A while after susancain.net/book/quietcame out, my old college friend, Stacey, got in touch. Stacey and I used to spend hour after hour discussing the personality traits of everyone we knew, including our own selves.

“I can’t believe you managed to make a career out of all those late night conversations!” she said.

That made me laugh. I’d never thought of it that way. But she was so right.

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Which brings me to today’s Kindred Letter - which is actually a guest post from my friend, the great psychologist, Scott Barry Kaufman - our guest on this coming Sunday’s Candlelight Chat (which will be on Zoom)!

Below are SBK’s thoughts on certain personality traits — and whether and how you can change them, if you’d like to.

Before you start reading, I’d like to introduce a philosophical question to this discussion, which is:

SHOULD we try to change our personality traits? Or is the better path to embrace radical self-acceptance?

My own bias is toward the latter approach. Arguably, self-acceptance (and from there, acceptance of others) is the heart and soul of everything I write.

But at the same time, we all have aspects of ourselves that we just don’t like, and that could (should?) be improved.

I still tend to think we should accept our underlying personalities, while seeking to change behavior patterns that don’t serve us well.

But, is this just a semantic difference?

No doubt SBK and I will discuss this on Sunday. :) And you can ask him your questions, too.

In the meantime - here he is, now, with some excellent, thought-provoking, and research-based ideas on how to make the changes you seek.

susancain.substack.com/…