Christian Jarrett on The Science of Personality

or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.

Our guest on this episode is Christian Jared, the author, editor, and contributor to ten books spanning psychology, neuroscience, self help, and productivity. He's recognized as a chartered psychologist and Associate of the British Psychological Society and Deputy editor of Psyche, a global digital magazine that illuminates the human condition through psychology, philosophical understanding and the arts. Christian's latest book is Be

Who You Want, Unlocking the Science of Personality Change. Hi Christian, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, get to me. I'm excited to have you here. We're gonna be discussing your book, Be Who you Want, Unlocking the Science of Personality Change. But before we get into that, we'll start, like we always do, with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always

at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks at with their grandparents. Well, which one wins, and the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in

the work that you do. Well. Actually, it seemed to chime, you know, really nicely with the whole topic of personality development, really because you know, the idea that we do have the potential to express different aspects of ourselves, and depending on the situations we put ourselves in and the experiences we have in life, you know, those different sides to

our characters can come out. So just it's straightaway, it made me think of that, and I suppose not only are we shaped by our life experiences, but that line about is the one you feed because the research I looked into is this idea that we don't have to be passive about these things. You know, we can take some conscious control and be more deliberate about the situations we put ourselves in and the company we keep and

that kind of thing. So it made me think of that, the idea of which sides to your character you're going to feed just from like a personal level, Like one thing that immediately I suppose popped into my head in terms of my own personality, like is I remember like earlier on in the age of Twitter, I might get bogged down for quite a long time in the Twitter spats and arguments online, and it was very tempting, you know, to engage in those kind of arguments and always try

and get the last word and someone and I always ended up feeling worse at the end of those episodes, and I think it brought out, you know, definitely the poorer side of my character. So you know, I just don't do that anymore. I just do not engage in any of that kind of online arguments and spots. So again, that parable made me think of that to do with which side of your character you're going to feed and

encourage on a deliberate level. Yeah. Yeah. You start the book right away with a pretty big question, which I think anybody who is in this space of psychology, of personal development of spirituality, you know, there is this core question of can we really change? You know, can we ever truly change? And to what extent can we change? And you really devote kind of the rest of the

book to talking about that. But in a short answer, what's your response now, after having asked that question, written that book, you know, all the work that you do in editing a magazine about psychology, what's your short answer to can people truly change? This short answer is an overwhelming yes, is the short answer. Yeah. It's a long running debate in psychology. And obviously everyone really has their intuition about this, don't they Whether they think people can

truly change deep down? But yet it raises the question about like what who are we really? You know, like how do you measure who someone is in the first place? And yeah, and how much that kind of a change. But whether it was through some of the life stories I looked into or the more formal research studies. The overwhelming answer that I came, of course, as the significant change is possible. In fact, it is probably the norm

for quite a lot of change to occur. You know, how deliberate that changes or not is obviously another question, and whether or not it's changed for the better or not is another issue as well. Yeah, so you just alluded to an interesting question, which is how do we measure who we really are? And one of the more prominent theories in psychology today talks about personality, and it divides personality into five main characteristics and we'll go into those in a minute. But that's one way of slicing

who we are in a loose way? Are there other psychological approaches for slicing who we are beyond personality that have much prominence. I really like the approach of the psychologist Dan McAdams and if he came across him. But my book is mostly focused on the so called kind of big five personality traits which you're you know, you're alluding to their Dan McAdams has this idea that that's kind of like the foundation of who we are, but

then layer it on top of that. He has the stories that we tell about ourselves, about our lives, the stories we tell of who we are and what's happened to us. And then another level he has is our values and goals, you know, like what matters to us, what we think is important in life. I suppose our morality would come into that as well. So that's kind

of three levels I think. Also, you know, some people think our relationships are a key part of who we are as well, you know, who matters to us, our identity, you know, the different roles that we take on in life. So there are all these things bubbling around, and they they all do kind of interact the different levels through interacts as well. As I was reading your book and thinking about all this thought came to mind. There's a song by a band I love. The band is called DAWs.

I don't know if you know them. Their Americans sort of I guess rock band. But the songwriter is incredible, and he wrote a song called a little Bit of Everything and it's just a beautiful song. But as I was reading your book, I was thinking so much, like of what we are and how we act and how we behave and what happens to us and how we respond. It really it's a little bit of everything, you know. It's the situation, it's our personality, it's our values, it's

our mood, it's our underlying biochemical state. It's how well did we sleep last night. It's like, it's a little bit of everything, and we want to reduce it. We want to go it's this so we can pin it down and make it simple. But it certainly does not seem in any way, shape or form to be simple. That's right. I think different people have a different view on what is kind of like the ultimate aspects of

who who you are? You know, once she drilled right down, you know, so if your personality does change, for example, you know, are you therefore a totally different person? Well, no, you're not. Are you completely There are aspects of you that will remain the same. You're still married to the same person, and you're still the parents of the same person. You still might believe in the same values even though your traits have changed and so on. So yeah, it

is a little bit of everything. I agree. The Big five theory of personality provides a very useful kind of framework for thinking about a lot of these things. Those five key traits capture a lot of the differences in our behavior and the way we think, and the way we relate to other people. So it's it's a kind of a useful heuristic. I think that captures quite a

lot of the variation in who we are. And it does, like I said, it interacts with those other levels, like our values and our life story, you know, the stories we tell about ourselves in both directions. You know, there's research suggesting, you know, when our values change and we change our priorities in life, that can feedback and actually change our traits, our personality rates. For example. Yeah, we interviewed not too long ago, Kevin Mitchell, who you may

be familiar with. You wrote a book called Innate. It's about, you know, some of the underlying biological wiring that says our personalities are somewhat innate, we come with them. But he also doesn't argue for that's all of it. You say in the book that the current estimation is somewhere between thirty and fifty percent of the variation and personality between people stems from the genes they inherited from their parents. So we're then saying the opposite of that is fifty

to seventy percent of it is beyond genetic. That a safe way of interpreting that. Yeah, it is, So there's definitely an innate aspect to it. One thing I tried to do in the book is be realistic. So I'm not arguing that, you know, you can totally change your personality, because I think, yeah, there are certain sort of hardwired dispositions that you have. I think what one kind of maybe metaphor I've found useful before is something like your

bodysh ape and physical exercise. So it wouldn't matter, you know, how many how many hours I spent lifting weights at the gym. I'm never going to be a huge giant guy. Depending on how much exercise I do and the type of exercise and what I eat. There's obviously going to be quite a wide range and how my physical state's going to end up. And I think it's similar with personalities.

If your genetic inheritance from your parents means, you know, you have leanings towards being an introvert, you're probably never gonna, you know, transform the other end of the scale. But depending on the choices you make in life and the routines you build in and the company you keep and the decisions you make, your relationships that you have and so on, you're definitely going to be able to shift yourself along the spectrum for sure, you know, quite considerably.

In that book, Kevin Mitchell had an analogy that I like, and he says, you know, we're not blank slates, but a slate doesn't have to be blank for you to write on it, you know. And I thought that was a nice way of thinking about it, like, you know, yeah, we come with some things written. When I think how much people can change, I can't help but think about my own life. And I was, you know, at twenty four, I was a heroin addict. I was homeless, you know,

I weighed a hundred pounds. I would have robbed you at gunpoint to get drugs. Fast forward, you know, last summer and my mom fell again, and I was going to the grocery store twice a week and picking up her opioid prescriptions and bringing them to her and not even thinking about it. I mean, there's a lot of change in there, and there are some underlying, as we said, some personality traits of mine that you know, I think have held a little steady during that time also, So

I think this is such an interesting question. One of the points that you make is that even modest genetic influences on personality can snowball by affecting the kind of experiences you have. So we know that we come with some amount of innateness. Our experiences tend to shape a lot of the rest of it. But that innatenesce can often cause us to keep selecting the same type of experiences over and over, which then re amplify those personality traits.

I think it's what you're saying there, right. Yeah. For example, so someone who scores highly in neuroticism, which means they have emotional you know, instability, prone to worry and stress and what have you. High scorers in neuroticism and more likely you know, to get into arguments, more likely to have difficult relationships, that kind of thing, and you can see how that is then going to escalate, isn't It's going to amplify it, just as you said, And so

similar with another one of the traits, agreeability. So if you're low agreeability, you know, you find it hard to trust other people, you see the worst in them, you're not very empathic. Again, you could probably gonna end up with more conflict in your life and so on, and

that's just going to feed those tendencies. So I think a lot about making deliberate positive personality changes is about short circuiting some of these feedback loops if you can deliberately sometimes as well as finding more constructive outlets for some of you innite dispositions as well. It makes me

think of some research you quoted in the book. The book is chock full of lots of great research, but one of the findings, and we've talked about this on the show in the past, but I think it's so interesting is you talk about loneliness and you say that people who are lonely have a tendency to show reduced extraversion and agreeableness, you know, at the end of the study, so they start a study, they identify as lonely and their traits for extra version and agreeableness are lower at

the end. And the other is that loneliness tends to make us highly sensitive to social slights and rejection, which we can see how that amplifies itself. So I'm lonely, I'm prone to interpret anything anyone does as a slight, even if it's not, which then drives me further into my shell, which makes me more sensitive to social slights. And I see this in all aspects of life. There's

sort of the upward and the downward spiral. So I'm describing some of the downward spirals that can happen with loneliness. Can you think of, you know, based on some of the things you have in the book, an example of an upward spiral that we might engage in across any of the personality traits. Mood interacts with the expression of

our personality traits very strongly. So whatever your baseline personality tends to be, there's research suggesting that when we're feeling happier and when we're with people who we trust and who make us feel authentic and that kind of thing, when we're in that kind of situation. Then, like I say, whatever our baseline personality traits, we tend to act more extroverted. Agreeableness goes up a lot of these kind of more

positive personality traits. So there's this technique or exercise. A team of British researchers came up whether they called the situation selection strategy, which is really just about being more mindful. Like they had one group of volunteers who before the weekend, they had them rehearse saying to themselves this weekend, when I'm choosing what activities to do, I'm going to think about what activities make me feel good. You know, what company makes me feel good, and that kind of thing.

And then they assessed them after the weekend compared to the control group, and it worked. By just being more conscious of the decisions they made over what to do that weekend rather than just following their usual routines or just being passive about it, you know, it lifted their mood. They spent more time feeling good and then and this manifested in the expression of their personality traits, feeling more extroverted,

more agreeable than so on. Quite a lot of the exercises in my book as well, are about encouraging positive trade change or about boosting confidence as well. So there's another one of the traits we haven't mentioned, which is openness to experience, a willingness to try out new things, see things in a new way, you know, be more open to other arguments and perspectives, whether in politics or

whatever it might be. And there's a whole load of research suggesting that, for example, doing more crossword puzzles and things like that and Sudoku and brain training access sizes leads to increases in openness, probably because it's confidence building, so you say about that kind of upward spiral. If you feel more confident in yourself, you're more willing to try out new things and be more minded. Similarly, physical exercise,

getting physically fitter seems to increase people's trait openness to experience. Again, psychologists think that's because of a confidence issue. Again, if you're more confident in yourself mentally and your mental abilities, and more confident physically, it encourages you to be more minded, more adventurous. And I guess almost like the opposite of what you're saying with the loneliness in a less defensive

kind of mindset. I suppose what you were saying there makes intuitive sense to me about our mood having impact on our personality, because every time I've taken a personality test, I end up feeling annoyed by it. And the reason I feel annoyed by it is some of them are like, would you rather go to a party or read a book? And I'm like, well, that really depends. Sometimes I'm in the mood to go to a party, and sometimes I'm

in the mood to read a book. Like so much of it to me seemed to be like, well, that really depends on mood. That mood is a big indicator and a big mover there. How much research is there that we know about the impacts that personality have on mood and mood has on personality, and psychologically speaking, how is mood defined? What is it? So mood is meant to be kind of your temporary state in terms of how you feel in the moment, So personality has meant

to play out over the longer term. You know, if I was to play the role of a perspective of a personality researcher, now they would say to you, well, that question about would you rather read a book or go to a party. If they asked you that question once a week for a year, you know, like talied up your answers. If you're an introvert, you would say read a book more often, whereas an out and out extrovert, Yeah, maybe a couple of weeks they would say they want

to read a book. Were measured over that kind of time span, they would more often say they want to go to a party. So it's partly an issue of time frames. And yeah, mood is just your kind of state in the moment, whether it's more positive or more negative valanced, it would be the technical time, is it

positively balanced or negatively. There have been these cool studies where they've had volunteers carry around these kind of smartphones, you know, where they take these little questionnaires as they go about their daily lives, and they kind of beap several times a day as they go about their lives, and they ask them, you know, what are you doing, who are you with, what's your mood like right now?

And then they get them to fill out a little mini personality test, and exactly as you're saying, the same individual scores their own personality differently depending on the mood they're in. So the kind of thing that you find is actually regardless of whether someone's an introvert or an extrovert. The kind of thing you find is that when people are in a social situation and enjoying it, then they

tend to rate their personality more positively. You know, they will rate their agreeableness higher, emotional stability higher, the extra version higher. That's why there's quite a few times in the book where I really encourage people. I suppose, whatever their leanings, whether they're an introvert or an extrovert, I think there's a lot to be said for having, you know,

at least some healthy social connection in your life. The research does seem to suggest, whatever you're kind of leanings on the intro version extra version scale, Tony much everybody does get a healthy kick out of happy social times, you know, with friends. Yeah. You say in the book that perhaps more than any of the other personality traits, extra version and introversion are shaped by habit. So we can become more or less introverted based on I guess

how much we engage in social activity. Yeah, and finding you know, if you can. It's not always easy, but you know, finding your niche. So socializing with people that you know you you don't yell with, you don't click with, is going to leave you grumpy. You know, you're gonna be feeling grumpy and you're gonna you're going to want to withdraw. Yeah, it's not like any old socializing will do.

But if you can try and find your kind of people and doing the kind of activity that you like, then you'll probably find Yeah, you start to come out of your shell and you start to act more extroverted. Real quick, let's just run through what the five main personality traits are so that as we continue to talk about them, listeners have that reference. You want to run through them real quick. Yeah. So there's openness to experience, which we touched on before, conscientiousness which is how self

disciplined you are and orderly and ambitious. There's extra version, which we've been mentioning, agreeableness, which is how warm and friendly you are and how trusting of other people. And then there's neuroticism, which is basically, if you're high in neuroticism, then you're low in emotional stability. Some people call it resilience as well. You know, so the opposite of high newroticism would be emotional resilience. So those are the big five.

Some people say there's the dark triad as well, which I'm sure you've heard of, the narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism as well. So there's those three. I do work with Chris who's our editor and producer, so I am familiar with the dark Tria. Just just kidding everybody. Chris is lovely. Um, so okay, So we've nailed down the five main treats.

One of the things that I found really interesting in the book was talking about how, broadly speaking it's not going to be for everybody, but broadly speaking, the way aging changes some of these personality traits in fairly predictable ways. Can you share a little bit about that. So they call this the maturity principle, and it's it's quite a positive story on the whole. Yeah, so the older we get this is what it meant about. You asked me

earlier about two people change. We can expect to change as we get older, and generally speaking, we become less neurotic as we get older. We get more chilled out as we get older, which is on average, which is quite comforting. I think, you know, less prone to worry and and less prone to negative emotions and so on. The older we get. On average, counscientiousness is a bit different, so that one tends to increase up to kind of

around midlife, and then it decreases into older age. One's kind of theory for that is they called it the ADULTI Vita effect. Late in life, but later in life people have fewer responsibilities if they're retired and their kids are growing up and some one, so they become less conscientious because they have fewer things to worry and worry

about is the idea. Openness to experience is another one that it mostly goes up through life, but then again it tends to decline later in life as people get more set in their ways and that kind of thing. You know. So you see, older people will tend to have a more conservative outlook, preferring things to be done the traditional way, and on average, of course, this isn't true for everyone, but you know, they'll prefer their usual routines and some one. Agreeableness is another nice one that

tends to increase through life. I think we see that again, it's a bit of a stereotype. Older people will tend to be warmer and more chatting and accepting. Extra Version is one that Again some of the studies are contradictory. Some say extra version kind of goes up through life. Again, it's another one of these sort of positive maturity principle things in terms are becoming more sociability, I suppose, and

and chatty. Some studies find dips like in midlife when people become parents and things like that for practical reasons. If you're stuck at home, you know, with childcare and that kind of thing, and you have juggling lots of responsibilities in life, there's less scope for socializing and adventure and that that that kind of thing. These are some of the kind of average tendencies you see. Yeah, of

course the lifespan. Yeah, that openness to experience decreasing as people age is something I really see in people as they get older. And it's one of my key anti aging strategies for myself because I notice it. I feel it in myself like wanting to do less, and I just keep kind of pushing against it because I'm like that sort of ossification strikes me as something I see in older people a lot, and it's one that I want to try and at least counter in a sane way. Yeah. Well,

I think that's a great idea. I mean, there are some studies showing interesting links between openness to experience as a personality trait and health outcomes later in life. People who score higher and openness are less vulnerable to dementia. For example, later in life, the more varia your routines and the more new ideas you expose yourself too, you know, if you keep yourself mentally on your toes, I guess

it all helps build up cognitive reserve. You know, they call it cognitive reserve, this kind of spare capacity that helps build your resilience to dementia later in life. So yes, it's a great policy to have. My partner's mom has late stage Alzheimer's. My dad has late stage Alzheimer's, and I can look at him. I didn't know Jenny's mom much before she was diagnosed, but I certainly know my dad, and I can sort of see what you're saying. And

I'm not saying this is what caused his Alzheimer's. I'm not making that leap, but he certainly his life was very let's just say small you know, he did sort of the same exact things over and over and over again, the same activities. You know, it was just small. I can see how that in his case may have been a contributing factor and be something in my case that

I want to be on the lookout for. There was another really interesting study that you talked about, and you said, the longest ever personality study, published in two thousand sixteen, involved a comparison of participants personalities at age fourteen and then again at age seventy seven, and it failed to find much correlation between the two times. That's kind of stunning. Yeah. Yeah. One way of thinking about it, I think is to imagine having a class reunion, you know, with your classmates

when you were at school when you're a teenager. Imagine having a reunion in your seventies when they followed up with these participants and yeah, how sixty year reunion. Yeah, how much do you think your friends from your class when you're a teenager. Would you think you would still see aspects of their personality that you remember from when you're at school, um or would they have changed completely?

And on the basis of this study anyway, they had access to the personality ratings of these kids, which I think we're done by their teach is when they're at school. And then they had these same individuals complete personality tests in their seventies and they couldn't find a correlation between the two. There is the caveat that the measures had changed. I think back when they had these ratings from when

these people were teenagers. You know, the personality quiz that that was used then it was different from the one later on, and that kind of thing. So there are some caveats, but it gives you pause for thought, doesn't it as well for anyone who's in a long term marriage that kind of thing, Like, you know, it's the person that you marry, you're going to be the same person in several decades of time. You're going to be married to the same person or someone who's very very different.

And yeah, I mean a lot of the research I uncovered suggests considerable changes take place and maybe we should expect that. Talk to me about what social investment theory is. So this is the idea of another factor in life that shapes personality traits is the roles that we take on.

So find that for example, when people win a promotion at work, for example, you look at their personality over the coming months or years, you'll see an uptick in conscientiousness, for example, after someone hurts one a job promotion, or in young people when they take on their first job again you see a kind of uptick in conscientiousness. Conversely, when people lose their job as it happens, you see, you know, you see the opposite, you see conscientiousness go down.

But social investment theory is really all about this idea that the roles we take on in life and the demands that are placed on us depending on what our roles are, to some extent shape personalities of see. A lot of the time that that's most concrete is in terms of our paid employment and that kind of thing, but obviously it applies to other roles that we take on in life as well. A lot of the research has been done on when people take a certain career path.

There have been studies like, for example, looking at when people join the military or something like that, more extreme examples, and again you get some of the personality trade changes that you might expect. So resilience will go up when people, uh, you know, join the military, and conscientiousness will will go

up and that kind of thing. And I would expect to see it more prominently and work simply because of how much time we spend their right, It's such a significant portion of our lives, you know, besides sleep, it might be the single biggest activity that we spend time with.

So I would expect to see it more prominently. There, I'm jumping around a little bit here, But there was so many fascinating things in the book, and I wanted to talk about the idea of ego depletion, because ego depletion the idea is that the more visions that I have to make, or the more I have to think, or the more I have to exercise my willpower, the harder that gets over time, that I basically wear that muscle out. Is that a safe way of describing what

ego depletion theory was? Yeah, this is I think Roy Baumeister. Yeah, he likens willpower to a muscle. Yeah, the more we use it, he suggests, we actually use up kind of glucose like energy and our body exerting willpower. And yeah, he says, the more you use it in one situation, the less you have left over for another. And sometimes

in very different contexts. If your willpower is drained because you've been concentrating on a boring spreadsheet at work all day, he would argue, that's going to leave you with lower reserves of willpower to resist getting a beer out of the fridge when you get home, or something like that is what he would say. And so that theory has been a pretty popular theory and makes sense on its surface.

It even seems to correlate a little bit to some of my experience, which basically says, you know, when you're more tired, it's harder to resist temptation. But then all of a sudden, there's some really contrary findings. Share those with us. Yeah, you're right, it's contested at the moment.

I don't know who's coming out on top. But for example, there are some findings I know, there was one out of India where people in India have a different attitude to willpower Apparently, you know, a lot of large sections of the population do where they have this relief kind of like the harder you work and the more effort you put in, it almost like charges you up like a dynamo on a bike, kind of on an old

fashioned bike. Analogy. So they've done some cross cultural studies and they just didn't find the ego depletion in the volunteers from India who have these beliefs if anything there will power kind of became enhanced the more effort for work that they did, or the more they resisted temptation in one situation and so on. So, Yeah, through a bit of a spanner in the ego gletion theory, findings like like that one that some of what it oils

down to is our own beliefs about willpower. If you believe it's a limited resource that you have, like fuel, then actually that is the way it will work for you. On the other hand, if you have a more positive attitude to these things and you think you've got a kind of more limitless supply, or even you see it more like, I suppose something you can build up through practice, enhance it, I suppose through use. If that's what you believe, that's more likely you have to be how it will

manifest in you. So those are some of the findings that have come out recently. They have somewhat complicated the picture. Yeah, a few thoughts on that. I mean, first, anytime I can get somebody to use the word spanner in my podcast. I am happy because you say ranch here, but I love that word. It's a great word. Secondly, it makes me think a little bit about some of the studies on stress that say, if you believe stress is harmful for you, it becomes more harmful for you if you don't.

And then the last thing is it makes me think about one of the criticisms with a lot of the ecology movement is that it's done on what we would call, you know, weird people, western educated. I don't remember all the acronyms, but you know, there's so much of it's done on say like white college students as an example.

And it's so interesting to see you go to a different cultural context and you find something very different, which does really speak to the extent to which our beliefs, what we actually believe and and what our culture tells us to believe, drives a fair amount of what we experience. I'm often shocked by how profound that sometimes can be. Yeah, I think psychology has got a lot of catching up

to do in this respect. You know, I've been writing up reporting new psychology findings for I think over twenty years now, and it's amazing how many involved white undergrads, especially psychology undergrads in the US or British universities or European universities. So do anything I would say about on this topic of willpower and what have you is there are some pretty cool studies. I found it useful myself anyway. You know, that suggests people who more successful at resisting temptation.

These are high scorers and conscientiousness, and they do a better job at resisting temptation and achieve more of their goals. Actually, the willpower question is almost like a red herring, because it's not that they are better exerting willpower. They seem to be really canny at kind of avoiding temptation in the first place. Yeah, their daily routines and and that kind of thing. They seem to steer themselves away from

the harmful obstacles to what they want to achieve. It's not so much that they've got this kind of ironclad warpower. That's something I try and think of for myself. Yeah, in terms of being a bit more strategic about dodging temptations in the first place. As a recovering alcoholic, I am very familiar with that idea. Right, the less of it you're around, the better chance you have. That's not to say you can't get sober being around it. The second time I got sober, I was around a lot

of thinking. But as they say old the colloquialism from a a was if you hang around a barbershop long enough, sooner or later, you're probably going to get a haircut. You know, the same basic idea. I'd like to hit a couple of things from recent Psyche articles. Um, although I want to say just a couple of quick things about your book for people. You've got ten rules for

personal reinvention that I think are really great. I wish we had more time to get to them, but a lot of them really come down to, like you said, believing that you can make a change and also being realistic about how much you can change. I mean, I summarized ten rules into two, but those were sort of the two big things that that stood out to me. Would you concur yeah, I think so. There are some findings that wishing to change your personality without being prepared

to do anything about it is it almost harmful. It almost kind of backfires. Just desiring to change but then not having a plan for how you're going to achieve that change kind of backfires properly because of of frustration that you're kind to then experience because you don't have a plan. So when it comes to being realistic, I think people do need to be honest with themselves about how much are they willing to disrupt the way they

currently do things. That's such a great point, right, which is that we often times will keep thinking, well, I really wish I could be or do X, you know, but without really thinking about what it would take to be or do X, and so we feel bad about ourselves because we're not doing it. But if we were to actually really look at what it would take and then go, am I willing to do that? And we might go no, I'm not, in which case then we

can sort of set it aside. The example I always uses when I started this podcast at the same time was like, I really want to be in a band again. I really want to be in a band again, And I was feeling bad because I wasn't making that happen. When I finally looked at my life in the structure and the time, I went, there's no way that both these things are going to occur, and so I'm going to pick this one. And then I was just able

to let that one go. And boy did it reduce a certain amount of psychic stress on me of you know, like you said, thinking I should make a change, but not being in a position to do it, or having to plan to do it, being realistic about how much change is going to be possible, bearing in mind how far you're willing to go, Yeah, to make changes in

your life with you know, changing your routine. That could be changed, getting a new job, it could be changing your relationships, moving house, you know, living in a different place. The more things you keep the same around you, the more likely you also are going to stay the same after all. Yeah, yeah, in your rules for change, that's a big one, right. You talk about environment. You also talk about you're more likely to succeed with the help

of others, which is obviously a key piece. All Right, So I want to pivot because I know you've got a hard stuff. But there was a recent article in your magazine Psyche. You didn't write it, but I wanted to ask you about it because it's something that's been spinning around in my mind and I hadn't seen anybody articulated until recently, which was really an article that talked about trauma and are we starting to overuse that word?

Are we starting to overdiagnose it? And the woman as her name, I don't know how to pronounce it, Ahna Guha, but she really talks about starting to notice the difference between trauma and distress, and I was just kind of curious. I know, you see a lot of articles, you see a lot of research. You know, you're kind of a bird's eye view of all this. What's your thought on

where we are with the trauma discussion? Because the feeling I've been starting to feel in my gut a little is sort of what she's saying, like, It's great that we've recognized the role of trauma, but are we starting to overdiagnose? What are your thoughts? I think she was flagging up that if you thought to use the term too loosely, to apply it all over the place to any kind of bad experience or difficult experience, you know,

you rob it of its true meaning. In psychiatric terms, you know, post traumatic stress is extremely serious condition and it comes with a sway of very very difficult symptoms like flashbacks and that kind of thing, and that kind of reliving. The traumatic occasion can be triggered even in context where you're actually safe, you know, which is a terrible experience to you know, keep going through. I think yeah, And the point I think she's making is it's just

getting banded around so much. There has been a realization that you don't have to have been in a life threatening situation to experience trauma or traumatic reaction, because traditionally, I think it was thought it has to be you know,

your life had to be threatened. So there has been a kind of broadening, but she's worried about it becoming open ended, where it's just becoming used for any old you know, you have an argument with your boss, and you know, the idea, oh, I'm traumatized because I had an argument with my boss, or some people called me some names on the train to work, and you know,

I'm so traumatized. So she's worried about it losing its specificity if we use it too loosely, and I think that has been going on to some Then the point that she made that I really liked was she says it's possible to acknowledge note and soothe distress without needing to legitimize it by assigning at the trauma label, and that if we do too much of this assigning of trauma to things that maybe aren't quote unquote trauma, and I know it's there's no clear line that we actually

decrease our psychological flexibility and resiliency. And I thought that was another sort of interesting point with it. You know, it seems like we had, you know, for a long time, we were all about capital T trauma right like the you know, rape or war or and then we started talking about lowercase T trauma like you know, childhood emotional neglect, things like that. It almost seems like we're trailing into like you know, super miniature tea, you know, for lack

of a better way to say it. And I don't know what the answer is. Again, it's just something I've been feeling as I do reading and talking to people, and her article just sort of helped crystallize some things for me. Yeah, Well, because I think language matters, doesn't it. You know, the terms we use matter, and people who have been through a genuine trauma, it only helps them for the term to be thrown about in a loose fashion.

That's not to say that aren't difficult experiences, as you say, at the kind of sub trauma level, of course, there are, you know, and you you want to help those people too. Yeah. By immediately going for the t words for any difficult experience,

I think no one benefits from that. Yep. And back to the point we made earlier about what you believe about something, whether you believe willpower is a depletable resource or whether you believe it ramps up what we believe about what happens to us and the stories we tell. And that's a whole Another part of your book we didn't really get a chance to get into, is so important and so in that way, language matters, and that's one of the reasons I love the work you do.

Your book is wonderful. It's out in paperback. I highly recommend it. And your online magazines is that what you would call it? An online magazine? Yeah, yeah, that's right. That a good word for it. YEA psyche is so good to You're an editor there and a writer, and there's so many great articles that always cause me to think, and so I know we're out of time. I admire your work, Christian, and I'm so happy we've got a

chance to talk with you. Oh, thank you very much, Eric, I already appreciates it, And thank you for your kind words about the book and Psyche Magazine. Yeah, we published yet Psyche Magazine. Every week we publish a new guide. Some of them are clinical guides that help people address mental health problems or difficulties. And we have kind of life skills guides about you know, the endeavor of lifelong learning. And yeah, I hope some of your listeners will check

out Psyche Magazine. And thanks Eric, thanks so much. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now. We are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support,

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