Not a psychologist but what makes sense to me is that:
1. When you’re born, you are naturally predisposed to certain personality traits.
2. Some personality traits you acquire through observation and mimicking as you go through childhood.
3. Everyone has the ability to change their personality traits. But the older you get, the less likely you are to change. Because it all has to do with your motivation to change.
Take “lying” for example. If Bob lied a lot as a kid but was motivated enough to change, then he’ll try not lying as much. If Bob ends up benefiting from lying less, he will be less motivated to switch back to lying a lot. Therefore he grows up to more likely become an honest man.
There’s basically a motivation threshold, below which you won’t change a personality trait because the benefit/cost isn’t worth it, and above which you will change because it would benefit you sufficiently. I think there are similar concepts in economics for example. Usually change is triggered by a specific event; for example, Bob being scolded by his parents for lying might have been the event triggering him to change.
So you think about criminals: some of them end up reforming, others remain repeat offenders. The ones who reform were sufficiently motivated to change their personality traits associated with committing crimes, while the repeat offenders weren’t motivated sufficiently enough to reform for whatever reason.
**Then you think about** **confidence**: some people are very self confident, some others not so much. The self-confident ones are those who were either: 1) born that way and stayed self-confident , or 2) changed at some point in their lives from unconfident to confident. Likewise, the non self-confident ones are those who were either 1) born that way and were never sufficiently motivated enough to change, or 2) were previously confident but sufficiently motivated to lose confidence.
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As a thought experiment you can place yourself, or people you know, in one of those buckets. Say you were someone who *has changed* confidence level before, think about that event or events that triggered it. Maybe you went on a sabbatical and found yourself (unconfident -> confident), or you suffered an injury/illness that hurt your self-image (confident -> unconfident). Perhaps instead you are someone who was always confident/unconfident and has never changed. If you want to change (presumably from unconfident -> confident), you should try to figure out *why* you aren’t sufficiently motivated enough to change. Maybe you’re holding onto insecurities, or you’ve just grown comfortable with your level of self-confidence. According to my theory, confidence is pretty much just how willing you are to show others your true self. There’s a lot to unpack with that but I want to keep this post short. Basically it’s a personality trait and therefore you can change it with sufficient motivation.
||Confident|Unconfident|
|:-|:-|:-|
|**Has always been that way** |Was never motivated by insecurities to hide true self around others.|Had grown simply sufficiently comfortable with the way they are.|
|**Has switched before due to some event** |Was motivated to put in the work to overcome their insecurities or be their true self around others (What you want to do if you’re trying to be more confident)|Was motivated to mask their true self around others due to some insecurity |
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!remindme 24hours