Stop trying to “find” your true self — there is a better way
Choosing your goals based on your personality is a mistake, do it the other way around.
We have been told this story all our lives, that we are special and unique. And what makes us unique is our own special characteristics, so we spend our entire life trying to find what it is that we were meant to be doing.
“I want to be who I am meant to be” — sounds familiar for the Millennials?
We are always scrambling for that personality quiz and seeing if we are compatible in a relationship based on some dumb results.
We are quick to define ourselves as an introvert or an extrovert? But just like Clark Kent can put his cape on and become a superhero, you can change too depending on the context and situation you are in.
I am an extrovert when I need to be making conversations for my job, but I am an introvert at a large scale event where I don’t want to spend energy making small talk, just because I don’t want to or feel like it.
And that’s ok, I don’t need to label myself based on how I feel at a given moment.
What if I told you those personality tests like the Myers–Briggs Personality test are not related to scientific research and do nothing but give us made up stories we like to tell ourselves. It’s not me saying it, ask Dr Benjamin Hardy who wrote the book “Personality isn’t Permanent.”
Your personality test results could be different in different periods of your life, does that mean you changed your personality?
You don’t need to find yourself, you need to create the version of yourself you want.
The person you want to be will always be a few steps away from you, that is your future self you want to create.
If you want to be a painter, but as a kid you were told you just don’t have the artisitc genes in you, then you won’t ever try and will probably live as a terrible painter your entire life.
But moving past our childhood trauma and our self enforced limitations is what brings us closer to who we want to be.
It’s not that we don’t have goals, but often we choose goals based on our limitations. We settle for less because these goals are “good enough” for someone like us.
Those limited goals then keep us distracted and we never really discover our full potential.
