PDF Summary:Me, But Better, by Olga Khazan

Most people believe their personality is fixed—that being anxious, introverted, or disorganized is simply “who they are.” But Atlantic staff writer Olga Khazan discovered otherwise. Through a year-long experiment backed by psychology research, she changed her personality from neurotic and introverted to emotionally stable and socially engaged. Her secret? “Fake it till you make it”—she consistently practiced behaviors associated with the traits she desired until they became natural.

In Me, But Better, Khazan explains how personality change can lead to greater happiness, stronger relationships, and career success. But she also notes that the process isn’t easy—it requires deliberately doing things that make you uncomfortable and acting against your natural tendencies. This guide unpacks Khazan’s insights into what personality really is, why certain traits predict life outcomes, and how to systematically change your patterns through targeted behavioral practice. We’ll also explore the basics of personality research, examine the neuroscience underlying behavioral change, and consider how personality ideals reflect specific cultural and social expectations.

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Why Change Your Personality?

Knowing that personality change is possible doesn’t automatically make it worth pursuing. This section examines how personality traits influence life’s outcomes and explores how changing these traits can help people live more authentically.

Personality Traits Influence Life Outcomes

Khazan explains that personality traits aren’t just neutral characteristics—they’re powerful predictors of how your life will unfold. Research reveals that personality functions like a set of tools: Some configurations help you build the life you want, while others create obstacles to happiness and success. People with certain trait combinations report higher life satisfaction, achieve better career outcomes, maintain stronger relationships, and enjoy better physical health. But those with other trait profiles face disadvantages across these same areas. Personality traits influence how you respond to opportunities, handle setbacks, build relationships, and pursue goals.

For instance, Khazan explains that high levels of extroversion strongly predict happiness, not because extroverts are “better people,” but because extroverted behaviors—socializing, speaking up, engaging actively—create more positive experiences and stronger social connections. Even people who identify as introverts feel happier when they engage in these behaviors. Similarly, high levels of conscientiousness predict career success because conscientious behaviors—planning, persistence, reliability—are exactly what employers and academic institutions reward.

The same pattern holds for emotional stability (the opposite of neuroticism). People low in neuroticism experience less anxiety and depression and maintain more stable relationships. This is because they’ve developed ways of thinking and responding to stressful situations that help them recover more quickly from setbacks, which compounds into better life experiences over time.

The Importance of Person-Culture Fit

While Khazan frames certain traits as universally beneficial, research reveals a more nuanced picture: The advantages of traits depend on how well they match your cultural environment. In fact, most people experience greater well-being when their personality profile closely matches the average personality of their country. Studies spanning millions of people across dozens of countries show that both extroversion and emotional stability (low neuroticism) lead to different outcomes depending on context. For extroversion, the general happiness benefits are stronger in cultures that value and reward extroverted behaviors, like speaking up in groups or frequent socializing, than in cultures that prize group harmony and quiet reflection.

Similarly, while emotional stability generally predicts better outcomes, the strength of this relationship varies across cultures. Research reveals variations in average anxiety and emotional reactivity between countries: Japan and Argentina score among the highest on neuroticism, while countries like Slovenia and Congo score much lower. For conscientiousness, the picture is even more complex: While Americans high in this trait enjoy better health through healthy lifestyle choices, the same trait in Japanese culture leads to excessive social obligations that can harm physical health through increased stress.

These differences in personality traits and their outcomes aren’t random: They correlate with cultural dimensions, like how much a society tries to avoid uncertainty and unpredictability, and with different expectations about social duty. This suggests that what constitutes adaptive levels of different personality traits depends partly on the cultural context where those traits are expressed.

Personality Change Helps You Live According to Your Values

If personality traits function as life tools, the crucial question becomes: Which tools do you need? You could pursue some idealized personality profile and try to fix what’s “wrong” with you by someone else’s standards. But Khazan argues that you should pursue personality changes that connect with what you value most and help you express who you want to be. For example, someone who values deep relationships might work on developing agreeableness and emotional stability because these tools enable deeper connection. On the other hand, someone who values achievement and contribution might focus on building conscientiousness and openness to experience.

(Shortform note: Research supports Khazan’s perspective, showing that people often hold values that contradict their current personality traits. For example, emotionally unstable people might value internal harmony because they lack it, and people with low self-esteem may prize social recognition because they crave it. This disconnect creates natural motivation for personality change: When you value something your current traits make difficult to achieve, you have compelling reasons to develop new behavioral patterns. Rather than forcing yourself to match some external ideal, personality change becomes a way to better express what already matters most to you.)

Khazan draws on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), developed by Steven Hayes, to explain how this approach works in practice. ACT involves accepting negative feelings as a normal part of pursuing what matters to you, committing to your values, and taking action toward the kind of life you want to live.

Hayes defines values as the principles that guide you toward the kind of person you want to become. In the ACT framework, gaining clarity about your values is an important step toward living more mindfully and responding intentionally to difficult situations. According to Khazan, your values provide sustainable motivation for difficult change. When personality change feels like self-improvement for its own sake, people often abandon it. But when the change you pursue serves deeper purposes—like enabling you to be a better parent, contribute more meaningfully at work, or build stronger relationships—your motivation becomes more resilient.

Why Your Values Shouldn’t Be Another Self-Improvement Project

While Khazan recommends connecting personality change to your existing values rather than pursuing an ideal profile, Hayes’s broader theory suggests that trying to optimize your values themselves could undermine the whole effort. According to Hayes, humans have a unique capacity for symbolic thinking that allows us to create mental categories, comparisons, and problem-solving strategies. But this same ability can lead us astray when we apply our problem-solving mindset to our own lives and see ourselves as problems to be fixed. When this happens, we might see our values not as guides to how to live, but as things we can adjust to solve what we perceive as being wrong with ourselves.

But Hayes argues that authentic values must be freely chosen—selected simply because they resonate with who you want to be, not because you can rationally justify them or expect them to deliver specific outcomes. Even if you worry that your values aren’t good enough, it’s important to live according to what you care about. He recommends looking at values not as ends to achieve, but as qualities you can continuously express through your actions.

Khazan’s Experience With Personality Change

Khazan’s experience illustrates how trait imbalances can limit life satisfaction and how values-based change can transform how you move through the world. Khazan writes that her high levels of neuroticism created a cycle of chronic anxiety that prevented her from enjoying her professional successes and personal relationships, while her low extroversion contributed to social isolation and missed connections. These patterns limited how much she enjoyed her life and how fulfilling she found her work and relationships.

(Shortform note: Khazan’s framework may oversimplify the relationship between traits and outcomes. Psychologists distinguish between neuroticism as a personality trait and clinical anxiety as a mental health condition: While neuroticism predicts anxiety disorders, it operates through mechanisms like shame rather than directly causing chronic anxiety. Similarly, introversion and social isolation are different: Introverts value social connection and can be just as negatively affected by loneliness as extroverts, but they may prefer smaller social groups and need downtime to recharge between interactions. This suggests that personality traits create vulnerabilities under certain conditions rather than inevitably limiting life satisfaction.)

While Khazan’s natural personality traits didn’t serve her well, she reports that developing more adaptive traits had significant benefits. Reducing her neuroticism changed her relationship with stress and setbacks, freeing up mental energy that had been consumed by worry. Her increased extroversion changed her approach to motherhood, leading her to actively seek out mom groups and social connections rather than isolating herself.

For Khazan, committing to a values-based approach to personality change meant connecting her transformation efforts to connection, presence, and authentic engagement with life. By framing her personality development as a way to better express what mattered most to her, the transformation felt like an expression of her authentic self rather than an abandonment of it. This deeper motivation sustained her through the inevitable discomfort of practicing new behaviors, even when they initially felt forced or uncomfortable.

(Shortform note: Khazan’s desire to be more present and engaged suggests that she wanted to become more mindful. People higher in mindfulness—the ability to pay attention to the present moment non-judgmentally—tend to be lower in neuroticism and higher in conscientiousness, extroversion, and agreeableness. This suggests Khazan’s personality change goals weren’t arbitrary: She may have been drawn toward traits that complement mindfulness. Mindfulness’s emphasis on accepting difficult emotions has also been shown to reduce the kind of stress that Khazan struggled with.)

How to Change Your Personality

Once you’ve identified which personality traits align with your values, the challenge becomes actually developing them. This section explores the core mechanism of personality change, why the process necessarily involves discomfort, how you can design your environment to support new behaviors, and specific strategies for developing each trait.

“Fake It Until You Make It”

Khazan explains that the fundamental principle underlying personality change is simple: You strengthen or weaken personality traits through repeated practice. This “fake it until you make it” approach recognizes that your personality patterns emerge from habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting rather than from fixed characteristics. This runs opposite to what most people assume—namely, that personality determines behavior. For instance, you might think you avoid parties because you’re introverted, but research reveals the reverse: Consistently engaging in introverted behaviors, like avoiding social interaction, reinforces introverted personality patterns.

This creates a powerful feedback loop you can use to change your personality. Khazan reports that when you consistently act in ways that align with a particular trait, those behaviors start to become automatic. Your actions influence how you see yourself, which in turn motivates further similar actions. So, for example, when you repeatedly practice extroverted behaviors (like initiating conversations or attending social events), you gradually develop extroverted traits and see yourself as an extroverted person. Your brain’s neuroplasticity provides the foundation for this process: Repeated behaviors strengthen neural connections associated with those actions. Even deeply ingrained traits can be modified through practice.

Khazan reports that in studies on personality change, participants who consistently completed daily challenges aligned with their desired traits—such as “introduce yourself to someone new” for people who wanted to become more extroverted or “spend five minutes meditating” for people who wanted to become less neurotic—showed personality changes within 15 weeks. The key was repeated practice over time, not occasional bursts of new behavior.

The Science Behind “Fake It Until You Make It”

Khazan’s approach has solid neurological foundations: Research confirms that consistently practicing new behaviors, even when they initially feel forced, can rewire the brain thanks to Hebb’s Law of neuroplasticity: “What fires together, wires together.” For example, when you repeatedly practice extroverted behaviors like initiating conversations, the neural pathways associated with those actions strengthen, eventually making extroverted responses feel more natural. But this raises philosophical questions about the nature of personality itself—and about what you’re really changing when you “fake it until you make it.”

Ray Kurzweil contends in How to Create a Mind that the brain operates as a vast network of pattern-recognition modules which process incoming information hierarchically, from simple sensory inputs to complex thoughts and behaviors. This means that what we experience as “personality” is just the sum of these active patterns at any given moment. If Kurzweil is correct, then Hebb’s Law takes on deeper significance for personality change. When you consistently practice new behaviors, you’re not just strengthening individual neural pathways. You’re also training your brain to activate new patterns, which, over time, become the dominant information processing routines that generate your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

Embrace the Discomfort of Acting Against Your Nature

Developing new personality traits involves acting against your current inclinations. This process, while uncomfortable, is essential for building new patterns. The discomfort you feel—anxiety, awkwardness, or resistance—is evidence that you’re changing. Khazan explains that personality change often follows the same principles as exposure therapy for phobias. Gradually and repeatedly exposing yourself to situations that trigger discomfort, while staying present rather than avoiding or escaping, eventually reduces the anxiety response and makes new behaviors feel more natural. This requires taking action first and allowing your emotions to follow, rather than waiting to feel motivated or comfortable before acting.

Khazan’s experience with improv classes illustrates this principle. As part of her effort to become more extroverted, she enrolled in improvisational comedy classes that forced her to interact with strangers in creative, unstructured ways. She experienced overwhelming dread before each class for months, but this discomfort was evidence that she was pushing beyond her natural introversion toward more extroverted behavior. Rather than interpreting struggle as proof that change was impossible, she recognized it as part of the process.

(Shortform note: Research reveals that during improvisation, activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (your inner critic) decreases while the medial prefrontal cortex (associated with creativity) becomes more active. This means improvisation quiets the voice in your head that says “Don’t say that” while encouraging creative thinking. Improvisation also enhances cognitive flexibility, the brain’s ability to switch between different behavioral patterns. People who practice improvisation become better at distinguishing between situations where different responses are appropriate. This skill might have supported Khazan’s personality change by helping her recognize when extroverted behaviors were suitable and to execute them more naturally.)

How to Get More Comfortable With Discomfort

The principles of exposure therapy that Khazan cites require you to put yourself in uncomfortable situations for extended periods of time—typically 60 to 90 minutes per session—while resisting the urge to escape or engage in “safety behaviors” that temporarily make you feel more comfortable. This process works because your brain needs sustained contact with the situations you fear to learn they’re actually harmless. When you cut exposure short or use coping strategies to reduce anxiety, they prevent this learning from occurring. The discomfort itself becomes evidence of meaningful change—your brain is being challenged to update its old patterns.

Researchers have found that we can even adapt to become more comfortable with inherently uncomfortable situations. Exposure to confusing, absurd, or meaningless experiences—like reading Franz Kafka’s stories, as participants were asked to do in one psychological study—can enhance people’s ability to find order and meaning in chaotic situations. This suggests that while uncertain or awkward situations might always feel uncomfortable, we can develop greater tolerance for that discomfort simply through practice. In essence, we can become more comfortable with being uncomfortable, which helps us change our behavior to better embody the personality traits we want to have.

Believe You Can Change

Khazan also points out that your beliefs about change matter enormously. One of the most significant barriers is believing your traits are unchangeable. When you encounter difficulty with this fixed mindset, you interpret struggle as proof of fundamental limitations rather than as a normal part of the learning process. Conversely, believing that personality traits can be developed through effort makes you more likely to persist through challenging periods and reframe setbacks as learning opportunities.

Many people worry that acting against their natural tendencies involves being inauthentic, but research suggests that you often feel more authentic when expressing a wider range of behaviors rather than being constrained by narrow personality patterns. The goal is to expand your behavioral toolkit rather than becoming someone entirely different.

How Identity Shapes Your Ability to Change

Researchers agree with Khazan that your self-image determines what you believe is possible, and that those beliefs shape what you do and how able you are to change. If your self-image includes beliefs like “I’m not a social person,” these beliefs will work against your efforts to become more extroverted by filtering out contradictory evidence and reinforcing existing patterns. Neuroscientists explain why this happens: Your brain constantly makes predictions about yourself and your environment. When you attempt to make personality changes that conflict with your self-image, you experience psychological discomfort because the behaviors you’re trying to adopt don’t match your brain’s predictions about who you are.

But this same mechanism can work in your favor. Your self-image is built from accumulated evidence of your own behavior—when you consistently act in new ways, you begin to see yourself differently. By taking small, objective steps to prove limiting self-beliefs wrong, you can gradually update your self-image to align with your desired personality changes. This suggests that Khazan’s emphasis on persistent practice doesn’t just serve to reinforce new habits, but it also allows your brain to collect evidence that contradicts your old self-limiting beliefs and build a new identity that supports continued growth.

Design Your Environment for Success

Developing new personality tools requires creating environments and social contexts that make the behaviors you want to develop easier while making the behaviors you want to stop harder to engage in. Khazan explains that context plays a powerful role in shaping your behavior, so think carefully about the situations you enter: Seek out contexts that encourage the traits you want to build while avoiding situations that reinforce unwanted patterns. If you’re working on extroversion, you might join a club that holds regular meetings. If you’re developing conscientiousness, you might choose to spend more time with coworkers who are particularly well-organized and focused on their goals.

(Shortform note: Khazan’s environmental design approach aligns with research on choice architecture: the deliberate crafting of decision-making environments to influence behavior. In Nudge, behavioral economists Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein explain that context shapes our decisions, often without our conscious awareness. They recommend setting up decision-making environments to offer “default” choices that encourage desired behaviors. This way, you can “nudge” yourself toward personality change by making desired behaviors the path of least resistance, rather than relying on willpower alone.)

Khazan also points out that surrounding yourself with people who embody the traits you aspire to develop provides you with both accountability for your choices and opportunities to see those traits in action. For example, Khazan’s improv class not only forced her to practice extroverted behaviors, but it also gave her regular opportunities to spend time with people who were already comfortable with social interaction and creativity.

(Shortform note: Khazan’s advice to surround yourself with people who embody the traits you want makes use of aspects of social learning theory. Psychologist Albert Bandura demonstrated that people learn new behaviors and attitudes not just through direct experience, but by observing others and seeing the consequences of their actions. This observational learning happens through four key processes: paying attention to the person modeling the new behavior, retaining what you observe, learning to reproduce the behavior, and having the motivation to imitate it. In Khazan’s case, her improv classmates not only showed her how to participate in improv, but gave her the motivation to practice more extroverted behaviors.)

Apply Specific Strategies for Each Trait

While the core principles of personality change apply across all traits, Khazan explains that each of the Big Five traits can benefit from somewhat different approaches.

To reduce neuroticism, focus on developing emotional regulation skills. Khazan participated in a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program that included daily 45-minute meditation sessions. Despite initially hating the practice, she found that consistent meditation significantly reduced her neuroticism scores. Other strategies include challenging catastrophic thought patterns, developing healthy stress responses like deep breathing, and cultivating gratitude practices that shift your attention toward positive experiences.

(Shortform note: Khazan’s techniques for reducing neuroticism all emerge from Zen Buddhism, which teaches that your thoughts and emotions—even those that feel catastrophic—are just temporary phenomena. In meditation, the breath serves as an anchor to the present moment, preventing you from worrying about the future or the past. Gratitude practices align with the Zen principle of appreciating the “suchness” of each moment, as even difficult experiences are part of the interconnected nature of reality. Zen Buddhism sees these practices as different expressions of the same insight: that suffering often comes not from external circumstances, but from our mental resistance to accepting things as they are.)

To increase extroversion, systematically expand your amount of social contact and engagement. Other approaches beyond Khazan’s improv classes include deliberately starting conversations, engaging in performance activities like public speaking, and gradually building social stamina while managing your energy levels to prevent burnout.

(Shortform note: Khazan’s strategies parallel techniques medical schools have developed for introverted students, who can struggle with fast-paced rounds and constant evaluation. Her improv classes mirror medical schools’ “think-pair-share” activities, while starting conversations and engaging in performances aligns with advice for students to rehearse scenarios and participate in presentations. Yet introverted students often burn out from performing an extroverted persona, which echoes a tension Susan Cain explores in Quiet. Cain writes that while introverts can learn to adapt, extrovert-dominated institutions might benefit from recognizing that introverts’ listening skills and thoughtful analysis are valuable strengths.)

To develop conscientiousness, you should implement structure and planning systems in your life. Khazan’s strategies include establishing organization systems for time management, vividly imagining future scenarios to increase your present motivation, building regular habits and routines, and creating accountability systems through deadlines and commitments to others.

(Shortform note: Research suggests that behaviors we associate with “low conscientiousness” may reflect how neurodivergent brains naturally function in ways that don’t align with expectations designed for neurotypical brains. Khazan’s advice involves creating the sorts of routines, schedules, and structures that neurodivergent people use to find stability, manage anxiety, and prepare for change. What Khazan sees as changing a personality trait can also be understood as compensating for differences in executive functioning. The distinction highlights that many personality “improvements” might just be about learning to perform the behaviors that society values, rather than fixing character flaws.)

To enhance agreeableness, focus on building empathy and relationship skills. You can practice perspective-taking to understand others’ viewpoints, learn constructive conflict resolution techniques, and develop deeper conversation skills. Khazan’s approach was to attend conversation workshops that taught techniques for asking meaningful questions and creating genuine connections.

(Shortform note: Khazan’s advice to build agreeableness through deeper empathy and better conflict resolution skills connects to research on collaboration. Conflict resolution expert Adam Kahane’s work with high-stakes mediations reveals that effective relationship-building often requires embracing tension rather than avoiding it. In Collaborating with the Enemy, Kahane suggests that deeper connections—like those Khazan found through perspective-taking and conversation—works best when combined with the ability to work through disagreements constructively rather than suppressing them for artificial harmony. This means enhancing agreeableness might require being able to maintain relationships while navigating conflicts.)

To increase openness to experience, actively seek novelty and embrace uncertainty. Khazan’s strategies include deliberately exposing yourself to new activities, ideas, and environments, and engaging in creative activities even if you have no prior experience or skill in those areas. You can also cultivate intellectual curiosity through reading and learning, and you can practice flexibility by varying your routines and embracing unexpected change.

Artistic and Scientific Thinking as Paths to Openness

While Khazan focuses on seeking novel experiences and being open to change, research reveals that two specific domains may be particularly powerful for developing openness to experience: the arts and the sciences. These represent fundamentally different but complementary approaches to cultivating intellectual curiosity and comfort with uncertainty.

Studies show that people high in openness to experience are naturally drawn to artistic engagement—both through enjoying art (attending museums, concerts, reading) and creating it (painting, music, writing)—and this engagement seems to make them even more open to new experiences. Researchers say that the arts cultivate openness by exposing people to novel perspectives, emotional experiences, and aesthetic possibilities that challenge their existing patterns of thinking. Engaging with unfamiliar art forms, attending performances outside your comfort zone, or experimenting with creative expression can expand your tolerance for ambiguity and your appreciation for diverse experiences.

Science offers a different but equally valuable pathway to openness. The scientific method, despite its structured approach, fundamentally depends on creativity, imagination, and a willingness to question established ideas. Scientists must constantly generate novel hypotheses, design creative experiments, and remain open to unexpected results that might overturn their assumptions. Engaging in scientific thinking—whether through citizen science projects, conducting personal experiments, or simply approaching everyday problems with systematic curiosity—can develop the intellectual flexibility and comfort with uncertainty that characterize high openness.