Achieve
Page 3
Leroy was studying criminology at university because he always had been fascinated by detective stories and crime shows. He admitted that, even when he was a young teenager, he often read books in bed when nobody was around, as reading was not something his family or siblings valued. Surprisingly, he never paid much attention to basketball or other sports on TV.
But his coaches and even his professors seemed to expect him to put little energy or effort into his studies. The message he was receiving was that he was there to play basketball and that academics were of little importance.
Leroy lit up when describing his favorite detective novels and crime shows and all the ways detectives could find their suspect with a mixture of old-fashioned detective work and modern forensic technology. He also lit up when talking about his criminology courses. When he talked about this interest with me, it was like I was talking to a completely different person.
Although it took some time, Leroy finally admitted to himself that he almost hated basketball and was really only playing to please others. He eventually admitted he felt trapped and dreaded a future in basketball. Of course, he admitted that making a lot of money in the NBA would be nice, but he really didn’t believe he could put in the work it would take to make it. He realized that basketball was taking away from his chance to achieve his real dream, which was to become an FBI agent.
After lengthy and heartfelt discussions, it became very clear that Leroy never really loved basketball and his lack of passion for the game was not something I could help him with. Without this passion, it is extremely difficult to make it to the top. The only thing I could do was help him figure out what he really wanted to do with his life. Leroy ultimately gained a better understanding of his personality, values, strengths, and interests using a number of the strategies outlined in this book.
In the end, Leroy decided to finish his second basketball season while doing his best not to let his studies slide. He wanted to make sure he would have no regrets if he stopped playing. In the end, he did stop playing. He sends me occasional updates and last I heard he still has no regrets.
After he stopped playing, his grades skyrocketed and he was a changed person. He went from being a kid living out the dreams of others to a man living out his own. He was accepted into one of the country’s top master’s degree programs in criminology and couldn’t be happier. He found a calling that was in line with his personality, values, and natural interests.
There is nothing worse than going through years of blood, sweat, and tears pursuing a goal that ends up being the wrong goal for you. Leroy is one of the lucky ones. There are many worse stories of athletes and others who pursued the wrong goals for the wrong reasons, and, as a result, ended up being miserable. Often they don’t even know why. Sometimes they become depressed, anxious, and addicted to substances to get by.
Don’t let yourself be one of them. Following the steps and doing the exercises in this book will help ensure you are on the right path for you.
Chapter 2
Know Your Core Personality Tendencies
The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.
― Thales
You can’t drive a car until you know how it works. Or at least, you can’t drive it well!
The same is true when it comes to your life. Without a solid understanding of your basic temperamental personality traits, what I call your Basic Personality Tendencies, you will find yourself frustrated and ineffective trying to live up to your potential. So in this chapter, you’re going to learn about your core personality.
One of the biggest mistakes most self-help books make is to assume we are all the same. I believe the one-size-fits-all strategy is one of the primary reasons most self-help books don’t lead to any lasting change for the majority of people reading them. Also, many self-help books are written by people with no training or serious study of human nature. Without this training, they often are unable to critically evaluate scientific research to determine whether their advice has any merit.
On the other hand, when books on psychological topics are written by academics, they often are laden with science, but weak when it comes to translating that information into actionable strategies that people can actually use. Conversely, there is a huge body of research on personality that has not made it into public consciousness.
That’s a shame because psychologists from around the world have produced consistent findings in the measurement of our basic temperaments or personality traits. This subject has been near and dear to me for a long time. In fact, my undergraduate and master’s theses dealt with what kinds of things our personalities predict, from adjustment and success in university to political orientations. My Ph.D. dissertation was also about how our personalities predict the types of psychological problems we develop.
That said, there are a number of personality measures being sold to people and businesses that are not based on good science. These measures are primarily sold and used by people with little to no training in psychology or personality, such as business consultants, executive coaches, and life coaches. If you’ve ever taken any of these assessments, don’t put a lot of weight on the results. If you plan on taking one, or if someone like an executive or life coach tries to convince you to take it, tell them you’ll pass.
Many of these measures like to pigeonhole people into personality “types.” The idea that you neatly fall into one of a number of supposed personality “types” is flawed and not well supported by research. Personality psychologists have found that categorizing people into types is not a very accurate way to describe personality. We are much more nuanced than that; people just don’t fall into neat little boxes.
Any serious personality researcher measures traits on a continuum or spectrum, not as an either-or proposition. Cross-cultural personality research has found that we all tend to differ across five to six global personality dimensions, each made up of a number of different but related traits that will be discussed below. Many popular measures sold to businesses are missing some of these key personality dimensions.
For example, one of the most obvious ways we differ from one another is in our tendency to experience negative thoughts and feelings. I refer to this as Negative Emotions — short for Susceptibility to Negative Emotions and Stress. This dimension is not even measured by some of the most popular measures used in business and by life and executive coaches.
The nail in the coffin for many of these personality “type” measures is that they have been shown to be unreliable. When a measure is unreliable, it is by definition invalid. In other words, useless.
For example, independent researchers have repeatedly administered these personality “type” measures multiple times to large groups of people only a few weeks apart. They found that a large portion obtained a totally different result or “type” each time they took the test. By definition, personality traits are enduring ways of acting, thinking, and behaving. Personality is not the same as your current mood and doesn’t change week-to-week. So if you get a different result each time you take the test, then it can’t be a valid measure of personality.
So don’t make any decisions or draw any conclusions about yourself after taking any of these popular personality “type” measures. No serious personality psychologist uses them anymore, as there are much better measures available that are in line with modern personality research which don’t have such fatal flaws.
What You Can and Cannot Change
One thing you need to know and accept is that there is a continuum of what you can and cannot change about yourself. Some things, like height, are essentially unchangeable once you become an adult. Other things like muscle composition are alterable to a certain degree, depending on a number of factors, including your genetics. The same thing goes for your psychological makeup.
Your Basic Personality Tendencies are difficult, but not impossible, to change at the core. Your tendencies are essentially hard-wired into you starting from a young age d
ue to a combination of the genes inherited from your family and your various experiences.
The neural pathways in your brain that control these are repeatedly activated on a daily, if not minute-to-minute basis for years and years. The repetitive activation of your basic personality strengthens these neural pathways, making them harder and harder to change the older you get.
Although much of your Basic Personality Tendencies are difficult to permanently change, things like values, beliefs, attitudes, interests, goals, habits, and self-perceptions are much more malleable. Before we get to some of your more easily modifiable features, though, first we must help you learn about your Basic Personality Tendencies.
Living your life or pursuing goals that are incongruent with your Basic Personality Tendencies invites failure. In a ground-breaking book, Personality in Adulthood, the National Institute of Aging’s personality psychologists, Robert McCrae and Paul Costa, found that our personalities are set like plaster by the time we reach the age of about 30. They and other personality researchers from around the world have repeatedly found that, despite what happens to us (e.g., divorces, job losses, lottery winnings, deaths of loved ones), our Basic Personalities Tendencies don’t change much over our lifespans.
This may sound depressing to some, but let me clear up what I mean and don’t mean by Basic Personality Tendencies:
Basic Personality Tendencies do not refer to our beliefs, values, interests, talents, or IQs.
Basic personality refers to temperaments that are present at birth, then shaped by life experiences. About 40 percent to 60 percent of our basic personality is considered heritable. This means they are inherited from our parents in our genes or the result of “nature.” The rest is considered to be influenced by “nurture” — what we experience in life.
Anyone with multiple children will tell you that each child came into the world with their own unique personalities, despite few changes in parenting styles, nutrition, and home environments between siblings. So make no mistake — Basic Personality Tendencies are real and have a huge impact on our lives.
Mindsets
I want to make something clear at this point. I’m not suggesting that our personalities are unchangeable. There is accumulating evidence of something called neuroplasticity, which refers to the fact that we can change our brain functioning through changes in lifestyles, daily habits, and through other experiences.
But this can only go so far when it comes to Basic Personality Tendencies. It is very rare to take someone who is extremely outgoing by nature and turn them into someone who is introverted for more than a short period of time. And that’s not really the point, anyway.
Changing basic personality should not be the goal for most people. The goal should be to come to know their Basic Personality Tendencies and learn to either work around them or work with them along the path to success. That said, some may need to change their personality as much as they can in a direction that is more conducive to reaching goals that are in line with their values and purpose.
And there is hope for those who want to work on a Basic Personality Tendency. There is a significant body of research that suggests that if you believe that your personal qualities and abilities can change — if you have what Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck calls a “growth mindset” — then you are more likely to be able to change them. On the other hand, if you believe your traits and abilities are fixed, you are unlikely to be able to change them. With a growth mindset, you are more likely to challenge yourself and persevere in the face of setbacks.
So let’s assume that you are in the early stages of getting your start-up off the ground and you believe you are an anxious introvert. You know that eventually you’re going to have to pitch to investors to secure the needed funding for your product. If you have a fixed mindset, you’re going to have a hard time believing you can pitch and schmooze with investors. You’ll either avoid doing this or try to pawn it off on someone else. You’ll probably say to yourself: “I’m way too anxious and reserved to pitch and mingle… I’m just not like that.”
But if you took on a growth mindset you would realize that even as a temperamentally anxious introvert, you could improve by working on your anxiety, presentation skills, and ability to charm and engage in small-talk. The growth mindset would enable you to alter your behavior, at least temporarily, or even possibly change your personality to a certain extent.
In the majority of people, personality traits are relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, but this does not mean that personality tendencies are unchangeable. If you believe they are unchangeable, they will be. If you believe there is leeway, you will be able to adapt your personality somewhat to suit your values and purpose.
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and others have now measured the effects of mindsets, but the wisdom has been known for much longer: Confucius said: “He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right.”4
Resources
Carol Dweck, Ph.D. who is the primary researcher in the area of growth vs. fixed mindsets. Check out her book Mindset here: http://goo.gl/IB9tYD
Personality In Adulthood: A Five-Factor Perspective (2nd Edition) by Robert McCrae, Ph.D., & Paul Costa, Ph.D.: http://goo.gl/RURCXw
The Owner’s Manual For Personality At Work: How the Big Five Personality Traits Affect Performance, Communication, Teamwork, Leadership, and Sales by Pierce Howard, Ph.D., & Jane Howard, M.B.A.: http://goo.gl/9ZO12N
Chapter 3
The 5 Basic Personality Tendencies
Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.
― Erich Fromm
Personality is that pattern of characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that distinguishes one person from another and that persists over time and situation.
― E. Jerry Phares
For more than 70 years, personality psychologists have sought to determine just how many basic personality tendencies or dimensions there are. Approximately 55 years ago, sophisticated statistical techniques narrowed down the thousands of ways we can describe personality into 5 global personality dimensions. Since that time, researchers have repeatedly reconfirmed this discovery and there is now general agreement that there are essentially 5 global dimensions of personality across cultures.
In this book, I will discuss the 5 Basic Personality Tendencies, each of which is made up of numerous related sub-traits. Also, each of these personality dimensions is distinct. In other words, your standing on one dimension is unrelated to your standing on any of the others. Below are the 5 Basic Personality Tendencies, with a bold label showing how I will refer to them throughout this book:
Negative Emotions: Susceptibility to negative emotions & stress
Extraversion: Tolerance for external stimulation
Openness: Degree of openness to change & new experiences
Agreeableness: Attitude toward others
Motivation: Degree of motivation & self-control
Where do You Fall on the 5 Tendencies?
I’d like you to rate yourself on the following 5 Basic Personality Tendencies. Try to reflect on how you have generally thought, felt, and behaved over the past few years. The goal is to get a measure of your personality, not your current state of mind. If you feel unsure, ask a few people who know you well where they would rate you. This is only meant to give you a general idea as to where you likely fall and is not a diagnostic test.
Bear in mind that not every descriptor within each of the 5 Basic Personality Tendencies will describe you well. They are provided to give you a general idea of what sub-traits tend to make up the overall dimension. Read all the descriptors and then decide where you think you fall on each Basic Personality Tendency. Keep in mind, there are no “good” or “bad” profiles.
Put a check mark in one, and only one, of the six boxes for each of the 5 Basic Personality Tendency descript
ions:
Susceptibility to Negative Emotions & Stress
I tend to be:
Extremely High Very High High
Worried, anxious, nervous, or tense a lot
Easily stressed
Annoyed and irritable often
Discontent or moody
Pessimistic
Easily panicked when stressed
Often motivated by fear and the threat of losing something (e.g., money, health, relationships)
OR
I tend to be:
Low Very Low Extremely Low
Rarely worried
Calm almost all the time
Patient and even-tempered
Content
Rarely stressed by difficult situations
Extraversion/External Stimulation Tolerance
I tend to be:
Extremely High Very High High
Extraverted/outgoing/social
More interested in doing things with people than alone
High energy
Attracted to excitement/stimulation from people or situations
Easy and quick to feel positive emotions
Enthusiastic
OR
I tend to be:
Low Very Low Extremely Low
Detached
Reserved and serious
Most comfortable and interested in working alone
Even paced
Avoidant of too much excitement/stimulation from people or situations
Slow to experience and show lots of positive emotions
Less enthusiastic
Openness to Change/New Experiences
I tend to be:
Extremely High Very High High