Sherry Benton, founder of TAO Connect , a psychology professor emeritus, and former counseling center director at the University of Florida who wasn't involved in this particular study , this is percent natural and, in a sense, kind of inevitable.
To an extent, you're in control of who you are as a person, so the best thing you can do is accept what you can't control, and work on changing what you can. That, Benton says, is most likely not going to change. However, "you can build excellent social skills and function well when more extroverted behavior is called for," she explains. Again, this is totally natural and, in some instances, all too necessary. Are we stuck with our particular type preferences with no choice or ability to use the opposite preferences?
Is personality permanent? He believed they're hardwired. However, Jung also believed how we use those preferences can and does change in healthy personal development and growth.
Kind of like how you can write with both hands, but one hand naturally writes better than the other. But you can learn to write with the other hand and a lot of children did way back in the day when everyone was forced to be right-handed.
In other words, the question of whether personality is permanent requires a deeper discussion. So what exactly are these "in-between" parts of personality? While changing beliefs might not necessarily be easy, it offers a good starting point. Our beliefs shape so much of our lives, from how we view ourselves and others, how we function in daily life, how we deal with life's challenges, and how we forge connections with other people. If we can create real change in our beliefs, it is something that might have a resounding effect on our behaviors and possibly on certain aspects of our personality.
From infancy, humans develop these beliefs and representations, and many prominent personality theorists of different persuasions acknowledge that they are a fundamental part of personality," Dweck explained in a paper.
Take, for example, beliefs about the self, including whether personal attributes and characteristics are fixed or malleable. If you believe your intelligence is a fixed level, then you are not likely to take steps to deepen your thinking. If, however, you view such characteristics as changeable, you will likely make a greater effort to challenge yourself and broaden your mind.
Obviously, beliefs about the self do play a critical role in how people function, but researchers have found that people can change their beliefs in order to take a more malleable approach to self-attributes. In one experiment, students had a greater appreciation of academics, higher grade point averages, and a greater overall enjoyment of school after discovering that the brain continues to form new connections in response to new knowledge.
Dweck's own research has demonstrated that how kids are praised can have an impact on their self-beliefs. Those who are praised for their intelligence tend to hold fixed-theory beliefs about their own personal attributes.
These kids view their intelligence as an unchangeable trait; you either have it or you don't. Children who are praised for their efforts , on the other hand, typically view their intelligence as malleable. These kids, Dweck has found, tend to persist in the face of difficulty and are more eager to learn.
At many points in your life, you may find that there are certain aspects of your personality that you wish you could change. You might even set goals and work toward tackling those potentially problematic traits. For example, it is common to set New Year's Resolutions focused on changing parts of your personality such as becoming more generous, kind, patient, or outgoing.
In general, many experts agree that making real and lasting changes to broad traits can be exceedingly difficult. So if you are dissatisfied with certain aspects of your personality, is there really anything you can do to change? Changing from an introvert to an extravert might be extremely difficult or even impossible , but there are things that the experts believe you can do to make real and lasting changes to aspects of your personality.
Psychologists have found that people who exhibit positive personality traits such as kindness and honesty have developed habitual responses that have stuck.
Habit can be learned, so changing your habitual responses over time is one way to create personality change. Of course, forming a new habit or breaking an old one is never easy and it takes time and serious effort. With enough practice, these new patterns of behavior will eventually become second nature.
If you believe you cannot change, then you will not change. If you are trying to become more outgoing, but you believe that your introversion is a fixed, permanent, and unchangeable trait, then you will simply never try to become more sociable.
But if you believe that your personal attributes are changeable, you are more likely to make an effort to become more gregarious. Dweck's research has consistently shown that praising efforts rather than ability is essential. Instead of thinking "I'm so smart" or "I'm so talented," replace such phrases with "I worked really hard" or "I found a good way of solving that problem.
By shifting to more of a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset, you may find that it is easier to experience real change and growth. Positive psychologist Christopher Peterson realized early on that his introverted personality might have a detrimental impact on his career as an academic.
To overcome this, he decided to start acting extroverted in situations that called for it, like when delivering a lecture to a class full of students or giving a presentation at a conference. Eventually, these behaviors simply become second nature. While he suggested that he was still an introvert, he learned how to become extroverted when he needed to be. Personality change might not be easy, and changing some broad traits might never really be fully possible.
But researchers do believe that there are things you can do to change certain parts of your personality, the aspects that exist beneath the level of those broad traits, that can result in real changes to the way you act, think, and function in your day-to-day life.
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