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Can You Change Your Personality?

Robin Nemesszeghy
Personality Solutions
7 min readFeb 21, 2022
Photo by Sammy Williams on Unsplash

One of the questions I get asked the most as an MBTI specialist is whether personality can change over time. I always give the same answer: both yes and no. Allow me to elaborate.

The Big Five vs. Myers-Briggs

There are two main theories I’ve contended with over the years:

  1. The Big Five
  2. The MBTI (Myers-Briggs)

People often argue over which theory is more “accurate”. But I don’t think this is the right question to be asking. I think it depends on the context. Both these theories are useful in their own settings, as I will talk about in this post.

People also tend to write the MBTI off as being too rigid, as “putting people in a box”, and as not accounting for the change in individuals over time. This is an issue with the way the MBTI is usually shown by popular sites such as 16 personalities. In this post, I will address why the MBTI is more open to the changing traits of the individual than you might initially think (but also, not in the way you would think).

Big Five — Ideal for Research

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Personality Solutions
Personality Solutions

Published in Personality Solutions

Using personality type theory to help couples, coworkers, friends, and families understand each other and communicate better — by helping them uncover unconscious processes that might be sabotaging their connection.

Robin Nemesszeghy
Robin Nemesszeghy

Written by Robin Nemesszeghy

Little Red Bird, flitting around to deliver words to the page | Creative Thinker & Writer | MBTI Specialist & Personality Coach | Editor & Book Coach

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