Personality Change: What You and Glen Powell Have in Common

In Netflix’s latest film Hit Man, Glen Powell plays Gary Johnson, a bumbling college professor (and devoted cat dad) who lives a simple, solitary life. He finds himself thrust into a precarious situation where he learns to navigate between different identities and personas. What begins as lighthearted play, however, becomes complicated when the lines between his playacting and actual transformation get blurred. One of his adopted personas becomes a desirable, second nature.

Although Hit Man offers a radical, cinematic portrayal of personality change, it serves as a good reminder of our malleability. For the last decade, psychologists have been accumulating evidence that supports the notion that personality can change. The great news is that our personalities change naturally over time (known as the “Maturity Principle”), and as we progress from our 20s to our 40s, we become more conscientious (with the most flux occurring during our 20s), but also more pleasant, self-confident, and emotionally stable.

Even more compelling is evidence that our character is not a fixed, immovable entity, rather, it is a canvas of potential change and transformation. While our core personality traits remain largely stable through adulthood, with the right kind of effort, we can tweak and enhance aspects of ourselves.

Recent studies have supported the possibility of self-directed change. A smartphone-based study found that delivering daily challenges, video clips, and personalised prompts over three months enabled short-term shifts in participants' self-discipline, extraversion, and emotional resilience. Similarly, researchers found that therapeutic interventions have shown promising results in reducing neuroticism in as little as eight weeks.

Many of us have felt the urge to reinvent ourselves at some point, whether driven by personal aspirations or societal pressures for constant self-betterment. In general, research indicates that our most common desires are to increase our self-discipline and assertiveness and, reduce our anxiety and neuroticism.

Yet, despite our collective goals, the path to change is not well-trodden. While strategies for building a new habit or setting the right goals are well-known and documented, how to actively change our personality is more complex and harder to grasp.

How do we change our personality?

1. Self-Awareness

You’ve heard this before, but as with any type of behaviour change, from a new diet to stopping smoking, change starts with self-awareness. We can’t wake up one day willing ourselves to be different. We need to understand the deeper motivations behind our desires. Is the change driven by positive motivations (for example, ambition, love) or negative motivations (for example, a toxic manager, fear, or regret)? A review of behaviour change studies has found that positive motivations, such as a passion for a role or love of a partner will facilitate more successful change than negative motivations such as fear or regret.

2. Planning

We often naively assume that setting the intention to change is enough, but it’s only a quarter of the battle. Let me give you an example. Many of us list our goals or New Year’s resolutions at the start of the year. We have grand plans but very few of us actually set out a plan for how to achieve those goals. Without a plan, we get distracted, we forget, and we get lazy. We need an action plan to remind us to follow through.

This action plan should contain the following:

a) A narrow goal: Instead of aspiring to“be more conscientious,” specify the specific aspect of conscientiousness that you need to change, such as “I want to be more self-disciplined around dealing with distractions.”

b) Actionable steps: List the specific, actionable steps that will help you achieve this goal in a specific time frame. Ideally, make each step gradually more challenging. For example, you could set yourself a six-week plan, and each week, you minimise distractions to a more challenging degree. Week One could be putting your phone away for an hour a day, and Week Two, not looking at your phone from 9 am to 1 pm.

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c) A target: Unlike starting a new gym regime where we often set ourselves a challenge of reaching an ideal weight, personality change is harder to quantify. One way to think about it is to treat change as learning a new language. When we attempt to learn a language, we have specific milestones in mind, from being able to order in a restaurant to navigating a difficult conversation. Do the same for personality change. If you want to become more self-disciplined, what would be your first milestone?

d) A buddy: Enlist support from trusted individuals, from friends, mentors, or coaches—people who have your back and hold you accountable. We often forget that setbacks and more often than not, failure are a part of our journey, and things are always tougher and take longer than we expect. Lean on someone trusted to help you along the process.

3. Fake it to make it with caution

In personality science circles, an ongoing discussion is the effectiveness and implications of the "fake it to make it" mantra. Many experts caution against feigning or faking a behaviour as it can lead to superficial and less sustainable change, and potentially increase the chances of imposter syndrome. However, a more balanced view is that sometimes we need a little jumpstart. If we approach personality change, as Glen Powell did, as stepping into a role—it can catalyze us to get started. Viewing behaviour as something we're "trying on" can help us get over the initial challenge of change, and then over time, it can become more natural.

Changing personality is no easy feat and requires patience, determination, and self-compassion. However, if we have the right motivation and put a few systems and behaviourally informed strategies in place, it's a pursuit that could reap significant benefits. We should not make dramatic changes, like Gary Johnson, but even small changes can be meaningful.