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

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
People think that you were born with your personality and
you're just stuck with it. But just because you've always
been a certain way doesn't mean you have to stay
that way. Alga Hazad, the author of Me But Better,
The Science.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
And Promise of personality shame. Can an introvert actually become
an extra if they want to?

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Rather than permanently changing? Learn the ability to try on
this personality trade put on extraversion?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Is there an age at which it's impossible to change
our personality?

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Some people change more after their thirty Different choices that
we make can change us throughout our lives.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
What's the difference between changing our habits and changing our
personality traits?

Speaker 1 (00:41):
So you can actually fake it until you make it.
Once you do your habits often enough, they will become
part of your personality and it won't feel fake anymore.
It'll feel like it's part of your identities both.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
How does this apply to people who had diagnosed with
depression or ADHD? Can they also change? Is that very different?

Speaker 1 (01:01):
There's actually been this push in psychology to identify the
personality traits that are associated with things like depression and ADHD,
and actually has gone head to head with Lexibro the
anti depressant and it works just as well.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
The number one health and wellness podcast Jay Setty, Jay
Chetty See Only Jetty. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.
Thank you so much for coming back to listen, learn
and grow. Today's guest is Olga Hasan, an award winning
writer for The Atlantic and the author of Me But Better,

(01:39):
The Science and Practice of Personality Change. In her work,
she dives deep into the science of why we are
the way we are, and more importantly, how we can
actually change it. Olga hasn't just reported on the research,
but actually experimented on herself to see if changing your
personality is really possible. Please welcome to On Purpose, Olga

(02:03):
asan Olga, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me Oga.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
I wanted to dive straight in, and the first thing
I wanted to ask you is, if someone listens to
this episode, if someone reads your book, what are you
hoping they can change and shift in their life? What
are you hoping for them?

Speaker 1 (02:19):
I hope that they realize that whatever is kind of
wrong in their life or not working for them currently,
that they can change that no matter what age they
are or where they live or what kind of job
they have, you know, if they feel like they don't
have enough community support, they don't have enough friends, that
they can go out and make those friends. If they
feel like their progression in their career is being blocked

(02:40):
by inability to publicly speak or connect with large audiences,
that they can learn those skills, you know, if they
feel kind of disorganized or like they can't really get motivated,
that they can learn organizational skills and make that happen
for themselves. So it's really just whatever your goals are,
and that you're able to align your traits and your
behavior with your goals.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
I love that. I mean that sounds like something we
all need and applies to each and every one of us.
How did you discover this to be a block? Like
when did you recognize that this was a block for people?
And what was that block that you were facing in
trying to sew.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
It was really just that I was very unhappy and
there was no particular reason for it. So it wasn't like, oh,
if this just gets resolved, I'll be happy again, you know.
I kind of start my book with this anecdote about
being in Miami in December a beautiful time to be
in Miami. You know, the weather is unimpeachable, cannot be

(03:34):
improved upon, staying in this great place, having a great
work life balance. Things with my partner were good. It
was before we had our baby, so we weren't tired.
But I just had this day where I had all
these like minor frustrations. You know. I got a really
bad haircut, and I got stuck in traffic, and I
got some photos taken to me that I wasn't crazy about.

(03:56):
I was just like, I hate these photos, and I
knew they were going to be released widely. I had
this like frustrating incident at a grocery store, and I
get back to our airbnb where we're staying, and I
just kind of have a meltdown and I kind of
feel just broadly unhappy with everything.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
You know.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
I immediately turned to alcohol, which is what I would
do at the time to manage my emotions. And I
was just sort of so frustrated. And then even like
a few minutes later, I kind of thought, Hey, why
am I Why is this all getting to me? Like
if you look at anything about this situation, you know,
I'm in this beautiful setting, nothing is really wrong. I

(04:32):
didn't get in a car accident, or you know, I
wasn't even late for anything. You know, I didn't get
fired from my job, my air whatever goes back. I
kind of realized that so often minor frustrations would really
add up to me because of my high level of
this trait called neuroticism, which is kind of associated with
depression and anxiety, and so I kind of would get

(04:53):
in these negative spirals where I would kind of add
up these small things, these small negative events, and let
them kind of ruin my whole day or my whole week,
or start this narrative where my life is so bad
I can never be happy because these small frustrations happen
to me. And I decided to kind of try to
change that, because you're never going to have a life
without small frustrations, Like nothing is ever going to go perfectly,

(05:16):
So the only way to be happy is to be
able to be happy despite that.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
How did that link to personality?

Speaker 1 (05:23):
There are some interesting research coming out that people can
actually change their personality traits, and when they do change
their personality traits, they actually become happier, healthier, whatever it
is that that trait is correlated with it can really
kind of increase all these positive elements of their lives.
And so we think of personality as something that we're

(05:46):
just kind of stuck with, Like I am this kind
of person and this is what I will always do.
I'm the kind of person who will always get frustrated
by small inconveniences. But really, we have the ability to
change the way we respond to situations. We have the
ability to change our behaviors, even our kind of typical
thought patterns, and really by changing those consistently, we have
the ability to change personality. So that's kind of when

(06:08):
I was like, maybe I should try a version of
this for myself.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
What is personality? Like? How do you define it? Because
I feel like he gets thrown around and then it
gets mixed with so many different words. How do you
define it?

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, a lot of people are like, oh, is it
like the kind of jokes you tell, or you know,
whether you're kind of loud and boisterous, those are all
kind of elements of personality. The way that personality scientists
define it is the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that come
most naturally to you. So something happens, someone honks at you,
at a red light, you know, or something you know?
Do you flip them off? Do you wave at them

(06:41):
because you're really good natured, you know, do you you know,
meditate to yourself? That kind of shows your personality. And
the researcher that I follow the most for this book
Nathan Hudson, who has done a lot of the research
on personality change. He actually adds another element to that,
which is that personality helps you get what you want.

(07:02):
So personality is how we go about pursuing our goals. Agreeableness,
which is another personality trait, can help you make more friends,
It can attract people to you. It can kind of
make you, you know, one of those people as like
a huge bridal party at your wedding. Conscientiousness can help you,
you know, get up earlier, get more done during the day,
get promotions at work, and things like that, if that's

(07:22):
what you're into. So kind of on top of being
this like reflex and habit, it's also a way that
we pursue what we want out of life.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Why do you think all of us feel so stuck
in who we are and start to believe things like
I'm just not a funny person, I'm just a disorganized person.
I'm just a negative person. Why do we get so stuck?

Speaker 1 (07:44):
I think it's because we've been told for a long
time that personality is permanent and that we just are
a certain way. I think some of this comes from
the fact that personality is partly genetic. So you think that,
you know, if something is genetic, it's inherited, You're going
to be just like your parents parents. What are your
parents like? They're like this, and that you're going to
be a combo of that. It doesn't really work that way.

(08:06):
We do. Obviously, personality is like everything, partly genetic, but
that means that it's kind of a combination of different genes.
The environment that you're in, and also your own decisions
and your own actions and what you choose to do
can shape your personality. But I think for a long time,
the way scientists have talked about it, it sort of
did feel like a death sentence, kind of like you're

(08:27):
going to be this way forever, you know. The famous
uh William James quote personality is set like plaster after
the age of thirty, and so especially after thirty, people
think that they're stuck being a certain way. But really
the more recent psychological literature has shown that people actually
change both naturally just like without really trying to. They

(08:49):
kind of change over time, and people can also change
over shorter periods of time by taking concerted effort.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Do we know how much personality is nature of vesus? Natcha.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
It depends on the trait and kind of the person.
But it's about forty to sixty percent heritable, and I
want to caveat that heavily. So that means it's let's say,
let's call it half comes from your genes. But if
you think about it, you're not like your parents twin, right,
So your genes, you get genes from them, but they
kind of get combined in these unexpected ways, and they

(09:22):
might manifest in different ways depending on the environment that
you grew up, the environment that you live in, now,
what kind of job you have, And so it's really
this gene environment interaction that creates a lot of unpredictability
in how your personality is going to manifest. Just because
you know that you have something genetically doesn't mean that
you're kind of doomed to be that way or that

(09:43):
it's definitely going to turn out a certain way.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Is there an age from which we can't change your personality.
You just gave that example of you know that old
core about the idea of thirty and it's sett in plaster.
Is there an age at which it's impossible to change
your personality?

Speaker 1 (10:00):
There have been studies that show that some people change
more after they're thirty than before. So most people change
a lot during their teen years and especially during their
early twenties, So that's a time of makes very rapid change.
A lot of people kind of become a version of
who they'll be for a part of their life during
that time. Both in my interviews with people and in

(10:23):
just the scientific literature, people kind of change throughout their
lives across all the traits. Different life events can change us.
Different social roles, different goals that we have, and different
kind of choices that we make can change us throughout
our lives.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
I like how everything you mentioned the things that people
want to change for themselves, but not changing for people.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, So that's been a big misconception about this topic,
as people are like, well, I don't want to change
my personality to please anyone. I don't do that. Don't
change your personality to please anyone, Like that's definitely not
my message. I think you should change your personality to
please yourself and to get what you want out of life,
not to please other people. So that's yeah, that's a

(11:06):
key distinction.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, And how do we even go about knowing how
we have to change our personality? Because I think when
you really believe, it's almost like living in a city.
So it's like, let's say I was talking to someone
yesterday and they said, I have lived in this town
for thirty one years, and I'm about to move to
a bigger city, and I'm scared and nervous. That's almost

(11:30):
what it feels like when you're changing your personality, because
you're like, I have lived in this body and this
mind and this personality for thirty one years. I don't
even know which other city I want to live in.
I don't even know which other personality I need or want.
How do you even unearth and uncover how you may

(11:51):
want to change your personality and what the right trait is.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
So there's kind of the dorky scientific way, and then
there's sort of less scientific, like wu wu ways that
might even work better. So the scientific way is there's
a big five personality test. It'll it'll measure where you
fall along the five personality traits, so it'll tell you
kind of, compared to everyone else on earth, you are

(12:16):
much less extroverted than other people. So you know, you're
very low on extraversion, and so you might look at
that score and think to yourself, I'd like to change that.
I'd like to be more outgoing, I'd like to make
new friends. Whatever it is to do with extraversion that
you want, and so then you can go about pursuing
that goal. What I think you could also do is
just like think about your values and think about what

(12:38):
it is you want out of life. Like a lot
of people say they don't want to become more extroverted,
and I kind of think that's fine if that's not
a value that you have. But I've also talked to
a lot of people who are like, look, I want
to get, you know, a job as a manager at work.
I don't want to, you know, be rank and file forever.
I want to grow in my career and that requires
a certain amount of extraversion. Like to lead people, to

(13:01):
speak persuasively, even just to manage people requires you to
have extraversion skills. So if you think about that as
a value for yourself, you could start to consider whether
extraversion might be a trait that you want to work on.
Another way that I did this personally is that I
kind of looked at the people in my life that
I was jealous of. So I have a friend who's

(13:22):
very good at making friends, Like she just is a
huge people person and people love her and are drawn
to her, and she could move to a new city
and make ten friends and be having dinner with them
that night, and I was really jealous of that. I
was like, I kind of want that skill. Like I
was actually like texting her, like how do you do that?
And so you could just look at your life at

(13:42):
you know, the people who do things that you're kind
of like, oh that's cool, Like I kind of want
to do that, cause that'll tell you the personality traits
that matter to you.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, I've always talked about how you can transform envy
into study, and that's kind of how I've been my
whole life. Anytime I've looked at someone and admired them
or liked something that they have, whether it's a trait
of skill and ability, I'm like, how did you get that?

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Right?

Speaker 2 (14:05):
And it's that idea, but it's interesting. I've always been
wired that way, so that's always been my natural kind
of when you were seeing your thoughts that you naturally had,
that's kind of how it naturally always been. If I
find something impressive, I want to know how to do
it and how to build it and how to grow it,
as opposed to feeling like they're special and I can't
have that. If that makes sense, What about those of

(14:26):
us who just feel what people should like me for
the way I am. If I can't make friends as
being authentically me and the word authentic now has become
this big buzzword and trend, So how does that fit
into that idea of Well, people should love to hang
out with you just the way you are. You shouldn't
have to be extrovert like your friend. Are you being

(14:48):
inauthentic by changing your personality?

Speaker 1 (14:50):
I mean the truth is is that no one has
ever authentically themselves one hundred percent, right. That could be
kind of off putting if you just said everything that
came to you your mind without any kind of filter
or like I think there was like a movie once
where it's like someone just said whatever they were thinking,
and it like people were very offended because you know,
it's we actually do have a filter between ourselves and

(15:13):
other people because we know that people kind of don't
want that like completely raw, like spur of the mind
thoughts that come to us. So that's one thing is
that one you're probably already filtering yourself at least a
little bit. Maybe you're doing it in a in a
kind way where like, you know, if a friend is
in a bad relationship, you don't necessarily want to be like, yeah,

(15:34):
keep dating that guy, you know, but you might say like, hey,
like have you thought about like what you're getting out
of this? You know, but you you might not just
launch into a rant about how that person sucks, right, Like,
you find ways of saying things that appeal to people.
The other thing is that like, how do you know
what your authentic self is? Like, yeah, well that's what

(15:55):
I'm saying, is like I don't know that, like we
have necessarily a genuine, consistent, authentic self that we need
to like preserve at all costs. I think that a
lot of times our emotions are kind of fleeting, and
if you say something one day, you might not say
it again the same way the next day. Or if

(16:16):
you feel something about about something one day, you might
not feel that same way the next week, So you
know which one of those is authentic? You know, are
you exactly the same as you were in college? If not,
are you are you faking it?

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Like?

Speaker 1 (16:29):
You know what I mean? It's we all kind of
change and shift over time and depending on the situation.
I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that. I
think that's called the growth.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Yeah, it's weird how we're fascinated by this addiction to
authenticity right now. Yeah, when I agree with you, I
think authenticity is you showing up in different ways at
different times with different people because you can't possibly be
the same person with everyone, and you're not going to

(16:58):
expose your self to everyone at all times. It's just
not a natural thing to do. But it's weird that
we have this guise of authenticity that seems to be
clouding our ability to grow when actually probably the most
authentic thing we can do as humans is to grow, Yeah,
and to choose to change.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
Yeah, And I don't know, I just think that that's
what survival is, right, Yeah. No, no one is going
to call you out for I don't know, trying new
things or trying new skills or trying new new traits.
I think that that can also be a part of authenticity.
Anything that you do for the first time is going
to feel a little inauthentic.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
That's the interesting part is that we had vingiangon recently
who's a communication expert and public speaking expert, and he
was saying that we change how we dress, and we
don't think that's an authentic but then we don't change
the way we speak. He was saying that our communication
style remains exactly the same our whole life. So if

(17:55):
we're monotonous and boring and we just think that's who
we are, but the reality is that we are changing
other parts of ourselves. And you're right, when you try
a new hairstyle, it feels a little uncomfortable for the
first week. When you try a new pair of shoes
or a new fit of clothing, it feels a bit uncomfortable,
and that's not inauthentic. It's you trying to change your
style or what fits you. And we can do the

(18:16):
same with our personality. What's the difference between changing our
habits and changing our personality traits? How do they connect
to do?

Speaker 1 (18:24):
This is a huge debate within psychology. I will try
to give the uh not super nerdy version of it.
So some psychologists think that habits basically become personality traits
after a period of time. So if it's your habit
to do something and you do it consistently for years, okay,
now this is your personality. Some psychologists think that there's

(18:47):
also an element of like thought behind that, where if
you do something and you really like to do it,
you kind of start to incorporate it into your personality.
You start to kind of make it part of your identity.
This is like, you know, people who become runners and
then they like kind of identify as runners, and they're
like as a runner, you know, and they're like running marathons.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
You know.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
That's sort of like more part of their personality is
like exercising a ton and being you know, really we
would say conscientious about running more so than someone who
just like kind of mindlessly takes a job every day
and they don't really think too much about it. It's
a gray area between those two poles. Like I didn't
used to be very conscientious, but I am now. And

(19:29):
I can't tell you exactly when the switch happened from
me just making a ton of to do lists and
like leaving a relief for everything, and like being like
remember this, remember this to like now me just doing
it naturally.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
To me, it makes sense that our habit somewhat lean
into our personality because a repetitive action or a consistent
action feels like it becomes normality, and then once it
becomes normality. But I, but I appreciate the distinction between
For example, a habit I have is to brush my
teeth twice a day, but I don't identify five Yeah,
as a brusher of teeth, right, It's something I do,

(20:04):
but it's not an identity. So I noticed that nuance.
Whereas I played pickaball three to four times a week,
and I consider myself to be a piccolar. Right, that
idea is there's an identity associated with that. And I
guess that's what you're saying, is the difference between personality
and habit. Before we dive into the next moment, let's
hear from our sponsors. Thanks for taking a moment for that.

(20:28):
Now back to the discussion.

Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, you incorporated into yourself a little bit more. I
have one example, which is public speaking is part of
my job. Like speaking at events, moderating events, doing stuff
like this. And when I first started many years ago,
I was not good at it. I was kind of
painfully just like really shy. It made me really uncomfortable

(20:50):
to do things like this, and I kind of just
brute forced kind of tried to get better at it,
and I worked super hard, and it did become a
habit I did. I had to do a ton of
these events, and like we were always having them, especially
before COVID, and I kind of felt like eventually, I
now really don't think about it, like I kind of
like if an event is coming up and I have

(21:10):
to moderate something, I'm like, Okay, what time do I
need to be there. It's not even a process of
like psyching myself up or oh gosh, I'm so nervous.
Even my physiological responses are not the same, Like I
don't get like sweaty palms and kind of jittery and
stuff like that. So I don't know, like, is being
extroverted in that way. I guess it's part of my
personality now because I kind of reflexively do it, But

(21:33):
in that intervening time, it was definitely like I'm not extroverted.
I'm trying really hard to be, and I'm building this
habit so that I can be.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Yeah, my experience is exactly the same my I was
so shy growing up as a kid. My parents forced
me to go to public speaking in drama school from
age eleven to eighteen, and I took exams in public speaking.
I was trained nine hours a week for seven years,
eight years in my life, and it transfered my ability

(22:01):
to stand up in front of a room. I've now
been public speaking since I was eleven and thirty seven now,
so it's what twenty six years of experience. So you
could ask me to give a talk on any subject
in three minutes and I'd feel comfortable. Granted the subject
would have to be something I'm aware of, not something
out of my expertise, but it would feel comfortable and

(22:21):
easy and I'd feel calm. If you asked me to
do that when I was eleven, that would not be
the case. And if you asked me to do that
at twenty one, I would have had the skills, but
I wouldn't have had the passion to talk about things,
and so I had to find what I was passionate about.
But I fully believe that people aren't just born with
skills that we notice them. And I think we've created

(22:42):
this myth in society where people are just magical or
special or gifted, and that actually does two things. The
first is it limits us from becoming those people or
achieving those things. And the second thing is it actually
discres credits those people for the amount of work they're
put in. So when you look at the greatest athletes

(23:04):
in the world. I had the fortune of interviewing Kobe
Bryant a few months before he passed. He was in
the gym for twice as long as everyone else. That's
what he said in his words, So you could argue
he was gifted and special in all those things. And
I'm not saying he wasn't, but he would say it
was because he was in the gym for twice as
long as everyone else. He was getting a four hour

(23:27):
shift in the gym before anyone woke up, and that
was the difference maker in his mind. When you look
at Cristiano Ronaldo, who's the biggest soccer player in the world,
it's the same. Anyone who's been in his vicinity will say, well,
he has a chef that's dialed in for his health,
and he has the best recovery program, and he has
the best fitness and wellness expert. When you look at
it through his head, it's all work, Whereas when you

(23:49):
look at it from the outside, you think it's magic
and gifted. Right, And so I think we discredit that
person's work ethic by saying it's magic and special, and
we actually steal the opportunity from ourselves from saying I
can't do that because I wasn't born with that. And
so I hope everyone who's listening is having that recognition

(24:10):
to say you can do it. And anyone that you
admire is just put in the work, whether it's public
speaking like yourself, or whether it's playing four hours of
basketball more than the average person.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, And that's a great example. And that is the
same with personality change. Anyone who has a skill or
a trait that you admire has probably put a lot
of effort into that.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
How long does it take then to change a personality trait?

Speaker 1 (24:34):
That's a good question, and it really depends on the trait.
So I found with extraversion, extraversion was one of the
traits that I wanted to increase. I kind of felt
socially isolated and like I didn't just really know a
lot of people in my community. And also just especially
after COVID, I was like I kind of just don't
talk to anyone, Like I'm in my house all the time,
and I even though it was safe to do so.

(24:56):
So for that one I noticed the change is really
like I found that I went from a preference to
just stay at home on my couch and watch Netflix
to a preference to get out there and talk to people,
meet up with people, even if it's just in a
surface level way. I found that change happened after like
a couple months, like maybe a month or two. It

(25:18):
was something more performative, like I did improv classes as well.
That took several months for me to truly get comfortable,
just because I'm not, as I said, a natural performer,
and that gave me a lot of anxiety, so that
one took a little bit longer. With something like neuroticism,
which is depression and anxiety, it's something that can be
really rooted in yourself, Like it's not purely behavioral, right,

(25:40):
Like you can notice that someone is pretty calm seeming
that they could be really anxious on the inside. That
can take a rather long time to change and to shift.
Are it's supposed toble Yes, So those studies that we
have show like it's like a few months of therapy
can really create a significant change in neuroticism. What I
did was like a meditation class that I think it

(26:02):
lasted eight weeks or twelve weeks or something like that.
It was MBSR and it's just pure mindfulness meditation for dummies,
nothing special to it, and that did work to decrease
MI neuroticism after I think like three months.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
How what did it do?

Speaker 1 (26:18):
I am still totally not sure what meditation specifically does
in the mind. I will tell you what I think
it did for me. So this meditation class was a
combination of sitting silently for forty five minutes every day
or some sort of other mindful activity like yoga or walking,

(26:38):
and once a week our teacher would give like a
presentation about a topic in Buddhism that is probably very
very obvious to all of your listeners, Like it's something
that probably they have heard of or have come across
or are aware of.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Right. It was.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
It was not super esoteric or like late breaking like
Buddhist thoughts it was very kind of simple, and I
sort of was like the whole time, I was like,
is this really doing anything? Like I kind of already
know about all this Buddhist stuff. I've come across it
in my research, and this meditation is just really boring,
you know, is what is this working? And it did work.

(27:15):
My especially my depression score went down considerably throughout the
course of this class.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Is that a self score or is it a So
all of these.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Are self scores. There's really not a way to measure
personality outside of self assessment. I would recommend for if
people really want to get super accurate scores, just do
the tests a lot frequently, because then you'll kind of
get a sense of like where you're falling and it
won't be like a random fluke result. But they're all
self scores. But mine went down from the ninety fourth

(27:44):
percentile to the thirty ninth percentile, which is a lot.
My anxiety went down, My depression just went significantly low
to I think like I was considered like not depressed.
And I think it was from these like Buddhist lessons
that they taught us that somehow, okay, So there's one

(28:04):
you're probably familiar with this. Have you heard of the
double arrow? So the double arrow for people who don't know,
is this idea that something bad happens to you. Let's
say you don't get as much work done as you
wanted to one day, and then you sit there and
berate yourself, why didn't I get as much work done
today as I wanted. Now it's going to screw up
tomorrow and I'm not going to get it done on time,
and my boss is going to be mad. That second
part is a second arrow that you're basically shooting yourself

(28:27):
with after the initial misfortune has happened. I knew this
going into the meditation program, but there was something about
someone kind of explaining it to me as like a
universal human phenomenon and something that you actually have control over,
Like you don't have to shoot yourself with this double arrow,
the second arrow. You don't get any extra points in
life from having two arrow injuries. You can just acknowledge

(28:50):
that something bad happened and think about, Okay, what am
I going to do? How am I going to move
forward in a calm way without a lot of self blame.
I think that really made the difference for me. A
part of my neuroticism came from self blame, and I
think a lot of other peoples does too, And that
class was really good if you're like a self blamer.
It was very good at increasing self compassion.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Having meditated for a long time now, I feel like
it's really beautiful hearing about someone having an experience that
in eight weeks was able to reduce depression that significantly,
and even hearing about your experience is really special because
I think one of the things I find most interesting

(29:34):
about the human mind is we think because we've heard
something often that we understand it and that we've realized it,
and therefore we're always looking for something new, not realizing
that actually it's that age old repetition of an idea
that then you get to live and breathe and apply
and then all of a sudden it transforms your life.

(29:56):
And it isn't always about finding a new And I
think this idea of always want to watch a new
show or a new episode makes sense because that work
isn't healing or transformative. But these ideas that are timeless,
that have been around for thousands of years, there's a
reason why when they finally hit they have this effect
that you know, you're smiling in front of me right

(30:17):
now and nodding. It's it's that feeling that you get
that you only get from something that heals you and
transforms you. Yeah, that you've heard it a million times,
but then when the penny drops, it stays with you forever.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
So there's a couple things about it. It was a
group class. It was zoom because of the pandemic. People
were kind of all sharing their struggles and we were
all kind of going through these realizations together too, and
so just seeing how it applied to different situations, even
like very simple. Like one thing my meditation teacher said
was she would always say, is things happen that we

(30:52):
don't like? And like, how simple is that? Obviously things
happen that we don't like. Every day something happens that
we don't like. But for me, I was like, oh, oh,
every single person here, sitting here has things happened to
them that they don't like. It's part of life. It's
not always your faults. Even if it is your faults
sitting there and going ah, why am I always causing

(31:12):
things to happen to me that I don't like? Is
not going to fix the thing. Yeah, and for me
that was really I don't know, that was therapeutic in
a way, as silly as it seems.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
No, it's I don't think it's silly at all. And
I remember looking into and I'm sure you're well aware
of this, but the frequency illusion and that idea has
totally given me so much confidence on how what we're
both talking about is so real and so true. So
for those who don't know, the frequency illusion is when
you're thinking about buying a red car, and now every

(31:44):
car that you see on the road is red, and
you think, wow, everyone's just buying red cars. It must
be in fashion, it must be in vogue, like everyone's
buying red. The reality is there are not more red cars.
It's just that now that you're noticing red cars, so
what you notice appears more often. So when you notice
things happen that I don't like, now all you're noticing

(32:05):
is the things that happen that you don't like. And
I always say to people that when I look at
my life, and if you've reflected on your life, you
can always tell two stories based on what you notice.
So I could either say today I love what I do.
I'm so grateful to do it. I'm really passionate about it.
I wake up and I'm really excited about it, and
I get to work with great people. Or I could

(32:26):
say the more I've done what I've loved, I've attracted
more negativity. I've had people steal money from me, I
had people want to take advantage of me, I've been exploited,
and whatever else it is. Now both of those are true,
and I don't want to encourage positive thinking, which is
no only good things happen to me, because that's not true.
Things happen that I don't like, But the reality is

(32:48):
I don't have to notice them as much. And ultimately
all that's multiplying is what I'm noticing. And that's exactly
what you're saying in this idea that and that's what
I think mindfulness does, especially NBSR, is this idea of
the ability to notice what am I paying attention to?
And is it helping me? And then all of a
sudden you go, wait a minute, when I focus on

(33:08):
the double arrow, it doesn't help me, it doesn't serve me,
it doesn't get me anywhere. I just criticized myself and
hurt and hate myself even more, and now I've dug
an even deeper hole that's really hard to get out
of tomorrow to get any work done exactly.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
And another common suggestion for reducing neuroticism is to have
a gratitude journal. And of course, like when I started this,
I was like, this is stupid. Why would anyone journaling
about gratit? Your Russians are not big on kind of
positive little journaling practices like that, And kind of the
more I did it, the more I realized that it
was helping you notice the positive story. So like even

(33:45):
on a dumb day where people on Twitter would yell
at me, and my boss is mad at me, and
my husband and I got in a fight or whatever,
you know, I could always find a few things that
went relatively well, you know, just even small things or
just things that I was happy that I had, you
know that I have that other people don't have, And
you know, it really does change your mindset a little bit,

(34:06):
It makes it It just breaks you out of that
cycle of like everything is bad and my life is bad.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Yeah, and the reason we have to do is because
we're all so wired. When have you ever got to
a meeting smoothly and said yeah, it was really smooth
getting here today. Most of the time, if it was
a bad journey to get to work that day, you
would talk about it with everyone the whole day. You
keep repeating it, so you would say it ten times
and you woul't even think about it. Every meeting you'd go, oh,

(34:34):
my god, I had the worst journey here to work today.
This guy coming off there was an accident. You know,
you saw the news and you just keep telling that story,
whereas you'd never say, yeah, I was really smooth today.
It was amazing. I'm just so thankful that every light
was green, and you know, you just don't say that,
and so we have to practice it. The gratitude journal,
I think has become such a meme now because it's

(34:56):
like whatever, it's kind of been so watered down. The
point of it is the repetition of noticing a good
story in your day because you're so wired to notice
the bad stories every day. I wanted to ask you,
what are the gender effects on personality?

Speaker 1 (35:12):
Women tend to be more conscientious in some ways, more agreeable,
and also much more neurotic. Neuroticism is like highly associated
with being female, and then men Men tend to be
much less agreeable, less conscientious in certain ways, and then
less neuroticism. Men tend to have more of a like this,

(35:36):
like it's called a dark triad or basically like kind
of an antagonistic personality trait that women, because of socialization
or whatever, tend not to display as much.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
And that's what makes heterosexual relationships so hard because there's
oh yeah, there's a complete alterative all of.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
The like my husband never mops the floor or whatever.
That's personality based.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, But the thing is it's shed cross men, as in,
it's not like it's just my guy.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
You occasionally will find someone you know. Obviously these are
all averages, so you'll find someone who's like, sure below
the average or above, but yeah, it tends to be shared.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah, so that's something that all men need to work on.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
Yes, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
And that's the hard part with that, right, because romantic
relationships is probably where we see this the most, where
we just say to a partner, but that's not who
I am. I don't want to be that. And also
because you feel the pressure that your partner wants you
to be that way, what do you do when your
partner wants you to be that way, but you don't
want to be that way for them.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
You know, there could be another reason to be that
way though, like even if it would just make your
relationship a little bit balmy, or you know, maybe you
understand each other better, maybe you communicate better because you
agree to say things a certain way. My husband has
this with like various things. He likes things like he
tends to think that eating the very last bit of

(36:58):
something is rude, and I think that leaving a big
bag with the tiny bit of something in it is rude.
But so now though I see when I see a
big bag with a little bit piece of something, I'm like, oh,
he's trying to be kind to me, right, Like I'm
seeing it through his eyes of like he's being empathetic.
And when I like gobble down the last of the

(37:20):
cheese and throw the package away, he tries to see
it as like I'm being efficient and showing him love
by not leaving crab in the fridge.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Yeah. Yeah, And that again goes back to the underlying need,
because that's an underlying expression of the same thing. Yeah.
Could you name for us the five personality traits and
then the personalities that are associated with those.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
So there's five traits that make up personality. You can
remember them with the acronym ocean, which is nice because
we're in California. So it's openness to experiences, which is
this is the hardest one, so stay with me. But
it's kind of like people who are open minded, kind
of down for whatever, kind of just you suggest a
new restaurant to them and they're like, okay, yeah, let's
check it out. See for conscientiousness, these are the go getters.

(38:05):
They wake up early, they run every day, they know
where all their stuff is, They work really diligently at everything,
They pursue their goals. These are type A individuals. E
For extroversion. We all have some sense of what this is.
It's not just talking a lot. It's also like how
much you like being around people and how kind of

(38:28):
active you are. You know, are you kind of more
the sit on the couch person or are you out
and about doing stuff with other people? Is extroversion even
if you're not talking. Agreeableness is a and it gets
a bad rap because people think it means just agreeing
with everything, but it's really how warm and empathetic you
are in your relationships. So you know, are you someone

(38:50):
who is filled with a lot of antagonism? Do you
start a lot of conflict with the people in your life?
Or are you someone who is able to take the
perspective of others puts other needs before your own. So,
people high in agreeableness tend to have like really deep
and meaningful friendships and relationships, but.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
It could lead to people pleasing. On the negative end, it.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Can, and I've heard from people who are like, I
want to be less agreeable because I want to be
less of a people pleaser. And there are ways to
set boundaries in relationships that can still be agreeable and
that don't lead to people pleasing. And then N is neuroticism.
It's kind of it's basically the two components of it
are depression and anxiety. So and it's it's kind of

(39:32):
all about how negative your inner weather is, Like how
gloomy is it in there?

Speaker 2 (39:38):
You know?

Speaker 1 (39:38):
Is it all like, you know, I had the worst
commute into work today because a guy cut me off
and blah blah blah, you know, or are you able
to kind of take a minute in there and smile
at something, laugh with someone, even just appreciate it being
a normal day. That would be someone who's more emotionally stable,
which is the opposite of neuroticism.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Got it. An introversion fits into extraversion. It's the opture scale, yes, yeah,
to openness closed, yes, exactly. So they're all gnciousness. Yeah,
I'm being unconscious.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yes, So they're all a spectrum. So no one is
one hundred percent one or the other. People are like,
I'm a total introvert. It's you're probably like twenty three
percent of the way.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
Yeah, Now we all mixed? Are we all of them? Right?
We have, we have, we have a score on the
spectrum of each and every one of them. But first,
here's a quick word from the brands that support the show.
All right, thank you to our sponsors. Now let's dive
back in.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
We all have each of these traits inside of us
to varying degrees. Generally, you want to be pretty high
on all of them. Other than neuroticism, you want to
be low on that one. But pretty high doesn't mean
all the way high or extreme or in every situation
or every day. It just means that, like, if called
upon to give a wedding toast, you're capable of doing that.

(40:56):
You know, you're not going to melt down. That would
be like an appropriate amount of it extroversion.

Speaker 2 (41:01):
Yeah, that's so interesting to say that, because I was
looking at a study that was saying that if we're
asked to give a toast as the maid of honor
at a friend's wedding, we literally feel like we're being
chased by a tiger, right, Like that's the response in
the brain because we're so scared of how it could go.
You're saying, ideally, you don't feel that way, and that's
a healthy level to be. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
So, and then that doesn't mean that you would give
a toast every day, you know. It doesn't mean that,
like what you would prefer most in the world is
to give a toast. You might still need a lot
of quiet time to yourself, but it's someone who can
kind of rise to those occasions.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
So I have a friend who always says to me,
I'm not as ambitious as you. I'm a lot more
content and I'm stable is the words he uses. But
then when we get into it, he'll be honest and
say I think I'm lazy, I'm not organized, and disguise
my lack of ambition as contentment, but really I'm not happy,

(41:58):
like I'm anxious, some stress them not in a good place.
Is that changeable? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
So for my book, I interviewed several people exactly like that.
So they kind of thought they were just kind of, oh,
whatever happens happens, kind of like, you know, I'm content,
I'm not very ambitious. But then one of the women, Julia,
she really wanted to start her own business. She wanted
to have her own copywriting business. But she worked as
like an assistant at a hair salon, which was not

(42:26):
really what she wanted to be doing it. It was
a little bit menial and like just kind of she
felt like she had skills beyond that, and she really
just struggled to get motivated or like figure out how
she was going to start this business. She kind of
just like flipped overnight, like she again kind of like
my thing with the MBSR class, she read that like
you can accomplish your goals by just working at them

(42:47):
for twenty minutes a day, just in some self help book.
This is not the secret to conscientiousness. But for her,
this was like, oh, like I could just do a
little bit every day toward my goals, Like I don't
have to suddenly wake up and be a different and
she did. She got super organized. She's like one of
the most organized people I've ever talked to. She has
like all these to do lists, she has a calendar,
she has Gira tracking of her client. You know, she's

(43:11):
like very together. And this was someone who quit her
job to start a business and then watched Game of
Thrones for you know, months, because she didn't have that
skill initially. So yeah, it's completely possible.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
So how do we do it?

Speaker 1 (43:23):
So what I found seems to work for people is
that you have to have This is now like a
cliche at this point, but you really have to have
a why. One of the other people that I talked
to in that chapter, he came from this like very
poor rural part of Virginia and he had never like
studied really, he just wasn't into school and he had

(43:45):
never written a paper before, and he didn't realize that
you can study for tests and in that way you
can improve your score. So he gets to college somehow,
like the you know whatever low college. He gets into
and everyone thinks he's going to fail out because he's
just not schools his thing, and then he takes one
psychology class, and he's like, oh, this is so interesting.

(44:05):
I'm learning about why people do what they do, the
science of the mind. This is applicable to me. This
is fascinating. And he decides he wants to become an
academic psychologist, like a researcher in psychology, which is so
far beyond where he is at that moment, and he does.
He honestly just completely turns his life around. He gets organized,

(44:28):
He gets like a filing cabinet with all of his
homework and all that stuff. He finds a study buddy,
which having a partner in whatever journey you're on is
always going to be more effective. They stay up all
night reading and studying together and writing essays together and
like puzzling through like what does this mean? What does
that mean? He finds a mentor in psychology who kind
of keeps him going and gives him hope. He makes

(44:50):
flashcards for every test, He sets like timelines for when
he's going to start studying for each psychology quiz, and
he is a He is now a tenured professor psychology.
He got into UGA, which is a great grad school
for psychology. And this is someone who I think made
D's in high school, and it's really about having that
thing that he's like, this is what I want to

(45:12):
be doing. This is absolutely how I see it playing out,
and nothing else in his life up until that point
had ignited him in that same way.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
What are the strongest types of whys?

Speaker 1 (45:22):
I would say, it's something that is going to kind
of fuel you for the rest of your life. So
people often it's like their kids. People will do anything
for their kids because they just kind of consume you,
and you're like an infinite amount of energy to pour
into them. For me, it was really I really wanted
to do journalism, and that was a big part of

(45:43):
what made me more conscientious because I had a series
of really boring jobs before I became a journalist, and
I was like, I can't spend my whole life being
this boared, Like I cannot go in day and day
out and not look forward to anything or learning anything,
or any kind of interesting conversation. Just to you know,
I was. I was a secretary at a mail order

(46:05):
mailbox company. I was like, this is this is so tedious,
this is so boring. I hate mailboxes. I don't care,
And I was like, I can't do this for the
rest of my life, no shade to the people who
work there. So that is something. It's like you can
be kind of running away from something, you can be
running towards something. It's something that's going to just kind
of fuel you forever, not not for the next you

(46:26):
know week.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
Okay, so you need a why what else?

Speaker 1 (46:29):
As I mentioned previously, having someone who's kind of on
the journey with you can be, for some reason, really empowering.
It's called the mutually reinforcing effect, and it essentially means
that you kind of are are learning from someone, right,
You're getting strategies from them. So he was getting these
like study skills from this other person, but he was

(46:50):
also kind of learning alongside him, like they were kind
of It kind of creates this positive sense of peer
pressure where you're like, let's do it together, let's like
run this race together. It makes you feel like less alone,
especially when things get really hard, like I think it
was for him at times.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
Okay, and then what else?

Speaker 1 (47:07):
There's a final concept called episodic future thinking. So a
lot of times we have trouble being conscientious because we
can't see how it will all kind of look in
the end. So I am not talking about the secret here,
but it's kind of about visualizing with very specific details,
either the outcome that you're trying to generate or the

(47:29):
outcome that you're trying to avoid. So for Julia, the
woman who had the business, it was, you know, I'm
working for myself. I set my own schedule, I have
all these clients. You know, I never have to see
this hair salon again. And it was it was very
clear to her, like how she was going to set
up her home office, how she was going to run
her day, how she was going to do this. So
she had all the like kind of visualized pieces of it,

(47:51):
and that would kind of keep her motivated when it
inevitably got hard. For some people, it can be something negative,
and as long as you're not so bogged down in
the negativity, that can be motivating. So the guy who
became a psychologist, his big fear was becoming an assistant
manager at Wendy's because that was like the only job

(48:11):
that was available in his hometown. And so he was like,
if I have to go back to my hometown and
be an assistant manager at Wendy's, like I can't. I
can't do that. I can't handle that I have to
do well at school because I can't have this like
Wendy's future happen to me. So that kind of thing
can be really motivating, and that's you know, connecting things
to a bigger vision. Like that, A lot of the

(48:31):
stuff that you're going to be doing for conscientiousness is
going to be kind of tedious, like you know, scheduling
guests for your podcasts, I bet is like not the
most fun process, like sending these emails and like finding
a time, but it's like necessary for the larger vision.
So if you keep your focus on that larger vision,
it will motivate you through those like difficult times.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
Yeah. I think that's such a big and poem part
because I often think when people think of their purpose
or they're calling or a better life life, it's without
any difficult, tedious tasks. Yes, and that's just not reality.
I talk to friends all the time, and I keep
reminding them that you're always doing things you don't want

(49:15):
to do to do more of the things you want
to do, and that's how life works. There's very few
people on planet Earth, if any, that only wake up
and do everything they want to do, and anyone who
says that it's probably just paraphrasing for well, it all
is things I love because it's feeding and serving a
bigger vision. And I also like what you were saying

(49:36):
because I think for me it was like that when
I was in a stable consulting job before I do
what I do now. The only thing that got me
out of there was I didn't want to be like
the people who are twenty years senior to me in
those roles. Again, no offense to anyone who works there.
They're happy there, that's great. I just couldn't see myself

(49:56):
being someone there when I was forty five or fifty
or whatever it was. And at the same time, I
couldn't imagine getting to the end of my life and
thinking I didn't try. And that visual for me was
really really powerful and even probably the one I use
most today, where I'm like at the end of my life,
if I'm lying there and I'm hopefully conscious enough to reflect,

(50:20):
I'm never ever ever going to be sad that I
tried something and people thought I was bad at it,
or there was terrible criticism or people laugh at me,
because at that point, none of that will matter, because
I'll be forgotten in a matter of moments, and the
most important thing will be what I'll remember about my life,
which is I tried, I gave it a shot, I explored,

(50:43):
I experimented, and I'll be proud of myself for doing that.
And I think that visual is such a powerful way
of whether it's like you said, five years, ten years,
twenty years, or whether it's all the way to the end.
It's such a powerful motivator that really puts things into
context that you caught right now exactly.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Yeah. And I mean even you know, people who are
professionals at being gritty struggle with this. Is one example.
One of the people I interviewed was Angela Duckworth, who
literally wrote grit So, the book about how to stick
with your goals. She has trouble sticking with her goals,
so she doesn't like making the PowerPoint slides for her
classes that she told me like, so she this is

(51:23):
a tedious thing for her. It's not fun. It's like
fixing the font and like making it readable and all
that stuff is. She doesn't enjoy it, but she does
it because it's so important to her to teach people
about psychology and to be, you know, a good professor.
And to connect with her students that she's like powers
through these like PowerPoint sessions. So I think that was
like a really good example because I'm like, if anyone
knows how to be gritty, it's it's her, you know,

(51:44):
but even she struggles with it.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Yeah, if someone wants to be more extraverted, what do
they do every day? What do they need to change?

Speaker 1 (51:50):
All you have to do is talk to people. And
it can take yes, it can take whatever form you want.
But my recommendation for people who are introverts, who are
kind of just starting out, maybe you just moved somewhere
new and you want to meet new people, sign up
for an activity that happens regularly that you don't have

(52:11):
to organize, because I think where people get stuck is
in the endless text chain of doom of like how
about Tuesday? How about Wednesday? How about drinks? How about here?
How about there? Like it's really hard to make things
happen in our society because everyone's so overscheduled, everyone's busy.
Everyone kind of has this inclination toward introversion. So just
sign up for something like pickleball or like whatever your

(52:34):
thing is, whatever you can tolerate that's like a group
activity that's going to happen with or without you, because
that's to me, like seeing the same people regularly over
time is how you build connections and how you build
friendships and not through like just being really good at scheduling.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Yeah, it's almost I remember for me it was I
was around fifteen years old. I was doing work experience
at this company that my i'd been connected to, and
my job was to cold call three hundred companies and
try and sell event space for an exhibition. And I

(53:14):
had never cold called in my life. At fifteen years old,
I didn't even know what that meant. And I remember
getting a quick coaching session with someone who was really
warm and actually really nice. His name was Joel and
just such a kind guy at the time, like he
was in his thirties probably but showing me the ropes.
And I remember just calling three hundred and he told me, hey,

(53:34):
most of them won't respond, most of them will say no.
And I probably only sold three out of three hundred
exhibition spots. But I felt so confident to be rejected
in cold call from that point because I'd picked up
the phone and talked to three hundred people and I
didn't feel like a failure, which is a really bizarre,
counterintuitive feeling because I failed two hundred and ninety seven times,

(53:58):
but the three exhibitions I sold were just such big wins,
and he was just like, yeah, those are the odds,
Like that's just how it works. And I feel like
that was the moment I built a sense of confidence
around being exposed to rejection. So it's almost like, what
you're saying, is that exposure therapy of Hey, if you're
not good at talking to people and you're bad at
organizing yourself, pick something that's organized and just talk to

(54:19):
one person and then next week talk to two people there,
and then next week talk to three people, and that
exposure therapy slowly, slowly, slowly, by the end of the
eight weeks, you're like, oh, wow, I'm comfortable talking to
people at pickleball now.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
Yeah whatever, Yeah, And it's you know, not every conversation
is going to go perfectly, like, not every person you
meet is. I had some really awkward conversations that I
describe in the book, like with these new people I
was talking some of them. So doing a lot of
meetup where you go on like group outings with people
usually it's like hiking or something like that. So it's
a bunch of strangers who hike together. Again, if you

(54:53):
go regularly, hopefully you get to know some of them.
And I was doing a lot of like bumble yeah,
bumble bff, and the bumblebff actually worked for me. I
did meet a friend on bumblebff and we're still friends.
But one of them was like, oh, she was trying
to tell me that women peak in high school, that

(55:13):
she was not looking for a partner and was not
ever interested in dating again because we were in our
thirties and women peak physically in high school. And I
was like, I really don't think women peak in high school.
That's really depressive. And I was just like, how do
I navigate out of this like very like specific thing

(55:34):
that you said that I really don't agree with And
that makes me sad that you think that. But so yeah,
you're going to meet people who were like, wow, I
don't agree with you at all about that. You know,
we're just people who have like political opinions that are
different from yours or whatever it might be. But you know,
then you'll meet someone like my bumblebff Alex exactly.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
I think what's hard about it is that humans feel
the more certain we are about who we are, the
safer we are. And so when you start becoming uncertain
about who you are and open to the idea that
you could be more, it's a scary place to live
because it's uncomfortable. But you don't like the idea that

(56:14):
you met someone at thirty they're really outgoing, and now
you're like, no, no, no, I'm a homebody. That's who
I am, Like, stop trying to change me? And yeah, sure,
I agree with you. Don't change for that person. But
have you ever asked yourself whether you want to be
more than a homebody? Have you explored have you experienced
it to even know whether that's what you want? And

(56:36):
I think we're scared to do that because we feel
sure that no, no, no, I'm a homebody and that's
my identity and that's what my friends know me for,
and all my friends will be like, yeah, you're a homebody,
and it evokes a sense of identity and purpose to
some degree, even though it isn't a purpose, but it
makes me feel like people know who I am and
I know who I am. So as soon as I
start changing my wife went through this. So my wife

(56:57):
was someone who was considered by her friend's family and
people around her that she was unorganized. She was spontaneous,
although she's the best time. So my wife is the
best energy. She is magnetic. Everyone loves her, adores her.
She didn't used to make plans. She didn't have a plan,
and it was really hard to get hold of her.

(57:17):
And that's the reputation she'd build up. And then when
she started to change that, so when she started to say, hey, sorry,
I can't actually make that. I've got work right now,
or do you know what that day I've got an event,
I can't make it. Before she was always available, always open.
Because she didn't have a schedule, people started to make
her feel bad about that, being like, oh, you've changed. Oh,
but you always used to be up for this before,

(57:40):
Oh I realized you're too busy for me now. And
it was really interesting to watch her go through that
because she was doing it for all the right reasons,
because she wanted to be someone who was organized, disciplined.
She was always disciplined in her workouts, but not as
much in her work and that shifted for her, and
now she's extremely productive and effective and all the rest
of them happy about it, but that changed. She had

(58:03):
a lot of friends who didn't react well to that,
And I think that's what people are scared of. Does
that make sense? Oh yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
Completely identify with that on so many levels. So first,
I think anyone who's ever given up drinking has had
this exact thing play out where everyone in your life
suddenly says like come on, like you're a partyment, like
what's going on with you? Like You're not gonna be
fun anymore, and then you have to like create this
new identity of someone who still has friends but doesn't drink.
The thing that was really resonant about that for me

(58:31):
was that so for a long time, I identified as
someone who would almost certainly be a bad mom. I
was like, I am the kind of person who if
I ever have a kid, I would mess up my
kid because I would be such a bad mom. I'm
not fit to have kids. I just had this story
about myself that like I can't do it, even though
I kind of wanted to do it, but I was
like no, no, no, like it's not for me. I'm

(58:52):
not a kid person, right, And people kind of reinforced
this in my life. So I remember when I got pregnant,
my mom told me, I can't you as a mother,
And I think for me, there was like some comfort
in that, because, like, having a child is scary, and
I'm not saying that everyone should or anything like that,
but it is is a big leap. It's like it
feels like a big It is a huge change in

(59:14):
your life, and it's a big decision to make it
really like that fear. I was kind of explaining it
away by like, I don't need to make this decision
because I won't be a good mom anyway. That totally
has not played out, Like I'm a great mom. Like
I love my son and I adore him. The stuff
that I thought I wouldn't like about it is the
stuff I like the most. The stuff that I thought
I would be best at is like I actually don't

(59:35):
find that enjoyable. I always ask myself, like why did
I tell myself for so long that I was certain
to be a certain way or that I'm just like
doomed to be a bad mom. I think we get
that way about so many things in our lives, and
it's counterproductive.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Yeah, And it's hard because at one point it's it's
hard because there's a sense of honesty and self awareness
at a point in time. It's when that story beg
comes finite and fatalistic that it becomes dangerous. Right there
have been points in my life where me saying I'm
just not the type of entrepreneur that goes on vacation

(01:00:12):
right now has served me. But if I'm the entrepreneur
forever that never goes on vacation, that is going to
hurt me. And so I think it's that nuanced balance
between how is this self awareness but not a self
defeating story? That's a really hard balance for people to
toggle almost because it requires so much awareness, honesty not

(01:00:37):
falling into the extremes. It just requires I don't even
know what the right word is. Maybe it's maturity. It
requires such a maturity to be able to hold an
idea and not make it your identity, if that makes sense.
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
And the thing you have to keep in mind is
that people and situations will bring things out in you
that you didn't think were there. Like, very few people
before they've ever had a baby, you like, are naturally
baby people. You know, first of all, they're only a
baby for a year. So you don't even really have
to worry about that much. But you know, I kind
of surprise myself that, like, you know, we bring this

(01:01:10):
little bundle home, a couple months go by, they start
kind of being more interactive and smiley and stuff, and
you do you start singing Baby Beluga and you know,
cooing at them and cuddling. You know, you start doing
all this stuff because as you take on social roles
or as you kind of pursue goals that are important
to you, you kind of find things within yourself that
you didn't think were there before. Like we kind of

(01:01:32):
have these like latent traits that come out when the
moment is right. So even if like you don't think
of yourself as a certain kind of person, you might
surprise yourself when that situation comes up.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out. It's like,
it's almost not like because you can't live this kind
of willing really approach to life of just or it
doesn't matter, I'll figure it out when I get there,
because that could be dangerous. And then at the same time,
you can't be the over planner and the over whelmed
person who's trying to get every meticulous detail right of it,

(01:02:03):
because certain skills are only going to come up in
the moment. What is that balance called? Is there even
a word for it? Before we dive into the next moment,
let's hear from our sponsors and back to our episode.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
I think this is called social investment theory, but it's
essentially this idea that over time, situations do change us,
like as there you know, there have been studies that
found that as people, you know, you get a job
that they're really interested in and become really committed to,
they become more conscientious. Naturally, of course they're like learning
this skill in order to do it for their job.

(01:02:37):
After people fall in love, they've done studies that found
that they become more extroverted and more agreeable because your
partner is bringing out those qualities in you, Like they're
kind of like highlighting these good parts of you and
saying like, look, luckily you have this in you, And
I think that's really cool. Like I think it's good
to know that as you take on these roles eventually

(01:02:58):
over time, you know it's going to be gradual. You'll
kind of shape shift to meet the moment, and you know,
you have to want to do it. You know, there's
a lot of like parents out there who could probably
stand to put more of a concerted effort into it.
But I do think it's it's hopeful that situations will
bring out qualities in us.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
How does this work apply to people in relationships where
they want their partner to change? And you'll hear someone go,
I just see their potential. I know who they could be,
they could they could really get it together, but they
don't see it in themselves. Yeah, someone's thinking that way.
How would you encourage them to think about change?

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
I really wish I had written a chapter of this
book called how to change your partner, because every single
interviewer has asked me that question, and I don't really
have a good answer because we haven't really studied how
to change other people. Like this is like the brick
wall that all of society like bangs their head against,
which is that we all wish our partners were a
certain way, and that our partners are never going to
be that way completely. So first of all, like any

(01:03:57):
profound and serious change over time, time has to come
from within, right, Like if you really want to make
someone like less anxious, saying like just calm down, stop worrying.
You know, it doesn't work. They have to want to
be less anxious. For some of the skills though, or
for some of the traits, it can be something where
like maybe you introduce your partner to some of the

(01:04:20):
tools that will help them be more conscientious. Maybe like
you start an exercise program together. For example, maybe you start, hey,
let's like both set a time every week where we're
going to sync up our calendars and figure out who
needs to be where when. You can do these like
little tools and strategies to kind of move them closer,
especially to conscientiousness. This has been found to work well,

(01:04:41):
where like you can kind of do it in the
background and it just kind of works. They don't have
to really want it. It's hard because in order to
keep that going, in order to go on a run,
you know, without you, they have to want to do it.
People want different things in life. That's that's like part
of what motivates personality change and what motivates everything else.
You could try, you know, asking them if they seem

(01:05:02):
to be living in accordance with their values. It's like, hey,
you said that you really wanted to exercise this year,
and we haven't done anything in weeks. Do you feel
like we're exercising enough, Like you could do some motivational interviewing,
but ultimately, you know, people have to find it in
themselves to do the things that are good for them.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
Yeah. People don't change for people, No, they change for themselves. Yeah. Yeah,
they change when they want to, They change how they
want to, and they change at their pace and their time.
And this idea that you have the power to change anyone,
if you just stop for a moment and thought about
how hard it's been to change yourself, right, you'd immediately

(01:05:41):
realize that you have zero power over anyone else. And
the reason why you're being asked by everyone is because
I think it's the biggest myth. Because we think that
if we can see someone's potential, we can change them.
We think that if we can see someone's amazing future,
we can change them. And we think if we can
see what someone could be and achieve that, we're somehow

(01:06:03):
holier than them for seeing that, and we think of
it as well intentioned, but actually it's not, because well
intentioned means I let you become who you want to become,
and I accept that that's who you are, and sometimes
it's painful because you can truly see what someone's capable of,
and that can be well intentioned, but until they really

(01:06:24):
believe they want that for themselves, it really doesn't matter.
And that is one of the most painful things to watch,
is someone lose out on their potential.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
Yeah, I mean, and you can talk to any you know,
relative of an addict, or anyone who sees a clear
path for someone and they won't take it. It's very
hard to make other people do things that you think
are good.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
How does someone who's more pessimistic and negative and is
listening to us right now and thinking, oga, I want
to become more of an optimistic or at least realistic person,
where do I start? How does that personality change?

Speaker 1 (01:06:59):
Look, well, you've come to the right place. Because I
am very negative and pessimistic. I would say I still
am even despite you know this this huge project that
I did where I really really tried to change myself.
So something that I came across that was really helpful
for this is the work of Tracy Dennis Tawari, who's
a psychologist who studies anxiety and a big thing kind

(01:07:19):
of an idea that I had about my anxiety was
that I need anxiety to kind of help me avoid
bad stuff, like I need like I will I will
screw up and like not get where I need to
be or like you know, mess things up unless I
stay really anxious and vigilant. And eventually what that would
do is is turn into just constantly worrying and constantly

(01:07:41):
being in a negative space. Where I was I was
never really enjoying anything because I was worrying about the
next thing. So anxiety, you can worry. You can think
about the things that could go wrong right, Like if
you're putting in an offer on a house or trying
to get a new job or whatever you're doing. You
can think about, like, oh, how how could this interview
go wrong?

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
But also think about how it could go right. Really,
most things in life, some things go wrong and some
things go right, like you know what we were saying earlier,
And you can actually make a list of your worries
of like things that could go wrong with this, but
then make another column of like things that could go
right with this, and how will I try to move
like more of these into this other column, because it

(01:08:22):
is it's unrealistic to only worry and to only think
about the negative because some amount of things will will
go well, or even if some of those bad things happen,
there might be good in them or things that are,
you know, maybe not so bad as you feared. So
I would just I call it reverse worrying. And it's
just it's not just like positive thinking. I'm sure everything

(01:08:43):
will be fine, it's some things will be fine.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
Yeah, And I like the idea of consciously having to
think about those again, it's just rewiring those thoughts that
are so habituated to constantly pull you in that negative cycle.
And you're right, it isn't this false toxic positivity, because
that isn't helpful or healthy at all. And it does
take a lot of practice and repetition, because yeah, you're

(01:09:09):
likely to wake up in the morning and the first
thought you have as oh, I'm so tired, I just
don't want to get out of bed, and so your
first thought of the day is a negative, pessimistic one
as opposed to an optimistic, thoughtful one of all, right,
I'm glad I got six hours last night, you know,
or okay, well, yeah I didn't get enough sleep last night.
Let me get a bed early tonight. Whatever that may

(01:09:29):
be could make the shift. What about someone who's feeling
like they're a people pleaser and they want to set boundaries,
but they struggle with it because they're scared of being
seen as selfish or assertive. How did they start making
that shift.

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
I've really had to apply this with parenting, but you
can kind of in a way, you can kind of
parent people around you, not literally, but you can kind
of like use some of the tools from parenting with
other people, which is make people feel heard, Like if
someone's upset with you about something. To give you an example,
I had a friend who texted me to say that

(01:10:09):
she wanted me to check in with her via text
message at least once a week and that we were
not going to be friends unless I text check in
with her once a week. And I don't like texting.
It's a very like a scheduling platform for me, not
a like emotional one, and I just don't like it.

(01:10:29):
And so at the time I sort of was like,
because it was before this project, I was like, Oh,
of course I'll do whatever you want. I'll people please, right,
I'll text you every week. And of course I did
it twice and then forgot because I don't actually like
doing it. So what I learned from Miriam Kermeyer, who's
like a friendship expert, is you can say like, hey,
I hear you. You feel like I'm not checking in
with you enough, you feel like we're not connected. I

(01:10:50):
totally get that. The thing is, I really don't like
texting people in order to have conversations. It interrupts my workflow.
Is there another way that we can do this? We
will meet your underlying need of being seen in this
friendship and being checked in on and going through this
hard thing, you know, with me checking on you, but
not require me to use this platform that I really

(01:11:11):
don't like to do this thing that I really feel
like it's not well equipped for. You know, maybe we
could schedule a weekly phone call, Maybe we could go
for a walk, and maybe we could do you know,
those other list of activities. There's almost always a solution
like that where you're meeting the underlying need, but you're
not doing it in this way that is like not
workable for you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
I love that because it is an underlying need. That
person doesn't really want a text every week, No, that's
that's them trying to find the bare minimum way to
keep you in them life. That's really what they're doing,
is what's the least I can ask for to try
and keep this person alive in my life. But what
I actually want is a really meaningful conversation once a
month on the phone or in person, where we go

(01:11:52):
out for dinner or have tea or whatever it may be.
That's what I'm really looking for. And I think the
more relationships go to solving the underlying need, the less
bitter will feel around. Hey, but I texted you every
week and you still don't feel close to me. I
remember one of my friends said to me, she said,
I just don't spend any time with my partner and

(01:12:16):
I said, well, he just taught me. You guys went
away last weekend and she said, yeah, but he was
reading a book or the news or whatever it was,
and I was trying to entertain the kids and we
didn't spend any time together. And I was like, well,
the underlying need is alone time, presence connection. It's not time.

(01:12:38):
You did have time together, you were both in the
same place at the same time. But the underlying need
is wanting connection in a safe space probably, and you know,
it's asking that person what is that underlying need, and
all of a sudden, you start to realize it's eye contact,
it's vulnerability, it's being able to share something that I've
been struggling with. And I find that no one ever

(01:13:01):
communicates that. We always communicate as like, oh, can we
just see each other once a week? Yeah, and that's
not really you know what you're looking for?

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
Yeah, And this also works I found with like political disagreements.
So when someone just comes at you with I have
people in my life who I really disagree with politically
on very important issues. When someone comes at you and
just starts ranting at you about their worldview that you
don't agree with, often it's because they are kind of
making a bid for connection, Like they're like, hey, this
thing is so important to me, Like is it important

(01:13:30):
to you too, Like they're kind of trying to get
you into their world. And once you see that, it
becomes less about like this person is my political enemy
and more about this person wants to establish a friendship.
Let's find something else to like base it on because
we don't agree on this, but you know, it can
become almost like a like a friendly thing as opposed
to this you know, political fight.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
That's a really beautiful nuance point of If you notice
people's conversations as a expression of them inviting you into
their world, which is often what it is, you start
realizing it it's actually not that much of a It
doesn't have some deep agenda or something. It's just them
saying this is what I think about. It's really tough

(01:14:11):
because we're all so busy and moving so fast that
when you see something you don't like or doesn't and
I think that's what we've got to in society today
is if I see a message or someone posts something
on their stories that I don't like, I start labeling
them as someone that I don't want to interact with,
rather than seeing that person as just a human who's
expressing their thoughts, beliefs, and things they're interested in exactly.

(01:14:32):
And we just don't have the time and capacity for that.
I was going to ask, can an introvert actually become
an extrovert if they want to?

Speaker 1 (01:14:41):
So I think they can, But I would recommend against
thinking of yourself as a pure introvert or extrovert. It's
really uncommon to be all the way to one end
or the other of introversion and extroversion let's say you
are quite introverted, though likely you would basically consider your
almost all the way introverted. I think it is possible

(01:15:03):
to become extroverted, but it's it's going to take a
lot of work. It's going to take a lot of effort.
I think I kind of realized that I was more
extroverted than I maybe was thinking at the beginning of
this project, Like I kind of found that I when
I didn't go to improv I would really miss it,
or when I didn't go to my little silly meetups,
I was kind of like the weekend felt a little empty.

(01:15:23):
So I would kind of avoid categorizing yourself and I
would just see what it feels like to have more
social interaction than you're used to. But let's say it
doesn't feel amazing. Like let's say you're like, it's is
actually quite exhausting, and you're like, I do need that
quiet time alone to recharge. There's this concept called free
traits that some psychologists have, which is that like, rather

(01:15:44):
than permanently changing to where it's like I'm a total
extrovert in every situation I want to talk to people,
you kind of learn the ability to kind of try
on this personality trait. It's almost like an invisibility cloak
or something where you can kind of like put on
extroversion and then do whatever it is you need to
do with that extraversion. So a lot of times college

(01:16:04):
professors will do this because they have to give these
like interesting lectures, you know, but they're the way they
got to where they are is because they're good at
like reading papers for you know, twelve hours at a time,
so they're usually they are pretty introverted. And Brian Little
he kind of does say that he puts on extraversion,
like he puts on the free trade of extraversion, goes
out and gives his lecture, and then he has to

(01:16:26):
like go hide by himself. He can't you know, stay
in that room and glad hand. He has to go
retreat and kind of restore to his introversion. So that's
another way to think about about it. I think that's
still personality change because it's still allowing you to meet
your goals that you have and it's not permanent. But
you know, to anyone who talks to him, he would
be an extrovert, and.

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
It's just reconciling that with Again, I just see this
challenge that we have with that today, which I don't
think is it's valid, but it's not justified this idea
of oh, but that's an authentic like you're just you
just using, you're just manipulating something, or you're adopting a skill,
and it's like, well, no, we all have to have
skills at work that we don't use at home. Yeah, right,

(01:17:09):
you're not that person at work, and you wouldn't try
and organize your family and the way you project manage
at work, and it's not inauthentic to turn that off
at home. It's normal to do that. And so yes,
if you need to develop communication skills to get promoted,
that's a healthy investment because that's an important part of
your life if it is, and those skills will probably

(01:17:30):
come in handy at home and in your personal life too.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
Oh totally. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
So it's almost like, how do we start looking at
life as the accumulation of skills and abilities and traits
and habits as opposed to shifting our entire identity because
of that Just in the same way as if you
wore color today, you're now not someone who just wears
color exactly. Yeah, you know, but it's weird how the
mind kind of plays that trick in saying, Oh, I'm

(01:17:56):
just people pleasing or I'm just shape shifting, which I
think has become such a worry to.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
Yeah, or masking people. Yeah, I've heard about like people
saying I'm masking if I'm like doing anything functional, and
I'm like no, I mean we are all masking to
some extent. Like you know, I have to go on
the radio sometimes, and that's definitely. You know, I don't
talk all the time like I talk on NPR, like
you know, we all have different ways of presenting ourselves

(01:18:23):
depending on the situation.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
Yeah, definitely. I wanted to ask you a last few
sections a question, how does this apply to people who
are diagnosed with depression or ADHD. Can they also change
that through this work or is that very different.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
There's actually been this push in psychology to identify the
personality traits that are associated with things like depression and ADHD.
So my depression score went way down with changing neuroticism.
Neuroticism and depression and anxiety are very closely linked. A
lot of these things that we think of as sort
of mental illnesses or mental health conditions actually have a

(01:18:57):
personality trait component to them, and NBS are the class
that I took actually is gone head to head with lexipro,
the antidepressant, and it works just as well. So in
some ways changes yeah wow, So in some ways, changing
your personality traits can address some of these whatever you
want to call them, mental health conditions that you might

(01:19:18):
not be thrilled with to have in your life. So
if it is depression, you know, something like meditation or
therapy can really go a great deal to addressing that.
If it's something like ADHD, some people think that's just
like a form of low conscientiousness. So if you think
about it, it's just not having the systems in place
to remember where your stuff is and where you need
to be and what's on your calendar. So a lot

(01:19:39):
of the therapists who work with adults with ADHD basically
just give them the tools that they use for conscientiousness.
So it's like, here's a Google calendar, like fill it
out with every single thing you need to do this week.
Here's you know to do list, It's an app that
I use. Here's a clock that you can set fifteen
minutes at a time. It's coming up with the tools
that people use to change personality traits too, And there's

(01:20:02):
actually a new effort to treat a borderline personality disorder,
which is a mental condition, it also has a personality
component obviously. By changing personality traits, it's using some of
the strategies in the book and through therapy to actually
shift people's levels of agreeableness and so forth and actually
help cure BPD.

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
Yeah. I think we're just living at that time right
now where it feels like work to go to MBSR
or to therapy and you don't actually end up having
any skills. Yeah, right, like with the pill, Like you
don't change your reality. You're numbing something or you're better
at dealing with it, or there's a sense of this
doesn't worry me anymore. But there's not really an expansion

(01:20:49):
of ability and skill. And my I mean, I'm mindful
of the fact that people are on very very different
levels and may need it, but it's quite fascinating to
hear that MBSR has that ability in similar scores.

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
Yeah, And what you have to keep in mind is
that I pro antidepressants whatever works for people, but you know,
they can reach a point where they don't work very
well anymore. But the skills that you learn through something
like meditation, mindfulness, even like a you know, a cognitive
behavioral therapy, they'll be with you through life, even when
you don't have your xanax, andy or whatever. So it's

(01:21:22):
something I recommend maybe doing, even in tandem with whatever antidepressant.

Speaker 2 (01:21:25):
We end every episode of On Purpose with a final five,
So these questions have to be anested in one word
to one sentence maximum. Okay, so Olga has on. These
are your final five. Question number one is what is
the best advice you've ever heard or received and you
can apply it well to personality in your world? So
what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
Go work at a place that will let you do
exactly what you want to be doing, even if it's
a very small establishment.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
Question number two, what is the worst advice you've ever
heard or received?

Speaker 1 (01:21:57):
That if something is difficult, it's not worth doing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Question number three, what's something that you used to think
was true about personality but now you've changed your mind
on it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:08):
I used to think that your birth order was the
most important thing that determined your personality interesting, and it
is actually not at all important.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
Let's talk about that, because people feel like I from
the first child, or the third child, or this middle.

Speaker 1 (01:22:20):
Child, eldest daughter.

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):
Yeah, none of that stuff's real. No.

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
Wow, there are some gender effects so that you could
be picking up on, like being a daughter versus a son,
But the birth order, it's very negligible. It's extremely small.

Speaker 2 (01:22:34):
Question Number four, What is the biggest change that you've
seen in yourself going on this journey that you're most
grateful for now looking back?

Speaker 1 (01:22:44):
Oh, it's that I think I need to connect with
other people in order to be happy.

Speaker 2 (01:22:48):
And you didn't used to believe that. No.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
I used to think that I could just be a
little astronaut in space and never talk to anyone and
be totally fine. I think I, especially as a new mom,
I joined a bunch of new moms groups and I
I really need those. You can't do it alone.

Speaker 2 (01:23:02):
I love that. Fifth and final question. We asked this
to every guest who's ever been on the show. If
you could create one law that everyone in the world
had to follow, what would it be?

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
No flaking on plans at the last minute. What's with that?

Speaker 2 (01:23:15):
I love it when someone cancels on it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:19):
The joy of missing out there.

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
I never canceled last minute, because I'm not that guy.
But I love someone canceling over me last minute, No
and so.

Speaker 1 (01:23:26):
And it's always like, you know, I just can't today,
It's like, yes, you can. You do it every other day,
Like come on.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
I love it. There's to be some punishment for that.
Then if you break that loan, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:23:36):
Hanging out with that person for a whole week.

Speaker 2 (01:23:37):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:23:38):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:23:39):
I love it. Everyone on the book is called Me
but Better, The Science and Promise of Personality Change by
Olga Hazan. I hope you've enjoyed this conversation. Make sure
you share your favorite reflections, the experiments you're trying, the
takeaways from the book as you're reading it. Please post
them and tag both of us on Instagram on TikTok.
I love seeing all your story and reels to see

(01:24:01):
what resonates with you. Olga, thank you so much for
coming on the show again. It's been wonderful to meet you,
and thank you so much for helping us teach us
how to be ourselves but better. So thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:24:11):
Yeah, thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:24:12):
If you love this episode, you love my conversation with
doctor Joe Dispenser on why stressing overthinking negatively impacts your
brain and heart and how to change your habits that
are on autopilot. Listen to it right now. How many
times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting
and start remembering.

Speaker 1 (01:24:31):
That's the moment of change.

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
Who cares how many times

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
You fell off the bicycle if you ride the bicycle,
Now you ride the bike.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Olga Khazan: Do You Feel Socially Awkward? This Episode Will Change Your Life & INSTANTLY Make You Confident in ANY Social Interaction