Modern Wisdom - #185 - Dr Benjamin Hardy - The Truth About Your Personality

Episode Date: June 18, 2020

Dr Benjamin Hardy is an organisational psychologist and an author. Do you believe that your personality is permanent? Innate & inbuilt? Dr Hardy disagrees. Expect to learn why Myers-Briggs & other personality tests are destructive & as inaccurate as horoscopes, how to reframe your past narratives, why you can overcome traumas, how to become the scribe of your own identity narrative and much more... Sponsor: Check out everything I use from The Protein Works at https://www.theproteinworks.com/modernwisdom/ (35% off everything with the code MODERN35) Extra Stuff: Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ Buy Personality Isn't Permanent - https://bit.ly/benMW Check out Ben's website - https://benjaminhardy.com/ Daniel Gilbert's Ted Talk - https://youtu.be/XNbaR54Gpj4 - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, hello friends, welcome back. My guest today is Dr Benjamin Hardy and we are talking about his new book, Personality Isn't Permanent. The clue is in the title, if you thought that your personality was an immutable characteristic some innate, inbuilt, unchanging North Star that is going to guide you for the rest of your life, you're about to get Redpilled out of existence over the next 50 minutes. This conversation is really cool, the tons of implications for how we view ourselves,

our own sense of identity, how we deal with past traumas, loads of other stuff. Also, if you're a fan of enigrams or Myers-Briggs or a color wheel personality tests, I've got some bad news for you, Ben reckons that they're mostly bollocks. So anyway, enjoy that. I also wanted to give a massive thank you to everyone who supported the launch of the Modern Wisdom Ultimate Lifehacks list at the start of this week. Like the most insane response

I've ever had to putting something out. So thank you to everyone who has gone and downloaded it. It is still available for free. If you haven't got your copy yet, just go to chriswilex.com slash life hacks and get your copy for free over 200 ways that you can upgrade your life instantly. Right, that's it. Dr. Benjamin Hardy, let's work, one, let's learn why personality isn't permanent. Let's learn why personality isn't permanent. Benjamin Hardy in the building. How are you doing, man? Doing good. Happy to be with you, man.

Really happy to be with you. Very happy to be with you. Talking about personality today. How do we define it? What is a personality? Well, there's a lot of different ways to look at it, but I think kind of the most surface level, just basic way of looking at it

is that it's your consistent attitudes and behaviors. You know, just a person's consistent way of being. Okay. So the way that you act in the world, yeah, way, yeah, very much act, you know, and how you kind of, and your attitudes, such as how you show up regularly in situations. Okay. That seems pretty basic. That doesn't seem like there should be any debate about what's going on with it.

You know, this is what you do. What's your personality? Okay. So what are. What's your personality? Okay, so what are the biggest myths about personality? One being that it's hardwired, that it's innate, that it can't change, that the best way to understand your personality is by looking to the past, which makes sense.

I mean, if you're trying to understand who a person's gonna be, it makes sense to go and look to the past and be like, oh, well, that's how that person's been. So that's probably how they're always going to be. Other kind of general views are that it's something you can discover because it's innate because it's viewed as hardwired, your job is to discover it. And then once you've finally discovered who you truly are, then you can finally go and create that life that's tailored or made and fit perfectly for you. And you can find your perfect spouse and perfect friends. So it all fits nice and neat.

And you don't have to go through any change or grinding. You know, just your life will be perfect once you find that out. Just falls into place. Exactly. Okay. So if you're not, or if that's a myth, if one of the myths is that you discover your personality, which by the definition that we came

up with earlier on is the way that you act in the world. If you don't discover that by looking backward, how do you discover what your personality is? Is there anything to discover? It depends on how you want to look at it. I think that there are things you can learn about yourself without question. But ultimately, your personality should be something you design yourself. That's obviously the core argument. The book is that it can be a choice.

The research is pretty clear that over time, your personality is going to change. You as an example are not the same person you were five or ten years ago. You actually have changed. You've actually probably changed more than you think you have because we see the world through the lens of our identity. And so we think we've actually probably changed less than we actually have because we see the world through our identity. One important crucial thing here just to clarify is that identity and personality are two different things. Identity is how you define and describe yourself. It's your self-concept, whereas personality is how you consistently act in the world.

But your identity is way more important. Your identity, again, is how you define and describe yourself. So if you said, I'm an introvert, that's a statement about your identity. It may not actually be true. In fact, I would say it's not always true. But your self-concept drives your behavior and your behavior over time becomes your personality.

And so a big problem with identity is that we get very fixated on our identity. We define ourselves certain ways. This is the type of person I am. It's shaped by the stories we tell about ourselves, and those stories are usually either present based or past based. Very rarely will you hear someone talk about who they aspire to be. Hmm, well, I suppose if you've got either overconfidence or imposter syndrome, you're either going to underpitch or overpitch what you presume that you will be in the future,

right? You sure? Sure. So are we saying that what most people do is take a couple of traits or perhaps a few experiences, a few dispositions, precliventies that they have in the way that they operate within the world and then drawing some much grander conclusions from that and then saying, this is my personality and or identity. That's a big one. Yeah, that has a lot to do with it. Yes, we tend to really give a lot of weight to various instances. Some of them could have been traumatic as an example, you know. But we give weight to a lot of former experiences

and those former experiences shape how we see the world. So, for example, if you failed a math test and it was just, you know, it wasn't that great for you. You may then just say that that one instance really proves that you can't do math. So therefore that is not something you can do. You know, you have a bad experience giving a speech in front of a class. You therefore you can't be someone who could be good at speaking. We tend to define ourselves very strongly by former experiences, particularly the negative

ones. And then we tend to avoid those negative experiences by former experiences, particularly the negative ones. And then we tend to avoid those negative experiences and try to find something that feels a little easier. Your comfort zone and your personality are very similar concepts. I would actually lump them into a very similar category where you do what's comfortable and you don't do what's uncomfortable. And to step outside your comfort zone would be to probably act outside of your way if typically doing things. But that's where obviously growth and learning are and that's where new experiences are, that's where changes.

Just as one other quick example, like our two twins, I've got two 18 month old girls. We live in Florida where there's a lot of swimming pools. So we're having our two girls do swimming lessons, right? First several times you put them in a swimming pool, these two little girls who can't even talk, it's pretty tough. They're screaming, they're yelling. A month and a half, two months later, these girls are freaking amazing swimmers. Yeah. The question is those as adults, how often do we put ourselves into such immersive learning

experiences? We stop doing that over time because often as people get older, they stop wanting to deal with such emotional learning experiences. They prefer to be able to predict the outcomes of their behavior, so they don't want to put themselves into situations that are unpredictable or difficult or challenging or emotionally stimulating. Yeah, I find it interesting how it relates to the comfort zone thing that you're...it's kind of a little bit like putting the cart before the horse or putting the horse before the cart here, right? That the actions that you tend toward are restricted by your own view of your own identity

and your personality, which further drills you into that particular pigeonhole. I am the person who is bad at maths, therefore I'll always let the friend get the bill or whatever, because that's how I self identify, which then makes you sickly, makes you worse at maths. Exactly. No, it's true. It's what's interesting about identity, if you think about how people define and describe themselves, identity feels very sacred and personal. And so because it's your identity, you seek to defend it and to confirm it.

So if you're telling someone you're bad at math, you're actually going to try to confirm that by proving that you're bad at maths. Look at how bad at math I am. Yeah, exactly. And so we're very, we really like to define our current identity. So there's a really good TED Talk by Daniel Gilbert. He's at Harvard. He gave a TED Talk called the Psychology of Your Future Self.

Have you seen that one? No. 10 minutes long. Actually, it's less. It's like seven minutes long. I will link it in the show notes below. Daniel Gilbert, what's one? No. 10 minutes long. Actually, it's less. It's like seven minutes long. I will link it in the show notes below. Daniel Gilbert, what's that? Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Gilbert, psychology of your future self. But here's why it's so interesting. So what Gilbert does is he asks people, do you think you're the same person you were 10 years ago? Almost everyone says no. But then what he does is he asks people, do you think you're going to be the same person in 10 years from now? And most people say yes. Oh, that's such a big red pill to swallow.

Oh, yeah. So here's, yeah, it is a big red pill. So here's why it's so crazy, man, is that he calls at the end of history illusion. You can reference that below. And if you want any research studies on it, but basically what he says, and this is Gilbert's exact quote, human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished. And so the reason why, and he explains why, he says, the reason people don't adequately predict their future is not because they can't, but because they don't. We often default as people to the past. We default to our memory because it's a lot easier to remember the past than to imagine the future. And so we don't spend very much time adequately thinking about who our future self is going to be. And so as a result, we make a lot of

decisions here and now assuming that the decisions our future self would be happy about, such as getting attacked too. I'm just giving that as an example because I see when I arm. But like, we make decisions here and now, oh, did you not have one? Oh, I thought I saw one. You know what I saw? Is I saw your shirt. Oh, no. No, I was looking at that. I was looking at another one.

Don't say that. My mum listens to this podcast, and if she finds out, I've got a tattoo. I don't mum. Don't listen to him. He's lying, I promise. No, no, no. But basically, what Gilbert talks about is that people make decisions in the present that

their future selves are really angry about. For example, getting away out of shape. You know what I mean? And so there's another researcher, his name is Hal Hirschfeld, he's at UCLA, and he studies how having a clear future self concept allows you to make better decisions in the present. Because what you want to do, just as you view your former self as a different person,

it's good for identity and also just for behavior to view your future self as a totally different person than you You in like three to five years from now is gonna have different perspectives You might be in a totally different situation. You might not be podcasting Know as well. You're gonna be up to Except for you if you decide who you want to be in the future But like your future self is gonna have different perspectives You're gonna be in a different situation you're gonna be solving different problems and you'll learn you'll know things that you

Currently don't know which is gonna alter how you go about doing things. That's totally fair and fine. I actually hope my future self is a lot smarter than I am today and makes better decisions than stuff. But if you, your future self is a different person. And this is how Hersfield said, then you can start thinking about what would they prefer versus what would I prefer?

Because right now I might prefer just to go sit on the couch and eat donuts all day. Like, you know, I've got five kids. So like sometimes I'll go home from work and I'll be fried and my kids like want to play in the current version of Ben Hardy doesn't want to do anything. I want to go sit on the kitchen, look at YouTube.

But if I think about what would my future self want, then I can make decisions based on what my future self would want. And one other quick thought is that, have you ever heard of the concept of deliberate practice? No. So have you ever heard of the 10,000 hour rule by Mocyn Gladwell? Yes. So Gladwell stole that idea from the research on what's called deliberate practice. There actually is no 10,000 hour rule. You could do something for 10,000 hours and continue to suck at it. But what deliberate practice means is that you're doing something in a very intentional way towards a very specific goal. So you have to have a clear future self in order to engage in a specific type of learning.

Like if you saw yourself as a certain type of podcaster, you could then adjust your skills to get to that level, right? Like you're, but if you didn't have a goal, then it doesn't really matter what you do. And so the process is always shaped by the goal. And in order to engage in meaningful learning, you have to have a clear future self. Is the goal a projection of the person you want to be? In a many ways, yes. It would have to do with outcomes you're seeking. It would have, but yeah, in this case, it would be, who is your future self? What is their circumstances?

Who are they? What is their life like? You could get as detailed as you want. How much money are they making? How many podcasts? Downloads they have? Where do you live? What are your relationships like? It's getting really clear on your future self, but so yeah, I mean, that's part of it. You could obviously think in terms of outcomes as well. I mean, the process of getting to 50 million downloads, I'm sure, is different than the process of getting to 2,. You know, and so you know, if you Joe Rogan, if you Joe Rogan, making those bags with Spotify, but yeah, it's, it's interesting. James Clear and Atomic Habits references something similar to this one. He talks about habit change and he uses a analogy of identity-based change.

That's actually what he calls it, I think, in atomic habits, where he says... There's something that disagree with Jameson, but that one is smart. Yeah. What else was I thinking about? I was thinking about something to do with this recently. It'll come to me, it'll come back to me anyway.

You dropped a stat in the book that says 90% of people are dissatisfied with some aspect of their personality. That is it's just such a crazy statistic to hear. It's like the vast vast majority of people have some malignant part of their own psyche that they want to get rid of. You don't need to go that far. I mean, basically, we all want to make changes. Maybe I want to be a little bit more patient. Maybe I want to be more empathetic. Maybe I want to be more charismatic. Maybe I want to be more organized. Maybe I want to be more bold. Maybe I want

to be more confident. So I mean, there's aspects of all of us that we want to change and improve. Maybe I want to, you know, and so, yeah, we all have aspects of ourself. Maybe I want to be more creative. So there's aspects of ourselves that we all want to change. Okay, I get that. I want to get into some slightly more esoteric questions here before we get on to potentially how can people utilize what you've discovered to improve themselves? How does personality relate to who the true you is. Right, so let's say, did I talk about this on a live stream yesterday? If you get a nose job, if you get plastic surgery

on your nose, is it still your nose? Most people will be like, well, yeah, it's kind of your nose, but it's also kind of not your nose, it's not how your nose would have been had you not have had the surgery. And I think sometimes when we look at behavior change, especially when we're talking about quite fundamental behavior change, which is identity personality, the fundamental like axioms of how we see the world and how we operate within the world, like how does personality relate to who the true you is? Does that make sense?

Yeah, so personality is more surface level. Personality is a byproduct of identity, of situations. Personality can even be a byproduct of trauma. There's actually a quote from Gabor Mata, have you ever heard of Gabor Maté? So yeah, he's got a quote where he says, what we call the personality is often basically some genuine traits or coping mechanisms that are not actually the true you, but are actually the absence of the true you. You know, and we've seen this where people, we become a certain way because of life or our situation or the environment or COVID-19 and maybe that has nothing to do with who we really are. But yeah, I think true you goes to more of a,

that's more of an existential question, or maybe even a spiritual question. From my perspective, true you, it has a lot to do with decision-making choices, attention. Wherever you drive, you know, it has a lot to do with decision-making choices, attention, wherever you drive, you know, it could even have to do with consciousness. But like, it's where you draw your attention. It's your ability to make choices, to choose, to make decisions. That's more fundamental than just whatever you are right now.

Because who you are right now is different from who you were when you were 10 years old. So how you're represented in the outside world is not the full picture. So your personality in a very real sense is actually your capacity to make choices to change your personality. Would that be one way to think about it? I wouldn't say it as personality. I mean, you could use a different word.

Personality, I would rather use, I mean, personality is just how you show up. Actually, the word comes from persona, which is back in the day was viewed as a mask. You have a different mask in different situations. Shakespeare said, all the worlds of stage and all of us come and go, we've got different roles that we play, right?

Yeah, so right now, your podcast and one situation you might be, I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna go be a dad. I'm gonna ask you. I'm gonna ask you. I'm gonna ask you situation you might be, you know, I'm going to go home and I'm going to go be a dad, you know, dad Muscles on podcast, mask goes off. Yeah, to some degree. I mean, I'm in a different role. I'm still me. It's not like I'm pretending to be someone different. I'm just in a different situation. And if you actually followed me in all those situations, I wouldn't actually be the exact same dude in every situation, you know, like, I've got to actually be a little different from context to context, you know, from situation to situation So yeah, I think what it what yeah, so personality is just how you're showing up. Okay, very temporary Let's talk about personality tests. I've got a story from last year Let's hear it. I was Speaking to a girl um, so it's slightly well

I was speaking to a girl, sort of slightly well, slightly well known girl and before we started getting even close to serious, she made me take a big five personality test. She had you take the big five? Yeah. Cool. What happened? I've done it a number of times before. Took the test, sent it to her. So I just thought, well, this is fun.

I was like, you do it as well. You take it as well, because I want to see what yours are. And I already knew what my results would be. It actually had moved a little bit from the last time, but I knew what my results would be. And that apparently passed whatever particular criteria she'd had for someone that she was sort of speaking to. And she had a fairly good justification. We can get into the accuracy of personality tests in a second, but her

justification was, it's a very expedient way to work out what sort of person someone is. And as someone that likes efficiency, I actually found it, I found it interesting. I wasn't too sure what it meant about her worldview, but I actually found it quite an interesting way to kind of begin a dialogue with it. Are you still with her? No. So it didn't work. It didn't work.

It didn't work. No, but I don't know what that was due to the personal. It didn't predict. It didn't predict success in the relationship. It did not. It did not all know. Can you tell this? I'm going to give her credit. I'm going to give her, I'm going to give her huge kudos though because the big five is actually a better way of looking at personality. Big five is more of a scientific way of looking at personality. So you got, and I wasn't, I'm not actually sure what test you took, you know, because there's a lot of them on the big five, but on that test, you'd be, you'd get, you'd give a score on, on the five, right?

One out of a hundred, right? Correct. So you got a score, one out of a hundred on introversion versus extroversion. You would never actually be called an introvert or an extrovert. You'd just say that I'm like a 36 on the scale or something, right? Exposentile. That's the key. That is the key.

It is that the research on big five shows that in different situations, you're going to be a little different. It's going to change over time no matter what. Big five, good for your that lady because that's the best way of looking at personality. Most of the tests are not like that. Most of the tests, because the big five didn't give you a type. Did it tell you what type of person you were? No, it just says you are this percentile in agreeableness,

this percentile in... But most tests that are non-scientific, like the Myers-Briggs of the world, the Ineagrams, the discs, they wouldn't give you percentile ranks. What they would do is they'd give you a type. It's a, you're an ENFJ, or you're a six, or you're a blue. And so, type-based personality tests are garbage. They're not good science, that's not how you view personality.

That's a radical, because there's no such thing as a personality type. Here's why. Here's why here's why Well think about it If I were to just say you're an extrovert which you may or may not be Would that always be true? Probably not No in some situations you're not gonna be in some situation and I'm not saying I don't actually know what you'd be Would that always be true? Probably not. No. In some situations, you're not going to be.

In some situations, I don't actually know what you'd be. I would not actually give you a categorization. But they're over simplifications, but also personality doesn't work in types. Personality is a lot more contextual. It also changes from one situation to another. So it has a lot to do with situations and environments and people you're around and mood you're in. And also it does change over time.

What the type based tests do, and they're just not a valid way of measuring personality because it doesn't really look that way. But these tests, what they do is they give you a really strong sense of identity. So remember, talk about identity. So like, remember, if I get a type that I'm a six according to the anyogram, then I think I'm always a six, which is not true. It creates tunnel vision, because now I have this strong sense of identity, which is now going to predict my behavior and actually maybe create my personality. But then I defend it. I defend my identity. I defend my six. And I can believe it. You're absolutely killing me. I've got written down here. I call those type, I call those type based tests identity tests, not personality tests.

Dude, I've got written down here. Let's talk about personality tests. Then I've got a little cue to remind me about my story from last year. And then just below it, I've got a little cue to remind me about my story from last year and then just below it I've got written horoscopes because to me it's the same as that you know like it is so the less the less world-rounded intellectual version of the girl who gave me the big five yeah I feel like five with extreme salt oh but let's get let's criticize big five in a second, but the less worldly rounded version of the girl that gave me that is the same one that says what star sign are you and then goes, oh, yeah, that's that's so typical. You're such an asparagus, you know, like you such a you're such a you're such a clemitis like I can't I can't I can't I you know I just

totally can't you know what what's the next step of that? It was the next one. Oh, you're black. You can't go to my school. Oh, yeah, you're right. It's really any different from racism. It's birth racism. Birth racism, that's what it is. I can't be with Pisces. I can't be with a Pisces because I'm just such a, I'm totally a Gemini and we just, we wouldn't gel. You know it's funny about that.

So when, so, so there's a big, so a big, big idea in psychology, which is relevant to learning is what's called psychological flexibility. Really key. What psychological flexibility means is that you can handle your emotions, especially when you're going through extreme change. If you're in a new situation and you're dealing with stress, you've got to be flexible to your emotions to the situation and to be able to handle it. That's actually how you build confidence.

And confidence means you can handle things. What's funny about what you're describing is like, you know, oh, he's a Pisces, I'm a Capricorn. There's no way I could be in a relationship with him. Like, that is like the exact, that's what we would call psychological rigidity. Like, you are so rigid and so fixed in your mind. It's essentially a fixed mindset. You're saying, I can't handle that.

I can't be flexible to that. You know, like I can only fit myself to various types of people and I've got to find those perfect fits because I'm fixed and I can't change and I and you can't expect me to do anything outside of what my my horoscope tells me. I don't know what is it. Let's go down this rabbit hole because I've never spoken about before. What is it about horoscopes and girls, man? What is it? Is it like a... I don't know.

I've never met one except for my mom who loves them. My mom loves them as well. My mom absolutely adores them. But no, I know it, dude. I know loads of girls. Tons of girls. Is it people just trying to bring order to chaos? Is it them just trying to have some way of feeling like

they're in understanding with the world on a level with what's going on? I don't know, man. I mean, I'm a Capricorn, but I think they actually changed the signs. You're kidding. You're kidding. No, they changed the thing. You're kidding. Like literally? No, they changed the meaning.

You're Capricorn membership got revoked. I think I might be in a different category. Or at least the people around me, because they adjusted it by like 10 days and so like, a third of the population sign changed and so they had to have like a, Oh God. An identity crisis for a minute.

So how do you mean, how do you be single? You would have had to have gone back to all of the girls that said, I'm a Gemini, I can't be with Capricorn. Look at my birthday now. Yeah, exactly. I've got my Capricorn cards gone away. I'm now like a total, I'm totally a Leo, and you're an asparagus. But yeah, it's okay. So horoscopes in a very real way, the reason that we can laugh about them and make them silly is that we don't believe, some people may include it, don't believe that there is any validity to the implication of the date that you were born on or the position of the stars upon your birth, impacting the kind of person that you are. How much truth is there in Myers-Briggs or whatever?

Obviously, it's very rough-hune. It's boxing you into a kind of a pejorative term or a majority term or whatever it would be, a category. But is there anything? Like are they even close to the mark? Are you more a six than you are a one? Are you more a red than you are a blue? Maybe in the moment, maybe in various contexts. a lot of it has to do with the mindset you

had when you took the test. Just as an example, there's a lot of research where they'll test how people score on these tests based on the conditions they're in. So like as an example, one study, it took the participants and broke them into two groups. And they had group number one take the personality test. And a week later, they took the same test. Just to see how they would score. And in that situation, it was the same test administrator. It was someone that gave them the tests, you know, the same person gave them the test both times. And they got fairly similar scores. The other

group, same situation, took the test, a week later took the same test the only different was there was two separate test administrators and By making that one change the scores were all completely unrelated and so Yeah, man So, you know, I think that yes And so, you know, I think that yes, you know, when I think about the test that really hosed me, because I tell the story in the beginning of the book about the color code and about how my wife almost didn't marry me because of my score on that test, when I think about the score that I had at the time, because that was me in college eight years ago, I took the test and my wife and her family who took the personality test, the color code very

seriously, like, oh shoot, this guy's a white Lauren, you can't marry this white because it's a pass of a luke dreamer. And they were all reds, which are type A go getters. If I think about myself, just in that situation, am I more of a white than I'm a yellow or my more, you know, like, because according to that test, there's only four categories of people. Either you're a red, which is a type A go getter, you're a blue, which means you really are into relationships, your heart's entered, you're white, which means you're a passive aloof dreamer, you're very introverted, maybe.

And then if you're, oh, yellow, you're just a pure extrovert. You know? And so if I actually think about, just me in the one snapshot of time, back at that time when I was considered a white a coin of Lawrence family If I were to say am I more white than I'm a blue or yellow Maybe I really don't know man like there were sides of me that were very driven You know there were sides of me where I really liked relationships

But there was a lot of me that really liked thinking and reflecting which obviously still is a big part of me, because we're having these conversations about thinking and psychology and stuff. But I wasn't, I would have never categorized myself that way even five years before that, like before I got really into psychology, I was more into gaming and more into like snowboarding and like being with friends and so like, that changed a lot because I went on that church mission,

which really changed my life a lot. And even now I would say I would actually mean my wife retook the test because we got asked to do it. She was the red according to the test back in the day and I was the white, but when we retook the test, I got yellow and she got white. And so I don't know, man. I do think that you can get some ideas from it. Here's what most people say they get out of the tests, is that it shows them the areas where they should better like their clear weaknesses.

And I think the reason it does that is this. Think about it. If there's only like four categories, if I know that you're either gonna be like, if you're a white as an example on the color code, which means you're very passive, you're very thoughtful. You spend a lot of time in your head.

Then I know that your weaknesses are probably that you don't talk very much in social situations. So I can lay out a bunch of prescriptions about you that are very general that you're going to hear and you're going to be like, holy crap, that exactly me. That's a horoscope. That's a horoscope, so's a horoscope all over again. Yeah, it's just laying out general prescription. So if you're a driven type of personality, then I can come up with a couple of prescriptions and say, probably someone who doesn't do very good when someone tells you what to do.

You know, and I can just lay out very general prescriptions, you know. You should be a medium. You can be one of those, is there a Jonathan in the room? I'm getting a medium. You can be one of those. Is there a Jonathan in the room? I'm getting a Jonathan. Is there, I'm sensing, I'm sensing that there's a part of your, a part of your personality that you're not too happy with at the moment. I could see you doing that televanjalist stuff, but that would be real funny. Okay, so there is some use to understanding where your strengths and weaknesses lie,

but is a personality test the best way to go about that? Is there another way to do it? Can we just like reflect, iteratively reflect on the way that we operate day to day? I mean, I'd ask you, how have you, will it just say, either decided, honed, figured out the strengths and weaknesses that you either like to develop or not to bump in. Is there a way that you've done it? A lot of introspective work, a lot of reflection, three and a bit years of consistent meditation practice with meditation coach, a lot of daily journaling I've got. So what you've just described is enormously more valuable than anything you would ever get from a person on a test.

Yeah, meditation, journaling, also decision making. So journaling, obviously, about your past and present, you know, journaling about who you want to be, journaling about what you're dealing with. That is such an incredible, what I would consider an emotional regulation tool. It allows you to be clear on your emotions, give them picture, it allows you to choose the meanings that you give to your former experiences, it allows you to think very clearly about who you want to be, it gives you space to think, reflect, meditate. So yeah, that is a much better place of understanding who you are and what you're dealing with and also integrating.

You know, just as an example, you know, we all have strengths and weaknesses. We all have a personality. I'm not declining that. But what, you know, the extent to which that's fluid or flexible in many ways is up to our own practices, such as meditation, you know what I mean. And so as an example, my, one of my sons, you know, because we adopted three from the foster system, we, he, he, he's semi-extreme sometimes when he's with his friends, you know, like he'll sometimes like throw like

a little emotional outbursts. And that's what literally happened yesterday. So one of our neighbors was over and they were swimming in our backyard. A son whose eight years old started kind of freaking out a little bit. And so our neighbor left. Like he was just like, I'm not hanging out with you. You screw this. He pieced out. his eight years old start kind of freaking out a little bit and so our neighbor left. Like he was just like I'm not hanging out with you screw this he pissed out and so. Then my son was all mad because his friend left and what happened is that well he was talking I was saying blah blah blah he was being rude you know.

And but he was sad that the friend left and then we kicked him out of the pool because he was being a jerk and so I'm like all right you gotta plot your journal. This is about an hour about 30 minutes minutes later after he called you son. Eight years old. And I said, just right because this was after you get kicked out of the pool and he was pretty bummed out and he was chilling sad. And usually when we're sad, we, we, we suppress it. We don't, we don't clear it up. You know, and the way to clear it up. So what Victor, Frankel said in Mansearch for meaning, have you ever read that one? Yeah. Who did that killer?

Oh, bro, let me interject there before you go on and tell us what you've done. Go, interject. The Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Erkart. I'll read it. Bro, never read it. Bro. Okay. Oh my days.

Remove all of the psychology, remove the understanding and kind of the, that transparency that Frank will bring to it where he's actually able to see what's going on, but just take his experience and turn it up to 11 for about six years, dude. That's, I'll leave you with that. I've forgotten Highlander.

I've forgotten Highlander by Alistair Urkart. Yeah, it'll take your head off. So good, so good. Well, so let me just give two quick, fronkle insights, and then I'll go back to my son. Please. Insight number one, and this is goes to my son, is that emotion ceases to be suffering the minute

you give a clear picture of it. What's that mean? Emotion ceases to be suffering when you give a clear picture of it. You give a clear picture to your emotions by turning them into words. So for example, if you write about, and it turned into a story, so my son was feeling sad and overwhelmed. And I said, write about what happened.

Well, I was swimming in the backyard with Rowan, and I was being a jerk to him, and then he left. And now I feel bad because I got kicked out of the pool. Now we have a picture of it. Oh, so that's what happened. And this is why you don't feel very good. What should we do about it? Like, how do you feel because this happened? I don't feel very good about it. I feel pretty bummed. What else do you feel? Well, I'm sad that I made Rowan leave because I wish I was out there swimming with him and now I got kicked out of the pool. Okay. Well, what do you want to do about this?

You know, do you want to swim with Ronan the future? Do you want to have good experiences in the future? Yeah. So what needs to happen? You do need to do anything to row in. Do you need to apologize? You know, this is like literally turning emotions into a picture so that you can then know what to do

with it so it's less overwhelming. The problem is that a lot of people they don't have an emotional regulation technique so that they can get clear. The other thing Franco said real quick, and I'll just throw this out there but then we can continue forward is that Franco said that the moment a person loses hope and purpose for their future, the present becomes meaningless and as a result the suffering in the present becomes unbearable. So if you're in the freaking Holocaust, what

that means is you die. If you lose hope in. So if you're in the freaking Holocaust, what that means is you die. If you lose hope in the future, you die in the Holocaust. You know, that's why he said that he said the circumstances, he said life is not unbearable by circumstance. It's unbearable by having a lack of meaning and purpose for your life. And so he said you have to have a hope and meaning for your future in order to actually have a And so he said, you have to have a hope and meaning for your future in order to actually have a healthy present. You can't live in the present without a future. And that makes so much sense when you think about how horse fields research on future self and making decisions based on what your future self would want.

You can't make good decisions in the present without having a quality future to work towards. Fronkel said that. So anyways, yeah. But the only reason I brought up my son with you in journaling is that journaling and meditation and decision making and moving forward, setting goals, moving forward, learning, those are the best ways that you're going to learn about yourself. Those the big four. I mean, learning is I don't know if there's a big four. But I just wondered if there's, so if we But I just wondered if we would just say to you,

what are some of the tools that you would say to someone, okay, I believe you, Dr. Hardy, I have faith that you're not horoscope, televanjulist man. I believe that I can impact not only my personality, but also my identity through my personality and the actions that I take in the decisions that I make. What should I do on my first step toward becoming less fixed, toward removing the weaknesses that I have in the holes in my game and then impacting on my strengths? What would you say? Genius, man. Just as a quick form of clarification,

it's actually your personality works through your identity Not the other way around you choose your identity first. Yes, which is how you define it and describe yourself And then that your identity or your self-concept shapes your behavior which over time becomes your personality Yes, I am going to get by the end of this podcast. I am going to get my head around it in my defense this is quite And I'm sure that everybody that's listening is thinking the same, like this is so kind of ground-chaking. It's very contrary to the narrative

that we've been told for a long time. So do you feel like this is ground-chaking what I'm telling you a little bit? Very much so. I mean, if I hadn't, the cheat codes are reading the book, right? Like it's showing the end of the movie before what goes on. But it's very different hearing it spoken to you.

And again, I just, man, I just keep on getting red-pilled on my show. Greg McEwan came on and read-pilled me about sensualism and just made me look at whole full like about like, why are you doing this and why are you doing that and why are you doing this? I'm like, Greg, this is my show, stop it. And it's the same with this. I'm just like, okay, this is my show, stop it. And it's the same with this. I'm just like, okay, get your head around it.

You can make this work. You can, don't, don't, so. Dude, no, dude, you're awesome. I have to say this is one of the funnest shows I've been on. Look how question I've been on. You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, I'm loving this. Dude, you can use that all day.

You can just freaking loop that. I've got it. I've got, I've got Dr. Jordan Peterson, great conversation with some of my good friends. Dr. Hardy, one of the most fun shows that I've ever been on. That's it. That's it. Where's my 100 million deal Spotify coming short to me? Let's give you 100 million. That's it. That's it. Thank you. Okay, so I'll give you I'll give you the steps now. Yes. Yes, please. We've really we've really cleared the clutter. One last idea before we give the steps and that's this.

And I've already kind of said it, but your current identity needs to be held loosely. That's why you wouldn't want to overly label yourself. If you want to give yourself a label like I'm a podcaster because that leads to your goals, that's fine, but hold your current identity loosely because you're not the same person you were in the past and you're not going to be the same person in the future. So rather than being so definitive in who you are right now, recognize that who you are right now doesn't really matter. That's actually what Carol Deweck says.

Carol Deweck, she's done all of her work on growth mindset first fixed mindset. And the people with a fixed mindset are very defined by the now. If you get an F on the test as a student, that means, oh crap, I'm dumb. If you get an F with a growth mindset, you say, I'm not there yet. I can get smarter. So you're never defined by the now, if you have a growth mindset, if you have a fixed mindset, then who you are today is all you'll ever be. Is that so coming from someone who knows his salt, right? Who

understands what they're on about that? I've read Carol Dwik's mindset and thought, Carol Dweck's work is some of the best in psychology. She's legit. She is incredibly legit. Her work is so high quality. She's a Stanford psychologist. She's been studying this step for decades. Her work is some of the absolute best in psychology.

Who else is up there? Let's before we move on. Before we get into it. Ellen Linger. Ellen Linger, Harvard. I would point to her work, read her books. Her book, Mindfulness and Counterclockwise will blow your mind. They'll they'll give you a few red. I need to put

the input in the show notes. Tell me that again. Ellen Linger, her look, Mindfulness Linger, L-A-N-G-E-R. She's a Harvard. Yep. Mindfulness and Counterclockwise are her books. I like Daniel Gilbert, as I've described already. He's the guy who did the future self stuff. Those are Brent's life is another really good one. Brent's life's got some crazy work. He actually wrote a book called Time and Psychological Explanation. That's very dense academic, but it changes everything about how you view time. Oh, God. Have you read Colour Revelli's book? Oh, ho, ho, ho, let me just call it. I've

got to hear what that, wait there. Sure. It is called the order of time. And if you get this unordable, people that are listening, um, if you get this unordable or you, Dr Hardy, it's read by Benedict Cumberbatch. It's read by Dr. Strange. And it's, I mean, you can see there. That's how it's super small, real small, only, what's this? How many pages? 185 pages of like a five paper. It's tiny, super quick read. But Benedict Cumberbatch, man, audible. That's your next audible credit there, everyone that's listening, go and do it. I just bought it. That's the sort of shit I love. Dude, it's, it's, it's, it's real cool. Um, anyway, okay,

look, we are, this is just a conversation between me and you now, I mean, you got this bro man's going on with forgotten that we're doing a podcast, everyone's like, look, guys, shut up. Uh, okay. So what are the steps? What are the steps? Here we go. I'll give them the steps. This is all about reframing the past and deciding a different future. So here's the goal. Here's the goal. The past is a meaning.

The past is not objective. Your memory and your story of the past is a story. It's not actually real. I'm not saying that the events didn't occur, but what I'm saying is is your view of the events is not the only way of viewing those events. So as an example, yes. The 11 year old version of Benjamin Hardy, whose parents got divorced and my father became a drug addict, right? When those types of experiences happen and we have experiences every day we

give meaning to those experiences and that meaning shapes our identity and it shapes our view of the world. So a lot of my view of the world was you know my parents are bad people or whatever you know what I mean which is not actually fundamentally true that was just my view right. And so here I am now 32 years old, I don't have to give the same meanings to my former experiences as I did when I had them. I don't have to come up with the same narratives that I did as an 11 year old boy. I can actually, with an understanding of the world, with an understanding of my father, with an understanding of people, I can say, you know what?

I saw it one way, but that's actually not how I see it anymore. I choose, you know, actually, you know, and I've actually gone back and I've talked to my dad about it. By the way, my dad's no longer a drug addict. He's overcome a lot of that. But I've been able to ask him a lot of questions, get a lot of understanding, and realize did I understand completely why he made those mistakes? He was going through hell, and he went through a lot of stuff, and he had actually had a lot of baggage himself that was unresolved. And so I can now have better context and view that allows me to see the situation differently. One other quick example,

and this is a little bit more practical. Last week I gave a talk to a group that I really value. A lot of people and you know I'm actually getting ready to launch the book. You know and so I was I was giving a talk in hopes that I would get help from some really high-level people for the book launch and I freaking flopped this talk. I mean I I bombed it dude. I was so embarrassed, so ashamed after the talk that I wanted to leave the group. Literally, I've been in this group for three years, and I was like, when you're caught in the emotions of a moment, because with emotions, there's an initial reaction. So, if someone cuts you off on the road,

or if someone punches you, you're going to have an initial reaction. But the more emotionally developed you get, the more you can have a secondary emotions, which is your chosen response. You know, we call it emotion regulation. That's what I was doing with my son, with the journal. Look, I know what happened. I know you're feeling terrible, but what should we do about this? How do you want to feel about it?

You got to give it a clear picture, right? In order to... And so anyways, I'm going to just quickly go here because I want to go back. I want to go to future stuff. But basically, I was caught up overwhelmed. I was stuck in my initial response. And I was thinking, I should probably leave the group. If you're caught in an initial negative response,

you get really black and white with your thinking. And you then become very limited in your options. So my only options in this case was I'd probably should leave the group because I'm no longer a good member of this group because I gave a really horrible speech. And so the only way out of that is first off to journal about it, write about your experiences, think about it,

and then talk about it to keep people, get it out so that you can get alternative perspectives. I started talking to a few people and just saying, hey, look, this would happen, and I honestly just don't feel very good about the group anymore. And some people were like, why? People would challenge my emotional assessment.

Then ultimately, it takes courage. All progress starts by telling the truth. I told the guy who runs the group. I said, dude, I'm sorry. First off, I gave a really horrible speech at your event. Also, I don't know if I can be in this group anymore, because I don't know if I'm providing value to this group. And I'm not even sure if the group's providing value to me.

I was just very open. And I think that this is a crucial key to reframing your past is that you need to be open about it. You need to be willing to talk about some things, and also in real time talk about it, but he was like, dude, Ben, it wasn't that bad, plus also, that one didn't work out very well, but we've got other options.

There's other ways to do this, and so I'm like, I just made me realize, okay, I was coming to some rash decisions, right? And that's usually what happens with trauma. There's a negative thing happens and you make rash decisions. And so the goal is this, and this will be the last thing I say about the past. First off, the past is just a meaning. It's a memory, and you can change your memories. You can change the meaning and the emotions.

So rather than now, and literally this was only three or four days ago, I had a horrible three or four days where I was caught up in my emotions. Now, I've proactively chosen to view the past. That episode as, that was the best meeting I've ever been to. I didn't have to view it that way, but I'm choosing to view it that way. Literally, and I'm not saying I'm not being naive, like literally that event happened for me, not to me. And that's really how you want to view Like literally, that event happened for me, not to me.

And that's really how you want to view the past. It happened for me, not to me. If you can say that, and you can believe it, and you can say, if I learned from this, my future's going to be a lot better. It's like turning in the obstacle into the way, right? Like what Ryan Holiday would say. It's choosing to look at the past and saying, I can turn this into something better. Or you can say, I'm defined by this therefore, I suck. So that's just step one is that you have to choose better meanings

and better story for your past. And you can do that with anything. Me as an 11 year old kid, me last week, it's choosing a better narration and viewing the past from a positive perspective that it happened for you. And the practical steps to do that are to perhaps journal, perhaps speak to somebody about it. Are those the alternative for those two things neutralize the emotions, right? Get more information. Yeah, you actually want the past to be information than emotion, but you had journaling about it, writing about it, learning about it, asking questions, being curious, getting more information. That's what I had to do with my dad. Getting more information about the situation, because the more context you have,

the more empathy you'll have, the more understanding you'll have. I have a lot of empathy towards my former self. I was really mad at myself two days ago, but now I'm like, you know what? If I really think about it, I did the absolute best I could. I wasn't good enough for the task at the time, but I'm not defined by where I am right now. You know what I mean? And there's still plenty of potential in that group and in that situation. If I choose to go that way, I don't have to be defined in other words by what happened. I can still be defined by my goals. And that's actually the key is that you don't want to be defined by the past.

You want to be defined by your goals. And so, and you don't want your behavior to be predicted by your past. You want your behavior to be predicted by your future self. The person you want to be. So rather than being defined by that thing and letting that thing drive my behavior, I should be thinking in a more flexible way. What is my ultimate goal? Who's my future self?

That's the thing that should drive how I handle the situation, which may require me to courageously come up to the group and say, look, guys, I kind of flopped that last talk, but I still want help with this launch. Is there anything we can do? I just like to come up to the group and say, look guys, I kind of flopped that last talk, but I still want help with this launch. Is there anything we can do? I could go back to being flexible towards the goal versus defined by the past. That's just the thing that we need to all do with our past. As far as future self here at the steps, and this is a lot more linear.

You need to think about who you really want to be in the future. Your future self is a decision you make, not a discovery you make. You don't discover your future self. You decide who you want to be. And that has a lot to do with thinking about, where do you want to be in your life? Like, where do you want to, I think two to three years out is a great time frame. You know, you might know beyond that. Like, obviously me, myself as an example with five kids, I knew five, 10 years ago that I was going to have kids. And so I had a future self, but on a very practical scale, where do you want to be in two to three years from now?

What do you want your circumstances to be who do you want like who do you want to be in a relationship with how do you want those Relationships to be what do you want your health to be like what do you want your income like how do you want your day-to-day life to be like What do you want your focus to be on what do you want to be doing? You know just really clarifying your future self What do you want to be doing? You know, just really clarifying your future self. Once you've clarified it, and I would say through journaling, and daily morning journaling really helps. You know, it's a drafting process.

You never actually finish this. And by the way, your current future self is based on a few things. It's based on your current knowledge, because once you learn new things, you might have new and better goals. It's also based on your current level of confidence. You and I may not have the future self to go make a billion dollars. Maybe yours is.

In three years, maybe you have the capacity to make a billion dollars in three years from now. I wouldn't project that right now. I think me and you are in the same company. Okay. I don't have the confidence or the resources or the skills to do that right now And so I probably wouldn't have that as my future self But as I build more confidence through gaining more experiences through building better relationships

I can then project out a higher level future self But anyways once you've decided your future self you need to then change your narrative your identity narrative rather than being so Definitive in who you are. And also overly describing your past, it becomes very powerful when you start telling people about your future self, telling people about your goals. A lot of people say you shouldn't tell people about your goals because you're going to get negative feedback. But you should, but you need to get that, if that's who you really want to be and if that's

what you want to do, then you're actually living a lie if you don't tell people who you're trying to be. Now, this isn't fake, it tell you make it. This isn't want to be and if that's what you want to do, then you're actually living a lie if you don't tell people who you're trying to be. Now this isn't fake at all you make it. This isn't pretending to be your future self because your future self is not you. They're a different person. This is saying this is where I want to go and this is what I'm up to and this is what I'm trying for. That allows you to first off believe it more because you're now telling people who you

want to be, which hits you at the subconscious level. But then when you start telling people about your future self, you will start to feel compelled to start organizing your behavior, start acting more congruently with your story. If I started telling people, look, I really want to start a podcast. I started telling everyone I wanted to start a podcast, right? I told everyone I wanted to run a marathon. If I didn't start running, they did, what the freak?

Why are you telling me you're going to do that thing? Yeah, so you start to feel compelled to act according to your story, and therefore your behavior starts aligning with your future self rather than your former self. And in psychology, we call it self-signalling, but basically your behavior signals back to your identity or your subconscious, the type of person you are. So this gets back to James Clear. You're your behavior signals back to you or creates votes to the type of person you think you are. Behavior solidifies identity. So when you start telling people I want to do X, Y, and Z, or this is where I want to be in the future, and then you start acting that way, it really

solidifies who you are, and that's how your personality gets shaped. One last thought, aside from obviously like organizing environment around your things like that, investing money into your future identity creates an extreme amount of commitment. The more money, and obviously you can start with small investments, but for myself as an example, when I started investing money into my goal to be a writer, I got really serious. I bought a domain name back, like in 2015, costate 800 bucks. My wife was like, are you sure about this? You know, but I've since made bigger and bigger investments because when you do that, what you're doing is you're actually

saying, I believe in my future self. This is who I am and I'm going to start putting money towards it in the present. In the present, I'm going to make an investment towards that future self. And that really gets you committed. Like from a psychological standpoint, we call it sunk cost bias.

We also call it escalation of commitment, but as you invest in things, you start to really get committed to it on an emotional level and you identify with the things you spend money on. And so if you're serious about something like, let's just say you're serious about really getting a shape, get a freaking personal trainer or something like that,

invest in health products or whatever, like that really convinces your identity that this is the door you're going. It really feels like a lot of the stuff, both backward facing and forward facing, is to do with taking the notions that we have inside of our heads, the sentiment of the person that I was, or the idea of being the person that I'm going to become, and concreting them, forcing them either through a linguistic commitment or through a social commitment or through a financial commitment, it gives them form. I feel like at least the future itself, yeah.

For sure. Your newsletter has like half a million subs or something, is that right? Yeah. Where can people go to subscribe to that because I'm sure that there will be a lot of people very interested in your work after today's discussion. Oh, cool. Man, thank you. Yeah, if you go to Benjamin Hardy Benjamin Hardy.com, you can find it in his letter worth $800, man. Yeah, it's just my name, right? Yeah, but you know, it's challenging. You gotta do that thing. right? Yeah, but you know it's challenging. You got to do that thing. I mean if I hadn't gotten it by now it would have been gone. Oh it would have been. I'm currently in the process of like choosing

what mine is going to be and there's some guy that makes movies in Hollywood that has just chewed up every Chris Williamsson iteration available and I'm like you didn't even leave a like dot co. Leave a dot co dude, come on. But if you anything, dude. Oh, I did. He's eating and then there's some guy that's just got Christopher Williamson on holding. Oh, don't get me into it. Dude, I know, but it's like that's the new real estate.

It is. What the fuck is parking? Parking themselves on this thing. Look, personality isn't permanent. We'll be linked in the show notes below. I think, you know, this is real ground sort of shaking scary stuff, man. It's gonna, it's gonna shake a lot of people, for sure. I love it, man. I love when stuff like this happens. I think it's really, really cool.

If you've enjoyed this discussion, make sure that you subscribe to Ben's newslight. A personality isn't permanent. We'll be linked in the show notes below. If you follow it through that, you will be supporting the podcast at no extra cost to yourself. Where else can people get you, money on Twitter and stuff like that? Yeah, but I mean,

you can find all that stuff at Benjaminhardy.com. I would mostly say just get the book, personalized and permanent, and go to Benjaminhardy.com. There's actually a lot of free online courses where I break you through the concepts in the book. This book actually has about 150 journal prompts throughout it to help you reframe the past,

up you really get clear on your future self. It takes you step-by-step, like literally how you can change the narrative of the past, get really clear on the narrative of the future, change your environment, change your subconscious. I mean, yeah, so I like it. It seems like a pretty good deal to me, man. I mean, you know, it doesn't seem like that part of a book.

Dude, it's also a handbook for change. How fantastic. Look, that's what it is. Thank you so much for coming on, bro. I've really, really enjoyed this. I had fun too. It was a lot of fun. Thanks, man. I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid