Change and Adversity - Dmitry Kudryavtsev

One of the biggest questions that I’d like to know the answer to, is: “Is it possible to change yourself, and how much control you have over this decision?” Sure, there are people who claim to have made a 180 degrees personality changes, but — aside from the fact that I can’t verify random online claims — assuming it’s true, I wonder, did they have/had a predisposition to make this change?

Some time ago, I came back from the gym and caught my wife watching a new video from Yes Theory. To those who don’t know what Yes Theory is, it’s a community that believes that the best, and most fulfilling life things happen outside your comfort zone. In fact, I have introduced my wife to their channel long time ago, but like most channels, I stopped watching them when the content became repetitive and boring. Nevertheless, she offered me to watch the video with her, and I agreed.

The video in questions is about surviving the deadliest military training on earth. In the video, the guys from Yes Theory join a 3-day (if I recall correctly) military training with Finnish soldiers in -36C. By the end of the video, I had a revelation that might provide an answer to my biggest question.

In the video, the guys are given tasks by the Finnish soldier, and then are left to complete these tasks. These tasks include skiing for the whole day, building a shelter, sleeping the night outside, as well as jumping into cold water. They are being monitored by a doctor for frostbites, but nevertheless, the experience looks tough, and some of them do experience long-lasting damage, as well as mental breakdown.

I always thought that overcoming adversity builds character. In tough situations, you can overcome your pre-programmed beliefs and behaviors and emerge as a new person. But I’ve observed something different in the video. One of the guys in the video, was also in other videos and experiments such as: hiking 5 days in a tropical climate to reach a Mayan pyramid, sleeping on a bed located above a canyon, visiting dangerous countries, performing dangerous hikes and mountain climbs, and more.

Given the sheer adversity this person had to overcome, one would assume that he would develop a resilient character. But that’s not what I observed in that video. In that video, he showed the same character traits as in other videos. And this made me think: maybe adversity does not build character after all?

Sure, this is not a scientific experiment, and sure one might claim that a handful of adverse experience is not enough to fundamentally change the person’s character. But this seems to correlate pretty well with my experience and observations. In my theory, your character traits are developed in early age. I don’t know the exact number, but I’d suspect it’s somewhere around the ages of 5 to 18. These are the ages when the brain is still rapidly developing, and the child builds their character by being exposed to the environment.

But then, what’s the role of adverse experience? In my theory, the role of adverse experience is not to build your character, but rather to show you your character.

Are you a quitter? Then chances are you will quit mid-way through every hard situation you encounter. Are you an empathetic person? Then chances are you will stop to help every struggling individual, rather than pass by them. But why does it matter, you might ask?

Well, it fundamentally changes the entire self development mantra. If your character is built/defined in your childhood/teenage years, then “everyone can make a change” type of messages, are useless, because you can’t make a change. Whether you are a fight or a flight personality, has nothing to do with how you want to react to hard situations in your adult life, but has everything to do with how you reacted to hard situations in your childhood/teenage years. You can’t^* become a fight personality if your whole childhood/teenage years you were a flight personality, just by putting yourself into situations where you could fight, because your default response is flight. And it doesn’t really matter how many situations you will put yourself into.

Now, notice I used ^* on the “can’t”. This asterisk means that this is the most probable outcome. Your basic personality traits are somehow defined by the environment, and your reaction to it, during your childhood/teenage years. And in a moment of truth, your brain defaults to these reactions. Can they be changed? I guess so, but it depends on a lot of factors.

Self-awareness is one of them, but it’s very hard to be self-aware in challenging situations. Brain plasticity and your will-power to change, also play a role, but I guess the older we get, the less we are willing to change, and the less plastic our brain becomes.

This then means that all these seminars, courses, training programs, and other new-age stuff — doesn’t really work. I remember long time ago, about 15 years ago, I’ve read about a self-improvement challenge on Reddit. It’s called “Project Mayhem” (as a reference to Fight Club, I guess) and the purpose of this project was to build confidence. It included a list of challenges such as:

Ordering a BigMac in a restaurant that does not serve BigMac
Wearing a tuxedo in public
Trying new food
Going to a new town by yourself

I don’t have the entire list, and I can’t seem to find any reference to it, but the idea was to put yourself outside your comfort zone in order to build confidence. And today, I believe that in order to be useful, it needs to be done at the right age, otherwise there is a high chance you won’t do it, because you already lack self-confidence. You are just not the kind of person that will order a BigMac in a place that does not serve one, and doing so, won’t undo years of conditioning and resorting to default behavior, but would rather induce a sense of shame, guilt, fear, or anxiety.

I don’t think this means you should avoid doing uncomfortable stuff. And I still believe that the only way to grow is outside your comfort zone, but I’d be wary of claims that promise you to transform your personality in 48 hours, or with 22 daily challenges. I’ve read numerous books on self-development, and despite the fact that I try to implement lessons and tactics from these books, I’m nowhere near being the 2.0 version of myself. More like 1.062 version of myself. Because a self-development book, and a handful of challenging situations won’t undo years of preconditioned behavior.

And to all the people who read this and say yes, but I was able to change my life, I’d argue that you already had these personality traits, but you might have convinced yourself that you lack, for example, self-confidence (or didn’t have much chance to exert it). Hence, when you picked up a book on self-confidence, it just helped you to structure what you already knew, and challenging situations showed you who you already are. Because books rarely teach us something new, they just help us validate what we already know is true. And adverse situations were designed to show you your personality, rather than alter it.

The old cliché of “people don’t change, they just become more of who they really are”, is probably more true than we think.

In the end, you have spent years, if not decades, reacting in a particular way, and it will take you the same time, if not more, in order to reverse the damages. I suspect that people who would want to change a particular personality trait they’ve adopted say, by the age of 14, will have to dedicated at least 14 years of constant attempts to react differently during adverse situations. And the later you start, the harder it will be, because as you age, you lose brain plasticity, and will-power.