My review of Personality isn’t Permanent by Dr. Benjamin Hardy

My review of Personality isn’t Permanent by Dr. Benjamin Hardy

I read this book in a matter of 4 days. It was very easy to read and digestible, and Dr. Hardy used plain, common language, not much psychology jargon, to explain his talking points.

I told myself I wouldn’t read any more self-help because I’ve read so much of it since I was 25 that I can feel my brain rebelling when I pick up yet another one, telling me to pick up a fantasy, or another nonfiction, or to go on an adventure instead of staying home and reading.

But in the end, I decided to read another and do a review of this one before heading out on another adventure.

This was a hell of a book! 

Dr. Hardy talks about how much standard personality tests, such as the Myers-Briggs, are flawed because they have 0 scientific basis from which they’re telling you what kind of personality type you are, and he explains that personality is more so determined by the choices you make in your life, the actions you want to take, and the type of lifestyle you create for yourself, not something that you were born with and destined to die with.

Dr. Hardy argues that your personality is flexible and that it is based upon the beliefs you take on about yourself, the actions you choose to take, and your confidence in your ability to achieve your desired outcomes.

He tells the story of how he used to be a total derelict, living on his friend’s couch, playing video games pretty much all day, totally directionless because his parents divorced when he was 11, which sent his dad into becoming a depressed alcoholic. That had a pretty big emotional effect on Ben and he didn’t take it well.

Fast forward a few years, and Ben decided he no longer wanted to be that derelict kind of guy, so he chose to pick himself up, and worked every day toward the life he wanted for himself, no excuses.

After many years of hard work, he became a Top Writer on platforms like this one, earned 7 figures a way, married the girl of his dreams, adopted 3 kids and had twins of his own, and wrote the book I’m reviewing right now.

He also talks about the fact that when he and his wife were dating, a personality test almost destroyed the relationship because the test said he was a white, and his wife was a red, apparently the two kinds being totally incompatible. His girl’s parents almost pulled the plug on their relationship because the test said their types were incompatible in the long run.

Ben talks about a story about a woman, Jennifer, who challenged herself to do a mountaineering trip, and had a bad fall. When she had the fall, her perception of herself, what she was capable of, and everything she thought she knew about herself, in spiritual terms, her ego, got shattered. When that happened, her outlook on her life, others around her, and the world changed. After the accident, she became far less of a fiercely driven lawyer type, which she had been before the trip, and became much more of a connected, spiritually-oriented, giving, contributory type. Almost the opposite of the lawyer personality she had once been.

All because of a really terrible fall that made her completely question her sense of self and how she was living.

Ben points out that when we experience something that shatters the ego like that, we are then free to choose a path that we’d like to take, instead of a path we don’t really want.

Although we don’t need to have an experience like that to change something we don’t like about ourselves. We can just choose to no longer do the things that represent what we don’t like about ourselves by being aware of it to begin with, then not doing whatever it is we want to change, and doing something different.

Dr. Hardy makes the assertion that given that our thoughts, actions, and behaviors make up our personality, we can choose to take on different thought and belief patterns, different behaviors so we can mold ourselves into the person we’d like to be, instead of the person we think we have to be, or the person who’s always done things a certain way because we didn’t know any other way to live.

If you’re interested in learning how to change an aspect of yourself you don’t really like, or want to learn how to, plain and simple, tweak your personality a bit so you can get out of the rut you feel like you’ve been in for too long, or even do an overhaul of yourself and you like books that read casually, yet professionally, without psychology mumbo jumbo jargon, this one’s for you.

If you’re not interested in fully changing your personality or even tweaking it, but wanna read an interesting self-help book that differentiates itself from 99% of the competition, or you like reading books about human psychology, it’s also for you.

For people who don’t like self-help, or learning about neuroscience or human psychology, it’s not for you. It’ll be a bore to read.