I’ve been obsessed with self-improvement for as long as I can remember, and I’ve emulated the people I respect, created lists of personality traits I attempted to form, dreamt about people I wanted to be, etc. But I’ve always ultimately failed to achieve the results I desired. My ability to become more than who I am has been an incredibly slow and tedious process. But recently I thought of an interesting experiment to try specifically regarding altering ones personality.
Say you have a person like myself who wants rapid, significant change. And we decide to find the overlapping personality traits they most desire from various characters and people they respect. We eliminate conflicting traits and are left with a complete description of a fictional character most desired by this person. From here we enact a single, strict rule; that whenever the person in question deviates from their desired persona, they must stop all activity and meditate. And regardless of deviation, meditation should still be required every 3-4 hours (this is technically arbitrary, whatever feels necessary should be used).
The point of the meditation is to restore control over the mind by focusing on breathing and calming oneself. Once achieved, the person runs through a mental checklist of personality traits and notes regarding the persona. Once completed they end meditation and return to playing out the role of this character.
My hypothesis is that, if diligently pursued, a person could rapidly alter their personality by weakening neurons of their original personality and strengthening these new ones. We all know that humans are adaptable and can assimilate into any environment, and if people hear something long enough they tend to believe it. I would imagine this person could achieve significant personality change in just a few short weeks and permanent change after consistent practice.
What do you think? Do you think this is possible? And please disregard any comments stating “this is a bad idea”, “that’s sad, you should appreciate who you are”, etc. I am well aware of all this and find that ordinary people use it to justify their weaknesses. Although I’ll admit that after researching Buddhism, higher states of happiness and contentment can be reached by eliminating desires like these. And we can’t ignore that this line of thinking is inherently bad because it causes unrealistic expectations and depression.
Update: Related to this was another question regarding experimental meditation. Could a person, summoning emotions and fluctuating between them, learn to summon them at will later on? For instance, if you meditated and imagined happy thoughts and followed them up by things that made you angry. Could you eventually have more control over those emotions?