Me, But Better: Olga Khazan On The Science of Personality Change, Challenging Fixed Mindsets, & The Big Five Traits That Shape Your Life | The Rich Roll Podcast

If there's some challenge in your life or something that you're facing or something unfamiliar that you have it in you to face that challenge.

Like you probably have the skills and the traits that are necessary to do that.

And you just need to nurture them. You need to go out and act as if Fake it till you make it and rise to the occasion.

And you can. Don't let your personality determine the things that you do in life.

Thank you. Hey people, today we are going to pontificate on personality. what it is, what's fixed about it, and what's not, and what we can plausibly do when we decide we're done with some part of ours and desire to do something about it.

So, Insofar as this is a show about change, Today's question to ask and answer is, Is it possible to actually change your personality?

And if so, how and to what extent? Before we do that, I would like to take a moment of gratitude. to thank everyone for their enthusiasm for last week's episode with James Fry.

I loved it. I think it will stand the test of time as one of my all-time faves.

But, you know, James is a lot, and for many, an acquired taste, I imagine.

I can't say I was all that sure how all of you would receive it.

So... It's been really great to get so much positive feedback and really heartwarming to hear from so many of you. how it recalled the kind of conversation that, harkens back to the early days of the show, the audio only days when I was like this traveling salesman peddling my podcast wares and knocking on doors to greet my guests with a suitcase full of gear that I would set up on their kitchen table or in a hotel room or some random conference room by the airport.

And I've got a lot of love and a lot of nostalgia for that time.

There was a romance to it, a purity. And it was exciting because it was new.

And unlike now, not that many people were doing it. if I was lucky enough to catch lightning with a guest like James Fry, like I did with some of my early episodes with people like John McAvoy and David Goggins. it would be like this event, but things have changed a lot.

And as I discussed in my most recent roll on, Most of those changes have been amazing, but some of the best aspects of this media format seem to have been slightly eroded in the midst of this growth spurt.

And some of those things are the very things that got me interested in it in the first place and what I still love about it the most. which is the unvarnished and vulnerable version of people sharing openly their very human stories. gleaned from personal experience.

And all of this I bring up to say that I found the response to the James Fry episode, as well as the Craig Mott episode, I should add, and a couple others in there as really heartwarming and affirming because it means that I'm not alone.

And so you guys have inspired me to be more proactive and more committed to getting back to the real heartbeat of all of this. prioritizing this kind of experience for you. and pursuing it more intentionally and rigorously, kind of like an artist would their art.

And so I guess I'm making a bit of a public announcement to you and to that.

So thanks for the nudge. Stay tuned because it's going to take a minute because we batch a lot of stuff in advance.

And the second thing real quick is that I'm in the early stages of doing more stuff on Substack these days.

We've got plans to do much more there in the near future.

So this is... early days, but I have started publishing some essays there about once a week. including one reflecting on the James Fry experience that I'm pretty proud of.

If you're not on my Substack, if you have never been on Substack, check it out.

I'm at Rich Roll. there just like I am on all the social media platforms, or you can find a link in the show notes on the episode page. on my website richroll.com Alright, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with more.

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A couple of years ago, I came across this article in The Atlantic titled, I gave myself three months to change my personality. where this journalist decided that she was kind of fed up with certain aspects of herself And she decided to set about changing them.

And it was this really great article. It was cheeky, it was provocative. really informative as well.

And so when I found out that she ended up extending her experiment for an entire year and then turning that into a book, which is called Me But Better.

I decided I best book her for the show because I find all of this fascinating.

And because I think it really captures the theme of this podcast, which is if it's anything.

What do we need to know and do to change for the better?

And after all that, I think I'd better just get into it.

So have at it with me and Olga Hazan. Olga, thank you for coming.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Thank you. Excited to talk to you.

In thinking about your latest book and your work kind of more broadly, Essentially, you're somebody who's challenged by and confused by a certain degree of anxiety and neuroticism that you're experiencing or you're having these challenging emotions, you're trying to sort them out and figure out if there might be a better way to And maybe you can speak a little bit about the specifics of that.

But you make this decision that you're gonna go on this journey to address that and you're gonna do it. through the lens of personality change.

So I have questions about that choice, but maybe just paint the picture of, who you were at the beginning of the journey we're gonna talk about.

So the book starts out with kind of a good encapsulation of this issue.

Which is I had this day in Miami, I was like on, My partner and I had been going down to Florida in the wintertime because I have seasonal affective disorder, which is also addressed in the book.

So we're in Miami. There's really unimpeachable weather, like beautiful or like... overlooking the ocean.

And I have this day where I have to do a bunch of stuff that is like, slightly annoying or just like slightly challenging.

And I just... it breaks me like I have to go get a haircut and the haircut is bad.

It's not a good haircut. It doesn't look good on me.

She didn't listen to what I said or I didn't communicate properly.

And I immediately chug a beer in order to try to like, emotionally deal with this bad haircut, which is how I dealt with my problems at the time.

And I We kind of lost my car in this parking garage, but then I like fight through traffic and I get to this photo shoot, which is the next thing I have to do.

And he like, I get there and he's like, do you wanna fix your hair?

I was like, this is... Trying to be helpful, but not understanding.

This is the result of me spending money on...

On my hair. And he takes a bunch of photos of me and they're like...

They're not good. I don't like the photos.

I think they look bad. But I'm not allowed to say this because they're for work.

Yeah, this is because they're going to go on the Atlantic.

They're going to be in the Atlantic. They're gonna be a giant, this blown up like magazine size in the print Atlantic magazine. that goes out to millions of people.

And I'm like looking at this and I'm like, this is like the worst photo of me ever taken.

So I'm like, okay, okay, yeah, okay. So I'm back in traffic.

I'm not a very good driver. I'm like driving.

I'm already like sweating this photo. I end up taking a bunch of wrong turns.

And I like my... like path home gets like longer and longer. my boss is like slacking me about something at the same time as I'm driving.

And he's like, this story needs work. And like, can you make these edits and I'm like trying to respond to him, but also driving.

I have to go to the grocery store because my mom needs these like special foods. for her like diet and like, I'm at the grocery store and my cart locks right outside the store.

And so I have to carry all my groceries. or no, I end up dragging my... parking lot to my car.

I drive my car to the Airbnb, um, It's just like a day of like minor stressors that eat away at me.

I basically get up to the Airbnb and I kind of just break down.

I just have... like when people say a nervous breakdown, I think that's just what I had.

I started just crying and kind of just, I think I said I hate everyone and everything.

I'm like chugging wine. And, you know...

Even now, telling this story, I'm like, That kind of is fine.

I mean, that's like an annoying day, but it's not.

Hair grows back and I didn't get in a car accident or anything.

Setting aside the fact that you write for the Atlantic and you're having your photograph taken for like this magazine, It's a very human story and extremely relatable.

And it's a story like many of the other stories in the book you tell with a certain level of self-deprecation.

It's death by a thousand cuts. It's not any one thing, but it's the accumulation of these, you know, inconveniences and this worldview that like the world is in a, you know, kind of adhering to like my plan that, you know, eventually boil over into, again, like a very human moment.

Like you just, you were overwhelmed and your anxiety burst through.

But as somebody who is in recovery and I'm like an AA person, this is like you're... come to Jesus moment, like you're having your awakening.

You're hitting bottom and you suddenly are blessed with the willingness to actually look at yourself something about it.

Yeah, yeah, I would say so. And like, I kind of was just like, There are so many people who would have looked at that day and said, hey, I'm getting my photo taken for the Atlantic.

How cool? It's all perspective. Yeah. You know, like that's who cares what the photo looks like, you know?

Like any rational person would look at it that way.

I just couldn't see the positive side of things the way that things are not all that bad or the way that I hadn't like, somehow darkly pick the wrong hairdresser or done something. terrible to like make this all happen.

So with this. kind of moment that you experience and this recognition that maybe you should get into action on this.

You make this decision to explore yourself through the lens of personality and personality change, which is a very interesting and different choice.

Like there's so many, There's thousands of books you could have picked up.

You could have called your colleague, Arthur Brooks.

Like there's a lot of, resources at your disposal and threads that you could have pulled.

And so I'm curious around like, how did you land on this idea of personality change in the first place? as being the kind of modality that you were gonna approach this problem.

So I had already done some research showing that personality... traits have a pretty big influence on our lives. some of the traits like conscientiousness, they matter more than like IQ or socioeconomic status. on some outcomes like mortality and job performance.

So I kind of, knew that this was all kind of connected to personality.

Like it wasn't just this random Like, I need to figure out how to stop having nervous breakdowns.

I knew that that was connected to the trait of neuroticism.

And kind of more importantly, it wasn't just my neuroticism that was going wrong at the time.

So this was kind of as the pandemic was letting up.

It was like 2021 or 2021. early 22. And I just kind of wasn't, getting back out there.

Like I never had a pandemic bubble. So I kind of just didn't see anyone for a year.

Yeah. And I just, even when it was like safe to gather, I, I was kind of just like retreating into myself.

If I had a busy work week, I was like, well, I deserve to sit on the couch and drink wine and not talk to anyone.

And that will be more restorative than connecting with other people.

And I kind of realized that, I mean, I had friends technically like people from high school, people from college.

I just didn't interact with anyone most weeks.

I was like, that's not healthy. Yeah. And also my, so there's a trait called agreeableness which has a lot to do with like warmth and empathy.

And for me, a part of it was anger and that I would get really angry both at myself and at other people.

And so I kind of wanted to tackle everything at once.

Like I wanted to... revamp multiple sides of myself as opposed to just meditating a lot.

But the normal response or the typical person would have said, okay, I know I have these things.

I have a... a certain degree of self-awareness about them.

Time to go to therapy. which is a piece here, but to, Is it because you had already spent so much time talking to all kinds of people, social scientists on some level understood the research around mental well-being that that that made this kind of a more obvious choice for you?

I think part of it is just, yes, So some of the research that I had already previously done, but also I was actually in therapy and therapy is definitely part of it.

And there are studies that show that going to therapy reduces reduces neuroticism by a significant amount.

So I definitely recommend therapy. Same with antidepressants.

If that works for people, I definitely recommend them.

But part of like this... science of personality change is that you actually have to go out and do stuff like just talking Like you kind of have to walk the walk.

And my therapist would suggest things to me like, hey, maybe you should get a hobby.

And I'm kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, like, sure.

I kind of wanted something that was like, boot camp or like a plan of some kind that would actually, force me to do things because that that is really the key part of personality change and of ultimately feeling better is is getting out of your house and actually doing the activities that are associated with personality change.

The premise is that personality is mutable and perhaps more mutable than we're prone to believe.

Like we identify it as this relatively fixed thing.

I'm curious around myth versus truth when it comes to that.

Let's just define, like, what is personality?

Yeah, so most of the scientists that I talk to think of it as the thoughts feelings and behaviors that come most naturally to you.

So if you're in Miami and you're getting your photo taken for the Atlantic Magazine and the photos look bad, Are you like, oh, well, at least I'm getting my photo taken for the Atlantic.

I'm so blessed. Thank you, Jesus. I'm going to drive home now.

Or do you have a huge meltdown and fall to pieces?

The kind of, The people who study personality change have a twist on that, which is that Personality helps us pursue our goals.

So... we kind of are all subtly trying to accomplish various things in our lives all the time.

And our personality traits help us accomplish those goals.

And sometimes when we find that we're really far from our goals or we're not able to do the things that we set out to do, we end up kind of changing our personalities without totally realizing it.

So this is like people who become super conscientious so they can get their dream job or so they can excel at their dream job. we end up kind of molding ourselves a little bit in order to get the things that we want.

So that's kind of the extra twist on it. that goes beyond just like what you're already like.

And how does personality differ from mindset or attitude, because those things are obviously important in terms of sort of setting ourselves about achieving goals as well.

Yeah, great question. So there's not like a psychology, obviously it's a soft science.

Like when these words get around, I was like, yeah, but his mindset, like what's a subset of what here?

Yeah. The other one I always get is like, how is it different from habit?

So it's kind of like personality is like all of the above.

Right. Because if who you are is what you do, then isn't habit a fundamental aspect of personality?

You know, it gets weird. Yeah, I would say that the most common thing way of like reconciling these that I hear is that habit, mindset and attitude are all part of personality.

But it kind of ultimately becomes... like they kind of all get braided together and become kind of like your identity or like who you...

Yeah, identify as, people who, go for a jog every day, eventually they might start to consider themselves like a runner.

And so that would be kind of more like a personality type than, you know, I just happen to exercise whenever I can remember.

So how does science... identify personality.

Talk a little bit about the big five. Yeah, so the conclusion that psychologists have come to after debating this for decades, is that there are five personality traits.

You can remember them with the acronym OCEAN.

So it's Openness to Experiences, which is... kind of a nebulous trait, but it's sort of like open-mindedness, how up you are for new ideas and activities.

This is associated with like political liberalism and kind of creativity.

C is conscientiousness, which is the go get it. getters among us these people get up early they do go for a morning jog.

They love to crush it at work. They know where all their stuff is.

They get places on time. E for extroversion.

Extroversion, the opposite is introversion.

It is sort of like that I need quiet time to myself to recharge, except that we all... need quiet time to ourselves to recharge, not just introverts.

Extroverts also, they like being around people and they also just are more active They just do a lot more activities.

They like to get outside the house and be doing things, even if they're not while they're doing it.

Agreeableness is warmth and empathy toward others.

These people have really, They're happier, they're kind of more resilient in the face of adversity, and they have really meaningful and deep relationships with other people. people.

And then neuroticism is basically depression and anxiety.

And the opposite is emotional stability.

So it's sort of like, bad things happen to you and you kind of just take it in stride.

So all of us, to one degree or another, fall somewhere along the spectrum with these five different Yes.

But this was not always the consensus on personality.

You know, like I grew up in a, it's like, I remember just hearing about the, the, the is it the Myers-Briggs, the Briggs-Myers test for a very long time.

And in the book, you kind of recount the history of science with respect to trying to understand what personality is and isn't.

Yeah. So before we kind of settled on the big five, and again, they're a spectrum.

So Um, no one is kind of a pure introvert or extrovert.

So all personality changes means moving along the spectrum of the traits.

But before that, there was different categories.

I mean, Freud had ideas that we we have like these subconscious impulses and that kind of dictates what we do.

The trait theorists who are kind of more popular now think that like, no, we're pretty aware of what we want.

People will kind of describe themselves pretty accurately when you ask them.

And then the Myers-Briggs was popular for a short time, but that one hasn't, kind of lasted in terms of validity.

Just because it kind of tends to put people in categories.

So like you're an introvert who judges...

And none of us are really in a category, like we all have, First of all, we all have like little bits of all the different traits inside of us.

And we might even use different traits at different times. depending on the situation.

We are a multiplicity of personalities. It isn't like a singular thing.

Yeah, and some people code switch pretty significantly.

I mean, I do as a parent, I'm not the same person at work or in a hostel interview that I am with my toddler.

So we all call upon different elements of traits in order to get through life.

Is the notion around mutability a newer one? did that start to become something that scientists were taking seriously?

I would say it is relatively recent. The personality change studies that I write about have only been happening since like the past 10 years or so. which is very recent if you think about the fact that the big five were only really codified in like the early 90s. late 80s.

So yeah, it is recent. Nathan Hudson is... is sort of the big personality change researcher that I profile.

But yeah, and for a long time, there was this thing thought that people change a significant amount or maybe a small amount during childhood and their teen years, but then once they're 30, the personality is set like plaster. to quote William James.

And so, you know, people thought like once you're 30, you're set, you're not gonna change ever again.

Your preferences aren't gonna change, your life isn't gonna change.

But kind of more recently, we find that that's not really true.

People do change a significant amount. I mean, just reflecting back on my own life.

Like when I think of myself at 30 or even like 35 versus now, like, yeah, My personality is completely different and my preferences are different.

I can't be an outlier in that regard. It seems almost self-evident or obvious that it can't be a fixed thing.

And yet maybe it's the the Myers Briggs thing or whatever Briggs Myers, whatever it is, kind of created this idea that it is a static aspect of who we are, like you are who you are and I'm an introvert and you're an extrovert.

And that's just the way that it is. Yeah, I think that the Myers-Briggs did because it puts people in categories.

And so people then have their little four letters or whatever. and they kinda carry it around and- It becomes self-fulfilling.

Yeah, and then, I mean, so, First of all, I have no problem.

People who identify as an introvert, I think that's totally fine if you wanna do that.

What I would kind of caution against is like taking that and like rejecting opportunities that don't fit with your personality as you think of it.

So if you're an introvert, so you can never become a manager because that requires speaking to people and inspiring people and going out and meeting clients.

I would not. try to think of yourself as an introvert for a while and see what happens.

Have you had this conversation with Susan Cain?

I have talked to Susan Cain multiple times.

So she's wonderful. And she did agree to be interviewed.

And I... I really love her book and I agree with her ideas, but she and I see the introversion, extroversion thing a little bit differently. if you're introverted, you should not only respect yourself for being introverted and perhaps even celebrate it, but with that understanding you're in a place where you can make better decisions about, you know, career and social situations, et cetera.

And I think Part of her book and her work is about rejecting this notion or kind of this cultural idea that if you're introverted, you're less than.

Yeah. Or bad because it's obviously it's, you know, a lot of attention and we celebrate them and the introverts are hiding in the corner feeling bad about themselves.

And she's saying, you shouldn't feel bad about yourself.

But where I think you guys probably agree is... we all need connection and we all need community and and and social nourishment and you're you're essentially acknowledging the introvert, but saying, you know, you have needs just like everyone else.

And sometimes you have to you know, step out of your comfort zone and put yourself in social situations to make sure that those needs are being met Also saying, yeah, I'm an introvert, so I need to do that more sparingly than an extrovert would.

Yeah, I think that's very well said. So part of my rationale for trying to become more extroverted is that There's all these studies that extroverts are happier.

And so I called Sonia Lubomirsky, who's like this happiness expert.

I love her, she's great. She's amazing.

And I was like, look, introverts are going to yell at me. quietly you know once she likes that though she likes to she likes to mix it up I was like, look, how can extroverts, how can introverts like be happy if they're not extroverted um and you know she really recommended like Look, it doesn't mean that you do have to do improv.

You can go to a book club and... listen more than you talk.

And that's still extroversion, quote unquote.

You can go on a hiking... trip and hike around and take things in and not be chatting the whole time.

And that still counts as being connected. with community.

So you have this acronym, uh, And we have these big five traits, But before you can begin to go on this journey, you have to basically get an assessment Like, where are you on the spectrum on all of this, right?

So how did you fare the first time that you, you sat down and went through that process.

I would say I feared. OK, so I had two things going for me in the spirit of positivity.

I was very high on conscientiousness. and very high on openness.

The things that were not so good, I was a little bit below average on agreeableness.

And I was extremely low on extroversion.

I was in the 23rd percentile. So I was very introverted and especially when it came to being, it said friendly or cheerful.

So it was not friendly or cheerful. You seem, well, whatever work, I didn't know you before.

It was. You seem perfectly cheerful and friendly right now.

Yeah. Yeah, proof is in the pudding now.

And then on neuroticism, I scored in the 94th percentile.

Wow. Which, yeah, it was like extremely high was the classification, yeah.

So neuroticism is something you're gonna have to focus on extraversion a little bit, but it all makes sense.

Of course, you're conscientious. Of course, you're going to be more introverted you're a writer and um and as a journalist you're not meant to be I mean, agreeable enough to convince people to talk to you.

Your job is to test the outer edges of people's ideas and to not necessarily take people at face value. value or trust them implicitly.

Yeah. And that's something that I struggled with, um, in that chapter and something that a lot of people who like They're like, I kind of want to be more agreeable, but I don't know.

People worry about becoming people pleasers. and sort of just agreeing with whatever everyone says or like succumbing to pressure or peer pressure.

That's actually like not agreeableness. That's kind of like a different thing.

It's like low assertiveness basically. It's easy to confuse it for that.

I did for a long time. of pride yourself on it like I'm easy to get along with I'll just say yes and everybody wants to be around me because you You're not being authentic, of course, but what you really are saying is I want to belong and I'll do anything to belong because I'm so desperate. to feel a part of something.

It's a betrayal of yourself. So you're not agreeable to your own being.

And on some level, you're not even really agreeing, you're just going along to get along.

Yeah, exactly. And what I had to learn is that there are ways... to be agreeable but still stick up for yourself.

You can have boundaries with people and state the boundaries in a kind way and not just go along to get along. but still be liked and possibly even be liked more than you would have been if you had just been saying yes to everything.

Because there's gonna come a point where you said yes so much that now you have to really throw down the hammer not kind way.

The explosion. Yes. Yeah. Well, what you're saying is agreeableness isn't agreeing with people, it's how you comport yourself in the face of ideas that you don't agree with or somebody who's being unpleasant or who is, you know, triggering you or provoking some kind of not great emotion inside of you.

Yeah, and I'll give you a really concrete example. of something that I did wrong.

So I had a friend who... So I don't like texting to catch up with people.

I'm fine with texting to make plans or like, hey, have you heard of this or whatever. whatever like short little things, but I don't like kind of long texts about what's going on in our lives.

I'd prefer a phone call. And so I had a friend who told me that I had to text her to check in with her every week or else she was going to stop being friends with me.

And of course, I was like, okay, okay, whatever you want.

I'll do it. I'll do it. No problem. But of course, I can't remember to text her every week because...

Texting is not part of my that I do is these text check-ins.

So I forget and then she stops being friends with me.

So I talked with like a friendship expert who was like, You could have just said, look, I'm really sorry that I've been making you feel like I'm neglecting you or that I don't care about you.

But texting is just. It's not something that I'm able to do at that frequency, especially in that way.

Is there another way that I can catch up with you?

Zoom call, phone call, something else." I don't know why, but I just, I never thought of that.

I just thought you had to say yes to whatever people wanted or else they wouldn't like you.

First of all, that is an outrageous request on behalf of somebody. who claims to be your friend.

Like if you wanna be my friend, you have to do homework and I'm gonna check your homework.

Like that's insane. And I would take that response that you just made you know, the response that you feel like you could have or should have. given that person a step further to say, you said like, I'm sorry, I'm making you feel this way, like you're not making her feel, you're not responsible for her emotions, you know?

Oh, right, right, yeah. It's like the conditions that she's imposed upon this. are pretty onerous.

And I would say that somebody who's really a friend or somebody worthy of being your friend is not somebody who would behave that way.

Yeah, and I mean that was a big part of Learning about agreeableness is like, when do I set a boundary and when do I... kind of just agree.

When do I go along? My wife's so good at this, like somebody recently you know, kind of was trying to tempt her into attending something she didn't want to the circumstances are irrelevant.

But it was sort of a similar situation of trying to draw her into a web that she didn't wanna be a part of.

And she was just like, yeah, oh, no, yeah, I'm not gonna do that. nonplussed by the whole thing that it was like, oh, okay.

You know, like it just passed, right? So...

Setting a boundary without the emotional charge around it. would be agreeableness.

Yeah. Yeah. And then not worrying, you know, are they mad at me?

Are they mad at me? You know, Because as long as you didn't yell, you communicated kindly, Because when you really will like ruffle feathers and make people upset is if you say yes so much, find yourself in a situation you don't want to be in and then at the last minutes, I know, or like, you know, yell at them for always asking you for things.

Yeah, this is the plight of the chronic people pleaser.

Like I've been in that situation like too many times.

And then you resent yourself and then you're mad at that person for no reason.

And you think like, by putting it off or if it's weighed in down the line on the calendar, like that, you know, you'll change your mind and wanna go and that day, it's just, it's a really bad strategy for life, but the fear behind it is, you're gonna get uh exiled from the group or whatever you're gonna end a friendship and and and that's the one thing you're trying to avoid.

But everything you're doing is leading you towards that all along.

Yeah, another thing I did for that chapter was volunteer in a homeless shelter.

And I was like, oh, these people must be just complete...

Sorry, it wasn't a homeless shelter. It was like a day center for the homeless and they served... served food, served lunch.

That was like the main thing happening. And I thought they would be like these saintly people who just, yes, whatever you like, you know.

But they were like kind of tough because they had to be because they're like trying to, you know, feed hundreds of people, some of whom were in active psychosis, in the middle of a pandemic in a, you know, a clean and hygienic and like quick way.

And so it was like, yeah, no, you can't have seconds yet.

You know, put up, pull up your mask. They were kind of tough with their clients.

But I kind of realized that they had to be so that they could do this broader project of agreeableness. of like getting everyone fed, they had to be kind of strict individually. disagreeable on small things in order to meet the agreeableness of the big thing.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Just as one workout does not an athlete make, one nutritious meal does not a healthy person make.

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I want all my listeners to enjoy a deep, That's birchliving.com slash richroll and get 27% off. site-wide, birchliving.com slash richroll. the thing that kind of sticks out to me that I'm curious about is just the this curiosity I have about your curiosity because I feel like you are this journalist and you interview all of these amazing minds and you go deep into the social science and research, etc.

But you're the subject. Like everything that you write about and both of your books, are like self inquiry.

Like there's something about you that you're trying to resolve within yourself. and then you go on this journey to try to learn about it.

But as a journalist, you're the subject.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like it's a lot of psychologists that I talk to have this concept called me search, which is The thing they end up dedicating their lives to and publishing all these studies on is basically something that's like kind of always been wrong with them or like something that they're trying to figure out about themselves.

And I feel like a lot of journalists have that too.

It might not be as explicit as mine where they're literally changing their personality or going on some sort of journey themselves.

But I think a lot of journalists have they're drawn to a beat that kind of speaks to something within themselves or like they're trying to figure something out or like, I don't know, they had kids and then they became a parenting reporter because they couldn't figure out some element of parenthood or something.

So yeah, I'm sort of like that in that I've just always...

Probably because I spent a lot of time by myself as a kid.

I have always kind of wondered like why people... think the things they do and behave the way they do and Yeah, so I've just always been drawn to those big, deep questions.

So yeah, I'm fortunate that I get to do that for my job.

I mean, writing is about answering questions, but when, The question has to do with something you're trying to figure out about yourself.

You know, you're going to go on this outward journey to answer it, but it's also you have to apply those answers inward.

So I always thought that like my unhappiness, like my tendency toward anxiety was, and unhappiness and sort of, I call it introversion in the book, but it was really just like a lack of social interaction.

I always thought that it was well, the world is just structured in a way that's making me unhappy. and it's making me anxious or it's hard for me to make friends because like everyone is bad.

And I think once I started learning a little bit more about the personality science, I

I'm sort of like, no, I like approach things, um, in a way that's counterproductive a lot of the time, because I have high levels of neuroticism. or I don't know how to kind of manage these feelings of neuroticism when they come up.

So I think it went from like kind of thinking that like, oh man, my life is so stressful.

My job is so stressful. Everything is so stressful.

And that's why I'm anxious all the time to like, I think there's something inside me that is making me more prone to stress. or making me interpret things that are kind of neutral as more stressful than they need to be.

Well, first of all, those things are also doing something for you You know, like you address this in the book, like we behave in these errant ways because on some level, they are serving us or at one point in time they did serve us.

And so we're reluctant to let go of them. and perhaps even more reluctant to see the ways in which they're leading us astray. right?

Like when they go haywire, like our strengths become our weaknesses.

Yeah, I totally agree with that. And that was the biggest struggle with Letting go of some of my anxiety is that I always thought that anxiety is how I... get things done.

Like that's how I get through life. That's how I meet deadlines and that's how I perform.

And if I didn't have my anxiety, I wouldn't have anything.

I would just like It's your superpower.

Yeah, I would fall apart. If you didn't have that, yeah, You wouldn't be writing for The Atlantic.

Like, none of these things would have happened.

Like, you know, the prospect of, like, not having that would be like taking the engine out of the car.

Yeah, yeah. And it can really like... interfere with your ability to have self-compassion because you start to think that like, well, if I'm compassionate to myself, I'm going to be soft and I'm not gonna try as hard. because I'm not gonna be like driving myself to achieve.

And I think in some ways, like that's evolutionarily adaptive, right?

Like, like, People who are here today who are kind of anxious high achievers, they're... like ancestors, you know, generations and generations back, like they were the ones who like spotted the saber tooth tiger or whatever, you know, they,

We come from a long line of people who were anxious and it did something for us.

And it's really hard to let go. Or you're the exception to the rule and you have built this life and you reflect back on it and see all the people that didn't have this thing that you have and and it's easy to then come to the conclusion that it was because of that, and perhaps solely because of that, that you were able to do these amazing things.

Oh yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Like when I look at people, you know, they got laid off.

Was it because they weren't anxious enough about their performance or something like that?

Yeah. It's easy to tell yourself that story.

If you had panic attacks like I did, this would not happen.

Exactly. There's your problem. The other part, the other kind of ripple or piece to that is like the urge to control, right?

If the world out there would just, adhere to like my way of doing things, like all of this would go away. and the frustration that people don't behave in the way that you want them to. amps up the anxiety, but is really fundamentally at its root, like a an issue around control or a fear of like, letting go or not being in charge.

Absolutely. Yeah. So that was a big element for me.

And it was So stay with me, but this is like specifically what was wrong with me was that I...

I had this urge to control and when I couldn't control the outcomes, when things didn't go according to plan, I would have a lot of self-blame.

If I had planned to go to a certain beach on a certain day and I couldn't find parking that kind of thing would like completely disappear. destroy me.

It would completely ruin not just that day, but that week.

I would tell this story in my head of I'm a terrible driver parking searcher.

Nothing I do ever goes according to plan.

So that element for me was like, I mean, in Buddhism, they call it the double arrow where bad things would happen and then I would just hit myself with that second arrow of self blame.

And that was a big part of it for me. Yeah, making the second mistake.

It's bad enough that it didn't go well and now I'm gonna beat myself up for it.

But within that, there's a narcissism, like this sense that you're all powerful, like, you know.

Yeah. I just didn't try hard enough. If I had, then that parking spot would have manifested itself or whatever.

It's a complete... delusion. And even if your life is terrible and you're, you know...

And you're just walking around with this victim mentality like that is a form of narcissism.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. A big thing, so part of what I did, spoiler, is improv to kind of get over some of these things.

And A big part of that, which is... That makes it so uncomfortable, but also... makes it so helpful is that you can't control anything.

You can't control what anyone says. You might have the best idea for a you know a sketch and like go in there and and want to do a certain thing but you're kind of co-castmates are gonna have different ideas and you have to find a way to make your idea work with theirs.

And that kind of feeling of like, it's not up to me how this goes was like very new to me.

Yeah, let's say exercise and surrender. And a really courageous one at that.

I mean, like improv, For anybody, let alone somebody who is is kind of like at their core introverted and, and, uh, and has some neuroticism, that's really scary.

I mean, in terms of like, now we're getting way ahead of ourselves, but like just to finish the thought, as an exercise, like I would have thought like, well, try something a little bit, you know, less challenging first.

That's like jumping into the deep end of the pool.

Yeah. Although it's funny, like in DC, everyone's like, oh my God, you did improv.

That's so scary. And I can't believe you did that.

Here, everyone's doing improv. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're doing these like LA podcasts. They're like, so...

Right, right. Yeah, everyone in this city is like done in improv class.

I know, I know. Well, it's a self-selecting audience.

But let's back up a little bit and create a little context here.

Essentially, what's happening here is you're like, okay, you're leveraging your strength, which is your conscientiousness. and you're applying it to this project, right?

And maybe even with a degree of neurosis, Like I am going to change my personality and I'm going to like talk to everyone.

And this is I'm committing to do it. And I'm going to like write this article about it for. like now I'm on the hook, like you created accountability around it.

And you go deep and you like, like you're trying all these things, like trying to understand if these things in a practical, real life context are going to move the needle for you.

Yes. My only caveat to that is that I was not this brave, intrepid person who... who was like, yay to all these activities.

Like probably my first- 10 times in improv, I was like, get me out of here.

Is this really necessary? Maybe I could just be an extrovert without doing this.

Should I call my editor right now? At what point did the article part of it come in?

Was that at the beginning? Were you like, okay, If I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna write about it.

I'm interested in the relationship between the writing aspect of it and just the personal journey outside of like, doing it because it's going to end up on the page.

So I always had the assignment the whole time I was doing this.

So I can't claim... So the idea, like you pitched the idea?

Yeah, essentially. Like it was already like... like Olga's gonna change her, or try to.

So I always had the assignment. So I can't pretend that I, it just worked out miraculously that they were into this.

But I will say that I've continued, like the book is out, it's done.

Don't have to do anything with it anymore.

But I will say I've continued a lot of this stuff.

It's good to hear because Basically, you write this article.

2022, did that come out? The article in The Atlantic?

Yes. I think so. But then after that came out, then you kind of like relax for a while.

Enough of that. Yeah, exactly. I can quit improv.

Relapsed a little bit. Yeah, yeah. And then obviously the book got you re-energized around it.

But now in the aftermath of a book, there's a longer tail like you're in.

Yeah, I think I realized that I was never really as introverted as I was telling myself that I was.

I think I had this story about myself that I just don't need any. social interaction.

And I think I kind of actually need quite a lot.

I think that's part of what keeps me going.

And so whenever I... I joined mom's groups and I did Bumble BFF long after I needed to.

I kind of am more of an approach person now than a retreat person.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it took the the pandemic for me to recognize that within myself, like when it started.

I mean, I live kind of out in the middle of nowhere.

I like my solitude. when I'm just working on my little projects by myself in a room with the door shut.

And so when the pandemic hit, I thought, well, I'm built for this.

This'll be fine. Yeah, yeah. And it took quite a long time to realize, you know, to kind of succumb to the languishing of it all and realize like, you know.

How much I that I needed social connection in a way that maybe I had never really reckoned with.

Yeah, I think, yeah, a lot of writers were like, oh, there's a pandemic.

Like, cause it's your day-to-day life is very insular, you know, you, You know, and I was the same.

I would do my interviews and then I would write.

If anyone talked to me while I was writing, I would yell at them.

And like, you know, I think it... I kind of realized that I was starting... I kind of need other people in order to feel like a person.

Like I... And one of the experts that I talked to, Jillian Sandstrom, She lives in the UK or moved to the UK as an American to teach.

And she kind of realized that she didn't feel part of the social fabric because she didn't have any friends and didn't like talk to anyone most of the time.

And so she would just start kind of talking to people on public transportation mostly, or like just when she was out and about and starting conversations with people.

Honestly, just because after a while you start to feel like, am I in a video game?

It can feel very isolating. And so sometimes she just has these like little short conversations with people just to.

I don't know, feel alive. What does the science say about when it comes to mutability of personality? in terms of like what is locked in and genetic and sort of predestined versus aspects of it that truly are variable depending upon like, how you engage with them.

Great question. So basically nothing is predestined.

So I will say that So 40 to 60%, let's call it half. of your personality is inherited or genetic, right?

It's influenced by your genes. However, like no one is exactly like their parents, right?

Because you, get those genes and then they combine in unpredictable ways.

You can't always... no kid looks exactly like their parents or acts exactly like their parents.

You can't always place like, this is from mom and this is from dad.

Our genes kind of combine in unpredictable ways and then they kind of interact in unpredictable ways with the environment.

And the environment is really what exerts a powerful influence. on your personality.

So if you're a kid who is a little bit introverted and you spend a ton of time reading and then you, you know, become this like professor and you end up giving a lot of talks.

These things are all going to influence your personality. kind of as you go along in life.

If you happen to smile a lot and you attract a lot of people to you, and you make a lot of friends, those friends will kind of influence your personality as well.

So I wouldn't say that anything is like, my dad had depression, so I'm gonna have depression and there's literally nothing I can do.

It's more like, okay, you might have a, you know, proclivity toward that, or you might have a... be kind of drawn toward that to some extent, but you still have a fair amount of wiggle room depending on choices that are made for you by your parents and childhood, and then choices that you make yourself. you know, in your early adulthood and throughout adulthood.

I mean, that alone is so empowering to know.

It's a very hopeful message in which we have quite a bit more agency than perhaps we really understand.

Yeah, and I mean, you see this with anyone who's ever... quit drinking or completely change their friend group or change their job or gone back to school.

Sometimes people just have these bursts where they're like, I'm gonna do something completely different.

And then that, or, you know, either their personality changes and it leads them into a new situation or they're placed in new situation and it then changes their personality.

I often think, though, in those contexts, I wonder, is it is it a desire to change your um, personality that motivates like a major life change, like a career change or something like that.

Or is it a betrayal of your personality?

Like you're walking around like acting in a certain way, but you're like, I'm not happy.

I feel like I'm living someone else's life or this is not for me.

I can feel it. To me, it feels like That's almost like a costume that you're wearing, like you've betrayed your personality and your personality is like, The authentic version of you has been muted and repressed and has happened. had enough.

Right. And it's like, come on, like we need to like go over here.

Yeah, so my therapist, one of the things she would always tell me is that I have a true self and an anxious self. and that my anxious self is always like undermining the things that I want.

So I do think some people do that, like they end up in a situation that they assumed was right or that they assumed was what they should be doing.

And then... Sometimes it's because we don't believe that we can change that we continue doing things that are counterproductive or just not a good fit for us or not a good fit anymore.

You also change over time and what was fun when you were 22 is not maybe fun when you're 42.

Are you familiar with internal family systems like IFS, Scott Richard Schwartz?

Yeah, I had him in here. From his perspective, you have all of these voices and personalities.

All of them are trying to you know, perform on your behalf and all these various ways and they're competing, you know, but, but, recognizing them and honoring them like, oh, like, hey, you know, my neurotic five year old self, like I know that you're doing that because You feel like you need to to protect me.

And I'm so thankful for that. But like, it's cool.

Like, we're good. Like, you can. You can like chill out, you know?

Yeah, I think, yeah. And there is like...

Yeah, there's an element of personality change to that is like which... side of yourself do you wanna present in a certain situation?

I talked to one, another podcaster, Who has this alter ego that she kind of like puts on when she has to do some like business transaction, like when she has to talk to her agent or something, she's like, and now I'm a successful business woman and she trots out that. side of herself, which is not who she is day to day.

Everything that you talk about in the book and you go through is very action-based. you have to do things.

You have to get out of your comfort zone.

And it reminds me of what Susan David you know Susan David like this she's this amazing professor of psychology and her whole thing is like discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.

And I think, who was it who said in your book something around confusing for being like a basically like I can't remember exactly what it was, but basically like being a betrayal of your personality If it feels uncomfortable, you shouldn't do it because I'm not... the kind of person that does that kind of thing and disabusing people of that.

Like if you want to grow, change, evolve, and engender your life with more fulfillment and meaning. it demands that you get out of your comfort zone.

So don't confuse that with something else.

Yeah, I mean, look, everything that you do that's new is going to feel uncomfortable the first time you do it.

I mean, nobody who... has a baby, goes home from the hospital that first day and is like, I feel totally... at ease with this.

I feel confident. I know exactly what to do with this baby.

I feel like a natural born parent. Everyone is like a total nervous wreck.

Can't believe they were allowed to leave the hospital with a baby. you know, is like Googling how many ounces at what time, you know, Anything you do initially is going to feel very, very uncomfortable.

I said, 10, 15 times I did improv, it was extremely uncomfortable.

And I think part of it is just like, if you have a value or a goal that's on the other side of that discomfort, you can't let the discomfort stop you.

You have to just kind of persevere a little bit until it becomes more comfortable.

You know, we see this like most explicitly and literally with exercise where like the first time you run, it's like super uncomfortable and you're like, why do people do this?

And then you get good at running and suddenly it's like glorious and euphoric.

That happens with mental things, attitudinal things too.

I found it in my notes. It was Sonia. Just because it doesn't feel natural or comfortable doesn't mean it's not authentic.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And authenticity, like the way we think like people think of authenticity is just what feels good to me, right?

And so I would caution against... letting that be your guide to everything you do because Not everything that feels good to you is the best thing to be doing at the time.

And not everything that's healthy or interesting or that's going to help you grow is going to feel good at first.

In terms of extroversion versus introversion, if you're introverted, and you're perfectly happy and your life is wonderful and fulfilled. fantastic, keep doing what you're doing, right?

But if you are feeling lonely or disconnected and, yearning for a little bit more connection with other people Here's the discomfort that you're gonna have to weather.

It's pretty obvious. Like you're gonna have to put yourself in social situations maybe you rather wouldn't that are going to be uncomfortable.

And you kind of walk through that We mentioned improv earlier.

To me, that's like a huge leap for somebody who's prone to introversion.

But it feels like that map is pretty self-evident.

But when it comes to Like, okay, uh, what are the contrary actions that I need to take here?

Yeah. So what anxious people do that is their reflexive action?

So it's their behavior that they use to cope with the anxiety.

If I worry enough, it won't happen. So kind of what the research kind of says that you should do if you have this tendency toward worry is, either to limit the worrying to like a worry period.

So set aside five minutes and write down everything you're worried about. and then just try to stop.

Of course, like anxious people aren't good at stopping thinking.

So what I kind of like that I got from Tracy Dennis Tiwari, which is a that has worked for me a little bit is, okay, write down all your worries, write down everything bad that could happen. but also write down everything good that could happen.

Because in reality, like most things in life, have positive and negative elements. something really frightening or terrible will occur, but then, you'll either find a way out of it or you will gain something from it or maybe it just won't be that bad.

Maybe you'll buy a new house and it won't have the XYZ that you were looking for, but it ended up having... a lot more space or it was in a cool neighborhood or positive outcomes are also possible.

That is something that I and a lot of other neurotic people tend to lose sight of when we're really in a worry spiral.

So that's like kind of your opposite action for that coping behavior of worry.

The other things I've heard of for people who kind of struggle more with like the panic side of anxiety.

So more like panic attacks. is to actually try to lean into the sensations of So including things like breathing through a straw, you know, getting your heart pumping really fast and just noticing that like,

These sensations are maybe a little unpleasant, but they actually don't hurt you.

Like you're not gonna die from your heart beating. fast or from hyperventilating.

That panic attacks aren't dangerous. A lot of what is painful about neuroticism is that you are kind of afraid of your feelings. you're afraid of your neuroticism.

And so part of what the kind of therapy around this involves is like making you less afraid of the anxiety.

So even if it comes, you're not... you're not panicking because you're anxious.

I have people in my life that I'm close with that are prone to this sort of thing. even to the extent that it's all consuming and it's being fueled by news and politics and global events and and just in just this proclivity for future tripping on the disaster that is, you know, obviously just around the bend.

And it's almost like, fuel source, you know that that makes them feel alive and and and kind of an addiction right like a It's energizing, I suppose, on some level.

It's destructive. But it's very difficult to, like I'm powerless.

Like I can't, you know, like I feel like, until someone like that has their own kind of reckoning.

Like, it doesn't matter what you say to them.

Like, hey, you know, maybe you should breathe out of a straw doing these things. it's very difficult to get somebody to take that leap and try something different.

Yeah, and I mean... Yeah, cuz those spirals can feel almost like very safe, right?

Like when I- Yeah, when I really get going on a worry spiral, it can almost feel like more comfortable than not worrying because you think that by worrying you can prevent things from happening.

Or maybe you're smarter than everyone else because you can see what everyone else can't see.

If they could see what you see. Yeah. But yeah, and I would tell myself like, well, I've always seen everything bad coming or like, but of course I haven't.

Like, you know, I... I didn't see Trump coming.

There's a ton of stuff that I haven't seen coming in my life.

Yeah, but I definitely sympathize with the, I guess, desire to just keep thinking about bad things because you think that that will keep them at bay.

I take it that you started doing these things.

What are some of the other things that you did and how effective have they been and what has... stayed with you or stuck that has led to you being less neurotic and So the main thing that I did was this class called MBSR, which is a meditation class.

It's called mindfulness-based stress reduction.

And in studies, it's been proven to work about as well as Lexapro.

And it's kind of simple when you describe it.

It's 45 minutes a day of mindful meditation.

And then every week, there's a Zoom or in-person gathering where they kind of do a PowerPoint presentation of like Buddhism for dummies, like very, very basic broken down. concepts from Buddhism that could be applied for stressful situations.

The meditation was extremely difficult for me.

It's very hard to focus on your breath, focus on anything but worrying for someone like me.

So that was, I think, helpful to an extent, but actually, The part of it that I think was more helpful for me was the Buddhism for dummies part.

I think I just needed... someone to come at me with like aphorisms at the right time when I was truly desperate and There's something about the shared setting and all of us kind of sharing our struggles and the teacher kind of telling you Buddhism's answer to these struggles that has existed for many centuries.

Um, it was kind of like a relief or it was, um, I don't, I don't believe in God, but I, um, people who are like, let go and let God, I kind of like, let go and let the universe a little bit I don't know how else to describe it but it was it was just like a little bit of a you don't have to be in charge of everything working out perfectly. was like the overarching message of that class.

And that to me was like, Okay. Like, you know what I mean?

It's not up to you. Yeah. Why are you carrying this on your shoulders?

Why don't you just drop the rock and surrender a little bit?

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There's so much overlap throughout the entire book with how 12-step works.

And in terms of what you just shared, a lot of people come in to the program Very... complicated opinions and emotions and histories with religion, faith, spirituality, et cetera.

But fundamentally, it is a spiritual program.

It's so non-denominational that you get to call God whatever you want or, you know, higher power, the universe. or even just the collective group of people that... between and betwixt them, share a wisdom that you don't have, like that's a power greater than you.

Buddhism app community, like there was a shared wisdom there that you were able to tap into.

But fundamentally it's about like letting go.

Like neuroticism is about this clutch And when you realize like, I'm not in control here, like there's more going on that I like, Like humbling yourself that you're not all powerful.

Is this... cathartic relief. Yeah, it really was like that for me.

One of the little aphorisms that I came across that I keep coming back to in the course of researching that chapter was actually from David Axelrod, the Democrat Democratic strategist.

Um, but I'm very DC. Um, uh, And he was kinda describing what it's like to work really hard on a political campaign. you're working like 100 hours a week, you're doing everything you can to get your guy elected.

And then come election day, you have no control. you could lose in a huge way and you have no say in the matter.

And it's... you know, it is what it is.

And what he tells himself is, all we can do is everything we can do.

Essentially just means like you can push really, really hard. can try hard, but then you ultimately have to let go.

You cannot control the outcome. And you have to just be okay with that.

And that, for me, has been really... helpful in a lot of ways, book launch, parenting, just day-to-day life.

You can set yourself up for success. You can set your kids it up for success and then you just have to take your hands off the wheel because you can't control everything. not only can you not control everything, I mean, Olga, what do you honestly think that you can control?

So I... Going into this, I thought... I basically thought that if people were smart... they could basically make their lives run flawlessly.

And that when my life didn't run flawlessly, it was because I wasn't being smart.

That was like my... theory that I had, which is not correct.

But I'll still, I'm gonna pressure you. I'm gonna keep with this.

Like, what do you think you have control over?

I mean, oh God, what do I have control over? the pants that I put on every morning.

I don't know. Like I have no... I think meditation... has been very helpful to me in helping me really really get like really understand that truly the only thing I have control over is my behavior like how I respond to externalities. and everything is an externality that I can't control.

I can't even necessarily control what my mind is doing all the time.

Like it's running its own things. And the more I meditate, the more agency I feel I have over that.

But it's really just... how am I showing up in the world right now?

I can't even control what's gonna happen a moment from now.

Maybe you'll storm out of here. Like, who knows?

You know what I mean? How dare you ask me?

But there's a piece in that, but also like a focus.

Like, okay, well, now that I know that, And I know that when I behave in this way, I'm setting myself up for a higher possibility that X, Y, and Z might happen.

But if I comport myself in these other ways that all these smart people who lived before me, seem to say lead you towards a better life.

And I do that consistently over time. My experience is that my life gets better, but it's better because I'm not attempting to get involved in controlling anything else outside of that.

Yeah, I think that's really smart. Something that it has done for me is to make me more aware aware of anxious spirals and kind of just wave at them as they go by, if that makes sense.

I can't emphasize enough how much Being more neutral about them.

Yes. hitting myself with not just the double arrow, but the triple arrow and the fourth and fifth, like I was hitting myself with so many arrows.

Because like... Okay, I will give you a very, very recent example.

Yesterday... We drove down to Laguna Beach to hang out with a friend of mine.

We had that situation. The parking was... challenging.

The beach we initially had in mind, like the swell was too big and we weren't going to be able to get in the water.

So we had to change locations. and it was like kind of a production.

And the whole time I was like, it kept popping up like this little gopher.

It was like... Your friend is mad at you for not making this unfold perfectly. friend, she's mad at you.

Like how dare you like not control the temperature of the water, the swells. the parking, like the Laguna Beach layout.

And I... It was very real to me in the moment.

I was like, oh my God, she's mad, she's mad.

I need to resolve this very quickly so she won't get mad.

And I kind of like I think it was probably from my Buddhism kind of or I don't know, therapy, some combination of all the stuff I did, I was kind of like, this is so silly.

Like, She's not mad. If she looks grumpy, it's probably just because we're all kind of grumpy because this isn't going super well.

Like, you know, or like and like as soon as we get in the water, we'll feel fine.

Like, you know, it was But that kind of moment of clarity of like you're kind it anxiously spiraling and that's okay, but like you don't have to buy into the spiral and try to fix things. just because it's there.

Yeah, noticing it as it's happening From a distance as opposed to indulging it and self-identifying with it.

Yeah, and also not beating myself up for... for the spiral.

It's like, okay, you're gonna have a spiral because that's kind of what you do.

This is where curiosity comes in, which is a big piece here.

Talk about your relationship with curiosity.

So Judd Brewer is the curiosity guy. And his... kind of method for treating neuroticism is to get curious about its effect in your body.

And this could not be less relatable to me at the start of my project.

I... I have basically no connection to my body or I started out that way.

I would end up in PT with all these cramps. in my shoulders and things and have like no idea where they came from after a stressful week.

I also am one of those people who bumps into things because I just am not very aware of where I am in space.

All up in your head all the time. So he's like, pay attention to how anxiety feels in your body.

And I was like... That's like saying, pay attention to the purple elephant in the room.

It's like, what are you talking about? There's no such thing.

But just asking that question illustrates the detachment, that you're detached from your physical being.

Yeah, and I really found that it was a good way in particular with panic attacks, which is not my main issue, but... when I do have them, that...

Again, just taking a second and thinking like, oh, wow, my heart's beating really fast. huh, my breath is like, you know, I'm breathing pretty deeply.

To me, that was a good way of breaking out of the panic attack and kind of Once again, just getting a little bit friendlier with it, maybe, or just...

Less like, oh my God, I can't have a panic attack right now.

You know, I'm in the middle of work or I'm in the middle of XYZ.

This happens to me sometimes when I'm giving a big talk in front of an audience.

Um, I still occasionally have like my heart like pounds in my chest.

Um, And I start to think that people can hear it. somehow.

And so... Previously, my response to this was to yell at myself internally and say, stop pounding, stop. chill out heart.

And of course that does not make your heart chill out. um so now i'm just like huh there it is again it's pounding it's it's going really fast uh I have a fast heart rate because like I'm getting ready to give this talk and that's okay.

Like that's part of what happens when I give talks.

And like that, it just like kind of, I don't know, it lets you take a step back from whatever's happening and whatever the anxious sensations are.

Yeah, the mindfulness, the awareness that comes with the practice of meditation that gives you just that extra space like that moment where you are presented with a choice of how to respond rather than just reflexively reacting.

Yeah. That becomes huge over time. Are you doing the loving kindness meditation?

You called Dan Harris a pussy. He was kind of mad at me, but then I think he got over it.

I heard the podcast that you did with him.

He was actually like, I loved it. So Dan's book helped me so much because he started out as an anxious dreamer. who didn't believe in meditation and like hated all this stuff.

He could be your higher power. Yeah, I kind of needed someone like that because some of the stuff... that I was reading when I was trying to get into meditation was like too esoteric and like, It was for people who are already very Zen and I needed someone who was not Zen. moved in that direction.

So Dan's book was really helpful to me, 10% Happier.

Yeah, I don't do the loving kindness explicitly anymore.

I have to be honest. I don't play the tape and like sit there and do it.

I try to just like sort of I was so not loving or kind to myself before that even just in the moment being like, You made a mistake.

It's okay. You know... like everyone makes mistakes, that's like huge progress for me.

That's like night and day. But I don't do it actively anymore. on some level, your message is the same.

It's like a 10% happier message. You know, it's like you're not an entirely different person, but you're probably... than you were before you launched into this experiment.

Yeah, I mean even small changes on these.

I mean, I think I've moved more than 10% on my traits that I was working on, you know, because I was like, doing everything I could.

All right, and taking the test. You actually have the stats.

Yeah. Yeah. You're beating Dan. I know.

I'm so much better than him. Write 20% happier.

Yeah, 20% happier. Take that. Fuck that guy.

Yeah, but it is. I mean, no one is ever going to feel like oh, I'm a completely different person.

I'm completely unrecognizable now. You know, you are just going to feel like you're up for more challenges, you feel more capable of taking a new type of job maybe, you feel okay like facing the day without alcohol.

You know, yeah, meditation is, maybe an all right idea.

It's all going to be things like this. I actually did.

I made friends like by doing the book. And that's like, I mean, that was huge for me.

I hadn't made a new friend in years. Yeah, my friend Alex.

Yeah, I'm like sad to hear that, but happy.

That I stopped doing that, yeah. A lot of this is, again, like back to the kind of AA framework.

There's a lot of like fake it till you make it, like act as if. which brings up this idea of authenticity, right?

Like, okay, I'm gonna do this thing Um, If I want to be a sociable person who's fun to talk to at a party, then I have to like act as if I'm somebody who does that, right?

And that's deeply uncomfortable. probably feels deeply inauthentic.

So how do you reconcile that sense of inauthenticity?

We kind of talked about it earlier, but that sense of inauthenticity with the aspiration.

Yeah, I guess I personally just don't put a ton of stock in... authenticity.

Because we're all acting so differently all the time. idea of multiple authenticity yeah like yeah like there's some yeah so I yeah is it I write that we all have multiple authenticities, but...

I don't... So when I was pregnant, my mom was like, I can't imagine you as a mother...

And I was like, oh my God, like that's so, that's scary.

Cause that was like one of the big fears that I had that I was like, not the sort of person who could be a mom.

What did she mean by that though? She just thought that I didn't have the personality of like what you think of as...

As a mom. Like the nurturing. Yeah, like I wasn't like a cuddly, nurturing, like kind of person.

And I was like, maybe she's right. Like maybe I don't have it in me to be a mom.

I don't have the right personality. And what I kind of realized and like this, my book was already done and I had my kid and that wasn't an experiment. uh I was like your kid brings it out in you like you they you become like this nurturing like this the biggest like hard ass, hard charging, you know, executive lady, you know, take no prisoners. like girl boss is gonna like come home and like coo and sing Baby Beluga because like, you rise to the occasion when you have these goals in your life that are really important to you.

And I'm probably not like an Instagram mom.

Like I probably... You know, I don't make homemade goldfish crackers for him or whatever, but I like...

I think I'm a good mom and I think I'm nurturing and cuddly emotionally.

It's just that, and I think that's authentic.

I think that's authentically me. It just wasn't before I had this goal. of being a good mom.

What is the most surprising experience that you've had by, I'm gonna put on a new hat It doesn't feel like it fits, but I'm just gonna keep wearing it until it feels like it's mine, right?

Only to wake up. and be like, oh, this is my hat.

Like I don't even think about it anymore.

Like I am different in this way. Definitely the... extraversion element.

If I'm being honest, I thought it would be a little going through the motions-y.

Like I thought I would... Okay, I'm going to do improv.

I'm going to do... I'm gonna make friends and like, I'll stop talking to them as soon as the book is finished.

As soon as I turn this in, then I can go back and shut the door on everyone.

Go back to watching my Netflix shows. And that really like didn't happen.

Like I kind of... I realized that I have this desire to connect with people.

I have a desire to meet more people. Like I haven't met all the people that I'll ever meet, you know, in college.

Like I... Yeah, I kind of realized that I need to, I'm someone who needs to reach out to people to connect with people and share experiences.

And it makes my life better. It's not just like I have to check this box because it's like eating my broccoli.

It's something to look forward to. It's something to, yeah, help me feel more stable.

Do you think because after turning the initial article in, And then I kind of jokingly said relapse, but you did kind of like go back to your old patterns.

And then did that create a moment of clarity where you're like, oh, like I thought I could just go back and now I'm back. less happier than I was when I was doing those things that I so deeply didn't wanna do.

Yeah, maybe it was the, the quote unquote relapse, um, I mean, I was drinking a lot during that time, so in a way.

All right, well, so you have a co-founding variable.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. I think it was also just like...

I did feel happier. Everything that I did, all the personality traits that I changed... involve an element of like the person generally feels better afterwards.

Like even introverts who are told to go behave like extroverts for a few minutes, Then they go back and the researchers ask them like, how do you feel?

And they're like, I feel great. I feel awesome.

Sometimes I even say I feel more true to myself. than I did before, which is kind of funny when it comes to authenticity.

But yeah, I noticed the benefits for me.

And I noticed that, you know, the anxiety wasn't, doing as much for me as I thought.

Like I can still achieve, like I still wrote a book.

I mean, that's huge to be like, I don't need that thing that I thought that I needed.

In fact, it was holding me back. Yeah, I mean, it's... writing the to-do list 100 times as opposed to one time.

You only really need that one time. You only need to plan. worry about the plans or worry about incessantly about things going wrong.

And to me, that was kind of a big breakthrough.

And honestly, like gives me space to do more stuff because I'm not... trapped in worry cycles all the time.

Yeah. You mentioned earlier, like, volunteering at the soup kitchen, so much of, of like worry and anxiety. is a form of self obsession.

And the antidote to that is to like, go help somebody else, like invest yourself in something bigger than you to be of service in whatever way.

Again, it's another like AA thing. Like if you just, if you wanna break the cycle of this pattern that you're in, Um, turn your gaze outward on somebody who could actually benefit from you showing up for them, even if it's in a small way.

Did that come up in the research or what has been your experience with playing around with that?

Yeah, I mean, all the studies say that like volunteering you know, feels like making, I don't know, it depends on what study you read, but it's like... hundreds of thousands of dollars more a year if you volunteer for a certain number of hours.

And I think it is because of that because, um, It is very easy to become self obsessed, especially if you're a creative person.

Um, like, a lot of us like have succeeded kind of because we are self obsessed.

We're like gonna move to the place that gives us the most opportunities and like work a million hours and do whatever it takes.

And you're always thinking about yourself and your career. career and what's next.

And that has a downside, which is you're always worrying about your career and what's next.

And I think it is true that like connecting with other people sharing your struggles, helping other people. it does help break that self obsession a little bit.

And, um, it just makes your inner weather balmier as Dan likes to say.

Um, one of the things that I noticed in the agreeableness chapter is that every single thing I did involved other people and like Less the journalistic like, what did you know and when did you know it, but more just like sharing experiences, kind of like they do in AA.

And sharing your story, relating to one another, giving each other advice, what have you.

I honestly think that was like the biggest thing that boosted my agreeableness was like being in community with so many different groups of people. because I just don't really do that.

Sharing their experience. Yeah, like I don't go to church.

You wrote an AA book and you didn't even know it.

I know, I know. Have you ever been to an AA meeting?

I have for reporting. Yeah. And then like when I was really when I lived in L.A. in grad school, I was really lonely and I was like, maybe I should join A.A.

Except I wasn't like addicted to alcohol.

That's like, you're like... What's her name in Fight Club? who goes to all the meetings, you know, because she's lonely, but she doesn't have any of the problems.

Yeah. Yeah, that would be me. I did talk to a lot of people in recovery for the book though.

Yeah. There's another adage that I love.

There's so many like... like stupid phrases.

But one that I really like is mood follows action.

It goes back to this idea that it's action-based.

Like if you come into... and, you know, choose your choose your malfunction like, OK, you know, you have a problem with drinking or drugs, you go in. you can't imagine, you know, what it like getting a week sober or whatever, but you just have to like you know, one day at a time, one hour at a time, like do what somebody who doesn't drink or use does, you know, act as if.

And whatever... sense of discomfort that you have around it, the mood that you want to inhabit is on the other side of like taking the action you don't wanna take.

And we have this idea like, I'll do it when I, feel inspired to do it.

And of course you never do it, right? Like I'll go to improv when I feel like, improv-ing, you know, it's like, no, you're never going to feel that way.

Yeah. Behavioral activation theory is like, a big part of this and that just is like you go out and do the thing And then mood follows action.

You will feel a certain way after you've done it.

And so that's really a lot of what personality change involves. because you aren't ever gonna feel like improving.

You're not ever gonna feel like quitting drinking.

I mean, And some of them were kind of interesting because I talked to one... This didn't make it into the book, but I talked to one guy who... quit drinking and then it like set off this like positive chain reaction of other things he wanted to change.

And then he actually ended up changing his whole career.

He was a lawyer and he's now a therapist. or in school to be a therapist.

But it was like, the drinking was like, I don't know, like once he got past that discomfort, it was like all these other things were like suddenly...

Right. More possible. Oh, I could do that thing I never thought I could do.

Anytime you take those actions, no matter how small, they're esteem building. and they give you a greater sense of empowerment that you can use in other areas of your life.

That's the beautiful thing about it. They're transferable, I guess, right?

But there is a bit of a weird conflict here I guess it's sort of Buddhist, like, There's a self-acceptance piece, like you have to accept, you have to sort of see yourself clearly, to identify those patterns, to understand the behaviors that aren't serving you with clear eyes. and not judge yourself for that, but like truly accept yourself for that while also accepting that there needs to be things that need to change in order for you to feel as happy and as fulfilled as you know that you can be.

Yeah, I still, I kind of wish this was not called personality.

I was just called like something else. Well, that's why I was like, where does mindset, attitude, personality, choice, like all of these things.

It's sort of like we're trying to put a hard science label on something that really resisted.

Yeah, yeah. I guess the way that I, like... settled this and like everyone's going to settle it a different way is that I'm just like not that attached to my personality.

Like I, I accept myself, like my inner core being, like the Olga who's out in the world trying to do things.

But I'm not like... And you have to do it by being an introvert or by being super neurotic.

I'm very loosely attached to the traits that I use to get there basically.

And for me, that's like what feels healthiest, but I feel like everyone else, comes to a different way to reconcile those two.

What's the thing that you're still holding on to?

Like when you talk to your therapist And you're like, okay, you're still doing that.

How's that working out? Oh, great question.

Like the thing that you're just really... still don't wanna release your grip on, even though you know it's not.

Not good. Yeah. I still, okay, so we have a kid now and- he has to meet milestones and milestones are like... straight A student.

How old is he? Like a fodder. So he's 16 months, but you know, they have like.

Are they rolling over? Are they blah, blah, blah?

Right, right, okay. So when he doesn't meet the milestones, I lose it.

I like completely like, I call a pediatrician like four thousand times.

I like make him all these appointments. He's he's already in all these. different like therapies to like try to meet the milestones.

He's in like occupational therapy even though he's a baby.

I really like... I get obsessive about the milestones and like... thinking that I can make the milestones happen faster or on a certain timeline.

So I've been trying to... realize that the milestones may happen when they happen and that I don't have perfect control over them.

I think this is a really big piece. I think this is really important.

I just know for myself, I have four kids, they're all older now, like our youngest is 17, oldest is 30.

You talk in the book about blaming your parents.

Like we look at our parents and we wanna like point the finger, oh, I'm this way because of them or whatever.

And there's an unhealthy aspect to that.

Like we have to take responsibility and agency for ourselves. but also we should recognize that we've inherited traits and patterns as a result of our upbringing.

And we all have unhealthy versions of those baked into ourselves. as a result of whatever experiences, the environment in which we were raised or I think the word like childhood trauma is sort of thrown around a little too cavalierly, but nobody had a perfect childhood.

And so there's residue of that within all of us that then, shows up in our behavior patterns when we're adults.

And I think that we have a responsibility to transcend those. for ourselves, of course, but really for our children.

Like, are you going to perpetuate this generational pattern that could be traced back however, how far back into your family tree.

Or are you going to arrest it in its tracks so that your child doesn't have to – not only inherit that pattern, but have to kind of suffer the consequences of you behaving like that.

And that's the huge, like for me, like that's the whole thing with parenting.

Oh yeah. And so this is like your Mount Everest, I think.

Yeah, being a cycle breaker is challenging.

Yeah. And then you do all this work and then you're tired and under duress and then suddenly Suddenly you're like doing the thing, you know, you behave in the way you promised that you wouldn't. so deeply baked into us.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I think he was... I mean, it was like just recently we started out like we're going to be gentle parents.

We're never going to yell at him and we're never going to. to punish him in any way.

We're going to be super nice. He started doing this thing where he would pull the childproof cover out of the socket.

And then to like double up on the danger, he would put that in his mouth, which is a choking hazard.

And then he would try to stick his finger in the socket.

And I was a triple threat, constantly keeping him from doing this like please stop stop stop no no no let's play with something else like you're like asleep deprived trying to keep a toddler from doing this thing.

So I pull him away from it. He crawls back over and does it again.

And I let it rip. I was like, what did I just fucking say? realized I was like oh that's like a voice from my past like what did I just fucking say like you know he's Judd says like, be curious about that.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like, why did I? Why did I reach for that phrasing?

But it is, it's like they do test you and they test like... what is your instinctual reaction to difficulty?

And like, you know, he doesn't know. He's like, oh, this is cool.

That's why our children are our teachers, because they hold this mirror up to the truth of like who you are, you know what I mean?

Yeah. And what a gift you're in a position to give your son because you you did all this work, you know, and you took it really seriously and you made all of these changes.

That is an incredible blessing that almost no one does.

It's really... an incredible act of service for your child.

I mean, to the world also to like, learn, you know, have at it or whatever.

But it's an amazing thing, I think. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah, I hope it works out. Maybe it was all for him.

I don't know, if he has a better childhood because of it, then it was worth it.

Well, the funny, yeah, it's like when you're a new parent, you're like, here's how it's gonna go.

They're going to be like this. And it's like, I'm always like, oh yeah, okay, we'll check in.

I'll see you in a couple of years. Like, let me know how that's going.

Only organic snacks. I mean, this will test all of your control issues.

Oh yeah. Every idea that you have about who this person is gonna be and what they're gonna do. how you're gonna parent them through it.

Like, you know, and evolution. Right, right, right.

Yeah, I have tried to resist like, you know, I'm know people who are like, I'm going to have kids and they're going to be pro tennis players just like me.

And I'm like, I would avoid putting that out there because if they get a whiff that you want them to be a pro tennis player, they're going to do that.

Also, like, why do you need them to be, like, what is missing inside of you that that's so important to you? that they need to be that, like what's unfulfilled in you that you need them to fill it for you.

Yeah. Like that's not great. Yeah, I don't know.

We're trying really hard to avoid like putting our stuff on him.

Yeah, it's hard, you know, it's hard. And I just think like any change, even no matter how small, is just a really difficult thing that I think People make sound easy and it's not.

But in your work, in your personal experience, like for the person who you know is stuck or is like I can't get out of this like self-defeating loop or I just constantly get in my way or I am neurotic or I'm terrified of putting myself in the mildest of social situations.

Like what are, some of the tools that you learned that you practice or that some of these experts have advocated for that can get these people, you know, off the couch or in the world and putting this stuff into motion.

I will give a concrete tip and then a more esoteric tip.

Concrete tip, if you are someone who has trouble.

Let's say you're like, okay, I just moved to a new city.

I need to meet people. I am having trouble meeting people.

I would just sign up for an activity that recurs regularly and that you don't have to organize because it's, always going to be there whether you show up or not.

But it would be better if you showed up.

So like you've already committed to bring the snacks or you've committed to whatever it's tennis and they need someone to play doubles.

Like, it's too hard for introverts to go from couch to, like... flourishing social life.

We need something to like push us out of the house and And it can be a meetup, it can be a book club, it can be anything where you're not texting people, let's get together Wednesday. let's get together Thursday, whatever it is.

So that's my specific tip. I would say like more broadly...

This comes from Stephen Hayes and is like kind of toward the end of the book.

I would just think about like your values and what you like want in life.

I would go back to that definition of personality from Nathan Hudson and the other change researchers and think about like, what is it that you want?

What does life look like when you're on your deathbed? before you're on your deathbed?

What does life look like in middle age? you know, what's keeping you from doing that?

For me, a big part of, I like knew I wanted a adult child late in life.

And the only way to have an adult child is of course to have a baby child.

But I was so anxious about becoming a parent.

That was a huge obstacle for me. And so you really have to think about connecting your behavior to your broader goals and your broader values.

Because that's the only thing that's going to motivate you to to actually do all this stuff, which is hard day to day.

It gets further complicated when you have an inner monologue telling you that you're undeserving of these things or Um, You're not good enough.

I think a lot of people have that. I suffer from that from time to time. that's constantly defeating you from that impulse to take that first action.

Yeah, it can be tough. I talked to one person, Zach Hambrick, who his parents were like dropping him off at college and they were like, we'll probably be picking you up soon because you're going to fail out.

And like, talk about inner monologue, like he did.

He had this monologue that he's not good at school, he's not academic.

And what worked for him and for a lot of other people is actually like finding someone else who's kind of like that who's kind of at your same level and like partnering with them to do whatever it is that you wanna do.

Like there's this element of like healthy peer pressure that you learn strategies from one another, you motivate one another, you give each other ideas, And it won't work if it's someone that is falling far behind you.

And it won't work if it's someone who's so far ahead of you that you you don't know how they got there.

A lot of times we think of mentorship as like, I need to pick, you know, someone amazing.

And it really, it can be someone who's kind of at your same level.

Like, as long as they're dedicated to the same goal.

So that's what he did. He found like a study buddy.

They went through college together. And he's actually like a tenured psychology professor now.

Wow. going from like making Ds, I don't know.

You're such a high agency person and thinking about your backstory, which we didn't even really talk about. bounced around, you grew up in like Odessa, Texas, right?

Midland. Midland, yeah. Friday Night Lights territory. daughter of Russian immigrants and really had to like make your way in the world to become this person.

And And you did, and it's something to be proud of.

But when I think about you, like, oh, well, this is a person who when they put their mind to something, like they make it happen, right?

Why should it be any different when it comes to personality change?

But then you read the stories in here and you're like, oh my God, she's so human.

Like she has all the fears and frailties that we all harbor secretly or publicly.

But I am curious about the person who does, who is living a life in which they don't feel like their actions matter.

Like they feel disenfranchised or disconnected and things that haven't worked out.

Like they don't have that track record to say like, oh, I did this thing in the past.

Here's how it moved my life forward. I would say that they probably do have a track record.

Like they probably have something they're passionate about. it may not be their job.

It may not be the city that they live in, but there might be a hobby there or there might be some sort of interest that they have or, or create, I don't know, creative spark or, or most of us want something.

It's very rare to be so Buddhist that you're okay with like no desires.

Then you've actually transcended the mortal coil.

You're enlightened at that point, right?

Congratulations. Tell me your secret, yeah, yeah.

I would just like pursue that. Maybe it's not through work.

The people that I met in improv, one of them was an accounting professor. suburbs and like his kids had gone to college and he like didn't have any friends and like I don't know.

I mean, that's not like a picture of, wow, everyone wants to be this guy.

He decided to do improv because it would get him out of his head.

It was something fun. He met people. It wasn't, let's get drunk together.

So it was creative. It nurtured a part of him that maybe his daily life didn't really.

And I think that's okay. I think it's okay to have you know, kind of a nine to five and have your... interesting thing be afterward.

But the point, the most salient point in that for me It's just the practicality of it.

Like I think... we were talking about like, what's the difference between personality and attitude and mindset?

The same applies when you start talking about values and purpose and meaning and passion and They're all words that we share in a well-intentioned way, but I think It's also confusing.

I don't know what my passion is. What's my purpose?

And I think it's paralyzing. to a lot of people or makes them feel bad.

Like, I don't know what my purpose is. I guess I'm supposed to like, and I don't. which is why I brought up curiosity earlier.

Cause like we all have something we're, curious about and even if it's just like what's the one thing you're willing to What's the one little step you can take to kind of nourish that curiosity?

And developing that habit alone kind of like just starts to move your path in a little bit of a different direction. without worrying about like what your passion or your purpose is.

Yeah, I would not try to identify a passion as your first step.

Those things happen as a consequence of acting as if and faking it till you make it and just, you know, getting out into the world and doing things that are uncomfortable until they're not.

Yeah, Carol Dweck had a great study. This isn't in the book, but I wrote about it a few years ago where she basically found that every college student thinks they have to find their passion and that should be their major.

That's an act of violence. I have a 17-year-old daughter right now. and we're going and visiting schools and she feels like She's supposed to know what you know because they're like well you can declare your major and it's like oh how is like, you're not supposed to know.

You shouldn't know. Like the whole point of going is to like explore your curiosity and figure out what excites you.

Yeah. And it's not giving up on your passion to change your major either.

Like, It's part of learning. And some of this, yeah, it can be developed. as you get better at something, you're like, oh, my passion is neurobiology or whatever.

You know, because you happen to be good at it.

Well, that brings up the whole subject of like quitting. that you bring up in here too, right?

As a very conscientious person, like probably quitting is difficult.

Like once you say you're gonna do something uh like then saying yeah i'm not gonna do this anymore is that hard for you It was hard and I wanted to not have too much of an escape route. for the book where it's like, as soon as I didn't like something, I could just quit it.

Cause you can't, you can. So it was like the meetups that you were like, do I do I keep doing these meetups that are like death marches sometimes or do I.

You know, like, you know, can I quit them?

I think like, I mean, everyone's going to come to a different decision eventually.

Two kind of things on that note is like, First of all, like I would get less attached to the specific activities that you're doing and more to like what you're working toward.

So if you're trying to make more friends, but you're not any good at pickleball, You don't have to stick with pickleball.

You can do something else, book club or whatever.

So you can change up the activities that are getting you there.

And the personality change research, they give them like a list of different things they can do.

It's not like you have to do improv. The other thing is something that I've had to realize with having a kid is that like you can have like seasons of your life where you do different things.

And that's okay. Like that's not giving up or quitting or... you're not being true to whatever your mission is.

But when you have a newborn, you're just not going to be able to have as active of a social life, unless all of your friends come to your house. during the baby's wake windows.

There's gonna be times of your life when you're maybe so solely focused on work or focused on having a new baby or whatever other thing.

And it's okay as long as it doesn't take over your life.

Is that... Or has that been a challenge for you as a striver?

So our baby and newborn experience was so all-consuming that it was... there wasn't really.

It removed the choice. Yeah, like I didn't, like all my friends live in DC, a 45 minute drive away.

And they're like, hey, come get drunk with us.

And I was like, I cannot. So that part was hard for me.

You're like, this is the season I'm in. I guess the baby decided.

It does get harder later on. I'm here. He's with my parents and I'm like, am I a bad mom for...

Enjoying myself. A bad mom doesn't wonder whether they're a bad mom.

Yeah, maybe. Of all the things that you tried and explored, what was the... like the most deeply uncomfortable of all of them. maybe beyond improv, maybe it was improv, but we talked about that.

The most deeply uncomfortable in some ways was this conversation workshop I went to in London. which was all about having like deeper and more meaningful conversations with people and how to do that.

And it was very interesting and good subject matter.

But I... I think I just have like a cultural difference with British people where...

And even in my introverted state, I am just a lot more garrulous and like overshare-y at baseline than they are.

And I think it like maybe comes off as rude or just like, not culturally like what they want. to be happening.

It was like- What was the context though?

We were all in a room together, And just talking about conversations and having deep conversations with one another for like three days.

But you're going deeper than they are? No.

What was it that was uncomfortable about it?

So she would like ask us a question like, oh, has anyone ever had this experience?

And like, it was just like dead silence in the room.

Like, a long... like no one raising their hand, like a long, long, long silence.

So you're like, I have to be the extrovert here?

I'm like, So I was like, does she want me to volunteer?

Or is this like a normal British silence that I need to just be silent through? you know what I mean like there was just like some cultural things where and then I felt like I was more willing to just say whatever I was thinking.

And for them, it really was like, The class kind of gave them permission to dig deeper and share more than they would normally share.

In that context though, you're like the leader.

You've got the American, you know, kind of like showing them how to like, you know, like talk about their feelings or something, you know?

I was wondering toward the end, like if they're like, I hope I never see this girl again because she talks too much.

I don't know. I really... It was... It was challenging because then like we were strangers basically.

And we were like, we would have these conversations where it's like, the person shares something and then like, some of the times we would have like these scripted lists of questions and they were like, what did that mean to you?

Or why was that important to you? to you, which I've learned is like a very good conversational when you kind of don't understand why the person's telling you something.

But you met the you're asking like, you know, what did that like breakup mean to you?

You know, it's like, You're probably used to it as a podcast host, but in day-to-day life, it can be a little... like strange, I guess, I don't know.

Yeah, well, I keep harping back onto it, but like, You could go to AA meetings.

It's like wearing it on their sleeve, you know what I mean?

But is that being an extrovert or agreeableness?

It was just like testing my comfort with being in a situation where I want to be liked.

And I don't totally understand the culture.

Right. I see. So the discomfort with like not knowing what the rules are.

Yeah. And if you don't know what the rules are, then how are you gonna people please and curry favor and feel like you belong?

Yes. Because even if you go on a Bumble BFF date in your city, like...

Which I didn't know what that was until I read her book.

It's like a dating app to make friends. Yes, yes.

I didn't even know that was a thing. So let's say, so I would go meet up with someone who works like for Congress, like it's not that different.

Like they're not that different from me.

I kind of get how the conversation is going to go.

We have basically the same values. Like we're going to talk for an hour to 90 minutes, we're both gonna have one drink and then we're gonna pay and leave.

I kind of get it, you know, and we're both not gonna ask anything too weird.

But in that setting, it was so strange. Like the questions we were asking each other and the like... just the way we were approaching the conversations.

And then I think I just... like I don't fit into British culture.

Well, speaking of conversations and not fitting in, I'd love for you to share a little bit about what you learned about how to do this, more agreeably.

I mean, obviously, we're all experiencing a very interesting moment right now in which disagreeability is paramount and our ability to Just share the same space with people and and communicate with some degree of. compassion and commitment to commitment to listening and understanding is very much not happening right now.

And we're seeing, and it's like, if we can't figure that out, democracy will not survive.

It's an existential crisis to the health and future of our country, I think.

And it all starts with how two people sit across from each other and look each other in the eye and communicate and exchange.

And this is being threatened profoundly at the moment.

So what did you learn about conversation and how to communicate with people who don't share the same worldview. and it's an inflamed situation where every word feels like a provocation.

Yeah, it can be so challenging. So there's a... psychologist I quote in the book who... And I'm going to butcher the quote.

I'm sorry. It's like... disagreement raises the possibility that we are stupid or wrong.

And if you think about it, that's how it can feel.

Because if I'm telling you that like, XYZ happened.

You're telling me that ABC happened. You know, one of us... is right or presumably, or one of us is wrong.

And then what does that mean about the person who's wrong?

Especially when you're self-identifying with that idea.

Oh yeah, yeah. What I would try to do is like...

Break out of the exact facts of whatever you're talking about and try to get at the deeper layer of why that person is telling you what they're telling you.

They're making some sort of bid for connection, even with wrong in your view, you know?

And Or just like how did that person come about those views?

Why are those views important to them? So, uh, I guess I'll give a real example.

My parents like... Vladimir Putin. And sometimes I...

Well, I haven't been doing this, but I sometimes think that our conversations about him would be more productive if I was like, what do you like about him?

Like what? Or what does he do for you? What does he represent for you?

Why is he meaningful? Why are you telling me about him?

What do you know about him? Because when they come to me and tell me about Vladimir Putin, Like they're trying to do something. they're trying to either like say like, hey, this is really important to me and I want it to be important to you too.

Hey, like I'm looking for something to talk with you about, you know? there's some underlying thing there that is not just like Vladimir Putin, the person.

And, um, And with admitting that I have not successfully done this yet, I think that if we try to...

I mean, not to make the whole world like a mushy kumbaya thing, but like if we try to get more into... the feelings that people have that are motivating what they're saying.

That can be a more interesting and fruitful conversation than you know... whatever the specifics are of it.

Because it's probably something like, I feel like Russians are disrespected wherever they go. and he makes me feel respected.

And it's like, oh, okay, why do you feel Russians are disrespected?

Why is respect important to you? What are some times that you have felt respected?

There are so many interesting questions and avenues in that direction that aren't like, but do you remember when on June 27th, he said XYZ, you know?

Yeah, that's not a productive strategy. But I think the path to empathy and understanding is is going beneath it to try to understand the motivation behind it. because everybody's right from their own perspective, right?

And they're being animated or motivated by something care about, and that thing they care about is probably something you care about too.

And trying to find shared ground there and trying to do it in the context of that are inflammatory, you know, makes it which brings it back to like mindfulness and all these other things that you shared about it, because that allows you to inhabit that space a little bit more detached and not threatened by it because you're not wagering your identity.

Yeah. And to hold your own ideas more loosely too.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, actually at that conversation workshop that was a little weird.

I shared that my parents have this belief because I was the overshare of the group.

And there was another guy there who was like, well, you know, like... it kind of makes sense from their perspective, right?

Like if I like... moved abroad during like Obama's presidency, I'd be like, he's amazing.

Even if everyone like in that country didn't like him.

There's a pride of where they grew up. Yeah.

And it's probably hard for them and they feel lonely.

And, you know, they wanna hold on to, you know, what was great about the place that they grew up in.

And, you know, are they exposing themselves to state sponsored propaganda or like, you know, what's informing them?

Yeah. Yeah. And so and that message is is probably. selling them an idea that if you believed it to be true, like you would agree with also.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And journalists do this all the time.

When we write stories about people, we're like, this person believes this.

And that's why they want this. And this is the obstacle to them getting that.

And here's the story about it. And we don't... start out with interrogating their belief system or whatever it is they want.

How have you found this just as a journalist who writes for The Atlantic and has written for The New York Times, like in this moment where There's a distrust of media, institutionalized media.

And a certain regard about like coastal elitism with respect to this kind of writing.

Like when you go out in the world and you interview people or You tell people what you do.

Like, do you run up against That kind of stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, I do. I mean, it's gotten harder for sure. than 10 years ago to interview people I guess I'll just say conservatives.

Yeah, it's gotten harder because there's a lot of anti-media rhetoric.

I mean, we try to... reassure people, tell them what kind of story it's going to be, you know, tell them why we're looking to talk to them. give examples of other stories that have taken their ideas seriously.

Um, You know, that's kind of all you can do is like sort of be like, I come in peace and then... like they can ultimately make the decision about whether or not to talk to you.

I have done stories though, involving lots and lots of conservatives.

And I actually interviewed a January 6th I mean, that's a perfect example of like, what is motivating that person?

Yeah, and I think it was actually a really interesting experience because I was like, I could kind of see.

Like I would not do January six, but I was like, I get why you put all these things together to lead you to January 6th.

Like I get where you were in your life and like what Donald Trump offered you and like why that led to you doing this.

Because like... Yeah, it just kind of made sense to me.

She's also from my hometown, which is... helped probably in helping it make sense to me but um Yeah.

I mean, often like if you just tell people like, look, I want to understand your perspective on this.

I want... I want to know what would they're like, okay, yeah, like I want to tell you.

And had you stayed in your hometown and lived that person's life, like you would have made the same choice that she made.

Possibly. I mean, yeah, maybe at least, you know, entertaining the plausibility of that.

Yeah. Yeah. Potentially. Yeah. All right.

Final parting words. Like what is what is like the overarching 10,000 foot view on personality and our agency to shift it that you want people to walk away with.

I would say I wrote recently like on my sub stack that better title for this book might have been You Have It In You, which is just that if there's some challenge in your life or something that you're facing or something unfamiliar, that you probably have it in you to face that challenge.

Like you probably have the skills and the traits that are necessary to do that.

And you just need to nurture them. You need to go out and act as if Fake it till you make it and rise to the occasion.

And you can. that don't let your personality determine the things that you do in life.

Yeah, I think we all have untapped potential that if we're courageous enough to face and wrestle with, could make our lives better, I think, and I love that.

Again, it's back to like agency, it's very empowering to hear that.

I hope so. Yeah, it's beautiful. What are you working on now?

What's the next book? What's the next thing that you're asking yourself What journey are you gonna go on now?

What's wrong with you now? I've been writing a lot about parenting and like, by my struggles and successes such as they are.

All right, well, I look forward to the parenting book.

Thanks. Olga, this was great. Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you so much. Me but better. I am me but a little bit better for having talked.

Talk to you today. And I think everybody out there listening or watching will be a little bit better for. for checking out your book, your wonderful book.

So thanks for writing it. Thanks so much.

Cheers. Peace. that's it for today thank you for listening i truly hope you enjoyed the conversation To learn more about today's guests including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books. the Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and the Plant Power Way. you'd like to support the podcast the easiest and most is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment.

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[The Science of Self-Transformation: Can You Actually Change Your Personality?]-[Me, But Better: Olga Khazan On The Science of Personality Change, Challenging Fixed Mindsets, & The Big Five Traits That Shape Your Life]

📋 Summary

The Science of Self-Transformation: Can You Actually Change Your Personality?

The Catalyst for Change: Hitting the Bottom

Understanding Personality: The Big Five

The Methodology of Change: Acting as If

Surrender and the Myth of Control

Conclusion: You Have It In You

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript