3 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR PERSONALITY

 BUILDING BETTER HABITS

A conscious man thinking about his personality/Credit/Anastasia Bekker

Summary

Ø Significant number of research studies agree that you can change your personality qualities

Ø You just need a proper intervention to improve your personality such as, counselling.

Ø Most personality changes are influenced by life events such as, death, birth, or diseases.  

In this post, you will learn three ways to improve your personality.

The kind of improvements you are looking for in your personality might not necessarily be associated with the ‘big five’ personality traits described by psychologists. Big five personality traits known in psychology are; extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness, and emotional stability. This could not be what you are looking for in your desire to improve your personality. Because you are already one of the big five traits. For example, if you are highly sociable and outgoing. You belong in extraversion. If, you are highly empathetic or kind, you fall under agreeableness. The curious and creative people fall under openness. If you consider yourself to me more thoughtful, then you are conscientious. And if you suffer from emotional instability or express emotions often, then you belong in neuroticism.   

Therefore, when you are looking to improve your personality. You are either seeking to clean up a trait or you are looking for a combination. For example, if your personality trait is neuroticism. Your improvement will focus on stabilizing your emotions. You want to be more emotionally mature. You are looking to avoid reacting using your emotions and lean more towards stability and maturity. You want to be a better communicator. We go through different events in life and people change along the way. You could have been socialized differently when you were a child. However, when you become an adult, you change. Because of the many experiments you engage in as an adult. Those different things that you incorporate or encounter along the way might change your personality. These three habits will help you arrive at your desired improvement.

Know Yourself

To carry out effective improvement on your personality. You need to know yourself. You need to know where you are currently at as a person. Knowing where you are will influence what you want to become. Knowing yourself means taking time to understand yourself. Understand yourself in terms of what is missing in your personality. What kind of traits or values you would like to incorporate in your current personality? This is important because you need to know what needs to be repaired. You cannot correct something unless you know what is wrong. When you understand a wrong, you can easily fix it. You need to know what is wrong with your current personality. The things that you don’t like about it. Areas that you think can use improvement. When you come up with a list of things and areas that need improvement. You can arrive at the right intervention.

There are various forms of interventions that can help to change your personality. For example, if, you have unhealthy practices such as, smoking. Your best intervention is to seek the help of a clinical counselor. If, you suffer from extreme fear. Your best intervention is to interrupt your environment. Try going out more or listening to other perspectives from other people who are not you. You other intervention is to confront the things that make you fearful. For example, if darkness drives you crazy. Spend more time outside after sunset. The more you challenge that fear of darkness, the more you become less fearful. You learn that there is no threat in dark other than your thoughts creating unnecessary fear. You can also seek therapy to overcome your fear. Knowing yourself helps to mark out unhealthy practices. When you identify what you don’t like. You learn the best way to fix it. The solutions to your personality might differ. While you can achieve some improvements by yourself. Extreme cases might require the help of an expert.

Excited woman enjoying her personality. Photo/Caique Nascimento

Serious life events such as, death might impact you badly. When you develop trauma as a result of loss. Your personality might benefit from the help of a counsellor. The unhealthy practices that you might involve yourself as a result of loss might also change you. To ensure that your personality remains what you know. Enlist the services of a qualified professional. Depending on the type of person you are; loss can impact you differently than the other person. So don’t focus on the other person’s coping mechanism. Focus on yourself. Understand how loss is making you feel or transforming you. Record the healthy and unhealthy practices. If you notice a long trend of unhealthy behavior, which you previously did not practice. That is the time to seek improvement. Improve your personality by incorporating healthy habits that fit you back to your right personality.   

Learn New Things

If you have been the same person that you were ten years ago. Then you need change. You need to improve your skills and overall life choices. Nothing remains constant. In the last ten years that you have done nothing to yourself. You have changed. You have changed in the sense that nothing new has been added in your life. The lack of new knowledge and challenges impact you negatively. Your change could be laziness. These new things that crop in change you. Even when you think nothing has changed around you. If, you stay the same person in ten years. Your growth will be impacted. You will be impacted professionally, personally, and spiritually. You could change from a more positive person to a negative person. Your life could change from exciting to boring because you do the same things.

Learning new things can result in the desired personality improvement. You just need to identify your core areas of interest and start learning new things. Learning can take different forms. You can learn in a real classroom. And you can also learn outside the classroom. The nature of your learning needs will determine the format. But since this is a personality improvement. You will not need a classroom to improve. You will need yourself to make difficult decisions. A difficult decision to stop doing what is harming your personality. If it is smoking, alcohol, drugs, or lack of focus. You must make up your mind about them. You must decide to reduce the rate at which you drink or smoke. Your personality improvement should focus on pulling you back. Bringing you back to the person that you want to become. In this case, a person seeking to be healthier or choosing a healthy lifestyle.

Happy woman with great personality. Photo/Andrea Piacquadio

Your new things to learn would range from learning about healthy lifestyle choices. The types of food you need. The types of healthy drinks you need to replace with alcohol. You learn about the alternatives that best serve your health. There are no alternatives to drugs. You will have to make a big decision. To stop using drugs. To stop associating with people who make you bad. Avoid places and people that influence you wrongly. These are the new things that you will learn. And you will also learn positive practices that you can incorporate in place of the bad habits you eliminate. Improving your personality does not just involve getting rid of things you don’t want. It also involves feeding your personality with what it needs to improve. Learn about new things you can begin practicing to improve your personality.

Drop Bad Practices

If your personality needs improvement. It means some bad things are happening. Drop the bad practices that are impacting your personality negatively. List all the bad practices that you don’t like. Learn about their sources. Understand when they began impacting you. Identify their underlying causes. Then go for those underlying causes. You definitely want to root those bad practices from your life. The best way is to go for their roots not branches. You want to get rid of them completely. Roots are the underlying causes. Learn when you first started abusing drugs. What circumstances led you there? What was going on in your mind? What was happening around? What influences led you to drugs? Dig and get to the bottom of the problem. That is the best way to get out of it. By fixing the source of the problem. You increase your changes of healing. Your personality improves when you completely root the problem out.

You can only drop bad practices when you know them. Assess yourself and establish habits and behaviors that you don’t approve. Get rid of those habits. Sweep across your life. Remove everything that you don’t like. Identify triggers that led you to the bad practice. An improvement only occurs when a real change happens. Your personality will only improve when you implement real changes. Changes that tailor you towards positivity. Changes that create progress. This means that you need to be very serious with the types of changes you are looking for in your personality. Do just wish it. Work it out. Put those improvements in action. And drop things that make your personality bad. Work hard for your changes. Your personality means a lot because it makes your overall being. The changes you make are meant for your good. For example, you want to be more responsible or more organized. Work hard. You will gain the personality improvement you want. Just make sure, you know yourself. Learn new things. And drop all bad practices currently impacting your personality.