Book excerpt: "Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change"

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Can you teach an old dog new tricks? Atlantic staff writer Olga Khazan prepared to change aspects of his personality, which he did not like by forcing himself outside his comfort zone, and he documented the progress made in his new book, “Me, but better: the science and promise of personality change” (Simon and Shuster/Simon Element).

Khazan, a lifelong introverted, among the challenges set for themselves: enrolled in a improvised class and dealing with his social anxiety. Yes and … how did that go?

Read a fraction below, and Do not remember the interview of Susan Spencer with Olga Khazan on “CBS Sunday Morning” on 20 July!

“Me, but better” by Olga Khazan

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My journey started completely due to my journey, watching the improvement with me MiddleDichtch & Schwartz One night on Netflix. The episode opened with two famous actors, Thomas Middleditch and Ben Schwartz, an uncomfortable long-term spectator spent in pulling a base for his sketch-a photography intern. Then, on a bare platform, Middleditch pretended to interview Schwartz for a photography job, which led to absurd questions like “Amboddy A Gazel”.

The audience laughs with Gamleez, but mostly, the scene reminded me that I need to file my expenditure report. I felt uncomfortable for the actors, just as the crowd could turn them on at any moment, which made them flattened for laughter in ghostly silence. I wondered why they could not write better scenes ahead of time. And worse than that, I knew that soon, I would be in his accurate position, except without the benefit of being a famous comedian.

For my personality-change project, I had decided to focus on each of the five symptoms for a few months at a time, and I first dealt with the extroivorson. In recent years, my life had landed in a rote that I did not like especially, and outfits looked like out. Most days, I worked, made dinner, watched TV, and did some more work. Amir and I were planning to move, and it happened to me that both of them went out of my house and without meeting any of my neighbors. A test in a self-help book reminded me that I have “high loneliness.”

My “very little” Extraversion score was probably not surprising for those who know me: My friend Anastasia once sentenced me to participate in a party on the pain of ending our friendship. But my hard-core introvence can be dangerous, sometimes shading in loneliness and isolation. I have a career in which every crack of work can be expanded, and sometimes I thought it was a good thing, because I did not have many hobbies or friends, otherwise to capture my time. (And say what you will do about extrovertity, but they have a lot of hobbies and friends.) I always told myself that I can focus on socialization after stabilizing my life, but the absence of social interactions, self, was unstable.

Among all the five symptoms, Extroover provides the simplest route for personality change: you just have to go out and talk to people. When you do this, you should be particularly good, or you do not need to declare yourself “extrovert”. You settled, and you will find Extroversion, such as the whole marriage follows the first fearless dancer.

Incidentally, it is also the ethos behind the improvised comedy: you just have to say something. Anything! Calling, “improvised” is small for “improvised theater”. The idea is that two or more actors get up on the stage, without knowing what they would say or what they will do. They reach the “view” by accepting and building a partner’s improvisation – a concept known as “yes, and”. When this is done well, the improversors say that there is really no difference between the improved and scripted theater – a claim about which opinions are definitely different.

I knew that I need a commitment tool for extrovertity – something to force me to my home and in Gregoryus. I decided to try improvised, which looked like the extroverted experience of full-world.

It also felt like a complete-minded madness. Rich saw me entering the website of Dojo Comedy, a comfortable looking DC improves theater, which includes a pair of Mustachiod Gruncho Marx Comedy Glass. “You work, Larry David is like ice hockey,” he said.

This is true. My normal vibe is low “yes, and” more “well, really.” I have not really liked the improvement as an art form. I do not like it especially funny – it’s like an expanded inside the joke you are never going to get. I thought Middledicch It would be hot to improve me, but it only shut down me.

A few weeks later, before the first class, I donated a grounding-red t-shirt and jeans, hoping to draw less attention to myself as possible. I tried to shake the memories of being so timid in the middle-school drama class that I was worthy of understanding only for the smallest role-daughter of Crachit. When I type the address of the improvement studio in my phone, I was relieved when the red snake of “more heavier than normal traffic” indicated that I would have at least one hour to be mentally prepared.

The improvement class was found in an old townhouse, in a room, which was filled with dozens of elephants, without any reason. Six of us were sitting in a circle on novice chairs, which seemed that they survived the Victorian funeral.

The instructor, a small brunette with a sharp brunette, friendly, was opened by asking us about our previous improvised experience – no, in my case. One of the other women discontinued a long list of improvised classes. What kind of crazy person works many times? I wondered. (Me, as it will come out.)

The instructor said, “Let’s start,” I prayed to someone to catch the elephant and knock me unconscious. This did not happen, so instead I stood to play warm-up games with a software engineer, two lawyers and a person working on the hill. Games meant that for the coming time we had to loose, which was “visual work” or was acting unscripted mini plays with each other.

First, we learned the improvised standard zip zop, which includes energy beams on each other and “zip,” “Zap,” and – you have estimated – “Zop.” The game is that the zip-zap-zopy is to be sufficiently unaffected to maintain the sequence, while what is still for someone else in the circle.

I was struggling for several reasons: because of the epidemic, I was not in a room with other people for more than a year. At her top, I have a bad awareness, and, because we wore the mask, you had to determine if someone was going to fully zop you from the angle of your eyes.

If someone messed up the sequence – for example, “zip” to another’s “zip”, then we will all stop, clap, and say, “Yay!,” It is okay to punch the idea that it is okay to punch the idea. The feeling of all this was very different from my job, where you can remove to screw, that it felt like some kind of rehabilitation for perfectionists.

Then we had to refer to different invisible objects among each other, including an invisible ball, who was derogatory, we had to refer to as “invisible balls”! I felt that other people were as nervous as I was, but as it was DC, one wind of the Tri-Hard overchievment reduced everyone’s true feelings. People, including themselves, will behave ridiculous if they feel that they have no choice. The next day I imagined all my companions to go back to work, in which he wrote an email in which he promised to circle back and touch the base. I wondered if he would think about this moment of eccentric at his brown-bag lunch, as he discussed the situation in Burkina Faso. It may be less chaotic than the situation in Burkina Faso.

Soon it was time to call an invisible hawk in my arm. I thanked that at least the blind was closed, so no one could see us from the road.

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“Me, but better” by Olga Khazan

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