I used to think that some things about me were just because of my fixed personality and they made me who I was.
What I didn’t realise back then is that this simply isn’t true. But, as long as I believed in it, it kept me caged in a prison of my own making.
Now as a coach, I encounter other people who have the same belief that their personality is fixed or that any possible change in their lives is always limited on their personality.
As I see beyond this thinking, I am now able to help people see it in themselves as well. Because when we stop buying into the beliefs of who we think we are, that’s when real, powerful, sustainable change is possible.
I wrote about this in detail in my book Sweet Sharing, here’s an excerpt:
“I used to think I was my personality. My identity was based on all of the thinking I was doing. If I had “good” thoughts, that made me a good person. If I had “bad” thoughts, that made me a bad person.
I desperately wanted to be a good person.
Deep down all I really wanted was simply to be happy and loved. Because of this I ended up spending a lot of my life pursuing things I thought would make me happy. What I didn’t realise was that I was expending my energy on pursuits that wouldn’t have the outcome I desired. I had forgotten that as a very young boy I was happy most of the time. I ignored the time my father told me that the proudest day of his life was the day I was born and instead still looked for ways to gain his approval. I saw the world through the lens of my own thinking—as we all do— and innocently looked in the wrong direction for my happiness.
What I was eventually opened up to was the realisation that I am in fact not my thinking. Thoughts occur to me constantly—but they are not who I am. As I have mentioned elsewhere in this book, I don’t have a fixed personality, and neither do you. As I dropped this misunderstanding, my thinking stopped having such a hold on me. It was no longer imperative to have certain “good” thoughts, and I no longer needed to feel guilty about having “bad” thoughts.”
Also on this very topic, there’s a wonderful conversation I did with Nicola Bird for her podcast The Little Peace of Mind where we explored about personalities and who we truly are:
- My journey to overcome shyness and introversion
- The realisation that transformed everything for me
- Why our personalities are not fixed
- How to work with limiting beliefs
- Dealing with the fear and discomfort of changing ourselves
- Answering the question “So what that I am living from the inside out?”
With love and appreciation,
Ankush
Coach and Author of Sweet Sharing – Rediscovering the REAL You
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