He's not me

Can you change your personality?  This is a question I have thought about and answered before, my answer then was yes, but I am beginning to question that - based on my own experience and based on what I see in others.  I have tried to change my personality in the past and changed many things in my life, a few of them quite major but no matter how long I hold on to those changes, I always come back to being "myself".

To date the longest change that I maintained was for 4 years - part of that was at University and the rest was after I graduated, but I eventually found it too much stress to maintain a personality that did not reflect how I really felt on the inside so eventually I went back to being "the real me".

The motivation for this post has come from seeing friends around me trying to change their lives.  I don't want to be cynical and "jinx" their efforts or be discouraging but at the same time I can't spur them on with vigour in an endeavour that deep down I believe is pointless or wasted effort.  Really what this comes down to is whether or not you should stand back and let others make their own mistakes - then again, this shows I believe they will fail, they might not, there is always the possibility that I am wrong and they will succeed.

I don't believe you can deny who you are forever, but I have always believed that just because someone else has tried and failed that does not mean that you will fail.  I have never been one to accept that because someone else, or even everyone else, who tried failed, was a justification for me not trying or that others should try and stop me.  For me personally I can't accept that, I have to be allowed to make my own mistakes. 

So I am at conflict.  On one hand I believe it's not possible to change who you are and feel that I should try and stop them making the same mistakes - on the other hand I know that I would not want to be stopped, I would want to make my own mistakes, it is the only way that I can be satisfied that it is not possible.

Through all this I know one thing that keeps resurfacing as the only truth that I can accept from this scenario with resolution:  They are not me.