I Thought This Was Just Who I Was
I thought my personality was fixed from birth.
People called me shy. Weird. Quiet.
Eventually, I stopped asking whether those things were true. I simply accepted them as who I was.
But years later, I realized something that completely changed how I understood personality.
What if the personality you’ve accepted for years isn’t who you are?
What if it’s simply the one you’ve practiced the most?
I’m studying for school at home, I can barely get by.
I check my clock…
10 minutes.
I stop studying, hop on my bed. And procrastinate.
I always thought I was stupid and lazy.
I don’t want to study for this test today.
My mother tells me I’m so smart but I barely work.
She tells me I always refused to study, and my sister would always be the studious one.
I’m just stupid…
…
My mother hears a lovely tune from downstairs.
She thinks she’s dreaming…
She puts on her robe and walks downstairs with a drowsy expression…
There she sees me, playing the piano.
She is so impressed,
Wow Alex, how have you learnt so much so quick?
You’re so smart.
…
For once I had to agree a little bit.
She had come home from work seven hours before.
And, she saw me practicing this piece, River Flows in You.
By 7 hours I had already learnt most of the piece.
I only started playing because I wanted a better grade in music.
I never expected something I did for school...
to become the only schoolwork I genuinely wanted to do.
…
I end up getting the end of year grades.
Music: A
For years I thought I was lazy. But when something genuinely interested me, I practiced for seven hours without anyone asking me to.
Nothing about me changed that day.
The only thing that changed was what I cared about.
I’m in my best friends face. All day I have so much energy.
I constantly try to wrestle with them…
Get their attention.
Just try to be annoying or funny.
Most of the time they get along with it…
But they always called me weird…
Alex, you’re so weird hah.
I didn’t even take offense to it most of the time…
I thought it was who I am…
But eventually, I wanted to become “normal” like them.
So I decide to act normal for a few hours…
…
I’m sitting there, not saying anything…
Not trying to do anything funny.
It’s so different from who I am…
After a few hours I have to give up.
I physically can’t be “normal”
Maybe…
I’m just weird…
I didn’t merely think I was weird. I stopped letting people know me because I believed knowing me would make them uncomfortable.
…
I never knew it would affect every interaction with people.
I’m in a grocery story, trying to talk to the cashier…
I’m messing up all my words, I can barely talk to her.
Actually, almost everywhere I’ve started becoming less social.
I can barely get my thoughts out… and when I do it’s slurry and weird.
I had distanced myself from people, because I didn’t want to bother anyone.
The less I spent time with people, the more normal I would seem…
Because then I would show less of my weird sides.
As long as I avoid talking, I take no risks.
I didn’t know that my social skills would go through the dump.
…
When I wouldn’t speak…
My parents would call me a shy person.
Oh Alex, he is just a bit shy… He’ll come around.
So naturally, I acted like the shy and weird person.
The less I spoke, the less social practice I got.
And the identity started creating evidence for itself.
For years, I never questioned it.
Then I went somewhere nobody knew who I was.
To a new environment where different behaviors created different personalities.
I’m in South Africa, my father has been here 17 times. He loves the people here…
Okay…
Well I don’t really talk much to people so I’ll let him talk to everyone.
…
I’m in this restaurant in this place called Langebaan.
We sit beside the lagoon as the sun begins disappearing over the water.
A couple sits down next to us.
And before my father says anything...
I start speaking to them.
And immediately I just get a good feeling for them, and without my father…
I start speaking to them.
…
Next thing I know the sunset has fallen,
I had spoken more in a few hours there than I had in months back home.
Everyone at the restaurant genuinely wanted to talk and get to know about me…
And all of the sudden, I spoke like the opposite of a shy person.
…
I would dance with random strangers…
Go up to people and initiate conversations with them…
Try to understand everything about them…
Nothing magical happened.
I simply behaved differently long enough that new evidence appeared.
Maybe there wasn’t one real version of me hiding underneath.
Maybe there were many possible versions of me... and whichever one I practiced became the one that felt natural.
Looking back, shy, weird, and lazy weren’t permanent facts about me.
Those weren’t facts. They were conclusions.
Then I acted according to those conclusions until they began to feel like facts.
I spent years thinking my personality explained my behavior.
I never considered that my behavior was creating my personality.
…
Every time I spoke first, stayed in the conversation, or sat down at the piano, I
collected evidence for another version of myself. Eventually, that version began feeling natural too.
…
I kept waiting for change to feel natural before believing it was real.
But everything natural about me had once been practiced.
…
Maybe you’re not discovering who you are.
Maybe you’re practicing who you’ll become.