"It's Just My Personality"
Recently I was having a conversation with a friend about a serious shoulder injury and I suggested a Buddhist practice for dealing with the pain and preventing further injury. He responded by saying “I’d have to have a different personality to do that.” I replied with “Why don’t you change your personality?” My friend signaled me with one of his fingers; he may have thought I was joking or saying something totally absurd. But I was not joking, and it got me thinking. It seems to me that this view of personality is not at all uncommon. Most people think that their personality is just what it is, it’s who they are, end of story. It cannot be changed any more than you can change your blood type: “With my personality? I could never do that .” Angry, fearful, untrusting, shy, consistently avoiding confronting difficult problems with other people, difficulty saying no or setting boundaries, talking endlessly and without listeni...
