Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

When is our personality shaped?

Well, there's two pieces of personality.

We're born, the sort of the genetic part of personality, if you will, it's called our temperament.

Our temperament. Temperament. Our temperament. You're born and you're either a cryer or not a crier or you're... I can make it ultra simple. Like, you know, there's some kids out there who have really difficult temperament. So born into the world, difficult. Talk to a parent, they're kids who are difficult to soothe, to make them stop crying, to help them sleep. As time goes on, they're just difficult kids. They don't play as nice. They have low frustration tolerance. They're difficult with their siblings. They're punchy, fighty. They get to school. They can't sit still. They're always getting into trouble. And none of the adults like them. So these kids with these difficult temperaments actually have this relationship with the world that's pretty unpleasant. Everyone's like, sit down, stop that, don't do that. And there's even this vibe these kids get, like nobody really wants to spend time with them, right? Because they're a real handful. Is it their fault? I mean, they can't really change that when you're five. No, you can't. But the difficult temperament's a risk factor for the adult narcissistic personality.

Now, not everybody with a difficult temperament goes on to become narcissistic.

So it's not a slam dunk, but it's definitely when we tell that story backwards.

Every narcissistic client I've ever worked with, without exception, had a difficult temperament as a child. So that either they, every so often I'd get lucky, they'd, we'd phone the parent during therapy and say, could we talk about this? Sometimes they'd ask the parent and the parent would come clean on that and say, yeah, you were a real hand. Because you had siblings, right? So they'd compare them to siblings. Some siblings have this great, easy temperament.

It's not quite, so temperament is that biological part of our personality.

It's how you might see your personality in either one of your parents or in a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle.

You'll say, wow, I have such a similar personality to them.

That's the genetics of it.

All the rest of it is shaped by the world.

Environment, parents, society, how you were treated and what you're exposed to.

Exactly.

So if you had a, let's say, a challenging temperament growing up, is there hope for you to, you know,

I guess shift your personality into a different style with environment.

I think so. I think so. I think a couple of things have to happen. That kid needs to be met where they're at.

So let's say you have a boy with a difficult temperament who's just energy and you get them into athletics.

Yes. Or you get them into something where they're using their hands, whatever that might be, building things or something like that.

And you really are with them.

Instead of saying you're being so bad, you're so difficult,

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