Personality Isn't Permanent by Benjamin Hardy
Growth is not linear. Sometimes it seems like you grow little by little, every day a bit. Sometimes you hit plateaus and it feels like you can’t really achieve the levels you wanted. While other times you make your breakthrough and finally you skyrocketed to unimaginable levels. Of course, your growth is always the result of a constant fight, constant work behind the scenes, and what I described just above is only how it seems on the surface. Why do I write this?
What I wanted to share with you is that my so-felt breakthroughs were almost always related to books.
My first steep growth as a developer hit in when my former boss, Rubens, gave me my first language-agnostic development book. The second “breakthrough” came a few years later when I started to read uplifting and self-improvement contents on a daily basis. I gained so many ideas, so much clarity in such a short time.
The third is still waiting, but this book, Personality Is Not Permanent can simply be the basis of the next rise.
What is Benjamin Hardy writing about in this book? Why is he saying that your personality is not something fixed? And if it is really not, how it can be changed?
Let’s flip slides! Do you think your personality is permanent? Do you think you are the same person as you were years ago?
Most probably the answer is no. If it’s yes, that would be a problem for you. It would mean that you are not growing, you are stuck. Hardy’s every point is supported by scientific research and/or study. That’s something that makes this book extremely valuable and trustworthy.
One of the most interesting researches lasted for long decades and they examined whether personality is a good means to predict success, predict future personal characteristics. The researchers were extremely surprised by the clear results they found. There was almost no correlation between the personality of someone in his young and in his old age. So often, people are completely different from those who they were years before.
How can your personality change? Obviously it can change in an ad-hoc way, mostly led by your circumstances, your friends, family, colleagues. In short, your environment.
But what if I told you that you can lead this transformation? Just as software craftsmanship claims that you should be in control of your professional growth and career, Hardy claims that you should be in control of the personality you internalize. You can and should be the designer of your future self.
Benjamin Hardy in his book, Personality Isn’t Permanent, drives you through the process of this change. He asks tons of questions that are not so easy to answer with full honesty, and it definitely takes time and courage. But if you do so, you are going to get a clearer vision of where you are going in your life and where you could go.
A self-improvement book supported by examples and research. Read it twice. First, read it through let it sink in a bit and the second time, grab your journal and answer all the questions of Personality Isn’t Permanent.
It will be worth your time.
Happy reading!