Toxic Personality Development
Toxic Personality Development
This week's newsletter offers an actionable plan to influence your growth consciously. Avoid the pitfalls of toxic personality development and become the best version of yourself!
Hi everyone!
I hope you tried the Dopamine Detox Challenge from last week. If you haven't tried it yet, don't worry. It's always possible to get started.
But what is our topic today?
I want to talk about personality and its development today. In our current Internet era, there are also many toxic personality developments, and that's why dealing with and developing awareness of it's more important than ever.
🧩 Understanding Personality
🔄 Personal Actions & Their Consequences
🔎 Goals, Dreams, and Their Impact
📚 Industry Critique
🗺️ Action Plan
🧩 Understanding Personality
What is personality development?
Basically, everyone has their personality, and this develops over time. This does not happen at the push of a button and is not a seminar, book, or person who immediately influences this.
Many immediately think of books and seminars about personality development, forgetting that they are the key to change.
In understanding personality development, we must also acknowledge the role of our experiences and environment.
Our interactions with the world around us, the challenges we face, and the success we achieve all contribute to shaping our personality.
It's a dynamic process, subtly yet constantly transforming who we are.
🔄 Personal Actions & Their Consequences
But the natural course of time and our daily actions also shape our personality, whether we want them to or not.
Some do it more consciously, others again not consciously at all.
Development happens mentally as well as physically. For example, cognitive performance and senses are addressed and improved or strengthened.
Every decision we make, and every action we take, plays a vital role in shaping our personality. It's important to remember that even seemingly inconsequential choices can have a lasting impact.
Moreover, our responses to life's challenges and how we handle stress also contribute to our personal development.
By being more aware of our actions and their potential consequences, we can guide our personality development in a positive direction.
🔎 Goals, Dreams, and Their Impact
Some also think about their goals or dreams.
If you have a goal, if you see this as a positive development that influences the whole.
It's always important to ask yourself:
Am I doing this for me or someone else?
Am I going to the gym because I want to feel better or to please others?
Am I studying because I want to gain knowledge, or just for work?
The phrase: "You have changed" is meant negatively in almost all moments.
Let me give you an example situation:
Imagine you meet every week with your two best friends. You have your routine and have been doing this for a long time.
You then find, let's say, a new hobby, start a project or business, or want to do other things.
Now you start to cancel your meetings more often. What happens?
A safety mechanism gets triggered in your friends, and they try to stop you.
At first, this is well meant, but it happens automatically.
But if you no longer come at some point, the sentence often comes: "You are something better.
Although you have changed your priorities, they no longer match.
📚 Industry Critique
I want to address today's important topic: the "industry" of personal development. It often plays on people's hopes and fears and offers supposed "quick fixes."
But everyone is different, and what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another.
When does one still begin to want to improve something about oneself or one's circumstances in everyday life?
A stroke of fate or separation, for example. That is a wake-up call, and you usually want to improve.
You are so caught up in your routines and everyday life; how often do you say, "Another year has gone by"?
That felt like every week. We are so fixed on our routines and everyday life. I say this every week.
Such an "event" takes away any ground under your feet. First, you ask yourself what is happening, and then you have to deal with yourself.
It's like a reality check for most people.
You start asking questions:
How do I get better?
How did the person do it?
What do I have to do?
So you look for mentors, and there are different stereotypes. But most of them enrich their wallet instead of helping.
Even if someone gives you a step-by-step plan, you may need something else. You are just putting together the puzzle of the person and their stereotype, but you need to know which piece you are missing.
So you develop into the person faster. But it is different for everyone, fast is very difficult.
If there is a lot of hype, hope, and a cult around the person, it is often just a guru. Then it helps the person but not yourself.
An example that I would like to give you are for example seminars. You know them. Where "successful" guys stand in front of the stage and shout motivational slogans into the crowd.
So many endorphins are released there. You think there are so many people who understand you, who also follow the cult. But this is not rational, and it doesn't mean your friends at home are all bad.
It is very toxic if all of them are so strongly separated from the others.
🗺️ Action Plan
1. Reality check
2. Environment Analysis
3. Goal setting
4. Change
5. Feedback
1. Reality check
The reality check is rational; talk to people and think about: Who are you, what are you good at and what are you not, and what are your skills?
2. Environment Analysis
Which people are in your environment? Which people are important to you?
3. Goal setting
When I stand here, where do I want to go? I don't need so much; maybe a routine is enough.
If you have yet to ask yourself these three questions, you don't know where you want to go and what you need because it does not help to buy a product for improvement or visit a mentor randomly.
Because the mentor was not exactly in your situation, you can't just copy what he did.
So before you buy a book, consider whether it is from you or if you are building a stereotype and the book is from his marketing.
What you have now does not necessarily equal bad, just because you have had such knowledge.
This means you must accept yourself and visualize where you want to go.
4. Change
This is then the corresponding action; here, the process begins.
Break it down into routines, for example, and don't do a 180-degree turn but do everything piece by piece.
5. Feedback
Get feedback from others, wait to react directly but think about it 24 hours later. Is the person right, and do I feel good about it?
For example, if people say what you are doing is weird, don't let people tell you they are all stupid and just don't get it.
Try to get away from your bubble and think about it rationally.
Conclusion:
Personality development happens all the time, whether we like it or not. It is our job to consciously and purposefully influence it, being careful not to fall into the trap of toxic personality development.
If you can answer these questions for yourself, you are well on your way to true personality development. And remember to enjoy the process and not just focus on the outcome.
Look for tools but be careful about toxic personality development because you often follow a guide you don't want to follow.
I hope this post has given you some new perspectives. Feel free to comment or DM me if you have any questions or feedback.
Thanks for reading.
I wish you all a wonderful time!
I’ll be on vacation for the next two weeks.
I’m looking forward to sharing my results of the “Dopamine Detox Challenge”.
See you all on Monday the 12th June.
Photo by Ben Mathis Seibel on Unsplash
Photo by Eduardo Soares on Unsplash