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
You know, do you make an effort to like read self-help books? It's kind of like the stuff that you do and absorb into yourself. that creates that other part of personality. So that's the kind of element that I'm talking about is that like, yeah, if you have two parents who are totally bookish and hate talking to people, you're going to naturally be kind of like, I feel really introverted.
But if you, you know, go into a job in sales and you talk to people, you know, all day and everyone around you is extroverted and you get like high fives and promotions for being extroverted like you're gonna be a little bit more extroverted than you naturally would be if that makes sense so it's kind of like at some point reinforcement does kind of work like
Yeah. So, um, that's like the whole book. So, um, let me just break it down into, let's talk about extraversion first. Cause I think that is like the easiest to wrap your head around and also has had the clearest results. Um, so, um, extraversion, basically the secret to increasing extraversion is to socialize with people. Some of the other traits are more existential and more like mindset
oriented and kind of like how you think about things um extraversion is like very clear-cut go talk to people like go do activities um so I signed up for a bunch of stuff I signed up for improv um sailing club uh a bunch of meetup groups um so which is like groups of strangers meeting up literally I like threw a party at my house. I just went out all the time.
I went from basically going out maybe once a week to going out like pretty much every night or like not and not like going out drinking, like although there was a lot of drinking. I can imagine. Like just being around people. And I found that like almost every time before I went, I dreaded it. I did not want to go. I was like, I hate improv. I don't even know why I'm doing this. This is stupid.
Like, I don't want to go. And then almost every time after I would do it, I felt better. I was like, that was super fun. Or like, that person in the sailing, my sailboat today was really interesting. Or like, that was cool. Or like, hey, like I... got to get whatever, a burger on the way back home.
Like there was something that came out of it usually that I was like, huh, that was like a nice break from the day. That was like a nice way to like liven up the day a little bit. And I think that's kind of like the, when I talk about increasing extroversion or like changing your introversion, you can remain an introvert, but just do like 20% more stuff, like connect with people 20% more.
And there's a little bit of a mood boost there. Like researchers who are introverts have studied this concept and have found that like even just connecting with people a little bit, and it doesn't mean that you have to be like the life of the party. Like I think people assume extroversion means like
you're super talkative and like can't shut up and, you know, or you're always telling jokes, you can like go hang out with two close friends and like, you know, listen more than you talk and like knit the whole time. And that's still extroversion. That's, you know, still being around people. So yeah, for that one, my extroversion did go up. And I think what I took away from that is that like,
I do enjoy having fun. I need to sometimes force myself to have fun. But it's okay to do that. It's okay to commit to an exercise class or to something else that doesn't sound super appealing all the time but ends up being rewarding.
Yeah. So neuroticism, I also saw an improvement. So neuroticism, I will cut to the chase. I meditated a whole lot. And meditation is also something that I did not enjoy. I didn't even enjoy it while I was doing it. And I did not enjoy it after I was done. I was not like, that was really nice. That sounds painful. Thank God I don't have to do that for another 24 hours.
I signed up for a class where we had to meditate for 45 minutes every day, which is so long. It's literally the longest 45 minutes of your life. However, it did work. My neuroticism went down and my anxiety went down a little bit, but my depression went down a ton.
um it went down a lot like to basically like not being depressed anymore um and why that happened is sort of anyone's guess um if i had to like posit why that occurred it's that um i did a lot of what's called loving kindness meditation which is where you're just like really nice to yourself um for however long and it's usually i do it to like a guided like a tape basically
people don't use tape anymore, like a recording, like a guided. Yeah, exactly. Like a guided recording. And it's like, you know, like, like there's like the line that always makes me cry is like, there's, you can search the whole universe for someone who is more deserving of love and happiness than you are yourself and not find anyone. And it's like, like, you're like,
And you're just like, oh, my God. You need to know what this tape is. So it's Sharon Salzberg. And I use the 10% Happier app for meditation.
Yeah, yeah. I have a podcast.
No. I think you're thinking of Judd Brewer. The 10% happier is Dan Harris.
Yes. Yeah. I mean, everyone has a podcast. Yeah. Oh, my God.
It's so embarrassing. But he, yeah. But it actually, like, really worked. I think, like, there's something about, like, repeating that. I don't know. And my meditation teacher also really tried to, like,
I think what it did is made me less afraid of my negative emotions. So you're sitting there like sometimes for hours and you're just like your mind is like going and going and it's silence, you know? And I think what it does is like, for me at least, I don't know if this is like correct, but for me at least, it made me like inevitably like negative feelings will come up during that.
Showing 81–100 of 118 · page 5 of 6
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