Personality swap?

I've been using Claude for about a year now. From day one, I had instructions to push back when necessary. Don't tell me how brilliant I am all the time, and point out important angles I might have missed. For a long time that worked the way I wanted it, and all was good. Claude was one of the more enjoyable tools I used for work. Over the last few months, push back has become the default position. It's like a hardened rule at this point. And when there's nothing to push back on, it'll reach for something related and lecture me about it. It's gotten downright pedantic/moralistic in the last few days and I'm over it. The question: is eliminating and replacing the instructions enough to induce a personality swap? Are there any other md files or settings I need to tweak before I can show Claude the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind?