John Burn-Murdoch

And you've had generations that knew this was the case, that climbed the ladder, worked hard, got a house.

Immediately, that's a bit of anxiety or stress reduced from their lives.

Sure, there's still a lot else going on, but they've now got a stable base to build from, sense of security.

And now you have a generation or two generations come along who start out with that belief.

They put the work in and they don't get that result.

So I think you can see how that could certainly shatter that sense that hard work is rewarded, but also can give that sense of constant insecurity that I'm still not there yet.

I'm still scrabbling.

Or even if that individual might have now gone onto the housing ladder, there are enough people around them, whether online or offline, who are still putting this message out that you can see how there could be a material basis for what we're talking about here.

Yeah, I think there's two ways of looking at this.

One is that there is a decent amount of evidence that people's personalities can change.

And this is where we could get into the weeds of what do we even mean by personality.

Now, for me, your personality is essentially the accumulation of your behaviours.

And so even if you're born a certain way, you can change your behavior.

I'm sure most people listening to this have done this in one area of their life.

And so there are some, there is in fact a wealth of evidence that specific training courses and other interventions can be used

to tweak one's innate self, to be a more conscientious or less neurotic version of yourself, for example.

Everyone's familiar with, for example, cognitive behavioral therapy, which of course can help with neuroticism.

There are similar types of exercises for conscientiousness.

And the other thing here is a lot of this is about habit formation.

Someone could be innately slightly less conscientious, but if you build structures and habits into your life that take away the need to constantly be trying all the time to do something, if you instead turn that into a routine, that can help.