Two convenient ways to dismantle a personality mechanism

It can be quite a drag to truly become aware of a personality mechanism, simply because you have grown so accustomed to it that you yourself do not question it anymore. And yet, recognizing these mechanisms within yourself is an essential step along the way, since how else would you know what it is you no longer were to invest your energy in? A convenient way to find out more about them, is: imagine what it would be like when things were different.

For example when the expected response is not there, neither positive nor negative. Like when you clean the room because your mother is coming to visit you and you always seem to notice a reaction in her about the quality of your housekeeping. Now she enters the room, and simply makes pleasant conversation, and you do not notice any trace of criticism or approval. Chances are that at first you find yourself getting angry at her because she does not mention anything and you did your best to please her. When she were to repeat this non-reaction pattern, you would soon find yourself no longer making the effort of cleaning the house only because of her visiting you. Now it no longer is a way to avoid unpleasantness nor a way to get a compliment, and so you will lose your interest for it.

However, you can also introduce a standard which is completely opposite to the one your personality upholds, in order to help you become aware of your belief in it. For example, your personality believes that you should be at work within a ten minute drive. Only when there is a traffic jam, it takes you longer. Now introduce a new standard: it should take me móre than ten minutes to get to work. Then simply notice all the things your personality comes up with, these are the motivations for your upholding the original standard. The only thing is, that you have taught yourself that the first standard for some reason is more logical.

These two approaches can help you during your process of becoming aware of the role of your personality in your life, and help you to truly recognize these mechanisms within yourself, then you can consciously choose to no longer insist they are a truth in themselves. Do not replace them with new standards, however, since that would only be the introduction of a new personality mechanism with an outcome which at the moment seems more desirable. So, in these examples, this is not about making a new standard like: when my mother visits it is all right when the house is a mess. Nor about the standard: I have to take more than ten minutes to get to work. Simply understand this is about realizing you can never truly make things work through your personality and start looking for the óther way: through your inner Self, other columns on the site can inspire you on that as well.