The Real Reason You Can’t Change Your Personality

00:00:00There's a paradox of self-awareness thatI think we all struggle with and it kindof doesn't make sense on the surfacewhich is that we spend every moment ofour entire lives with ourselves. So youwould think that we would understandourselves better and more accuratelythan anybody else.Yet we all struggle so intensely toaccuratelyperceive ourselves. We all have blindspots. We exaggerate certain aspects ofourselves. We we imagine that everybodyis looking or laughing at some aspect ofourselves that they don't even notice.And so there's this weirdcontradiction in each of us in that weare self-obsessed yet we are notaccurate in our obsessions. And I thinkthis obsession with understandingourselves is it's a natural human driveand it is the reason why we're so drawnto all these personality tests, allthese assessments and I don't know ifyou remember like back in the old dayswith Facebook, there were like new likewhat Harry Potter character are you orlike what Star Wars character are youand everybody would sign up and take allthese tests and then send it to theirfriends and compare them. There'ssomething about defining and labelingourselves that isdistinctly human

00:01:15and natural. And ofcourse marketers discovered this at acertain point and they startedleveraging it to sell their [ __ ] to us.And certain personality assessmentsproliferated in the corporate world andare probably the most popularpersonality assessments today. Now themost popular of these corporate drivenassessments is known as the MBTI or theMyers-Briggs Type Indicator. And Iimagine you've taken it a bunch oftimes. I've taken it a bunch of times.But do you know your type off the top ofyour head?>> Wellum well it depends. Remember we justkind of>> [laughter]>> Um depends what day of the week you youtook it.>> Yeah a little bit. A little bit, yeah. IN G I N JFOh, you said>> I N F J>> I N F J, there we go.>> Okay. I'm I'm generally I N T P,although I've been an E N T P in thepast. People love this. Like I've beenin so many groups and forums. I mean,there are people people put this intheir LinkedIn profiles. People will askyou this at job interviews.>> I've seen people with t-shirts that havetheir type on them.>> Really?>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.>> It's amazing how sticky this test is.And it's funny because when we announcedthat we were doing this episode, we gotmultiple people requesting

00:02:30that we talkabout M B T I on the episode.To which my response wasthis person's not going to be happy withwhat we have to say.>> Right, [laughter] right. Yeah, yeah.>> So, this is the story of theMyers-Briggs Type Indicator. So, mostpeople who are really into the M B T I,they will reference that it is based onJungian psychology, Carl Jung, Freud'sprotege.This is true>> Yeah, in the abstract. [laughter]>> Yeah, yeah.>> It's kind of Jungian like in the waythat Limp Bizkit is hip-hop. Like it's>> Okay.>> Yeah.>> inspired by, but like no rational personwould actually call it>> Apologies to Fred Durst.>> hip-hop. No, no apologies to Fred Durst.[laughter]>> Come on. Okay.>> Let's be real. Let's be moredisagreeable, dude.>> all right.>> [laughter]>> So, in his notesJung tried to categorize people based onhis clinical observations. And heidentified what he called two attitudes,which is actually introversionextraversion. This is where introversionextraversion comes from, it comes fromJung. And then four functions, and thosefour functions were thinking, feeling,sensing, and intuition. Now,interestingly, Jung did not put

00:03:45anyweight into these types or categoriesthat he came up with. He kind of justwrote them as a brainstorm and was like,this is kind of interesting to thinkabout. And he explicitly said that youshouldn't categorize people, and youshouldn't base a person's personalitybased on like one of these simple thingsthat he identified. Yet, that did notstop people. It was actually an Americanwoman named Katherine Briggs whodiscovered Young in around 1920, becamereally obsessed with his work, loved it,and took it upon herself to become theAmerican English interpreter of Young'swork. And so, she translated a bunch ofhis work, she wrote a bunch of articlesabout him, she popularized him in theAmerican consciousness, she hadarticles that appeared in the NewRepublic about him. And so, she was justtalking about Young all the time. Shereally made a career out of spreadingand proselytizing Youngian psychology toto the American public. Now, she had adaughter named Isabel Briggs Myers. Now,Isabel was a novelist, and she wrotesome mystery novels,had a modest amount of success, but itwasn't until World War II when womenwere being called into the workforce inmass that there was a real need toquickly identify

00:05:00each woman's naturalstrengths and tendencies. And Isabel sawthis as an opportunity to create somesort of personality type system thatwould quickly identify what each womanwas good at, what they were bad at, andso that they could be quickly allottedinto a job or a line of work that couldutilize their skills and talentseffectively. Now, of course, Isabel grewup with her mom constantly talking aboutYoung, so Isabel relied on some of thatearly Youngiancategories and functions that she haddiscovered. And this is how you get thefour spectrums of the MBTI system. So,the first spectrum isintroversion-extraversion, the secondone is intuition versus sensing, thethird one is thinking versus feeling,and then she just kind of made up thefourth, which is perceiving versusjudging. It's funny that that's the oneshe made up because that's the one Ifind that like nobody knowswhat it means.>> What it means or what to do with it,yeah.>> Yeah, exactly. I guess perceiving iskind of low conscientiousness.Uh, you're like spontaneous, you don'tplan things. And judging, apparentlyyou're very conscientious, you're veryrigid, structured, all all that stuff.>> Judicious, yeah.>> Yes.>> Yeah.>> And so Isabel started administering theMBTI test from her dining room table

00:06:16with her mother during World War II.There was no scientific validation,there was no peer review, there was nocontrol group, it just spread likewildfire. Now, this eventually caught onamong government administrations. Theydecided, "Well, we need to usesomething, so why not this?" So theyused it throughout the 1940s, and by the1950s, it had actually been codified bysome governmental agencies as alegitimate test to give to people tomeasure their personality, their naturaltalent, their natural skill sets. By the1960s,corporate consultant groups startedapplying the MBTI to their Fortune 100clients. And by the 1980s, it was Ithink it was 89 out of the top 100companies in the world had administeredthe MBTI to their entire workforce. Thisis where you get all these theories oflike certain MBTI types like work bettertogether, and some are uh,you know, better at at certainmanagerial positions, and some MBTItypes should date each other, and someshouldn't date each other. There's allthese like hairbrained theories goingon.None of it was validated. None of itreplicated any sort of empirical study.It was all spread simply through theexpediency of the corporate world.Today, it's estimated that 2 millionpeople per year take the MBTI

00:07:32in acorporate setting. My degree is ininternational business, so I took abunch of business courses. I remember inour organizational behavior course, halfof the entire course was spent on MBTI.>> Oh, really?>> Yes.>> Oh, wow.>> Like we spent everybody took the testand like there were like longdiscussions of like how you shouldorganize a team around different MBTItypes, how certain MBTI types workedwell together, some didn't.It's all just like [ __ ]pseudo-science.>> That's the business department atuniversities.>> Well, this is just>> Not as empirical.>> Reason number 250 to not study businessin university, kids.>> Yeah.>> So this test has withstoodat this point almost 100 years ofpopularity and is taken by millions,tens of millions of people around theworld. It is taken seriously by some ofthe richest corporations in the world.It just blows me away how sticky it is.AndI think it really comes back tothe importance that we place on likeknowing ourselves. We want somethingthat will reflect ourselves back to usso that we can have a properunderstanding of who we are and whatwe're doing. And it and I can't tell youhow many times I I have ended up inconversations with people who have askedme about the MBTI and I have to sitthere and tell them like

00:08:47it's basically a horoscope for smartpeople. They're like, "No, man. No, youdon't under- understand. Like it's I Ihad my whole team take it. It's likeit's amazing. It's changed the businessorganization." All this stuff. To meit's really notable just how far thishas traveled and how much legs it hasunderneath it.>> Well, it almost it feels like itresolves that paradox that you opened upwith, right? It feels like it resolvesthat. We have this deep need to know whowe are. And so here's a tool. You justhave to sit down and then we're going tospit back out this label for you. And soit feels like it resolves that paradoxfor you. And so I'm I'm sure there's awhole bunch of people like really pissedoff at me right now and they're like,"What are you talking about? I'm an E NJ F T.">> I S F J.>> What yeah.>> [laughter]>> Okay. Okay. Cool. But let me bring youdown a>> their dreams. Just destroy their dreams.>> Repeated tests on this like actualempirical tests where you go out and youactually try to sit down and parse thisall out, right? There's really badreliability with this test. Somewherebetween a third and half of the peoplewho retake it, even just a few weekslater, get different results. Okay? So,right away, I don't know if you weretaking a a blood test of some kind orsomething and a third to half the timeyou got something different, would yourely on that test? No, absolutely youwouldn't, right? It's a more of a coinflip than it is a a personality test atthat point, right? The other problem,which you've

00:10:03already alluded to as well,is the the kind of the binary nature ofthese labels that you have. Young neveractually said these were even categoriesnecessarily. He's like, these arespectrums probably of something that youcan you can shade towards one end ofthis or the other. And yet, doesn'tmatter if you're 51% extroverted, you'rean extrovert. You're an E. Uh on thatday, if you're 51% of anything, you'rethat thing. No, there's actually acontinuum uh and again, kind of adistribution around which you kind offloat. Unlike the Big Five too, the uhMBTI actually does not predict very muchat all. Whereas the Big Five doespredict like the job performance likethat I talked about, relationshipsatisfaction, mental health.MBTI we cannot reliably predict any ofthose things, any of those realimportant outcomes that we would wewould hope they would uh predict. Justdoesn't predict it. There's no measureof neuroticism.There is like a subcomponent that theykind of try to throw in as like I thinkit's assertive versus tumultuous. I meanthat's I don't think those are goodlabels to begin with, but it reallydoesn't get at neuroticism. And youcould argue like we did earlier is thatthat's one of the most important uhpersonality traits for your mentalhealth and well-being in the long run.Doesn't even measure that.

00:11:18So, just allof that taken together should at leastput a little kernel of doubt in yourmind if you're really stuck on your MBTIscoreor your type that there's somethingthere's something off here. Recently Iretook this test, right, in prep forthis, and I was an INFJ. Uh I know I Itook it a while back and I was an ISTJ.>> Okay.>> Um so my two middle uh labels flipped.>> Flipped, yeah.>> Right? And I think it was just becauseof the mood I was in, I'm sure. Like, uhyou know, I was feeling a little moreemotional and so all of a sudden I'm anINFJ.>> Yeah. Emo Emo Drew's.>> I was Emo Drew. I was Emo Drew a coupleweeks ago when I took this, right?That's And that's how it goes. Ifsomething can't be reliably reproducedlike that, that should raise a red flagright off the bat. And then all theother things that went through.>> It does blow my mind howdurable this test has been, thepopularity of it.>> The stickiness, like you said, it's justincredible. So why Why then Why do weWhy do we cling to these? Why like Whyare we so obsessed with these?>> I think there's an inherent importanceof self-knowledge. It circles back tothe whole point of this episode. How doyou change? You can't figure out how tochange until you understand who you areand what your natural predisposition is.I think we instinctually seek outinformation and frameworks that willreflect back to us an accurate

00:12:33pictureof who we are. We feel this There's likea deep-seated need to feel some sort ofcertainty and predictability around whowe are. I think this is why people lovehoroscopes. I think it's why people getreally into like stuff like theEnneagram. I think it's it's why peopleare like obsessed over astrology. And Ithink it's why corporate people arereally into MBTI. It gives them thatfalse sense of certainty. It is aplausible framework that is justaccurate enough for them tofind some credibility in it and then,you know, base some decisions off of it.>> What you're getting at is a little bitof like the Barnum effect, right?>> Yes.>> Like it's There's a little bit of truthto it because it's so general that it'skind of applicable to everyone. So theBarnum effect is uh basically you cangive someone a like a generaldescription of just about anything. Thisis how horoscopes tend to work, okay?You just make these generalizations thatcould be true of just about anyone. Andif you're reading it and this text istelling you that this is what you areand it's so generalum and usually almost always positive aswell. It's just the the human brain isgoing to just accept that.>> justifying why it's true, right? So,it's like I could sit down and let's saywe've never met and I could sit down andlet's say I'm a fortune teller, quoteunquote, right? And I could start sayinglike, "Oh, you're

00:13:49somebody who's beenthrough a lot in your lifeandyou do a lot for others, butsometimes you're not appreciated, right?Like these are things that are literallytrue about every single [ __ ] person,right? But it's when somebody says thatto us, we feel so seen. We're like, "Ohmy god, they understand me." And this isit's essentially what horoscopes aredoing. It's like leveraging thiscognitive bias to affirm a reflection ofourselves that we like. You want tobelieve that you've been through a lotand people don't appreciate you. So, ofcourse when somebody says that to you,you're going to be like, "Yes.">> Right.>> Right? When an MBTI says, "Yeah, youtend to get in your head a lot and thatcauses you you know, means you're reallysmart, but it also causes some problemscuz you're a little bit cerebral whenyou should be feeling a little bitmore." And you're like, "Yes, that'stotally me.">> Yeah, the confirmation bias too. It'slike anything that is could beinterpreted as negative, you're probablyjust going to dismiss that as well. So,you have those two powerful effectsgoing on, the Barnum effect and theconfirmation bias kind of two sides ofthe same coin a little bit, but>> This episode is brought to you byWealthfront. Now, we've been talkingtoday about how change actually works.And here's the part worth holding on to.Most of who we are isn't something youcan change by simply deciding to. Yourbehavior is, though. You change onespecific thing, change your environmentso it makes it easier than thealternative, and then you let thatbehavior

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00:16:19For more information,please see the episode description. Solet's talk about why this matters andwhy this is actually very dangerous.>> Isn't this just harmless market isharmless fun? You're you're on you're onwhatever, you know, back in the day likeyou were talking about the personalitytest on Facebook. It's just fun. It'sjust harmless fun.>> I will ruin your dinner party if you letme. Soa number offemale friends of mine have been reallyinto astrology and and I just [ __ ]rain on their parade.>> Yeah.>> Because this is this is why this isactually not helpful. Labels matter.When you label yourself something, youwill start looking for evidence thatthat label is true.And this is why shame is so damaging,right? So when you label yourself asan unlovable or an unworthy person, youwill unconsciously start seeking outrelationships that confirm that thatperception of yourself. So if you takesome test and the test is like you're avery sensing person who like needs towork with your hands, you're going tostart looking for confirmation of thatin the world whether or not it's true.And if it's not true, then you're goingto bump into a lot of friction in thethings that you pursue and the thingsthat you try to do. And this is whyaccuracy around our traits is just soimportant.

00:17:34Because traits can't reallybe changed, you have to be accurateabout them. The most important thing isthe accuracy. Because if you'reinaccurate about the about a trait, ifyou become convinced that you say youare very extroverted when you areactually very introverted, then you weregoing to spend your life fighting yourown introversion and creatingtons of unnecessary struggle and andfrustration for yourself. So there's areason bogus personality tests havesurvived for decades without scientificsupport. I mean they're they're fun,they're almost always flattering, theytell us something that feels true, butalso like isn't necessarily verifiableor like not really debatable. There's nolike friction or tension of like tryingto likeyou know, actually understand if it'saccurate or not. I think it gives us a afalse sense of certainty. Like, okay, wedon't have to question this part ofourselves anymore. Like there's justthis constant likeun- not knowing of like, is this reallyright for me? Like, is this who I shouldbe? Should I try this other thinginstead? And like that that's a verystressful place uncomfortable to be allthe time. Yeah. Yeah. And so when when atest comes around and it's like, "No,you shouldn't do that. You should dothis."There's a There's a certain amount ofrelief that comes with that.>> with that clarity, yeah.>> Right. It's like, "Oh, I don't have toworry

00:18:49about this anymore.">> But figuring out who you are, it's it'sdifficult. It's painful. I think thatagain, that goes with that clarity. Ifyou just have this label that we cangive you,you don't have to worry about that,right? You just don't have to worryabout that anymore. This is what I amand okay, I'm not going to question it.I'm not going to sit with it. I'm notgoing to be uncomfortable with it. I'mnot going to have to change my mind atany time down the road.>> Yeah.>> All the uncertainty is gone.>> This actually comes up all the time inin personal growth and in psychology,right? So, if you label yourself somesomething and it's not accurate, thenyou're going to cause a lot of strifeand hardship and stress. But, if thatlabel is accurate, then it can actuallybe extremely useful. I was diagnosedwith ADHD when I was young. I tried medsfor a while. You know, we talked aboutthis on the focus episode. And I wentthrough this long period of my lifewhere I actually just rejected the labelof ADHD. And I didn't find it helpful.>> And then now I've kind of come backaround to it and I'm like, "Yeah, itmight be useful, actually. Kind ofexplains some of my tendencies and my mymy mental habits.">> The danger is that if you adopt a labeland there's just like the underlyingbehavior is not there, the underlyingevidence is not there, then then you'regoing to start seeking out the evidencein the world where it it wouldn'tnaturally be. You run into this, too,with like addiction groups, right? Imean, I've had this conversation withrecovered alcoholics and I've

00:20:04like toldthem my story with alcohol and I and Iasked them like,"Does that con->> constitute alcoholism?" And they'relike, "Well, it depends. Like, is thelabel useful for you? Cuz if it's not,then like don't call yourself analcoholic. Only call yourself analcoholic if you find that label usefuland it feels true to you."Because it like again, helps you developthose adaptations.>> Another one I'll throw in, too. Thisexcuses a lot of shitty behavior.>> [laughter]>> It's true. And it's true.>> Yeah, it it's a responsibility shield,right? Um it's like, "Well, I'm I'm anintrovert, so I don't have to do that."Or>> I'm ADHD, so you can't ask me to doanything.>> Like, I am who I am, take it or leaveit, right? And that's a shitty way to goabout, you know, interacting with otherpeople. So, yeah, we're handed thislabel and then it's like, "Oh, now Ihave a shield and this explains all ofmy behavior and so I don't have to doanything about it." Okay, theexplanation of the behavior is only onepart of it or explanation of the e- whoyou are is only one part of it.>> And that's I I'll remind you, that's thefirst fundamental error we talked aboutin chapter one is is that mistaking thetrait for the behavior. It's you canhave a trait doesn't mean you can't havea contrary behavior.>> I would also argue a little bit too thatthe test like the MBTI that best whatthey're telling you is more about youradaptations.>> Mhm.

00:21:20>> It's not about your actual core traitsthat you>> I agree with that.>> But it's more about the stories thatyou're telling yourself about. I wouldsay that that's a real risk you'rerunning too is that this is really who Iam and so now I'm going to latch ontothose stories even harder.>> I think understanding the differencebetween those two things is absolutelycrucial.>> 100%.>> like understanding like okay>> 100% crucial.>> This is who I am and it's a trait whichmeans I'm probably not going to changeit, but this is who I am but it's anadaptation, it's a story, it's anarrative, it's a habit that I picked upand I can change that. And likedistinguishing between those two thingsis is absolutely fundamental. So I guessthat raises the question is what are thefundamental traits? And we've alreadytalked about the big five. We've alreadytalked about how predictive they are,how they can predict health outcomes,relationship quality, career success. Godown the list, the big five predicts itas well or better than pretty muchanything we've ever found. There aretraits that we carry that we can'treally change that are not limited topersonality traits. Like like chronotypefor instance, right? Like we we'vetalked before about how some people arejust naturally genetically predisposedto be night owls and some people arejust naturally predisposed to be morningpeople. And understanding which one youare and working with it rather than likefighting against it is way more

00:22:35effective. So like I would throwchronotype in there as like anotherexample of a a trait that you shouldjust identify and then accept ratherthan trying to change.>> there's a even deeper question thoughtoo around this which is like is is thisreally the big like are the big five thebase level of who you are? And that getsinto like this deeper philosophical typeof argument that we could have but youknow orgo to like the existentialist likeJean-Paul Sartre, right? He living inbad faith was if you think you can'tchange yourself. How deep does this go?That I'm not sure about, honestly. I'mnot I'm not honestly not. I think thisis like the empirical way that wedescribe who we are.Is there a deeper level to it?Absolutely it could be. I'm not sure.Again, this is the best we have so far>> Yeah.>> uh, to to explain how we could changewhat we're going to talk about is ouradaptations and our behaviors.>> Yeah. I think what you alluded to thereis kind of uh,a blank slate>> Yes.>> philosophy, right? So, blank slateismcomes from John Locke in the 17thcentury and he wrote Essays ConcerningHuman Understanding. And in that book,he argued that uh, human beings are borntabula rasa, which is blank slate orit's like a empty tile, right? That ismeant to be written on. And so,everything of who we are

00:23:50comes from ourenvironment and our early experiences.This idea persists even today. Like youyou run into this. You don't run into itso much in psychology departments,probably as much othersocial sciences.>> Yeah.>> There's some humanities>> You run into it in>> departments that are>> It's kind of the default point of view.It's the default point of view offar left political ideology is thatwe're all born kind of pure and innocentand that it's society that corrupts usand it is all the trauma and awfulthings that happen to us that like bakein our personalities and everything.First thing I I II feel like I know with pretty goodcertainty, blank slateism is false. Andthere's just the amount of evidence thatis amassed, particularly over the lastlike 40 years, is just overwhelming.Almost every significant psychologicaltrait or measurement that we have,there's some degree of heritability>> Right.>> in involved in it. In some cases, a lotof heritability involved. Steven Pinkerhas a fantastic book called The BlankSlate. It is like a 600-page bookdigging into all of the research likedispelling the assumptions of blankslate ideology. And in that book,he talks about a certain category ofresearch which I'm completely fascinatedwith. It is

00:25:05probably some of the research that'sactually changed a lot of my personalpersonal views on just human nature andhuman behavior. And that is twinstudies. It started at the University ofMinnesota with a researcher namedBouchard, and he started identifyingtwins that had been separated at birthand adopted by separate families inseparate places. And so you get theseunbelievable stories of liketracking down two identical twins whogrew up in completely different places,completely different families,completely different socioeconomicconditions, different religions,different households, differentcultures, like everything. And it turnsout that likethey're both firefighters, they bothmarried a woman named Linda, they bothdrink the same brand of beer, they bothwash their car with a garden hose. Likeit it's justit's like all of these insanecommonalities show up across these theseseparated twins. And Bouchard decided toactually study this. And like there'sthis ancient question of nature versusnurture. Like how much of us is justborn into us, and then how much of us isdetermined by our environment? Andidentical twins who are geneticallyidentical, but who grow up in differentenvironments, they are kind of theperfecttool of measurement.>> Right, natural experiment. Yeah.>> to resolve this as

00:26:20much as possible.>> Mhm.>> Those early twin studies were very veryinformative um for for us to figure outlike what is the contribution of ourgenetics versus our environment. Parsingall that out, these these naturalexperiments that came about becausethese identical twins were raised apart.That gave us a great opportunity tostudy this, okay? Here's the thingthough in behavioral geneticsespecially. Heritability has a veryspecific definition. It doesn't meandetermined, okay? This is something thatI think our industry and we've probablyeven perpetuated this to some degree,too. When you hear the wordheritability, that's what you think. Iinherited this and there's nothing I cando about it. So, what those studies didshow though is that somewhere between40%and 60% of personality traits, the bigfive that we've been talking about, areheritable, okay? But heritability is apopulation leveluh measure, okay? It can't reallypredict any any individual differencesnecessarily. What it's really doing isit's telling you some the the degree towhich your personality traits in thatenvironment at that time with thosespecific people, that specificpopulation, how much of that can beattributed to genes. It does not meanthat these genes determined that.Actually, if you change the environment,the

00:27:35heritability um measure will change,too, okay? If that makes It probablydoesn't make sense, but that's thepoint.>> it's based on the variability,right? That's right. It's the variation.So, if you have a very stablenon-variable environment,>> Right.>> and most of the of observed variabilitybetween say two two twins,>> Yeah.>> uh or two people will be geneticallydetermined.>> It's not that the genes are causing thatnecessarily. It's not that they'redetermining that. It's just how much ofit is due to the genes versus theenvironment. And it depends on how muchof variation is in within both of thosetypes of things. So, it really is thatinteraction between genes andenvironment, okay?>> Okay. It's almost like there's like a astew, and and there'stwo types of ingredients in the stew,and like one is genetics and one isenvironment. The genetics, I guess,this is kind of how I'm imagining it.It's kind of a fixed amount.>> Yes.>> And then the environment, you can eitheradd a little bit of environmentingredients or a lot of environmentingredients, and depending on how muchyou add, the the proportion of geneticsgoes up or down. So, the genetics mattermore>> or less based on the environment. Yes,okay. So, I know that's a little bit ofan abstract like idea to wrap your headaround, but when you see this,especially like in in like

00:28:50thisself-help industry, they'll say, youknow, 40% to 60% is heritable. They callit half, right? So, 50% of who you areis determined>> They don't even say that, but>> [laughter]>> I've seen it I've seen it before.>> [gasps]>> And but, you know,>> Please say that. Most people are like,you can change anything tonight.>> Okay,>> [laughter]>> even the more nuanced version of that.>> I'll change your entire personality.>> that. I get that, too. But, even themore nuanced version where they say,"Okay, so half of your your personalityor who you are is determined by yourgenetics, but you know what? Turn lemonsinto lemonade, and that means halfisn't, right?" That's not what theheritability is saying at all. It's justsaying this is our best estimate frombehavioral genetics. When you startdoing molecular genetics, and you startlooking at what they call a genome-wideassociation studies, doesn't matter whatthose are, but um when you start doingthose, so far we've only found somewherebetween 5% and 15%of uh personality is heritable in inthose studies. So, it's somewherebetween 5% and 60%. That's what we cantell you right now.>> All right, that's that's not helpful.>> We really don't know. [laughter] Thepoint is we really don't know.>> Okay.>> How much of our our personalities andwho we are is actually geneticallydetermined, and it probably changesbased on the environment a lot, okay?>> Yeah.>> Well, to kind ofbring this

00:30:05back to practicality, it isdefinitely more heritable than mostthings, right? Like, say my preferenceof TV show>> Yeah, sure, or like a food you like orsomething like that. That yeah. Yeah,definitely. I don't know. There there isevidence that it is definitelyheritable, that it issomewhat genetically determined. It's atleast influenced by genes. We just don'tknow the extent to which it is. Prettymuch everybody in the field has come totheconclusion that yes, genes matter. Thedebate is really around the degree.>> Okay.>> Right? Of of what's going on.That said, yes, it still looks like itfor whatever reasonyour personality does getwell solidified through a combination ofgenes and environment fairly early onand it is harder to change over time.Personality is one of the most uh whatthey call polygenic features of humanitythat we study so far, which meansthere's like thousands of genes that gointo this and not you can't point to oneof them for any of that. Even even likethe the SSRI genes, which we thought inthe '80s and '90s like, "Oh, this islike a mental health. This This explainsneuroticism." That's what we thought forthe longest time. That's not even true,you know, which was like it's like asingle gene or small set of genes anywaythat determines those that variations.>> A certain amount of our personalityis heritable.>> Yes, it's influenced by genes for

00:31:20sure.>> And a certain amount isdriven by our environment in ourchildhood. And as you you said inpassing there, which I think this is areally important point to drive home,the older we get, especially as we enteradulthood and as we do get towardsmiddle age, to William James's point, itreally does start to set.>> Up to this point we've been talkingabout like you can't really change yourtraits a whole lotif you're like 15 years old andlistening to this, you are the probablythe exception.>> Right, you're a lot more malleable, yes.>> If you're 22, you're still kind of anexception, but maybe less of anexception than the 15-year-old. Whereasif you're listening to this and you'relike 45,it then>> Probably harder.>> Yeah, it's going to be very very hard.>> And that is what they've seen. So,between the ages of 20 and 40>> Okay.>> are about where we see like our ourpersonality traits really solidify. Andthat's a that's a a general rule that wesee, okay? Not steadfast, not everysingle time. Yes, there'ssome opportunities for change and that'swhat we're talking about, right? Butsomewhere between 20 20 and 40 is wherewe kind of see those set in more, okay?Depends on your your past experiencesand your experiences within that timerange, too.>> So, I think it's probably worth statingfor

00:32:36the listener younger listeners,you're going to have a little bit moreinfluence on these traits. So, if youare, say, very introverted and you'dlike to be more extroverted, or ifyou're not very conscientious, you'dlike to be more conscientious, thelevers that you can pull on thebehavioral and the adaptation level areprobably going to have a little bit moreforcethan, say, somebody listening who's50 or 60 years old.>> There are predictable shifts inpersonality, too, as you get older.>> Yes.>> For instance, uh as we age, we get moreconscientious. You already mentionedthis. You said you were not at all as ateenager or even in your even in your20s, and you're much more conscientiousnow, where you're taking care ofyourself, you clean up more.>> A little bit.>> A little bit.>> Yeah.>> Right, a little bit. Okay, that's fine.Agreeableness, too, that arises thatarises as you get older as well. Youknow, think about it likewhen you were younger anyway, like yourdad was a hard ass, and now he's likethis, you know, now he's a grandpa,right?>> Yeah, he's softy, yeah.>> Yeah, yeah.That's very predictable, too. Thathappens with almost everyone. Uhneuroticism falls, too, as we get older.We we we get more emotionally stable aswe get older. The thing about that is,though, is that everyone kind of tendsto do that.>> Right.>> And so, where you fall kind of in theorder, you know, if you were high inneuroticism as a young person, you'reprobably still going to be high as

00:33:51anolder person, but you're going to belower>> Right.>> than you were as>> It's like the entire tide shifts.>> Right.>> Um>> Your rank of where you are, though, kindof stays the same.>> Yes.>> Right.>> So, even though you may get lessneurotic as you age, so is everybody>> Everybody else around you is, too, yeah.>> So, if you are more neurotic than 99% ofpeople when you're young, you're stillgoing to be more neurotic than 99% ofpeople when you're old,>> but you'll be less neurotic than youngerpeople>> Yes.>> at that time.>> Okay.>> Yeah.>> Makes sense.>> They call this the maturity principle.Okay, where your conscientiousnessrises, your agreeableness rises,neuroticism go down goes down. I don'tknow if it's really a mark of maturityor not, but it does happen.>> I do think I think for people tounderstand this because again, comingback to understanding what is changeableand what is not is is at the core of ofeverything that we can do, right? Likeif you spend your time trying to changesomething that's not really going tochange.Or if something changes naturally, thattells us that it has little to do withour effort. I think what happens a lot,I can think of like some some friendsand family members who have like chilledout as they aged and just naturallybecome less neurotic. It but theyattribute it to like all the workthey've done or you know, like some bigkind of epiphany that they've had. Likethere's some sort of narrative

00:35:06that'screated to explainwhy they've chilled out so much over thelast 10 or 20 years when it's likeyeah, you just got older. And so it isuseful to know these things just tounderstand like, okay, this is thetrajectory you're going to be on. Thesepersonality traits do drift slowly overthe decades. If our goal in this chapteris to really just develop accurateself-understanding, then it's importantfor us to understand how our personalityis going to drift over time so that wecan properly attribute it to just thenatural aging process. I can't tell youhow many people I've talked to in saytheir 40s or 50s and they talk abouthow, you know, something's reallydifferent in their life and they're liketrying to come up with all sorts ofexplanations for why it's different andI'm like dude, you're 45.>> Yeah.>> [laughter]>> You lived life and you chilled out.>> you're not 30 anymore. Like of course ofcourse you don't want to do that thinganymore. Like that's it'd be weird ifyou did. So anyway, I I just think theaging thing here is significant andimportant.>> Yeah, absolutely it is. I guess onething I wanted to bring up too though,was that, you know, those types ofstudies where we do see that. Like it'spredictable, like pretty much the entirepopulation moves in that direction. Butwhat about the people who actually doput in a lot more work? Because if ifwe're just doing population level, thisis

00:36:21how people change and whatnot,doesn't that get kind of watered down bythe people who just don't even try? AndI don't think we've done those studies.I don't think we actually can know that.It is the the effort which is what we'regoing to really be talking about moreand more, like where are you aiming thateffort? I still agree it probablyshouldn't be at the like the traitlevel. You're describing the populationand how they how they shift over time.>> Right.>> Whereas you might have some outlierindividuals who do actually a lot of thework and could change. I don't I don'tknow. I'm not sure.>> It could be.>> Yeah.>> It may just be that some people are moremalleable than others, right?>> That's probably yeah. Maybe that's apersonality another one of thosepersonality traits that like howmalleable are you? That's yeah.>> I mean, we'll definitely get to that inthe adaptation section because>> I jumped ahead here, yeah.>> Yeah, like I cuz what I have found isthat some people are just kind ofnaturally predisposed to like rewritetheir own personal story very easily andand then other people like reallystruggle to let go of things.>> Okay. Well, that that actually kind ofgets to a point that I did want to maketoo. Neuroticism tie in your teenageyears, it goes down as you get older,conscientiousness goes up, all of that.Why does this happen though? Is like youwere you were making the case as you doyou got older, you chilled out, you'rewhatever, hormonal

00:37:36changes maybe or, youknow, you just experience in life. Maybeyou just maybe you're just tired, right?>> [laughter]>> Like I don't have>> I can identify with that.>> I don't have time for this [ __ ]>> I I get that. As you get older, you takeon more of these roles that require youto be more conscientious, to be moreagreeable, to be less neurotic. You havemore responsibility and you have morepeople counting on you. So all of thosethings have to come together a littlebit.>> sense. Like if you want the elder of thetribe, you probably want them to beextremely patient and chill and like noteasily floppable.>> Right. And things like marriage, too,that's going to change you. Having kids,that's going to that's going to make youmore conscientious probably and andprobably more neurotic, too. To somedegree. The aging process has a lot ofdevelopmental milestones that go alongwith it and those canon the margins shift your certainpersonality traits.>> Why are we banging on this for so long?Like the the we've we're really gettinginto the weeds on on this and>> and genome-wide association studies,yeah.>> Yeah, you think? [laughter]It is important [snorts]and and I think the reason that we arespending so much time on this is becauseultimately the goal of understandingyour personality, of understanding whoyou are, gaining an accurate sense ofself-knowledge,it boils down to self-acceptance. Itboils down

00:38:51tobeing comfortable with your owntendencies. And this is particularly aproblem in the self-help industry. Yousee this all the time. Like all themajor seminars andgurus in this space, they're basicallyadvertising that they can fundamentallychange who you are at your core. Right?So, if you've always been a shy, quietperson in a crowded room,they're advertising to you thatthey can change you, that you'll stopbeing that way, that it's your childhoodtrauma that made you that way and youjust need to like, you know, heal orwhatever. And the science just does notback that up. Andwhat I have personally found in my ownlife and what I have found with thethousands of people that I've talked toover the yearsis that real healing, quote unquote,is just accepting who you are.It's likeunderstanding likeI am a quiet person. I am never going tobe the person at the center of the room.Sure, I could maybe learn how to do thatin brief spurts and moments,but this is who I am and so I shouldadapt my lifeto what I'm starting with. It's likeimagine if I tried to sell you a seminartelling telling you that you can make itin the NBA.

00:40:07Like just follow my 10-step course andyou too will make it to the NBA despitethe fact that you're like 5'7" orwhatever. And likeit doesn't matter how what I teach you.I could say you could be like it's yourchildhood trauma that's holding youback. It's your It's It's the bulliesfrom school who convinced you that youcan't be an NBA player. Like you justweren't born with it. Like>> I wanted to be an NFL player when I wasThat really wouldn't have worked[laughter] out for me, right? And I Iaccepted very early on like that's notgoing to happen. I 100% agree with thatthat the moment you realize that oh,this is who I am and I'm okay with that.>> Yes.>> That'sironicallywhere you get the change the most. Thisis very Carl Carl Rogers.>> Yes, it is.>> All right, the positive self-regard andall of that.>> Yes.>> It's a It's a It's a weird thing. Ididn't feel that in general until likemy probably mid to late 30s. I startedfeeling that way where And I evenremember talking to some friends we weretalkingand I just said out loud for the firsttime just kind of might have beenthinking about it. I was like, you know,I'm I'm okay with who I am now. And thatwas just like a oh [ __ ] That was>> I feel like that's something that reallydoes happen in your 30s and 40s. It'sinteresting. We did that we did thatpiece like 10 years ago when I turned30. We asked everybody in my audienceover 40 like what they wish they knew at30. And I I

00:41:22distinctly remember so manyolder readers and fans writing in andsaying getting older is great. You knowwho you are. You accept yourself. Likeyou know how to work with your strengthsand weaknesses.And I really do think like a lot of ouryoung adulthood is spent bothtrying to influence who we are a littlebit because you know, at that age youstill are a little bit malleable and youstill can kind of nudge yourself in acertain direction.But also you're trying to understand whoyou are. You're trying to figure outlike okay, am I an extroverted person?Like if you asked me at 25 if I wasextroverted, I probably would have saidyes.Just because I like to party and I wasdating a lot. I didn't know. I didn'thave a clear understanding because I hadnot lived in enough context enough. Sosome of this is is simply like livingenough life to get an accurateperception of who you actually are at abase level andI don't want to say give up on trying tochange that base level, no, but acceptthat that base level, right? And it itAnd Carl Rogers does have that beautifulquote where he says that it's byaccepting myself that I'm finally ableto change, right? It's likeunderstanding like, "Okay, this is mystarting point.I accept the starting point.Now, how do I work and and move forward

00:42:37from here? It's about reorienting thequestion of what do you want to change?Why do you want to change it? Howchangeable is it? And if it is somethingas fundamental as your agreeableness oryour conscientiousness or how open youare to new experiences, I would say it'snot worth the effort. Like all of theevidence is so [ __ ] stacked againstyou. The amount of effort it takes tomove a personality trait just a tinybit, that effort is so much better usedin other places.>> You know what I think self-acceptancealso gives you? Actual clarity. Yeah, wewe talked about thethe personality test, the MBTI, and allthat, and one of the things we'reseeking is is clarity. Andagainst that uncertainty that we have,this is another level of clarity. Onceyou hit that self-acceptance, you'relike, "Oh,this is actually who I am, not what thistest told me.You know, not what somebody else told meor whatever." When you've actuallyfigured out and internalized it andlike, "Okay, this is actually who I am."Then you do have a lot of clarity aroundit. Now you know what to do.>> It is in a lot of ways the mostfundamental component of of ourpsychology. It's interesting when wewere developing purpose, a hill I waswilling to die on, I told the team, Iwas like, "We have to have a Big Fivepersonality assessment

00:43:53in the onboardingitself." Right? So, it's like when yousign up for the app,you are put through a quick Big Fiveassessmentbecause I I just explained to them I waslike, "Simply getting people's theusers' Big Five personality traits isn'tgoing to immediately make the AItwice as effective as like, you know,chat GPT out of the box. Just becauseit's there's so much [ __ ] researcharound the big five and like all theoutcomes it drives in people's livesthat just understanding those traitsabout somebody can like completely alterhow you talk to them, what sort ofadvice you give them,how how they should approach a differentcontext. So,understanding these things is like sofundamental and core. And then once youunderstand them, don't fight them. Likethere's nothing wrong with you. You canbe a disagreeable person. The worldneeds disagreeable people. We needpeople like be [ __ ] dicks and fightfor good things, right? We need lowconscientious people. We need people whoare just like go with the flow and arelike easy and they are happy to likelive in any situation. Like the worldneeds all types of people. And so,understanding what type of person youare can help you adapt and build abetter relationship that you have withthe world. So, everything in thischapter has been about your traits, thedeepest layer of your personality and

00:45:08who you are.It's the layer that is mostfundamentally you and what's mostunchangeable and inherent about you. Butin the next chapter, we're going to getinto the next layer and that's thatstarts to get into the layer that we canactually change. But to explain thatnext layer, we're actually going to endup debunking one of the most popularpsychological studies ever done. So, ourtraits are the deepest level ofourselves, at least that we'vediscovered at this point. I think it'suseful to think of them as the playingfield that you're working with. So,everything you do has to be kind of ontop of them.They define the game that you're playingeven if they don't determine everythingyou do within the game. But here'swhat's really interesting is that youcan have two people with extremelysimilar big five personality profilesbut completely different lives,completely different outcomes and theybehave completely differently indifferent contexts and circumstances.And so,the next layer up, which is theadaptation layer, which is essentiallyhow people take their internalpersonality traits and then interpretthem and use them in the world, is wherewe get into what really makes us uniqueas individuals. This is the level ofidentity. This is the level of worldviewand beliefs. This is the the level of uhroutines

00:46:23and habits and rituals. This isactually where we start to get into thestuff that you really can change. Andthis is some of the most powerful stuffyou can change. Digging into somenarrative you have about yourself andreinterpreting it and gaining a newunderstanding of how you relate to theworld, you can change these things andthey do have real lasting outcomes forpeople. So,that's what's coming up in the nextchapter.Anything you want to add before we go?>> Okay, no. I'm excited cuz this is whereit gets super interesting. So,>> This It gets Yes. This is where the meatis.>> Mhm. This is what they call the work.So,>> Yes.>> [music]>> What's up everybody? Thank you forwatching. This video is just one chapterof a much larger podcast episode aboutchange, where Drew and I covereverything from specific ways to changean annoying behavior to deep identitylevel changes. We'll be releasing newchapters every few days on YouTube, butif you want to watch or listen to thefull episode right now, click on thelinks in the description to watcheverything on Spotify. And if you likethe show, please don't forget tosubscribe. And if you want to work onthe topic at your own pace, we have afree PDF guide and workbook with all ofthe resources, citations, and exercisesat solvepodcast.com/change.So, I will see you soon.