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Originally Posted by sillycat
... I have recently noticed that I would also try to mimic other peoples lives, for example if I read a book and I liked the main character, I would then try to mimic her personality traits in my life...
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I remember some time ago, when I wasn't at all sure what kind of person I wanted to be, looking to other people (living, historical or fictional) whose traits or thinking I admired and trying to copy them -- a piece or two from this one, a piece or two from that one. I eventually discovered two problems with that approach. One (probably the less important) was that the pieces I was collecting didn't always fit together well and didn't usually fit
me that well. The more important problem I discovered was that
none of the people I admired seemed to have gotten the way they were by copying anyone else.
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Does anyone have any particular ways of doing this? Are there any books which can be of help?
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I'm not quite sure where you're starting from. I can't come up with any good entry-level books at the moment. If you don't mind having to stand on tiptoe some of the time to grasp where the author is coming from, here are a couple I often found myself inspired by:
On Becoming a Person, Carl R. Rogers. Affordable and well worth having around, IMO.
Motivation and Personality, Abraham H. Maslow. Incredibly expensive, but you may be able to get it through a library. I found Chapter 12 ("Self-Actualizing People: a Study of Psychological Health") the most interesting -- but YMMV.