Menlo Book Club: Personality Isn’t Permanent

Our team at Menlo Group has taken a variety of different assessments to discover our attributes, strengths and languages of appreciation. Dr. Benjamin Hardy asserts that personality tests like these can limit our lives if we let them.

“You can decide who you’re committed to being and becoming,” Hardy writes in the introduction of his book Personality Isn’t Permanent. “Who you become is a choice—which only you can make.”

We recently read his book as a team and would love to share our insights.

We can become whoever we want to be.

As the book title states, our personalities aren’t permanent. We can change and become whoever we want to be. “Who you want to be in the future is more important than who you are now, and should actually inform who you are now,” Hardy says.

We must be intentional about setting goals to become that person. These changes may not always be the comfortable or easy route, and we may fail along the way, but each step is a step closer to becoming our ideal selves. We should focus on continual growth instead of individual milestones and achievements.

Our pasts don’t define us.

So many of us have lived our lives in a certain way based our past experiences, particularly our past traumas. We need to let go of the labels we’ve assigned to ourselves (“introvert,” “unathletic,” “bad at math,” etc.). Hardy emphasizes the importance of an empathetic witness to listen to our emotions and help us reframe our experiences. They can provide additional insights to help us move forward.

To change our personalities, we need to change our habits and environments.

Our ideal future selves don’t stay up late, waste time on social media or eat too many sweets. We can start to become that person by removing these limiting behaviors. Our environments also play a role in helping us become our ideal selves. We should surround ourselves with people who match who we want to become and regularly get outside our comfort zones to ensure our personalities don’t stay stable over time.

We enjoyed the book and the thought-provoking questions Hardy asks in each chapter. We look forward to continuing to apply these principles to change our personalities.

You’re invited to learn alongside Menlo Group! Join our Virtual Book Club and receive regular email updates with chapter summaries, discussion questions and business tips from our team.