When I was a sophomore in high school, there was much about me that I realized I didn’t like. In response to this realization, I made a critical decision that had a profound effect on the person I am, even to this day.

I decided that that’s just the way I am is a horrible, terrible excuse, and it’s not good enough. Correspondingly, I decided that I ought to have much more control over who and how I am than most people seem to want to recognize. I decided that I ought to be able to decide who I want to be, and be that person.

That year, I changed who I was in quite a few ways. I don’t remember all of them, specifically, but a couple things do still immediately come to mind. For years, I had been very quick to anger; my fuse was extremely short, and my temper was quite loud and demonstrative. I was easily angered not only when anger was justified, but also when it was completely preposterous (not to mention wildly inappropriate). I decided early that year that I didn’t want to be so quick to anger. I was also, as are most teenagers, driven by jealousy. This did not seem to me a positive character trait, and so I decided not to be a jealous person.

My process was simple enough: I looked at other people, and I thought about the character traits I saw in them. When I saw things that I did not consider admirable or attractive, I sought to remove those elements from myself. At the same time, I also thought of the people I looked up to the most, and I asked myself what I admired them for. I then tried to incorporate into myself those things about them that caused me to hold them in such high regard.

The effects of these decisions were life-changing. I certainly was not a perfect person by the end of tenth grade, nor am I yet anywhere close. But by the end of that year, I was a different person. To this day, I still vividly remember an incident near the end of that year that made me realize how profound the decision to decide who I would be was. One of my classmates did something extremely hurtful to another of my classmates, the latter being my very good friend. I remember sitting in my dorm room with my roommate, Seun, who was also infuriated by what had happened, as a cold anger built slowly within me.

Slowly.

I became very angry, but I did not lash out or act rashly and pugnaciously, as I would have not so long before. Quite the opposite, I determined coolly and slowly (there’s that word again) how we ought to proceed, and I even held my friend back from acting much the way I might have in the past. Instead, we acted maturely and wisely (though not at all timidly) to address the situation. I was proud of us.

As the anger of that moment subsided and I processed what had just happened, I realized how much I had changed. I realized another thing, also; I looked back over the previous months, and I discovered that I had become someone who was not only slow to anger, but who was very difficult to make angry. In particular, it had become virtually impossible to anger me by doing something to me. To engender that kind of emotion in me, you had to hurt my friends.

Over the years, I have at times forgotten that I have the ability to choose who and how I will be. At other times, I have returned to it, as I do again now, and reminded myself that, “That’s just the way I am,” is the lousiest excuse I can think of.

I see this as a very common problem in our society—though, admittedly, it may have less to do with our society and more to do with human nature. People are quick to blame their nature for their shortcomings (that is, when they’re willing to place blame anywhere near themselves, at all), but few recognize—or are willing to recognize—the power they have to decide their own nature. Most of us are aware of our failings; few are willing to just stop it.

(Side note: It doesn’t have to be something negative that you do; you can make the same simple decision about a failure to do something positive. What is it that you wish you did, but you don’t do? And more importantly, what is it that causes you not to do what you should do? Is it laziness? Fear? Stop it.)

Give it a try sometime. Think of what it is that you don’t like about yourself, and just stop it. It may not be easy, at first, and you may not be consistently successful immediately after making the decision. But keep making that decision.

One day, you’ll become aware of something about your nature that isn’t natural or accidental at all, but is instead something quite deliberate, because you decided to be that way. Because instead of blaming your shortcomings on “the way you are,” you decided to just stop it.