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20 Simple Activities That Science Proves Can Change Your Personality for the Better

Jessica Stillman
5 min readJan 18, 2022

Many people think of personality as something unchanging — you get a certain set of characteristics at birth and by and large you’re stuck with them forever. But science paints a very different picture. Give the same person a personality test as 14 years old and again at 77 and they’ll appear to be two completely different individuals.

But while it’s clear that personality is more malleable than many of us believe, that leaves an important question unanswered: can you control the drift of your character or are you captive to random experience and the biology of aging? Can you choose to change your personality or is personality evolution just something that happens?

A new study aimed to find out not only if you can shape your own character, but exactly what it takes to do so. Its conclusions are good news for those of us who would like to be more outgoing or less neurotic.

The more you try the more you’ll change.

To understand the study it’s important to first have a little background on how scientists view personality. Forget all those Facebook quizzes and even popular typing tests like the Myers Briggs. They are little better than astrology.

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Jessica Stillman
Jessica Stillman

Written by Jessica Stillman

Top Inc.com columnist/ Editor/ Ghostwriter. Book lover. Travel fiend. Nap enthusiast. https://jessicastillman.com/

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