Ask HN: Has anyone been able to transform their personality? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Has anyone been able to transform their personality?

13 pointsslenocchio22 comments

For context I'm naturally introverted, never been consistently great in group social situations and struggle sometimes in 1 on 1 situations with naturally outgoing people. I'd like to feel more at ease with myself, feel more comfortable contributing in an authentic, confident, light-hearted way. But instead I'm often in my head over-analyzing instead of being present.

Has anyone here been able to transform their personality from one that is filtered/socially anxious/stoic to one that's fun/ confident/at-ease? If so what steps did you take to make this transformation?

Appreciate the help.

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> I'd like to feel more at ease with myself, feel more comfortable contributing in an authentic, confident, light-hearted way. But instead I'm often in my head over-analyzing instead of being present.

Two very important pieces of advice:

1. Feelings follow action. It's extremely difficult to "think yourself" into confidence, but if you act confident (even pretend to) you'll soon start feeling so.

2. Feeling comfortable is a result of competence. If you know you are going to do great, you will feel comfortable. So to feel at-ease, focus on building social skills.

When I was younger I realized I had mediocre social skills (I was outgoing, but also pretty awkward. One of the perks of spending too much time around computers growing up, I guess.). For a few years I prioritized fixing it, basically trying to get as much exposure to different social situations as I could (e.g. traveling internationally by myself, trying sales jobs, etc.) and got to a point where I'm usually the most social person in any group.

(Feels kinda weird writing that about myself, but we're on an anonymous forum, huh.)

I think doing something similar could help you a lot. Obviously depends a lot on where you are and what you want, but in general I think getting more experience & build competence in social skills would give you highest ROI on your time.

Happy to talk more if it's useful.

Really appreciate your response Archipelagia. I'm in the process of trying to be more social in my day to day, however I work a remote tech job which limits my social interaction for a large part of the day. I've thought about trying a sales job as you suggested...any advice on switching into this field? I have ~6 years experience as a developer/manager, making that sort of career shift would be pretty drastic but I'm open to it.

You could soft shift into more social things in your personal life. Attend meetups Join an exercise group (there’s a running group near me) There’s even a casual conversation group in San Francisco (although this is good practice it’s not something I find fulfilling)

Hm, first, why exactly would you like to make this shift? Purely to train social skills?

If so, I'd recommend finding some small sales side-gig over the weekends instead of doing a full career change. Sales can very rewarding (both in terms of money and satisfaction), but 1. you need to be pretty good to make decent money and 2. if it doesn't suit you, it can be extremely stressful.

On the other hand doing some smaller sales on the side could be a nice way to test the waters. And if you decide to make a full switch later, having some prior experience will look nicely.

For the side gig, I'd probably look into direct sales vs phone or online. It's more stressful and the experience doesn't directly translate into doing B2B later (I'm assuming you'll want to move into tech sales down the line), but it's very much a crash course in building self confidence.

I was exactly how you described in high school. I had a group of 5-10 friends that we would hang out together but I was way more comfortable myself hanging out just with 1/2 at a time.

Then I immigrated to the US. I realized that with my current personality it would be hard to make friends. Im not usually outgoing/funny etc..

So I literally tried to copy how some of my more outgoing friends would act. It sounds weird to describe but I think it helped me. You don’t lose yourself completely but if you’re actively aware of how you would normally act, its not that difficult to think “what would X do” and just do that. And just keep doing iterations of that until this becomes normal.

I think emulating friends helps cause we’re naturally not good at this, so this helps get in the reps. Then after a while its just you

Most of problem for me were related to anxiety, being in a new country made it even more difficult.

Have you traveled?

It’s a bit of a clichè but backpacking Europe left me feeling a lot more confident.

Deutsche Bahn has a great English language user interface and Hostelworld is great for avoiding having your Eurotrip going all Eli Roth.

Learning to rapidly acclimate to a shared space, to navigate a foreign city on various mental states, and possibly even tussle with a foreign intelligence service.

(Don’t accuse me of being in the CIA when I’m zonked out on edibles and pounding club mate in a disco that used to be a nuclear bunker little miss BND or whatever - but thanks for the memories ;) )

Pithy non-answer: no and why would you want to?

Serious answer: yes but it's not a change of personality. It's about recognizing fear and developing skills.

When I experienced this level of deep self doubt I emerged having learned a few things.

One, I'm not broken and don't need to be fixed. I'm more like some sloppy code that got rushed to production and could use some fixes. I do them one at a time to remove whatever blocker is hindering my happiness at the moment.

Two, I'm much happier when I do things I like. I took up oil painting because I wanted to. I painted a nude and hung it in my living room. I became a private pilot. Full in your own blanks.

Third and most importantly, I learned how to deal with racing thoughts. Racing thoughts feed on the energy we put into fighting them. If you fight them you feed them. Meditation was my method but it's tricky for us. We are told it relaxes you but when we try the racing thoughts give us an experience of failure. The trick is to stop fighting them and let them flow freely, while gently bringing your attention over and over to the meditation object (typically the breath). The first meditative state described in the oldest Buddhist texts "is accompanied by sustained and appplied thought". It's normal for everybody. Sooner or later you learn not to believe everything you think and freedom begins.

Best of luck.

It really depends on what you mean. Anxiety is something that is really contextual and depends on the person, unfortunately I don't have a great deal to offer on the subject.

Speaking as an introvert, I came across an interesting piece of advice from Ken Jennings, a record holding Jeopardy contestant. He basically talked about how trivia could be used in a practical sense to open conversational doors. By having a great of knowledge on a wide variety of subjects, there is almost a certainty that you'll be able to connect with a stranger, at least at some nominal level.

People love being asked about themselves, and if you know something about a hobby that they're passionate about, you can ask more poignant questions.

For example, if somebody tells me the that they're into juggling, I can ask them about the kinds of patterns that they like to do, mills mess, cascade, etc.

If they're into aviation, I can ask if they prefer flying high or low wing aircraft, playfully quiz them on METAR, and commiserate on how paralyzingly hard it was to be talking to a towered airport for the first time.

If they're into music, we can discuss harmonic theory, instrumental technique, and our favorite musicians.

And so on. It takes a conscious and deliberate effort, but the rewards are a deeper interaction beyond mere small talk.

Extroverts work hard at what they do. They expend effort to talk to others, learn about them, contribute to interactions, etc.

Many just appear at ease, the same way a duck appears to glide across water. You too can do this. Learn what they do; don’t try to emulate how you think they feel.

With practice, you may feel better when using these skills, but actually using them will come first.

The harder question is going to be whether you find this to be worthwhile.

In my experience, you can fake a change, but actually emboding it is not possible. I.e. you can learn to become extrovert, but you won’t enjoy it, it will require a lot of effort from you (as everything that is forced) and you’ll revert to your natural self anyway. All in all, it’s better to find how to leverage one’s strengths instead of trying to become someone else.

For what it's worth, my experience was opposite to yours.

Public speaking: once I built competency and realized I'm actually pretty good at it, I started enjoying it much more. Now I feel pretty comfortable presenting to a bigger group and it became my "default" – if I wanted to supress it, I'd have to actively pay attention.

I went through the motions of making the transform, and am still in the process. I wrote about my experience:

https://carlmastrangelo.com/blog/become-an-extrovert

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I find the re-framing of thought patterns useful, even though I don't always remember to apply them.

I really liked your post, especially comparison in the introvert/extrovert thinking:

>Notice the difference in narrative: > > “That person looks interesting, I wonder what their story is?” > “Maybe that person is interested in the same things as I am, I want to go find out.” > “People go out to socialize, maybe they’re just a little shy at first.” > “I noticed something interesting, but I don’t have anyone to tell. Maybe that person nearby feels the same way”.

I actually noticed something similar over time as I got more outgoing. I think that internal narrative is one of the most enjoyable indicators of becoming more extroverted.

My normal way is very introverted, but I love burlesque and sideshow acts, and I'm pretty comfortable with being outgoing and confident when I'm in character.

The character is pretty much me but with most of my attention focused on performance, and the process of practicing and scheduling a performance makes me start getting into character with that group far before the actual show.

I think a big thing that performance has helped me with is the feeling that i have to change my personality. Now i feel more that i am practicing and performing a character based on my real personality, instead of trying to delete parts of it and replace them with more extroverted personality traits.

You might want to dig deep into the "being more at ease with myself" aspect. What is your self-talk telling you? What are you afraid of? etc.

It helped me to realize and accept that extroverted people are so preoccupied with themselves and their image that they barely notice others. Once I accepted that I am basically invisible to them, I don't bother making my views, opinions known. Instead I ask questions and direct the conversation into areas that interest me or just excuse myself and walk away. I don't have to prove anything to anybody.

As engineer to engineer... We are distributed on a bell curve, where everyone has different qualities.

One can move on the bell, but only to certain extent in a timeframe.

There are key traits that wont change, but some are flexible

I have changed to be more extrovert and being interested in other people, without changing who i am

I have experience in helping people overcome anxiety in many ways, one of them is people

Feel free to ask for more

Hey Daniel,

Appreciate your response. Could you describe what actions you took to move on the bell. Already I'm trying to talk to strangers more. I'm trying to strike some sort of balance between putting myself out of my comfort zone and being authentic to how I'm feeling in the moment. But progress is slow enough to be almost unnoticeable.

It’s important to note that you cannot change who you are.

You can, however, change how you behave.

The biggest thing you can do to notice the change is to practice taking to strangers.

I haven't tried to alter my personality, but I've tried to intentionally act different in certain social situations by adopting kind of a trolling mindset and pretending I was playing a character.

Think of it as an acting rather than social exercise.

Maybe you get better at being more naturally outgoing with a bit of indirect practice.

I did it when I found my people. And after I did it once I could recognize the feeling and get back to it. I’ve always been quiet, bookish, social events are draining. But I found a way.

The key came when I attended the velocity conference a decade ago and it was full of people interested in stuff I like, with interesting stories to tell and thoughts to share. I went out to dinner with a colleague I’d passed a dozen times but never spoken to. I’d just spent the day chatting to strangers and rather than feeling drained like normal I felt energized. We talked for an hour and I realized that it felt great.

We talked tech and how people fit into technical processes. It dawned on me that this is how extroverts feel. It’s not that we don’t like connecting with other people it’s that we like a style of connection that we often don’t get. Once you identify the type of interaction you like you can go and get it. For me it is 1:1 deep conversation about interesting things.

So I started to lean on that. Find something interesting and likable about the person I’m talking to. Discover the thing they care about. Learn about it from them. Dive deep into a the thing they care about. People love to talk about themselves, dig around till you find the thing they love and they’ll open up. Those things are probably also the most likable things about them.

I also realized that certain behaviors are more successful so I wear them on purpose.

Imagine it as a prompt for ChatGPT. “As a professional with confidence and poise what would I say now” For example I was traveling alone to a vacation destination. I realized it’d be more fun if there were people to share it with. So I made a point to talk to every person I encountered: Person on the plane next to me. Person struggling to close the overhead bin. Person at baggage claim, person on the boat to the island. Once we arrived there were 8 people I knew by face or name and I simply invited the group to anything I found interesting. I have funny pictures of what looks like a group of old friends on vacation together. But they were all new friends who I met by delicate choice.

So to recap: Find your people. Figure out what you’re passionate about and attend group meetings of those people. Use the character prompt: “as an outgoing, friendly person I’d say the following” Practice deliberately talking to strangers. (This is a huge life hack) Realize that beneficial personality traits are available to dawn as they suit you.

Extroverts reading this will chuckle at how conscious and deliberate the tactics are. I suspect because extroverts simply do all this stuff intuitively. Well just because we have to work harder at it doesn’t mean we can’t get the job done.

I've tried. In fact, I spent a good portion of my life trying to become more extroverted and "likeable". While I found I could very accurately mimic the people who had this trait over time it became exhausting to keep up with. As I've gotten older I've learned to work with what I've got. Instead of trying to chase this idea of what I consider a "good" personality I simply tried to improve the weakpoints in my own personality.

I would recommend you do the same. Don't "transform" anything. Just sand down the rough edges of what you have and find a group of people who are okay with you as you are. You will be happier for it and far less stressed. If you're anything like me, you will become exhausted very quickly trying to be something you are, intrinsically, not.

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