How to change your personality: 8 tips

It is normal and relatively common for people to seek to improve themselves and improve their way of being. However, on some occasions the change sought is very deep, structural. This is the case of those who consider changing their personality completely. Is it possible to become a person very different from what you have always been?

In this article we will see some tips and recommendations about how to change your personality through the introduction of different habits in your day to day.

• Related article: "The main theories of personality"

How to change your personality

Personality is by definition something that is maintained over time, which tends to be constant. Specifically, it is the set of psychological dispositions that guide us towards certain dynamics. behavioral and not others, and is based on a genetic component and another learned, which is born from the experience.

However, as with most psychological phenomena, personality is not an element imposed on us in a deterministic way

, but we can influence it in surprising ways. It is practically impossible to turn it completely around and become something in which absolutely nothing of what we once were is noticeable, but radical changes are possible with effort and time.

So, to change your personality follow these tips.

1. Concrete your objectives

The goal of "changing my personality" is too abstract, too ambiguous. If you do not divide it into different specific objectives, you will get lost in vagueness and will not make significant progress.

Therefore, write down on a sheet of paper what aspects of your way of being that you would like to change, filtering priorities, and focus on it. After all, it is absurd to propose to change totally in all aspects of one's own personality; you have to target those areas that cause problems or are perceived as weaknesses.

2. Create the commitment

Every time we set ourselves an ambitious goal that requires effort, it is good to make sure that we are fully committed to it. One way to do it is to talk about it with other people, in order to create expectations and have more reasons not to give up.

Generating this kind of self-obligations is very positive. to achieve goals and not throw in the towel, despite the fact that it apparently limits our freedom.

3. Distance yourself from your past failures

On many occasions, one of the obstacles that makes it difficult for someone to change her personality for the better is the fact that you fall into the trap of believing that you will fall over and over again into the kinds of failures you fell into in the past.

It is true that we all have weaknesses that characterize us, but that does not mean that we cannot arm ourselves against these kinds of errors. With enough effort and learning, we can develop extraordinary skills. Even if we don't, this simple thought helps us stop being afraid of those aspects of life. that we have never been very good at it, which serves to make us stop being so vulnerable to they.

4. Give up what they'll say

Your changes in personal development should only concern you. It is clear that people always have reasons to speak behind one's back and to criticize, but precisely for this reason what others think should not obsess us; nobody knows us as well as we know ourselves, and that is the reason why the vast majority of appreciations and moral judgments that we receive from others have no value.

Being aware of this, and that everyone has the same weaknesses for which we ourselves are capable of hating ourselves on certain occasions, helps to put things in perspective and to not feel condemned to always be the same: around us people change radically for better and for worse, and you can do the same. The question is to guide this change so that it is for the better.

• You may be interested in: "Tips to stop thinking about what others think of you"

5. Surround yourself with people who inspire you

Much of learning occurs spontaneously by simply surrounding ourselves with those who give us reasons to improve and content on which to work to become better.

If we avoid falling into the trap of constantly comparing ourselves to those we consider to be the best, we will begin to absorb and adapt to our way of being those elements that we consider positive: have more patience, learn to listen and put ourselves in the shoes of others, be more creative by not discarding the most outlandish ideas, etc.

6. Do not assume your own identity, modify what you already have

It is important not to cover yourself with tics that define the personality of others, but to develop our own version of what we want to become. For example, if we want to work on self-esteem to trust more in our abilities, we must not use imposted the expressions or body language of another person, but look at what we usually do and perform corrections.

Focusing on oneself is an essential element to change one's own personality, since you have to work with what you have; pretending that we are a blank page will only generate frustration.

7. Introduce small changes in the day to day

Dedicate some time each day to notice what you do and correct it as you go to tend to the desired goal. The rest of the day, don't worry about it. In this way, you will do work intensively, while later you will not have to work on it and you will be able to recover (which prevents you from stressing too much).

Little by little, the repetition of those moments in which you make an effort to change will make them automate, and you will be able to gradually expand the time window that you dedicate to developing an improved personality.

8. He has the help of psychologists.

If necessary, psychologists can help you through psychotherapy. Professional accompaniment is usually very useful to find new strategies to improve and detect errors that had gone unnoticed.

Bibliographic references:

• Corr, Philip J.; Matthews, Gerald (2009). The Cambridge handbook of personality psychology (1. publ. ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Gonzalez, Jose (1987). Psychology of personality. Madrid: New Library.