Years ago, I read a radical little book that changed everything I thought about leadership. The key idea of The Impersonal Life,written by Joseph Benner back in 1914,is that most human suffering comes from letting personality run our lives. It’s still true today.
Why Your Personality Is So Compelling
Personality refers to your conditioned self that’s shaped by your desires, fears, expectations, etc. It’s the part of you that says more money will finally make me safe, more power will finally give me control, more recognition will finally mean I matter.
Personality tracks status. It compares constantly and craves certainty. It aims to keep you safe. In modern life, those instincts attach themselves to money, power, and fame — socially approved stand-ins for safety and worth.
My point is not to reject money, power, and fame. It’s to stop letting your personality use them as substitutes for fulfillment.
Why Success So Often Disappoints Leaders Who Achieve It
Buddha called it craving for security, control, and identity.
Jesus said none of it measured life success and walked away from wealth, power over kingdoms, and public glory.
Plato warned that when appetite and status dominate one’s inner life, judgment quietly erodes. It’s a pattern as old as civilization.
The problem isn’t that personality exists. The problem is when your personality becomes who you think you are. The invitation here is discernment: learning to be a leader in the world without letting your personality define the terms of your life.
What This Looks Like in Leadership Today
I see this constantly in my executive coaching work.
A leader finally reaches the role they chased for years. Big pay. Real authority. High visibility.
For a while, there’s relief. Then the inner pressure and self-doubt return — often stronger than before.
Research consistently shows that more does not mean better. It just moves the bar. Your personality adapts to your new status, recalibrates, and asks for more. This isn’t failure. Personality is just doing its job.
How Leadership Coaching Helps Here
Coaching helps you shift from personal striving to impersonal clarity — action without ego attachment, ambition without inner depletion.
You learn to know you are enough. You choose to be unapologetically you. That makes great leadership sustainable.
Know someone who could use some help in saying no? Setting limits? Holding healthy boundaries? SEND THEM THIS FREE “HOW TO SAY NO” LEADERSHIP GUIDE HERE. It’s an act of love.
Mirror – Reflection Questions
- How are your desires for money, power, or recognition serving you (or not)?
- Which past achievements brought lasting fulfillment, and which quietly just raised the bar?
- What changes when you no longer need success to justify your worth?
Door into Action: 5 Amare Action Steps to Let Go of Personality
1. Notice your personality’s triggers. Pay attention to moments when urgency, comparison, or defensiveness show up. That’s personality grabbing the wheel.
2. Interrupt the reflex. Practice pausing before responding in high-stakes moments. Even two seconds creates choice.
3. Decouple worth from results. Notice how often your mood tracks outcomes. Gently loosen that connection without reducing your commitment.
4. Practice impersonal presence. Engage fully without rehearsing how you’re being perceived.
5. Accept help. Work with a mentor or coach to help see your blind spots and point out when your personality is running the show.
Amare Team Talk
At your next team meeting, name the pressure out loud. Ask: “Where do we feel we need to perform or prove ourselves here?” Just notice together. Then choose one upcoming decision or meeting and agree to slow it down slightly. Fewer justifications. Less posturing. This helps you lead from sufficiency instead of “not-enough-ness.”
Your Inspirational Challenge
Stop asking money to make you feel safe.
Stop asking power to make you feel secure.
Stop asking recognition to make you feel whole.
When money, power, and recognition take their proper place as powerful tools, your leadership will change. Decisions get cleaner. Relationships soften. Energy returns.
This is the quiet shift Benner pointed to — from a life run by personality to a life rooted in something deeper.
That shift doesn’t make you less effective.It does make your success finally feel like it belongs to you.
Big Amare!
–Moshe
Today’s Amare Wave Wednesday Quote
“Personality is the mask; life is what looks through it.”
—Joseph Benner, The Impersonal Life
Click here and read more Amare Wave Wednesday newsletters on related topics:
Empowering Your Mind: 5 Powerful Techniques to Think More Uplifting Thoughts and Less Diminishing Thoughts
Conscious Leadership: An Amare Perspective
Stand by Your Values—How to Meet Today’s Chaos with Clarity
Original article published on Inc.com.
