HOW TO HAVE A PERSONALITY
July 2007
By the time you’re old enough to read this, your personality is set as hard as old
concrete. But even concrete can be jack-hammered away. But what is Personality?
Once formed is it impossible to change? Is it possible, by an act of will and the
implementation of self discipline, to reinvent yourself? After all, isn’t there a whole
Industry devoted to doing just that? Assertiveness training, work shops designed to
bolster self confidence, cure addiction, win friends and influence people. The problem
with most of these is that they are designed to cure or reverse a single flaw. They don’t
address the whole. They don’t develop a complete character.
Most people never even think to ask themselves who they want to be or how they
want to live. They assume they’re stuck with what they’ve got, even though much of it
wasn’t even of our their own making. We are formed and influenced by our parents,
teachers, neighborhood, friends and the colossal accident of our birth. Our accents and
mannerisms, attitudes and self image mark us in time and place, even down to the
neighborhood and economic class. We imitate or we rebel; but the absorbed the forms
and made them our own our own.
In order to create a Lifestyle you have to do two things: eliminate the old, and
create the new. The process is much the same as the first time around, except that we
are doing our research in a much larger library and are able to make conscious choices.
Imagine if you were writing your own book and got to create yourself, flesh out your own
character and decide for yourself who you’ll be. I’m not talking about the circumstances
surrounding your life. They are relatively unimportant. You may not be able to write: “I
am rich” and make it happen; but you can act rich, or take whatever characteristic of
being rich you admire and make it yours. For example, you can decide “I’m never going
to worry about money”. That’s an attitude. A choice. One anyone can make right now.
You can decide, “I’m going to be generous” whether you make ten dollars an hour or a
hundred million a year. The superifical circumstance of actually having money or not is
actually beside the point. The same applies to other circumstantial traits like being
beautiful, athletic, artistic or even, tall. It’s how you act, how you feel, what you believe
that really matters.
l: How Do I Start
Write down all the elements of your current personality. Be brutally honest. If you find
yourself writing physical or circumstantial traits change them to how they affect your self
image. For ex: If you wrote down “I am broke”, change it to I am self conscious about
being a loser because I have no money, (if it applies). If you write: I am short, Write “I
act tough to compensate for my height, or “ I am always afraid people won’t notice me.
Once you have written these separate them into two columns. One represents the traits
about yourself that you admire, the other traits that you do not.
ll: Imagine the Character
You are a screen writer whose job it is to come up with an unforgettable
character, one who is capable of holding the attention of the audience. The
character is not perfect. In fact, far from it. Perfect is boring. He just has to be
unforgettable. Now here’s the good part. You are not only the writer, you are the
audience. Start by moving all the characteristics you admire about yourself over
to your character’s outline. Next think about the character traits of friends or
public figures you admire, or even fictional characters. Sketch them in. Merge
these into one supercharacter. Push the envelope as much and as far as your
imagination will allow. Go for the outrageous and large. Don’t worry about
integrating these parts right now. Just build that unforgettable character who is
larger than life. Start imaginging yourself as that character.
lll: Bor-ring!
Resist the urge to go for the strong silent type. Strong silent types are boring.
Most people who see themselves as the strong silent type are seen by others as
quiet and dull. Real snoozers. Shyness is the enemy. There’s no room for
embarrassment. Draw as much attention to yourself as possible. It does not have
to be in a sophomoric or obnoxious or even loud manner. But you want to matter
and have something to offer. You can’t do that by blending into the background.
Why are some people shy and others, who don’t have anywhere near as much to
offer, are totally outgoing and extroverted. A lot of it has to do with how we see
ourselves. Being extroverted means you have to draw attention to yourself and
risk being thought of as pushy, or an asshole. It is usually a mistake to want,
above everything else, to be cool. A lot of being shy is actually just wanting to be
cool and not have anybody think anything negative about you. It’s far better to be
interesting. After all, interesting is cool, isn’t it. Remember, you are your one and
only audience. It only matters what you think.
Iv: Courage
The one trait all great characters have in common is courage. Courage to
be themselves and to follow their own passion. Constantly remind yourself of that
and have the courage to be who you want to be. Combine that with other traits
such as humor and compassion, or whatever YOU come up with and you are on
your way to inventing yourself. Don’t be afraid of having extreme opinions
because you may provoke a strong negative reaction. If you really believe what
you’re saying, people will respect it. And what could be better than inviting a
dialog. Either you’ll convince them of the wisdom of your beliefs or you’ll learn
something from theirs. Learn to express yourself openly and without fear? If you
provoke a strong response in someone else it must be working. If you get into a
heated debate with somebody because of your extreme views all the better.
When someone says something you haven’t considered, acknowledge it. People
love that.
THE TRAPPINGS
All great character have props. It might be the way they wear their hat, their penchant
for classical music, their quirky wardrobe, their funky car. In the same way you rejected
the character traits that were imposed upon you by others, reexamine the trappings of
your life. Just because all your friends wear Tommy Bahama doesn’t mean you have to.
In fact, it’s a damn good reason not to. Everything you do and wear and that surrounds
you should be something you feel some passion about, and the more uniquely you it is
the better. We’ve all experienced this, some article of clothing or household decoration
that we really loved and made our own. Not as image but because it really meant
something to us. Develop your passions fearlessly. Look at every new experience as
discovering something you may come to love. Explore new music that no one has ever
heard of. Read about things that are so far from your own experience you couldn’t even
imagine them. Make time for the things you KNOW you love and don’t let anybody stop
you from doing them. Just like with a good script, the secret to developing a good
personality is revision,revision revision.
Now here’s the tricky part. You are not really making this up. Whatever you come
up with will elolve and be moulded by your experience and values into a personality that
can only be YOU. What you are really doing is bringing it forward on a conscious level.
You’re not conforming to the roles that were imposed on you by your family and friends.
You are rejecting all that and breaking free to become the person you want to be, the
person you were meant to be.