#but of the ones i did none of them affected me this consistently/profoundly/personally
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name a more iconic duo than orv fanfiction and making me cry i'll wait
#IGNORE ME#orv fic writers are on some shit i am not kidding#fic after fic of things ur mentally ill ass needs to hear or needed to hear once upon a time#not the onoly reaeson for tears ofc theres plenty that are like#((gestures vaguely)) yk. (nobody is enlightened to what i mean tho hopefully u get its a positive gestures vaguely)#there havent been many fandoms ive been into enough to read fic of#but of the ones i did none of them affected me this consistently/profoundly/personally#anyway. everyone is cool and rad send tweet
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Heartbreaks
It isn’t easy to move on from someone you loved profoundly, knowing that person doesn’t comprehend the depth of your affection. Yes, I loved someone deeply, only to be hurt in the end. Despite the flaws others saw in him, I cherished everything about him. His ignorance somehow held an allure for me. I went blind in a one-sided relationship, hoping that one day our dreams would materialize, but none of them ever did. I was torn between believing he might have feelings for me too, but it was all a facade. Forever turned out to be an illusion. He disregarded my feelings, and I swear, no one will ever love him as intensely as I did. I gave him every signal, but he remained oblivious. I was like a green flag just for him, yet he took my emotions for granted.
I’ve never had an ex, but I’ve certainly experienced heartbreak. I gave my all, but he couldn’t reciprocate. He deemed my love immature, and so be it! At least it was pure and genuine, unlike you, who’s merely after fame. I allowed my heart to shatter into pieces multiple times, and he had the audacity to break it repeatedly, crushing it until he was satisfied. He consistently let me down, even though I always stood by him.
How can someone be so cruel as to repeatedly break another’s heart? It’s utterly maddening!
I will continue to harbor resentment towards him for the rest of my life because that’s all he deserves from me at this point.
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Who do you think are the best written aot characters? Everyone seems to think the holy trio of Zeke/eren/Reiner, followed almost always by Erwin,floch or historia... what’s your opinion?
“Everyone”? Well, I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask this (I don’t study literature, so I don’t have many means to judge who are the best written characters), but I can give you my opinion.
I count Zeke and Erwin among the best written characters. On a side note, I think it’s interesting to notice how both these characters’ lives and objectives were profoundly determined by their respective fathers. On one hand, Erwin dedicated his life in the pursuit of discovering the truth about humanity, and thus proving his father’s theories, and reaching the dream they shared. Zeke, on the other hand, was also deeply influenced by Grisha, but in his case, he pursued the realization of a world that was quite the opposite of what Grisha wanted from him, in what can be seen a sort of rebellion against the sufference his father caused to him. Also, though Zeke’s one was undeniably rushed with respect to Erwin’s, I think both of them had one of the most meaningful, and tragic sendoffs. There’s both a sense of realization, and beauty in their sacrifices (as Erwin let go of the dream which was consuming him, and gave up on his life for humanity, and Zeke, before dying, was finally able to see the beauty of life which he had failed to see before), but also a feeling of betrayal and cruelty (Erwin never reached his dream, Zeke had to die just when he discovered the beauty of life).
Reiner was also one of the best written characters, I think. The Marley arc put him in a completely new perspective, and it was interesting, and psychologically sound, to see his struggles, how much his sins, his sense of guilt were affecting his mental health. However, as basically everyone else from the 104th, his character was also butchered in this final chapter for me - him joining the choir of sobbing over their oh-so-selfless and tragic genocidal friend, him sniffing like a meant-to-be funny perv Historia’s letter - so I don’t count him anymore among the best written characters.
I haven’t put much thought on Floch, to be honest. I think though there’s consistency in the fact that, as at the serum bowl he wanted to revive the one who he thought as the “devil” who would have led them to victory, he later became the main accomplice of another leader, Eren, whom he thought would ensure their survival. However, overall, the impression I get from him is that he mainly served to satisfy Isayama’s need to show how much the fear of the other, and fanaticism, and the thrill given by being able to exert powers on other people through violence as elements of human nature.
Historia had an amazing development during the Uprising Arc, but after she became queen, and in particular after the Marley arc, she basically disappeared from the screens, and we weren’t shown that much of her besides mysterious, and silent panels of her being pregnant. Then we had that fragmented convo between her and Eren in chapter 130, where she appeared to strongly disagree with his plans, where she said that they couldn’t just slaughter innocent people...just to discover in the end that, in fact, she really did go along with him, passively accepting what could have become the genocide of the entire humanity apart from Paradis, if the Alliance hadn’t stopped Eren in time. Plus, she’s now the leader of a fascist nation, and doesn’t seem to suffer, or to show any remorse for her choice (she’s shown happily carrying her baby, in a pastoral, cheerful family scene). Hence, her final arc’s not only troubling for me, but I find it also simply inconsistent with the kind of person she grew to be (one that would start orphanages to help poor children, one that was able to understand, and voiced, how unjust, wrong would it be to bring on millions of innocent people the same tragedy they had to suffer on Paradis).
As regards Eren. Well, I’ve partially given him the benefit of the doubt till the end, and I’ve even written some metas in the past in an attempt to understand him - what was going on in his mind, why was he doing what he was doing - since Isayama didn’t concern himself with simply show it to us readers, and we had to came up with disparate theories and interpretations, all of our own, to make some sense out of him. However, we finally discovered what Eren's reasons for genocide were...and none of them really made sense. They were utterly nonsensical and self-contradictory at best, and in the end, Eren simply admitted that he could not even know why he did what he did: “...I don’t know why, but I wanted to do that. I had to…”. The general impression I get from Eren is that his character was sort of sacrificed after post time-skip - and I agree with aspoonofsugar’s meta in that he became more of a plot-device, rather than a character in his own right.
As regards what characters I think are best-written, after this final chapter...well, I fear I’m not completely able to separate my judgement on this from my personal preferences, just in terms of how much I like a character, but, anyway: the Veterans (Erwin, Levi, Hange, or those who stayed true to themselves till the end), Gabi, Zeke, Grisha, Keith Shadis. I also like Falco, Onyankopon, Porco, Pieck, Kruger, Pixis and I still feel attached to Mikasa. Then, Armin used to be one of my favourites, and I also liked the rest of the 104th, but after this chapter, I don’t really know what to think about them.
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sorry for yet another cryptic rant on main but there is something that has been bugging me for over a week now and it keeps being brought to my attention over and over again so i just... have to air out some dirty laundry for a second.
we had to make the hard decision to close our group a week and a half ago. fair enough, every group comes to an end even though it is hard after a group has run for so many months. and you have tried so hard as admins, for so many months ( especially during the global pandemic which affected everyone ), to create a safe space and a room for distraction. we have tried so hard to keep the group active and the members involved and enthusiastic and excited. we reached out, asked for opinions and suggestions with the sole purpose of making the group better and for keeping the group thriving. even though not everyone always took kindly to that, especially when it came to activity and asking to do a bit of self-reflection on the half a dozen roles some had and virtually no time to roleplay them. but we tried to make it work, always. we offered tools to enhance plotting with everyone when it was pointed out that plotting ( or lack thereof ) was the issue. very few made use of it. out of twenty members only a good handful reacted to plotting calls or replied to starters, which always included the three admins. i think everyone would agree that such a thing is disappointing to see, to say the least - to receive complaints about ‘ i have no plots ‘ but seeing very little effort made to actually plot. you have to realise there is only so much an admin can DO FOR YOU. we offered tools. we have written numerous messages to point out the importance of plotting and interacting with everyone. we have pressed on inclusiveness over and over again. but we cannot do the plotting for you. don’t blame us for it then. it isn’t fair. don’t tell us you cannot talk to us ‘ because we are admins ‘. numerous people from our group did come to us afterwards to appreciate how approachable we were as admins. don’t tell us you cannot talk to us and it is pointless talking to us because ( quoted ! ) ‘ WE CANT TALK TO YOU ALL BECAUSE YOU LITERALLY DONT GIVE A FUCK ‘. as admins who tried so hard to keep the group running and who have always valued our members’ opinions and only ever did or said anything to make sure our group was the best it could be, that everyone felt included and the group wouldn’t die... it hurts a whole lot to be told that. especially in a one way conversation where you were only talking about yourself and were not hearing anything else that was said or asked. to be insulted and talked to in a very passive aggressive and accusing manner two weeks in a row, causing me and the other admins so much stress because we did care so deeply, was the final straw. especially since the root of the problem was a clique everyone was aware of ( mind you ) - a clique you were all part of. and then to blame the admins for ‘ bubble roleplaying ‘ while the admins were the only people making an effort to plot with everyone who posted plotting or starter calls, and the admins got almost no replies to their own plotting calls or starters... that was very rich. there is a difference between purposely favoring and only writing with certain muns ( bubble roleplaying ) and roleplaying with certain muns more frequently because no one else is doing your replies / wanting to plot with you. do not throw that in my face when you were the one sitting on my reply, you were the one to not react to my plotting calls or replied to my starters and i was the one who always sent the last message in a conversation because you never replied again. don’t manipulate me and guilt trip me into believing i was still the problem ( which you knew would get to me, because it is who i am - you know i care deeply and you abused that to make me feel bad about myself ). maybe there is equal blame. i will be the first person to admit that i am far from perfect. but then there is still EQUAL blame. not just you pointing a finger at me. don’t guilt trip me by bringing up a mistake i made in the past and profoundly apologised for to the person i wronged back then and actually talked it through with them - it was none of your business to begin with. my friendship with them was strained, i admit, and i am not too proud to take blame for that at all. not at all. but you made me lose a friend i loved dearly with your meddling. i still do not know what the cause was of everything you said and the drama you started ( maybe you all just wanted a way out of our group, so you could start your own with all of our members but us admins ; because just leaving when everything was so shit apparently, was too easy, right ? an opinion not a lot of members did seem to share with you, by the way ) - all i know is that it caused a group to close and the members who did still love it were punished. and you and your friends, who were at the roots of a lot of tension even though you refuse to see your own blame in anything, did not say a word. not a thank you for all the months. not even a goodbye to the other members if you care so very little for us admins to acknowledge what we did do right. nothing. radio silence.
BUT HERE COMES THE GOOD STUFF ! y’all started your own group ! and fair enough, it had been in the works for a long time, by one of you. fair enough, you asked your closest friends from our group ( your clique, ey ) to help out admin. fair enough, fair enough, fair enough. but to post only one thing in our groupchat an hour after we announced closing, and it being a double promo to your own group which DROPPED the same night we closed and you asked A SHOUTOUT FOR from me ( which i gave you, because after all i still wish you all the best, i do - even though i do not agree with a lot of things you did and do ) the morning after we closed our group... that feels very disrespectful to me. and that isn’t all, is it ? because your group only consists of OUR MEMBERS ! members who i know ( from numerous sources ) you have all messaged privately to ask them to join your group. you even asked one of my co-admins. you asked everyone but me and my other co-admin. you just take our members, plop them back down into your own group to continue where you left off with them, right ? but you exclude me and my co-admin. all of you ignore me on discord since then. you ignore me on instagram, when i compliment a picture of yours because i still care about you. and in the meantime, you are just luring all of our members into your new group. do you have any idea how EXTREMELY UPSETTING that is ? to know you are deliberately being left out of something ? even by people you considered your friends ? i don’t care that you created a new group, all four of you - we made a new group as well which we are super proud of and excited for. you do you, always. and i wish you the best with it. but when you go around messaging all of our members - members you probably did not have anything to do with when our group was still running because they weren’t your best friends - to have them join your group so you can pick up where we left off... but you are excluding me ? that hurts me deeply. because no one likes to be left out. and no ones likes to feel like trash and feel uncared for. no one likes to feel that the blame is all on them after trying so hard to do good for everyone. which was always the goal in our group. it hurts, and i hope you know it. and i hope you’re not proud of it. i wish all of you and your group the best. i just wish it wasn’t build on the months of work we put into our group to make it a solid family. only to cast us out like we are dirt. after treating us like dirt, some of you at least. shame on you.
#sien stuff: rant.#i'm not calling any names but you will know who you are if you read this#and i hope you'll realise it's beyond upsetting to me#and lets be honest it is kind of disrespectful to us admins (even tho our group closed because of reasons you can /probably/ tell 'cause you#had a nice hand in it) who had a lot of patience through insults that were thrown at us#passive aggressive behaviour you showcased to us when we were /just/ trying to make our group better and involve our members more and ask#for their opinions and ideas to make sure the group remained thriving and that everyone still felt excited and enthusiastic to write#and most importantly who granted you chances upon chances and requests which we actually did not condone because of the attitude we received#only to not even get a thank you or /any acknowledgement/ that you understood our concern with the requests you made.#not even a THANK YOU or any message did we get back. not one. which is extremely disrespectful and immature.#i know i myself have flaws. a lot of them. and i know i make mistakes. but i own up to every single one of them. and i apologise because i#/care so deeply/ and i hate knowing i have wronged someone. i will always be remorseful for the mistakes i made and probably will make in#the future even though i know from myself what i have to work on to become a better person! it's called self-reflection tho you should try i#it*#i know this post is super long and maybe vague but i had to let it off my chest because after all the smoke cleared i feel like i can see#who you really are? and it's upsetting.#and this is a free site - you are free to start your own group and everyone is free to join it! of course!#but to ask our members privately and leave us admins out... that sucks a whole damn lot.#and i hope your members will never do that to you if your group ever comes to a close#again sorry for the rant folks but i am so upset and frustrated and angry i just had to say smth.#but i don't want to waste any more time or breath on it after this tbh#i have my own new group with my awesome coadmins?? i am excited for that.#and i hope this'll allow me to move on. it's aired. it's done.
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Thoughts on Tuesday Nights in 1980
As is the case for most readers, I assume, the cover of a book draws me in, but the cover copy decides whether or not I'll read the book. Thus, as soon as Tuesday Nights in 1980's cover copy compared it to Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, I inwardly groaned, and, had I not received my copy free through YPG's Little Big Mouth program, I would have put the book down right then. I can’t stand stories where the POV characters' narratives are removed from one another only to intersect due to the contrivances of "fate" (i.e. the author). Which is why, although I know that it's among many people's favorite Christmas movies, I really disliked Love Actually, even more so than A Visit from the Goon Squad. However, as previously mentioned (here and here), with free books, I'm not picky. So I dove in, and considering how much I ended up loving this book - it may be one of my favorites of the year, if not of all-time - I'm thinking that in the future I shouldn't judge a book by its cover or by its cover copy. (But then how will I choose which books to read, you ask? Solution: just read everything.) I can best convey the experience of reading this book as follows: Eyes: Glazing over every time this motif recurred. Tearing up when the characters were at their most desperate. Ears: Distantly aware of the praise that will undoubtedly be heaped upon this debut novel and its author for her experimental writing techniques. Mouth: Opening in awe of the author's talent at times and yawning at others. Silently screaming at Lucy, whom I found insufferable for all of the reasons that Engales ultimately did, even if it is believable for the youngest character to be naive and idealistic and dependent on others to define her: Face: Turning the pages frantically, sometimes prematurely, to find out what would happen next. Then, as I neared the end, turning pages more slowly to prolong reading the book. Heart: The same one beating in the chests of all of the POV characters. The same one bleeding onto the page through the author's pen. Kind of a cool method of reviewing a book, right? Now imagine that I used this technique three or four more times during this review. Would it still be cool? Then again, if Prentiss intended her writing itself to imitate art, then her repeated anatomical deconstruction of scenes is appropriate regardless of its subjective appeal: like art, these passages are, at their worst, obtuse and pretentious, but at their best, they're evocative and alive with meaning and sensation. Most of the time, I adored the writing in this book, pausing to savor lines and mark their pages for later reference. Other times, the writing struck me as tedious and trying too hard. But the former instances surpassed the latter in frequency, and even when Prentiss's writing frustrated me, I always, always admired the effort and artistic ingenuity it displayed. Aside from the writing, my favorite aspect of this story was its characters, as they read not so much as characters as they did people with lives and histories. The interview with Prentiss included in the back of the book revealed that it took her seven years to write Tuesday Nights in 1980, and that in that time, each character underwent several evolutions. I might've guessed the length of Prentiss's writing journey by how intimately she seems to know her characters. I might've guessed it by how well she portrays their sadness too. Authors - and lowly writers like me - like to joke about the cruelty we inflict on our characters, but often I come away from a book with a sense that its author has tortured the characters merely because tragedy is more realistic and yet more literary than happiness. Not Prentiss though: she breaks her characters to great effect. I reveled in their brokenness. Had she made less bleak narrative choices, the book would not have been as powerful. (What's with everyone in this book not feeling like eating when they're sad though? Could there not have been at least one character who gained rather than lost weight due to depression and loneliness? Or perhaps that's not how "beautiful" people grieve.) Of all of the characters, none is more miserable than the setting, which, yes, is itself a character. Through her sensuous, affecting descriptions of New York City, Prentiss captures everything I love and hate about the place. If sometimes these descriptions tire or overwhelm, then this mirrors the sensory overload characteristic of the city. The below line, in particular, resonates with my image of New York City: It was then, on his very first day, that he knew he had found his place in New York, a place for the deranged and wrecked and bold, a place where pity couldn't exist if it wanted to because there would have to be too much of it. That is exactly how I feel when, every morning as I'm trekking to work from Penn Station, I avert my eyes from the numerous homeless people lining the sidewalks. I wonder, then, if I'm the only one purposefully ignoring them (and my conscience), if my fellow pedestrians no longer notice them at all. Each time I swallow my pity, choke it down until it settles uncomfortably yet harmlessly in the pit of my stomach, I think, "I couldn't give change to all of them, even if I wanted to." The same is true of emotional currency: there is a limit to how much sadness, how much sympathy, a person can feel and still have it be useful to the people to whom it's extended. Don't misunderstand me: I'm not sharing this experience because I want anyone to feel sorry for me. I'm merely trying to illustrate, through this example, how profoundly I connected with Prentiss's portrayal of New York City and its inhabitants. Perhaps that's the root of why this novel was more enjoyable for me than the structurally similar A Visit from the Goon Squad: unlike the latter, Tuesday Nights in 1980 is about poor, hopeless people. My people. The people I am and am surrounded by every day. People who have earned their sadness and thus can wear it more credibly than Egan’s white middle- and upper-class characters . How much I liked it aside, this book has also helped me begin to overcome my writer's block. I probably sound like I'm full of crap, especially because I'm posting this review a week late, but hear me out. When, toward the end of the novel, James decides that it's worth writing merely because he can and Engales can no longer paint, I lingered on that sentiment for a long time. Strangely, I'd never thought of the act of creating from the perspective of someone who'd lost the ability to create. The tragedy of Engales's accident persuaded me like no other purely intellectual argument ever had that I should write as much as I can while I can, even if what I'm writing is complete and utter garbage, as I often deem it. Not only is there inherent value in the act of creating, but hey, I might be dead tomorrow! Barring my sudden and untimely death, I might grow old and get dementia; I might be young and get dementia. I might go blind, develop arthritis, lose a hand, and in any of these instances, how I wrote, if I still managed to write, would irrevocably change. Thus, I want to take full advantage of being able-minded and -bodied, because writing time is not infinite. (And to address the late blog post, despite what fiction would have us believe, revelations don't inspire immediate change: overcoming writer's block in order to write more consistently will be a slow process for me, for sure, but it's one that I'm committed to undergoing in a way that I wasn't before.) Reading time isn't infinite either, which is why I rarely reread books anymore, but Tuesday Nights in 1980 is one book that I strongly believe would improve upon rereading. I mentioned in a previous blog post that I dislike it when I can visualize an author's notes while reading, but Prentiss is such a master at concealing hers that I think it might be fun to go back and try to reconstruct them with the novel’s resolution in mind. Aspects of the plot are somewhat predictable, but they didn't feel predictable while I was reading, which is what matters. In conclusion, read this book, and, if you're both a reader and a writer like me, cry because you can never write anything as true or as beautiful as just one line from this novel. Then be like me and James and try anyway.
#tuesdaynightsin1980#mollyprentiss#literaryfiction#books#bookreviews#reading#scoutpress#simonandschuster#ypg#littlebigmouth#publishing#avisitfromthegoonsquad#jenniferegan#loveactually
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Is Your Personality Permanent? New Research Says ‘No.’
June 11, 2020 11 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
I caught up this week with a longtime friend, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, an organizational psychologist whose newest book, “Personality Isn’t Permanent” will be appearing in June.
Hardy is young — a thirty-something husband and the father of five. He and his wife Lauren adopted three children (with great difficulty) from the foster system, and also have year-old twins. He’s very accomplished as a scholar, speaker, organizational psychologist and author, but is surprisingly low-key in conversation.
In the five or so years I’ve known him we’ve had fascinating exchanges on a number of topics: habits, self-discipline, communication — and most recently, personality.
Unlike traditional experts, Hardy maintains our personalities are not fixed. He maintains and demonstrates through research that our lifestyles, preferences, attitudes and character traits are surprisingly fluid. At every stage our personalities are the result of the decisions and pivotal experiences along with non-decisions and habits we accumulate on the way.
The Personality Tests are wrong
We ask, “Are you a ‘red’ or a ‘white’?” or, “Are you INFJ or ESTP?” Hardy points to a recently published study of 1,208 fourteen-year-olds in Scotland. Teachers ranked these students in the 1950s on six characteristics: self-confidence, perseverance, stability of mood, conscientiousness, originality and desire to learn. Sixty-three years later researchers retested 674 of the original participants. Each person, now in their 70s, rated themselves on the six traits and nominated a relative or close friend or relative to rate them as well. The results: There was almost no overlap.
According to Harvard psychologist Dr. Daniel Gilbert, over even a ten-year period of time, you are not the same person. In his own research, Gilbert asked people how much their interests, goals, and values had changed over the previous decade. Respondents reported significant changes. He then asked how much they expected their interests, goals, and values to change over the ten years to come. Most anticipated little change.
Gilbert’s observation: “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.” Therein lies the problem, Hardy maintains.
How does the assumption that your personality is permanent hold you back?
The myth holds you back in two ways:
You are held back by your propensity to pre-judge others based on their past. When we meet someone we’re considering for a key hire, or a partnership, for example, what do we do? We typically ask questions about their past experience as we look at their track record and ask the opinions of others who’ve worked with the person before. Like the Shakespeare quote, we assume: “What’s past is prologue.” We assume their prior behavior indicates where their weaknesses could derail them again. Granted, past actions are a data point and potentially very important. But suppose we were to test and evaluate a person on present attitudes or the hypothetical decisions they’d make going forward? If you ask about a past experience, for example, ask what they did and why in one of their most difficult situations, and what they’d do now if they had the chance to do it again? Listen for their attitudes, the rigidity of their opinions, and the thinking or feeling process that guides their decisions today. If you evaluate, test for emotional maturity and “EQ” to determine the person’s flexibility and willingness to learn and improve or whether they’re likely to be mired in prior habits and ego.
You are held back by the assumption that you’re unlikely to change. Many years ago, advisors told my prior business partner that he was extremely difficult to work with and was intimidating to the company’s employees. His response was a shrug. “I’m in my forties, so it isn’t likely to change.” I don’t know the current prognosis as this was some 25 years ago. But for years after my own departure, the company he led, while it met with some successes, continued to be centered around what I privately observed to be “a set of symbiotic relationships.”
As an outsider no longer affected by the stresses, a part of me inwardly cheered, as the success seemingly proved that companies don’t have to follow a single model or a specific formula to succeed. But with a desire to improve or a flexible attitude toward positive changes, what could be possible then?
When we assume we aren’t capable of changing or aren’t likely to do so, we almost ensure that barring traumatic events (such as loss of health or nearly losing a marriage) we won’t change, or won’t change by much. Sadly, this also means the negative addictions and habits that tend to rule our existence remain largely the same.
Related: Personality Tests: Helpful Tool or Lazy Shortcut?
You can change any habit, or addiction, in an instant
Hardy talks about the principle of addictions at length, as this is a giant component of the material he teaches. I have also learned this principle poignantly from listening to Tony Robbins speak. Robbins maintains that three conditions must exist to successfully end a deeply-held addiction:
The fervent desire to end the addiction.
A traumatic or pivotal experience that signals you must change. This could be something like a young daughter lamenting that her father’s smoking addiction means he won’t be alive to walk her down the aisle at her wedding, or the doctor informing a heart attack victim he or she will not survive unless their diet and exercise habits can change.
The ability to substitute a less objectionable habit for the one you are trying to break.
I have tested this theory and proven it true. For more than two decades I had a Diet Coke addiction so bad it was the constant topic of jokes among the people who know me. At its peak I was unable to function without a minimum of six bottles a day. I made valiant efforts to quit and even made it for an entire six months one time until a particularly bad stressor pushed me off the wagon again.
Later in life — much later — I realized how often I was getting sick from plane travel, lack of sleep and exposure to children with colds. So I took an herbal immunity supplement. The friend who gave me the supplement warned me the drops could occasionally bring on a detox rash reaction in people who are a little older, who drink, or who eat a poor diet. Since none of that pertained to me, I believed I’d be fine.
A week later, in Phoenix to give a keynote address, I woke up in the hotel entirely covered in rash. It itched horribly and it even covered my scalp. I knew immediately it was due to the massive load of chemical toxins in the Diet Coke, since I actually ate pretty well. But enduring the rash made me suddenly repulsed at the thought of ever engaging with something so clearly detrimental to my health and body again.
That experienced occurred three years ago, on April 26 of 2017. I replaced the habit with several bottles of Kombucha a day and will never touched a glass of soda or artificial sweetener again.
Related: The 5 Personality Traits All Entrepreneurs Must Have
Who will you be tomorrow? Today’s the day to decide
Hardy points out that every one of us has the capability to change long-held beliefs and traits with consistent effort, and for the most part, at will. For example, he talks in his book about a 13-year-old girl who was profoundly struck by the words of a teacher who assured his students they could do and be anything if they had a deeply held desire to grow and change.
She took his words to heart as she thought about her painful shyness and reticence to speak up or get acquainted with anyone new. So she consciously fought the tendency from that minute forward. She spoke up, and actively forced herself to be more visible and vocal from that moment on. By the time she graduated from high school, she had an entirely different personality, by her own desire and design.
Hardy himself, with a doctorate degree, five children, two books and hundreds of thousands of followers points out that his wife had nearly sent him packing based on his earlier personality scores. The oldest son of divorced parents, he’d spent much of his youth and childhood adrift. He had no goals or ambitions and missed so many classes in high school he was required to plant a tree on the school property in order to receive his diploma. But a two-year church mission became a pivotal experience for Hardy, and set him on a course of discipline and purpose that has influenced his path and accomplishments since.
In my own case, a bad experience around a personality test contributed to my decision to leave the first firm I co-founded. It was the mid-1980s and the Myers-Briggs test had recently come into vogue. The other founder and I (the one with the rigid personality) had been butting heads, and our COO suggested taking the test. My result: ENFJ, with the “E” (for Extrovert) only a hair’s breadth away from “I (for Introvert). His result: ESTP. On paper, we were polar opposites. This explained a lot. Then it got worse.
“No, this can’t be right,” he said as he surveyed my results. “Ruled by imagination? Dreamer? Head in the clouds? That’s not you. Take it again. As a matter of fact, I’d make sure nobody like this would ever get into our business.”
I was dumbfounded. The desire and need to innovate actually was me, 100 percent. But it seemed clear that those abilities would never be valued in the place I was sitting, and potentially not even allowed. I attempted to forge onward, but within two years the burnout was intolerable, and I made the difficult choice to move on.
I’ve been a co-founder and now founder of three businesses since. I innovate programs regularly and find my greatest strengths in the development of new solutions, sometimes even on the fly and in the midst of a storm. I still work long hours but find far more fulfillment as I have the freedom to evolve as I please. Leaving my first company was painful beyond belief. But many things are far better for me now as I and those around me have gained the room to develop new strengths.
Hardy stresses the dangers in taking personality tests too seriously. In evaluating our tendencies, he advises giving more credence to programs such as the Enneagram that identifies tendencies within a range of characteristics instead of a color or a four-letter score (although in a recent column for Psychology Today he suggested doing neither).
Recently, I retook the Myers-Briggs test. I was curious, and believe I’ve progressed immensely over the 25 years since the fateful testing: My evaluation today: INFJ. The only perceptible difference in my score from 25 years ago was that the Introvert tendencies I’d considered less predominant became more so.
By many measures, I’m now established as a leader in business. Regardless of the score, I can attest that my head, then and now, continues firmly entrenched in the clouds, ever imaginative. All these years later, the scenario that terrified me so badly has left me with a different conclusion: If I hadn’t moved on, imagine everything I’d have missed. As I recall that fateful experience, my overwhelming feeling is not fear. It is gratitude.
You hopefully have decades of additional business decisions ahead. Yes, your personality will change in the ways you choose and allow it to. So what will you choose?
Related: 11 Bad Personality Traits Costing You Business
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source http://www.scpie.org/is-your-personality-permanent-new-research-says-no/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/620677969057382400
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Is Your Personality Permanent? New Research Says ‘No.’
June 11, 2020 11 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
I caught up this week with a longtime friend, Dr. Benjamin Hardy, an organizational psychologist whose newest book, “Personality Isn’t Permanent” will be appearing in June.
Hardy is young — a thirty-something husband and the father of five. He and his wife Lauren adopted three children (with great difficulty) from the foster system, and also have year-old twins. He’s very accomplished as a scholar, speaker, organizational psychologist and author, but is surprisingly low-key in conversation.
In the five or so years I’ve known him we’ve had fascinating exchanges on a number of topics: habits, self-discipline, communication — and most recently, personality.
Unlike traditional experts, Hardy maintains our personalities are not fixed. He maintains and demonstrates through research that our lifestyles, preferences, attitudes and character traits are surprisingly fluid. At every stage our personalities are the result of the decisions and pivotal experiences along with non-decisions and habits we accumulate on the way.
The Personality Tests are wrong
We ask, “Are you a ‘red’ or a ‘white’?” or, “Are you INFJ or ESTP?” Hardy points to a recently published study of 1,208 fourteen-year-olds in Scotland. Teachers ranked these students in the 1950s on six characteristics: self-confidence, perseverance, stability of mood, conscientiousness, originality and desire to learn. Sixty-three years later researchers retested 674 of the original participants. Each person, now in their 70s, rated themselves on the six traits and nominated a relative or close friend or relative to rate them as well. The results: There was almost no overlap.
According to Harvard psychologist Dr. Daniel Gilbert, over even a ten-year period of time, you are not the same person. In his own research, Gilbert asked people how much their interests, goals, and values had changed over the previous decade. Respondents reported significant changes. He then asked how much they expected their interests, goals, and values to change over the ten years to come. Most anticipated little change.
Gilbert’s observation: “Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.” Therein lies the problem, Hardy maintains.
How does the assumption that your personality is permanent hold you back?
The myth holds you back in two ways:
You are held back by your propensity to pre-judge others based on their past. When we meet someone we’re considering for a key hire, or a partnership, for example, what do we do? We typically ask questions about their past experience as we look at their track record and ask the opinions of others who’ve worked with the person before. Like the Shakespeare quote, we assume: “What’s past is prologue.” We assume their prior behavior indicates where their weaknesses could derail them again. Granted, past actions are a data point and potentially very important. But suppose we were to test and evaluate a person on present attitudes or the hypothetical decisions they’d make going forward? If you ask about a past experience, for example, ask what they did and why in one of their most difficult situations, and what they’d do now if they had the chance to do it again? Listen for their attitudes, the rigidity of their opinions, and the thinking or feeling process that guides their decisions today. If you evaluate, test for emotional maturity and “EQ” to determine the person’s flexibility and willingness to learn and improve or whether they’re likely to be mired in prior habits and ego.
You are held back by the assumption that you’re unlikely to change. Many years ago, advisors told my prior business partner that he was extremely difficult to work with and was intimidating to the company’s employees. His response was a shrug. “I’m in my forties, so it isn’t likely to change.” I don’t know the current prognosis as this was some 25 years ago. But for years after my own departure, the company he led, while it met with some successes, continued to be centered around what I privately observed to be “a set of symbiotic relationships.”
As an outsider no longer affected by the stresses, a part of me inwardly cheered, as the success seemingly proved that companies don’t have to follow a single model or a specific formula to succeed. But with a desire to improve or a flexible attitude toward positive changes, what could be possible then?
When we assume we aren’t capable of changing or aren’t likely to do so, we almost ensure that barring traumatic events (such as loss of health or nearly losing a marriage) we won’t change, or won’t change by much. Sadly, this also means the negative addictions and habits that tend to rule our existence remain largely the same.
Related: Personality Tests: Helpful Tool or Lazy Shortcut?
You can change any habit, or addiction, in an instant
Hardy talks about the principle of addictions at length, as this is a giant component of the material he teaches. I have also learned this principle poignantly from listening to Tony Robbins speak. Robbins maintains that three conditions must exist to successfully end a deeply-held addiction:
The fervent desire to end the addiction.
A traumatic or pivotal experience that signals you must change. This could be something like a young daughter lamenting that her father’s smoking addiction means he won’t be alive to walk her down the aisle at her wedding, or the doctor informing a heart attack victim he or she will not survive unless their diet and exercise habits can change.
The ability to substitute a less objectionable habit for the one you are trying to break.
I have tested this theory and proven it true. For more than two decades I had a Diet Coke addiction so bad it was the constant topic of jokes among the people who know me. At its peak I was unable to function without a minimum of six bottles a day. I made valiant efforts to quit and even made it for an entire six months one time until a particularly bad stressor pushed me off the wagon again.
Later in life — much later — I realized how often I was getting sick from plane travel, lack of sleep and exposure to children with colds. So I took an herbal immunity supplement. The friend who gave me the supplement warned me the drops could occasionally bring on a detox rash reaction in people who are a little older, who drink, or who eat a poor diet. Since none of that pertained to me, I believed I’d be fine.
A week later, in Phoenix to give a keynote address, I woke up in the hotel entirely covered in rash. It itched horribly and it even covered my scalp. I knew immediately it was due to the massive load of chemical toxins in the Diet Coke, since I actually ate pretty well. But enduring the rash made me suddenly repulsed at the thought of ever engaging with something so clearly detrimental to my health and body again.
That experienced occurred three years ago, on April 26 of 2017. I replaced the habit with several bottles of Kombucha a day and will never touched a glass of soda or artificial sweetener again.
Related: The 5 Personality Traits All Entrepreneurs Must Have
Who will you be tomorrow? Today’s the day to decide
Hardy points out that every one of us has the capability to change long-held beliefs and traits with consistent effort, and for the most part, at will. For example, he talks in his book about a 13-year-old girl who was profoundly struck by the words of a teacher who assured his students they could do and be anything if they had a deeply held desire to grow and change.
She took his words to heart as she thought about her painful shyness and reticence to speak up or get acquainted with anyone new. So she consciously fought the tendency from that minute forward. She spoke up, and actively forced herself to be more visible and vocal from that moment on. By the time she graduated from high school, she had an entirely different personality, by her own desire and design.
Hardy himself, with a doctorate degree, five children, two books and hundreds of thousands of followers points out that his wife had nearly sent him packing based on his earlier personality scores. The oldest son of divorced parents, he’d spent much of his youth and childhood adrift. He had no goals or ambitions and missed so many classes in high school he was required to plant a tree on the school property in order to receive his diploma. But a two-year church mission became a pivotal experience for Hardy, and set him on a course of discipline and purpose that has influenced his path and accomplishments since.
In my own case, a bad experience around a personality test contributed to my decision to leave the first firm I co-founded. It was the mid-1980s and the Myers-Briggs test had recently come into vogue. The other founder and I (the one with the rigid personality) had been butting heads, and our COO suggested taking the test. My result: ENFJ, with the “E” (for Extrovert) only a hair’s breadth away from “I (for Introvert). His result: ESTP. On paper, we were polar opposites. This explained a lot. Then it got worse.
“No, this can’t be right,” he said as he surveyed my results. “Ruled by imagination? Dreamer? Head in the clouds? That’s not you. Take it again. As a matter of fact, I’d make sure nobody like this would ever get into our business.”
I was dumbfounded. The desire and need to innovate actually was me, 100 percent. But it seemed clear that those abilities would never be valued in the place I was sitting, and potentially not even allowed. I attempted to forge onward, but within two years the burnout was intolerable, and I made the difficult choice to move on.
I’ve been a co-founder and now founder of three businesses since. I innovate programs regularly and find my greatest strengths in the development of new solutions, sometimes even on the fly and in the midst of a storm. I still work long hours but find far more fulfillment as I have the freedom to evolve as I please. Leaving my first company was painful beyond belief. But many things are far better for me now as I and those around me have gained the room to develop new strengths.
Hardy stresses the dangers in taking personality tests too seriously. In evaluating our tendencies, he advises giving more credence to programs such as the Enneagram that identifies tendencies within a range of characteristics instead of a color or a four-letter score (although in a recent column for Psychology Today he suggested doing neither).
Recently, I retook the Myers-Briggs test. I was curious, and believe I’ve progressed immensely over the 25 years since the fateful testing: My evaluation today: INFJ. The only perceptible difference in my score from 25 years ago was that the Introvert tendencies I’d considered less predominant became more so.
By many measures, I’m now established as a leader in business. Regardless of the score, I can attest that my head, then and now, continues firmly entrenched in the clouds, ever imaginative. All these years later, the scenario that terrified me so badly has left me with a different conclusion: If I hadn’t moved on, imagine everything I’d have missed. As I recall that fateful experience, my overwhelming feeling is not fear. It is gratitude.
You hopefully have decades of additional business decisions ahead. Yes, your personality will change in the ways you choose and allow it to. So what will you choose?
Related: 11 Bad Personality Traits Costing You Business
Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co
Delray Beach SEO
source http://www.scpie.org/is-your-personality-permanent-new-research-says-no/
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The Gifted is over for now, and so are a couple of its major characters
Since we last left the beleaguered mutants and mutant-adjacent characters of Fox’s possibly-doomed X-Men spinoff series The Gifted, they’ve been doing what they do best: constantly changing sides. Say this for a series that sometimes threatens to move quickly while going nowhere: It didn’t save a bunch of reversals for the season finale, a move that would have shamelessly mimicked the events that ended Season 1. No, before the finale even aired, there were change-ups and switch-backs and feints aplenty: Andy Strucker, the wayward aspiring edgelord, finally returned to his family. His fellow Inner Circle member Polaris, the smart-mouthed, revolution-hungry daughter of Magneto, became a spy for the Mutant Underground, accidentally got Sage killed, made the same reversal, after (further) revelations about Reeva’s extreme methods for her pro-mutant group. Blink left the Mutant Underground to join the Morlocks, then got killed... or, it seems, stuck in some kind of portal purgatory. (Wherever she is, it’s no longer in the MU.) Less officially, Caitlin Strucker has pivoted from reluctant and protective mom figure to fiery freedom fighter, and Reed Strucker is now a murderer! Which Andy finds very relatable.
I’m not trying to recap every development of the past couple months. Suffice to say, there’s been a lot of group-hopping, and a lot of those groups getting backed into different corners and shooting powers and/or bullets at each other. “oMens” dispenses with voluntary side-switching, though it also quickly dispenses with the Strucker family reunion, as Andy and Lauren get snatched back up by the Cuckoos just as they’re plotting their latest out-of-the-corner escape, from their Purifier-surrounded apartment building. Reeva, mostly undaunted by the defections in her ranks, wants to use the combined Strucker powers to destroy the Sentinel Services building.
And she succeeds! A whole damn building gets destroyed without a whole lot of fanfare before Esme’s slight hesitation allows the Mutant Underground to recapture their youngest members. None of this feels as momentous as it probably should, because “oMens” performs an uncommonly adroit—for this show anyway—act of refocusing the story from a multitude of drawn-out, season-long arcs to a particular character’s particular fate in a kind of back-to-basics move.
Usually back to basics is not where I want The Gifted to go, because it involves returning to the Struckers, who are consistently the least interesting and most irritating characters on this program (sometimes actively, sometimes just by default). But while the episode’s additional flashbacks are written in the same clunk-on-the-nose style as the typical cold opens without the benefit of brevity, the scenes from the marriage of Caitlin and Reed do build to something: Reed’s sudden decision to go up against Reeva, knowing that her attempts to knock out his powers will backfire, destroying her... and him.
And he succeeds! And there is the episode’s more momentous explosion, despite the smaller number of casualties. Reed Strucker dies, and Stephen Moyer is presumably off of this show, if there’s even still a show for him to be off of. (More on this in a moment.) Reed was, as mentioned, never my favorite character on the show, and Moyer’s performance always felt a bit too workmanlike to transcend how stodgy the character has been written. But I admit, I found his sacrifice, and his family’s devastation, affecting. On a less emotional level, I admire Gifted creator Matt Nix (who penned this installment, his first one in a while) for seeming to understand what a corner Reed had been written into, either defined by suppressing his powers, or defined by not being able to control them. To make such a serious, controlled personality realize that his destiny in all this (ugh, but I’ll allow it) involved surrendering control—at least of his body.
This move takes out season-long Big Bad Reeva, too, and I have to say, she turned out to be sort of a disappointing villain. Grace Byers certainly cuts a stylish figure in the part, but Reeva pretty quickly settled into the predictable kind of movie/TV ideologue, willing to game the results in order to hasten violent revolution on her side, blah blah blah. The most notable aspect of her character wound up being the strange visual cue that through some combination of framing, the Byers performance, and a profoundly dopey-looking depiction of her mutant power, Reeva often looked like she doesn’t have use of her arms. Now she has use of nothing.
It’s a satisfying end for Reed and a relief to be done with Reeva, but “oMens,” in typically fast-paced and mostly entertaining fashion, does point to just how much of this season has consisted of rapid piece-moving, a sort of perpetual motion that’s often fun in the moment but can feel wearying and repetitive over the course of 16 episodes; I think the slightly extended season was a mistake, and if anything, this is the type of show where 10 would be fine. Especially considering that even with more episodes at their disposal, the resolution of the finale felt a little rushed: Reed dies, the Struckers mourn, Polaris and Eclipse are reunited with their daughter, Morlock Erg (Michael Luwoye, whose increased role has been a pleasure of the last bunch of episodes) joins the group for real, as does Esme (great additions, also basically not commented upon at all). Another reconfigured group—and another cliffhanger, as Blink returns, looking futuristic and Future Past-y, ushering everyone through a new portal.
Whether we’ll get to actually see what’s on the other side is, as ever, in some doubt. The Fox-Disney deal is about to close, and if the new studio doesn’t want a mostly pretty successful X-Men movie franchise on its hands (it doesn’t) and already has MCU and Star Wars plans for its streaming service (it does) and can wash its hands of ancillary X-Men stuff (it can), and wants to treat anything that’s not Ryan Reynolds playing Deadpool as ancillary (it does), well, it doesn’t look great for the modestly rated, if somewhat appreciated, The Gifted Season 3... though maybe it will get yet another stay of execution based on the Fox Network as we know it maybe not having time to wind all the way down and reboot itself as largely sports and reality by September 2019. There are definitely moments in “oMens” that feel like they’re protecting the show’s fans for both possibilities: Most of the characters get some resolution to their emotional journeys, while the Blink thing assures fans that it’s not over, unless it is.
But that’s sort of an X-Men thing, too, isn’t it? I mean, it applies to a lot of superhero comics, but the X-Men in particular feel like a neverending strife generator. The movies reflect this, too: Days Of Future Past fixes the timeline, but Logan’s timeline still leaves plenty of room for heartbreak. The Last Stand gets justifiably erased from continuity, but then Dark Phoenix comes around and Jean looks like she’s wearing almost the same stupid goddamn Evil Jacket. Some of this, as in the comics medium, is pure franchise-driven cynicism: We gotta keep the series going even if we don’t have a plan, until such time as the plan gets scotched for unrelated corporate-merger reasons. But I think one reason I respond well to the X-Men characters on film and TV is that this neverending fight isn’t entirely mercenary. It’s also sometimes how the world works. If there’s any non-obvious, non-telegraphed truth in the earnest pulp of The Gifted, that might be it.
Stray observations:
OK, comics nerds, get to nerding: Are they just teasing a second, lower-budget Days Of Future Past riff with that Blink thing, or is there another storyline this Blink reappearance is queuing up?
There were such big doings a-transpiring with the Struckers this episode that I didn’t have rom above to mention how the mutants’ latest escape involved Thunderbird subjecting himself to an all-out chain-wrapping, speed-ramped, mailbox-throwing brawl, with a coda where he punches powers into Erg! I don’t have anything smart to say about any of that; I just thought it ruled.
Did Polaris say “the whole dang government” in her first scene? Dagnabbit, she really is softening.
“In a way, I feel like we’ve been preparing for this for a long time,” Lauren says about powering up with Andy, without so much as a wink. Yeah, Lauren. Like maybe 16 episodes? Or 29?
Caitlin, explaining her cache of guns: “I don’t have an X-gene. I figured it was the next best thing.” Her superpower is a bunch of guns; Caitlin is basically the Punisher now.
This season of The Gifted has really leaned into its stylized camera angles; canted angles have been all over these episodes, and “oMens” used plenty of low-angle shots, too. A nice way of keeping the show comic-book-y without getting too crazy.
Maybe I missed more details on this earlier in the season when I was watching merely for fun and not for recappery, but... the Purifiers are a crazed race-war militia, right? And law enforcement never really bats an eye at this? This episode includes a tossed-off explanation that the cops are willing to look the other way when they surround the apartment building, but Jace Turner (whose big journey seems to be a never-ending circle) is leading a full-on gun battle in the streets, and it’s not the first time. I get that maybe the show thinks it’s doing commentary here, but I feel like after a series of escalating firefights, the cops would not be looking the other way, or if they did, they’d just see another Purifier gun battle.
Is this the end of me writing about The Gifted?! If so, thank you guys for watching along with me! I’ve really enjoyed taking this regular dose of X-Men methadone in between the movies, and I’ll be bummed if there’s truly no more Fox-era X-Men stuff after this summer. Don’t let Tony Stark be the one who builds Cerebro!
Source: https://tv.avclub.com/the-gifted-is-over-for-now-and-so-are-a-couple-of-its-1832881840
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