The Place-Personality Pendulum

You ever notice how place-dependent our personalities can be?

Like, you know how some spaces that make us come alive?Maybe for you it was the excitement you felt when you last went to an amusement park. Or the peace you feel when you last looked at a forest in autumn. Or even just the comfort you feel returning back home after a long day.

These places are our identity amplifiers — the ones where we feel most ourselves.

On the opposite side of the spectrum there are the spaces that act as identity dampeners — the ones that seem to make us lose sight of who we are.

A mindset I've been resonating with lately is that every place has something to teach us about ourselves. So a question I've been asking is “where are my soulmate spaces?”. Where are the places that will make me feel the most alive?

https://twitter.com/LamarElimbo/status/1666448896401330181?s=20

You ever notice how place-dependent our personalities can be?

Like how some spaces make us come alive?

Maybe for you it's the excitement you feel when you go to amusement parks 🎢

Or the peace you feel when looking at a forest in autumn 🍂

These places are our identity amplifiers. The ones where we feel most like ourselves.

On the opposite side of the spectrum...

there are the spaces that act as identity dampeners. The ones that seem to make us lose sight of who we are.

Like when an introvert feels their personality dissolve when they walk into a crowded room.

Or when we see videos of mob mentality or experience instances of the bystander effect.

A mindset I've been resonating with lately is that every place has something to teach us about ourselves.

So a question I've been asking myself is “where are my soulmate spaces?”.

Where are the places that make me feel the most alive?

The way I see it everywhere we go we’re at the whim of a Place-Personality Pendulum: a constant recalibration of our personality depending on the environment we’re in.

When it comes to how places make us feel, I think that there are 2 main spectrums at play:

1. Does a place make us more or less connected to the person we are / want to be?
2. Does a place amplify or dampen the personality we’re wearing? Does it give our persona a megaphone or a gag?

On the top-left of the pendulum are places that make us feel possessed. We look back at how we acted or felt in those spaces and question: "how could I have acted that way? Who even was that person? Maybe we felt the need to play some sort of character in order to fit into our surroundings.

On the bottom-left of the pendulum are places that put us into zombie mode. They are the soul-sucking spaces that seem to smother our personalities. It's what I'd imagine I'd feel like if I woke up in the military barracks of an army movie like Men of Honor or Cadet Kelly.

When it comes to the left side of the pendulum, few things can illustrated the power of an environment that disconnects us from ourselves like the Zimbardo Prison Experiment.

The Zimbardo Prison Experiment, conducted in 1971, aimed to investigate the psychological effects of perceived power on individuals in a simulated prison environment. Participants were randomly assigned as prisoners or guards in a mock prison. However, the study spiralled out of control as the guards became increasingly abusive and the prisoners endured psychological distress. The experiment was abruptly terminated after six days due to ethical concerns. It highlighted the potential for ordinary individuals to exhibit cruel and dehumanizing behaviour when placed in positions of authority and the importance of ethical guidelines in psychological research.

While places in the upper-left corner amplify the parts of our personality we least like, the ones in the upper-right corner amplify the parts of ourselves that we most like. These are places that I'm dubbing Les Chambres de Chat du Cheshire (my desperate attempt to conjure my high school french in order to take advantage of the tongue twisting alliteration which loosely translates to Cheshire Cat Rooms). These are the ones where we can't help but smile — the spaces that for some reason make our personality shine.

Finally, in the bottom-right of the pendulum are the zen places we love to go when we want to mellow. Research on places where we experience awe, for example, have demonstrated its ability to inhibit our ego-centric thinking. They compel us to zoom our focus off of ourselves and onto the greater world.

As we move through the world, our place-personality pendulum is in constant motion. And it makes me wonder:

• What if we treated our pendulum like a game of hot and cold? Where we keep an ongoing monitor of whether we're getting hotter or colder from the places that make us feel most like ourselves. Can we more easily live life as our true selves if we hunt down our Chambres de Chat du Cheshire?
• How can we protect ourselves against possession? Is there a practice we can implement or some training we can go through to ensure our ideal personality remains consistent in the face of spaces we don't resonate with?
• What's the easiest personality spark of ours to maintain? In those prison / army movies, some characters never seem to completely lose their spark. What's the baseline personality trait we'll hold onto no matter what?
• Assuming that both monk and Cheshire modes have their benefits, what's our ideal balance? How much time should we be / have we been spending in each?

https://twitter.com/LamarElimbo/status/1668254376358494210?s=20

The way I see it, everywhere we go, we are at the whim of a Place-Personality Pendulum.

A constant recalibration of our personality depending on the environment we’re in.

When it comes to which personality we use, I think that there are 2 main spectrums at play:

1️⃣ Does a place make us more or less connected to the person we are / want to be?

2️⃣ Does a place amplify or dampen our current persona?

👻 Top-left of the pendulum: places that make us feel possessed.

We look back at how we acted or felt in those spaces & question: "How could I have acted that way? Who even was that person?

Think Black Friday type mob mentality and bystander effects.

🧟 Bottom-left of the pendulum: places that put us into zombie mode.

They are the soul-sucking spaces that smother our personalities.

Think military barracks of army movies like Cadet Kelly.

😸 Upper-right corner: places amplify the parts of ourselves that we most like.

The Cheshire Cat Rooms.

These are the ones where we can't help but smile.

The spaces that for some reason make our personality shine.

🧘🏽‍♂️ Finally, on the bottom-right are the zen places we go to when we want to mellow.

Research on places where we experience awe, for example, have demonstrated an ability to inhibit ego-centric thinking.

They help us feel connected with the greater world.

Identity Strippers

I judge people before even speaking to them.

I don't tend to believe in my judgements until they're confirmed, but I definitely make it a habit of channeling my inner Criminal Minds-esque profiling abilities to imagine up a personality profile for people I don't know.

Posture, style, accessories, aesthetics, grooming, pace, affect, social company, volume, vigilance, scent, expression, clothing, smile...it all factors in.

I watched an Architectural Digest video recently and this clip drew my attention to places that strip people of their outward identity markers.

🔗 / Architectural Digest Video /

I think this notion of a sauna as a place where pre-judgement nearly ceases to exist is really fascinating. It got me wondering:

• What other places lend to strip outward individuality? Any place where a uniform is prescribed, I'd assume.
• What places tend to increase our judgements toward others based on their outward appearance? Thinking of those fancy shops in Pretty Woman.
• In which circumstances would a lack of outward individuality be discerning vs alarming? In the video about the saunas, it seems that a lack of identity markers put people at ease and made it easier for them to commingle. But at the same time, I could easily imagine feeling on edge around someone who I couldn’t figure out. I wonder what the balance is here?