Olga Khazan: Do You Feel Socially Awkward? This Episode Will Change Your Life & INSTANTLY Make You Confident in ANY Social Interaction

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People think that you were born with your personality and you're just stuck with it, but just because you've always been a certain way doesn't mean you have to stay that way.

Olga Hazad, the author of Me, But Better, The Science and Promise of Personality Change.

Can an introvert actually become an extrovert if they want to?

Rather than permanently changing, learn the ability to try on this personality trait.

Put on extroversion.

Is there an age at which it's impossible to change our personality?

Some people change more after they're 30.

Different choices that we make can change us throughout our lives.

What's the difference between changing our habits and changing our personality traits?

So you can actually fake it until you make it.

Once you do your habits often enough, they will become part of your personality and it won't feel fake anymore.

It'll feel like it's part of your identity.

How does this apply to people who are diagnosed with depression or ADHD?

Can they also change or is that very different?

There's actually been this push in psychology to identify the personality traits that are associated with things like depression and ADHD.

And

actually, it's gone head to head with Lexapro, the antidepressant, and it works just as well.

The number one health and wellness podcast.

Jay Shetty.

Jay Shetty.

The one, the only Jay Shetty.

Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.

Thank you so much for coming back to listen, learn and grow.

Today's guest is Olga Hazan, an award-winning writer for The Atlantic and the author of Me But Better, The Science and Practice of Personality Change.

In her work, she dives deep into the science of why we are the way we are and more importantly, how we can actually change it.

Olga hasn't just reported on the research, but actually experimented on herself to see if changing your personality is really possible.

Please welcome to on purpose Olga Hazan.

Olga, thank you so much for being here.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Olga, I wanted to dive straight in.

And the first thing I wanted to ask you is, if someone listens to this episode, if someone reads your book, what are you hoping they can change and shift in their life?

What are you hoping for them?

I hope that they realize that whatever is kind of wrong in their life or not working for them currently, that they can change that no matter what age they are or where they live or what kind of job they have.

You know, if they feel like they don't have enough community support, they don't have enough friends, that they can go out and make those friends.

If they feel like their progression in their career is being blocked by inability to publicly speak or connect with large audiences, that they can learn those skills.

You know, if they feel kind of disorganized or like they can't really get motivated, that they can learn organizational skills and make that happen for themselves.

So it's really just whatever your goals are and that you're able to align your traits traits and your behaviors with your goals.

I love that.

I mean, that sounds like something we all need and applies to each and every one of us.

How did you discover this to be a block?

Like when did you recognize that this was a block for people?

And what was that block that you were facing and trying to solve?

It was really just that I was very unhappy and there was no particular reason for it.

So it wasn't like, oh, if this just gets resolved, I'll be happy again.

You know, I kind of start my book with this anecdote about being in Miami in December, a beautiful time to be in Miami.

You know, the weather is unimpeachable, cannot be improved upon.

Staying in this great place, having a great work-life balance, things with my partner were good.

It was before we had our baby, so we weren't tired.

But I just had this day where I had all these like minor frustrations.

You know, I got a really bad haircut and I got stuck in traffic and I got some photos taken of me that I wasn't crazy about.

I was just like, oh, I hate these photos.

And I knew they were going to be released widely.

I had this like frustrating incident at a grocery store.

And I get back to our Airbnb where we're staying.

And I just kind of have a meltdown.

And I'm, I like, kind of feel just broadly unhappy with everything.

You know, I immediately turned to alcohol, which is what I would do at the time to manage my emotions.

And I was just sort of so frustrated.

And then even like a few minutes later, I kind of thought, hey, why am, why is this all getting to me?

Like, if you look at anything about this situation you know i'm in this beautiful setting nothing is really wrong i didn't get in a car accident or you know i wasn't even late for anything you know i didn't get fired from my job my air whatever it goes back i kind of realized that so often minor frustrations would really add up to me because of my high level of this trait called neuroticism which is uh kind of associated with depression and anxiety and so i kind of would get in these negative spirals where i would kind of add up these small things these small negative events and let them kind of ruin my whole day or my whole week or start this narrative where my life is so bad.

I can never be happy because these small frustrations happen to me.

And I decided to kind of try to change that because you're never going to have a life without small frustrations.

Like nothing is ever going to go perfectly.

So the only way to be happy is to be able to be happy despite that.

How did that link to personality?

There was some interesting research coming out that people can actually change their personality traits.

And when they do change their personality traits, they actually become, you know, happier, healthier, whatever it is that that trait is correlated with.

It can really kind of increase all these positive elements of their lives.

And so we think of personality as something that we're just kind of stuck with.

Like I am this kind of person and this is what I will always do.

I'm the kind of person who will always get frustrated by small inconveniences.

But really, we have the ability to change the way we respond to situations.

We have the ability to change our behaviors, even our kind of typical thought patterns.

And really by changing those consistently, we have the ability to change personality.

So that's kind of when I was like, maybe I should try a version of this for myself.

What is personality?

Like, how do you define it?

Because I feel like it gets thrown around and then it gets mixed with so many different words.

How do you define it?

Yeah, a lot of people are like, oh, is it like the kind of jokes you tell or, you know, whether you're kind of loud and boisterous?

Those are all kind of elements of personality.

The way that personality scientists define it is the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that come most naturally to you.

So something happens, someone honks at you at a red light, you know, or something, you know, do you flip them off?

Do you wave at them?

Cause you're really good natured.

You know, do you, you know, meditate to yourself?

That kind of shows your personality.

And

the researcher that I follow the most for this book, Nathan Hudson, who has done a lot of the research on personality change, he actually adds another element to that, which is that personality helps you get what you want.

So personality is how we go about pursuing our goals.

Agreeableness, which is another personality trait, can help you make more friends.

It can attract people to you.

It can kind of make you, you know, one of those people who has like a huge bridal party at your wedding.

Conscientiousness can help you, you know, get up earlier, get more done during the day, get promotions at work and things like that, if that's what you're into.

So kind of on top of being this like reflex and habit, it's also a way that we pursue what we want out out of life.

Why do you think all of us feel so stuck in who we are and start to believe things like, I'm just not a funny person.

I'm just a disorganized person.

I'm just a negative person.

Why do we get so stuck?

I think it's because we've been told for a long time that personality is permanent and that we just are a certain way.

I think some of this comes from the fact that personality is partly genetic.

So you think that, you know, if something is genetic, it's inherited.

You're going going to be just like your parents.

What are your parents like?

They're like this and that.

You're going to be a combo of that.

It doesn't really work that way.

We do, obviously, personality is like everything.

partly genetic, but that means that it's kind of a combination of different genes, the environment that you're in, and also your own decisions and your own actions and what you choose to do can shape your personality.

But I think for a long time, the way scientists have talked about it, it sort of did feel like a death sentence, kind of like, you're going to be this way forever.

You know, the famous William James quote, personality is set like plaster after the age of 30.

And so especially after 30, people think that they're stuck being a certain way.

But really, the more recent psychological literature has shown that people actually change both naturally, just like without really trying to, they kind of change over time.

And people can also change over shorter periods of time by taking concerted effort.

Do we know how much personality is nature versus nature?

It depends on the trait and kind of the person, but it's about 40 to 60 percent heritable.

And I want to caveat that heavily.

So that means it's it's let's say let's call it half comes from your genes.

But if you think about it, you're not like your parents' twin, right?

So your genes, you get genes from them, but they kind of get combined in these unexpected ways.

And they might manifest in different ways depending on the environment that you grew up, the environment that you live in now, what kind of job you have.

And so it's really this gene-environment interaction that creates a lot of unpredictability in how your personality is going to manifest.

Just because you know that you have something genetically doesn't mean that you're kind of doomed to be that way or that it's definitely going to turn out a certain way.

Is there an age from which we can't change our personality?

You just gave that example of, you know, that old quote about the idea of 30 and it's set in plaster.

Is there an age at which it's impossible to change our personality?

So there have been studies that show that some people change more after they're 30 than before.

So most people change a lot during their teen years and especially during their early 20s.

So that's a time of very rapid change.

A lot of people kind of become a version of who they'll be for a part of their life during that time.

Both in my interviews with people and in just the scientific literature, people kind of change throughout their lives across all the traits.

Different life events events can change us, different social roles, different goals that we have and different kind of choices that we make can change us throughout our lives.

I like how everything you mentioned are things that people want to change for themselves, but not changing for people.

Yeah, so that's been a big misconception about this topic is people are like, well, I don't want to change my personality to please anyone.

Don't do that.

Like, don't change your personality to please anyone.

Like, that's definitely not my message.

I think you should change your personality to please yourself and to get what you want out of life, not to please other people.

So that's, yeah, that's like a key distinction.

Yeah.

And how do we even go about knowing how we have to change our personality?

Because I think when you really believe, it's almost like living in a city.

So it's like, let's say I've, I was talking to someone yesterday and they said, I have lived in this town.

for 31 years and I'm about to move to a bigger city and I'm scared and nervous.

That's almost what it feels like when you're changing your personality because you're like, I have lived in this body and this mind and this personality for 31 years.

I don't even know which other city I want to live in.

I don't even know which other personality I need or want.

How do you even unearth and uncover?

how you may want to change your personality and what the right trait is.

So there's kind of the dorky scientific way and then there's sort of less scientific, like woo-woo ways that might even work better.

So the scientific way is there's a big five personality test.

It'll measure where you fall along the five personality traits.

So it'll tell you kind of compared to everyone else on earth, you are much less extroverted than other people.

So

you're very low on extroversion.

And so you might.

look at that score and think to yourself, I'd like to change that.

I'd like to be more outgoing.

I'd like to make new friends, whatever it it is to do with extroversion that you want.

And so then you can go about pursuing that goal.

What I think you could also do is just like, think about your values and think about what it is you want out of life.

Like a lot of people say they don't want to become more extroverted.

And I kind of think that's fine if that's not a value that you have.

But I've also talked to a lot of people who are like, look, I want to get, you know, a job as a manager at work.

I don't want to.

you know, be rank and file forever.

I want to grow in my career.

And that requires a certain amount of extroversion, like to lead people, to speak persuasively, even just to manage people requires you to have extroversion skills.

So if you think about that as a value for yourself, you could start to consider whether extroversion might be a trait that you want to work on.

Another way that I did this personally is that I kind of looked at the people in my life that I was jealous of.

So I have a friend who's very good at making friends.

Like she just is a huge people person and people love her and are drawn to her.

And she could move to a new city and make 10 friends and be having dinner with them that night.

And I was really jealous of that.

I was like, I kind of want that skill.

Like I was actually like texting her like, how do you do that?

And so you could just look at your life at, you know, the people who do things that you're kind of like, ooh, that's cool.

Like, I kind of want to do that.

Cause that'll tell you the personality traits that matter to you.

Yeah.

I've always talked about how you can transform envy into study.

And that's kind of how I've been my whole life.

Anytime I've looked at someone and admired them or liked something that they have, whether it's a trait, a skill, an ability, I'm like, how did you get that?

Right.

And it's that idea.

And, but it's interesting, I've always been wired that way.

So that's always been my natural kind of when you were saying your thoughts that you naturally had.

That's kind of how I've naturally always been.

If I find something impressive, I want to know how to do it and how to build it and how to grow it, as opposed to feeling like they're special and I can't have that, if that makes sense.

What about those of us who just feel, well, people should like me for the way I am?

If I can't make friends as being authentically me, and the word authentic now has become this big buzzword and trend.

So how does that fit into that idea of, well, people should love to hang out with you just the way you are.

You shouldn't have to be extroverted like your friend.

Are you being inauthentic by changing your personality?

I mean, the truth is, is that no one is ever authentically themselves 100%, right?

That could be kind of off-putting.

If you just said everything that came to your mind without any kind of filter.

Or like, I think there was like a movie once where it's like someone just said whatever they were thinking and it like people were very offended.

You know, it's, we actually do have a filter between ourselves and other people because we know that people kind of don't want that like completely raw like spur of the mind thoughts that come to us.

So that's one thing is that one, you're probably already filtering yourself at least a little bit.

Maybe you're doing it in a, in a kind way where, like, you know, if a friend is in a bad relationship, you don't necessarily want to be like, yeah, keep dating that guy, you know, but you, you might say like, hey, like, have you thought about like what you're getting out of this?

You know, but you, you might not just launch into a rant about how that person sucks, right?

Like you find ways of saying things that appeal to people.

The other thing is that like, how do you know what your authentic self is?

Like,

yeah, well, that's what I'm saying.

It's like, I don't know that like we have necessarily a genuine, consistent, authentic self that we need to like preserve at all costs.

I think that a lot of times our emotions are kind of fleeting.

And if you say something one day, you might not say it again the same way the next day.

Or if you feel something about something one day, you might not feel that same way the next week.

So, you know, which one of those is authentic?

You know, are you exactly the same as you were in college?

If not,

are you faking it?

Like, you you know what I mean?

It's, we all kind of change and shift over time and depending on the situation.

I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that.

I think that's called growth.

Yeah, it's weird how we're fascinated by this addiction to authenticity right now.

Yeah.

When I agree with you, I think authenticity is

you showing up in different ways at different times with different people because you can't possibly be the same person with everyone.

And you're not going to expose your full self to everyone at all times.

It's just not a natural thing to do.

But it's weird that we have this guise of authenticity that seems to be clouding our ability to grow when actually probably the most authentic thing we can do as humans is to grow.

Yeah, exactly.

To choose to change.

Yeah.

And I, I don't know.

I just think that that's what survival is, right?

Yeah.

No, no one is going to call you out for I don't know, trying new things or trying new skills or trying new traits.

I think that that can can also be a part of authenticity.

Anything that you do for the first time is going to feel a little inauthentic.

That's the interesting part is that we had Vinjiang on recently, who's a communication expert and public speaking expert.

And he was saying that we change how we dress and we don't think that's inauthentic, but then we don't change the way we speak.

He was saying that our communication style remains exactly the same our whole life.

So if we're monotonous and boring and we just think that's who we are, but the reality is that we are changing other parts of ourselves.

And you're right.

When you try a new hairstyle, it feels a little uncomfortable for the first week.

When you try a new pair of shoes or a new fit of clothing, it feels a bit uncomfortable.

And that's not inauthentic.

It's you trying to change your style or what fits you.

And we can do the same with our personality.

What's the difference between changing our habits and changing our personality traits?

How do they connect?

This is a huge debate within psychology.

I will try to give the the

not super nerdy version of it.

So some psychologists think that habits basically become personality traits after a period of time.

So if it's your habit to do something and you do it consistently for years, okay, you're now, this is your personality.

Some psychologists think that there's also an element of like thought.

behind that, where if you do something and you really like to do it, you kind of start to incorporate it into your personality.

You start to kind of make it part of your identity.

This is like, you know, people who become runners and then they like kind of identify as runners and they're like, as a runner, you know, and they're like running marathons.

You know, that's sort of like more part of their personality is like exercising a ton and being, you know, really, we would say conscientious about running more so than someone who just like kind of mindlessly takes a jog every day and they don't really think too much about it.

It's a gray area between those two poles.

Like

I didn't used to be very conscientious, but I am now.

And I can't tell you exactly when the switch happened from me just making a ton of to-do lists and like leaving early for everything and like being like, remember this, remember this, to like now me just doing it naturally.

To me, it makes sense that our habits somewhat lean into our personality because a repetitive action or a consistent action feels like it becomes normality.

And then once it becomes normality, but I, but I appreciate the distinction between, for example, a habit I have is to brush my teeth twice a day, but I don't identify as a brusher of teeth, right?

It's something I do, but it's not an identity.

So I noticed that nuance, whereas I play pickleball three to four times a week and I consider myself to be a pickler, right?

That idea is there's an identity associated with that.

And I guess that's what you're saying is the difference between personality and habit.

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Thanks for taking a moment for that.

Now back to the discussion.

Yeah, you incorporate it into yourself a little bit more.

Yes.

I have one example, which is public speaking is part of my job, like speaking at events, moderating events, doing stuff like this.

And when I first started many years ago, I was not good at it.

I was kind of painfully just like really shy.

It made me really uncomfortable to do things like this.

And I kind of just brute forced kind of tried to get better at it.

And I worked super hard and it did become a habit.

I did, I had to do a ton of these events.

And like, we were always having them, especially before COVID.

And I kind of felt like eventually I now really don't think about it.

Like I kind of like if an event is coming up and I have to moderate something, I'm like, oh, okay, what time do I need to be there?

It's not even a process of like psyching myself up or, oh gosh, I'm so nervous.

Even my physiological responses are not the same.

Like I don't get like sweaty palms and kind of jittery and stuff like that.

So I don't know, like is being extroverted in that way, I guess it's part of my personality now because I kind of reflexively do it.

But in that intervening time, it was definitely like, I'm not extroverted.

I'm trying really hard to be and I'm building this habit so that I can be.

Yeah, my experience is exactly the same.

I was so shy growing up as a kid.

My parents forced me to go to public speaking in drama school from age 11 to 18.

And I took exams in public speaking.

I was trained nine hours a week for seven years, eight years of my life.

And it transformed my ability to stand up in front of a room.

I've now been public speaking since I was 11.

I'm 37 now.

So it's what, 26 years of experience.

So you could ask me to give a talk on any subject in three minutes and I'd feel comfortable.

Granted, the subject would have to be something I'm aware of, not something out of my expertise, but it would feel comfortable and easy and I'd feel calm.

If you asked me to do that when I was 11, that would not be the case.

And if you asked me to do that at 21, I would have had the skills, but I wouldn't have had the passion to talk about things.

And so I had to find what I was passionate about.

But I fully believe that people aren't just born with skills, that we notice them.

And I think we've created this myth in society where people are just magical or special or gifted.

And that actually does two things.

The first is it limits us from becoming those people or achieving those things.

And the second thing is it actually discredits those people for the amount of work they're put in.

So when you look at the greatest athletes in the world, I had the fortune of interviewing Kobe Bryant a few months before he passed.

He was in the gym for twice as long as everyone else.

That's what he said, in his words.

So you could argue he was gifted and special and all those things.

And I'm not saying he wasn't, but he would say it was because he was in the gym for twice as long as everyone else.

He was getting a four-hour shift in the gym before anyone woke up.

And that was the difference maker in his mind.

When you look at Cristiano Ronaldo, who's the biggest soccer player in the world, it's the same.

Anyone who's been in his vicinity will say, well, he has a chef that's dialed in for his health and he has the best recovery program and he has the best fitness and wellness expert.

When you look at it through his head, it's all work.

Whereas when you look at it from the outside, you think it's magic and gifted, right?

And so I think we discredit that person's work ethic by saying it's magic and special.

And we actually steal the opportunity from ourselves from saying, I can't do that because I wasn't born with that.

And so I hope everyone who's listening is having that recognition to say you can do it.

And anyone that you admire is just put in the work, whether it's public speaking like yourself or whether it's playing four hours of basketball more than the average person.

Yeah.

And that's, that's a great example.

And that is the same with personality change.

Anyone who has a skill or a trait that you admire has probably put a lot of effort into that.

How long does it take then to change a personality trait?

That's a good question.

And it really depends on the trait.

So I found with extroversion, extroversion was one of the traits that I wanted to increase.

I kind of felt socially isolated and like I didn't just really know a lot of people in my community and also just, especially after COVID, I was like, I kind of just don't talk to anyone.

Like I'm in my house all the time.

And I, even though it was, you know, safe to do so.

So for that one, I noticed the changes really quickly.

Like I found that I went from a preference to just stay stay at home on my couch and watch Netflix to a preference to get out there and talk to people, meet up with people, even if it's just in a surface level way.

I found that change happened after like a couple months, like maybe a month or two.

With something more performative, like I did improv classes as well, that took several months for me to truly get comfortable just because I'm not, as I said, a natural performer.

And

that gave me a lot of anxiety.

So that one took a little bit longer.

With something like neuroticism, which is depression and anxiety, it's something that can be really rooted in yourself.

Like it's not purely behavioral, right?

Like you can notice that someone is pretty calm seeming, but they could be really anxious on the inside.

That can take a rather long time to change and to shift.

But it's possible.

Yes.

So the studies that we have show like it's like a few months of therapy can really create a significant change in neuroticism.

What I did was like a meditation class that I think it lasted eight weeks or 12 12 weeks or something like that.

What type of meditation?

It was MBSR and it's just pure mindfulness meditation for dummies, nothing special to it.

And that did work to decrease my neuroticism after, I think, like three months.

Wow.

What did it do?

I am still totally not sure what meditation specifically does in the mind.

I will tell you what I think it did for me.

So this meditation class was a combination of sitting silently for 45 minutes every day or some sort of other mindful activity like yoga or walking.

And once a week, our teacher would give like a presentation about a topic in Buddhism that is

probably very, very obvious to all of your listeners.

Like it's something that probably they have heard of or have come across or are aware of, right?

It was it was not super esoteric or like

late breaking like Buddhist thoughts.

It was it was very kind of simple.

And I sort of was like, the whole time, I was like, is this really really doing anything?

Like, I kind of already know about all this Buddhist stuff.

I've come across it in my research.

And this meditation is just really boring.

You know, is this, what, is this working?

And it did work.

My, especially my depression score went down considerably throughout the course of this class.

Is that a self-score or is it a?

So all of these are self-scores.

There's really not a way to measure personality outside of self-assessment.

I would recommend for if people really want to get super accurate scores, just do the tests a lot frequently frequently, because then you'll kind of get a sense of like where you're falling and it won't be like a random fluke result.

But they're all self-scores.

But mine went down from the 94th percentile to the 39th percentile, which is a lot.

My anxiety went down.

My depression just went significantly low to, I think, like I was considered like not depressed.

And I think it was from these like Buddhist.

lessons that they taught us that somehow

what's one that stood out to you okay so there's one you're probably familiar with this.

Have you heard of the double arrow?

So, the double arrow, for people who don't know, is this idea that something bad happens to you.

Let's say you don't get as much work done as you wanted to one day, and then you sit there and berate yourself.

Why didn't I get as much work done today as I wanted?

Now it's going to screw up tomorrow, and I'm not going to get it done on time, and my boss is going to be mad.

That second part is a second arrow that you're basically shooting yourself with after the initial misfortune has happened.

I knew this going into the meditation program, but there was something about someone kind of explaining it to me as like a universal human phenomenon and something that you actually have control over.

Like you don't have to shoot yourself with this double arrow, the second arrow.

You don't get any extra points in life from having two arrow injuries.

You can just acknowledge that something bad happened and think about, okay, what am I going to do?

How am I going to move forward in a calm way without a lot of self-blame?

I think that really made the difference for me.

A lot of my neuroticism came from self-blame.

And I think a lot of other people's does too.

And that class was really good if you're like a self-blamer.

It was very good at increasing self-compassion.

Having meditated for a long time now, I feel like it's really beautiful hearing about someone having an experience that in eight weeks was able to reduce depression that significantly.

And even hearing about your experience is really special because I think one of the things I find most interesting about the human mind is we think because we've heard something

often that we understand it and that we've realized it.

And therefore, we're always looking for something new, not realizing that actually it's that age-old repetition of an idea that then you get to live and breathe and apply.

And then all of a sudden it transforms your life.

And it isn't always about finding a new.

And I think this idea of we always want to watch a new show or a new episode makes sense because that work isn't healing or transformative.

But these ideas that are timeless, that have been around for thousands of years, there's a reason why when they finally hit, they have this effect that, you know, you're smiling in front of me right now and nodding.

It's that feeling that you get, that you only get from something that heals you and transforms you.

Yeah.

That you've heard it a million times, but then when the penny drops, it stays with you forever.

So there's a couple of things about it.

It was a group class.

So it was a Zoom because of the pandemic.

People were kind of all sharing their struggles and we were all kind of going through these realizations together too.

And so just seeing how it applied to different situations, even like very simple, like one thing my meditation teacher said was,

she would always say, is things happen that we don't like.

And like, how simple is that?

Obviously, things happen that we don't like.

Every day, something happens that we don't like.

But for me, I was like, oh, every single person here sitting here has things happen to them that they don't like it's part of life it's not always your fault even if it is your fault sitting there and going ah why am i always causing things to happen to me that i don't like is not gonna fix the thing yeah and for me that was really i don't know that was therapeutic in a in a way as as silly as it seems no it's i don't think it's silly at all and I remember looking into, and I'm sure you're well aware of this, but the frequency illusion.

And

that idea has totally given me so much confidence on how what we're both talking about is so real and so true.

So for those who don't know, the frequency illusion is when you're thinking about buying a red car and now every car that you see on the road is red.

And you think, wow, everyone's just buying red cars.

It must be in fashion.

It must be in vogue.

Like everyone's buying red.

The reality is there are not more red cars.

It's just that now that you're noticing.

red cars.

So what you notice appears more often.

So when you notice things happen that I don't like, now all you're noticing is the things that happen that you don't like.

And I always say to people that when I look at my life and if you reflected on your life, you can always tell two stories based on what you notice.

So I could either say today, I love what I do.

I'm so grateful to do it.

I'm really passionate about it.

I wake up and I'm really excited about it and I get to work with great people.

Or I could say the more I've done what I've loved, I've attracted more negativity.

I've had people steal money from me.

I've had people want to take advantage of me.

I've been exploited and whatever else it is.

Now, both of those are true.

And I don't want to encourage positive thinking, which is no, only good things happen to me because that's not true.

Things happen that I don't like.

But the reality is I don't have to notice them as much.

And ultimately, all that's multiplying is what I'm noticing.

And that's exactly what you're saying in this idea that, and that's what I think mindfulness does, especially MBSR, is this idea of the ability to notice what am I paying attention to?

And is it helping me?

And then all of a sudden you go, wait a minute, when I focus on the double arrow, it doesn't help me.

It doesn't serve me.

It doesn't get me anywhere.

I just criticize myself and hurt and hate myself even more.

And now I've dug an even deeper hole that's really hard to get out of tomorrow to get any work done.

Exactly.

And another common suggestion for reducing neuroticism is to have a gratitude journal.

And of course, like when I started this, I was like, this is stupid.

Why would anyone be

journaling about gratitude?

Russians are not big on kind of positive little journaling practices like that.

And kind of the more I did it, the more I realized that it was helping you notice the positive story.

So like, even on a dumb day where people on Twitter would yell at me and my boss is mad at me and my husband and I got in a fight or whatever, you know, I could always find a few things that went relatively well, you know, just even small things or just things that I was happy that I had, you know, that I have that other people don't have.

And, you you know, it really does change your mindset a little bit.

It makes it, it just breaks you out of that cycle of like, everything is bad and my life is bad.

Yeah.

And the reason we have to do it is because we're all so wired.

When have you ever got to a meeting smoothly and said, Yeah, it was really smooth getting here today.

Most of the time, if it was a bad journey to get to work that day, you would talk about it with everyone the whole day.

You teeth were beating it.

So you would say it 10 times and you wouldn't even think about it.

Every meeting, you'd go, oh my God, I I had the worst journey here to work today.

This guy cut me off.

There was an accident.

You know, you saw the news.

And you just keep telling that story.

Whereas you'd never say, yeah, it was really smooth today.

It was amazing.

I'm just so thankful that every light was green.

And, you know, you just don't say that.

And so we have to practice it.

The Gratitude Journal, I think, has become such a meme now because it's like whatever.

It's kind of been so watered down.

But the point of it is the repetition of noticing a good story in your day because you're so wired to notice the bad stories every day.

I wanted to ask you, what are the gender effects on personality?

Women tend to be more conscientious in some ways, more agreeable, and also much more neurotic.

Neuroticism is like highly associated with being female.

And then men?

Men tend to be much less agreeable, less conscientious in certain ways, and then less neuroticism.

Men tend to have more of a like

this like it's called the dark triad or basically like kind of an antagonistic personality trait that women, because of socialization or whatever, tend not to display as much.

And that's what makes heterosexual relationships so hard because there's

a complete friction of all of the like my husband never mops the floor or whatever, that's personality based.

Yeah.

But the thing is, it's shared across men.

As in, it's not like, it's just my guy.

You occasionally occasionally will find someone you know obviously these are all averages so you'll find someone who's like below the average or above um but yeah it tends to be shared yeah so that's something that all men need to work on yes

yeah exactly

and that's that's the hard part with that right because romantic relationships is probably where we see this the most where we just say to our partner but that's not who i am i don't want to be there and also because you feel the pressure that your partner wants you to be that way what do you do when your partner wants you to be that way but you don't want to be that way for them?

You know, there could be another reason to be that way, though.

Like, even if it would just make your relationship a little bit balmier, you know, maybe you understand each other better, maybe you communicate better because you agree to say things a certain way.

My husband has this with like various things.

He likes things like

he tends to think that eating the very last bit of something is rude.

And I think that leaving a big bag with a tiny bit of something in it is rude.

But so now, though, I see, when I see a big bag with a little bit piece of something, I'm like, oh, he's trying to be kind to me, right?

Like I'm seeing it through his eyes of like he's being empathetic.

And when I like gobble down the last of the cheese and throw the package away, he tries to see it as like, I'm being efficient and showing him love by not leaving.

crap in the fridge.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that again goes back to that underlying need because that's an underlying expression of the same thing.

Could you name for us the five personality traits and then the personalities that are associated with those?

So there's five traits that make up personality.

You can remember them with the acronym Ocean, which is nice because we're in California.

So it's openness to experiences, which is, this is the hardest one, so stay with me, but it's kind of like people who are open-minded, kind of down for whatever, kind of just you suggest a new restaurant to them and they're like, okay, yeah, let's check it out.

C for conscientiousness, these are the go-getters that wake up early, they run every day, they know where all their stuff is, they work really diligently at everything, they pursue their goals.

These are type A individuals.

E, for extroversion, we all have some sense of what this is.

It's not just talking a lot.

It's also like how much you like being around people and how kind of active you are.

You know, are you kind of more the sit-on-the-couch person or are you out and about doing stuff stuff with other people is extroversion, even if you're not talking.

Agreeableness is a, and it gets a bad rap because people think it means just agreeing with everything, but it's really how warm and empathetic you are in your relationships.

So, you know, are you someone who is filled with a lot of antagonism?

Do you start a lot of conflict with the people in your life?

Or are you someone who is able to take the perspective of others, puts others' needs before your own?

So people high in agreeableness tend to have like really deep and meaningful friendships and relationships.

But it could lead to people pleasing on the negative end.

It can.

And I've heard from people who are like, I want to be less agreeable because I want to be less of a people pleaser.

And there are ways to set boundaries in relationships that can still be agreeable and that don't lead to people pleasing.

And then N is neuroticism.

It's kind of, it's basically the two components of it are depression and anxiety.

So, and it's, it's kind of all about how negative your inner weather is.

Like, how gloomy is it in there?

You know, is it all like, you know, I had the worst commute into work today because a guy cut me off and blah, blah, blah.

You know, or are you able to kind of take a minute in there and smile at something, laugh with someone, even just appreciate it being a normal day?

That would be someone who's more emotionally stable, which is the opposite of neuroticism.

Got it.

And introversion fits into extroversion.

It's easier at scale.

Yes.

So openness, close.

Yes, exactly.

So they're all.

conscientiousness yeah being unconscious yes uh so they're all a spectrum so no one is like 100

one or the other people are like i'm a total introvert it's you're probably like 23 of the way to you know yeah um and are we all mixed are we all of them right we have we have we have a score on the spectrum of each and every one of them but first Here's a quick word from the brands that support the show.

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Now let's dive back in.

We all have each of these traits inside of us to varying degrees.

Generally, you want to be pretty high on all of them other than neuroticism.

You want to be low on that one.

But pretty high doesn't mean all the way high or extreme or in every situation or every day.

It just means that like, if called upon to give a wedding toast, you're capable of doing that.

You know, you're not going to melt down.

That would be like an appropriate amount of extroversion.

Got it.

Got it.

Yeah, that's so interesting you say that because I was looking at a study that was saying that if we're asked to give a toast as the maid of honor at our our friend's wedding, we literally feel like we're being chased by a tiger, right?

Like that's the response in the brain because we're so scared of how it could go.

You're saying ideally, you don't feel that way.

And that's a healthy level to be.

Yeah.

So it's, and that doesn't mean that you would give a toast every day.

You know, it doesn't mean that like what you would prefer most in the world is to give a toast.

You might still need a lot of quiet time to yourself, but it's someone who can kind of rise to those occasions.

So I have a friend who always says to me, Jay, I'm not as ambitious as you.

I'm a lot more content and I'm stable is the words he uses.

But then when we get into it, he'll be honest and say, I think I'm lazy.

I'm not organized.

And I disguise my lack of ambition

as

contentment, but really I'm not happy.

Like I'm anxious, I'm stressed, I'm not in a good place.

Is that changeable?

Yeah.

So for my book, I interviewed several people exactly like that.

So they kind of thought they were just kind of, oh, whatever happens, happens.

Kind of like, you know, I'm, I'm content.

I'm not very ambitious.

But then one of the women, Julia, she really wanted to start her own business.

She wanted to have her own copywriting business, but she worked as like a assistant at a hair salon, which was not really what she wanted to be doing.

It was, it was a little bit menial and like just kind of, she felt like she had skills beyond that.

And she really just struggled to get motivated or like figure out how she was going to start this business.

She kind of just like flipped overnight.

Like she, again, kind of like my thing with the MBSR class, she read that like you can accomplish your goals by just working at them for 20 minutes a day, just in some self-help book.

This is not the secret to conscientiousness, but for her, this was like, oh, like I could just do a little bit every day toward my goals.

Like I don't have to suddenly wake up and be a different person.

And she did.

She got.

super organized.

She's like one of the most organized people I've ever talked to.

She has like all these to-do lists.

She has a calendar.

She has JIRA tracking of her client.

You know, she's like very together.

And this was someone who quit her job to start a business and then watched Game of Thrones for, you know, months because she didn't have that skill initially.

So yeah, it's completely possible.

So how do we do it?

So what I found seems to work for people is that you have to have, this is now like a cliche at this point, but you really have to have a why.

One of the other people that I talked to in that chapter, he came from this like very poor rural part of Virginia and he had never like studied really.

He just wasn't into school and he had never written a paper before and he didn't realize that you can study for tests and in that way you can improve your score.

So he gets to college somehow, like the, you know, whatever low college he gets into.

And everyone thinks he's going to fail out because he's just not, school is not his thing.

And then he takes one psychology class and he's like, oh, this is so interesting.

I'm learning about why people do what they do, the science of the mind.

This is applicable to me.

This is, this is fascinating.

And he decides he wants to become an academic psychologist, like a researcher in psychology, which is so far beyond where he is at that moment.

And he does.

He honestly just completely turns his life around.

He gets organized.

He gets like a filing cabinet with all of his homework and all that stuff.

He finds a study buddy, which having a partner in whatever like journey you're on is always going to be more effective.

They stay up all night reading and studying together and writing essays together and like puzzling through like, what does this mean?

What does that mean?

He finds a mentor in psychology who kind of keeps him going and gives him hope.

He makes flashcards for every test.

He sets like timelines for when he's going to start studying for each psychology quiz.

And he is.

He is a, he is now a tenured professor in psychology.

He got into UGA, which is a great grad school for psychology.

And this is someone who, I think, made Ds in high school.

And it's really about having that thing that he's like, this is what I want to be doing.

This is absolutely how I see it playing out.

And nothing else in his life up until that point had ignited him in that same way.

What are the strongest types of ways?

I would say it's something that is going to kind of fuel you for the rest of your life.

So people often, it's like their kids.

People will do anything for their kids because they just kind of consume you and you're, you have like an infinite amount of energy to pour into them.

For me, it was really, I I really wanted to do journalism.

And that was a big part of what made me more conscientious because I had a series of really boring jobs before I became a journalist.

And I was like, I can't spend my whole life being this bored.

Like I cannot.

go in day in, day out and not look forward to anything or learning anything or any kind of interesting conversation.

Just to, you know, I was, I was a secretary at a mail order mailbox company.

And I was like, this is, this is so tedious.

This is so boring.

I hate mailboxes.

I don't care.

And I was like, I can't do this for the rest of my life.

No shade to the people who work there.

So that is something, it's like you can be kind of running away from something.

You can be running towards something.

It's something that's going to just kind of fuel you forever, not for the next week.

Okay.

So you need a why.

What else?

As I mentioned previously, having someone who's kind of on the journey with you can be, for some reason, really empowering.

It's called the mutually reinforcing effect.

And it essentially means that you kind of are learning from someone, right?

You're getting strategies from them.

So he was getting these like study skills from this other person, but he was also kind of learning alongside him.

Like they were kind of, it kind of creates this positive sense of peer pressure where you're like, let's do it together.

Let's like run this race together.

It makes you feel like less alone, especially when things get really hard.

Like I think it was for him at times.

Okay.

And then what else?

There's a final concept called episodic future thinking.

So a lot of times we have trouble being conscientious because we can't see how it will all kind of look in the end.

So I am not talking about the secret here, but it's kind of about visualizing with very specific details, either the outcome that you're trying to generate or the outcome that you're trying to avoid.

So for Julia, the woman who had the business, it was, you know, I'm working for myself.

I set my own schedule.

I have all these clients.

You know, I never have to see this hair salon again.

And it was, it was very clear to her, like, how she was going to set up her home office, how she was going to run her day, how she was going to do this.

So she had all the like kind of visualized pieces of it.

And that would kind of keep her motivated when it inevitably got hard.

For some people, it can be something negative.

And as long as you're not so bogged down in the negativity, that can be motivating.

So the

guy who became a psychologist, his big fear was becoming an assistant manager at Wendy's

because that was like the only job that was available in his hometown.

And so he was like, if I have to go back to my hometown and be an assistant manager at Wendy's, like, I can't, I can't do that.

I can't handle that.

I have to do well at school because I can't have this like Wendy's future happen to me.

So that kind of thing can be really motivating.

And that's, you know, connecting things to a bigger vision like that.

A lot of the stuff that you're going to be doing for conscientiousness is going to be kind of tedious.

Like, you know, scheduling guests for your podcasts, I bet, is like not the most fun process, like sending these emails and like finding a time, but it's like necessary for the larger vision.

So if you keep your focus on that larger vision, it will motivate you through those like difficult times.

Yeah, I think that's such a big important part because I often think when people think of their purpose or their calling or a better life, it's without any

difficult, tedious tasks.

Yes.

And that's just not reality.

I talk to friends all the time and I keep reminding them that you're always doing things you don't want to do to do more of the things you want to do.

And that's how life works.

There's very few people on planet Earth, if any, that only wake up and do everything they want to do.

And anyone who says that is probably just paraphrasing for, well, it all is things I love because it's feeding and serving a bigger vision.

And I also like what you were saying because I think for me, it was like that when I was in a stable consulting job before I do what I do now, the only thing that got me out of there was I didn't want to be like the people who were 20 years senior to me in those roles.

Again, no offense to anyone who works there, they're happy there, that's great.

I just couldn't see myself being someone there when I was 45 or 50 or whatever it was.

And at the same time, I couldn't imagine getting to the end of my life and thinking I didn't try.

And that visual for me was really, really powerful.

And even probably the one I use most today, where I'm like, at the end of my life, if I'm lying there and I'm hopefully conscious enough to reflect, I'm never, ever, ever going to be sad that I tried something and people thought I was bad at it or there was terrible criticism or people laughed at me because at that point, none of that will matter because I'll be forgotten in a matter of moments.

And the most important thing will be what I'll remember about my life, which is I tried, I gave it a shot, I explored, I experimented, and I'll be proud of myself for doing that.

And I think that visual is such a powerful way of, whether it's like you said, five years, 10 years, 20 years, or whether it's all the way to the end,

it's such a powerful motivator that really puts things into context that you can't write now.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And I mean, even, you know, people who are professionals at being gritty struggle with this.

As one example, one of the people I interviewed was Angela Duckworth, who literally wrote Grit.

So the book about how to stick with your goals.

She has trouble sticking with her goals.

So she doesn't like making the PowerPoint slides for her classes, as she told me.

Like, so she, this is a tedious thing for her.

It's not fun.

It's like.

fixing the font and like making it readable and all that stuff.

She doesn't enjoy it, but she does it because it's so important to her to teach people about psychology and to be, you know, a good professor and to connect with her students that she's like powers through these like PowerPoint sessions.

I think that was like a really good example because I'm like, if anyone knows how to be gritty, it's, it's her, you know, but even she struggles with it.

Yeah.

If someone wants to be more extroverted, what do they do every day?

What do they need to change?

All you have to do is talk to people.

And it can take when you don't want to.

Yes.

It can take whatever form you want.

But my recommendation for people who are introverts, who are kind of just starting out, maybe you just moved somewhere new and you want to meet new people, sign up for an activity that happens regularly, that you don't have to organize.

Because I think where people get stuck is in the endless like text chain of doom of like, how about Tuesday?

How about Wednesday?

How about drinks?

How about here?

How about there?

Like it's really hard to make things happen in our society because everyone's so overscheduled.

Everyone's busy.

Everyone kind of has this inclination toward introversion.

So just sign up for something like pickleball or like whatever your thing is, whatever you can tolerate.

That's like a group activity that's going to happen with or without you.

Because that's, to me, like seeing the same people regularly over time is how you build connections and how you build friendships and not through like just being really good at scheduling.

Yeah, it's almost, I remember for me, it was, I was around 15 years old.

I was doing work experience at this company that my

I'd been connected to.

And my job was to cold call 300 companies and try and sell event space for an exhibition.

And I had never cold call in my life at 15 years old.

I didn't even know what that meant.

And I remember getting a quick coaching session with someone who was really warm and actually really nice.

His name was Joel and just such a kind guy at the time.

Like he was in his 30s probably, but showing me the ropes.

And I remember just calling 300 and he told me, hey, most of them won't respond.

Most of them will say no.

And I probably only sold three out of 300 exhibition spots, but I felt so confident to be rejected and cold call from that point because I'd picked up the phone and talked to 300 people.

And I didn't feel like a failure, which is a really bizarre, counterintuitive feeling because I failed 297 times.

But the three exhibition slots I sold were just such big wins.

And he was just like, yeah, those are the odds.

Like, that's just how it works.

And I feel like that was the moment I built a sense of confidence around being exposed to rejection.

So, it's almost like what you're saying is that exposure therapy of, hey, if you're not good at talking to people and you're bad at organizing yourself, pick something that's organized and just talk to one person.

And then next week, talk to two people there.

And then next week, talk to three people.

And that exposure therapy slowly, slowly, slowly, by the end of the eight weeks, you're like, oh, wow, I'm comfortable talking to people at pickleball now.

Yeah.

Whatever it may be.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, not every conversation is going to go perfectly.

Like, not every person you meet is.

I had some really awkward conversations that I describe in the book, like with these new people I was talking about.

So I was doing a lot of meetup where you go on like group outings with people.

Usually it's like hiking or something like that.

So it's a bunch of strangers who, who hike together.

Again, if you go regularly, hopefully you get to know some of them.

And I was doing a lot of like bumble.

Bumble.

Yeah, bumble BFF.

And the bumble BFF actually worked for me.

I did meet a friend on bumble BFF and we're still friends.

But one of them was like, oh, she was trying to tell me that women peak in high school, that she was not looking for a partner and was not ever interested in dating again because we were in our 30s and women peak physically in high school.

And I was like, I really don't think women peak in high school.

That's really depressing.

And I was just like, how do I navigate out of this like very like specific thing that you said that I really don't agree with and that makes me sad that you think that?

But so yeah, you're going to meet people who you're like, wow, I don't agree with you at all about that.

You know, or just people who have like political opinions that are different from yours or whatever it might be.

But you know, then you'll meet someone like my bumble BFF, Alex.

Yeah, exactly.

I think what's hard about it is that humans feel the more certain we are about who we are, the safer we are.

And so When you start becoming uncertain about who you are

and open to the idea that you could be more, it's a scary place to live because it's uncomfortable.

But you don't like the idea that you met someone at 30, they're really outgoing.

And now you're like, no, no, no, I'm a homebody.

That's who I am.

Like, stop trying to change me.

And yeah, sure, I agree with you.

Don't change for that person.

But have you ever asked yourself whether you want to be more than a homebody?

Have you explored?

Have you experienced it to even know whether that's what you want?

And I think we're scared to do that because we feel sure that, no, no, no, I'm a homebody and that's that's my identity.

And that's what my friends know me for.

And all my friends will be like, yeah, you're a homebody.

And it evokes a sense of identity and purpose to some degree, even though it isn't a purpose.

But it makes me feel like people know who I am and I know who I am.

So as soon as I start changing, my wife went through this.

So my wife was someone who was considered by her friends, family, and people around her that she was unorganized.

She was spontaneous, although she's the best time.

So my wife is the best energy.

She is magnetic.

Everyone loves her, adores her.

She didn't used to make plans.

She didn't have a plan.

And it was really hard to get hold of her.

And that's the reputation she'd build up.

And then when she started to change that, so when she started to say, hey, sorry, I can't actually make that.

I've got work right now.

Or, do you know what?

That day I've got an event.

I can't make it.

Before she was always available, always open because she didn't have a schedule.

People started to make her feel bad about that, being like, oh, you've changed.

Oh, but you always used to be up for this before.

oh i realize you're busy too busy for me now and it was really interesting to watch her go through that because she was doing it for all the right reasons because she wanted to be someone who was organized disciplined she was always disciplined in her workouts but not as much in in her work and that shifted for her and now she's extremely productive and effective and all the rest of it and very happy about it but that changed she had a lot of friends who didn't react well to that.

And I think that's what people are scared of.

Does that make sense?

Oh, yeah.

I completely identify with that on so many levels.

So first, I think anyone who's ever given up drinking has had this exact thing play out where everyone in your life suddenly says like, come on, like you're a party man.

Like what, what's going on with you?

Like you're not going to be fun anymore.

And then you have to like.

create this new identity of someone who still has friends, but doesn't drink.

The thing that was really resonant about that for me was that, so for a long time, I identified as someone who would almost certainly be a bad mom.

I was like, I am the kind of person who, if I ever have a a kid, I would mess up my kid because I would be such a bad mom.

I'm not fit to have kids.

I just had this story about myself that like, I can't do it, even though I kind of wanted to do it, but I was like, no, no, no, like it's not for me.

I'm, I'm not a kid person, right?

And people kind of reinforce this in my life.

So I remember when I got pregnant, my mom told me, I can't imagine you as a mother.

And I think for me, there was like some comfort in that because like having a child is scary.

It's, I'm, and I'm not saying that everyone should or anything like that, but it is it is is a big leap it's like it feels like a big it is a huge change in your life and it's a big decision to make it really like that fear i was kind of explaining it away by like i don't need to make this decision because i won't be a good mom anyway that totally has not played out like i'm i'm a great mom like i i love my son and i adore him the stuff that i thought i wouldn't like about it is the stuff i like the most the stuff that i thought i would be best at is like i actually don't find that enjoyable i always ask myself like why did i tell myself for so long that I was certain to be a certain way or that I'm just like doomed to be a bad mom?

I think we get that way about so many things in our lives and it's counterproductive.

Yeah, and it's hard because at one point, it's

hard because there's a sense of honesty and self-awareness at a point in time.

It's when that story becomes finite and fatalistic that it becomes dangerous.

Right.

There have been points in my life where

me saying I'm just not the type of entrepreneur that goes on vacation right now has served me.

But if I'm the entrepreneur forever that never goes on vacation, that is going to hurt me.

And so I think it's that nuanced balance between how is this self-awareness, but not a self-defeating story, that's a really hard balance for people to toggle almost because it requires so much awareness, honesty,

not falling into the extremes.

It just requires, I I don't even know what the right word is, maybe it's maturity.

It requires such a maturity to be able to hold an idea and not make it your identity, if that makes sense.

Oh, yeah.

And the thing you have to keep in mind is that people and situations will bring things out in you that you didn't think were there.

Like very few people before they've ever had a baby, like are naturally baby people, you know?

And first of all, they're only a baby for a year, so you don't even really have to worry about it that much.

But, you know, I kind of surprised myself that like, you know, we bring this little bundle home, a couple of months go by, they start kind of being more interactive and smiley and stuff.

And you do, you start singing baby beluga and, you know, cooing at them and cuddling, you know, you start doing all this stuff because as you take on social roles or as you kind of pursue goals that are important to you, you kind of find things within yourself that you didn't think were there before.

Like we kind of have these like latent.

traits that that come out when the moment is right.

So even if like you don't think of yourself as a certain kind of person, you might surprise yourself when that situation comes up.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out.

It's like, it's almost not like, because you can't live this

kind of willy-nilly approach to life of just, oh, it doesn't matter.

I'll figure it out when I get there because that could be dangerous.

And then at the same time, you can't be the over-planner and the overwhelmed person who's trying to get every meticulous detail right of it because certain skills are only going to come up in the moment.

What is that balance called?

Is there even a word for it?

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And back to our episode.

I think this is called social investment theory, but it's essentially this idea that over time, situations do change us.

Like as there, you know, there have been studies that found that as people, you know, get a job that they're really interested in and become really committed to, they become more conscientious naturally.

Of course, they're like learning this skill in order to do it for their job.

After people fall in love, they've done studies that found that they become more extroverted and more agreeable because your partner is bringing out those qualities in you.

Like they're kind of like highlighting these good parts of you and saying, like, look, look, you have this in you.

And I think that's really cool.

Like, I think it's, it's good to know that as you, you take on these roles, eventually over time, you know, it's going to be gradual.

You'll kind of shape-shift to meet the moment.

And, you know, you have to want to do it.

You know, there's a lot of like parents out there who could probably stand to put more of a concerted effort into it.

But I do think it's, it's hopeful that situations will bring out qualities qualities in us.

How does this work apply to people in relationships where they want their partner to change?

And you'll hear someone go, I just see their potential.

I knew, I know who they could be.

They could really get it together, but they don't see it in themselves.

Yeah.

If someone's thinking that way, how would you encourage them to think about change?

I really wish I had written a chapter of this book called How to Change Your Partner, because every single interviewer has asked me that question.

And I don't really have a good answer because we haven't really studied how to change other people.

Like this is like the brick wall that all of society like bangs their head against, which is that we all wish our partners were a certain way and that our partners are never going to be that way completely.

So first of all, like any profound and serious change over time has to come from within, right?

Like if you really want to make someone like less anxious, saying like, just calm down, stop worrying, you know, it doesn't work.

They have to want to be less anxious.

For some of the skills, though, or for some of the traits, it can be something where like maybe you introduce your partner to some of the tools that will help them be more conscientious.

Maybe like you start an exercise program together, for example.

Maybe you start, hey, let's like both set a time every week where we're going to sync up our calendars and figure out who needs to be where when.

You can do these like little tools and strategies to kind of move them closer, especially to conscientiousness.

This has been found to work well where like you can kind of do it in the background and it just kind of works.

They don't have to really want it.

It's hard because in order to keep that going, in order to go on a run, you know, without you, they have to want to do it.

People want different things in life.

That's, that's like part of what motivates personality change and what motivates everything else.

You could try, you know, asking them if they're, they seem to be living.

in accordance with their values.

It's like, hey, you said that you really wanted to exercise this year and we haven't done anything in weeks.

Do you feel like we're exercising enough?

Like you could do some motivational interviewing.

But ultimately, you know, people have to find it in themselves to do the things that are good for them.

Yeah.

People don't change for people.

No.

They change for themselves.

Yeah.

And they change when they want to, they change how they want to, and they change at their pace and their time.

And this idea that you have the power to change anyone,

if you just stopped for a moment and thought about how hard it's been to change yourself,

you'd immediately realize that you have zero power over anyone else.

And the reason why you're being asked about everyone is because I think it's the biggest myth because we think that if we can see someone's potential, we can change them.

We think that if we can see someone's amazing future, we can change them.

And we think if we can see what someone could be and achieve, that we're somehow holier than them for seeing that.

And we think of it as well-intentioned.

But actually, it's not because well-intentioned means I let you become who you want to become.

And I accept that that's who you are.

And sometimes it's painful because you can truly see what someone's capable of and that can be well-intentioned.

But until they really believe they want that for themselves, it really doesn't matter.

And that is one of the most painful things to watch is someone lose out on their potential.

Yeah, I mean, and you can talk to any relative of an addict or anyone who sees a clear path for someone and they won't take it.

It's very hard to make other people do things that you think are good.

How does someone who's more pessimistic and negative and is listening to us right now and thinking, Olga, I want to become more of an optimistic or at least realistic person,

where do I start?

How does that personality change look?

Well, you've come to the right place because I am very negative and pessimistic.

I would say I still am, even despite, you know, this huge project that I did where I really, really tried to change myself.

So something that I came across that was really helpful for this is the work of Tracy Dennis Tiwari, who's a psychologist who studies anxiety.

And a big thing, kind of an idea that I had about my anxiety was that I need anxiety to kind of help me avoid bad stuff.

Like I need, like I will, I will screw up and like not get where I need to be or like, you know, mess things up unless I stay really anxious and vigilant.

And eventually what that would do is turn into just constantly worrying and constantly being in a negative space where I was, I was never really enjoying anything because I was worrying about the next thing.

So anxiety, you can worry.

You can think about the things that could go wrong, right?

Like if you're putting in an offer on a house or trying to get a new job or whatever you're doing, you can think about like, oh, how, how could this interview go wrong, right?

But also think about how it could go right.

Really, most things in life, some things go wrong and some things go right.

Like, you know, what we were saying earlier.

And you can actually make a list of your worries of like things that could go wrong with this, but then make another column of like things that could go right with this.

And how will I try to move like more of these into this other column?

Because it is, it's unrealistic to only worry and to only think about the negative because some amount of things will go well.

Or even if some of those bad things happen, there might be good in them or things that are, you know, maybe not so bad as, as you feared.

So I would just, I call it reverse worrying.

And it's just, it's not just like positive thinking, I'm sure everything will be fine.

It's just some things will be fine.

Yeah.

And I like the idea of consciously having to think about those.

Again, it's just rewiring those thoughts that are so habituated to constantly pull you in that negative cycle.

And you're right.

It isn't this false, toxic positivity because that isn't helpful or healthy at all.

And it does take a lot of practice and repetition because

Yeah, you're likely to wake up in the morning and the first thought you have is, oh, I'm so tired.

Just don't want to get out of bed.

And so your first thought of the day is a negative, pessimistic one, as opposed to an optimistic, thoughtful one of, all right, I'm glad I got six hours last night, you know, or, okay, well, yeah, I didn't get enough sleep last night.

Let me get to bed early tonight.

Whatever that may be could, could make the shift.

What about someone who's feeling like

they're a people pleaser and they want to set boundaries, but they struggle with it because they're scared of being seen as selfish or assertive?

How did they start making that shift?

I've really had to apply this with parenting, but you can kind of,

in a way, you can kind of parent people around you, not literally, but you can kind of like use some of the tools from parenting with other people, which is make people feel heard.

Like if someone's upset with you about something, to give you an example, I had a friend who texted me to say that she wanted me to check in with her via text message at least once a week and that we were not going to be friends unless I text check-in with her once a week.

And I don't like texting.

I just, it's, it's a, it's a very like a scheduling platform for me, not a like emotional one.

And I just don't like it.

And so at the time, I sort of was like, because it was before this project, I was like, oh, of course, I'll do whatever you want.

I'll, people please, right?

I'll, I'll text you every week.

And of course, I did it twice and then forgot because I don't actually like doing it.

So what I learned from Miriam Kermeyer, who's like a friendship expert, is you can say like, hey, I hear you.

You feel like I'm not checking in with you enough.

You feel like we're not connected.

I totally get that.

The thing is, I really don't like texting people in order to have conversations.

It interrupts my workflow.

Is there another way that we can do this that will meet your underlying need of being seen in this friendship and being checked in on and have going through this hard thing, you know, with me checking on you, but not require me to use this platform that I really don't like to do this thing that I really feel like it's not well equipped for.

You know, maybe we could schedule a weekly phone call.

Maybe we could go for a walk.

Maybe we could do this other list of activities.

There's almost always a solution like that where you're meeting the underlying need, but you're not doing it in this way that is like not workable for you.

I love that because it is an underlying need.

That person doesn't really want a text every week.

No.

That's them trying to find the bare minimum way to keep you in them life.

That's really what they're doing is what's the least I can ask for to try and keep this person alive in my life.

But what I actually want is a really meaningful conversation once a month on the phone or in person where we go out for dinner or have tea or whatever it may be.

And that's what I'm really looking for.

And I think the more our relationships go to solving the underlying need, the less bitter we'll feel around, hey, but I texted you every week and you still don't feel close to me.

I remember one of my friends said to me, she said, I just don't spend any time with my partner.

And I said, well, he just told me you guys went away last weekend.

And she said, yeah, but he was

reading a book or the news or whatever it was.

And I was trying to entertain the kids and we didn't spend any time together.

And I was like, well, the underlying need is alone time, presence, connection.

It's not time.

You did have time together.

You were both in the same place at the same time.

But the underlying need is wanting connection in a safe space.

And probably, and, you know, it's asking that person, what is that underlying need?

And all of a sudden you start to realize it's eye contact, it's,

it's vulnerability, it's being able to share something that I've been struggling with.

And, and, and I find that no one ever communicates that.

We always communicate as like, oh, can we just see each other once a week?

Yeah.

And that's not really, you know, what you're looking for.

Yeah.

And this also works, I found, with like political disagreements.

So when someone just comes at you, I have people in my life who I really disagree with politically on very important issues.

When someone comes at you and just starts ranting at you about their worldview that you don't agree with, often it's because they are kind of making a bid for connection.

Like they're like, hey, this thing is so important to me.

Like, is it important to you too?

Like, they're kind of trying to get you into their world.

And once you see that, it becomes less about like, this person is my political enemy and more about this person wants to establish a friendship.

Let's find something else to like base it on because we don't agree on this.

But it can become almost like a friendly thing as opposed to this political fight.

That's a really beautiful nuanced point of if you notice people's conversations as a expression of them inviting you into their world, which is often what it is.

you start realizing it's actually not that much of a, it doesn't have some deep agenda or something.

It's just them saying, this is what I think about.

It's really tough because we're all so busy and moving so fast that when you see something you don't like or doesn't, and I think that's where we've got to in society today is if I see a message or someone posts something on their stories that I don't like, I start labeling them as someone that I don't want to interact with rather than seeing that person as just a human who's expressing their thoughts, beliefs, and things they're interested in.

Exactly.

And we just don't have the timing capacity for that.

I was going to ask, can

an introvert actually become an extrovert if they want to?

So I think they can, but I would recommend against thinking of yourself as a pure introvert or extrovert.

It's really uncommon to be all the way to one end or the other of introversion and extroversion.

Let's say you are quite introverted though.

Like you would basically consider yourself almost all the way introverted.

I think it is possible to become extroverted, but it's going to take a lot of work.

It's going to take a lot of effort.

I think I kind of realized that I was more extroverted than I maybe was thinking at the beginning of this project.

Like I kind of found that I, when I didn't go to improv, I would really miss it.

Or when I didn't go to my little silly meetups, I was kind of like the weekend felt a little empty.

So I would kind of avoid categorizing yourself and I would just see what it feels like to have more social interaction than you're used to.

But let's say it doesn't.

feel amazing.

Like let's say you're like, it's, it is actually quite exhausting and you're like, I do need that quiet time alone to recharge.

There's this concept called free traits that some psychologists have, which is that like, rather than permanently changing to where it's like, I'm a total extrovert in every situation.

I want to talk to people, you kind of learn the ability to kind of try on this personality trait.

It's almost like an invisibility cloak or something, where you can kind of like put on extroversion and then do whatever it is you need to do with that extroversion.

So a lot of times college professors will do this because they have to give these like interesting lectures, you know, but they're the way they got to where they are is because they're good at like reading papers for you know 12 hours at a time.

So they're usually, they are pretty introverted.

And Brian Little,

he kind of does say that he puts on extroversion.

Like he puts on the free trade of extroversion, goes out and gives his lecture, and then he has to like go hide by himself.

He can't, you know, stay in that room in Gladhand.

He has to go retreat and kind of restore to his introversion.

So that's another way to think about it.

I think that's still personality change because it's still allowing you to meet your goals that you have.

And it's not permanent.

But, you know, to anyone who talks to him, he would be an extrovert.

And it's just reconciling that with, again, I just see this challenge that we have with that today, which I don't think is, it's valid, but it's not justified.

This idea of, oh, but that's inauthentic.

Like you're just, you're just using, you're just manipulating something or you're adopting a skill.

And it's like, well, no, we all have to.

have skills at work that we don't use at home.

Yeah.

Right.

You're not that person at work and you wouldn't try and organize your family in the way you project manage at work.

And it's not inauthentic to turn that off at home.

It's it's normal to do that.

And so yes, if you need to develop communication skills to get promoted, that's a healthy investment because that's an important part of your life if it is.

And those skills will probably come in handy at home and in your personal life too.

Oh, totally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's almost like, how do we start looking at life as the accumulation of skills and abilities and traits and habits as opposed to shifting our entire identity because of that?

Just in the same way as if you wore color today, you're now not someone who just wears color.

Exactly.

It's, you know, but it's, it's weird how the mind kind of plays that trick in saying, oh, I'm just people pleasing or I'm just shape-shifting, which I think has become such a worry today.

Yeah, or masking people.

Yeah.

I've heard about like people saying, I'm, I'm masking if I'm like doing anything functional.

And I'm like, no, I mean, we are all masking to some extent.

Like, you know, I have to go on the radio sometimes.

And that's definitely, definitely, you know,

I don't talk all the time like I talk on NPR.

Like, you know, we all have different ways of presenting ourselves depending on the situation.

Yeah, definitely.

I wanted to ask you a last few sections a question.

How does this apply to people who are diagnosed with depression or ADHD?

Can they also change that through this work or is that very different?

There's actually been this push in psychology to identify the personality traits that are associated with things like depression and ADHD.

So my depression score went way down with changing neuroticism.

Neuroticism and depression and anxiety are very closely linked.

A lot of these things that we think of as sort of mental illnesses or mental health conditions actually have a personality trait component to them.

And MBSR, the class that I took, actually has gone head to head with Lexapro, the antidepressant, and it works just as well.

So in some ways, changing, yeah.

Wow.

So in some ways, changing your personality traits can address some of these, whatever you want to call them, mental health conditions that you might not be thrilled with to have in your life.

So if it is depression, you know, something like meditation or therapy can really go a great deal to addressing that.

If it's something like ADHD, some people think that's just like a form of low conscientiousness.

So if you think about it, it's just not having the systems in place to remember where your stuff is and where you need to be and what's on your calendar.

So a lot of the therapists who work with adults with ADHD basically just give them the tools that they use for conscientiousness.

So it's like, here's a Google calendar, like fill it out with every single thing you need to do this week.

Here's, you know, to-do is an app that I use.

Here's a clock that you can set 15 minutes at a time.

It's coming up with the tools that people use to change personality traits too.

And there's actually a new effort to treat a borderline personality disorder, which is a mental condition.

It also has a personality component, obviously, by changing personality traits.

It's using some of the strategies in the book and through therapy to actually shift people's levels of agreeableness and so forth and actually help cure BPD.

Yeah, I think we're just living at that time right now where it feels like work to go to MBSR or to therapy and you don't actually end up having any skills.

Yeah.

Right.

Like with the pill, like you don't, you don't change your reality.

You're numbing something or you're better at dealing with it or there's a sense of this doesn't worry me anymore, but there's not really an expansion of ability and skill.

And I mean, I'm mindful of the fact that people are on very, very different levels and may need it, but it's quite fascinating to hear that MBSR has that ability and similar scores.

Yeah.

And what you have to keep in mind is that I'm pro antidepressants, whatever works for people, but they can reach a point where they don't work very well anymore.

But the skills that you learn through something like meditation, mindfulness, even like a, you know, a cognitive behavioral therapy, they'll be with you through life, even when you don't have your Xanax handy or whatever.

So it's something I recommend maybe doing even in tandem with whatever antidepressant.

We end every episode of on purpose with a final five.

So these questions have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.

Okay.

So Olga, Hazan, these are your final five.

Question number one is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

And you can apply it all to personality in your world.

So what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

Go work at a place that will let you do exactly what you want to be doing, even if it's a very small establishment.

Question number two, what is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?

That if something is difficult, it's not worth doing.

Question number three, what's something that you used to think was true about personality, but now you've changed your mind on it?

I used to think that your birth order was the most important thing that determined your personality.

Interesting.

And it is actually not not at all important.

Let's talk about that because people feel like I've been the first child or the third child or this middle child.

Eldest daughter.

Yeah.

None of that stuff's real.

No.

Wow.

There are some gender effects so that you could be picking up on like being a daughter versus a son, but

the birth order, it's very negligible.

It's extremely small.

Question number four.

What is the biggest change that you've seen in yourself going on this journey that you're most grateful for now looking back?

Oh, it's that I think think I need to connect with other people in order to be happy.

And you didn't used to believe that?

No, I used to think that I could just be a little astronaut in space and never talk to anyone and be totally fine.

I think I, especially as a new mom, I joined a bunch of new moms groups and I really need those.

You can't do it alone.

I love that.

Fifth and final question.

We ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show.

If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

No flaking on plans at the last minute.

What's with that?

I love it when someone cancels on me.

It's like such a

joy of missing out.

I never cancel last minute because I'm not that guy, but I love someone canceling on me at last minute.

No.

And so, and it's always like, you know, I just can't today.

It's like, yes, you can.

You do it every other day.

Like, come on.

I love it.

There has to be some punishment for that, then, if you break that law.

No hanging out with that person for a whole week.

I don't know.

I don't know what the punishment would be.

I love it.

Everyone, the book is called Me But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change by Olga Hazan.

I hope you've enjoyed this conversation.

Make sure you share your favorite reflections, the experiments you're trying, the takeaways from the book as you're reading it.

Please post them and tag both of us on Instagram, on TikTok.

I love seeing all your stories and reels to see what resonates with you.

Olga, thank you so much for coming on the show again.

It's been wonderful to meet you.

And thank you so much for helping us.

teach us how to be ourselves but better.

So thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you so much.

If you love this episode, you'll love my conversation with Dr.

Joe Dispenza on why stress and overthinking negatively impacts your brain and heart and how to change your habits that are on autopilot.

Listen to it right now.

How many times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering?

That's the moment of change.

No one cares how many times you fell off the bicycle.

If you ride the bicycle now, you ride the bike.

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