How To Transform Your Personality [5 Things To Do]

In this article, I’m going to talk about how to transform your personality. So first, I’m going to explain a little bit about some of the challenges you might face that make you want to change your personality and one of the biggest problems with changing your personality. Then I’m going to share what you need to do to actually change your personality. Let’s go.

The truth about changing personality

Here’s the thing about personality. Again and again, the research shows that our true personality doesn’t actually change much and that it’s kind of a lost cause to try to change it too much.

So the big shift I want to make before we dive into this article is instead of perceiving it as changing your personality, I want you to shift the context to becoming the best version of your personality.

That’s because we know that when you try to change something fundamental, you can usually change it maybe I don’t know, 10 to 15%. But if you focus instead, on building on top of your gifts and your strengths, and who you naturally really are, we can see changes of 100% or 200%.

And by the way, I didn’t make that up. That is part of the very first beginning chapter of strengths finder, which is one of my favorite books, and I use the Strengths Finder test with all of my clients and friends.

So now that we’ve got that out of the way, we understand that we want to work with who you actually really are, rather than trying to fundamentally shift who you are, what we’re trying to do is become the best version of you.

5 things to do to transform your personality

1. Know Thyself

Now the very first thing we want to do to transform ourselves and become more aligned with who we really are and change our personality as a result of that is to know thyself.

Know thyself is about diving inward into who you really are in the first place.

Now, a lot of times who we really are can get a few skated, can get covered up by layers and layers of conditioning and programming, by our families, by our teachers, by our friends, by our culture.

And for that reason, we might have a natural personality that’s buried under layers of adapted personality.

You may have heard about the famous story of Michelangelo who was asked how he created the statue of David that’s so famous and if you’re not familiar with it, go Google it. It’s beautiful.

And he said, it’s simple, but took a block of stone and removed everything that wasn’t David. And that’s what I look at this personal development process as being.

Number one, knowing thyself is about removing everything that isn’t you, that was placed on you, that was acquired, that was programmed everything that’s gotten in the way of you actually being you.

There’s a difference between who we are in our nature, and who we are based on nurture, who we developed ourselves to be.

And I’m not saying that every part of nurture is not you. But I want you to be discerning and intentional about saying is this part really me, is this thing that I do really who I am, is this thing that I say that I’m great at really what I love, right, and really starting to distinguish and peel away the parts of you that you’ve adapted in order to get approval or love from the world.

Also, read How to become self-taught (10 Easy ways to self-learning).

2. Focus on developing a vision for yourself

This second thing to look at, that will automatically transform your personality without you even trying is to focus on developing a vision for yourself and for your life created from desire and possibility.

So often what we create in our lives, and I know that this is true for me, and it might be true for you, is based on other people’s expectations of us.

I went decades into a career that I didn’t enjoy because I thought I had to. And so for this second step, you want to look at what do you actually want to experience in life.

Truly, like remembering that we get this one shot at this life, no matter what your beliefs are about coming back and reincarnation, the way this life in this body, this moment is once and so what is it that you want to experience? What do you want to live?

And really clarifying that desire and that vision and consider even practicing in your mind, going daydream mode and envisioning what does it feel like to be in that life?

When you start to operate from the vision, when you start to really connect to it to connect to your own desire, your personality will start to shift.

Just naturally, you will become more joyful, you will become happier, as long as you focus on the feelings associated with that vision, rather than on the feelings associated with not having the vision. This is a really important distinction.

3. Address childhood trauma to transform your personality

The third thing I want to invite you to do that will also naturally transform your personality almost without even realizing it, is to go back and address and heal the wounds of your childhood.

All of us had wounds, some of us more than others, for sure. But every single one of us had experiences that hurt and that may have been too much for us to deal with as a child.

Those are the experiences that can shut us down, that can hurt us that can make us protect ourselves and build a wall around ourselves.

So I invite you to go back and mine, your childhood and your past for those problems, for those stories, for those situations, and circumstances that hurt you and go ahead and feel the feelings of them and see if you can’t feel it, let it go and forgive.

4. Create a new relationship with your physiology

The fourth thing that you can do to transform your personality is to create a new relationship with your physiology, with your body.

One thing that we know for sure from science and a whole bunch of research is that our emotional state is very closely tied to our physiological state. It’s also very closely tied to our posture and our nervous system. But I’m not going to get too deep into that here.

But what I will say is that what you put into your body, how you treat your body, the rest that you give your body, all of those things, impact your emotional state, your physiology, and ultimately your personality.

It’s hard to be a positive, uplifting, happy person when you’re in a whole lot of pain. And so another thing to do is to address the things in your life in your body that cause you pain.

5. Find a mentor to transform your personality

The fifth thing I invite you to do to transform your personality is to find a mentor. A mentor or multiple mentors, I personally have mentors in every area of my life in which I want to grow and transform.

But finding a mentor to help you by reflecting on things that you might not be able to see. I like to say you can’t see the label of the jar you’re in and I personally have mentors so that they can help me see the truth of what I’m experiencing at the moment.

A lot of times as individuals, we can see the truth about ourselves in hindsight, but it’s difficult to see it at the moment, perhaps when we’re hijacked by certain feelings or emotions, or beliefs.

So having great mentors who are willing to tell you the truth, supported by love, right, not just the truth in a painful way, although it can be painful, but really the truth from love. That’s a really powerful recipe for helping you transform and grow into the best version of yourself.

6. Surround Yourself With The Right People

The sixth thing I recommend for a shift in personality is to surround yourself with people who embody how you’re looking to be in your life.

So when we are trying to transform but we surround ourselves with people who are more like the old version of us, it’s gonna be really hard to do it.

For example, when we’re overcoming an addiction, but we keep surrounding ourselves with the people who are stuck in that addiction, it’s very counterproductive.

From that vision from that possibility that you created, looking for who are the people that you can surround yourself with, it’ll help you stay connected to that vision.

And then finally, in all of this, my advice is to love and forgive yourself for not doing it perfectly. It will never be perfect.

And if you hold yourself to a standard of perfection, you will always be disappointed. And that doesn’t do very much to help us have an uplifting and positive personality.

So I invite you to consider being easy with yourself, forgiving yourself, loving yourself, and allowing yourself to crack a few eggs along the way.

All of that being said, I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this article, and learned a lot from it! On top of that, I really hope to see you in our next article!