[Closed] Anyone effectively changed their personality??

Its the sort of thing counselling may help with - you are not looking to change your personality but to reduce some aspets and increase others.

It would be a fairly long process tho I think

Honestly it sounds like you need to step away from social media rather than change your personality.
It's either that or simply learn to let it go rather than fight to the bitter end.

As for the winter thing, learn to get outside, even the rivers are nice through winter (I swam through winter this year).

Doesn't sound too me that up out need t tuo change yourself, more change your perspective and priorities

Its the sort of thing counselling may help with – you are not looking to change your personality but to reduce some aspets and increase others.

Listen to TJ. He's (become) an expert in learning to step away from arguing on social media.

It easier said than done but stepping away from online platforms/ daily news can be hugely positive.

I’ve deleted Facebook account and minimised news consumption for a couple of years now and it really is a blessing.

In terms of changing personalities, I have had some success. In my case growing areas that like empathy and inclusion of others that I wasn’t naturally coming to. Mostly through some online work training in unconscious bias and some really deep and meaningful thoughts about how I treat my wife. I found that genuinely motivating to me. If I can directly make the one I love happier by how I act and treat others then that is so so worthwhile.

The fact you've recognised aspects of your personality that could be improved upon has to be a step on the road to being able to make some changes.

Self help books might be beneficial.

Good luck.

Stop caring about the crap people post or share on social media. It's not their real personality either..

Better than I was perhaps 🙂 Hardly expert

for me that aspect was pretty simple. During my time away I did lurk a bit and realised just how daft I had been. I also at that time came to understand some odd bits of my personality more than I did

I also know I will forever remain on a shoogly peg on here so am careful

Nobody "wins" in social media. I just treat people as if they were sat in front of me. I don't argue much when they are, so see no reason to online. My Facebook page is tragically bland of course but so's my life 😉

Yes. I was the king of argumentative arrogant arseholes.

One day I decided to not be and changed.

I like me a lot more now

Step away from Facebook, I gave up on it 6months ago. Too easy to get upset with folks and easy to get in to petty arguments, a couple of things last summer that would have blown over if people stayed away from social media and just chilled out a bit got out of hand, pleased to say I realised it was like a school playground and backed away, but it was saddening to lose some friendships over it.  Staying off it has helped me chill out, replaced it with Duolingo.

Have ventured back this week as I got a message saying someone had posted, something nice, and to go and see it. I did and have bowed out again, time away makes me realise it's an awful user experience.

TJ is a great example of how to rehabilitate your online persona btw, just don't ask about oil for chains...

Brave post OP.

You clearly know you are not enjoying your time online, and that it's become an outlet for negativity for you.

Time for a break and perhaps to reach out to a few people to apologise?

Or try to consciously only post positive things?

In answer to your question, yes I have - and you've already done the hardest bit yourself.

Its interesting the facebook thing. I hardly ever get into rows on there 'cos I almost exclusively use it with friends. Anyone pissing me off gets ditched and the same for any groups that annoy me. I ditched one mainly american mtb group on facebook because of their attitudes.

You cannot do that on a forum but on facebook you have control

Re social media, control who you follow and who you interact with. A lot of people say Twitter and Facebook can be toxic, mine isn’t as anyone who is toxic I unfollow or block. Also decide what you want from social media, for me I want to follow interesting people and keep up to date with friends. Make it a positive place. And if you can’t do that, delete it.

Re eating, plan meals and don’t have snacks in the house. If I have crap food in my house I eat it, so I don’t buy any so the temptation is removed. And I take my own lunch to work so I don’t get tempted go nuts in Tesco.

It’s easy to say to control yourself but you can remove the temptation it makes it easier.

Facebook can be easily dealt with... Delete the app on your phone. I still have it for the occasion s when its bloody handy but have to use a browser.

And never turn on notification.

Yes. I was the king of argumentative arrogant arseholes.

One day I decided to not be and changed

I was this and am not 100% improved yet.   It’s a mark of my social media changes I wrote and deleted a whole paragraph a few minutes ago and returned merely to wish you good luck OP.

Cut the social media, sit back and enjoy the silence, you don’t need to fill it up.

Eating more healthy food might help the mood swings? To be brutally frank you are describing a toddler with sugar high and low tantrums. No more chocolate and fizzy drinks. And tidy your room!

I used to be conceited, but through hard work and dedication I worked on my weakness, and now I am perfect.

You cannot do that on a forum but on facebook you have control

This, for all that say Facebook is to be avoided, I disagree, it's the easiest controlled media there is, apart from the odd ad, it's entirely up to you what you see.

Mine is just all people I like and who's company I enjoy.

A couple of years ago I realised I was carrying too much weight, drinking too much and being crabbit in general.

Chucked the drink, got fit, sleep better, lost 4 stone and the crabbitness disappeared almost as a side effect.

Best of luck, as Chaka says, you've done the hard bit already.

Give yourself the gift of not having an opinion on everything. It may sound trite, but I mean, really have an internal monologue to give yourself that break. It will become habit after a while and you can break the trains of thought. You then notice that the world doesn’t change one iota.

It’s a great gift that lasts for ages.

I worked as a coach for 3 years.

The people in your position who could see a problem and had a strong motivation to change changed.

Some one them used the stuff I talked about as it was a solution. Some of them found something else.

Anyone who expressed the motivation to change as strongly as you changed!

Some things that worked for people

A)Just deciding to change. Some people just decided what was going to change and changed it.

B) support from people they trusted. They decided what was going to change. Talked about it with people they trusted. Got some support and changed.

C) self help/ psychology. Decided what the problem was. Identified what was causing the problem. Changed with it without support of people.

d) reflection on events. Picked and event that they didn’t like. Thought about why that was. Decided what they would do differently next time. Tried different approaches.

None of that is easy or quick. Everyone thought option a would work for them. It doesn’t! I saw one person manage it in 3 years, everyone around them was gobsmacked by the change. Lots managed to change and we’re happier with themselves as a result

A couple of my mates coach remotely via phone and internet. Drop me a pm if you want me to dig their details out

Good luck : )

Recognising that you're unhappy and want to change is the first and most important step, Bravo OP

Good post OP. I have two motivations for wanting to change my personality:

1) Often angry about things I have no control over (politics...)
2) Being a patronising w*****r to my wife

Giving up or at least severely restricting Facebook (and news!) seems like a good start, problem is even good friends tend to post political stuff, so I really just need to restrict to people who post bikey and outdoorsy stuff...

Anyone ever found a solution to painfully over-thinking EVERYTHING? Testosterone supplements? 😀

Just as an aside, I've found it useful to "snooze" certain individuals who use Facebook to make angry political points on a daily basis.

Sometimes you see them pop back up after 30 days, still at it. Other times they've cooled their jets and you forget you even did it.

I can't speak for the rest of it, but the getting grumpy/angry/****ish over the winter thing is very familiar. Vitamin D tablets have definitely helped (although not eradicated completely) over the last couple of years.

I have a zero tolerance approach to politics on face book, especially brexit. Far to many thick ignorant brexit types regurgitating the work of Russian bots. Its pathetic, I only use facebook for keeping in contact with a few select people and a few groups. Everything else gets blocked.

If you have identified the source of the poison then dealing with it should be pretty easy.

As for winter - I try to keep teh exercise up and embrace the dark. I quite like running in the dark now.

However, I’ve noticed lately that my whole entire time on screen I’m an absolute tosspot.

I have a lot of experience talking online (I was doing it before it was cool!) so here's my view.

When we interact in the real world, the mere presence of another human face activates the social part of our brain, and we moderate our behaviour. These responses come from way back in our evolution as social animals, I think. It's why we can complain about the food in a restaurant but when the waiter asks us if it's ok we say yes, why we will angrily complain about people when they aren't there but say nothing when they are. Or why otherwise nice normal people can be such utter tossbags in cars but nice as pie walking around town.

So whilst we know in a rational sense that the people of STW (or other social media) are humans, there's a deep subconscious part of our brain that is not activated so we don't treat them in the same way as if we were physical present. This is why we all have so many bitter rows online, IMO.

Interestingly not everyone seems to be affected by this - some folk are super nice on and offline, I don't know if this is a conscious effort or the right behaviours are just triggered in those people without a face present.

Thanks for the excellent replies so far people, some great suggestions and i'm quietly absorbing the content and ideas being thrown at me.

I've had a lot of counselling over the years and have access to one that knows me quite well now, although having thrown thousands at counsellors over the years for phobia management I'm even at the point now where I genuinely thing getting wider opinions offers me a wider perspective and take out of that what is relelvant.

Great comments, keep them coming!

Chucked the drink

Hence the username right?

Well done OP, it takes balls to come straight out and admit you have a problem.
IMO, yes you can change, it won’t happen overnight, but you can start today.
Make a couple of small changes and work from there.
Re: facebook. Rather than arguing with idiots, just block anyone who continually posts stuff you’re not actually that interested in, especially inflammatory subjects like politics/religion.
Good luck, you’re trying to do the right thing, keep at it 👍👍

Hence the username right?

Na, was only 2 years ago mate, had this pseudonym for years.

FWIW OP - I've never had you down as one of the argumentative, angry types that exist on here and elsewhere.

The general election, Brexit and now lock down has given me unlimited feeding time at the Facebook zoo and I’ve been relentless.

I stopped using Fb over two years ago, still got the app, because I’ve a close group of friends who all used Messenger, but I just stopped looking at it because seeing all the stupid bullshit being posted was just making me angry, mostly the conspiracy crap - when my cousin started posting about chemtrails I nearly lost it completely!
With anti-vaxxers, the C19/5G thing, #AngryTinkerbell, and everything else going on, stepping away was probably the best thing I could have done.
I still read about that stuff on Flipboard, ‘cos of all the news feeds I get, but now I just tut loudly, and post them onto the appropriate threads on here! 😎

Hi Op,

When I first read your message I thought you'd infiltrated my mind and was actually writing on my behalf! I too became acutely aware of when I'm being a tosser. In time I learned a few tricks to help keep me on the straight and narrow.

Mrs Silk lets me know when to kerb it (after I asked her to tell me), I learned to accept her telling me because I know I can be difficult and if she's telling me then I probably am.

Leave Facebook and moderate your media exposure. Twitter is good because you have much more control over your feed therefore you're more likely to agree with opinions expressed.

Before launching into full on keyboard warrior attack, try to understand where the other person is coming from. Their opinions may differ vastly from yours but they may have valid reasons for having a different viewpoint to you.

The following quote always resonates with me:
"You are not entitled to your opinion.
You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” ― Harlan Ellison.

You may be right and someone else may be wrong, but you don't always need to let people know. Nobody likes a smart arse.

Anyone ever found a solution to painfully over-thinking EVERYTHING?

Well, you’re likely aware of my history, so fwiw...

Its a habit, and a gradual process to breakdown but once you do it really works.  Mine I know is caused by the classic CBT labelled “intolerance of uncertainty”. I’ve recently re- entered counselling to remind myself of the symptoms, triggers and preventions.  I have a useful 4 page A4 summary sheet which if 13thFM you want a copy PM me your email and I’d be happy to share it.

The main trick is to understand you cannot, and will not control everything, or everyone.  Life is not perfect, people are different, people have different opinions, good and bad things will happen, and it is not your fault nor your entitlement to correct things.  You just need to learn that most of it is inconsequential.  Find out what is consequential to you - make this a short list - and just keep those things in mind, and let life unroll around you.

One of my biggest worries is ego driven - what people think of me.  I’ve come to realise beyond the bounds of my family and human morality it doesn’t matter, but more importantly other people’s analysis and opinion by me is coloured by their limited exposure to me in the moment, and is impacted by their own thoughts and personality which are beyond my own control.  I am responsible for myself, but not for others judgement which can be influenced by factors other than those I am responsible for.

Anyone ever found a solution to painfully over-thinking EVERYTHING?

A practice of mindfulness and you can switch it off

part of my personality that I’m actually not enjoying

This is normal,we are made up of different sub personalities,some we like, some we don't.It's positive to be aware of our different entities,acceptance and awareness lessens their impact on us.The only way to change, is to have compassion and understanding, that we are not perfect, and have good aspects, and not so good aspects of ourselves.

Walking away from Facebook should be fairly simple. I know a few people who have done it:

1. Change your password to something random (if you really find it hard get someone else to change it and the email address too).
2. Log out, and delete the app from your phone.

Three weeks without it and you'll be fine!

I'm not convinced that its just facebook you need to fix though...

yesterday I gave a good friend what for because she’s a paramedic and broke her ankle running, which to my inner monkey doesn’t correlate as a good thing to be doing when she’s frontline worker.

So you honestly think that people dealing with high levels of stress and workload shouldn't be taking part in exercise, because they are too important to society? Think that through - if she's that critical its vital she is mentally as well as physically well. Accidents happen the system will cope with small numbers of accidents; it will not cope with large numbers of people being mentally incapacitated at the same time.

I agree with those saying to lose Facebook. It is the cancer of modern society.

I was getting pissed off with the things my friends posted, always seeing a negative slant on it. For example, the pictures of the kids ready for their first day at school. Clearly the poster has shared it as they are proud etc, but I was starting to see it in a negative light, thinking 'who f-ing cares' etc.

Anyway, I came off Facebook quite some time ago and it is the best decision I have made in recent times. Get it gone, lose frustration of seeing garbage. I am getting close to doing the same with Instagram. Whilst I enjoy what I see on my feed, as its stuff I have chosen, whenever I venture into the 'search' it just shows me images of people flaunting themselves for 'likes', which I think is pathetic (obviously each to their own), but again, its easy to eliminate this added avenue of frustration/hate etc.

I feel losing facebook has improved my well being no end. sometimes less is more in life!

Observationally I've come to the conclusion that a lot of men emote in one of three ways: Normal, Happy or Anger...and that's it. The problem with that is that beyond normal/happy, the only emotion for any form of stress that lots of men are left with is anger. It is as if they have been conditioned by society that that single strong emotion is the only one they're allowed to demonstrate in public. I've done something wrong: Anger, You've done something wrong to me : Anger...it's often non directional, and although it's often not directed at the people around you, any attempts by others to calm you down makes it even worse...social media multiplies it I think because of the facelessness of the interactions (better explained by Molly, up there)

I've had to do some work on myself to recognise that, and I'm better at managing it, and identifying the patterns, but none of us are perfect.

Edit: I junked facebook a number of years ago also

You cant change your personality, its you.

You may hide bits of it, surpress bits of it, modify bits of it. But that takes a consious effort thats hard and not natural.

Remove the the elements that are not good for you. Step away from crap, dont enter into crap, pick the stuff you like.

As others have said: Ditch the Social Media (apart from STW) I found myself shouting at the radio while commuting to work, so Id turn up already pissed off. Once I simply turned it off and my whole day improved. Now I just listen to podcasts and music I like. No more angry, no more crap news.

Sometimes the solution is simple. It comes from your actions.

I agree with those saying to lose Facebook. It is the cancer of modern society.

No, that's the Daily Mail.

I'd absolutely agree that having a break from FB might be a good idea for the OP.

But personally I find this place more "challenging" a lot of the time.

Please apologise to your paramedic friend - I think you know you were out of order there.

Also, maybe think through your thought process - identify what even led you to think she had some something ‘wrong’ by going for a run? What triggered that response in you?

I agree with those saying to lose Facebook. It is the cancer of modern society

+1

I deleted it at the start of the year and it's been so refreshing.

I found I was getting pulled into arguments with complete strangers on it that were completely unnecessary and it was making me really angry. Plus just mindlessly scrolling through it out of habit

Only cared about all the photos I'd uploaded over the years so downloaded all them and deleted my account. Best thing I've done in a while. It's a place that thrives on hate, anger and minsinformation

I'm genuinely surprised at how many folk can't "manage" Facebook. Maybe I'm just lucky but I don't see all this ****tery. Could be my choice of friends and groups of course. The worst I see is in some of the local/community groups and from folk I don't know in real life so I pay them no more attention than random drunks in a pub.

I think you would get a lot out of reading 'the chimp paradox', steve Peters. amazon (ebay 2nd hand a bit cheaper)

Better than I was perhaps 🙂 Hardly expert

Quite a noticeable difference! Whatever drugs you're on, they're working 😉

... kind of...?

We're initially influenced a lot by our family and environment growing up, so we can pick up unhelpful behaviour patterns.

Later on in life with more knowledge and perspective, different circumstances, better role models, we can to an extent change how we react.

For me it took a lot of reading up on the details (+1 for the Steve Peters book). Then boiling what I'd learned down to a few simple things.
Get enough sleep.
Stop and think first.
Don't be a dick about it.
If you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all.
The best way to influence is to set a good example (and even then it makes bugger-all difference)
Life is too short.

Etc

Seems you have 2 areas you'd like to see change, the food/winter thing and the online/interpersonal thing.

Both - assuming you've gone beyond "I shouldn't..." and arrived at, "This stops. Now." are stuff that can be changed and I've done changes in both areas.

It perhaps helps with both that I've lost people I love to "poor life choices". The least I can do in their memory is make *different* mistakes. And knowing that any of might not be here next year, I manage to cut folk more slack.

It can help (I still do this sometimes) to have venting outlets. A diary, private posts on some blogging platform, someone very close and down to earth and non-judgy that you can go, "Can I have a ten minute whinge about X who is being batshit again?".

Also a +1 for realising that media/internet consumption is 99.9% optional. You DON'T have to watch tv/read papers/listen to the radio/read FB if it doesn't improve your life. Your blood pressure is precious so think about "I'm not doing this right now" at the very least. Can really recommend - you end up paying so much more attention to the life you're ACTUALLY living.

TL;DR
Yes: get more sleep, read some books, treat people as if they've got terminal cancer & only 3 years to live.

Honestly it sounds like you need to step away from social media rather than change your personality.

I think this might be the answer but I as a self-confessed social media addict (forums, FB, IG) I'd find it extremely difficult.

That said, maybe changing your habits might help or taking it in small steps. I was the admin on a vehicle specific facebook group with ~80k members and I was finding that I just thought that 99% of the people on there were utter tossers. Could honestly do without it so said thanks but no thanks, gave up the admin thing and since I was getting very little from the group itself, left that too. Honestly feels so much better.

I deactivated facebook a couple of weeks before lockdown for two reasons. The first was I was checking it all the time and felt I was becoming quite bitchy talking about what people had posted etc. The second was I could see how it was going to go with COVID 19 , some of my mates were getting quite vocal about what we should and couldn't do . With the news being 24/7 about the virus I knew it wouldnt be good for my mental health. I have actually had a couple of disagreements with mates over the phone since.
Id happily delete FB if it wasn't for using messenger , marketplace and losing lots of good family pics from them growing up and holidays etc. I'd start by ditching social media and take it from there. That said I still use Insta but its only really for following friends and seeing where their riding. Good luck.

To add to the above about FB, if you can't leave it (checking on family etc), if you find particular people just post stuff that winds you up all the time, unfollow them. Stay friends but their verbal diarrhea doesn't fill your timeline, you can't see it and as such you don't find yourself replying to it / going down the rabbit hole.

80% of my family are unfollowed on facebook for that very reason 🙂

I'd love to be alot more outgoing. Never been much of a talker as I have aspergers and although I am more confident now I am older I chat alot less to new people than I used to.i cannot think what to say and think better of talking.

I’ve never gotten into any negative stuff on FB but I got rid of it a year ago just because there is very little of any merit on there.

Trumpton, you describe me before I went traveling round Oz for a year.

I mostly did it on my own, one mate was moving about the same pace as me. It put me in the situation where if I didn’t talk to people,people wouldn’t talk to me.

Perhaps now is the wrong time for moving to Oz but you can chose to change if you want to. Start small, work your way to different situations that are closer to were you want to be.

Thanks

I’m genuinely surprised at how many folk can’t “manage” Facebook. Maybe I’m just lucky but I don’t see all this ****tery. Could be my choice of friends and groups of course. The worst I see is in some of the local/community groups and from folk I don’t know in real life so I pay them no more attention than random drunks in a pub.

This

I see almost no ****tery unless I seek it out. Be ruthless. Unfollow or unfriend folk who irritate you. Leave groups full of ****s

Another thing - some folk don't realise that FB will prioritise feeding them stuff they interact with. Don't get dragged into commenting on clickbait - you just get more of it. I see some of my friends doing this, not realising the effect.

Unless you are young and still growing up, your personality doesn't fundamentally change. What you can change is the situation you are in.
When I was in a miserably unhappy marriage I was irritable and argumentative, now that I'm in a marriage that works really well I'm a much nicer person to know and more relaxed, so much so that I’m now good friends with my ex, she’s a much nicer person to know too, because she’s no longer miserable.

I see almost no ****tery unless I seek it out. Be ruthless. Unfollow or unfriend folk who irritate you. Leave groups full of ****

I recently left an annoying local group (full of moaners) and joined a cat lovers group where it is all cute cat photos and positive comments. Makes a v relaxing 2 min break from work to scroll thru my fav cat breed photos rather than hear about how the bins haven;t been collected on the correct day 🙂

I follow "daily otter"
Each day I get a cute pic