About this episode
This episode explores the complexities of personal change and the misconceptions surrounding behavior and personality.
If you've ever tried to change something about yourself, failed, tried again, and concluded you must just be broken, here's some good news: you're probably not broken. You've just been aiming at the wrong target for years. Who you are is actually a layered system. There's your personality, the deep set points you were largely born with. There's the layer of adaptations you've built on top of that, the beliefs, identities, and emotional patterns that help you navigate the world. And there's your behavior, what you actually do day to day. Most people fail at change because they treat behaviors like permanent traits and traits like behaviors they can flip overnight, spending years aiming at the wrong layer. In this episode, Drew and I map out the full system. We get into why the most popular personality test in the world was invented by a failed novelist and predicts almost nothing about you, why the Big Five is the single most replicated finding in all of psychology, and why insight on its own is the smart person's favorite way to procrastinate. We talk about why willpower is overrated and environmental design quietly does most of the work, why putting your gym shoes by the door…
People in this episode
Host: Mark Manson
Guest: Drew
Topics covered
- personal change
- psychology
- behavioral patterns
- self-improvement
- willpower
- environmental design
Keywords
- change
- personality
- Big Five
- willpower
- environmental design
- self-improvement
- behavior
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Big Five, personality test
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