A major reason why people spend countless hours consuming content is because they fall in love with characters. Whether it’s for personal relatability, admirability, or something that they can’t quite put their finger on, people find themselves obsessing over the ways their favorite characters weave their way through entertaining experiences. And while everyone certainly has their favorite characters, everyones' favorite characters certainly aren’t the same.

For a moment, think about your favorite characters of all time across any setting (media, books, etc.). Encoded in your favorite characters, there’s a lot to learn about your own character. But most people don’t learn because they don’t look. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that looking at the character of others is much easier than looking inward at one’s own character. Even broader, it’s always easier to consume than to create.

Actually, gossip is just an ugly form of consuming the character of others. The gossiper gawks at others while commenting as if judging their character is their sport. But the gossiper is anything but a noble sportsman. Instead, they play the role of the coward who judges the character of others as a means to escape having to examine and develop their own character. ‘I can never find monsters under the bed if I don’t look for them,’ they say to themselves with their avoidance of introspection.

What everyone comes to find, though, is that the monsters hiding in the darkness of our character are there until we look for them, find them, and drag them out [kicking and screaming, of course]. Sure, everyone has monsters mucking up their character, but how do we find them. While there are many ways, a solid starting point is to look to others. Not so much in the literal sense, but more looking at the outcomes of our actions for others, along with how they may have reacted. When we improved the lives of others, that was probably the result of the positive traits of our character, and vice versa. Ultimately, our actions come from our character, so when someone distances us, it’s a way of them communicating that they don’t like our character.

One of the craziest parts about a person’s character is that it will totally develop on its own if the person doesn’t take an active role in developing it. Well, perhaps not on its own in the literal sense, but the subconscious stays busy developing our character to protect and feed our ego. See, everyone experiences trauma in different forms, and for each instance of trauma, our subconscious is careful to shape our identity and patterns towards avoiding or fixing the trauma. For example, if you ended up having a terrifyingly embarrassing experience public speaking, then your subconscious makes it a point to embed “I’m a bad public speaker” into you identity. Unbeknownst to you, unless you’re very careful to be aware, you’ll avoid public speaking in order to conform to the character your subconscious has created.

Again, if you’re not aware and proactive about shaping it, your character will become a complex piece of trauma patchwork. Here, it’s worth noting that trauma is what shapes each monster as it sneaks into a perfectly shaped cranny in the darkness of your subconscious. So when you go to find the monsters, you have to pay attention to their shape and characteristics as you’re dragging them from their comfortable lairs. Understanding each monster lets you know how it got there, and gives your conscious the chance to alter your character accordingly.

Altering your character is straightforward conceptually. It turns out that character and identity are nothing more than complex constructs in our mind. You can define the construct however you’d like. In other words, if you want to write a one-page creed for yourself that governs your identity, then you just need to spend enough time absorbing the creed that it finds priority in your subconscious. Of course, having an identity is one thing, but living your identity is another.

There’s a reinforcing relationship between having an identity and living it; the actions that make up your life affect how you see yourself and vice versa. Sure, being proactive about crafting your identity forms the main shape of your character, but integrity is what forms the structural foundation. Where integrity is the ability to consistently live into your desired and professed character. Both integrity and character are important, but you have to start by confidently articulating your character.