Image credit: Meltwater

The Temperament refers to the makeup, inner attributes and composition of a person. It is one’s sum total of one’s character, behaviors, attitude and preferences.

Your Temperament is your personality.

The Temperament of a person can rarely be changed. This is because, it is mostly a determined by birth factors, rather than influenced by environmental factors.

Yet, you can modify your Temperament in such a way, that you become the person that God wants you to be.

You might not be able to wholly change everything about you. Yet, you have the ability to prune away some attributes of you that are uncultured, and engraft those qualities, that though alien, are needed in the society.

This is important, because your Temperament is the foremost reason why a buyer would want to do business with you repeatedly.

It can be a fragrance which attracts people to you, and can also be a stench, which separates people from you.

Even as Born Again Christians, we find elements of our temperament surfacing in our daily lives, hindering us from living the God-life.

Some Christians are short-tempered.
Some Christians are very timid.
Some Christians are very impatient.

One might think that the regeneration of a Christian, would birth in Him, a new temperament. A new character. A new disposition.

From experience and observation, this does not happen often.

Moreover, there is no way the Bible explicitly promises an automatic transformation of the Christian’s character at rebirth.

If a person as an Unbeliever was Melancholic, salvation will not automatically transform that person into a very happy Christian.

In fact, his favorite character in the Bible might end up being Jeremiah, and his favorite book, Lamentations.

This is the reason a lady can pray to God fervently for hours, in the church, yet, still engage in idle talk the moment she is outside the church.

This is equally the reason you must be sensitive in your dealings with men. There are very anointed preachers with terrible personalities.

Some have propensities of pride and superiority outlook.
Hence, once you step on their toes carelessly, you’ll face their wrath.

Their character problems should not make you doubt the Anointing of God upon their lives.

He truly is anointed. But your actions stirred up the untamed temperament in him.

Even in the church, you find things like these.

That is why you hear the phrase, ‘Satan dwells mostly in a church gatherings’.

It’s not that the devil is heavily manifest in the church, it’s just that several Christians haven’t modified their personalities and temperaments to match with the faith which they profess.

There are many factors that can influence one’s character and even temperament. Some of them include;

Environment,
Gene,
The things one is exposed to at early age,
Experience etc

Yet, your personality can be modified and well cultured.

Do not say, ‘This is who I am. Love me for who I am’, when who you are is not worth loving.

When you purchase a phone, it comes with its default settings. Some of the default settings were chosen based on the preferences of the phone’s maker.

One of these default settings include the Phone’s ringing tune. Every phone usually comes with its own default ringing tune, which is often unattractive to the user.

Would you buy a phone with an unattractive default ringing tune and not change it?

Or would you resolve to let the default tune remain, since it was what the phone was programmed with at production stage?

I believe the first option would be your choice.

Similarly, you can also modify your personality to fit to the Christian conduct the Bible prescribes for believers.

There are many ways to do these. I’ll sum it up in one word; SELF ACCOUNTABILITY.

Change comes from within not from without.

Internet writers can provide for you, a hundred methods for modifying your Temperament, yet, it all comes down to being accountable to yourself.

I will explain this in three processes.

1. You must be Honest with Yourself

Stop excusing your excesses and weaknesses. You must come to a point where you admit that you need to modify your character.

You must come to the point where you agree with yourself, that your Temperament needs some refining, repainting and pruning.

It was Richard Bach who said;

How can we resent the life we’ve created for ourselves? Who’s to blame, who’s to credit, but us? Who can change it, any time we wish, but us?

Your change is not responsibility. Take it as your responsibility.

One of my favorite sayings of Les Brown is,

Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.

You ought to accept responsibility for your Temperament and its refining. Do not shift the blame to anyone anymore.

2. Highlight the Pros and Cons of your Temperament.

Do this with thoughtfulness and absolute sincerity. Make sure it is written on a piece of paper.

Afterwards, in few sentences, write a note on the kind of person you want to be.

Let the picture of you being that person be formed in your conscious and subconcious mind.

3. From that day, decide that the person you wrote down, is you.

Every morning you wake up, take a look and that note, and remind yourself that, that is YOU.

This will take time and effort. There is nothing as tasking as Character development. Yet, there is nothing as attractive as a well developed character.

The main secret of the Influential men of the society, is their ability to keep modifying their temperaments even as they advance in pursuing their dreams.

Great men evolve.

Sometimes, when provoked, you can find your old attributes manifesting again.

Yet, do not be dismayed.

Rsolve that it won’t happen again. Go back to that note, and keep living the way you wrote there.

I do not guarantee perfection.

But this method will certainly transform a lot of things about you.

It will make you accountable to yourself. Other than your God, you become in full control of your Temperament, and not your Temperament in full control you.