DiscoverBeing Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick HansonHow to Change Your Personality with Olga Khazan
How to Change Your Personality with Olga Khazan

How to Change Your Personality with Olga Khazan

Update: 2025-04-281
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Can we really change our personalities? In this episode, Forrest is joined by someone who’s actually tried most of the things we talk about on the podcast: journalist and author Olga Khazan. Olga shares the personal experiments that led to her becoming more extroverted and agreeable, and less neurotic. They discuss the Big Five personality traits, how behavior shapes identity, the role of self-concept, authenticity, and some of the common challenges people face when trying to change a core aspect of who they are.


About Our Guest: Olga Khazan is a writer at The Atlantic, where she covers health, culture, and the complexities of human behavior. She's the author of Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World and her new book Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change.


You can watch this episode on YouTube.


Key Topics:


0:00 : Introduction


1:15 : Olga’s personal background with personality change


5:20 : Age, extroversion, self-concept, and Olga’s improv classes


10:10 : Unconditional positive regard, meditation, and mindfulness


20:55 : Trying on different traits, and acceptance vs. change


24:25 : Conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, and individualism


36:20 : Changing at the ‘trait level’, and the changes Olga has embraced most


43:50 : Psychedelics, non-self, and identifying what’s really true


53:50 : Nature vs. nurture and the aspects we can’t change


56:30 : Parenting and personality change


1:02:05 : Recap


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How to Change Your Personality with Olga Khazan

How to Change Your Personality with Olga Khazan

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., Forrest Hanson