Flex_ Do Something Different - Ben [3]
Life is so varied and so changeable that there isn’t one personality ‘type’ suited to it. How can a person make the most of what life throws at them if they have fixed ways of being? If they approach today’s situations with yesterday’s strategies? No wonder people often commit faux pas, make fools of themselves, feel overwhelmed or out of their depth. How can we develop and grow unless we learn from the old and adapt our wisdom to the new? People’s failure to do so explains a whole catalogue of missed opportunities, misunderstandings and dysfunction.
And yet most humans are predictable in the extreme. Most have a limited repertoire of fairly predictable behaviours. That’s why psychologists can assign them a personality category. Yet many people are vain enough – some would even say deluded enough – to believe, when they reflect on something they have done, that they acted out of choice. Moreover, that they were able to put their personality aside for a moment and act in the ‘best’ way. They would say that they meant to take the course of action they did and that there was some careful consideration involved.
Even though anyone who knew them could have predicted they would behave as they did.
The rather unpalatable truth is that most of our seemingly conscious intentions are just illusions. Our past habits, which make up our personality, hijack our ability to exercise free will or act differently. They inhibit awareness and take the decision out of our hands. Many intentions to act, or choices, are not the result of having judged the situation and made a conscious choice. They are more likely to spring from past behavioural patterns. From our autopilot. We do what we do in a new situation because we did that kind of thing in the past. But if we cannot flex ourselves, we will become prisoners of our personality.
Extroversion-introversion is one of the ‘big five’ personality traits. Yet consider for a moment the extrovert who is the life and soul of the party and happy being the centre of attention. His extroversion is not always an asset. In fact it becomes a handicap when he’s forced to have a quiet night in, or on a visit to his girlfriend’s sombre parents. The introvert on the other hand may cling to the walls at a wild party, but knows how to enjoy his own company or that of more serious folk. A person who can flex, using extroversion and introversion traits appropriately, is equally comfortable in either context. His personality does not alienate him from any corner of the world.
This is why we refer to the ‘personality trap’. It may keep us from doing the best for ourselves, from coping with all facets of our world, and we’ll talk more about that later. But you may be thinking that having a definite personality has some advantages too. And indeed it does. We like to be seen to be consistent. People like to feel they know us and know what to expect from us. They like to be able to label us and put us in a box. That predictability – our personality – becomes our personal trademark. It defines who we are and is our behavioural footprint on the world. There are personal and social benefits, for ourselves and others, from being consistent in how we behave. It is also a highly energy-efficient way for the human system to operate, as we’ll see in the next section.
3. People on autopilot
When a pilot switches his controls to autopilot he can relax a little. He no longer needs to be hyper-attentive to all the aircraft’s operations. As we go about our daily life we too can switch our operating system to autopilot. This means we don’t have to think too much and so we reduce the demands on our cognitive and processing systems. We can probably spend around 90 per cent of our day in this state. Going through the motions. Doing