Surprising Road to an Awesome Future

By Bayo Ogunmupe Before you commence with Christmas festivities, and crafting of your New Year resolutions I want to draw your attention to the notion of whether you could be someone else? For now you’ve been a totally different personality from the one that would clinch the success you want. Perhaps you could become a better version of You. From experience, I know we all sometimes, like to change something about ourselves. In the past I used to be a reticent, quiet listener, never ever offering my opinion in conversation. But now, I am too talkative, sometimes interrupting others in conversations. It is as if I would like to return to the introversion of my past. The phrase, character defects, exists for a reason. Thus, to be less stressed and better organized might be nice. But the benefits go a lot deeper than that. You might be at a dead end of your career at present. And you want to be more successful in your career. And you want to be happier; for personality has a lot to do with these traits. From the research thesis: Be Who You Want: Unlocking the Science of Personality, we found a study of 26,000 people in the USA, where, independent of their family’s social status, an individual’s personality traits at high school were related to their longevity. Personality traits also correlate with future career success more than factors related to family and parental background and nearly as much as intelligence. In terms of happiness, a recent estimate placed the monetary value of a small reduction in trait of a propensity for negative moods, stress and worry (neuroticism) as equivalent to an extra $314,000 income per year. For a very long time in the past, psychology said you couldn’t change your personality to any appreciable extent. But new research is showing we have more power over our disposition than was previously thought. With effort and resolution, you can change aspects of who you are, especially your levels of extroversion and neuroticism. I am not saying you can completely overhaul who you are, or that it could be done easily. But certainly an effort will make a difference. As that research shows, even a small tweak can help. Therefore after that your career standstill, it might be an appropriate time for a personality spring cleaning. And you will get some solid insight from Christian Jarrett’s book: Be Who You Want: Unlocking the Science of Personality. Thus, if you ever felt boxed in by people’s labels of you or felt aspects of your personality were holding you back from a richer life, help is available; get to it. But first of all accept that you are a personality which could be made a subject of scientific study. You may have heard of the Myers- Briggs personality test. Go for it, it is available in the United States. Buffeted by prejudice like saying astrology is unscientific; certainly it is like saying an atomic bomb may cause some property damage. Whenever you want change listen to experts and professionals, not the herd. When psychologists measure personality, they use the Big 5 traits. Each one exists as a spectrum. It is natural for you to score high, low or be in the middle. One, Extroversion is how sociable and energetic you are. Extroverts are more upbeat, optimistic and happier. Two, Openness to experience, it means you dig new ideas, culture and travel. Three, people high in Consciousness; timely, well organized and who send me emails correcting my grammar or tense on this column. People low in consciousness don’t finish important things because they are often derelict and easily distracted. Four, Agreeable people are warm, friendly, patient and trusting. Five, Neuroticism is about frequency of negative emotions like sadness and anxiety. You know where you fall in each category but let’s not guess. Just go and take a quick test. But how do you change your traits? Well, don’t worry, there is one incredibly easy way: do nothing. With age, extroversion, openness and neuroticism drop while consciousness and agreeableness usually increase. But if you’re looking for something faster, you are going to focus on behavioral change. By deliberately and consistently acting in a certain way you can inch yourself in the direction you want to be; much like how re