Go to exhibitions and speak like an extrovert: what habits can change the character

Want to change, believe — and do. Psychologists from the University of Zurich have formulated three principles for successful personality transformation.

If you still don't know if you're an introvert, take the test Menteora. As a bonus, artificial intelligence will list the most suitable professions for you. The accuracy of the test is 70-80% (read about Menteora's unique career guidance methodology).

Principles of transformation into a new personality

The first principle is that you must strongly desire to change the behavior associated with specific personality traits. For example, to become more friendly at work. This intention can be an end in itself, or it can become an intermediate stage in a career.

It's the same with diets and sports: “I'm going out for a run on Tuesday night” is realistic, but “I'm going to run more” is not a plan.

The second principle is that for a successful, purposeful personality transformation, you must be sure this is possible. It is a crucial requirement.

Psychologist Carol Dweck has shown in her work that people with a growth mindset don't conform to circumstances but find solutions.

Heredity determines about half of the personality traits. Inherited qualities resemble factory settings. With enough effort, these settings can be changed.

The third principle is reinforcing desired behavioral changes until they become part of your nature. Be persistent and remember that it takes time, and sometimes you feel uncomfortable.

It takes a strong will to develop new behavioral habits, but after a while, they get more accessible and then become automatic, just like riding a bike or driving a car.

Manage character traits pointwise

If you develop new habits, you can change from the inside out. Reading fiction makes you more attentive to others. There is training for this.

Training

Build emotional resilience

Do online memory exercises. Training your memory increases its volume and can simultaneously manage several information streams. You will be in better control of your thoughts.
Thank people regularly. Write a short thank you to someone daily or write a thank you note. Research shows that gratitude can protect: people who experience and express gratitude do not suffer from stress.
Try to be abroad. Studies indicate that it reduces neuroticism.
Walk regularly. It's proven to improve your mood, even if you're not sure it's not.
Martial arts will give you self-confidence and teach you how to control attention.
Take a course of psychotherapy — cognitive behavioral therapy). An hour of talking with a psychotherapist a week changes the personality. According to a study by Brent Roberts and his team, just a few weeks of psychotherapy reduced neuroticism by one and a half times.

Develop Consciousness

Find an exciting job. Favorite work makes a person organized and purposeful. Colleagues begin to appreciate you, and customers begin to thank you. You can take a career guidance test.
Get involved in volunteering. Participate in the activities of community organizations — for example, the parent committee of the school where your child is studying. Find an activity you enjoy that arouses genuine interest, motivates you, and fuels your diligence and determination.
Learn to resist temptation. The proportion of overweight passengers is higher on routes with more food service outlets. Choose a route to work away from your favorite bakery or fast food and save your health.
Show self-discipline. Put in more effort today—in work, relationships, or hobbies—and you'll make your life easier in the long run and develop persistence and a future-oriented mindset. Scientists have proven that students who diligently completed their homework began to grow in consciousness over time.

Open up to new experiences.

Make more time for cultural activities. Get ready to adopt an exploratory, experimental thinking style, start reading more, attend theatrical performances, and learn to play musical instruments. It will change your personality and open up new experiences.
Crosswords and Sudoku are based on induction — from the puzzles to the general. Subjects aged 60 to 94 were taught to solve crosswords and number puzzles. After that, they were more open to new things than people without prior training.
See photos and videos from your archive. It increases creativity. Significant events of the past, especially meetings with close friends and relatives, increase self-esteem. They encourage optimism.
Go in for sports. Regular physical activity, gym, and daily walks. After observing several thousand people over 50 years, scientists found that older people remained open to new experiences. Their less mobile peers did not want to learn new things. An active lifestyle is one of the most prominent ways to improve your personality.
See the world through the eyes of a child. It's like seeing everything for the first time. Admire foliage patterns, birdsong, and architecture. Admiration opens up new experiences.

Be kinder

Recently, German scientists described a method of self-knowledge based on the reflection of characters within your personality. You will better understand your character if you can trace yourself as the Powerful Parent, Joyful Inner Child, Traumatized Inner Child, and others. And you will be more empathetic toward others.
Meditate. Half an hour of self-observation a day is sure to increase empathy. Mindfulness makes you attentive to your thoughts and experiences while remaining an observer. You will become more attentive and caring. Read Seven ways to increase empathy.
Read good fiction. Novels with a multi-layered plot and complex characters teach us to look at events from different points of view and consider other people's emotions and motives. It is necessary to learn to empathize.
Spend time with “outsiders” — people of different cultures or ethnicities. Sign up for a sports club attended by members of ethnic minorities. Italian psychologists, testing hundreds of high school students twice a year, found that those who interacted closely with immigrant classmates during the school year became more friendly (unlike peers without similar experience).

Cultivate extraversion

Learn a foreign language associated with a more extroverted cultural context than your native language. Speaking a foreign language, you adopt some personality traits considered stereotypical for the culture in which the language developed.
Speak like an extrovert — you can speak in your language. Extroverts speak more fluently and abstractly than introverts. They say bluntly: “Let's have a drink!” — unlike introverts: “Why don't we have a drink?” Extroverts, as it was, let in an element of risk and chance, reflecting their approach to life.
Use the if-then algorithm. For example: “If I find myself on a train next to a stranger, I will make at least one attempt to start a conversation.”
Find a social friend or partner. Studies of young people of both sexes show that they increase extroversion after the first romantic relationship experience.
Be more confident in yourself. Do it, various, including controversial, psychological techniques are used, for example, power posing: take the pose of a superhero, putting your hands on your sides and legs wide apart, as if taking up more space in space. Try some rituals from athletes' arsenal if this thought makes you laugh. For example, fasten your shirt in a strictly defined way. Rituals will increase your self-confidence, even if you think they are devoid of logic deep down. Read Five ways to become more confident instantly.
Make friends with anxiety. Introverts suppress physical sensations such as heart palpitations and adrenaline rushes. It is what extroverts are looking for. Introverts can learn to tolerate better and even enjoy such sensations (and thus become more courageous and love risk), interpreting them not as signs of anxiety but as manifestations of spiritual uplift.

Take the Menteora career guidance test; artificial intelligence will name your most suitable professions. The accuracy of the test is 70-80% because we use a mathematical-statistical algorithm (read about Menteora's unique career guidance methodology).