A psychology-based New Year’s resolution: Change your personality

Setting a goal to change your personality may seem as daunting as striving to climb Mount Everest. And although I acknowledge that changing one’s personality is challenging, it is a goal which can be accomplished with focus and consistent effort. In the following sections, I will discuss the nature of personality and provide a game plan for changing yours in a direction that will improve your life.

What is personality?

Personality refers to a person’s relatively stable way of thinking, feeling and behaving. In other words, people tend to think, feel and behave in the same way in different situations and over time. For example, someone who is described as conscientious in their personality would tend to display elements of conscientiousness such as diligence and organization in different situations and from one time to the next.

Note that personality refers to a tendency. That is, although people have relatively stable ways of thinking, feeling and behaving they often think, feel and behave differently from this tendency. For example, there will be situations in which someone who is described as conscientious would not display elements of conscientiousness such as diligence and organization. It is also possible for someone who has been described as conscientious to shift over time to being less conscientious in their relatively stable way of thinking, feeling and behaving.

Can personality be changed?

Given the relatively stable nature of personality, it does not change easily but it can be changed. It does so typically for one of two reasons. One is that the person encounters one or more significant life events or people whose impact disrupts and shifts the person’s relatively stable way of thinking, feeling and behaving. This includes positive events and people leading the person to change their personality in a favourable way along with negative events and people leading the person to change their personality in an unfavourable way.

Personality can also change by taking deliberate steps. This is typically done in therapy by working with a professional who can help you to change your way of thinking, feeling and behaving in a favourable direction.

Areas of personality to target for change

I recommend two ways to identify areas of your personality which you may want to target for change. One way is to consider aspects of your personality which are having a negative impact on your life. For example, many clients work to become less depressed and happier, less anxious and calmer and less reactive with anger and more patient.

A second way is to use the ‘Big Five’ personality framework to identify characteristics which you would like to address. This research-validated personality scheme posits that personality consists of five independent characteristics—introversion/extroversion; openness to experience; conscientiousness; agreeableness and neuroticism/emotional stability. Completing the big five questionnaire reveals the extent to which a person possesses each of these characteristics.

In addition to measuring where you stand on each of the big five personality dimensions, you can also target one or more of them for positive change. For example, if your score on conscientiousness is lower than you prefer, you may wish to target this characteristic for positive change. Doing so would, in effect, result in conscientiousness being more a part of your personality.

Changing personality through therapy

As I mentioned, personality change can be done in therapy by working with a professional who can help you to change your way of thinking, feeling and behaving in a favourable direction. In my next article, I will discuss strategies which are helpful in this process.

May you set goals to change your personality to enhance your life,

-Dr. Pat