Have you ever taken an online personality quiz? What about a career aptitude test in high school or a strengths assessment at work (e.g., Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicators)? These are examples of using personality tests to promote “staying in your lane.” But what if personality was not etched in stone? What if, instead of playing to your current strengths, you imagined the life you want and purposefully developed the characteristics you’d need to be successful?

If you’ve ever thought, “I can’t do [insert job or activity] because I’m not [insert personality characteristic] enough,” this post is for you.

Personality is your characteristic way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Are you a person who tends to think about situations in your life more pessimistically, or are you a glass-half-full kind of person? Do you tend to get angry when someone cuts you off in traffic or are you more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt (e.g., “Maybe they’re late to pick up their kids”)? Do you wait until the last minute to complete tasks, or do you plan ahead?

You can think of personality as a label that summarizes how you think and behave. Depending on your answers, you might be labeled as optimistic, empathetic, or reliable. In other words, you are considered “reliable” if you think and behave “reliably.” And while it might seem hard to change personality, people change how they think, feel, and behave all the time. If you start to think “being on time shows others that I respect them,” feel pride when you arrive to brunch before your friends, and engage in new behaviors that........

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