Me, But Better

By: Olga Khazan

Narrated by: Olga Khazan

Is it really possible to change your entire personality in a year? An award-winning journalist experiments with her own personality to find out—and reveals the science behind lasting change.

Olga Khazan was spiraling toward an existential crisis. Though she treasured her loving relationship and dream job, her neurotic personality often left her snatching dissatisfaction from the jaws of happiness. Lately, her brittle disposition felt ready to shatter under the weight of just one more thing—but could she really change her entire personality?

Personality consists of five sliding-scale traits: extroversion (how sociable you are), conscientiousness (how self-disciplined you are), agreeableness (how empathetic you are), openness (how receptive you are to new things), and neuroticism (how anxious you are). Research shows you can alter these traits by acting like the kind of person you’d like to be. In Me, But Better, Olga embarks on a year-long experiment to see if it’s possible to start “radiating joy” instead of dwelling in dread—trying everything from Zip-Zap-Zopping toward extroversion in improv to surfing her way to openness, even if she spends more time wiping out than hanging ten.

Sharply witty and deeply fascinating, Me, But Better candidly explores what it means to live a fulfilling life, and how to keep growing, no matter how uncomfortable it feels.

Honest and Self reflective self improvement memoir

I appreciated the smart and revealing memoir documenting the author's attempt to change some life long personality traits.

Me only Better

Loved it insightful really enjoyed the book really liked it and now I have
to type all these other words to count my vote

Well, organized, enjoyed the personal anecdotes

Overall enjoyed the book. I have difficulty reading because of my age this was the first audiobook I ever listened to.

The more specific, the more relatable

It was really interesting to hear Olga share her journey through personality change in the context of the science as well as her own life. It was good but I felt like I was either missing more experts or deeper personal reflection. I do think there’s definitely something worthwhile here. Maybe more time with Mary Roach or Mike Birbiglia would take this pretty good personality driven memoir somewhere very special.

felt unfinished

This is a great book and wanted to give it 5 stars but it has a few not so good things: I really loved the subject and how she told the story, she is a very talented writer, but it felt unfinished, I felt like I was left hanging and wished there was more of a defined conclusion. also the narration was not the best, made me wish she had hired someone to do it, however it is good enough to listen until the end.