The Truth About Your Personality | Dr Benjamin Hardy | Modern Wisdom Podcast 185

Dr Benjamin Hardy is an organisational psychologist and an author. Do you believe that your personality is permanent? Innate & inbuilt? Dr Hardy disagrees. Expect to learn why Myers-Briggs & other personality tests are destructive & as inaccurate as horoscopes, how to reframe your past narratives, why you can overcome traumas, how to become the scribe of your own identity narrative and much more... Sponsor: Check out everything I use from The Protein Works at https://www.theproteinworks.com/modernwisdom/ (35% off everything with the code MODERN35) Extra Stuff: Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ Buy Personality Isn't Permanent - https://bit.ly/benMW Check out Ben's website - https://benjaminhardy.com/ Daniel Gilbert's Ted Talk - https://youtu.be/XNbaR54Gpj4 #personality #psychology #identitychange - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: modernwisdompodcast@gmail.com

Benjamin HardyguestChris Williamsonhost

Jun 17, 202056mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Designing Your Future Self: Why Personality Isn’t Permanently Fixed

Dr. Benjamin Hardy argues that personality is not a fixed, innate trait but a flexible outcome of identity, environment, and choices over time.
He distinguishes between identity (how you define yourself) and personality (how you consistently act), emphasizing that identity should be consciously chosen and future-focused rather than passively inherited from the past.
The conversation challenges popular personality tests and horoscopes, showing how rigid labels create self-fulfilling limits and psychological rigidity.
Hardy outlines practical tools—like journaling, clarifying a future self, investing in that vision, and reframing past events—to deliberately reshape who you become.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Personality is changeable; identity should be consciously designed.

Personality is your consistent way of acting, but it is shaped by the identity you choose—how you define and describe yourself. By choosing a new identity narrative, you can gradually change your behaviors and thus your personality.

Stop over-identifying with past events and negative stories.

We often let single failures (a bad math test, a bad speech) define us permanently. Journaling, seeking more context, and talking openly about these events allows you to reinterpret them as learning experiences that happened for you, not to you.

Use a clear future self to make better present decisions.

Research on the ‘psychology of your future self’ shows people underestimate how much they’ll change. Explicitly defining who you want to be in 2–3 years helps you choose behaviors today that your future self would prefer, rather than defaulting to comfort and short-term impulses.

Beware rigid labels from personality tests and horoscopes.

Type-based tests (e.g., Myers-Briggs, Enneagram) and horoscopes create strong but misleading identities (“I’m a 6,” “I’m a Capricorn”), which narrow your options and encourage psychological rigidity. At best they give broad generalities; they are poor guides for who you can become.

Journaling and emotional ‘picture-making’ regulates emotions and identity.

Turning emotions into clear written stories, as Hardy did with his son, stops them from being overwhelming and lets you choose new meanings and next actions. This is far more powerful for self-understanding than any static test result.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.

— Dr. Benjamin Hardy (quoting Daniel Gilbert)

Your personality should be something you design yourself.

— Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Identity is how you define and describe yourself; personality is how you consistently act in the world.

— Dr. Benjamin Hardy

What we call the personality is often some genuine traits or coping mechanisms that are not actually the true you, but are actually the absence of the true you.

— Dr. Benjamin Hardy (quoting Gabor Maté)

You don’t discover your future self. You decide who you want to be.

— Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Difference between identity and personality, and why identity matters moreMyths about fixed personality and the illusion that we are ‘finished’Future self research and using it to guide present decisionsCritique of personality tests (Big Five vs. types, Myers-Briggs, Enneagram) and horoscopesPsychological flexibility vs. rigidity and how labels constrain behaviorReframing past experiences and trauma through new meaningsPractical tools: journaling, meditation, deliberate practice, and environmental/financial commitments

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