A practitioner asks: “To what extent can willpower change personality traits? It is a popular idea that people can choose to be their best self or decide to become more tolerant, assertive or friendly, etc. But how much is personality genetically determined and unchangeable, and how much is personality a result of the influence of environmental factors such as lifestyle, parenting, or social class?” What can Creator tell us?

The mainstream psychologists are woefully ignorant, as is true of human society in general, about what makes a person a human being and all that goes into their makeup, their proclivities, their personality, their strengths and weaknesses, their flexibility, and on and on. It is presumed to be genetic, at least in part, and the rest environmental influences, but this is a highly erroneous perspective. Such things as you are describing are a function of soul attributes, not truly genetics, and the karmic influences of other lifetimes. In other words, prior history but not necessarily prior genetics. There is a certain component of the genetic complement arranged before they enter life by the individual who incarnates. This is done through careful planning while still in the heavenly realm, to have a certain makeup, a certain composite nature, and wherewithal suitable for the plans and challenges ahead they wish to tackle. So the ability to alter things is done within the divine realm, not when you are here stepping into your role as an incarnated human given the platform you take on, the developing fetus of the mother and all that goes into its makeup, physically and genetically. It is the greater influence of soul attributes that will really be determining what can be done easily and what is more challenging because a soul attribute might be less expressed or counteracted to some extent by an opposing force, on the part of another soul attribute, that has a different kind of agenda and characteristic. The ability of willpower is meager to alter one's makeup and destiny. To be sure, self‑discipline and planning, and the dedication and passion one brings go a long way in determining what might be at least malleable. In other words, modifiable to some degree, at least to perhaps make an improvement through sheer determination and persistence, but those qualities are also soul attributes. So the extent one can muster willpower sufficient for the task is yet another set of variables that are preexisting, so one must have the wherewithal to use so-called "free will," in a practical sense, in order to have any degree of success. In most cases, there will be modest gains but rarely something transformational unless what one desires to accomplish has simply been hindered, perhaps by life circumstances, so that if one finds a way to wriggle free from the grip of negativity, the true inner nature can then be unleashed and become a source of strength, even unexpectedly. If it has been suppressed for a long period of time, this complicates the picture and one never knows for sure these kinds of details, because humans are not consciously aware of karma and its workings, nor their predisposition to have a certain soul profile. So we would say that the ability to modify things is modest and only possible with inner wherewithal that has been bestowed through divine planning and soul makeup from the point of creation.