Personality Reinvention Through Displacement

“The first lesson is that it is possible to change your current reality by changing yourself. This is probably best done when your personality is more angular, plastic, undefined – certainly in your twenties, though I have seen people change for the better at any age. To reinvent yourself, you need to go away – away from home, away from friends, away from co-workers, away from your job, away from your state or region and from your country. Personality reinvention is the ultimate in reality distortion – changing yourself is both easier and more likely to change your prospects than changing the world around you. It’s not a good idea to take personality change too far, but self-improvement is always possible, and easier if you move to a more positive, outgoing, dynamic place.”

“‘There is nothing,’ he wrote, ‘like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered”