Book Review: Personality Isn't Permanent

The following is a review of Dr. Benjamin Hardy’s yet to be launched book ‘Personality Isn’t Permanent’ (releasing on June 16). 

Dr. Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist and bestselling author of ‘Willpower Doesn’t Work’. His blog is read monthly by millions of people and has been featured on Forbes, Fortune, CNBC, Cheddar, and many others. From 2015-2018, he was the #1 writer in the world on Medium.com and is a regular contributor to Inc. and Psychology.

Our society that believes ‘change is the only constant’ always caveats that with some exceptions: human personality, for example. At least till now. Dr. Hardy’s latest book ‘Personality isn’t Permanent’ destroys that myth.

The deeply held faith that is taught by parents, teachers, and society, in general, is that for the most part, each one is born with a certain ‘personality’ and one should just live with it. In fact, the most common advice is that if one can ‘discover one’s personality’ half the battle is won. Right? Wrong, says Dr. Hardy.

The generally accepted norm of personality so far has been that it is innate, fixed, unalterable.

So much has gone in to create designer clothes, designer hairstyles, designer perfumes but Dr. Hardy shows you can ‘design your life’. It is perfectly doable and is not tied to discovering yourself but designing yourself.

Personality succumbs to Purpose. Everything yields to your Purpose including DNA. Depending on your past to secure a future is in-efficient and wasteful. 

Purpose makes history and biology irrelevant. This book shows you how to identify your life transformative purpose and take a step by step approach to get on the path. It will help you shake off your mind’s biases and the lies we tell ourselves.

Another misconception of modern society is that inspiration triggers action. In fact, to the contrary, action kindles inspiration. Just as in the alphabet, Action comes before confidence, motivation, and passion. 

Action kindles confidence which shows positive responses that in turn triggers motivation and over time manifests as passion. This passion knows no limits and can far exceed the wildest projection of your future self or who you want to be. It all begins with purposeful action.

The inherent advantage of a purpose-based approach such as ‘what can I offer the world or my community’ is, that it is inclusive. A passion-based approach begins and ends with you. When your goals start shaping your identity, you are unshackling the burdens of fixed personality. The road is now open to your future self.

After this, Dr. Hardy expertly points to the four levers you can use to move the world and win: trauma, identity narrative, subconscious, environment. 

There are four major factors that keep people stuck in their patterns. These are past trauma that has not been reframed, an identity narrative of the past, their subconscious that maintains consistency with their former self and emotions, and an environment that supports their current rather than a future identity. 

These four levers can be configured to propel you to a brilliant joyful future or to set you back in misery and low growth. Dr. Hardy shows you with examples, how these seemingly innocent factors can become lifelong barriers, and how they can be tamed. 

In one of the deeper analysis of how the subconscious can be enhanced to support us in achieving the future self, Dr. Hardy explains the mechanics of emotions. A common understanding is that emotions are mind matter. ‘The glue that holds our body, memory, and identities together is our emotions’.

Addictions of all kinds (from material to smartphone) are emotional molecules having been transformed into biology or ‘body’ demanding more of the same. This is the reason addiction becomes a physical disorder from a mental craving. Transformation to the new you will require behavioral changes with awareness so that old additive patterns are overcome. 

Redesign your environment to one that reminds and nudges you to become the new you. These can be anything from posters to paintings to a bookshelf or something else altogether. Walls silently speak to the subconscious. And silent reinforcement aids your journey to the new destination. To the creation of the future self.

This book is for everyone, no matter where you are in life. It is a scientific, progressive layered approach to understanding who you are and why you believe who you are. It shows you where you could be and how to get there. It will expose the chinks in your thinking, compromises you may have unknowingly made about your true potential, and wake you up to your greater self. 

Read it. Get another copy. Gift it to someone you care about. The book launches on Jun 16 from the Penguin Random House.