Why Personality Quizzes Are A Waste Of Time
This author is arguing that you can change everything about your personality.
“Personality tests are fast food for the soul. They make you believe you can discover your true self in an instant,” writes Dr. Benjamin Hardy, the author of the new book Personality Isn’t Permanent that comes out June 16.
I was there too. Having not thought about myself, my identity, and goals until 2017, I one day stumbled upon the Myer-Briggs test. Similarly to a lot of people that take the test, my jaw dropped because “it’s so accurate!”
I readily paid $33 for the full version of test results, and read and reread it over and over again.
“Ah, this is me then! That’s how it is. I finally have the answers!” I beamed.
Only it didn’t occur to me that there are 16 types according to Myers-Briggs and there are 7.79 billion people in the world. There is no way one can categorise 7 billion people into 16 groups. Because everyone is different.
Dr. Benjamin Hardy, an American organisational psychologist and writer, is taking up a big task with his latest book — he’s countering this industry of personality tests. Which is worth $2 billion, by the way.
Even if you have never taken Myers-Briggs and don’t know what Enneagram is, there is a big chance you took one of the tests popular in the noughties’ Facebook that determined which Hogwarts house you would end up in, how many kids you will have when you’re older (yes, there really was a test for that), or what type of car you are. By the way, these Facebook quizzes later ended up in a big scandal to do with personal data.
But, data privacy breach aside, what made us believe that finding out whether we’d be in Gryffindor of Hufflepuff at that given moment (even if accurately), determined anything about us?
As even about Harry Potter, Hardy writes:
“Harry Potter wasn’t “born” to be a Gryffindor. He didn’t have the innate personality of a Gryffindor. He chose to be one, and that choice and the experiences that followed shaped his personality.”
And he’s right. Harry Potter was actually selected to be in Slytherin but through his persuasion he ended up in Gryffindor.
“That’s the truth of personality. It’s not innate, but trained,” writes Hardy. “It can and does change. It can and should be chosen and designed. Choosing one’s own way is a primary purpose to our lives.”
No Fixed Personality
Conveniently broken down into six sections, “Personality Isn’t Permanent” first looks at popular myths around personality and what is true about it.
One of the myths is that people’s behaviour can be predicted and is always consistent.
“It isn’t our behavior that is consistent, but rather our view of our behavior that makes it seem consistent. We selectively focus on what we identify with and ignore what we don’t. In the process, we often miss or purposefully disregard the many instances when we’re acting out of character,” the author writes.
So basically, if you’re given a list of personality traits you supposedly possess, you will start picking out proof of those traits from your behaviour. The traits that don’t fit into that list you will just ignore or count them as an exception.
This is not an accurate approach to “categorising” yourself. Because if you were looking to buy a green car, you would suddenly start noticing all the green cars in the streets and not notice other colours. In fact, you might even start realising that there are far more green cars than you thought there were. But in reality did anything happen to all the non-green cars in the meantime? No, they still exist. You just experienced a shift in your mind that caused you to only pay attention to the green cars.
This aspect works far beyond cars and objects. And you can use it to your advantage. When you set yourself a goal — a big, transformational goal — you will start noticing all the opportunities that could facilitate that goal. That’s why when you have a clear goal and write it down, the chances of it actualising increase immensely.
“Life starts taking on a whole new meaning when you begin thinking of your future self right now, and consider what they will want. Rather than making decisions based on your current identity, you could begin making decisions your future self would love and appreciate,” writes Hardy.
The Effect of Trauma
According to Hardy, a lot of people get stuck in a fixed personality because they haven’t resolved their trauma.
“Just because something happened in the past doesn’t mean the event or experience is ‘objective.’ This can be a bitter pill to swallow, especially for people who insist on the past or specific events being understood a particular way. Our past, like any experience or event, is a subjective meaning or perspective, which we ourselves ascribe meaning to — whether positive or negative, good or bad. Without question, experiences from our past can and do impact us. But it isn’t actually our past that is impacting us, but our present interpretation and emotional attachment to that past,” Hardy writes.
Viewing your past in more effective and healthy ways, he adds, is a “natural aspect of evolving as a person.”
It is important to realise that nothing is permanent, not even your past. Or as a concept known as the observer effect says “the mere observation of a phenomenon inevitably changes that phenomenon.”
So even objects change just from you looking at them. That’s why living an intentional life requires psychological flexibility. You have to understand that everything changes, including your circumstances.
We don’t react to reality, we react to our perception of reality. That’s why you can change the way you react to your past too by shifting your thinking.
“Psychological flexibility is the skill of being fluid and adaptive, holding your emotions loosely, and moving toward chosen goals or values. You need psychological flexibility to reframe your past and imagine a future self. The more flexible you become, the less you’ll be overwhelmed by or stopped by emotions. Instead, you’ll embrace and learn from them,” says Hardy.
After you have accepted some events from your past and start viewing them from the position of a compassionate observer, you can start shifting your story and enhancing your subconscious, which is what the next two book chapters are called.
Facilitating Your Goals and Creating Your Future
In order to shift your story — provided you aren’t yet living the life you want to be living — you need to have a vision of where you want to be in the future. Once you establish that vision, you live it. As Hardy constantly writes in his work, it’s “be → do → have” in this particular order. Once you know who is it that you would like to be, you start living like that person would. Make life and everyday decisions according to that person’s standards.
Would the person you see yourself to be in three years agree to that job? Who would they have as friends? Who would they marry? Would they eat this particular food?
This will also help you make decisions much more easily as you have a set of criteria for that now.
But it is not enough to just establish what you would like to achieve, you have to commit to this ideal future 100%.
“Most people hold their true desires tight to their chest. They are afraid to fully admit what they want most in life. But when you commit to a specific outcome, you’ve got to make that outcome your new narrative,” Hardy writes.
Make sure your life totally reflects your idea of ideal future. And it will become much easier to get the things to facilitate the actualisation of that future.
“As you begin acting as your future self, you will eventually become that future self. Your personality will adapt itself to your goals, and you’ll have the characteristics, attributes, and circumstances you want,” Hardy writes in “Personality Isn’t Permanent.” “A single goal allows for a more streamlined path, which allows you to not only see the outcome but also the path to making that outcome real.”
Your Environment
The last significant change you need to immediately make to live your dream life is to reconsider your environment. Environment can involve anything: literally the place you live in, the objects that you hold in this place, the people you spend most of your time with.
As human beings, we default to the roles of our social environment, writes Hardy.
“It takes extreme intentionality and decisiveness not to default to an expected social or cultural role.”
So how does one use the notion of the environment to improve themselves? They put themselves in “new environments, around new people, and take on new roles.”
“[That] is one of the quickest ways to change your personality, for better or worse.”
I’ve been following Hardy’s work for over a year now and I would say he had the biggest influence over my immense self-growth within this period. The foundations laid out in “Personality Isn’t Permanent” will help you break free from your limiting beliefs and live your best life.
Personality Isn’t Permanent comes out June 16. You can read the first chapter for free here.
