Mark Manson

And it's a trait, which means I'm probably not going to change it.

But this is who I am.

But it's an adaptation.

It's a story.

It's a narrative.

It's a habit that I picked up and I can change that.

And like distinguishing between those two things is is absolutely fundamental.

So I guess that raises the question is what are the fundamental traits?

And we've already talked about the big five, right?

We've already talked about how predictive they are, how they can predict health outcomes, relationship quality, career success, go down the list.

The big five predicts it as well or better than pretty much anything we've ever found.

There are traits that we carry that we can't really change that are not limited to personality traits, like, like chronotype, for instance, right?

Like we'll,

We've talked before about how some people are just naturally genetically predisposed to be night owls and some people are just naturally predisposed to be morning people.

And understanding which one you are and working with it rather than like fighting against it is way more effective.

So like I would throw chronotype in there as like another example of a trait that you should just identify and then accept rather than trying to change.

Yeah.

I think what you alluded to there is kind of a blank slate philosophy, right?

Yes.

blank slate ism comes from john lock in the 17th century and he wrote essays concerning human understanding and in that book he argued that human beings are born tabula rasa which is blank slate or it's like an empty tile right that is meant to be written on and so everything of who we are comes from our environment and our early experiences this idea persists even today like you you run into this you don't run into it so much in psychology departments probably as much other