Why You're Not Stuck Being "You" Forever & How To Change Your Personality | Olga Khazan

May 8, 2025

Olga Khazan, a staff writer for The Atlantic and author of 'Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World', dives into how personality can be transformed. She discusses recognizing when change is necessary, common traits people want to alter, and practical steps for reinvention. Khazan highlights the influence of environment on personality and shares techniques for managing anxiety and neuroticism. Intriguingly, she explains why introverts may find happiness through extroverted behaviors, encouraging a journey of self-awareness and personal growth.

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ADVICE

Use Commitments to Stay Accountable

Sign up for commitments you can't easily skip to stay accountable.
Being forced to attend helps make new behaviors stick and drives personality change.

ANECDOTE

Improv Helped Let Go of Control

Introverted Olga found improv challenging and nerve-wracking at first.
Over time, she enjoyed the chaotic, unprepared playfulness that taught her to let go of control.

ANECDOTE

Long-Term Meditation Battle

Olga scored extremely high on neuroticism and meditated an hour daily for months.
She found meditation challenging but it ultimately reduced her neuroticism slightly.

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Olga Khazan is a staff writer for The Atlantic and the author, previously, of Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World. She has also written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Vox, and other publications. She is a two-time recipient of the International Reporting Project’s Journalism Fellowship and winner of the 2017 National Headliner Award for Magazine Online Writing.

Today on the show we discuss: how to know you need to change your personality, the most common personality traits people want to change, steps you can take today to completely reinvent who you are, techniques for reducing anxiety and neuroticism, the role your environment plays in your personality, how to completely reinvent, why introverts are happier after acting extroverted and much more.

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