Changing Your Personality Through Spirituality—Yes, It’s Possible
In my last Light Hustler piece, I described how the sixth step provides a mechanism to identify the specific forms that my personality challenges (aka “defects of character”) assume so that I can become more aware of them, exercise greater conscious choice with regard to acting on them, and begin the process of letting them go.
Step Six fits hand-in-glove with Step Seven, which gives me a pathway to begin to remedy these challenges and the impulses they feed that lead me to reflexively act in ways that are unskillful and unhealthy — allowing me to be a better person by responding to circumstances in ways that are much more mindful, proportionate and balanced.
Step Seven involves identifying the specific spiritual principles that represent the opposites of our personality challenges and putting them into practice.
Personality challenges and the spiritual principles that oppose them cannot operate at the same time. If the treatment for the disease of addiction is actively working a program of recovery (often in combination with some level of formal professional treatment), the treatment for one’s personality failings is the active application of select spiritual principles. For example:
· The antidote for my inclination to judge others is compassion — for others and for myself.
· The antidote for my arrogance is humility.
· The antidote for my resentment — old anger kept alive by the reliving of past perceived injustices in my mind — is forgiveness.
· The antidote for my anger is acceptance.
My 12-step literature describes anger as my reaction to and denial of reality in the present. Acceptance is about learning how to more peacefully co-exist with things as they are in the here and now.
At first glance, I couldn’t grasp the link between anger and denial. It took me a while to appreciate that they are simply different stops on the same mental-emotional rail line. Denial is a function of the inability to accept reality as it is. Anger is a more conscious form of denial that reflects my refusal, my unwillingness to accept reality.
Anger is my narcissistic denunciation of a reality I don’t like because circumstances or people aren’t how I want them to be or think they should be. This happens in bowling, when I throw what appears to be a perfect strike ball that crushes the pocket at the ideal angle of entry, exploding all the pins — except for the number 10 pin (the pin of Satan for right-handed bowlers the world over), which somehow remains completely untouched and stands there taunting me. How dare that muthafuckinpieceofshit pin defy my will and not fall down with the rest of them like it was supposed to — damn it?!
Whenever I’m unable to accept the reality I’m presented with, my anger ignites and suffering (for myself and often for those around me) commences.
Accepting our emotions and allowing ourselves to feel them takes less energy than avoiding, suppressing, or displacing them by acting out on the personality challenges they drive. Genuine acceptance of feelings frees up energy to practice spiritual principles in response to whatever life throws at us.
The Serenity Prayer’s dialectical dynamics of acceptance and change are active in the seventh step. The work combines the acceptance of things as they are and improving conscious contact with spiritual principles — through practice applying them to mitigate the influence of those difficult aspects of my character. The most effective path to personality renovation — and reducing the propensity to be an asshole in all of its myriad incarnations — is to practice the spiritual opposites of one’s personality challenges.
While relapse into alcohol or other drug use is not part of my story (just for today), I do have periodic relapses of acting out on my personality shortcomings, including the need to control and to “be right.” Fortunately, the more I practice applying the spiritual principles of my program of recovery, the quicker I become consciously aware that I’m caught up in a familiar unhealthy and unskillful vortex. I can then make a more conscious decision about how I want to act, rather than react unconsciously based on well-worn reflexive patterns.
It’s like realizing (awareness) that the plane I’m piloting is nose-diving toward a crash and then using the skills I’ve acquired through practice to pull out of that dive (action). With practice, I act out on my character flaws less often, and when I do act out on them, my actions are less severe and create less suffering for myself, as well as those I care about. And, progressively I develop the capacity to be kinder and gentler with everyone — even me.
Although Step Seven reads Humbly asked him (as in God/our Higher Power based on our individual understanding of that concept/entity) to remove our shortcomings, it’s useful to clarify that personality challenges may never be totally removed in the sense that they disappear altogether. Through awareness and action, it is possible to behave differently, downsizing the prevalence, intensity and influence of my shortcomings so they create fewer problems. As their sharp edges are chipped away and their rough spots sanded down, their power over my behavior decreases.
The diligent practicing of spiritual principles gradually and progressively turns personality challenges from huge boulders that obstruct one’s path into small smooth stones that can be sidestepped or picked up and tossed aside.
However, it’s still easy to trip over even small stones if I’m not paying enough conscious attention to where I’m walking in the here and now.
For more, visit my Psychology Today column, Some Assembly Required
Copyright 2018 Dan Mager, MSW
Author of Roots and Wings: Mindful Parenting in Recovery and Some Assembly Required: A Balanced Approach to Recovery From Addiction and Chronic Pain
