Self Improvement: You Are Not Your Personality

The behaviour of normal people is rarely appropriate. How could it be! Because normal behaviour is generated automatically – you don’t have to give it any thought, you just react – by your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is an expert at creating your reactions – it is this ability that has got the human race to the pinnacle of success! But, as I said, normal behaviour is rarely appropriate – because the subconscious mind is constantly focused in the past – your childhood years – and it uses this out-of-date ‘stored knowledge’ to dictate your current automatic behaviour. With information that is so far out of date being used to dictate your behaviour, how could today’s behaviour be appropriate to what is actually taking place today?

How could it be right and proper when you consider that the normal person is permanently on automatic pilot? It’s simply the way we’re built. If you’re having a good day, your behaviour can actually be mildly effective – that’s in comparison to how effective you could really and truly be had you taken the trouble to focus on what’s actually happening and act, rather than react. But even at that, normal people only have good days now and again. It’s the normal or bad days that have consigned your life to that repetitive, mundane, not-so-bad life – you know, the one where really great things rarely happen, the one where you don’t like your job or the one where your relationship has gone flat – the ordinary stuff of the normal life. And on those everyday not-so-bad days, normal behaviour varies from midldly in-effective through inappropriate to dangerously outrageous. People losing the head with the morning rush hour, people bullying their subordinates at work or who play with their workers’ lives. Husbands who beat wives, wives who beat husbands – or just the everyday not-so-bad feeling of ‘I wish I was somewhere else’ and all the ineffective behaviour that that brings with it.

The problem is, however, that we tend to confuse our behaviour with who we are – a criminal mistake that can lead us into recrimination, guilt, frustration, anxiety and even more inappropriate behaviour. You are not your behaviour. How could you be? Your behaviour is automatically created by your personality – all the crap of ‘stored knowledge’ in your subconscious mind. Your personality has absolutely nothing to do with you – there’s enough psychological evidence amassed over the last seven decades to prove this conclusively.

Which leads me to a most important point. You’re only able to take really appropriate action (rather than normal reaction) by deliberately side-stepping your ego or personality – this is the essence of personal development (as distinct from personality development). You will not be able to do that until you come to terms with the absolute fact that all inappropriate action comes from that source. What’s done is done – if damage was done, go and undo it. But if the only damage was to your own self-image, then, get over yourself and get on with your life – starting right here, right now.