yourself

Are our personalities set in stone, or can we work on – even improve – them?
t some point most of us have been assigned a neat label for our personality, as if it were a brand of clothing. It could have occurred during a job interview, for an online dating profile, or in a social-media quiz that matches your traits with a character from Game of Thrones. Or perhaps you’ve endured a conversation with friends in which everyone is declared an “introvert” or “extrovert”, the two tribes into which the entire world’s population can seemingly be divided. ​The dogma of personality classifications, says psychologist and author Dr Benjamin Hardy, is that they reveal “your true core authentic self – and that [once you have] discovered it, you can finally live your true life.” They are supposed to be empowering and are presented as definitive. They work on the assumption that personality is a rigid thing, cast in plaster.
continue guardian