I’ve changed myself on purpose.
Who is the real me?
There’s an underlying ambition there, otherwise there would be no incentive to try to change anything. The base (I won’t say “real”) me is tightly wound, selfish, and lazy about many things. Also I don’t *like* stress. It’s my cultural that upbringing makes me want to be a better, more selfless, more hardworking person.
I’ve worked very hard at becoming “Nice,” though you may not see this aspect of my personality (or #2′s) on the blog! I try to be nice both in my external interactions with others and internally. Being nice externally means being polite and respectful. #2 taught me how to use “I” statements rather than “You” statements when we were roommates and they really do work. Being outwardly nice (but still firm, and apologetic when no, sorry, I can’t become a doormat, it wouldn’t be fair to my other commitments) helps smooth many things over for me. When people think of me favorably they’re often willing to help me out when I need it.
More difficult is working on being nicer internally. And my reasons for being a nicer person internally are also completely selfish. I don’t like stress. So what I do is I assume the best of people because it’s less stress for me to do that. Often, I have found, if I keep acting like people are being good people eventually they start believing it too, at least in their interactions with me. And because I have a history of unintentionally slighting people, not due to any underlying whatever on my part but because I’m a bit socially clueless (and many misunderstandings are due to cultural differences across the US, only after years of study and living different places can I avoid those). I figure I ought to give people the benefit of the doubt that I wish they would give me. Middle school was over decades ago. I’ve spent quite a bit of time as a young adult working hard at looking for possible reasons for people’s actions and picking the best one. Now it is automatic. And it really is much less stressful than assuming people are trying to slight me.
Stress used to make me melt down. Graduate school hit me hard. So I ended up in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). And I worked really hard at it, because, I hate stress. Now when I start feeling the physical signs of stress, I automatically start deep breathing. When I start thinking unhelpful and untrue negative thoughts, I automatically start to cognitively restructure: That isn’t true, what is true, what are the consequences? I’m going to be ok.
Breathing isn’t the only physical thing that seems to change who I am. While dealing with infertility I discovered how much of my emotional ups and downs were food-related–hypoglycemia really does make me crazy. Birth control pills, even the low dose ones I was taking, also had effects on my personality. I will probably never go on BCP again (though they’re great for many people and we should all have easy access to them!), and now I know that when life seems hopeless possibly for no reason that maybe that’s a sign I need a snack, or to stay away from the refined carbs.
Academia is full of ups and downs. For example, the results that were working an iteration ago are now all significant in the opposite direction. Or the unfair rejections from journals for things about the paper that aren’t actually true. These are a constant. And early in my career they were much more devastating than they are now. I know that the sign error is either a mistake in the programming, or it will be something unexpected and interesting that might make a better paper (generally, however, it is the former). I just need to track it down. The rejections are inevitable, and although there would be fewer if I was, say, male, if I’m not getting any, it means I’m not aiming high enough or not trying enough things. And so long as *I* still think the paper is worth something, eventually I’ll find an editor who agrees. (It helps that as I’ve gained a reputation in the field the quality of my reviewers has also increased– starting out some of the folks they send your work to are idiots and assholes.)
I used to only be friends with crazy people. (#2 has mellowed considerably throughout the years!) I found crazy people interesting and normal people boring. But people who are still crazy in their late 20s and 30s… well… maybe not the best for someone who wants to avoid stress. I also have a strong personality and had a tendency to “fix” people with weaker wills than my own (seriously, some people… the answer is so obvious, and yet…) Over the past 10 years or so, I have started to shy away from the crazy, keeping them at a polite arms length, and I have been willfully stepping away from my tendency to control people who want to be controlled. I probably do enough inspiring and future changing in my role as teacher and mentor.
The man I partnered with calms me down. Every other boyfriend resulted in shouting matches, even the first sweetheart of a guy. I love who I am when I’m around my guy almost as much (but not quite) as I love who he is. He’s the perfect package all around, and his effect on me is a wonderful benefit. I love the way we don’t fight, but instead we problem-solve together.
The me that I want to be is not the me I started with. The me I want to be is a more wonderful person, and is who I have become in many ways and am continuing to become.
“I can’t be born again, but I can change a little every day.”
Have you ever tried to change your personality on purpose?
April 10, 2012 at 2:46 am
Still trying. I am not good with bullies, or even with proto-bullies — I let them get away with too much at first, and then I utterly blast them. I have tried and tried to improve but am only good at it in phases. I need to be in a good situation and feel I have freedom to handle bullies well.
April 10, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Bullies suck.
April 10, 2012 at 2:58 am
I know people knock The Secret, but it really played a part in changing my life. After reading it, I decided to consciously try adopt a more positive outlook by default.
I used to take pride in a lot of negative things – my pessimism, my sarcasm, my inability to cook… I still have a very dry and cutting sense of humour, I still laugh at my culinary ineptitude (while taking steps to address it, because I finally realised that I love food so much, it doesn’t make sense to not try) and I still consider myself a realist. But honestly, just shifting my underlying philosophy to focus on the good, to (if you like) send out positive thoughts and vibes rather than always moping and focusing on what sucks about life, has been great. I’m not a different person, by any means; but I am more pleasant and interesting to be around. And honestly, I’m happier for it.
April 10, 2012 at 8:56 am
The Secret sounds a bit like cognitive restructuring… though I’d always thought it was more Stuart Smalley than CBT. (As in, you’re supposed to say stuff that actually isn’t true but you’d like to be true, rather than focusing on the truth and changing your mindset to a forward looking one.) Obviously I haven’t read it! (But I did have a friend from SoCal in college who would always be quoting ridiculous things from it. But she said ridiculous things a lot, even when not quoting the Secret, so it may have biased me somewhat.)
April 10, 2012 at 3:13 pm
True, it focuses more on sending out thoughts about the kind of thing you want to attract (hence why it gets such a bad rap). The message I chose to take away from it was, like I said, to focus on the ups (which can never be a bad thing, unless you go all the other way to extreme blindness and ignoring reality) and possibilities.
April 10, 2012 at 6:49 am
Oh yeah. I try to be nicer than the ‘default’ me. Less sarcastic. Less hermit-y. Because all of those things actually do make me happier, feel better about myself. Like eemusings, I was changed by The Secret. Mid-melt down, I discovered that by changing the way I thought about things could change the way I felt about those things. Then, just a few months later, I stumbled upon a passage by the Dalai Lama, and that nudged me further down the road. It still takes a lot of conscious discipline, but that’s a good thing.
April 10, 2012 at 4:20 pm
Changing the way you think to change the way you feel is one of the cornerstones of CBT– the cognitive restructuring part. (The other part is changing your physical reactions to stress in order to allow your rational mind to take control.) It totally works.
April 10, 2012 at 9:02 am
I am the most impatient person I have ever encountered, especially when it comes to other people failing to understand or perceive things that are obvious to me. This is obviously a terrible trait when it comes to mentoring, and I believe I have done an excellent job of tempering this trait, thereby allowing myself to become an outstanding mentor to students and post-docs and junior faculty.
April 10, 2012 at 4:21 pm
Haha, yes, suffering fools is an important skill! (Especially if a fool is defined as anyone not as amazing as CPP– a large set! ;) )
April 10, 2012 at 10:09 pm
Ha! I am the most impatient person I have ever met. I wonder which one of us is worse…
April 11, 2012 at 5:09 am
“Patience? How long will that take?”
“I want to beat people up right now! I’ve got the pajamas.”
April 10, 2012 at 9:05 am
I might have to try this. People assume I am one way (nice, quiet, sweet) and then come to find out I am generally quiet but often like to have the last word, am impatient and will say mean things in anger. Assuming that people have the best intentions would be a lot easier to do than the part where I change my actions to reflect my internal niceness ie doing nice things (a specific request I’ll do, coming up with how to be nice on my own harder). For example we brought snacks and drinks for Tate’s flag football team last game. I set them out near the sidelines. I thought that was nice. Apparently I was supposed to know that I also needed to at half time and end of game tell each child we had snacks and drinks and offer both. That didn’t occur to me at all. How does an unthoughtful person become one?
April 10, 2012 at 10:11 am
A good question! I wonder if some of the techniques used to promote mindfulness would help.
Maybe you could make a checklist or put a band on your wrist to remind you to think, “Is there anything I could do here?”
Though I’m not sure if the flag football example is a good one of thoughtlessness! It sounds like it’s just a different custom, which isn’t thoughtless at all even if it seems like it might be to the people with the custom. A lot of my social problems have been adapting to different customs across the US– like is it polite or rude to ask probing questions? Do you offer things about yourself instead (and is that polite or rude)? I’ve got most of the US mapped out in those terms now so make many fewer social faux pas!
April 10, 2012 at 11:22 am
You should totally post that map. As a public service to the rest of us. And immigrants coming to the US!
April 10, 2012 at 11:24 am
Hahaha, well, we highlight some of those differences in our earlier geographic series of “You know you’re in…”
http://nicoleandmaggie.wordpress.com/tag/geography/
Looks like some are missing the geography tag– we should fix that.
April 10, 2012 at 9:20 am
I really like this post! I do try to “get a little better every day”- although some days I am more successful at that than others.
One thing I had been trying to change that I am starting to realize I shouldn’t try to change, though, is the fact that I get interested in lots of different topics, and get bored at work if I’m not getting new challenges. I thought of that as a bit of a flaw- as in, I should just suck it up and stop whining. So I was trying to make myself more patient with the boring work. But I think that is the wrong approach. I actually AM reasonably patient with the boring work, as long as that isn’t ALL of my work! Someone on my blog referred me to Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher, and it is giving me a lot to think about.
April 10, 2012 at 9:38 am
That’s a really good point. There are many things about my base personality I’ve decided not to change as well.
I left a comment on Femomhist’s blog about how I wanted to be Anne of Green Gables and then I really didn’t want to be Anne at all, but now I’ve come to accept that aspect of my personality.
What I meant there was when I read with horror in one of the later books about how people were always on their best behavior around Anne. And I thought… I don’t want people to be on their best behavior, I want them to feel free to be themselves. But I found out that’s not the case with me… people do act like their better selves around me, even friends, because they don’t want me to be disappointed or eye-rolling or eyebrow arching. After some trying to fix that (I swear I’m not particularly over-judgmental, I just have a very strong personality– people assume things of me that aren’t necessarily true… my mom tracks this aspect of the women in my family to a great grandmother up the matrilinial line), I just gave up and decided if people want to be good drivers instead of maniacs when I’m in the passenger seat, well, that’s an advantage to me. It’s also helpful with my career as a professor. If people want to be better people around me, well, no skin off my nose.
Not so good with close friendships ‘cuz always being on one’s best behavior I imagine adds stress to a relationship, but one takes the good with the bad, and some distance can be a good thing anyway. Easier to have acquaintances than to bend over backward trying to make people feel free to behave differently around me.
April 10, 2012 at 10:35 am
Hmmm, very interesting! I did not *intentionally* change my personality (from sarcastic, snobby, hermit-y) but falling in love with ballroom dancing (and soon after with now-DH) most definitely did enable some major changes in how I relate to the world. I am much more tolerant and sociable now.
I have several principles for relating to the world. 1) do unto others as you would have them do unto you; 2) if you don’t have something nice or useful to say, just keep quiet; 3) their issues are not my problem; 4) do what you say you are going to do; 5) don’t say yes very often, but mean it when you say it. “You,” of course, in these statements meaning “me.”
I don’t try to change people, but I am as honest with them as I can be and still qualify as civil. If someone is causing me stress or unhappiness, I vanish them. Life is too short (or too long!) to spend it trying to fix people.
April 10, 2012 at 4:24 pm
Those are really good principles. Though I’m not sure how they let you live in Los Angeles with #4 and #5 (the mean it when you say it part)… (I would say I was kidding here, but it is one of those big cultural differences that really got to me!)
April 10, 2012 at 10:54 am
I’ve always been very-in-my-head. Reflective. It takes some effort for me to focus on my surroundings. Maybe related to that, I don’t think my core values change. I mostly see the continuities and not the changes in my personality.
Despite this, I have changed intentionally a great deal during grad school- moreso than at any other stage of my life. Mostly, I’ve gotten a lot more positive and optimistic. For the longest time it felt forced and artificial. But nowadays I’m not depressed. And I like being upbeat.
I still want to be seen as smart and funny- which I suspect were the biggest factors that drove me toward developing sarcasm and cynicism as my default attitudes as a teen/young adult. But I realize how seldom people need sarcasm- there’s a surfeit of it in my surroundings. And, in many endeavours, there’s a dearth of optimism.
Becoming a parent has also changed me, in many of the stereotypical ways (it’s made me much more conscious about how modeling ‘good behavior’ can influence others). And also some not so stereotypical ones (I’m more *able* to be patient, but I have little desire to use up that patience on stupid grownups)
April 10, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Someone once told me that a large percentage of mental issues don’t rear their heads until a person’s mid twenties. I have no idea if that’s true. But it makes hanging out with crazy people that are in their late twenties to early thirties a whole lot less appealing. They may actually be crazy.
I think tempering ourselves to be better is a large part of why we’re here. And sometimes we have to be nice even though we don’t want to. Maybe because, as you have said, it leads to happiness, but all too often we are self-destructive beings.
April 10, 2012 at 4:24 pm
innnnnteresting
April 10, 2012 at 4:53 pm
I like the Fruits Basket music.
I don’t change my personality on purpose, but I adapt to specific other people. Some people just don’t want to *blank*, so I need to not try. Like not calling people who don’t like to use the phone, etc. As a result, I act differently in different groups of people, but I’m still the same person.
April 10, 2012 at 5:36 pm
me too!
April 10, 2012 at 6:35 pm
I deliberately changed how I talked so that I would use the lower register of my voice. I still sound a bit cartoonish, but it could be worse.
I deliberately quit sucking my finger and, later, biting my nails.
For a while my best friend and I decided that whenever we had an opportunity to do something and we didn’t know if we wanted to, we would say yes instead of no. We never regretted that. (Nowadays I can’t do that because there are too many things to say yes to where I am now, which is great.)
I’m still working on taking more initiative in getting to know people who I think I will like and staying away from people that I think I won’t like. Sadly, my first impressions cannot be trusted, but it still seems like a good idea.
I am also still working on trying things for a longer period before I give up. At least I know that I tend to err in giving up too soon rather than in beating a dead horse, so that’s valuable. It’s also handy to know that I tend to be too macho about jumping back after injury or illness, so when in doubt, I know I should probably rest more.
And I really need to get better at maintaining stuff. Even though I’m a grown-up and theoretically can now do whatever I want, I do like my stuff to be well-maintained, so I should learn how to do that.
(I’m already a nice person. It’s just way more pleasant to be nice. Really, it’s from empathy. I can even simulate patience with just empathy + niceness + politeness even though I am not patient at all. In my last job (and in ballroom dance class) people would actually gush about how patient I am. But really I was just being a decent human being around people trying to learn skills that are difficult (and, in the case of dancing, embarrassing) to learn.)
April 10, 2012 at 9:45 pm
I decided to change myself pretty drastically when I first started college. I am very introverted, but I was so shy that it made people horribly uncomfortable. I avoided talking to people or avoiding them at all costs. I probably wouldn’t have cared too much until I met someone who was more shy than I was. I realized how uncomfortable I felt being around her, and it occurred to me that this is exactly how people felt when they had to be around me (before I got comfortable enough).
I have worked very hard on learning to smile, make eye contact, and ask questions. I think a combination of simple mental effort, teaching, and dancing with partners (where you have to look at each other) has slowly worked it out of me. I am still very uncomfortable around new people, and socializing is incredibly draining for me. On the other hand, people no longer realize this as I have managed to change how I approach most people when meeting them for the first time (or two).
The first time a friend saw me a couple years after this change, he was completely flabbergasted, so I guess it was pretty effective.
April 10, 2012 at 10:13 pm
I am teaching myself to respond, not react. It is also very hard for me to see the good in people, I always automatically assume the worst scenario and the worst intentions, so I am generally always ready to pounce. My husband does a lot to calm me down. So I have been working on becoming nicer, but it’s hard.
Patience is another virtue I don’t have, but it’s been getting better with age and practice. I am much better at mentoring students than I was initially, and at classroom teaching.
April 12, 2012 at 1:59 pm
I have found meditation helps me cope best with stress. I used to meditate every day but got out of that habit when dad lived with us.I’ve started up again after feeling so stressed out at the end of last year I felt like I was going to blow a gasket! and I just feel so much better for it. I think I’ve been constantly trying to change myself for the better “the unexamined life is not worth living’ and all that :)
I think i’m more accepting of myself now than I used to be, I love time to myself, peace and quiet, intelligent conversation. I used to think I had to change to fit in, now I don’t. The need to fit in has long gone but it does make for misunderstandings in the workplace. I’d much rather take a walk around the block in peace than sit in a tea room and listen to gossip. I guess I
m trying to say accepting who you are and changing for your own reasons is important, not changing because of others (often misguided) impressions of you.
April 16, 2012 at 1:58 pm
I needed this today. I struggle so much with the internal niceness. SO much of what you said I can relate to– especially the crazy people when I was younger vs the crazy people now.
Do you know I always wanted to watch Fruits Basket and never did? I haven’t watched anime in years, I miss it so much, and yet I have no idea what to watch or how to get into it again.
April 16, 2012 at 2:02 pm
I think you might be able to watch individual fruits basket episodes on youtube. (And of course there’s netflix.)
It’s a wonderful one about the power of growth, acceptance, love etc. Just listening to the theme song makes me teary-eyed. Makes me want to watch it again!