At this point, you’re not just in a mood. You’re reflecting a temperament,
a tendency toward the habitual expression of an emotion through certain
behaviors. A temperament is an emotional reaction with a refractory period
that lasts from weeks to months.
Eventually, if you keep the refractory period of an emotion going for
months and years, that tendency turns into a personality trait. At that point
others will describe you as “bitter” or “resentful” or “angry” or
“judgmental.”
Our personality traits, then, are frequently based in our past emotions.
Most of the time, personality (how we think, act, and feel) is anchored in
the past. So to change our personalities, we have to change the emotions
that we memorize. We have to move out of the past.
Figure 4B. The progression of different refractory periods. An experience
creates an emotional reaction, which then can turn into a mood, then into a
temperament, and finally into a personality trait. We, as personalities,
memorize our emotional reaction and live in the past.We Can’t Change When Living in the Predictable Future