Reinventing Yourself - Step I. - PART TWO - Social environment & Personality
HOW TO REINVENT YOURSELF - PART II (Social Environment & Personality)
Become who you are!
-F. Nietzsche
Picking up where we left off in the first episode, today we’re going to clarify the two remaining factors of our First Nature. After we complete this first step, we are going to move to the more creative phase of Self-Reinvention.
Social environment
If you thought to yourself “Goosh, all these things I can’t do much about, hopefully we’re getting to the manageable stuff now”, then you are only partly wrong. Following two factors are in our hands, however, not from the very beginning.
Social environment is something we definitely CAN curate, however within a certain limit. It’s a similar case as with the upbringing. In the earlier part of our life we did not have much saying in this matter. We don’t get to pick the kindergarten, school or even city we live in. We also don’t decide on where we spend our time. We may choose our friends, but that’s about it. Last but not least - and this can be a big difference maker - we don’t get to choose the country we live in!
How and where we spend our time is usually up to us only since high school or so.
BUT, even though our primary social environment has shaped us into who we are today, it doesn’t have to remain like that! Nietzsche is a perfect example for this considering that his father was a Lutheran Pastor. Although he was guided to Christian path and surrounded be other Christians since the day he was born, because of Friedrich rebellious nature and extreme open-mindedness his life took a quite different road.
Social environment is thus definitely part of our First Nature, however, it can be adjusted and reshaped to suit our goals and desires once we grow up and become independent. (As we’ll see in the Second Nature phase later.)
Steps to take:
Rethink where do you want to live, whom do you want to meet and have around yourself, whom you idolize and what content and information you allow yourself to consume.
Personality
Personality is just one of many words we could use to describe this category.
Character, personal uniqueness or as the ancient Greeks called it - daimón.
A real nitpicker would remark that the exact meaning of each of these terms is slightly different. True, but they all tie into the one common denominator - what have you been born with.
The simplest way to describe this factor is to think of DNA in a somewhat metaphysical sense. Personality is the unique mixture of genes of your parents and life’s randomness.
It’s the fingerprint kind of thing. There is no other in this world that’s exactly like YOURS. Even if you have a brother and sister let alone a twin - they’re not exactly the same as you in every aspect. For example you might look almost the same, have the same style and taste and voice, but one can be very lively and social and the other one rather introverted and quiet.
Our personality is thus definitely given to some extent. However, it’s the most malleable and fluid of all four mentioned factors. It changes constantly throughout our life. For some very little, for others very drastically. It all depends on the degree of self-awareness and the decisions we make.
Mind you that we’re not speaking about our persona yet, but about personality. Persona is what’s perceived by others or presented by you. Personality is what’s on the inside and what only you can see. You could define personality also as the total sum of all our positive and negative character traits.
The important thing about personality is to realize this:
It CAN be changed. However it’s gonna take a lot longer than you might think.
The modern age has poisoned us by forcing us to believe that there’s a quick fix for everything. That everything can be changed in a few weeks by taking a couple of online courses. These may be a valid starting point, but the actual fundamental change just doesn’t happen that quickly. Think about it: If you have behaved in a particular way for say 30 years, do you really think it can be offset by a couple of weeks?
Steps to take:
In more practical terms, you can analyze your personality in terms of the big 5 (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism).
Another thing you might do is to write down your top ten positive and top ten negative character traits that are most typical and meaningful for you. Try to involve a good friend of yours, a spouse or a family member for some (not always objective) feedback. Use their opinion rather as a prompt for deeper self-reflection and analysis rather than a “given”.
Go through all of these four factors and do a thorough analysis of your inventory.
Remember: these are the tools and material that you have been given.
It’s the necessary step of realizing what you already have that will lead you to the next much more exciting and fulfilling step: Active Self-creation.
Take your time.
Go through your personal inventory.
Next week, you’ll be already crafting your own future.
Thank you for reading!
See you soon,
fellow thinker! :)