Should You Change Yourself?

When you pause to analyze all the elements that shaped your personality, you may notice that many influences have been imposed on you —either by other persons or by other factors. During our early formative years, most of us had relatively little to do with establishing our own habits and ways. Much of your behavior was established by your modeling yourself after others —friends, associates, parents, schoolteachers. In addition to these influences, your parents’ behavior, their likes and dislikes as well as their prejudices that you have lived with from infancy, have had an effect on you and have shaped your personality to some degree. The result is that many of your ways and your general outlook on life are simply a reflection of theirs. You tend to get upset at things that upset them. You are inclined to tolerate things that they tolerated. And you rarely notice that you copy their behavior until someone tells you that you are acting just like your father or your mother.

In case you’re going to change now that you’re grown-up, make sure that the change will be worth it, whatever the area. Make sure that it is what you want and that it is better than what you have now. Vance Packard writes in his book The People Shapers: “Apparently with a little counsel, any reasonably bright person can now become a modifier of his own behavior.” This is called self-management. In other words, where a measure of self-control is applied, outstanding improvements have been noted. Only a well-informed, a well-advised individual is able to make right decisions and may really take action on his own initiative, exercising his own free will. Until and unless that happens, she/he will be the victim of the system that, under the pretexts of freedom, dictates what you are to pursue.

And You, Who Are You?