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March 31, 2025 40 mins

Science writer Olga Khazan didn’t really like herself. A self-described neurotic, she tended to fixate on the negative. She assumed she’d always be this way, but then she came across research showing that personality is something you can change. In today's episode, Olga chronicles her year-long journey to "fix" her personality, and invites us to consider whether it’s truly possible to change who we are.

Try the personality test that Olga talks about here.

Sign up for Maya’s new newsletter, where she shares the results of *her* personality test (!) here.


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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin, Hey, slight Changers, Maya Here. My new newsletter, which
I'm so excited about, is out now. It's called Change
with Maya Shunker. It's totally free and you can sign
up at Changewmaya dot com or check out the link
in our show notes. The reason I started this newsletter

(00:35):
is that I'm so excited about building a community with
all of you around how we can navigate change with
more wisdom and with more hope. I'll be sharing personal updates,
links to what I'm reading or watching lately, exciting new
science about change, and my top takeaways for my conversations
on this show, with some behind the scenes action. I

(00:56):
hope you'll sign up and spread the word with your
friends again. You can sign up at Changewithmaya dot com. Okay, now,
onto the episode, there were.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Kind of signs along the way that not only was
I not thrilled with my personality, other people were not thrilled.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
With it either.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Olga Hasan didn't really like herself. A self described neurotic,
she tended to fixate on the negative at parties. Her
go to conversation starter was everything that was wrong in
her life. Olga just assumed that she'd always be this way,
but then she came across research showing that personality is
something you can change.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
And I was like, huh, that's kind of interesting, because
though neuroticism was probably my biggest problem, it wasn't my
only problem, and I felt like a personality overhaul was
sort of an effective way to get at all of
the stuff I was struggling with at the time.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
On Today's show Extreme Makeover Personality Edition, I'm Maya Shunker,
a scientist who studies human behavior, and this is a
slight change of plans. I show about who we are
and who we become in the face of a big change.

(02:30):
Olga Hasan is a writer for The Atlantic, and she
recently decided to tackle her biggest challenge to date. Could
she fix the parts of her personality that she didn't like.
She gave herself a year to find out. She chronicles
this experiment in her book Me But Better, The Science
and Promise of Personality Change. Olga says that from the

(02:53):
time she was a little kid, she's known one thing
to be true.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
I am very anxious and have always been very anxious.
My parents told me that as a toddler. One of
my first full phrases that I said was I'm not
going to like it.

Speaker 4 (03:07):
I'm going to be uncomfortable. Oh about okay, new situations.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
What a mature, precocious toddler. You have all the words
you needed to describe that. I'm impressed.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
I was mature and precocious, but I was very very anxious.
I did not like new experiences and new things. That
was a problem because when I was three, we immigrated
from the USSR, which is a new experience and a
new thing, and I think I just never really got
over my anxiety, my kind of like wariness of new
things and new people. I was never really a joiner,

(03:42):
being an immigrant kid. I was always sort of like,
are other people judging me? You know? Am I sticking
out from everyone else? And so because of that, I
think I always kind of retreated from not just big
groups of people, but just sort of people in general.
Like I kind of kept everyone at arm's length. So
to me, that was a kind of like very extreme
introversion of almost like just leave me alone.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
I found it so funny and charming that in your book,
when you talk about resenting parts of your personality that
you're like and guys don't just take my word for it.
Other people didn't like me that much either.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yes, so there were kind of signs along the way
that not only was I not thrilled with my personality,
other people were not thrilled with it either. So one
of them was that in grad school, we were all
paired up and we had to write obituaries, like fake obituaries,
obviously about one another, as sort of practice for the
first job that everyone has at a newspaper, which is
writing obituaries. So for these obituaries, you had to interview

(04:43):
the other person's friends and family. And I remembered one
line that stood out from my partner's obituary about me,
which is, she really enjoys grocery shopping. He called my
best friend from college, and that is what she said.
And then there was like I was like a bridesmaid
of one of my other friends or no, I was
the maid of honor. And on her wedding website she

(05:05):
was like, Olga doesn't tolerate bullshit from anyone, and I
was like, I feel like, typically you want a maid
of honor who is like, she's the best, She's always
there for me exactly exactly, you know, has some sort
of other qualities than like no bullshit, tolerate.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
We call this damning with faint praise.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Right, yes, yes, And so there were just a lot
of situations where I was like, am I like bringing
my best into the world sometimes?

Speaker 4 (05:36):
Or you know, I don't know, is this too much?

Speaker 2 (05:38):
This sort of cynical, introverted, kind of neurotic person that
I've become.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
There's a story you talk about in your book that
I found so much resonance in where this very good
thing happens to you in your professional life. Right, it's
a kind of a big career moment, but your brain
finds ways to self sabotage and to create lemons out
of lemonade. Essentially. Can you share a little bit of

(06:06):
that story? I think it exemplifies well what a can
mean to be neurotic in everyday life.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Sure, And I'm going to preface this by saying that
the story will make everyone hate me at first. I
also hate the version of myself that wasn't grateful this day.

Speaker 4 (06:20):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
With that said, So I'm in Miami and my boss
will call me and they're like, we need to take
a photo of you, like a professional photo of you
to illustrate this story that you wrote. Part of me
was obviously like wooho, like my Carrie Bradshaw moment. You
know I'm gonna be photographed, and then I kind of
started to freak out. I hate having my photo taken.

(06:42):
There's just something about it. I feel like I don't
look the way I really look in photos. And I
also hadn't gotten a haircut in a while. So I
go and I book a hair appointment and I kind
of don't describe what I want very well, which was
on me, and she cuts it into probably the worst
haircut I've ever gotten outside of like a supercuts.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Can you just describe it just for listeners, like, what
does it look like?

Speaker 2 (07:07):
It looked like an avant garde mush. I think she
was going for like a layered almost like a Rachel
from Friends type thing, except my hair doesn't do that,
and so it just looked strange. So on top of
time to get my phototaken, I have to get my
phototaken with awful hair. Miami, for all its positive qualities,
a lot of traffic. Hard to find this photo studio.

(07:28):
There's no parking because there's never parking. The first thing
the photographer says is, do you want to fix your hair?
There's this's a specific type of photo which I have
to look very serious and not smiling, and they want
it to be a profile photo.

Speaker 4 (07:43):
I do not like.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Having profile photos taken of me. I'm like just getting
like more and more clenched. Is this is all happening?

Speaker 4 (07:50):
Whatever? That's over?

Speaker 2 (07:52):
I drive on into Miami. I take a wrong turn
because I'm a terrible driver, and end up like having
to circumnavigate this little cruise ship launching island. It takes forever.
My boss is like slacking me about other things. My
mom is flying in that night and I have to
go get groceries for her at the grocery store. This

(08:13):
is again a very small thing, but the shopping cart
locks on my way to my car to load the groceries,
so I have to like drag the shopping cart full
of groceries across the parking lot. So I get home
and I just melted down. I was like crying, wailing,
chugging wine, just like I need to get to a

(08:35):
place of calm, and I have no idea how to
do it. Telling my husband I don't want kids because
I can't handle kids obviously because I can't even handle
like Miami on a frustrating day. Yeah, I was having
this connection and that is sort of what launched the
whole thing.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
So would you say, then, based on the scenario, just
describe that the trait you most identified with was neuroticism.
Was that the thing that you were finding to be
the most challenging.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah, it was definitely the one that in day to
day life, I felt like was holding me back from
enjoying life the most. There are a million ways to
have interpreted that day, and I chose the worst possible interpretation,
and that really is neuroticism. It's like seeing threats, seeing
bad things, being anxious, being depressed. That's what the trade

(09:23):
of neuroticism is all about. And I was like, wow,
this trait is why I have days like this, meaning
I interpret days like today in this way.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
So you have this experience with the mushroom haircut and
the photo shoot gone wrong and then everything else going
wrong that day, and you said that was kind of
your like come to Jesus moment, right, Okay, things, something
needs to change because I'm actively self sabotaging my happiness
or like what could be happiness in most moments of life. Yes,
what first gave you the idea that personality change was

(09:56):
even a possibility?

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah, So this is some research that I came across.
It showed that personality can change through things like behaviors,
just stuff you do every day, small things, small habits
that can actually alter the way you think about the world,
the things you like to do, the things you end
up doing. And I was like, huh, that's kind of
interesting because though neuroticism was probably my biggest problem, it

(10:20):
wasn't my only problem. And I felt like a personality
overhaul was sort of an effective way to get at
all of the stuff I was struggling with at the time.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
So you have this realization, Okay, personality can change, right,
I'm seeing that in the research. Now I'm going to
embark on a journey to better understand personality and understand
what levers are at my disposal so I can in
fact change it. And I loved learning about the history
of personality science, especially because researchers had been a bit
all over the place right historically, I'm like, what is personality?

(10:52):
What's the best way to test it? Can you tell
me about the first researcher who essentially put forth the
idea of personality traits, these distinct features that we each carry. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
So this was Gordon Allport, and he was sort of
reacting to Freud and a lot of previous researchers who
were just kind of like making stuff up, like you know,
people must secretly want to have sex with their moms
and that's personality. And he's like, no, let's like actually
just see what what are some of the ways we

(11:28):
describe people? Maybe that's personality. So he sat down and
he looked through the dictionary and he just made a
list of adjectives that can be used to describe people.
And some of them were kind of out there, like
airy and zestful or two of them, which like, I
don't think you describe anyone as like zestful. And so
he had a huge list of thousands of traits. Researchers
eventually just winnowed down through those and they narrowed all

(11:50):
of those traits, all those synonyms, down to five big traits.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Can you walk me through the big five traits and
what each of them are?

Speaker 4 (11:56):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yeah, The Big five traits can be remembered with the
acronym ocean. The first's openness to experiences, which is sort
of imaginativeness and creativity, political liberalism. Also in their conscientiousness,
which is getting stuff done, being on time, meeting deadlines,
being organized, extraversion, which is being cheerful, having a lot

(12:21):
going on, just being really busy, and being a people person. Agreeableness,
which is also being a people person, but more in
like a warm, empathetic way. So you might not have
a ton of friends, but you're just so close with
the ones that you do have, and like you're just
a super nice, sweet angel person. And then neuroticism is

(12:43):
basically anxiety and depression. Okay, the flip side of neuroticism
is emotional stability, and that's the one that you do want.
That's a good thing.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
So is it fair to say, like neuroticism is bad,
Like is that what the personality scientists are saying, Then
if they're saying the flip side is emotional stability, right right, right,
Like extraversion introversion. Okay, we've got pros and cons to both,
but like neuroticism versus emotional stability.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, so generally neuroticism is considered bad and all of
those other ones that I mentioned those other four higher
levels of those are considered good. They tend to correlate
with well being. At the same time, you don't want
to be too high on them or like just off
the charts high. So conscientiousness is a good example. Conscientiousness

(13:34):
is correlated with longevity, making more money, being healthier. But
if you think about people who are just super duper
detail oriented, that can start to be like obsessive compulsive
disorder almost sure, so you kind of want to stop
short of those extremes.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
I mean, the reason I asked too, is that I
think we can argue that there's many benefits to being
a bit neurotic right in everyday life. And more importantly,
I think this raises a more philosophical question about how
we gauge whether personality traits are quote good or bad,
which is, should we be only solving for well being
and happiness on an individual level. I mean, I'm certain

(14:14):
that Beethoven was highly neurotic and his artistic contributions to
the world were profound.

Speaker 4 (14:20):
Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
It just raises an interesting question of again, what we're
solving for, Like what's the north star? Is it for?
Every human to be maximally happy, or is it for
every human to live kind of a rich life full
of varied emotions. And then on a societal level, couldn't
we argue that society flourishes when it has this mixing
pot of different personality types that were just better off

(14:44):
when there is that diversity kind of built in. I
do wonder were you worried that trying to change your
personality kind of overall might impede aspects of the traits
you actually wanted to preserve.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
Yeah, there was always this element of striving in anxiety,
Like I'm nervous and you know, I'm worried, but I'm
also trying to do better. I'm trying to do well,
and I think part of me was a little reluctant
to give up on the anxiety because I worried that
it would mean that I was no longer trying to
do well.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Also, that's what gives life meaning and purpose, right, and
like gets you out of that in the morning is
some feeling of striving.

Speaker 4 (15:26):
Right exactly.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
I think reading those studies and seeing that they worked
for people gave me hope that I could do it too,
because I did think, Okay, if I'm actually able to
change my personality, that could make my life better.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
After the break, Olga gets to work, and let's just
say it's not without pain.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
I just was like, I don't want to do this.
I want to just jump out of my skin and
run out the front door.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
That's after the break. On a slight change of plans,
Olga gave herself one year to change her personality. Her
goal to become more extroverted, more agreeable, and less neurotic.

(16:14):
Olga found in her research that even small changes a
person makes in their daily lives can alter the way
they engage with the world.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
So I signed up for improv, I signed up for sailing,
I sign up for a bunch of meetup groups that
went like hiking and other stuff. I just tried to
get out as much as possible. And so for each
of the trades I basically went through and made like
a little curriculum for myself.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Let's talk about improv. That sounds like my worst nightmare.
So tell me about that first day of class, and
like just set a scene for me of what it
was like for Olga. Who's there for like really non
traditional reasons, Right, You're like, I'm actually here because I'm
trying to overhaul my personality and I would really like
to be slightly more extroverted, which is a hilarious premise

(17:02):
for joining an improv class.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yeah, I was not there for the right reasons to
you the reality to Yeah, so yeah, I signed up,
and I have to say that I was like, I'll
just deal with the fact that this is my worst
night merit later. Like I kind of just put it
off and put it off, and then suddenly it was
the day. It was the day of the improv class,
and I was like, Okay, I'm actually gonna go. I
hate performing in front of other people. I hate people

(17:26):
looking at me, I hate being silly. So I'm driving there.
It's an hour long drive, and I'm kind of getting
mentally prepared and like whatever, it's not a big deal.
Just be cool, you know, all the stuff that doesn't
really work.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
For me at all.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
And so we like sit around in a circle and
she does intros, introduce yourself, have you done improv before?
Like how long can we like draw out these intros
so that we don't actually have to do any improv
on the first day. And then she's like, okay, let's
get started, and I just had this extreme feeling of
wanting to die, like I just want to not exist,

(18:06):
because I just really didn't want to do it. I
was like, I don't want to do this. I want
to just jump out of my skin and run out
the front door. But I did not do that. I
stayed there, and I improvised a bus stop conversation with
someone else, and I improvised being a purchaser of sulfuric acid.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Wow, what else?

Speaker 4 (18:31):
Yeah, I would not be impressed. Actually, the fact that
you did.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
It at all. I mean, I don't even care about quality.
Just the mere fact you didn't dissolve into a puddle
on the ground is like applause worthy in my opinion.

Speaker 4 (18:43):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah. So how long did you participate in these classes,
these improv classes? And then were you noticing changes over time?

Speaker 2 (18:52):
I did improv for probably about a year all told.
The dread was there almost every time for the first
five or six months. But what I started noticing over
time is that invariably I felt really happy afterward.

Speaker 4 (19:07):
It was just like a mood boost.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
For whatever reason, being really silly with other people with
no expectation of performance in a good way. There's no
expectation that what we did was good. That was really
freeing for me, and it was just like really fun.
It was like what people talk about when they talk
about having fun, which is just like being silly and
playful for a few hours.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
So you actually found yourself enjoying it. Maybe it's too
far to say you were looking you looked forward to
the classes, right, I did not look forward to that,
but you found it less painful over time.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
So this is still my thing with extroversion is that
I'm still like, oh, I don't want to go. I
don't want to go. Maybe I should just cancel, maybe
I should just bow out. And then I'm there and
I like slowly warm up over time to whatever the
situation is improv but even you know, a party mixer,
happy hour or whatever, I'm there. It gets better over
time and I'm happy after it ends, I'm like, oh,

(20:03):
that was really cool, that was really neat. That was
nice to catch up with them, you know what have you.
And there's studies on this too that show that like
hardened introverts will be like I'm not going to socialize.

Speaker 4 (20:12):
I'm not going to socialize.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Then the researcher is like, go socialize for a couple
of minutes, just do it, and then they do it
and then they feel better afterwards. Yeah and that Yeah,
that's exactly what happened to me.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah, I love that research. It's so compelling. It's like
people are like, there's no way I'd want to talk
to the stranger, and then they talk to the stranger
and it's like that was the best moment of their
day having that interaction. So you mentioned a couple of
things that you tried in order to boost extraversions, so sailing,
these improv classes, other activities. When it came to boosting agreeableness,
this one was really surprising to me because you actually

(20:44):
took an anger management class, and I wouldn't naturally have thought, oh,
the soul for agreeableness is managing anger. But then when
I was thinking about your definition, right, you talked about
it as being about human empathy, right, Like, it's about
exercising that empathy in moments you have maybe more compassion
for others, And so I can understand then the connection

(21:04):
to anger. You want to limit the frustration that you
have in response to other people, thus made making you
more agreeable. Is that the right way to think about it?

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, exactly. And I mean one thing that did come
through consistently is that as we all noticed opportunities in
our lives to have more empathy for people that made
us mad, we became less mad at them. Like one
of my classmates said she was always mad at a
friend who was always late, and then the friend told

(21:32):
her that she's always late because she's always checking to
unplug all of her appliances around her house because she
had been in a house fire, and so she was like, oh, man,
like okay, I could totally see that, I could totally
see why you would do that and that would make
you late. Yeah, And that kind of just stopped her
anger at her friend. And that happened to me on
different levels with a lot of different things, including anger

(21:53):
that I had at my husband over various things.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah, there were two techniques that you talked about coming
from the anger management classes that I thought were super
interesting things to kind of be aware of that were
sort of subconsciously doing in day to day life that
if we were to be more aware and reframe things,
it could help increase our agreeableness. So can you tell
me about inflammatory labeling?

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, So this is something I mean that we all do.
You're not a rage aholic if you do this, But
people who tend to get angrier than others tend to
do this a little more inflammatory labeling is sort of
referring to situations more negatively than is realistic. So if
a coworker makes an innocent mistake, you say, like, that
guy's a total idiot. You know, you're just kind of

(22:34):
writing off the things that people do in this very
negative way, and that actually makes you angrier. Like that
doesn't help you understand that person or help you explain
their behavior. It just you're like, yeah, that idiot and
I have to work with him, Like you know, you
kind of just get more and more frustrated. And so
the recommendation there is actually just I mean, I know

(22:55):
it's hard, but like, don't do that. Don't try to
read into the motivations behind people's behavior. Maybe they're not
an idiot, maybe they're having a really busy day. I mean,
I know it's like a new parent. I honestly seem
probably really dumb to people a lot of the time.
But it's honestly just because I'm really tired, and so
I'm sure that like I've made people mad by just

(23:18):
I've like misspelled my name at the doctor's office. But like,
I'm just honestly really tired.

Speaker 4 (23:23):
I'm not sure, you know. So, yeah, I'm just remembering that, you.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Know, there's situational factors behind people's behaviors.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah, can you give me a concrete example of how
you might have applied this to your marriage? For example,
So you talk in the book about using inflammatory labels
when it came to your husband and your interactions, and
so what's an example of a time where you try
to apply like, okay, taking the temperature down and maybe
not type casting him is a certain way following some
sort of failure, negligence or what have you.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah, many many years ago, I noticed that our fridge
had like seven or eight different mustards in it that
were all open, and that he had gone to the
store and bought more mustard. And I got so mad
at him. I was like, rich, what is the deal
You're trying to like throw all our money away on ustard?

Speaker 4 (24:09):
You don't care at.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
All about our grocery management, or like, you just don't
care about me.

Speaker 4 (24:14):
All you want is mustard.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
You know.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
I was just getting so worked up thinking that he
was in the grocery store plotting, you know, to like
overwhelm me with mustard. But really he just forgot, because
everyone forgets whether they are mustard or not.

Speaker 5 (24:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yeah, you know, it's just kind of like reminding yourself
in those moments. Okay, was he really like, was this
a you know, malicious mustarding or was this just kind
of being forgetful?

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Even like, my husband's not a mustard lobbyist, this is
truly innocent. Another one that I really loved was around
the expectations that we have of others, reducing them a
little bit with a slight tweak. So you talk about
framing things as goals rather than expectations.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, this is something that is useful in particular with
family members or even like kids, Like a lot of
the people in anger management were getting mad at their
kids for not meeting their expectations, and maybe like a
better way to look at that is as a goal.
So you know, your goal is for your child to
have their homework done by a certain time, but an

(25:17):
expectation is sort of a little bit more rigid, and
you also get more frustrated when someone doesn't meet your expectations.
It's literally like the phrase from a performance review, but
someone missing a goal is sort of like, Okay, well
we can try again, you know, Okay, let's just practice
some more and maybe we'll meet it the next time.
It's just another way of reframing the way you think
about other people's actions.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
So now let's get to the third trait that you
tried to change, which was decreasing neuroticism. Right, this is
the big beast. Tell me about what you tried to
try to decrease neuroticism.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
So for neuroticism, I tried a lot of stuff, but
it was mostly meditation, and people don't like to hear
that because I've found that people do not like meditation,
especially anxious people.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
They don't want to do it fast.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
And that is, unfortunately like most of what I did.
I did, okay, different types of meditation. I did guided meditations.
I meditated in a sensory deprivation tank. But the biggest
thing I did is I did a meditation class for
which we meditated for forty five minutes every day, and
then we did an all day meditation retreat, which was

(26:25):
not a retreat for me, and we also learned about
Buddhist concepts and principles, which was probably the most helpful part.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
What concepts in particular did you find resonant. I really
like the double arrow, which is this idea that if
something bad happens to you, let's say you miss a deadline, right,
that you shouldn't then berate yourself from missing the deadline,
because that's hitting yourself with another arrow, right, that's the

(26:56):
second arrow of blaming yourself and being mad at yourself.
So just say, okay, I missed that deadline. You know
what am I going to do next? And just this
idea that you don't always have to reprimand yourself or
punish yourself for things not unfolding the way you would
like them to have unfolded. That was really freeing for me.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
And weirdly, the other thing that was really helpful was
that my meditation teacher always said things happen that we
don't like. And I know that sounds really simple, but
I had never honestly considered the fact that everyone has
things that happened to them that they don't like.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
So I'm asking for a friend for those who uh
don't take to meditation, are there other techniques that they
or I might use in the neuroticism space.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
I did do gratitude lists, but I struggled with them
because for whatever reason, or maybe it's just my family,
but I was kind of always taught that it's not
good to express gratitude for things that you have in
an open way because that would mean the fate or
like the mean Russian god who's always watching, can take
them away.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Interesting, Okay, so like we weren't ever supposed to be like, oh,
thank goodness we have money and savings without like spitting
over our shoulder and knocking on wood and like all
this other stuff, because it's like that's tempting fate, right, Okay,
So for me, it kind of made me a little
queasy doing that. Although if you're not someone who has

(28:23):
that response to gratitudeless, I would recommend that as like
a more cerebral type of exercise to just like boost
those warm and fuzzies if you're struggling.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah, the science is so strong here about the boost
to well being and satisfaction when practicing even just small
moments of gratitude, right, or like experiencing those moments of
mindfulness where you're just doing the dishes and you just
pause for a second and like kind of appreciate the
stillness or the water on your hands, or something good
that happened in your day. Because I really struggle with meditation,

(28:54):
I try to just do more bite sized moments, like
little meditation snacks I'll call them.

Speaker 4 (28:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
Then I try to like sprinkle them throughout my day
because I just don't have the right temperament.

Speaker 4 (29:03):
That totally counts.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
And are there any other interventions you tried in any
of the buckets that you would want to share?

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Those are the three that I worked on, But there
were also the two that I did not. I kind
of had no room to go up because I'm already
very open and very conscientious. But I will say that
the thing that seems to work for openness is psychedelics.
There's like a few things that seem to work for conscientiousness.
Probably the most interesting one that I came across is

(29:31):
just decluttering. And I don't mean just like your stuff,
I mean like obligations, your to do list. Taking a
more minimalist approach to various things in your life will
actually allow you to get more done.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yeah, because it's also making it more manageable to be
conscientious in the first place. Right, you have just a
more limited to do list or schedule as you're trying
these different interventions. I'm curious, although, like, did certain things
feel like they were coming more naturally to you? So
they were things that you you kind of instinctively wanted
to keep doing, versus things that you felt like you
were forcing yourself to do for the sake of this project.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
I would say the thing that started coming more naturally
was extroversion. I started to really like and look forward
to socializing in a way that I really had never had.
And I started to really want to go to all
these activities that I had signed up for with my
credit card and couldn't back out of. So no, but
it was actually it was a good thing because I
was like, oh, man, I actually have you know sailing today,

(30:28):
and I really want to go. It's not, you know,
a thing I'm being forced to do. So that's the
one that I ended up kind of taking to the most.

Speaker 4 (30:34):
I would say, hmmm.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
So this leads me to a a broader question than
I have about personality. I'm curious to get your thoughts
on it, which is, should we reduce personality to just
a set of expressed behaviors or should we be thinking
about personality in terms more in terms of our internal state, right,
like how it makes us feel or even what comes

(30:57):
more naturally to us. So I could see if we're
defining personality in the former way, then a lot of
these interventions can work because you're just seeing changes in
behavioral expression. But to really alter your core and to
feel like there's something natural and organic about it feels
like a different size of problem to solve than one
that might be out of reach for these sorts of interventions.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Yeah, so great question. And the answer to that is
that different traits work differently along those two metrics, Like
is it natural versus is it just expressed?

Speaker 1 (31:29):
Yeah, tell me more. So.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
Conscientiousness is one where all you have to do is
just make the to do lists, set the calendar reminders,
leave fifteen minutes early, and you will be conscientious. Like
that is conscientiousness. It is only measured through expressed behaviors
and that's pretty much all you have to do. And
that's actually how I became conscientious, Like, I honestly was

(31:52):
not really detail oriented in high school and in college,
and I actually just started using technology frankly to just
remind myself of stuff and it worked. You know, there
are other traits like neuroticism, which, as you can imagine,
is more about mindset and how do you approach the
world and how do you think about things, And that's
why neuroticism is harder to change. You know, people do therapy,

(32:13):
they take medication. Those things can change neuroticism, but you know,
it takes a while and it is trickier in that sense.
But I will say that once you start doing some
of these things, even if it doesn't feel natural at first,
it can start to feel more natural over time.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
You took that baseline personality test at the outset right
to set, kind of like, okay, here's where I'm beginning,
and then you tracked personality along the way and you
took the test repeatedly. What did you find at the end.
What were the areas where you noticed big changes?

Speaker 2 (32:48):
The biggest changes I noticed were a huge increase in extroversion.
And that's something that I think has stuck with me,
and I think is like no longer true of me
that I'm an introvert. I think, oh, I would not
really describe myself that way anymore. Anxiety went down a
little bit, but my depression went down a lot. I
became a lot less depressed. Not totally sure why, but

(33:10):
I did a lot of meditation, a lot of like
loving kindness, reflections of things, and I guess it made
me less gloomy. And then my component of agreeableness that's
love and trust in other people went up as well.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
Have the people in your life, Olga, notice meaningful differences
in you in terms of the way that you engage
with them.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
I did have some friends say that they noticed that
I was more up for doing things, like I was
less reflexively like no, no, no, no no to every invitation.
My friend Kathy said that I have a healthier relationship
to work. I get less every time I have a deadline.
I'm not like, oh my god, oh my god, am
I going to meet it. I'm a little bit more

(33:53):
chill about my job.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah, you know, you had the ultimate pressure test recently
for all of this, which is you had a baby.
You have an eleven month old now, and man, I mean,
like your basic needs haven't been met. I'm assuming no,
I'm not sleeping, you don't have a lot of time
for yourself, just total overwhelm. And I'm wondering because you
don't have the cognitive wherewithal like you don't have the

(34:16):
bandwidth to actively practice some of these traits or like
some of these desired behaviors, have you reverted back to
certain tendencies more than before? Are there other ones that
have remained quite sticky despite the pressure test.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, so having a baby is like rewiring your whole
personality and everything else in your life. I think with
extra version, you know, new motherhood can be very lonely,
and I think the previous version of me would have
retreated into the loneliness and kind of just tried to
tough it out on my own. But instead I really
have tried to reach out more and meet up with people,

(34:53):
make connections with other new moms, even if it's a
brief whatever what's that message, or you know, not like
a bosom friendship, but just sharing experiences or meeting up
for the like thirty minutes that we have in our.

Speaker 4 (35:05):
Free time and our way.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
You know, I really kind of try to prioritize that
because I just saw the power so much of interacting
with other people and socializing, even if it's in short
little bursts throughout the day.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
How do you think that post experiment Olga would respond
to the day of the photo shoot. So back in
the day you came home and you had to melt down,
you said you were like guzzling wine. How do you
think you would cope today with that same experience?

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Oh, I just completely differently. First of all, Instakart, those groceries,
girl liked you got too much going, Like, like, why
didn't I think of that?

Speaker 4 (35:47):
Anyway?

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Also, okay, don't schedule a haircut for the morning of
the photoshoot.

Speaker 4 (35:51):
But whatever.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Okay, let's say you did that. You get there, your
hair looks bad, the photos look bad. Whatever, nobody cares.
This was published in the magazine and zero people said
you look bad. So just whatever, not my favorite photo.
They got what they wanted. Go back to the airbnb,
get in the pool.

Speaker 4 (36:10):
Whatever. Yeah, it's you know, I think I would.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Have just had a completely different reaction and just kind
of enjoyed it for what it was, like, almost in
all of its hilarity. I mean, it's hilarious to go
mushroom cut the day of your big photo shoot.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Right, It's like an improv show that's going really badly,
and like people are totally misunderstanding each other and mishearing
each other. And it's just getting more and more weird
because no one's on the same wavelength. Sometimes those can
be like the funniest shows, because yeah, life is like
that sometimes.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yeah, definitely. At the end of the day, do you
feel like you got what you wanted out of the experience,
that your personality changed in the ways that you'd hoped.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yes, I still wish I had completely like nuked my anxiety,
my like little striver immigrant, like I want to be perfect.
It's like I wish I was totally not anxious anymore.
But I aside from that, I am happy with the results.
I think that it it just made let me see

(37:10):
myself and the world in a different way. And I
think it made me just aware of the possibilities that
are out there and of.

Speaker 4 (37:16):
What can happen when you break out of grooves that
you've created for yourself.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. Don't forget to check
out my new and free newsletter Change with Maya Shunker
on Substack. This week, I took the personality test that
Olga mentioned. It was super fun and I share my
results with all of you there. I'll share a link
to that personality test so that you can try it
for yourself, and while you're there, please leave a comment

(38:01):
so I can hear from you about what you learned
about yourself and maybe what parts of your personality you'd
like to work on. You can sign up at the
link in the show notes or go to change with
Maya dot Com. Join me next time for the first
episode in our two part series with Amanda Knox, a
woman who spent years in an Italian prison for a

(38:23):
murder she did not commit. In part one, we'll revisit
my twenty twenty one conversation with Amanda. She talks about
what it was like to return to the US after
being exonerated and how she struggled to rebuild her life.

Speaker 5 (38:38):
Just because you deserve to be angry doesn't mean that
it's the thing that's going to make you your best self.
And I don't want what happened to me to turn
me into something that is not my best self. I
want to still feel like I'm in control of at
least one thing in my life, and that's me and
how I'm reacting to a set of bad circumstances.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
Then you'll hear part two. In the decade that followed
Amanda's exoneration, she made a bold choice to reach back
out to the lead prosecutor who built the case against
her and to confront him face to face in Italy.
I invited Amanda back to reflect on this experience and
is truly one of the most moving and profound conversations

(39:20):
I've ever had. That's all coming up on A Slight
Change of Plans. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written,
and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Changed

(39:41):
family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate
Parkinson Morgan, our producers Britney Cronin and Megan Luvin, and
our sound engineer Erica Huang. Louis Scara wrote our delightful
theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A
Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a

(40:04):
very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A
Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.
See you next week. If your son grows up to

(40:34):
resent parts of his personality and is like, hey, mom,
I want to do an overhaul of my personality. I'm
curious about the kind of advice you would give him.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Well, my son is perfect in every way, and so
there can never be anything wrong with him.
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Host

Dr. Maya Shankar

Dr. Maya Shankar

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