Is It Possible To Improve Your Personality? The Science Says Yes. Here's How To Do It. | Olga Khazan

28:18Just by way of illustrative anecdote, I'm recording this at a studio in New York City where we regularly record when I'm not at my home studio. And I have really bad claustrophobia and the elevators here are really small. I didn't need it today, but sometimes I need Barry, the security guy, to ride me up in the elevator. And I saw Barry when I came in today. We caught up and he He like stopped what he was doing. He was getting ready to ride me up in the elevator and he didn't need to today, but we had a nice conversation. And for me, that's just like an excellent example of how awesome it can be.

28:53And I was terrible at this. I was such a frosty. I'm still naturally, my personality is naturally frosty New Englander. But over time, I've, you know, in part through hearing the evidence and in part by getting some feedback, I've really tried to turn this around. So anyway, yes, you were listing a bunch of things we could do to be more extroverted, and you started with the lowest hanging fruit. What else is on the list? for increasing kind of the more deep social connections in your life. I would sign up for something that recurs regularly with the same group of people and that it's hard to get out of.

29:29So it doesn't have to be improv. It doesn't have to be some crazy sport. Meetup is great because generally the same people show up on the same types of groups or same types of events. So I would just commit to something that has some sort of cadence where you can kind of plan to see the same group of faces over time because otherwise it's hard to get a good quasi friendship going if you're kind of just like chatting a little bit here chatting a little bit there this reminds me a little bit of the work of renee brown who talks a lot about vulnerability which i never at some point in the culture vulnerability went from being a bad thing to being a good thing but anyway another word would just be like openness or realness and i would argue and i'd be curious to see what you think about this, that it's not just the quantity of social interactions, it's the quality of social interactions.

30:23And I'm not trying to make what I'm about to say happen all the time. But sometimes I track how many times somebody will say, well, I've never really talked about this before. I don't know why I'm saying I'm saying too much. But to me, when I know like, all right, yeah, we're in real territory. Oh, totally. And this is something where I noticed when I was going on all these meetup hikes. The worst ones was where I was hiking with someone for hours and we were like, what do you do for work? I do this. What movies have you seen? I've seen this. Where do you like to eat? I like to eat at this place and this place.

30:57And the best ones that I still remember, honestly, with other Eastern Europeans who have no filter, who were like, yeah, here are all the problems in my life. Here's how much I hate my mother-in-law and why. Here's why I think my son is wasting his life away. Here's like why I divorced my husband, like just in the first 15 minutes. And I prefer that. Like I would rather do that than small talk. So if you seek out those people who like to do the level of deep talk that you do. You know, it's so interesting because that also speaks to an interesting dynamic that I actually don't know much about and haven't done enough research into, but we are naturally drawn to people who are like us.

31:41If I'm honest, I really have cultivated a wide social network, but many of the closest male friends I have are almost identical to my brother. And they're just like menshy Jewish guys. That's not entirely true. There are other people in the inner circle who completely do not fit that profile, but I am drawn to that type of person for, I think, some pretty good defensible reasons. I love my brother and they're also like my dad. So it's easier to be vulnerable with people who are like you. And there's a real crackle that I love of being around people who I have nothing in common with. Barry, the guy who rides me up in the elevator is from West Africa.

32:22I mean, so like we have nothing in common, but we have a great time catching up. I wonder if you have any thoughts about that in terms of how to spice up your social life? Oh, that's interesting. It's going to depend on every person, whether you tend to like people who are exactly like you or people who are pretty different from you. I will say that most of the research shows that friends are quite similar. They're similar on 86 % of various qualities and traits and preferences and things. So most people end up making friends with people who are quite similar to them. I will say that in the course of writing this book, I made a really good friend who is much, much, much more agreeable and thoughtful than me.

33:06And that has been really interesting because she's also taught me a lot about agreeableness and thoughtfulness that a disagreeable person like myself, I wouldn't have thought of it. I'm like really grateful to her because I'm like, oh, this, you're doing this and it makes me feel good. I should also do this for other people, including you. So that kind of thing can be helpful too. Okay, well, let's go to agreeableness then as we work our way through the big five here. I just want to say at the beginning, like your crankiness, it's not just a bug. It's also a feature. You know, like the fact that you called me the P word and a very prominent publication was hilarious to me.

33:47And the fact that you write with a wry sense of humor and are kind of judgmental. And like, so I wouldn't want you to like sand down all those edges. And I wouldn't want anybody else to either. So nobody wants to be more agreeable. Like I'm like the only person on earth who's ever tried to be more agreeable in the studies on personality change. People generally don't pick agreeableness as the trait that they want to change. They usually pick extroversion and conscientiousness. And I was a little bit nervous about it too. Cause you know, as a journalist, you have to be skeptical. You can't just be like, oh my god you're right and you know concede to whatever everyone's saying so i was a little bit like is this gonna make me into some a softy who's gullible and it kind of didn't like i think it helped me manage my anger especially at my husband then boyfriend that part of it was really good and it also helped me learn how to manage my friendships a little bit better and not necessarily just by agreeing to whatever they wanted to do.

34:49There's like a balance there with agreeableness where you don't want to become a pushover. But true agreeableness, I would say, is not being a pushover. Technically, agreeable means not just that you agree with everybody, but that your warmth and empathy quotients are high. Yes. And also that you trust people, which was the one for me that was really, really low. I actually was really high on empathy, but my trust was so rock bottom that I actually scored low on agreeableness. All right. Well, let's just set trust aside for a second, because that seems like something we should come back to. But I just want to get back to your notion about true agreeability is not being a doormat, because I actually have spent a decent amount of time in my life working on my agreeability because of the aforementioned frosty New Englander propensities.

35:39And it does not mean, in my understanding at all does not mean being a pushover to quote Brene Brown again, who I admire. Clear is kind. So in your communication with people, giving clear feedback, another thing I struggled to do, even though I was also snippy, so it was a wonderful combination. And I don't want to use the past tense too much here, because I'm sure this shit still happens. But giving people clear feedback, which could scan as disagreeable, but doing it in a warm and empathetic way. That's true agreeability. Would you agree? I would agree. So there's definitely like a, an element of disagreeableness where you try to get along.

36:23And so you're like, yeah, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. And then it builds and builds and builds. And then you get snippy. I was prone to that one as well. So one thing I learned in the course of this, it was from this like therapist who specializes in friends. All my friendships were falling apart kind of during this time or right before I started working on the book. And I was like, what is going on here? What do I do about this? So at one point I had this friend who texted me and she's like, I need you to text me every week or else we can't be friends anymore. I need you to text me to check on me every week.

36:58I don't like texting that much. Like I don't really text very often unless it's like, let's meet here at this time. I also don't like checking in on people if it's not clear that there's something wrong with them. Like if they're fine, I don't really feel like I need to check in on them. Even if they're not fine, like they should just tell me and then we can talk about it. So I was just very kind of annoyed by this request. And I was like, but I thought that being a good friend meant saying, okay. So I just said, oh, sure. Of course. Yeah. Can this count? this one. So she didn't react well to that.

37:32The whole thing just really, it did not go over well. So I reach out to Miriam Kiermaier, this friendship expert, and I'm like, what should I have done in this situation? And she really pointed out that this is where boundaries are really helpful, where you can tell someone, hey, I'm so sorry that, you know, you feel like I've been ignoring you or I haven't been in touch as much. I am honestly not a big texter. Is there another way that we can keep in touch. And I did not do that because, again, I thought agreeableness meant agreeing. Like boundaries are kind of the way to keep agreeableness from just turning into everyone walks all over you.

38:08Yes, that is so important to me. And now I'm wandering into territory where I'm going to seem like I'm virtue signaling. So please excuse me. There does seem to be a gender component here. I was reading and I was trying to find this quote in preparation for this interview and I couldn't find it. So I don't remember who said it, but it was something to the effect of, and this was by a mental health professional. Her advice was to women be less agreeable. And I think she was using like a narrow definition of agreeable, like meaning stop just agreeing to everybody, stop agreeing to be a pushover.

38:45And she was citing massive disproportionality and like autoimmune diseases among women and stress related diseases because women are being overly agreeable. So this boundaries piece seems key, and also having a capacious, proper understanding of what agreeability is seems key, given that it can be and has been weaponized against certain population groups. Yeah. And, you know, I was sensitive to that, that women are kind of expected to be agreeable. But I think the kind of pernicious version of agreeableness that is often expected of women is, is that kind of go along to get along? But sure, I'll text you as often as you want, you know, or I'll do it.

39:28I'll volunteer. You know, I really don't think that's what it's saying. Like, I think the good parts of this trait are kind of standing up for yourself, but also doing it in a kind way and with empathy for whoever you're talking to. And also, honestly, I would say that doing what you described, you did for a long time and many people, perhaps even my wife, do this, which is like, fine, fine, fine. Fuck you forever. Yes. So that's our actually agreeability, right? So it's socially imposed, culturally imposed, going along to get along. You know, you're gritting your teeth the whole time. And the person on the other side, who may or may not be me, might not even know that you're stepping over the line.

40:13Yeah. So that's like passive aggression and agreeableness really is more like assertiveness, I would say. Yes. A warm, clear, kind assertiveness. You can set boundaries and be really clear. You can do, I mean, this comes up for me a lot when people are asking me like, how do I survive in the modern political era? And I often argue, you know, like hatred, I understand it, and anger too, and it's not the cleanest burning fuel. It's better to tap into what you care about as a motivator, including yourself, vulnerable populations you want to protect, and even to a certain extent, the people you disagree with.

40:54But you can take really firm action from that place. You could do all the shit you would otherwise have done. You're just not doing it with all of this toxicity running through your veins. Does all that track for you? Yeah, I think so. And I mean, the fact that the country is so fractured and at odds came up a lot for me in the work on agreeableness. I mean, my parents like watch Russian TV 24-7 and are huge supporters of Vladimir Putin. And then I'm from Texas. So a lot of people I know are Trump supporters. Some people from my hometown are like actual J6ers. There's not a way for me to like just never talk to those people again, right?

41:37They're going to be a part of my life because anytime I go back to Texas, I'm going to interact with Trump supporters and or my parents. I kind of had to figure out a way to have those people be in my life to interact with them and not to have everything turn into either a fight or me like agreeing with January 6th, which I don't. Right, right, right. Yeah, that's why I think this agreeableness thing, like, it's got a PR problem. Yes. But properly understood, and this is why it's in the big five, like warmth and empathy, it's a kind of enlightened self-interest. Like it improves your relationships, which makes you happier.

42:16But again, it's not about saying yes to shit you shouldn't say yes to. Okay, but you also said part of agreeability is trust. Yes. And so that's actually an area where I'm actually less confident because how wise is it to trust other people and how often should you do that? Yeah, I mean, that's a really tough question. I don't know. I mean, honestly, like trust but verify is probably the smart way to go on this. But what helped about this chapter that I was working on and kind of the whole book is that I was just in all of these programs and groups and clubs with other people. And a lot of them did involve a lot of like sharing personal struggles and like personal challenges.

43:09You know, in my meditation group, there was like someone with chronic pain and like people like dealing with job stuff. And there's like a new parent. So I just got to know a lot of people with a lot of different challenges that were similar to mine, maybe different in degree. And I think that did kind of increase my trust in humanity in a weird way, even though technically for my job, I'm not really allowed to trust anymore. Right, right. Okay. Maybe that's why I was getting hung up on this too, because I have a background as a journalist. But you know, as you're speaking, I realized actually one spin on this that lands for me is, Well, a couple actually.

43:50One is that you were in these groups and people were being vulnerable and there's a certain amount of trust involved in opening up in that way. And it is worth taking a risk once in a while to have the trust that you can say something that's revelatory to somebody and you don't know how it's going to be received. So running that kind of experiment once in a while, which can pay off really because it can deepen your relationships, that involves a kind of trust. Similarly, there's a great phrase that I heard from Becky Kennedy, the popular podcaster and social media personality who talks a lot about parenting.

44:29There's LGI and MGI, the least generous interpretation and the most generous interpretation. And so this isn't about blind trust, but like just running the thought experiment when somebody pisses you off or you're questioning their motives. Like, what would be the most generous interpretation of this? It's not to say that you should take it on faith, but like just to at least open your mind to it. That's what's coming up for me as I'm listening to you talk about trust. How does that go down with you? Yeah, I think that's right. And as a reporter, you see a lot of the worst of humanity. Like you do, I mean, you do interact with people who are lying to you.

45:07You are reporting on bad things and bad people. You do get a lot of evidence that some people are not trustworthy. And I think for me, what was interesting about this was that I sort of gathered a lot of evidence that people are trustworthy. So I don't go to church or I'm not religious, as might be obvious at this point. I'm not part of any community groups or anything like that. So I actually like, I realized that I never interacted with people in a positive way. Like it was all just my immediate friends and we would get drinks together, my coworkers, and we would talk on Slack and that was it.

45:43And so to kind of have this experience of like, most people are just kind of bumbling through. Sometimes they make mistakes and sometimes they say things that are kind of stupid or not correct, but most people are just kind of trying to get through the day. I think that was kind of an important realization for me. Yeah. And I will say something that's maybe not going to be popular with my own audience, but like I can apply that to the Jan Sixers from your neighborhood. Like they live in an information environment in which they thought they were taking a patriotic act. I don't agree. And I can have compassion for it.

46:17And I can do both of those things simultaneously. And that's okay. Yeah, that's kind of where I landed with the Jan Sixers from my hometown. down. Honestly, like if you do talk to them, they thought President Trump wanted them to do that. And they really like him. And that was the conclusion that they came to. I don't like excuse it now or I'm not like, oh, you shouldn't face any consequences. But I don't know. It made me see people kind of more as whole people, I guess. Absolutely. And I think that's the key. Nobody's saying no consequences, no boundaries. We're just saying that you can impose consequences and set boundaries without vilifying people and putting them in the bad bucket forever.

47:01It's just, it's not seeing the whole thing.

47:07Coming up, Olga talks about conscientiousness and some things that may surprise you, an antidote to procrastination, how these tips that we've been talking about apply to neurodivergent people, the most important of the big five, some tips for reducing neuroticism. We talk about psychedelics and we pull all the way back and talk about practical ways to make reasonable changes on all of this stuff in the middle of Europe. I've been a fully adult human male for many decades, but I've never really focused on shorts as something you can wear and actually be stylish. I'm trying to up my shorts game, especially as my family and I have a big beach vacation coming up in the next couple of weeks.

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50:22For a busy life.

50:29All right. So we've gone through two of the big five, the big five aspects of personality and your attempts to change your scores on each of these. Let's go to conscientiousness. What is that? And what did you do to boost your own conscientiousness? conscientiousness? So conscientiousness is just getting shit done. It is being super organized, being on time to everything, being really productive, staying on task, not prioritizing. These folks get up really early. Their houses are super clean. These are those kinds of people who are super annoying and who also are never running late for a meeting or anything like that.

51:06And I I was actually really high on this trait starting out, and I'm still high. So I mostly interviewed other people who increased unconsciousness. Well, I'm very high on conscientiousness. I actually dragged my ass out of bed at six in the morning, went to a crazy workout group this morning. So I'm super tired as we're having this conversation. And I have a deep suspicion that our high marks on conscientiousness are pretty deeply linked to our high marks on neuroticism. Okay, so I have asked this question of so many personality psychologists. There's no correlation there. Yeah, people who are high on neuroticism are not high on conscientiousness.

51:46I think a bunch of journalists are just high on both. And they're like, they must be related. Like, it's my secret. But no, there's like scientifically, there's no link there. Okay, we'll get to neuroticism in a second. But let me just stay with conscientiousness. You ended up speaking to a lot of folks who were less conscientious, even though you were doing okay in this category. What can one do to boost one's conscientiousness if this is an area of struggle? Conscientiousness is really almost kind of one of the simplest ones to grow on because what you really have to do is like make the Google calendar and make the to-do list and check it and leave 15 minutes early and put your keys in the same spot all the time.

52:30So none of this stuff is that mind-blowing. But the issue that the people that I interviewed ran into is that they didn't kind of naturally know to do this stuff. It kind of didn't occur to them because they had never done it before. It was like one of those things where if you've never done it, you kind of don't know how to do it or why you should. And something that really seemed to play a role for all the folks that I talked to is this concept called episodic future thinking, which kind of just is like a fancy term for like visualizing very specifically the outcome that you want. and maybe not even like the outcome, but just like the scenario that you're setting yourself up for.

53:11So if it's like getting some presentation for work done, it would be like visualizing yourself delivering the presentation, everyone kind of clapping at the end, ordering from the deli afterward, you know, what outfit are you going to wear? Like how nice it will feel to like finally be done and have your boss be pleased with you. So having these kinds of like big picture visions of a positive future, or actually even a negative future, like what'll happen if you don't do it, that can really motivate you to take those incremental steps of conscientiousness. Because actually, like most of conscientiousness is really tedious.

53:51It's not very fun. And that tends to be why people don't like to do it. So this episodic future thinking is kind of the antidote to procrastination? Yeah, exactly. Because really no one wants to make the PowerPoint slides and no one wants to read more pages of the law textbook and no one wants to go jogging at 5.30 a.m. But having kind of a broader goal that you're working toward that you can link those micro tasks to is something that a lot of people I talk to found motivating. What about ADHD and the neuro spicy? Those are folks who have challenges, deep neurological challenges with executive function.

54:36Does this advice work for people in that category? It's actually like especially for people in that category. So a lot of ADHD is just like a very, very low conscientiousness, very, very severe levels. Maybe not, but low conscientiousness and ADHD are kind of very similar. And a lot of the strategies to help people with ADHD are basically just versions of the advice that you would give someone for conscientiousness. Interesting. I have a very close friend, a meditation teacher, Jeff Warren, who has pretty severe ADHD, and he's always kind of finding ways to like bolster his prefrontal cortex by like either having a technological fix or hiring the right person to sort of outsource, either outsource or support some of the weaknesses in his own brain functioning.

55:29Does that sound like it lines up with what you learned in this area of your research? Oh, totally. And that's like completely allowed. I mean, most people use technology to help them stay on task. This one woman, Julia, that I interviewed, she really wanted to start her own business and did not know how to get there. So what she really did is, I mean, I think she uses Todoist, which is like a to-do list app. She uses a calendar. She has like a whiteboard with everything written on it. She time boxes stuff. I mean, she uses a lot of different tools to kind of stay on task. And that's not conscientiousness.

56:05That is itself a form of conscientiousness. All right. Let's move on to neuroticism, which apparently, as you established before, is the most important of the big five in terms of its impact on the quality of your life. And this is where I haven't taken a personality test, but this is where you say you scored very high and I'm really confident this is like the one test I can ace. What is neuroticism? Let's just start there. What is neuroticism technically? Neuroticism is depression and anxiety. It is feeling negative, negative thought spirals, worrying, being labile in scientific terms. So just kind of like small things happen and you really fall to pieces, anything under that category.

56:54How was this showing up in your life beyond ruining trips to Miami? It was ruining my whole life. I mean, it was just sort of worrying all day, not sleeping at night because I was like waking up and worrying. I couldn't decide whether to have a baby or not because I was so nervous about the postpartum period in particular. I thought I would be a bad mom and that it would just be like so terrible. so inability to make decisions crippling insomnia constant worry and then just like when good things did happen i never savored them it was just like on to the next thing i remember seeing you on twitter sort of publicly wringing your hands about like whether to have a baby i mean you really you really wrestled with it you now have one or two i have one congratulations that's awesome.

57:44Thanks. Okay. So what did you do about this? So the answer, as you know, is basically mindfulness. So annoying. All of its forms. Yeah, I know. Every article that's like the one trick you can use to feel happier and it's always meditation. So say more about it. Okay. So I really did not want to meditate because I, every anxious person hates meditation starting out. so I started with a bunch of stuff like I was kind of doing like self-guided stuff I did I used your app a little bit in particular Sharon Salzberg's meditations and I would try to meditate kind of on my own I went to like one of those like sensory deprivation tanks that was kind of a bust I tried to work through this app called unwinding anxiety that is mindfulness but without meditation.

58:37That's Dr. Judd Brewer who's been on this show many times. Yeah. Yeah. That like kind of worked, but mostly just for panic attacks for me, which panic attacks were like one small drop in the neuroticism bucket for me. So finally I signed up for MBSR, which is you are probably familiar with, right? Yeah, but let the people know. Sure. Okay. So mindfulness-based stress reduction. And this is a, I think, 10-week class where you meditate for 45 minutes a day. And then And every week there's a two and a half hour class about kind of like Buddhism light concepts. Yeah. I can imagine people listening.

59:16I mean, my audience has a lot of meditators, but I think also a lot of aspiring meditators or I feel shitty that I'm not meditating type of folks. And so that's a big commitment, 45 minutes a day. And then you go to the class on top of it. Yeah, it was a huge commitment. I think the first day of the class, people were like, I can't do this. I have kids. I have a job. I can't do 45 minutes a day. And the teacher was just like, yeah, 45 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Just respect feeling overwhelmed. That's actually not a bad example of a firm agreeability. Yeah. There was always just like, if you didn't like something, it was like, Yeah, you don't like it.

1:00:04Yeah, that's a feeling that you're having. So did you actually do 45 minutes a day? I did. And has it created an abiding habit for you? Okay, so I would say created an abiding habit until I had a baby. Okay, totally. I have to be honest. And I know that you write in your book that not having time is not a good excuse. But after Evan was born, I really just did not have time to do anything and meditation fell off. It showed. I like I really my anxiety went back up and I kind of I fell off the wagon. Can I just clarify that for a second? Not having enough time is an excuse and it is a good excuse and is very common.

1:00:46And you can do just a little bit once in a while in order to keep your head in the game. So like a minute daily ish. I think that the biggest exception to this is new mothers. because, you know, I've lived with a new mother. It is just so, and you know, new fathers too, but let's be honest, the bulk of it often falls on the mom. So I have so much empathy or maybe compassion would be the better word for that situation. And I would just say like, if you don't have enough time, first of all, give yourself a break and like, that's cool. Like maybe now's just not the time. And you can also just do little bits every once in a while, you You know, like those moments where you're feeding the baby or walking the baby, you can still tune into like whatever the raw data of your sensations and mentation.

1:01:39And then every time you get distracted, start again. So does that sound a little bit more user friendly? Yeah. And, you know, I think a lot of spending time with the baby is kind of meditative for me because we don't really like look at our phones when we're with him because the second we look down, he's like going to go eat the garbage or something. and so we spend a lot of time just kind of like watching him do stuff or just like kind of like gazing at him that is like kind of the closest to meditation that I get these days but it is sometimes kind of a little bit meditative I would say and then last night I was actually I was reading him a book about taking deep breaths when you get mad and I was like showing him how to breathe deeply.

1:02:25And I was like, he kind of did it too. So he kind of like did a little breath work together at bedtime. Anyway. Many people say X or Y activity is meditative and I sort of give them a break on that. But in the back of my mind, I'm like, well, you know, from a mindfulness perspective, if you're not like paying attention, you know, in a quite deliberate way, and then every time you get distracted, you start again. You may be achieving flow or you may be in a state of peace and calm, but it's not necessarily meditative the way a Buddhist would describe it. But what you describe of like, actually, I'm gazing at my child and I remember those feelings.

1:03:09And I still do it to the extent that he'll let me gaze at him ever as a 10-year-old boy. Actually, you are in your senses in those moments. You're in your visual senses and your feelings of whatever feelings of warmth or annoyance are coming up. That to me scans actually as genuinely meditative. Well, that's good. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of as close as I get. I'm trying to get back into some of the types of mindfulness that I enjoyed, like yoga and like walking and things. And now that he's getting a little bit older and I'm not breastfeeding anymore, which is like the key thing keeping me from being able to do anything.

1:03:42Yeah, I get it. As a neurotic person, having done a significant amount of research on how one can improve in this regard, what would you say to the listeners about how they can reduce their neuroticism? So I'm just the kind of person who I need like mantras, like I need like kind of little phrases to go to whenever I'm getting really in a spiral. and some of the most helpful elements of this actually came from that weird little class where she taught us like little buddhist concepts so something that i had noticed well my whole life is that i would get really angry at myself when things didn't go quote unquote right if some work assignment didn't go well or a bad performance review or a story didn't get very much traffic or these are all work ones but i don't know i had a party at my house and it seemed like people didn't have fun.

1:04:40But it was smaller stuff too. Like I got stuck in traffic and was slightly late meeting someone for coffee or something like that. I would have this like a lot of anger at myself and kind of a lot of self-blame. And actually a lot of the concepts from Buddhism helped me overcome that or just to accept that there is a lot of uncertainty in life and that you can't take responsibility for every single thing that happens. And it was actually something from your book that was really helpful. And it was a quote from David Axelrod. Oh, yeah. I love the political consultant, which is all we can do is everything we can do.

1:05:19And I actually tell myself that a lot because to me, it is such a good way of accepting the fact that like you have to work really hard, like in in this industry, in a lot of different industries, you there's just no way to stop striving and be a Buddha and just sit on a mountain all day. You have to like really put in the hours and work super duper hard. But at a certain point, that's all you can do. You cannot make certain things happen, even if you've really put in the hours. And to me, that was like, I know it sounds dumb, but that was like kind of mind blowing. It blew my mind too. There's a reason why I put it in the book and I emailed him and asked for permission to use it because he had said it in an off the record session.

1:05:59There's another articulation of the same sentiment often attributed to Teddy Roosevelt. And I'm not going to get the words exactly right, but it's something like, do what you can with whatever you've got, wherever you are. And it's amazingly helpful professionally, but also again, in turbulent political times when people feel so helpless and hopeless, like there's something you can do. It may not even be related to the problem, but there's some action you can take. Here's another related slogan that would fit in the same category, which is action absorbs anxiety that you can, knowing you've done what you can do will help you sleep at night, whatever's worrying you.

1:06:40Yeah, that's actually Tracy Dennis Tiwari, another anxiety researcher that I talked to. She kind of made the point that like anxiety, you know, it's going to come up, you're going to feel anxious sometimes, but it's kind of what you do with that anxiety that matters? So she's like, yeah, by all means, like make a to do list of everything that you're worried about and what you're going to do in order to address it and then put it away and go back to sleep. You don't need to, you know, stay awake dwelling on these same anxieties, but use it to take action toward the outcome that you want and then acknowledge that at a certain point you can't control everything.

1:07:18I want to make a quick point before we move to the fifth of the big five, the point I want to make is that many of the other things that we've discussed already, like working on other aspects of the big five, I think, and in my experience, can help a person and have helped me reduce my neuroticism, most especially working on the quality of my relationships. And so I'll give you another slogan that I love that is also not mine, which is never worry alone. And this is deeply consonant with how we evolved. And so working on extroversion and agreeableness, again, properly understood, can really help ease the nervous system.

1:08:00Okay. Final of the big five, openness. What does that mean specifically? Openness is this nebulous trait that has a bunch of stuff that writers and creative people really like. It includes both creativity and verbal fluency. So like being good with words, it includes kind of imagination, liking kind of abstract art and unusual music and movies, liking to travel, liking anything kind of new and avant-garde, just being kind of down for whatever.

1:08:36so being down for whatever in terms of new experiences in terms of radical interesting ideas that's what you're referring to specifically yeah all of the above new ideas new experiences and even actually political liberalism like is correlated with this trait because if you think about it like liberals have historically been the group that are more like okay with new changes in society and kind of new ways of living. Although it's interesting, I was listening to like a center right podcast today and they were talking about how there's a decoupling happening between conservatism and being right wing, because actually there's so much that's happening on the right wing these days that is not conservative.

1:09:21It's radical and new and disruptive. Yeah, I take that point. I think that some of those studies were probably done in like the Clinton era. So yeah, that's probably true. Let's give those Gen Sixers their respect. They were definitely open to new ideas. All right. So what did you do to boost your openness? And were you open? So I was already really high on openness when this started. And you actually don't want to be too, too high on openness because the people who are like way on the far end of openness actually can kind of veer into kind of psychosis. Because if you think about it, like if everything could be true, right, then like nothing is not true.

1:10:10And so it's, you can see how it could cross over into some mental health stuff. But the big thing that has been found to increase openness is psychedelics. I mean, obviously not advocating that people do psychedelics. Please like do it in a controlled way with, you know, doctors and stuff. But that is, I mean, according to studies, the way that consistently boosts openness. I want to get practical in the end here. We've been pretty practical throughout, but I can imagine people at this point in the conversation are thinking, all right, well, Olga had a book contract and was very committed to doing all of these things.

1:10:46How do I make changes in like a reasonable way, given my busy life? Yeah, so you definitely don't have to become an improvisational actor and go surfing and do all the stuff that I did in order to change your personality. I would start by either taking a big five personality test. You can do it on personalityassessor.com. That's the site that I use that was created by one of the researchers whose work I followed. Or you can just find a different one on the internet. Or you can just think about areas in your life where you feel like you could use a little bit of an upgrade. So do you not have that many friends?

1:11:25Do you feel like you have a lot of conflict with your loved ones? Do you feel like you are really anxious all the time? And then I would maybe try one or two of the activities from the book on, you know, a scale that feels manageable. So for meditation, MBSR is a huge commitment. But you know, the people who were in my class did have jobs and kids and stuff. It has been shown to work basically as well as Lexapro. So that's one where if you really, really want to reduce neuroticism quickly, that's a good way to go. But you could also do shorter meditations, as you mentioned, five minutes, 10 minutes.

1:12:01Loving kindness is a great one to start out with. Even though you may get called names in the paper. People will call you a pussy, but that's okay. Most of the activities that have been shown to change people's personalities in the research studies that I looked at only take a few minutes a day. They're not kind of huge commitments. It's something like gratitude journaling or exercising for a few minutes or saying hi to someone or getting coffee with someone. These aren't like super time consuming. The key is to just do them consistently over a long period of time. I have two questions I habitually asked toward the end of an interview.

1:12:42One is, is there something you were hoping we would get to that we haven't gotten to? Yes. There's one point that I want to make, which is that people sometimes ask me if they should change their personality so that other people will like them better. And I think it will help other people like you better. But the most important reason to change your personality is that it will make you happier. So it's a selfish thing to do. But I see that as a good thing. It's something that will enhance your life and your relationships and your happiness level and not necessarily the people around you. Yeah.

1:13:14Again, to use this phrase, enlightened self-interest. Exactly. Because, you know, the happier you get, the easier you will be to be around. Okay. Great point. Final point. Can you just remind everybody of the name of your book, the book you wrote before it, where we can find your work on an ongoing basis, anything else you want us to know about, et cetera, et cetera? Sure. So I'm Olga Hazan. My book is Me But Better. You can find it wherever books are sold. You can find the rest of my writing at theatlantic.com, where I'm a staff writer. I also have a newsletter that's mostly about personality at olgahazan.substack.com.

1:13:50And my previous book is called Weird. And that's also available wherever books are sold. Olga, great to spend time with you. Thank you for doing this. And congratulations on the new book. Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

1:14:08Thank you again to Olga Hazan. awesome to talk to her don't forget there is a guided meditation specifically tailored to this episode it really digs into the issue of procrastination it comes from our teacher of the month don mauricio and it's only available to paid subscribers over on danharris.com if you become a member you'll get access to our growing library of companion podcast meditations and all the future meditations that'll be coming down the pipe and you also get access to these live guided meditation sessions that I've been doing and that our teachers of the month are going to start doing.

1:14:43In fact, we have one today at 4 Eastern over on Substack. Details at danharris.com. Finally, just to say a quick thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.