Do you ever wish you could change your own personality? New research shows you can, and it’s surprisingly quicker and easier than you might think. In a new study from the University of Zurich, researchers found that people who wanted to become more self-disciplined could achieve that change in just two weeks, using a smartphone app that sent them twice-daily reminders. The same process also worked for people who wanted to be more open to new experiences. You can use this information to make changes to your own personality and habits.
Researchers have known for a while that your personality isn’t fixed throughout your life, explains psychologist, author, and personality expert Benjamin Hardy in a Psychology Today post. Instead, he says, it’s useful to see personality as points along a spectrum, where you may be more or less extraverted, or more or less agreeable, for example, and that these traits may change over time depending on your experiences. And he says personality is a skill that can be learned.
