Can You Really Change Your Personality? Do You Really Even Want To? w/ Olga Khazan

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Kevin Miller

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4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2025

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I grew up in the world of self-improvement when personality profiles became popular. The idea then was you had a core personality style and it was pretty solid, like your hair color. Culturally we like to label people’s personalities, “She’s a classic type A personality,” and “Oh, he’s super introverted.” In regards to changing one’s personality, I question if we want to change who we are, or just how we are? I think we all have tendencies we are dissatisfied with. We find ourselves anxious, depressed, worried, frustrated, angry, sad and more. I don’t think we’d look at any of those with desire. I’ve never woken up in the morning deciding to be more worried than normal. Usually the opposite. So, can we change ourselves? My guest is Olga Khazan and she devoted a full year to trying to change her personality. Olga is a staff writer for The Atlantic has also written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and more. She is a two-time recipient of the International Reporting Project’s Journalism Fellowship. Olga said she didn’t like much how how she was being, and with every reason to be happy and at peace, she described herself as fairly neurotic. I appreciate this line from our talk, she said, “What if rather than trying to make everything in the world go my way, I changed the way I responded to the world?” So she had specific aspects of her core personality, she literally wanted to change. And she embarked on the experiment as the reporter she is. She documented it all in a book, titled, Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change. I appreciate that Olga didn’t come out with some big, bold claim, but simply stating what she didn’t like, what she wanted to change, and she documented the journey. And today, she says that yes, she’s still her, but…less neurotic. She’s still Olga, but, enjoying life more. You can find Olga at the Atlantic or on Substack. I felt this conversation helped me better understand and embrace myself, and, consider how I could be me, but better. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome. I'm Kevin Miller. This is a podcast for your personal evolution. Today's episode,
0:09.2	can you really change your personality and do you really even want to? I grew up in the world
0:16.6	of self-improvement when personality profiles became really popular and the idea then was you had this
0:23.9	core personality style and it was pretty solid like your hair color culturally we like to label
0:29.8	people's personalities you know she's a classic type a personality and oh he's super introverted
0:35.1	and in regards though to changing one's personality, I tend to question, do we really want to change who we are or just some aspects of how we are?
0:46.3	I think we all have tendencies that we're dissatisfied with when we find ourselves anxious or depressed or worried, frustrated, angry, sad, and so on. And I don't think
0:57.1	we'd look at any of those with desire. I've never woken up one morning and decided, you know,
1:01.7	I'd like to be more worried than normal today. It's usually the opposite. So can we change
1:07.2	ourselves and our predispositions? Well, I brought on an expert. My guest is Olga Kazan,
1:14.0	and she devoted a full year to trying to change her personality. So Olga is a staff writer for the
1:22.2	Atlantic. She's also written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post.
1:27.3	She's authored
1:27.9	a book. She's a two-time recipient of the International Reporting Project's Journalism Fellowship.
1:35.6	But Olga said she just realized she didn't like how she was being often. And with every reason
1:43.1	to be happy and at peace, she described herself as
1:46.2	fairly neurotic and not so happy. And I really appreciate this line from our talk. She said,
1:52.1	what if rather than trying to make everything in the world go my way, I changed the way I
1:58.0	responded to the world. So she had specific aspects of her core personality that
2:04.0	she literally wanted to change and she embarked on this experiment as the reporter she is. She documented
2:12.0	all of it in a new book. It's titled, Me, But Better, The Science and Promise of Personality Change.
2:19.4	And I appreciate that Olga didn't come out with some big, bold claims, but simply stating
	...

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