Olga Khazan
speaker
118 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Olga Khazan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I got tired of drinking so much or, you know, I got tired of being so disorganized or, you know, one more person made a comment about how I'm always late and I decided I didn't like it. So it really depends. It's sometimes like it's a realization that someone else points out to you and sometimes it's something that comes from within yourself.
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Sure. My name is Olga Hazan, and I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic magazine. And I'm also an author of books. This is my second book. And it is actually kind of stems from a cover story I did for The Atlantic a few years ago. So that's that's my backstory.
Yeah, I can give you a spoiler. So the cover story, I kind of experimented very lightly with changing my personality. But then I kind of realized that I needed to do more. And kind of letting up on the experiment, I backtracked. I noticed that I was sort of falling back into old patterns. So the book is really an overview of the five traits of personality
My personal attempts to change on three of them and because the other two, I actually don't need to change. They're fine. They're very high in me as it is. But I do interview other people who increased on those traits through various methods.
Sure. Yeah. Wow. That's a long time ago. Yeah.
Graduated from high school like 20 years ago. Then I went to college, did not major in journalism, but I Really found myself drawn to journalism. I did an internship in journalism. And then I went to graduate school after I graduated from college, which is not like a necessary step for anyone listening at home, but it is something that I did.
Then I got a job at the Washington Post out of graduate school, and I worked there for a brief time. And then I moved to the Atlantic in 2013. And I've worked at the Atlantic ever since. And I've done a couple of different jobs there, but I've mostly been a writer covering like health and human behavior.
yeah um that probably was so when i did my internship in college i wrote one story um during that internship it was complex why i only wrote one but that that was like the amount that i was allowed to write um and it was about online gaming addiction um and uh i remember when it came out i felt so just accomplished like i was like yes like my life is all coming together and of course like
I wouldn't be a full-time writer for, I think, eight years after that. But it was, it was like very good motivation to keep going.
Yeah. So your personality, you know, a lot of people think it's sort of like what you like or dislike or sort of the kinds of things you say or whatever. But it's really a lot about your reactions to situations and kind of like something comes across your way. And are you like, yes, let's do it. Or are you like, oh, I don't know about that.
Or, you know, it's kind of like how you interact with the world. And I noticed that a lot of how I was interacting with the world was not, helping me really. Um, so the intro to the book kind of gives a good overview of this, but I had this day, this is before I had a kid and it was like, now having had a kid, I'm like, wow, this was actually like a fantastic day.
I should have just appreciated it. But you know, it was like, I got stuck in traffic. I got a bad haircut. I got photos taken that looked really bad. Um, I had a stressful thing where I had to like pick my mom up at the airport, but I had to go grocery shopping before. But like there was like a delay at the grocery store and then I was going to be late to pick up my mom.
And it was like this whole thing. And I just had a meltdown. I got back to my Airbnb that I was staying in and I was like, drank wine and like cried to my boyfriend at the time and was just like, I hate everything.
Um, and then I kind of got to thinking and I was like, even like me saying that now to you, I'm like, wow, that is so whiny and like unappreciative of the fact that like that day, you know, I was able to buy groceries. I was in Miami. Like I got myself to Miami. Uh,
I, you know, was getting a haircut, like spa day for me, you know, I got professional photos taken, like, you know, and it was sort of like I had this realization that like, wow, I can take anything good and positive and maybe or maybe even just like mediocre, right? Like a lot of things that happen in life are kind of like, oh, that was whatever.
And I have a tendency to dwell on the negatives and to emphasize the negatives and create these stories out of the negatives that were not serving me. And it was making me not enjoy my life to the extent that it could have and should have been enjoyed. And so that's kind of the long and the short of it, why I decided to change.
There's a time and a place to feel your emotions. You can feel your emotions and also like.
Yeah, so neuroticism was one of the things I wanted to change. So neuroticism is one of the five traits and it's just anxiety and depression, right? And I had a lot of that. I had a lot of anxiety and a lot of kind of negativity, as I mentioned. But there are other elements of personality and they sort of encompass those other things that you mentioned.
So actually, as far as like improving my neuroticism, a big thing I actually looked to was Buddhism and a lot of Buddhist teachings. Because a lot of neuroticism, it's not about like – reducing the number of things that happen to you that are bad. I mean, although if you're addicted to drugs and that's why bad things keep happening to you, that's something to look to.
Showing 41–60 of 118 · page 3 of 6
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