Personality change – identifying your bad habits and changing them

The world around you will fit the person you are. If you’re a positive upbeat go-getter who tells charismatic stories and exudes fun in social situations then opportunities and people who fit that kind of vibe will be drawn to you like a magnet. That’s what the power of the mind is; it’s the actual vibe you give off shaping the world around you.

 

If you are not actually changing who you are then things will not change in your life. It doesn’t matter how often you visualise about something you’d desperately like to have in your life, if you do not do anything to change yourself you will not get anywhere. It’s as simple as that. Are you changing yourself right now? And by changing yourself I do mean your personality.

 

So many people in personal development focus on the quick-trick feel-good side, and the dreamy visualisation side, and they miss out the important stuff which makes all those other things worth-while. Don’t get me wrong, I am a massive advocate of visualisations – but the whole point of visualisations is that they identify for you the things you need to move towards and the things you need to move away from.

 

When you imagine yourself in six months time and everything in your life has gone exactly the best way you could have wished for, how exactly does that person differ from the person you are right now on a day-to-day basis? If that person is exactly the same then either you’re being unrealistic with your visualisation, or you’re not paying enough attention to who you actually are.

 

You absolutely need to identify the nasty habits which you have and you need to change them into positive ones. You need to hold up a mirror to your personality and say... “what’s not quite right here?” This is far more important than looking in the mirror on a daily basis to check how you’re physically looking (although that can be quite important too depending on what you’re doing). It can also be quite a challenging thing to do, especially if you’re someone who gets very involved in conversations and emotions and has not yet developed a good sense of self-awareness.

 

This is a never-ending process by the way. I have not stopped doing this, and I hope that I will always have enough humility to realise that there’s always something about myself which I can make better.

 

I’ve used various exercises for self-assessment over the years, very recently I came up with the method I’m about to share with you and I am extremely happy with it. It yielded for me some things I was not previously aware of and now they are things which I am working on intensely. It highlighted some bad habits which would have otherwise absolutely got in the way of the things I’ve got planned in the next few months and years.

 

 

It helps if you do this exercise right after doing a little bit of visualisation.

 

If you don’t have a visualisation practice, just fantasise a little about how you want your life to be – all you need to do is get a feel for the person you are in those fantasies. Get into it, and rather than trying to “create” feelings in relation to what you think you want, instead let your feels guide what you’re imagining so that you’re just thinking about whatever your feelings are telling you you really want. When you feel strongly about something that’s when powerful things can happen.

 

Once you’ve got a good feel for that, grab a piece of paper or whip open notepad and write...

 

 

X, y and z being the things that you want to be. That can be anything from meeting lots of romantic interests, earning over 100k a year, sailing around the world, or whatever it is that you’re aiming for.

 

Then you list the habits. You will be surprised at how easily they come to you. Don’t be afraid to list as many as possible, and if you’re struggling just think about it... what have you done today which the “you” in those visions would never do.

 

How about “complain to my friends” or “procrastinate aimlessly on social networking sites”? ... I’m sure those two are very common.

 

List everything and make particular note of the big ones – the ones that feel really incongruent. Pay particular attention to actual actions that you’re taking which are not congruent. This exercise seems to work much better when you focus on the things you’re doing rather than your mindset in general.

 

Once you’ve done that, write down this...

 

 

Make a list. It can be anything, even if it’s as simple as “bite my lip, and let it go” if you’re thinking about a complaining habit. Or maybe you can change online procrastination to – “stop myself and refocus on productive things.”

 

You want to find the best habits possible.

 

Once you've got a good list, start implimenting. Social habits are by no means the easiest thing to change, however if you combine this kind of excercise with a good visualisation process then a powerful snowball effect can begin to happen whereby you realise the change you're making is bringing you closer to your goals and there-by you get a positive reinforcement cycle of change.

 

 

One of my bad habits I identified was a tendency to call random people out if I thought they were being rude. So if someone bumped into me without apologising on the street then I’d shout after them to let them know what I thought about that. Of course this also applied to things like people driving with no road manners and me then beeping at them and so on, you get the idea...

 

But you know that’s a lot of wasted energy, and not only that I’m firing negative things back into the world. It’s not something which will help me in any way. On top of that, sometimes I’d get into confrontations with it which is just a whole load of wasted time, and a good way to put yourself into a bad mindset for the rest of the day (or night).

 

So I came up with several positive alternatives, and the one I actually implemented was – “just let it go realising that doing so is much more positive and beneficial to me and my goals.”

 

That was enough for me to begin changing that habit. It’s been a couple of weeks now and so far I’m very happy with my progress. I’m saving a lot of energy, staying much more focused and I’m a lot less stressed out driving even if I feel some people are being rude to me.

 

The truth is – rudeness is actually starting not to bother me at all. Once the landslide starts to begin when you’re making a change then the positive reinforcement of the extra time and energy you have as a benefit from altering your behaviour comes into effect and actually causes the process to happen faster and more effectively. In other words the change starts to avalanche and you find that your old habit goes completely and the new one flourishes. That’s personal development folks.

 

Of course there is work involved – this process does not just happen effortlessly. You need to actively change your habits, and that’s something I’m going to discuss in great detail in the follow-up to this article.