Can I change my personality?

Over the years I have lost count of the amount of people who have said to me…

‘It’s just the way I am’
‘It’s part of my personality’
‘I’m just one of those kinds of people’
‘I’m just a natural born worrier’

And when they say this they genuinely believe this to be true!

And when you believe something to be true, then guess how that will impact how you behave, how you show up every day and navigate your way through life.

The truth is, if you stop for a moment and break down the word ‘personality’ you can see that a ‘personality’ is created from your reality.  In simple terms – how you view yourself.

(check out this 3 minute clip of Dr. Joe Dispenza explaining this in more detail!)

And that personal reality is formed based on all the thought structures in your brain 🧠  and your belief structures, perceptions, and stories you have (innocently) created based on your experiences and what you make something mean.

And when people talk about their personality, they speak about it as if it is something which is fixed – that it’s permanent, some kind of hard object.

The more we tell ourselves ‘This is who I am‘ or that ‘This is part of my personality‘ or ‘I’m just an angry person‘ for example, it will seem like that is true because at some level we have accepted it as the truth.

What if that wasn’t true?

What if you were open to the possibility that this view of your personality was simply formed based on your inner reality, and that isn’t the truth of who you are?

As Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, describes, the most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.

As Steve Chandler says in his book Creator, Who You Are is divine creative energy.

Yet more often than not we’re not using that divine creative energy to create what we truly want to experience – instead, we are busy arguing about our limitations!

Earlier this year I was at a three-day coaching event with Jamie Smart, Sunday Times best-selling author.

During an exercise, we were talking about what we wanted to create for ourselves.

I said to 2 of my colleagues that I’d like to be more loving towards people.

I get a lot of feedback about how kind, compassionate and loving I am….however!

…there are times when I can be snappy. Times when I can be quite direct or abrupt with people. 

And because I am aware of that, I’d got it into my head that maybe I wasn’t as loving as I ‘should’ be!.

As I chatted this through with one of my peer coaches, Marie, she said to me ‘Maybe you already are love‘.

I felt like I’d taken a bullet. 

The tears immediately weald up in my eyes, emotion flooded through my body because in that moment I heard the truth.

I was just doing a really good job of talking myself out of that! 

What do you want to create?

Next time that you’re describing yourself or describing a limitation, I invite you to remember that’s not who you are. 

If you say you are no good at languages that you are a terrible worrier, that you will never amount to much, or you are an angry person – that’s not your personality!

It’s just a view you have taken about yourself based on your inner world – your reality.  And a view you have given a LOT of time and attention to, which is why it formed part of your inner reality.

Instead, ask yourself what you want to create. Who do you need to be?

One of the things I often ask myself is ‘Who am I being when I am doing’.  This works wonders to raise your level of self-awareness and allow that creative energy to flow so that you can create who you want to be!

Happy creating!