'I changed my personality in six weeks'

I've been neurotic since my teenage years, when I had my first panic attack, although it has lessened over the years.

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Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

16.02.2026. 20:20h

Lori Clark, BBC journalist

When I felt an itch on my hand a few months ago, which kept recurring, I immediately remembered an article about mysterious itches that were driving people crazy.

They scratched until they peeled off their skin and flesh, sometimes crippling or even killing themselves.

That's probably exactly what's happening to me., I thought in panic.

I experience similar episodes on a semi-regular basis.

And so it wasn't entirely surprising to me when I scored higher than 85 percent of respondents on an online personality test when it came to neuroticism.

I've been neurotic since my teenage years, when I had my first panic attack, although it has lessened over the years.

First of all, I believe, thanks to my gradual interventions - I reduced my self-criticism, tried not to obsessively engage in every social interaction and the various ways in which I certainly humiliated myself.

Then the editor offered me an intriguing task: Would I try to correct some aspects of personality, citing new research in the field?

The psychological model of personality with the most scientific basis is the "Big Five", which reduces it to five dimensions - openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, cooperation i neuroticizam.

Each is subsequently divided into additional traits, so that neuroticism, for example, includes excessive worry, rumination (a psychological phenomenon of constantly and repeatedly thinking about negative thoughts, problems, and bad experiences from the past or present), and emotional instability, while extraversion includes assertiveness and sociability.

Psychologists once believed that personality was fairly unchangeable.

"Some of my colleagues back in the 1980s argued that it was fixed until age 30 and things like that," says Brent Roberts, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois in the US and one of the most influential personality researchers.

"A lot of research has emerged in the last three decades that has tempered that view."

Psychologists have found that people tend to become less neurotic and more conscientious and cooperative over the course of their lives.

Researchers now think that these changes “stem from biological maturity and accumulated life experiences that foster responsibility in adults,” says Mirjam Stiger, a personality change researcher at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Lucerne, Switzerland.

In recent years, psychologists have conducted multiple studies on personality changes, and recent research suggests that we can accelerate this effect through conscious decisions.

A growing number of studies suggest that with targeted interventions, we can achieve levels of personality change in just a few months that we typically see over a lifetime.

I only had six weeks available for my experiment.

Home

My first stop was an online personality test.

I wanted to assess where I currently rank in the 'Big Five'.

It turns out that, in addition to skyrocketing neuroticism, I'm also very "open" - more open than 93 percent of people.

Openness indicates acceptance of new experiences and ideas, so I took that as a generally positive thing.

My conscientiousness was also very high, which was no big surprise, since I was a die-hard nerd in school and still exhibit an unfortunate tendency toward perfectionism.

My cooperation wasn't bad, but it wasn't exactly great either.

High scores on agreeableness usually mean that you are considerate, willing to cooperate, trust others, and are popular in society.

I was there in 50 percent of the respondents.

There were a few questions I regret not answering differently, but I hadn't reached that level yet.

I reluctantly agreed that I was generally “suspicious of the intentions of others” and I disagreed that I “have a forgiving nature.”

In personality studies, the Big Five trait model measures people on five character traits, although it has been criticized for oversimplifying complex personalities.

My neuroticism might be the worst thing about my personality, but it's far from the only thing I would change.

Like many bookish and introverted people, I grew up tormented by the idealized image of the extroverted social butterfly, flapping its giant wings cheekily close to my fragile self-confidence.

At one point I thought that maybe I could become that, but I have long since come to terms with the fact that I will never be that.

Still, a little more extroversion can't hurt - especially considering I recently moved to a new city, where my partner and I don't know anyone and are eager to make new friends.

Typically, people want to become more extroverted and conscientious, and less neurotic.

I wanted to be a little more extroverted, a lot less neurotic, and a little less conscientious, because that leads to perfectionism.

I also wanted to become more cooperative, because I think a lack of faith in other people is one of the things that feeds my neuroticism.

On the other hand, many people say they want to become less cooperative because they associate that quality with being easily manipulated by others, says Roberts.

(It is true that less cooperative people usually make more money).

The path to change

In a yoga class, towards the end of the sixth week of the experiment, I found myself doing something almost unthinkable - I spontaneously started a casual conversation with the person on the mat next to me.

Studies show that socially acceptable changes in our personalities can transform our lives for the better.

Lower neuroticism and higher extraversion are particularly associated with greater life satisfaction.

But how to achieve them?

A 2019 study, led by personality psychologist Nathan Hudson of Southern Methodist University in Texas, looked at whether active intervention could change targeted traits over time.

Researchers asked student participants to select aspects of their own personality that they would like to change and then complete weekly challenges that would "bring their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors into alignment with their desired traits."

After 15 weeks, the results indicated that the students were able to achieve small but statistically significant changes in their desired traits, including extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism, but not openness and agreeableness.

Those who completed multiple challenges went through the biggest transformations.

Stiger conducted a similar intervention in 2021, which also produced the desired changes in extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and agreeableness, but not in openness.

These changes remained during the three-month follow-up.

Using Hudson's study, I scribbled down a set of activities that encourage change in each of my desired personality dimensions.

Reducing neuroticism: Start meditating daily, keep a gratitude journal regularly, try to neutralize a negative thought with a positive one, or simply write down the thought and how it makes you feel.
Increasing extraversion: Go to events to meet new people, say hello to the cashier at the store, open up and honestly tell a friend how your life is going right now.
Increasing collaboration: Do a small act of kindness for someone close to you, and when you're about to say something mean about someone, say something positive instead; if someone does something irritating, think of three external factors that could explain their behavior (e.g., "they're not feeling well"), instead of internal factors (e.g., "they're a bad person").
Increasing conscientiousness: Pay bills as soon as they arrive, organize and clear your desk, spend 30 minutes writing down a list of your short-term and long-term goals
Increasing openness: Read a news story about a foreign country, go to a poetry reading, visit a museum or gallery.

Interventions rely on a mix of adaptive thought patterns and attitudes, and trying out new behaviors.

The prevailing logic is, if you want to become someone different, start thinking and acting like that someone.

In other words, fake it until you make it.

priority

Researchers typically focus on interventions that last several months, so to speed things up for my six-week timeframe, I prioritized activities that seemed to target several traits at once.

By going to a yoga class or opening up to a friend, for example, I was able to improve neuroticism, agreeableness, and extraversion simultaneously.

I was honestly afraid to try some of these activities.

“Offer to get someone in line a coffee” made me worry that the target would think I was awkwardly flirting with her or secretly filming her for those tasteless YouTube videos that are supposed to make you feel better.

I would need so many drinks before I would engage in 'talking to a stranger at a bar' that the harm to my health would certainly outweigh any benefit to my mental well-being.

And self-affirmations will always seem ridiculous if, like me, you come from a long line of emotionally stingy Scots.

I did say out loud, "I choose to be happy today," but not without a self-critical, forced smile.

I tried as many activities as I could.

I dragged myself to a few social events, but I found myself on the verge of going back into hibernation by the time I got this assignment, which encouraged me not to give up for the rest of the year.

I made new efforts to attend local events, as well as to see friends who live near me and to arrange phone calls with those abroad.

Although most people claim to want to change at least one aspect of their personality, those who will actually make the effort are certainly much fewer.

I thought that scheduled meetings with strangers would disrupt my hermetic home-work existence to a huge extent, imagining that I would need days to recover from attending a new book club.

In fact, the exact opposite happened.

Enlightenment

The more events I went to, the easier it became.

I took a model painting class that I enjoyed a few months earlier, but I never went back to it.

The last time, during a break, I curled up defensively around my phone as people crowded around me with glasses of wine in hand.

This time I struck a friendly pose and found that talking to people came quite naturally.

In a yoga class, towards the end of the sixth week of my experiment, I found myself doing something almost unthinkable - I spontaneously started a casual chat with the person on the mat next to me.

I also started meditating and keeping a gratitude journal almost every day.

Meditation proved to be almost enlightening.

At first it was almost impossible to quell the flood of thoughts.

In addition to the classic intrusions of what I had to do that day, there were also relentlessly laborious comments about what I was feeling from second to second as I tried to meditate.

The unstoppable chatterbox at the wheel of my mind seemed afraid of being asked to step out of the vehicle for a while, afraid, perhaps, that he wouldn't be allowed back in.

But after my partner suggested that I think of it not as leaving the vehicle but simply as turning off the engine, I stopped being afraid of the silence.

I also began to see the benefit of encouragement to extend it to parts of my life that were otherwise characterized by a frenzy of nervous chatter.

To improve neuroticism, “you target people’s willingness to experience emotions,” says Shannon Sauer-Zavala, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky in the US.

She says that neurotics chronically avoid emotions, as well as berate themselves for how they feel.

Sauer-Zavala is working on an intriguing approach to treating mental health conditions through interventions that target the personality.

“If we target neuroticism instead of generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, panic disorder, eating disorders, and so on, then it’s simply more effective,” she says.

At the end

So far, the results indicate that the approach is effective.

Psychologists once assumed that personality was fairly unchangeable, but recent research is changing that view.

Neuroticism is not the only personality dimension that can lead to psychological vulnerabilities.

Sauer-Zavala says that high levels of conscientiousness can turn into perfectionism, which I can definitely relate to.

Of the interventions proposed by Sauer-Zavala, this one gives me goosebumps.

“Figure out what 80 percent of your best work is, stop there, and see what happens,” she says.

"Either send an email with a typo, or leave work at five every day this week. That's usually the biggest anticlimax."

I obsessively check and reread every correspondence before sending it.

After Sauer-Zavala's comment, I tried to stop myself from doing a final proofreading of the correspondence and just send it.

Later, I can't help but open it again and notice what I perceive as a glaring error - a close repetition of the same word.

It hurt me, just look at that!

But of course he's right, it doesn't matter in the least, and I quickly forget about it.

By the end of the sixth week of my experiment, I didn't feel radically different, but I did feel pretty good.

Again

The time has come to repeat the test.

Even at an early stage, I felt that I could notice some changes.

In response to the question about whether I was "warm and friendly," I was pretty sure I would disagree with that beforehand.

This time I had six weeks of undeniable evidence before me.

I objectively socialized, often with strangers, and I didn't have a bad time.

So, I must be a friendly person after all.

Researchers were right when they said that when you behave in a certain way, it can change your perception of yourself.

Answering questions like this helped me jump from 30 to about 50 percent in extroversion.

In terms of collaboration, I made huge progress, jumping from 50 to 70 percent.

It seems that if I think positively about people, it actually leads me to have a more positive attitude towards humanity in general.

Regarding neuroticism, I showed significant improvement, dropping from 83 to 50 percent.

I have remained about the same in terms of conscientiousness and openness.

Throughout the six weeks, I was still often consumed by self-doubt and plagued by a host of ridiculous health-related paranoias.

But I felt like I could treat them more as what they were - fleeting ephemerals that didn't have to carry any greater meaning.

Sometimes the clear articulation of a concern in my head was enough to declare it unsustainably ridiculous.

Keeping a gratitude journal reminded me that not long before, I had found things I could be positive about, and I probably will again.

Changes

This was, of course, a highly unscientific study conducted on just one person, but I still feel the need to point out a few potentially confounding factors in the results.

First, I wanted to change for the purposes of this article, which could obviously have affected the results.

Additionally, I took the test again the day after attending a new local writers' meetup, and the night before I went out to dinner with a friend.

I was buoyed by recent social successes, it was sunny and I was in a good mood.

If I returned to monastic solitude and stopped keeping a journal, would I be able to regress in the coming months?

It's certainly possible.

However, my results were roughly consistent with those obtained from personality studies to date.

Stiger's study, for example, showed that personality traits shifted in desired directions by an average of half a standard deviation, the equivalent of going from 50 to 65 to 70 percent.

In a ridiculous attempt to achieve some scientific objectivity, I asked my partner to take the test with me at the very beginning and after six weeks.

He was my "control" subject, as he did nothing to change his personality.

In the end, his results came out pretty much unchanged - very high neuroticism, high openness, mediocre agreeableness and extraversion, and low conscientiousness.

Even with the most effective personality interventions, it is important not to exaggerate the results.

The biggest changes recorded in studies to date are "huge," by the researchers' standards, Roberts says.

"Are they huge from a layman's perspective? Probably not. It seems that, overall, most people remain pretty much the same."

And although the vast majority of people claim to want to change at least one aspect of their personality, those who are willing to put in the effort are certainly much fewer.

When my partner finds out about my results, he is genuinely impressed.

"So, I could change too if I wanted to?" he asks himself.

And then think about it for a moment.

"Although I don't feel like it," he adds.

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