I’ve been reading an excellent book that I may have mentioned here before. The book is called “Personality Isn’t Permanent,” and it’s by Benjamin Hardy.  Hardy starts out by telling us that all those personality tests we just love to take are bunkum. They’re meaningless, he says, because personality isn’t a fixed thing.  Now if you’ve heard me talk about mindset before, particularly the difference between having a growth mindset and having a fixed mindset, you already know that personality isn’t fixed. You already know that we can grow and change in all areas of our lives including our intelligence, our abilities, our character, and our personality.  This book reinforces the fact that the growth mindset is the mindset we should all have because regardless of a personality test that might tell us we’re flamboyant or reserved or talkative or quiet, we have the power to change those things. In other words, we aren’t our characteristics. The truth is that we exhibit certain characteristics but we aren’t those characteristics. We behave in certain ways, but we aren’t held to those behaviors. We can always choose to change our behavior. I’ll give you a personal example. As a kid, I was painfully shy. I didn’t make friends easily, I didn’t like being the center of attention, and if there was some sort of play or performance that I had to be in, I was in it against my will. I remember one play that I was required to be in where I went after the role of…chair. That meant that I had to hold up a piece of paper board onto which a chair had been painted. No speaking lines, no showing my face, none of that. I hid behind the chair and was perfectly happy to play that role.  But I didn’t want to be shy. I wanted to make friends and to not be so intimidated by so many situations. Think about it – this world is hard for shy people. Whether it’s being called on to read aloud in class or being expected to participate in college or being required to make presentations in our professional lives, there’s a lot of putting ourselves out there in life. And for shy people, that can be extremely painful. I was tired of feeling that way, so one day, I decided that I wasn’t going to be shy anymore.  I decided to change my identity, to shed my identity as a shy person and put on the identity of an outgoing person. How did I do it?  Listen to this episode to find out how I did it and how you can too! If you’re working to change something and feeling overwhelmed, you need to run now and grab my free download called “Overcoming Overwhelm.” This short but powerful pdf will help you get out from under overwhelm and get back in control. Click here to request it. And if you’re not already in our private Facebook group, pop over and join us. Click here. My new program, Your 90-Day Change Plan, is launching soon. You can learn more on my website. Click here to check it out! Finally, if there’s something change-related that you’d like to hear me talk about on this podcast, please send me your suggestions. Email me at gina@ginamariehunt.com Make sure you’re subscribed to the You CAN Change Your Life podcast, and I’ll see you here next week!