Acting Your Way Into Change

Welcome back to our ongoing series on the interplay of principles and personalities. This is the third and final installment, where we continue to explore the theme of principles before personalities.

Two weeks ago, we delved into how principles shape our personalities. Last week, we explored the power of living with rigorous honesty in accordance with our principles rather than hiding behind performative personality masks.

This week we return to the interplay of principles and personalities.

Principles determine our personalities; however, the relationship between principles and personalities is reciprocal: Personalities can affect principles, which, in turn, precede and predict our personalities.

Our principles will change if we frequently and habitually display a performative personality. If we hold the principle that the world owes us favours, we will have an entitled and angry personality. But if day after day, we put on a mask and live performatively, serving those around us, we will find that our principles change. One day, we will find that we have become, at a principled level, kind and considerate, even when we are not paying attention. We will have established a new principle of living.

This is the truth in the aphorism, “We can act our way into a new way of thinking.” Personalities, habitually adopted, can affect principles.