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To get rid of shyness or irritability, to become more cheerful or more attentive – the desire to transform something in oneself probably visits everyone sooner or later. We can become different… But to what extent?
“In my youth, I was cheerful and brave, a real adventurer,” recalls 45-year-old Natalya. – I jumped with a parachute, hitchhiked, spent the night in the open air … Now I’m different – calm, homely. I’m not looking for thrills anymore, I’m busy with family life, taking care of children … I’m watching videos of those years, I can’t believe that that crazy girl is me.
Striking or subtle changes in character, lifestyle, aspirations occur constantly in everyone, although we do not always notice it. After all, personality is not a given, but “a process of constant self-determination in the world,” as psychologist Alexei A. Leontiev said.1. We try to do something, make mistakes and learn to correct them, find meanings and change goals. We try on new roles, and the character also changes a little.
Most often, personality traits develop in the course of life in a direction that is desirable for ourselves and for those around us, as studies show. Psychologists from the University of Houston asked American teenagers what they thought about their character, and 50 years later they asked the same participants the same questions.2. What changed? It turned out that over time, survey participants became calmer, more responsible and more accommodating – so much so that the changes were clearly visible to others.
Frog, don’t boil!
What if circumstances change us and new tendencies that we notice in ourselves are not very satisfactory? “Over the five years of a quiet life in a money position, I lost all my passion and curiosity, I became like that boiled frog that gradually adapted to hot water until it was too late to escape,” admits 36-year-old Artem, an IT specialist. Everything seemed to be going great, until one day I found myself terribly dissatisfied with myself and others, but I did not have the strength to rearrange something. The hardest thing was to tell myself that I have been going the wrong way for a long time!”
In order to start rebuilding ourselves, we must first see ourselves as we are. “Indeed, how can I correct what I deny? says Anna Pham, a specialist in the field of choice psychology. “I can’t separate from my parents if I don’t acknowledge the fact that I’m addicted.
Self-reliance arises not when I run away from home or explode at the mention of my mother, but when I acknowledge reality, including my inner state. Why do I behave this way and not otherwise (I get annoyed, offended, crying, shouting, silent, but I would like to speak …)? What character trait manifests itself in this way, in what situations, why do I need it? “Having realized this, I can change my attitude towards my peculiarity and, due to this, I myself will become a little different,” continues Anna Fam. “Or I can change the situation, and in the new circumstances this peculiarity of mine will lose its sharpness. There is a third way: I can compensate for those manifestations that I do not like by developing other traits of my character.
Perhaps our “inner frog” will turn into a rose, if we create the right conditions for this. “All my childhood and adolescence, I trained and set records,” says 23-year-old athlete Elena, “there was no time to hang out, chat too. I didn’t know how to talk about things that didn’t involve swimming, and when I was given a compliment, I silently stared at the floor. Finally, I decided that this would not work, and signed up for acting classes. I’ve been studying for a month, I’ve learned to look my interlocutor in the face and I notice that it’s also easier for others with me. ”
Always ready? And when is it ready?
It turns out that we can change everything we want? Perhaps so, but only to some extent. It is unlikely that at the age of 30 we will be able to retrain from a laboratory assistant to a test pilot, although we can master parachuting. A philosopher immersed in his work can expand his social circle, but will he become the soul of the company? However, it is unlikely that he really wants to.
“Any change takes time (mental processes require maturation), motivation (understanding “why”) and energy, and sometimes there is very little of it,” says Anna Fam. – If you are exhausted and depressed, you will not have enough fuel to start living differently. Then you will have to first eliminate the causes of depression and take up the restoration of strength.
In addition, the readiness to develop is different for everyone – it is associated with personal potential, psychologist Dmitry Leontiev notes. If our potential is high, we are active, included in what is happening, able to act without a guarantee of success, and in a difficult situation we do not lose at least minimal control over what is happening. And then we are really ready for change. Sometimes they turn out to be more radical than we expected: it is not individual traits of character that change, but the whole personality, so that it seems to both our former acquaintances and ourselves that we have become someone else. Maybe we really are turning into someone else.
“The trigger was that I didn’t get married for a long time and had complexes because of this”
Timur Solovyov, host of the Good Morning program
“As soon as we are born, they begin to educate us – parents, school, society. As a result, often at some point in our lives we find ourselves completely surrounded by other people’s desires, not our own. With age, I began to listen to myself more and try to do what I really want, and not what others expect from me. This understanding did not come immediately. A kind of trigger was the fact that I didn’t get married for a long time and had complexes about this – everyone around creates families, they have children, but I don’t have a relationship. I clearly realized that it was about me, and not about others. I began to understand what was happening to me in general in a relationship.
I read a lot of literature, studied with psychologists, tried different techniques and methods until I found something that helped me. I got to the bottom of the very beginning, to the patterns, attitudes that were laid in me – how I should be and how to live. And correlated it with what I really want. And I wanted to live freely, to enjoy the life of a single and fairly wealthy person. When I accepted this, I literally rediscovered myself. And I keep learning.
Self-knowledge is a lifelong work. It is impossible to say: “Stop, I have learned everything about myself and I do not intend to change anything else in myself.” Changes within us do not happen once and for all. Every day, every minute and second is a challenge for us, a test to be real. To understand who I really am is not the end, but only the beginning of the journey. Life is like the light from a movie projector, and we are the picture that is shown on the screen. What kind of movie will be, we choose for ourselves.
change skin
“So much has happened in the past year! — surprised 43-year-old Marina. – I survived the betrayal of my husband, got divorced, moved to another apartment and changed my entire circle of friends, and I did it with such evil determination that I did not expect from myself. As if the former soft and compliant Marina disappeared without a trace. In this case, we are talking about “the destruction of the former identity and the creation of a new idea of oneself on its ruins, that is, the experience of a real transformation,” commented the Jungian analyst Elena Purtova. – This is a deep process, and any shock can start it, whether it is an age crisis, divorce, death of loved ones or moving. Even the birth of the first child destroys the woman’s previous self-image, she gradually acquires a new identity – “mother”.
The process of transformation sometimes takes several years. Let’s imagine a lizard or cancer: growing up, they shed their skin or shell, because they no longer fit inside. Something similar happens with our inner world: “The new experience that has appeared does not fit into our old image of ourselves,” Elena Purtova explains. “We throw it off and stay naked, vulnerable for a while. Time must pass before we create a new cover for ourselves that will protect. We will create it, because rebirth is an active work: understanding oneself and accepting new, unfamiliar qualities that may not seem the best and most convenient. The task is to give them a place, to understand their meaning, to let them work for us.
Tangible results
Discipline or frivolity, restlessness or equanimity … It is believed that personality traits become stable when we become adults, and it is not easy to correct them.
However, the work of psychology professor Brent Roberts and his colleagues at the University of Illinois has shown that personality is much more variable than we think. Psychologists analyzed more than 200 clinical studies to assess how different types of psychotherapy (sometimes using medication) affect the personality of clients.
It turned out that, on average, after 3 months there were noticeable changes: the participants became more open and sociable, and their emotional stability increased by about twice compared to the previous life. In addition, the subjects gradually became more accommodating and conscious. By the way, the analysis showed that these changes persisted for a long time after the end of psychotherapy. This means that we are talking about persistent transformations, and not about a temporary change in mood, which is observed when symptoms of depression or increased anxiety are removed.
B. Roberts et al. A systematic review of personality trait change through intervention. Psychol Bull, 143 (2), 2017.
Constructor “I”
Can we start the transformation process of our own free will? Jungian analysis denies such voluntarism: if nothing fundamentally new has matured in the psyche, changes will not occur.
But there is another view: the British sociologist, the author of the concept of fluid modernity, Zygmunt Bauman3 likens identity to a constructor that allows you to endlessly experiment with the forms of yourself: “Of course, you can try to choose any one identity, but how many others, tempting with the breadth of their possibilities and not yet tested, are waiting around the corner. It is never known for sure whether the current identity is the best?!”
Indeed, today we can change our country, language, profession, appearance, and even our gender if we want to. What space! But it doesn’t suit everyone. “The absence of any boundaries motivates one to develop, and for the other it will be a difficult test,” notes Elena Sokolova, Doctor of Psychology4. – It’s good when we have the ability to perceive new things, to reconsider relationships and worldview. But will we be able, by experimenting, to return to something permanent, about which we say: “I stood on this and will continue to stand”?
Roles, character traits can change, but stability requires the main thing that supports our integrity, whether it is a civic position or loyalty to one’s vocation. Even when we are angry with ourselves, complaining about our stupid mistakes, there is still that part of our “I” that feels great. She also deserves attention.
About it
“Personal Potential”, ed. Dmitry Leontiev. Collection of scientific articles about our resources and possibilities. (Meaning, 2011)
1 A.A. Leontiev Active Mind (Sense, 2001).
2 R. Damian и др. Sixteen Going on Sixty-Six (Pyarxiv Preprint, август, 2018).
3 Z. Bauman & B. Vecchi. Identity. Conversations with B. Vecchi (Polity, 2004).
4 Author of the book Clinical Psychology of Self Loss (Sense, 2019).