Could we change our Temperament if we wanted to?

Like it is said in the QOTW post this question will be be a little like deep sea diving into your head... Have you ever written about or even looked into your own temperament?

Sure I've had a few check-ins with myself here and there and I know some aspects of my temperament, but I'm sure this exercise will be quite rhe treasure trove!!!

Whatever I come back up to the surface with, I want to make sure I can use both good and bad artifacts to understand and better myself.

I try to live by the four agreements but it's not always easy to remember especially perhaps when that temperament takes over.

In brief, Don Miguel Ruiz, is an author of Toltec spiritualist and neoshamanistic texts. The Four Agreements advocate personal freedom from beliefs and agreements that we have made with ourselves and others that are creating limitation and unhappiness in our lives.

• Be impeccable with your word.
• Don't take anything personally.
• Don't make assumptions.
• Always do your best.

These four actions can really change one's life. They're pretty simple when you think about it like that, but in practice it's a very different srory. I have found this philosophy to be extremely powerful. It can really effect one's behavior for the better and be very uplifting.

But is that my temperament, am I changing my nature or merely learning to control it?

I've been on this kick lately to find the origin of some of the words we use, so let's see what TEMPERAMENT has to offer...:

A couple definitions, not in my own words:

The combination of mental, physical, and emotional traits of a person; natural predisposition.

A person's or animal's nature, especially as it permanently affects their behavior.

The word traces back to a Latin word, temperare, which means "to mix or blend."source

A little history from Britannica:

Galen, the Greek physician of the 2nd century AD, who developed it from an earlier physiological theory of four basic body fluids (humours): blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.
According to their relative predominance in the individual, they were supposed to produce, respectively, temperaments designated sanguine (warm, pleasant), phlegmatic (slow-moving, apathetic), melancholic (depressed, sad), and choleric (quick to react, hot tempered).

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So if our temperament is dictated by which body fluid has dominion over the others, than surely we could change our natural predisposition through nutrition, no?

But to go back to @Eco-Alex's question, in my own words temperament is just one's nature. While my temper can effect my behaviors, I've learned to controle the dark side.

I am understanding, easy going, very flexible, yet very stubborn, and here and there I feel that beast wanting to come out... I have had my fair share of explosions. I can defenitely blow a fuse when I am pushed hard enough!

I remember being 15 or 16 years old, I had just gotten into a fight with my step father. To make a story short, he did something that made me mad concerning my mother and my little brother, so I threw the content of a pint size glass into his face... I'm pretty sure he didn't appreciate the vitamine C (with lots of pulp) all over him, because I found myself, feet off the ground, up against the nearest wall!

And everyone was screaming, my little 2 year old brother included. My poor mother, this was the second time she'd seen her husband and her sun get into an altercation of that magnitude. I mean he was super pissed off!!!

I remember a second layer of anger coming accross my body when I had noticed my favorite Iron Maiden t-shirt had been ripped when he picked me up with both his hands. Oh I knew the beast was coming out in me... But I let it all happen, knowing damn well it probably wouldn't turn out great at all.

There's a bit of a dark spot in the story, a small piece I cannot remember. What is clear though is that I ended up outside, knowing he was coming back up the hill (he had gone for a drive, maybe to step away from the situation in order to calm down). I picked up a stone, the size of a cinder block, I was going to throw it into his windshield.

I'm not sure what happened, but as I got ready to launch this small boulder into his oncoming vehicle, something came over me and I imediately dropped the idea.

I remember a clear image of what would have happened with the cliff at the top of that hill and thinking:

Holy shit, I probably would have killed him if I hadn't stopped. What he fuck am I doing???

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So yeah, here it is, one of my stories on the dark side of my temperament. There are more, but none quite as intense as this one. There's a police chase I can tell you about one day, that had to do with my stubbornness and thinking I could outsmart a network of radio communication... I have a clear problem with authority! They got me in the end, with a couple guns pointed at my head and a few lashes of the baton! And another gun pointed at me story, at a much younger age... I remember running as fast as I could in zig-zags across a parking lot, away from that mad-man I had angered! That one makes me chuckle a little because, had he decided to shoot, all that zig-zagging wouldn't have helped all that much, but hey at 11 years old.. what are you gonna do?

My step father and I get along great now, we talk a lot and when one or the other feels there is a little too much friction starting we take a walk alone, reflect and exhale. We don't talk about it but we apologize almost everytime! It seems to work very well for both of us.

And police, well let's just say I found a way to avoid them mostly...

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This temperament of mine has a dark side yes but it has some really good sides as well... I like to help people whenever possible!

Perhaps the use of entheogens could change one's temperament. I recently heard a conversation on the subject. Teacher plants can give us the ability to permanently change our behaviors. Looks like I may have worked on myself, somewhat unconsciously.

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Hey @eco-alex, thank you for this question, I enjoyed diving in. I could have kept on writting about the many good and bad places my temperament has brought me, but opening up with that story took a bit more courage than I thought.

I am happy to find out I do not have a killer instinct and I can kind of see clearly that there has been many events in the last decade or two which wpuld have pushed me over the edge in the past! Though I can see that there was always something holding me back too!