I am no longer who I was. Who am I today?
How many times have you crossed along with someone, maybe an old friend, who makes a comment and asserts something about you that was left behind years, even decades ago? Or you find yourself talking about someone as if time and life hadn't passed for that person, affirming qualities and taking for granted that you know them well.
We tend to think of our own personality and that of others as something fixed and stagnant. From this idea stem phrases like "I am like this" or "That person is like that." But...just as our body regenerates and we don't have a single cell identical to the one we originated from, our personality is also constantly being remodeled and updated. It is permeable to life's events, to changes in our thinking, to the experiences we go through, to the mistakes that help us rectify the paths we take. Thus, the person we were may no longer be here... And the person we talk about with ease may not be the old acquaintance anymore.
To delve into this topic, it is necessary to consider two instances that Transpersonal Psychology differentiates: Essence and Personality.
The Essence: is our unconditioned part, that core that remains unchangeable. Our Self, our real I, our Self, our Soul, for ancient wisdom. This Essence comes to live a human experience, to evolve and go through its learnings. It is our deepest, most authentic part, the one that "knows us," and, if we connect with it, guides and orients us to live a meaningful life.
The Personality: is the attire with which the vulnerable Essence dresses to navigate human life. It includes our defense mechanisms and the strategies with which we manage to get what we want. In short, it's the character we create over the course of life and contains all the attributions, both our own and those of others, of who we believe we are: "I am active." "I am lazzy." "I am conflictive." "I am shy." "I am organised." "I am a mess." As we grow and interact, we add characteristics and form a solid mosaic that we call "Personality".
This Personality is important because it provides us with a sense of identity, but it is just the shell, just "a small part" of who we truly are. Our true Essence rests in the depths of personality. And every so often it claims its voice when it is not heard by the voices that resonate in our Personality.
Metaphorically, to be more illustrative, we can say that the Personality is the character and the Essence is the true actor. Sometimes, it happens that the character "swallows" the actor. Thus, we often find ourselves dominated by the automatic mechanisms of our personality. Reconnecting with the actor means shedding the "character" we have embodied, lightening its mask so that some of that deep Essence filters through and lets us see who we really are, in truth.
The Personality is the character and the Essence is the true actor. Sometimes it happens that the character "swallows" the actor.
The word person derives from the Latin "personare," which means "mask used in ancient Greek theatre to represent a character." When we say, "I am like this," we fix the mask. The more the mask is fixed, the more rigid the personality becomes.
So, each of us needs, in the course of our life, to "work on oneself" to abandon those masks that suffocate more than they facilitate the expression of our most intimate expression.
From "This Is Me" to "I Want to Be"
From this psychological perspective, personality is not "IS" but rather "IS BECOMING..." It's a process in constant movement and reactualization. Being artisans of ourselves, we can mold this vessel called Personality as if it were a kind of clay, so that it can be a channel of expression for our deepest Essence. Of course, personality does not regenerate itself... The craft of the artisan is learned and practiced. If we omit this non-transferable work, we can leave this world bemoaning the same old things, alienated from who we truly are, distracted by the whimsical egoic caprices of our personality. When we forget that personality is a vehicle for our true Essence, we believe we are only the outer garment of our ego. This ego, so fond of labeling and being labeled, names itself by saying "This is me," and from this rigid place assumes that nothing can be done to change the things that are no longer liked, "once labeled," that's what we buy into. Life scenarios have changed, years have passed, and we continue "fond" of that old suit put on us by our parents, which we then embodied... We never again ask ourselves, "Who am I really? Am I what I was told I was? Am I still the same person?"
A warning is in order! Absolutely nothing in our personality was formed by chance or accident. It had its meaning, its reason for being... only that today it may need review...
A characteristic of which I now renounce and is part of my personality, at one time served us and even saved our lives... For example, a person who learned to be demanding because this way they got their parents' attention and praise as a child, a child who learned to be fearful to keep his overprotective mother calm. In that childhood moment, it was necessary to adapt to our intimate environment and respond to what we interpreted our parents wanted from each of us. Winning their recognition was securing the love and attention we needed to survive given our real vulnerability. But now? That vulnerable child has grown: Why do we continue with the same pattern? That girl, now grown up, can choose to "ease up," just as the boy, now a man, can challenge his fears and dare what he did not before. There's no longer a fearful mother following him at every step... However, we continue embodying the same traits... the problem is, they have long since stopped being resources and today can be great limitations in our lives.
What do I mean by this? It's not about fighting with our own personality traits, as they were valuable at some point. Instead, it's about updating them and balancing them with their complement, with the opposite that we've relegated to the shadows. In the previous cases: the grown-up girl won't have to stop striving for improvement, but it's good for her to learn "also" to relax, to unwind, and to pamper herself. Similarly, the once fearful boy, as an adult, must develop courage and daring so as not to be subjected to his fears all his life.
Thus, accepting ourselves is the first step to transforming. It's not about fighting with who we were up to this point. Transformation is not war; It is harmonious, based on integrating new qualities into our personality. These new features must be adapted to the context in which we operate at the present. The more flexible and adaptable the personality, the healthier and more functional it will be in interacting with others and in the way we treat ourselves.
The personality that was taught to us, today can be redesigned
It's clear that what we call Personality is the sum of traits we've learned according to the life experiences we've had and the mandates received. We learned to be distrustful because our trust was betrayed, to be obsessive because perfection was demanded of us, not to show affection because love was not openly demonstrated to us, to be dependent because someone else always did it better than I... And the list can go on indefinitely. However, childhood is not destiny, and everything learned can be unlearned if we set out to learn new ways of being and doing.
A good strategy to achieve this is to become aware of those most prominent characteristics of our personality about which we tend to affirm, "I am this way." We can start by making a sort of itinerary through our different roles and functions: How am I as a friend? How am I as a mother? How am I as a woman? How am I as a worker? How am I as a sister? How am I as a daughter? This step is necessary because a characteristic may work very well in a certain role and be dysfunctional in another. I can't treat my son with the same distance and formality as I do my boss, right?
A fixed Personality treats everything equally. An appropriate phrase would be: "To a man with only a hammer, everything looks like a nail..."
Once this sincere self-registration is done, we must take each of these qualities and, from full consciousness and honesty, reflect: What part of my provisional personality no longer serves me or is surplus to requirements? What do I lack today and need to develop? Patience? Tolerance? Responsibility? Autonomy? Consideration? Love? What about me do I like in a certain role and can implement in another to make it more functional?
Whoever discovers this capacity to self-model has an enormous potential to reinvent themselves into a better version each time.
For those who work on themselves, the years make them wiser and more integrated. For those who do not, the years make them stubborn and inflexible. Why? Because the same mask all their life, over the years, becomes hardened and rusted. That is, the unworked traits, which have become incarnate in us, instead of "having them," "they have us, and they dominate us from the mechanical nature of maintaining the same routines of being. They have gained a life of their own! Thus: we put on the face we want to wear, we say things we don't want to say, we do what we said we wouldn't do, etc., etc. We act possessed by what we've learned!
The proposal is: to shake off our garments, empty the wardrobe of those old habits that no longer serve us and update the parts that require recycling. On our own, if possible, or with help if not enough... But, it is essential to let go of "I am like this" and let come "Who I want to become". We can see ourselves as moving rivers or as stagnant water. The latter is condemning ourselves to stay in the same place without being able to move forward.
When we manage to see ourselves as flowing rivers, we can see that quality in others and recognise the possibility that they can be different from how they may have been at some time.
If we see ourselves always in the same place, always dealing with the same clumsiness, we will think that all the people around us follow this same law of inertia, stuck in the same traits. That assertion about others is truly a projection of one's own personal stagnation. With a frozen gaze, we observe our surroundings and continue seeing: "the usual lazy person," "the one who doesn't think," "the addict," "the fool," "the shy one," "the swindler," "the unfaithful." From there arise the well-known "prejudices," we make a prior judgment according to the past without stopping to re-evaluate or question those truths we treat as incontrovertible. But neither a mistake is a sentence nor a stage of life defines us. So let's not rush to make judgments about others nor abandon the precious possibility of updating and beautifying our personality.
This article is an invitation not to take oneself "for granted" nor to take others for granted. When you find yourself saying "I am like this" or about others "He/She is like that." Remember that as long as there is a breath of life, a glimpse of breath, it's always time to be the person we want to be.
How to start? By letting go of victimhood, withdrawing excuses, stopping looking outward, and abandoning one's own and others' prejudices. There is no task more arduous and glorious than to carve one's own wood, no more dignified profession than to be one's own sculptor.