Self Improvement

What’s The Difference Between Habit And Personality?

What are the things we can’t change?

You are who you are. If Disney movies have taught us anything, it’s that all we have to do to save the day or defeat the bully or get the boy/girl is to be ourselves.

If somebody doesn’t like who we are, we shouldn’t change. Nope, no self-examination for us! Instead, we should find somebody who’ll accept us exactly as we are. Somebody who’ll never ask us to grow or to change or to improve ourselves. Anybody who would be rude enough to suggest that we aren’t perfect just as we are, obviously doesn’t truly love us.

The only thing is, we do change sometimes. We might become the kind of person who goes for a run every day, or who wakes up early in the morning instead of sleeping in until noon. We might become meditators or entrepreneurs or fly-fishing enthusiasts, all without worrying that we’re betraying our true nature.

In fact, now that I think about it, we spend a lot of time changing, often with significant effort, but we don’t feel as if we’re failing to be ourselves when we do. Why? Because we treat habits and personality as if they’re different things.

Introversion, for example, is considered an immutable personality trait. Set in stone. The mere suggestion that an introvert might try to be more sociable is insensitive and judgemental, whereas suggesting that a smoker try to cut down isn’t.

Sometimes the line is blurred. For example, is overeating a habit or an immutable trait? How about somebody who drinks alcohol every day? Or somebody who gambles? There are lots of ways this double-standard manifests itself. There are some things the people around us do that we’re willing to dismiss as “just the way they are”, whereas others are “things they really need to work on”.

But what’s the difference between any of these things? Why should we consider our capacities to grow and change to be limited in some areas and not in others?

I’m not suggesting that we pressure into changing if they don’t want to, I’m saying that buying into the idea that certain aspects of who we are can’t be changed even if we want them to, locks us into patterns that we might well be better off without.

Pessimism, shyness, a short temper, anxiety, self-pity, none of these are hard-wired into us. They’re habits, sometimes deep-seated habits, that we can change over time if we work at doing so.

Who we are is a lot less fixed than we’re led to believe. This is a good thing. Because the only thing better than being who we are, is realising that we can become whoever we want to be.