[Music] you can afford anything but not everything every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else and that doesn't just apply to your money that applies to your time your focus your energy your attention anything in your life that is a scarce or limited resource and that opens up two questions first what matters most to you not what does society say should matter most but what is truly a priority in your life and number two how do you align your daily decision-making to reflect that answering these two questions is a lifetime practice and that is what this podcast is here to explore my name is Paula pan I am the host of the afford anything podcast and today dr. Benjamin Hardy joins us to talk about how personality is not as permanent as we might think dr. Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist who has written extensively about topics such as personality willpower and motivation he is a contributor to Psychology Today Inc calm and he was the number one writer on medium.com from 2015 to 2018 he's the best-selling author of willpower doesn't work and has now published a new book called personality isn't permanent on today's episode we discussed how our personalities are not as fixed as we think they are and what we can do if we want to change our sense of identity in order to rise to the level of our goals rather than fall to the patterns of our past if this is a concept that intrigues you listen on here is dr. Benjamin Hardy hi Ben how are you I'm excellent how are you doing I'm doing really good just happy to be with you thank you for spending this time with us you've written about how personality changes throughout your life can you first introduce that concept the central thesis of personality not being permanent absolutely there's lots of kind of strands of research I use to build the foundation of this book one of them just being what's called longitudinal research so they've done studies now on people who are like in their 70s they measure these people's various aspects of these people's personalities 50 60 years ago and the researchers were surprised that these people were not the same people at all and that's becoming more and more you know not surprising like although there's common conversations that like you are who you are you can't teach an old dog new tricks like the truth is is you change a lot and so that kind of takes me to Daniel Gilbert he's a Harvard psychologist and he's been studying this for quite a while and basically what he's found is is that even if you look back over the last five to ten years if most people are actually interactive and thoughtful about it they actually are quite different from who they were five to ten years ago most people can quickly see that they actually make very different decisions than they did in the past they they have different priorities or preferences the things that they used to think we're interesting or no longer interesting so it's easy to see even on like a five to ten year frame that you are quite a different person you see things a little differently but the real rub or the real challenge for people it's not that their personality doesn't change it's that their perspective of their personality can get stuck from Daniel Gilbert's perspective we overemphasize the present we're very strongly obsessed in many ways with who we are right now and as a result it leads us to under projecting what's possible for our future we don't spend much time imagining a different version of ourselves in the future we're very definitive in who we are today we're very much trying to understand and proclaim who we are today which leads us to not being imaginative or thoughtful about seeing ourselves as a different person so what the research shows is that people change Wayne more than they predict they will as a rule I mean this just has the masses right part of Daniel Gilbert's research you found that even when people are aware of how much they have changed in the last five to ten years they underestimate how much they predict that they will change within the next five to ten years yep that's the key and there's a lot of reasons why one of them is obviously as he says we don't spend very much time imagining our future self we also think our future self is who were gonna be today we think that who we are right now is who were gonna always be as he says human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished we're also kind of just in similar roles I just think that people tend to overemphasize their current self and really get definitive in the labels they either give themselves or in the story that they tell about themselves it can be very present focused there's another kind of realm of research that connects this for myself that's from Carol Dweck she is the Stanford researcher who kind of coined the terms fixed mindset growth mindset and what she found is that people with the fixed mindset are very definitive in who they are today you know if you fail a test with a fixed mindset meaning you don't believe you can change that what that means is that that's where you're at you can't surpass this mountain because it's obvious you're not up to it because you already failed the test where's like people with the growth mindset they fail the test they're like okay I'll figure this out what killed wek says is they get too luxurious in the power of yet they're not there yet but they get to get there and so people with the growth mindset they don't really care that much about who they are today because they're more interested in what's possible for their future whereas people with the fixed mindset people that are overly definitive and who they are today it matters a lot more to them who they are today whereas for myself I don't really care who I am today I'm way more interested in where things are going now when you say who you are today there's the situational component of the circumstances of your life today but then there's also the personality identification component of today I identify as an introvert I identify as somebody with a lot of anxiety I identify you know in in way XYZ ways part of your book talks about how even the sense of self is more dynamic than many people assume oh yeah hugely right now I'm having this conversation with you I'm at my office I'm gonna go home after this conversation and go and be the dad of five kids and so I'm definitely gonna show up differently and I'm gonna have different patterns of behavior even just stepping into my house there's gonna be all these triggers that are gonna go off in my head and really the rhythms and routines that shift me into dad and husband mode and I probably have habit I know I've got habits associated with my home environment that are totally not apparent in this environment or when I'm on the road so yeah personality is not just a score that you get and then that's who you always are Ellen Langer she's the Harvard psychologist who studied mindfulness for an enormous amount of time she's found that when people have overly adopted a single perspective of themselves you know whether it's introvert or it could be anything they tend to believe that that's who they always are which is inaccurate in different situations you're going to show up differently in different contexts and context is really the thing that matters more than you know most people give credit to you talk about the five myths of personality can you describe what these five myths are let's first do a high-level overview and then we'll go into depth about each one sure yeah so the first one which can be a good nice hot button for a lot of people is that there's no such thing as a personality type so like if you take a type based personality test a myers-briggs a disc Enneagram generally the more popular ones those would give you a type and interestingly and I literally just wrote an article about this because I noticed that there was a person who was high up at myers-briggs and she had written an article on Forbes and I wrote a response to it on Psychology Today but in that article the article in Forbes she agreed that personality changes and can change and actually should change but that your personality type doesn't change and that's her perspective that's the myers-briggs perspective no science to back that up there's no science for even the notion of a personality type a lot of psychologists would kind of throw that into the realm of horoscopes that's just not really how personality works and so that's that's obviously the first myth second myth being and I really don't know the order of how I threw these in the book but you know that it doesn't change that it's innate that it's non-flexible that you are who you are personality is stable over a lifetime that's totally false other myths are that personality is completely from your past that who you that the past is the thing causing you to be the person you are today that's inaccurate you know that your personality is just the authentic you that it's just you once you've kind of figured out and discovered who you really are then you can just play to your strings like that's that's also false and then finally just and I don't even remember but just you know those are I mean those are generally that like that is your authentic self that it doesn't change that once you've finally discovered who you are you can then live the life you want those are generally the minutes and there's no good backing and those would lead to I would say ineffective they would stunt a lot of potential growth and change so let's take into each of those one by one and and let's start with going a little deeper into this notion that personality cannot be categorized into types because certainly as you mentioned personality typing tests such as the myers-briggs the Enneagram these are pretty popular immensely it's a multi-billion dollar industry they're enormous ly popular this is I guess where we could talk about the big five the big five is kind of the most scientific view of personality it's still a very imperfect theory there is no perfect theory and it is a Western theory of personality meaning that like they've studied the Big Five in other cultures and it hasn't worked out so well basically I had a big 5 views personalities as it breaks personality into five categories or five factors which we're all similar on these five factors so there's extraversion which is basically just how social you are to many degrees there's conscientiousness which is how organized and goal-oriented you are there's emotional stability which is just how emotionally stable you are in various situations it just breaks it up into these categories agreeableness you know how how good you are at developing relationships and being agreeable with people and then finally openness to new experiences it breaks in to that but what would happen is you actually took a test and anyone can do this you can go and take a big five personality test online first off the test construction really matters usually with a type based personality test it's very poorly constructed for actually getting good data usually those tests they'll ask you a bunch of questions and then they force you to answer you know like one of four scenarios they're forced choice where is like a big five if you took it you would be asked a question such as like you know how much do you like trying new things could be anything like that but the structure of the answer would be it would give you what's called a Likert scale in that scale would be like one to five or one to seven one being like totally disagree seven being like totally agree somewhere in the middle you know it's like neutral and you could give some nuance to your answer you know like maybe four out of seven five out of seven or like you know but you answer the question then you'd get an output and the output would give you a percentile rank against the general population and by the way with percentile ranks usually most people are somewhere in the middle like they call the bell curve most people are somewhere in the middle and then there's some outliers on both sides me as an example I think you would never actually call yourself an introvert or an extrovert because that would be actually inaccurate and like even Carl Jung who the myers-briggs claims to base themselves off of he said there's no such like this is a quote from me so there's no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert such a person would be in a lunatic asylum so like no one is actually one or the other we're just somewhere we would score a percentile rank you may be slightly an outlier like for myself I like in the 60th percentile for extraversion maybe even 55th and usually most people gonna be somewhere right there like I'm pretty dead in the middle but what the research shows is that all of these things are gonna change over your life and all of them are situational in many ways like the role that you're in in many ways determines how social you are your goals in many ways determine where you're going to show up on these I mean so these are gonna all change over time but you can also actively improve on these if you want to become more emotionally stable as a person or what we would call emotionally flexible so that you can handle stressful situations you can do that so it's just not smart to throw yourself into a category because it's first off the category wouldn't always be true but the bigger challenge is that the category then becomes a part of your identity and your identity is different from your personality your identity is how you self-described it's your self-concept it's your story about yourself and usually with these labels that then becomes your identity and then your identity drives your behavior and it also drives your goals and it drives you to seeking to prove the identity being true like James clear who wrote atomic habits and I'd love this quote of his II says that the more sacred an idea is to us or the more it is a part of our identity the more we're going to defend it against criticism so it also just stunts your imagination towards seeing yourself as a different version of yourself if you take the type based way seriously it makes you think your personality is more extreme than it really is so you know it just doesn't work in types it's just not how it should be viewed and you make the argument that overly categorizing or typify in yourself is a way in which people limit themselves as opposed to instead setting a goal or a vision and then becoming that person they need to be in order to achieve that they may instead set a fixed identity and then limit themselves based on the boundaries of what they believe their fixed identity to be very much yeah your personality in your comfort zone are very similar concepts and usually with overly labeling yourself or overly defining your current self you know and it's really healthy actually the view kind of going back to Gilbert it's good to view your current in your former self as two different people you're not the same person you were in the past you actually would make different decisions and you can actually look at the decision making of your former self and you can say I wouldn't do things the same way you know I even look back at the book I wrote before this one which is willpower doesn't work I recently read listen to the audible just for fun and that I saw a lot of things that I no longer agree with not necessarily fundamentally disagree with but I definitely see things differently and I know that my future self is gonna see things differently as well and so I think that the obsession with the current self can really limit your perspective that you're not the same as your going to be you're not the same as you were and also you're not going to be the same in the future so don't hold so tight to your current self indeed and instead who is the person you want to be you know like the research is growing in this realm of the psychology of your future self that you have to actually have a clear future self in order to make quality decisions in the present franco found that to be the case as well he wrote the book man's search for meaning about his experience in the Holocaust but without a hope and sense of purpose towards your future the present loses meaning and so you need a clear future stuff to make high-quality decisions in the present or intentional decisions they also need a clear future self to engage in a deep learning process or what we would call deliberate practice which is how you just develop skills and so the lack of imagination and decision-making towards the future self can really stunt people and instead we're really good just saying this is who I am this is this is my boundary this is what you can expect of me rather than actually thinking about what you would choose and what you would want we like to define our limits for sure all right so let's say that a person they may have a particular goal that relates to the external world or theirs again to their situational context let's say hypothetically a person says well my goal is that within the next five years from now I want to be making $100,000 a year and debt free and saving twenty five percent of my income so that might be their the situational context goal that they have for five years into the future but they also have certain identity around who they believe they are so for example they might think well I'm just not good at math or I'm not very organized or I can be highly anxious or I'm really shy to what extent could those identifiers limit their their ability to pursue that situational goal hugely they could hugely limit that goal a lot of people they want to make more money but they have really bad identity around money and really bad stories or habits or beliefs about money and so obviously you would want to do two things first you'd want to clarify the person you would like to be you know if you're someone who's making six figures you're saving a lot of money so you're someone who saves who's comfortable with money who's comfortable having money who likes good things or who invest money I would clarify your future self and the type of person you are in addition to your circumstances and situations and why this is important is is that very much the goal does determine the process so like if the goal is to be making six figures and have the freedom to live wherever you want versus the goal to be a millionaire and be running a company those two things would require a different identity and a different daily process I'm not gonna tell you which one to pursue but you you decide which future version of yourself and situation you want and that's the thing that's gonna have to dictate the things you learn and develop between you and there but it is important to kind of reverse you know look back on some of the things that have stunted your growth or that have led you to being who you are currently today and I multum utley reframing those so kind of thinking maybe like why do I have negative beliefs about money well you don't have to go to too far I don't think you have to spend so much time digging through the past you know I think a lot of its just determining what you want and then figuring it out but it is nice to be able to point to various events and to say or even just scenarios like I just grew up in this situation and then using that to explain what's led you to this point but ultimately choosing a different meaning for it rather than being defined by it or blaming it for where you're at just choosing to tell a different story but you know that is how you want saw things or that's what shaped you initially but you've chosen to view things differently for these reasons and you're not going you know and yeah and I would argue it's definitely not healthy to have a negative view of the past ultimately you can kind of say the past to some degree factually that I grew up and let's just say a broke situation you know like I can't even speak to myself like my parents are not enormous ly great with money I do make a lot more money than both of my parents combined at the point and I can see how when I was 17 18 19 even 20 my views around money were very much shaped around that environment I also did have other influences but at some point or another I chose to be inspired by different influences but I have no negative perspectives towards my parents at all I can just ultimately choose to define why I've chosen to look at money differently you have to kind of have reasons as well it's not just this is my future stuff you also want reasons behind why that future self is compelling and why you're no longer interested in doing things the way you were before so I think a lot of has to do with not only choosing the future self but choosing the meaning of why it's so important to you that relates to the idea that you talk about that the past is something that's happened for you rather than to you oh yeah I think that that's how it should always be viewed usually if anything's a negative traumatic experience you know anything and even growing up without money you can choose to blame that as your reason for not having opportunity or success or you can choose to use that as the reason for why you're gonna choose to do things differently you know you get to choose the lens through which you view the past and this is how history works I mean we're in the middle of a pandemic we're going through like this extreme racial revolution which is awesome but it's forcing us to look differently on how things were going in the past that's just what happens our view of the past always adapts based on where we're at in the present the past isn't the thing that caused us to get there it's our current situation that causes us to choose how we look at the past and you know for your own self it's much better to just choose to look at the past that it happened for you that it was beneficial you know I went through a lot of hard experiences and I still go through hard experiences and it's best to say that this is something that you can use because then you can actually learn from it and you can actually use it to propel you forward if you if it's something that happened to you where you're the victim towards it then obviously if place to control outside of yourself and also you're assuming that events led you to where you're at versus the meaning that you gave to events in and more than likely it's the meaning that you're giving to events that's causing you to be the person you are versus the events themselves and so if there are aspects of who you currently are that are limiting it would then be incumbent on you not just to take the actions that are required to fulfill those situational goals but to fundamentally alter your sense of self so that you can become the type of person who does the things that leads to the ideal situation that you want to create for yourself yeah there's like the old school adage be do have you be the person first to do what that person would do and you can have what that person would have so that I think like starting with future identity is big because then you can to many degrees use that as the new narrative for your new identity you don't necessarily need to fake it till you make it because we're all agreeing that your future self is a different person than who you are today but you are at least pointing your story and your behavior and your attention in the direction of your goal the goal is that you not only have a new vision for your future but it's also the new story you're not afraid to tell people about what you're trying to accomplish you're not ashamed or hiding your goal out of fear of failure or fear of judgment you're just being honest that this is what I want to accomplish and by telling people about it you're going to be able to believe it more you're going to get more support and accountability in your environment you can also then proactively put yourself in the right environments around the right people who will ultimately get you in that direction so you can become that person changing your behavior actually can over time change your identity but it's it's better to think about the identity you want first and then have the behavior follow-through and then ultimately over time your behavior repeatedly is a reflection of your personality so it's not enough just to say that that's what you want but you imagine it you say it and then you use that as the basis for your daily actions I mean that's why I'm personally a big fan of evening and morning routines mostly because when you wake up I think that there's a lot to say about how you start something in many ways shapes how it ends that doesn't always have to be the case but starting a day in a reactive stay where you go subconscious and then you just live on autopilot to what's urgent and kind of just the roles in the situation and maybe the addictions of the technology and whatnot can really create a fast-forwarding of time where a lot of time can pass and not a lot can change but if you put yourself in the right frame of mind in the beginning whether it be through journaling meditation prayer whatnot and you project out your future self and then think about what you could do before things start getting busy right you can actually take action towards your future self and that's called living intentionally or living courageously and the more you do that the more confidence you'll build as a person and so you can do this I mean I speak for myself and I'm sure you can speak for yourself the goal is actually that your future is the thing driving your behavior rather than the past the goal is is that the things you're doing on a daily basis even if it's just going to the gym and working out it's based on a goal it's based on what you're trying to accomplish as a person rather than you're just doing what you do because that's what you've always done in your book you talk about some of the different reasons that people stay stuck in patterns that developed from the past and you identify for key reasons people being defined by past traumas people being defined by identity narratives that they've already formed subconscious ideas and beliefs and the environment that they have how do you address each of these issues such that you can rise to the level of your goals rather than fall to the patterns of your past it's just important to realize I think that the stories that we have about ourselves are often passed based or heavily present based and that story your identity is a big driver of your actions and behaviors and what you're willing to do it takes a lot of willpower and also it's not sustainable to act outside of your identity to do something where you just don't see that that's who you are and so addressing identity and narrative is huge and the reason I brought up trauma is because often our narratives about ourselves are the byproduct of former negative trauma you know traumatic experiences and it's important to realize that trauma isn't always some huge event like you know returning from war or being in an abusive marriage although those are heavily traumatic and they can have an enormous impact on our identity and on how we see ourselves and how we you know even what we aspire towards but trauma can also just be being told you're not smart or you're not good-looking or they you know like it could be just little things and we all have little things occur all the time which can negatively impact how we see ourselves and it's important to actually choose a different perspective on what maybe once was a trauma you know I mean in the book I talk about someone who I you know know very well who she was in a private art lesson in the instructor corrected her in such a way in front of the class that it led her to being embarrassed and in her embarrassment and when it comes to emotions we all have reactions where I'll have reactions to events the reaction isn't really what matters it's really what you choose to do afterward which is what we call emotional regulation which is a skill so needed to be developed as a parent I can promise you like sometimes I react in a negative way and can get upset with my kids and I'm ultimately teaching them how to be reactive rather than to sit take a breath be mindful the situation and ultimately choose what to do with it but often we have negative experiences and in this case with my you know this relative of mine this was 40 years ago this is an amazing woman who's in her 80s now but 40 years ago she was in a private art lesson she had this experience where she was embarrassed because I had a teacher corrected her in front of the other people in the class and the narrative she formed about herself because of her reaction and her emotions was I'm not good at drawing I can't do this and so that then became her view and that's still how she views herself 40 years later is that she can't draw but that was a narrative and an identity that she formed because of an emotional reaction to an event now the reaction is just how you emotionally felt about it but that doesn't mean that that's the meaning you had to give to it she could have chosen to give the meaning a million different meanings the meaning she gave to it was is that I'm not good at doing this she could have had conversations with people could have journaled about it could have ultimately done a lot of different things to choose a different meaning she could have ultimately gotten to the point where she chose to say holy cow that teachers investing a lot he's giving me extra attention you know yeah it's kind of a little bit embarrassing or it was embarrassing I initially felt embarrassed because I was wondering what people would think about me but now I just I realized that this is exactly what I need if I want to become the artist I want to be to do the kids books I want to do like we as people get to ultimately choose the meanings of our experiences often we don't instead we build meanings based on how we initially felt and so it's just really important to realize that often how we see ourselves is incredibly limited because of the experiences we've had then obviously the there's the other big levers you know this conscious in the environment which if we want to we can go into environment you know and social group being big aspects of that but yeah I mean there's reasons why we go into repetitive cycles it's not because our personality is innate and unflexible the anecdote in your book about the the woman who 40 years ago was corrected by an art teacher in a very public very embarrassing way and and as a result decided I can't draw and has let that be her reality for the last 40 years reminded me very much of all things a a fiction book it was the baby-sitters club that I read when I was a kid and Claudia from the baby-sitters club is an aspiring artist and she takes an art class and in this art class every student the teacher just sort of looks at their painting and says mmm and walks on by and with Claudia the teacher constantly harps on you change this change that that can be improved this could be improved and so throughout the course of this book Claudia thinks like oh my god I must be the worst student I'm the I'm the only person who's getting corrected and at the end of the book it turns out she has a conversation with a teacher about it and the teacher says frankly it's when something is already good that's when I can see the tweaks that can take it from good to great but she might not have ever gotten that person effective if she wouldn't have asked right exactly and she could have got that perspective so much sooner right exactly exactly and that's precisely what that anecdote in your book reminded me of well it's interesting cuz meaning has everything to do with context and she didn't have that context initially when she was getting corrected she just thought that she formed the meaning based on her very limited perspective that ah I must be horrible at this because she keeps correcting me then you know over time and at some point another she gets more contact she asks the question or the teacher says no I do this because when I see great work I can see how can be tweaked if she had that information to that perspective sooner she wouldn't have created the meaning in her mind that she can't do it when I was growing up my parents got divorced my father became an extreme drug addicts literally from when I was 11 to 20 he overcame it all and he's an amazing place now and we have a great relationship but when I was 11 years old 13 14 and it was just all happening of course I was forming meanings of course I was experiencing emotions and I will say I had a very limiting identity and had by-product very passive personality for a long time but while writing this book and I've forgiven my dad you know and we're great friends now and he's also completely changed his life but one of the things that I intentionally wanted to do while writing this book was expand to my own perspective of that aspect of our life and so I I just asked him a ton of questions you know we're both very comfortable to each other he's gone through all sorts of therapy he's even done a lot of he's even support a lot of addicts through like group counseling and whatnot in the past so like he's very comfortable talking about it which is obviously a very clear sign of healing but I just asked him we just tell me all about what led to the divorce what led to you becoming a drug addict just tell me everything I just want to know your perspective because I've never actually gotten his perspective I only had my perspective and my perspective was limited I don't even really remember my perspective anymore because long ago was but he just broke it down and he just said you know he told me about his childhood he had been adopted but he told me about being bullied as a kid and he told me so many interesting things you know about his brother that I just didn't even know about and then he told me just about the challenges between him and my mom and the things that ultimately led to the divorce and just the depression of having his three sons and his wife gone you know unexpectedly and just coming home from work alone and ultimately being in a very deep invulnerable place and just he was suicidal to some degree for a while because he just felt like he had failed in so many ways and then he got invited by a friend to go get a drink at a bar and he'd never really been a drinker but when I was learning more and more about his side of things obviously I became way more empathetic and compassionate and understanding towards him and therefore not as negatively impacted and feeling like such a victim I was like holy cow like I can understand I mean obviously I wouldn't want myself to make those decisions but ultimately I can understand when you actually explain things you know so in psychology there's a concept called the fundamental attribution error we judge ourselves based on situational factors but we often judge other people based on their character like so like if I'm running late for a meeting I'm gonna explain all the reasons why I'm late it's cuz X Y & Z all these situational factors you know I couldn't get my car running like I give myself the benefit of the doubt but when you do something wrong you know if you cut me off on the road I'm gonna think you're just a bad driver like I'm gonna attribute it to your character and that's what we call the fundamental attribution error there's always a reason for the behaviors and if you can get more context you can better understand why that person is acting the way they are or why you're acting the way you are it's really powerful when you can broaden the context of whether it be your past or even in a situation whatever it is you can then attribute new and better meanings you know so for my relative who ultimately made a snap judgment about herself and formed a fixed narrative or a fixed mindset which ultimately stunted her ability to get good at art and ultimately probably to some degree some regrets or at least at this point just the belief that she can't do it and in my opinion the loss of a lot of development and maybe a lot of satisfaction and achievement and transformation if she would have been willing to get more context even if that starts and in my opinion it can start by yourselves in the form of just writing down how you feeling what happened and then ultimately thinking about it in different ways you know like asking what what could this have meant or why did I choose to feel that way or and then maybe having conversations you know there's a quote from Viktor Frankl but this quote also is similarly stated in many other places that emotions cease to be suffering when you give it a clearer picture and giving it a clearer picture often means just turning it into a story you know telling people that this is what happened and then getting alternative perspectives and ultimately choosing a better meaning at some point you have to choose the meaning you give to it and that's a choice that we make you know like she could she did choose the meaning that she's not good at art she it was kind of a reactive meaning I recently bombed a talk so I gave a talk to a very high profile group hoping that it would lead them to supporting my book launch to be honest with you and I just didn't do very well I flopped the talk was incredibly embarrassed and the thoughts that initially came to me was that I shouldn't be a part of this network anymore I was frustrated by how it went the thoughts that were racing through my mind at the time were this groups not good for me they're not gonna contribute to me and I'm not really gonna contribute to them those are the thoughts racing through my head because of my embarrassment but I didn't want that I didn't like what that was creating for my future because I was realizing this is gonna limit my future if I go this way and I don't want that I had multiple conversations kind of sharing the situation getting different people's perspectives and ultimately having a conversation with the guy who led that group and telling him like this how I feel you know I hated how the talk went and also was a little frustrated that I didn't get the support I was hoping to get from this group for my book launch and she was really kind and thoughtful in how he responded we went back and forth and ultimately I chose instead of being negatively impacted by it to just say I didn't say in in the simplest words this happened for me although it really did but I was just chose to give it the meaning this could be the best meeting that's ever happened to me if I choose to learn from it this is the best meeting that's ever happened because if I choose to learn from this I will get so much more out of this than any other meeting I've been to and I was inspired by my mom because literally the week before it was Mother's Day this was like little I guess this was last month but she said this Mother's Day was the best Mother's Day she's ever had and I think well why what made this one so special you know and she's like what I just loved it you know I just loved how I was talking to my boys my younger brothers in a treatment facility right now but she was just like I just loved it it was so good and I and we both talked about meaning making the fact that that was a choice that she had to she chose to just call it the best mother's day ever but now that's how she genuinely feels about it that's the story she's telling about it so I just did the same thing I was like that was the best meeting I've ever had and by choosing that meaning now all of a sudden I'm not ashamed I can have normal conversations with the people who are in that group and I can still be strategic about accomplishing my goals versus just cutting off my goals because of my feelings inside it I just think it's important how we frame the past the president ultimately our future can you believe the narrative that that's the best meeting you ever had when the emotions around it were so raw and negative yeah well it takes time to get past that initial reaction but the sooner you face the emotions versus bury them the faster that they go away I'm no longer embarrassed by the talk because I still I don't actually feel like it was as bad of a talk as I initially thought I initially thought it was horrible because it didn't turn out the way I was hoping it would but now my view of even the talk itself and the way that people experienced it isn't the same way most people actually really liked it I mean it could have been better for sure and I didn't get the result that I was wanting it at that point in time but now literally a month later first off I'm no longer embarrassed by it actually I'm proud of it as weird as that sounds because I was stretching myself so I'm really thinking about it I call it power moves in the book where you're like where you're aggressively chasing a future self if you don't fail regularly then you're not actually stretching yourself like it kind of was a failure to some degree but if I'm looking back on my former self a month ago who attempted that I'm freaking proud of that person because that person was trying something huge and he failed to some degree at his goal and it led to a lot of learning and ultimately a lot more vulnerability where I can talk to these people about what I'm trying to accomplish and I can ultimately learn a lot I failed because I didn't know what I was doing and you know in neuroscience they call that you know a prediction error where we often avoid situations that are beyond us or deal with uncertainty because we don't know what's going to happen and so instead we stay in the stable situations that we can predict but prediction errors are where all the learning is so like if a child who's a little toddler touches a hot stove that's called a prediction error like they predicted incorrectly that their hand was they didn't think that their hand was going to get burned obviously when they put their hand on the stove but that's how incredible memories are formed and that's where deep learning is formed which allows you to better navigate the world and if you're not going to put yourself through those types of experiences then you're never gonna actually be able to produce better results I'm not just lying I'm not I'm not convincing myself of a false narrative it is what exactly what I needed if my goal is to continue to get better what I'm trying to do I mean even a radically failed marriage or just anything if you choose to view it that that's exactly what I needed obviously it was horrible and in many cases with trauma you aren't at fault but ultimately it happened and so it's up to you if it's going to debilitate you or you can say wow I'm gonna be better because of that Wow I just learned a lot it's like either you choose learning or you choose to completely turn your brain off to learning and instead you're defined by the past that's the difference between trauma and not trauma how do you construct an environment that is conducive to that type of reframing of trauma and that type of learning and growth I think the willingness to have conversations is one big one you know like talking you know having people in your world where you can talk about what's going on being open not embarrassed about how you're feeling so having supportive people around you who want you to succeed that you can actually have good conversations with and you can actually I call them empathetic witnesses in the book but where you can actually actively reframe on purpose you know like if you're struggling or stuck or you can reach out to people who will help you get out of that you know who will encourage you and remind you of your future self or help you through a challenging problem it's very important that we have good people around us who can encourage and support us and also that we can be open with and who can be open with us I think that's big obviously being aware of how the environment is impacting you there's a quote from Marshall Goldsmith who wrote the book triggers and he said if we did not create and control our environment than our environments creating and controlling us and so I think just being aware of the inputs you let in if you're listening to negative media as one example you'll probably have a negative mindset you know there's a separate quote that says your input shapes your outlook being mindful of how the influences around you are shaping your views of things the media you listen to the music you listen to the people who surround you these things are shaping how you see the world they're shaping your identity and your personality and so being thoughtful about what you should be ignorant of you know in the book I talk about strategic ignorance what influences do you already know you should be unaware of so like as an example Peter Diamandis the futurist so he just refuses to watch mainstream news because first off he knows it's by a second off he knows what it does to how he feels it doesn't support his growth he's not ignorant it's not like he's choosing to not be aware because he gets his information from different sources he's just choosing to be strategically ignorant of various things Seth Godin the writer he talked a lot about how he used to read the Amazon reviews about his books all the time and they just made him feel like crap because some of the negative people would just troll them and just give no constructive criticism just literally tear him down and so at some point or another he just realized there's no point for him to be aware of that like he's just not gonna go there anymore so choosing to remove you know from a willpower perspective it's equivalent to removing the negative food from your house or like the unhealthy fruit from your house tree trying to be healthy so you don't have to think about it anymore you know Michael Jordan says once I made a decision I never thought about it again so rather than going back and forth in your mind and burning out your decision fatigue if I should do this you just make one choice you remove the thing from your environment and you just don't have to think of any more I think the other one is just having reminders having an environment that supports your future selves and weeding out the things that are pulling you back just being aware of how your environment is shaping you and then constructing an environment that that can support you and you can do that in simple ways because environments and situations although they're different they're similar like you can set up situations just as one example I had to recently write a book in a very short timeline and different books in this one I to write the book in three months in that situation the timeline of it like the deadline forced me to write so much faster than I would have if I didn't have the deadline so you can proactively set up situations as well I call these forcing functions but you can set up a situation that forces you to show up a short time line is obviously a smart one it's setting up the context so that you're forced to do what you want to do anyways but you've created a scenario where your chances of failure are a lot less because the situation requires that you show up a certain way what do you do if you set up a situation in which the situation requires that you show up a certain way like a timeline that is realistic yet aggressive you set up that situation and then you observe yourself still not rising to it yes well that's actually exactly what happened to me I was starting to fall apart emotionally and I was getting stressed out I actually got really sick because I was stuck I experienced extreme writer's block this book is the one we're talking about now it's called who not how it's a book I'd co-authored with a guy named Dan Sullivan it comes out in October of 2020 so was a co-authorship it was a different book than I've written before was purely about entrepreneurship I got stuck very much and I had a really good friend I mean his name's Tucker max but he was editing the book and he's really the person who helped me through it but my problem initially was that I was stuck with what this book should be and again that had a lot to do with my framing and so I struggled by myself you know and I loved the quote that you're only as sick as your secrets but I was struggling and I was confused I didn't want to bring it up I just figured I could get myself through it and the deadline started getting closer and closer and I was supposed to have like a draft sooner like five weeks ago kind of thing not that far but like a few weeks ago and ultimately you know I finally admitted to Tucker who was editing it I said good I'm stuck like I can't get past this and I'm actually really sick now cuz the stress and so we're going to push the timeline back a little bit it's like dude why didn't you tell me this like weeks ago you know we could have solved this and ultimately we had to get on the phone a few times what's interesting is with the alternative perspective you know and I'm obviously surrounding yourself with mentors or people with better perspectives in this case Tucker is just a brilliant book guy he's just knows books way better so a single conversation with him can solve 10 hours of problems you know 10 minutes of his time can solve 10 hours of my time if I'm sitting by myself trying to hash through this but also he helped me emotionally realize why I was stuck and I think that that's part of having good people around you is helping you understand why you're stuck well usually why you're stuck has to do with your view of the thing in my case I was stuck because I was trying to write a book that Dan would like dan is the co-author and I'm the writer he's the main author and it's mainly his ideas we both realized when he was asking me good questions and helping me realize why are you so stuck why are you not liking this book like this is something you've been excited and I just like dude I'm just trying to write a book that Dan would like then he was like dude that's the stupidest thing you could do like it's also good to have people gonna tell you flat and for you to also not take it as criticism but just be open we both realized the best thing that I could do is just write the book that I want to write because I'm the writer and ultimately that would be the way for it to be the most successful anyways there's a reason I'm the writer in that case and in that case actually the books called who not how and so you should actually just let the who do the how as an entrepreneur and I was the who so I just let me write the dang book but once I got to the conclusion and got that out of me and felt heard and also just felt like I had permission to do what I wanted to do then then I was able to write well again you know you know cuz I first I've had the support and also I started being faster at telling when I was stuck rather than waiting for a week or a month to try to figure out my own as soon as I got stuck and like knew that I needed help I just reached out and said I'm stuck without having any ego you know just like I need help we have a conversation like I'm stuck right now or I'm having a hard time like I think the faster you can communicate along the way because if you're pursuing a big future self and you're stretching yourself you're going to get stuck you're gonna be trying things you've never done before you're gonna fall on your face and so the more emotionally open you are the more emotionally flexible you can become and so it's about not trying to do it by yourself not doing it through grit and willpower but instead doing it through relationships and through support and breaking through so yeah I got stuck many a time and I learned the lesson that I should be a lot faster at communicating when I'm stuck and ultimately we hit the deadline we knocked it out it was the fastest thing I had to write but I almost shot myself in the foot I try to do it by myself well thank you for spending this time with us are there any final takeaways that you want to leave this community which I think the major insight of this book and there's a heavy amount of research yes these are also my opinions but there's also heavy amounts of research to support them clarifying your future self is such an essential thing obviously having the courage to face your past and choose different views of it so that you're not so stuck there also takes you to courage but deciding who your future self is which is a one of the things that Viktor Frankl said is is that what man needs speaking of men and women what man needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal a freely chosen task your personality is not something you discover passion or purpose are not things you discover there are things you choose it's a freely chosen task and so I would invite listeners to freely choose who you want to be in the future and use your future self as the basis for what you do today that would be living intentionally and that would lead to a lot of transformational learning experiences it would lead you to of going outside your comfort zone which is your current personality and actually expanding like you did as a child continuing to grow and not solidifying yourself with who you currently are you know a lot of people say that kids can learn faster than adults and that's totally junk adults have such developed brains you know if we were actually applying ourselves we could learn so fast kids just are way more flexible and that's something that's a skill to be developed again so I guess the biggest imitation of my book is to let your future self be the thing driving your behavior not your former self and this book can show you how to do that well thank you for spending this time with us where can people find you if they would like to learn more about you you can find Benjamin Harry calm Benjamin Harry calms my website the blogs are there you can get personalities and permanent anywhere like Amazon Barnes just wherever you'd prefer to buy the book [Music] thank you what are some of the key takeaways that we got from this conversation here are six number one choose who you want to be dr. hardy says that this is perhaps the single most important thing that you can do to help yourself when you're attempting to expand your personality and your sense of possibilities adopt a growth mindset and be curious about the possibilities of who you can become and develop a sense of self on a daily basis tell yourself that I am someone who is XYZ or I have the identity of someone who is X Y V your personality is not something you discover passion or purpose are not things you discover there are things you choose it's a freely chosen task and so I would invite listeners to freely choose who you want to be in the future and use your future self as the basis for what you do today as dr. hardy says the person you are now is not the person who you will be in ten years so why not proactively choose who you want to be reflect on the type of person that you want to be what characteristics do you want to have how do you want to identify what habits and traits do you want to embody break this down into small incremental actions and improvements that you can make towards becoming this person keep a journal in order to keep track of your goals and your progress you can also practice journaling about your future self so for example you can write down what one behavior or pattern do you want to change what statements can help you achieve this how will you practice this in your day to day life and then each day you can journal and document how you focused on shifting your pattern of X or Y or Z for example if you naturally tend to spend money pretty casually but you want to start identifying as a frugal person then the behavior or the pattern that you want to change is perhaps impulsive spending and on a day-to-day level you can journal about what you did that day to refrain from an impulse purchase maybe you were at Target and something caught your eye and you picked it up but instead of then carrying it to the cash register and checking it out you put it back down and you made a note that if you're still thinking about it in a week you can go back and get it that would be an example of a daily behavior resisting an impulse purchase that fuels a larger pattern of conscious spending or spending in a more frugal or deliberate way so that is key takeaway number one choose who you want to be key takeaway number two stop focusing on absolutes as dr. hardy says most of us aren't absolute introverts or extroverts were somewhere in the middle along a spectrum and identifying as either/or can cement the belief that that's all you are and this doesn't just apply to introversion and extraversion it applies to any label or characteristic that you have if you over identify with a given label it doesn't foster the belief that your personality is flexible and that context matters you may behave differently around a group of new people at a networking event than you do when you're around your family or your loved ones it's just not smart to throw yourself into a category because first off the category wouldn't always be true but the bigger challenge is that the category then becomes a part of your identity and then your identity drives your behavior and it also drives your goals and it drives you too seeking to prove the identity being true beware of overly identifying with labels or stories that don't fit the future narrative that you're trying to build now you can use this to your advantage since identity drives behavior and that behavior reinforces your identity choose your future identity carefully choose what adjectives you want to use in order to describe yourself and your future self because soon enough your behaviors and your decisions will follow suit so that is key takeaway number two key takeaway number three reframe your past the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves are powerful if we tell ourselves the story of I'm a bad public speaker I'm a bad artist I'm bad at math I'm disorganized if we tell ourselves those stories then we begin to believe it our view of the past always adapts based on where we're at in the present the past isn't the thing that caused us to get there it's our current situation that causes us to choose how we look at the past we can choose how to interpret our past and we can choose the meaning that we give to an event for example we can look at a time in which we may have stumbled over our words while giving a speech on stage and either tell ourselves the story I'm not a good public speaker or tell ourselves the story hey I survived I did well I entertained the crowd and it was a stepping stone on my path to becoming a top-notch public speaker think about things that have happened as something that you can learn from something that can help you propel yourself forward and reframe your past such that it happened for you not to you it has shaped you into the awesome person that you have become so that is key takeaway number three key takeaway number four be do and have first identify the person that you want to be then do the things that that person would do and the consequences will follow be the person first do what that person would do and you can have what that person would have this reminds me of something that a previous guest named Todd Herman talked about in episode 184 he described the power of developing an alter ego the alter ego was the be it was the identity of a certain person and embracing that identity embracing that alter ego made it easier to do what that alter ego would do so the example that Todd Herrmann gave was that when Beyonce was early in her career she would sometimes have some stage fright and so she developed this alter ego Sasha Fierce and she went on stage as Sasha Fierce and by virtue of identifying with this alter ego Sasha Fierce she then would do the things that Sasha Fierce would do that contributed so much to the person that she became the person that she is today that eventually after some time she didn't need that alter ego anymore that was the example that Todd Herrmann gave in Episode 184 you can listen to that at afford anything calm slash episode 184 this advice from dr. Benjamin Hardy in which he talks about be do have first be the identity of the person be the person that you want to be as a result you will then do the things that that person will do and as a result of that you will then have the success have the outcomes that that person will have this be do have really reminded me of that conversation with Todd Herman so start by adopting the identity that you aspire to have think about somebody who embodies it and what would they do point your story point that narrative towards your goal that is key take away at number four key takeaway number five establish both a morning and an evening routine we've all heard about the benefits of having a routine but dr. hardy drives the point home when you wake up I think that there's a lot to say about how you start something in many ways shapes how it ends starting the day in a reactive state such that you go on autopilot doesn't help you proactively change so instead start the day in a way that is mindful and intentional about how you spend your time for example you might start your day with a few minutes of journaling or prayer or meditation you might start your day with exercise be intentional about the first things that you do when you wake up and the last things that you do right before you go to bed because both of those bookend and largely set the tone for what happens in that messy middle so that is key takeaway at number five and finally key takeaway number six construct an environment that's conducive to change in order to rise to the level of your goals rather than fall to the patterns of your past or fall to the patterns of your present you want to set up an environment which supports the types of changes that you want to make be aware of your inputs be aware of environmental cues and triggers and reshape your environment in the way that's most conducive for you maybe that means taking facebook off your phone so that you can't mindlessly scroll through that app for 20 minutes a day maybe it means that the only time that you visit Facebook is on a laptop or on a desktop maybe it means that you move your savings to a bank account that is not the same bank account that you use for checking so that that way when you log into your account your normal checking account you don't see your savings and therefore you're not tempted to dig into it or spend it out of sight out of mind those are two examples of how you can reshape your environment and reshape your environmental cues and environmental triggers in order to foster the type of behavior that you want and ultimately to be conducive to building the type of person that you want to be it's about not trying to do it by yourself not doing it through grit and willpower but instead doing it through relationships and through support and breaking through those are six key takeaways from this conversation with dr. Benjamin Hardy on how you can reshape your future self we've mentioned a ton of resources in this interview he talked about mindset by Carol Dweck atomic habits by James clear man search for meaning by Viktor Frankl stumbling on happiness by Daniel Gilbert we've compiled a list of all of the resources that he mentioned during this interview and you can find that list of resources on our show notes page at afford anything comm slash episode 265 you can also sign up for our free podcast newsletter where we will send you a synopsis of every episode including key points that the guest made and the resources like the ones that I just named that way if you ever want notes on an episode if you ever want to dig up something or be reminded of hey you know I think I heard somebody talk about this who was that exactly you can quickly search your inbox for all of the show notes that have been sent to you and find what you're looking for so you can get that podcast newsletter for free by signing up at afford anything comm slash show notes that's afford anything comm slash show notes if you want to chat about today's episode with other members of the afford anything community you can connect with like-minded people and build those relationships at afford anything comm slash community that's where we have an amazing community of people who are interested in all kinds of different arenas ranging from paying off debt to early retirement to building financial independence to starting a side hustle we've got people who are interested in all of that and more and you can organize and find different groups based on topics like that entrepreneurship debt payoff retirement you can find people who are in your same age group people in their 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s you can find people who are geographically close to you maybe you can meet up in a social distancing friendly way you can make those connections and build that community at afford anything calm slash community totally free again that's afford anything calm slash community that's our show for today thank you so much for tuning in if you enjoyed today's episode please do three things number one most importantly share this with a friend or a family member if you know someone who would benefit from listening to what we talked about in today's show send them a link to this episode which you can find at afford anything comm slash episode 265 number two make sure that you hit subscribe or follow in whatever app you're using to listen to this episode so that you don't miss any of our awesome upcoming shows and number three leave us a review you can go directly into whatever app you're using to listen to this episode to leave us a review there or if you're at your desktop or a laptop head to afford anything comm slash iTunes that will redirect you to the page on the Apple podcast website where you can leave us a review and these reviews are super helpful in allowing us to book great guests and have these types of fascinating conversations on our show thanks again for tuning in my name is Paulo pant this is the afford anything podcast and I will catch you in the next episode you