How to change your personality: 8 tips to help you grow
Clinically reviewed by Dr. Chris Mosunic, PhD, RD, MBA
Are you looking to grow or evolve certain aspects of yourself? Explore 8 pointers for transforming your personality in a gentle and compassionate way.
Maybe you snap at someone you love, then immediately wish you weren’t the kind of person who does that. Or you spend another party hovering near the snacks, longing to be someone who could just walk up and talk to a stranger. It’s a feeling most people know — the sense that some part of you doesn’t match the person you want to be.
Noticing the gap between how you act and how you’d like to act is where growth starts. As hard as it may seem, you can change your personality in meaningful ways, even if it’s rarely dramatic or fast. It’s all about shifting the patterns that no longer fit your life, not becoming a different person.
Here’s what the research says about how you can shift your traits, along with some grounded ways to start working on yourself.
What does it mean to “change” your personality?
Personality is often discussed as if it’s fixed. But a more accurate way to think of it is as a collection of patterns: how you tend to think, feel, act, and connect with others. The most widely used framework, the Big Five, breaks personality into five dimensions.
Openness to experience: Curiosity, creativity, comfort with new ideas
Conscientiousness: Self-discipline, reliability, follow-through with commitments
Extraversion: Sociability, assertiveness, how energized you feel by social interaction
Agreeableness: Warmth, cooperation, how you handle conflict
Neuroticism: Tendency toward negative emotions like anxiety or stress (the reverse of this is often called emotional stability)
These traits fall on a spectrum, which means changing your personality doesn’t have to be extreme. Maybe you want to feel less anxious in certain situations, more at ease with people, or just a bit more willing to try new things. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, you can move in the direction you want with steady effort.
Can you actually change your personality? What science says
According to researchers, your personality shifts naturally over time. Most people become more reliable, more easygoing, and less reactive as they get older. This is called the maturity principle, and it tends to happen without much conscious effort.
If you’d like to nudge that shift along, evidence shows that people who set clear goals for how they want to change (and follow through) see modest shifts over time.
That said, growth can be slow. Some traits are harder to adjust than others, especially deep-rooted habits you’ve had since childhood.
Note: If you notice a sudden or dramatic personality change—especially one that feels out of your control—it's worth bringing up with a doctor promptly, as it can sometimes point to an underlying medical cause.
Related read: Why a growth mindset can help you thrive (and 10 tips to build it)
How to change your personality: 8 tips to help you grow
You don't have to tackle all eight of these at once — in fact, you probably shouldn't. Pick one or two that speak to you, and come back to the rest whenever it’s useful. This is a toolkit, not a checklist.
1. Name exactly what you want to change
Instead of setting a vague goal like “I want to be a better person,” get specific. “I want to pause before reacting when I’m frustrated” is a goal you can actually act on.
The more precisely you can name what you want to shift, the easier it becomes to make progress. You might notice you’re confident at work but anxious in new social settings, or patient with colleagues but reactive with family.
2. Act like the person you want to become
One of the more counterintuitive findings in personality research is that behavior tends to lead identity, not the other way around.
For instance, you don’t have to feel like an extrovert before you strike up a conversation with someone new or feel confident before you speak up in a meeting.
Psychologists call this "acting as if." When you act the part, even if it feels forced at first, it starts to feel more natural over time.
3. Practice mindfulness to interrupt automatic patterns
Reactions often feel automatic. You react before you’ve had a chance to choose how you respond. Mindfulness encourages you to take a small pause, instead of defaulting to old patterns.
A few minutes of meditation practice a day, like a breathing exercise or a body scan, can help strengthen your ability to pause and notice what you’re feeling before you react.
💙 Practice slowing down with The Pause meditation on Calm.
4. Set up your environment to support you
Relying on willpower alone to sustain new habits can get exhausting, and it isn't always enough. Your environment shapes behavior more than you might realize, and you can use it to your advantage.
If you want to follow through on things, keep your to-do list somewhere visible. If you want to be more present with people, try placing your phone out of sight, like tucking it in your bag when you’re out.
5. Push yourself with new experiences
When you put yourself in unfamiliar situations— like trying a new activity or surrounding yourself with different people—it pulls you out of your usual patterns.
Research suggests that this kind of novelty is linked to increases in openness, one of the Big Five traits, and the same disruption to routine can support growth in other areas too.
💙 Explore the 7 Days of Growth series on the Calm app.
6. Give yourself months, not days
Personality change usually happens so gradually that you probably won't quickly notice it in your day-to-day life, which is exactly why it's easy to give up too soon.
Instead of looking for immediate proof of progress, try a daily reflection. Ask yourself, “What did I do today that lined up with who I want to become?"
7. Keep what’s already working
Not every trait needs fixing. Before you decide to change something, it's worth asking whether the issue is the trait itself, or whether it just doesn’t fit the environment you’re in.
Sensitivity, for example, is often labeled as a weakness, but it's also closely tied to empathy and creativity. Rather than trying to “fix” the trait itself, it can help to find better ways to work with it. That might mean setting boundaries around how much you take on, so you have the capacity to engage fully where it counts.
💙 Try a Self-Acceptance meditation from the Daily Calm.
8. Bring in a therapist when it helps
Some patterns are hard to shift on your own, especially ones rooted in early experiences. A therapist can help you understand what's driving these behaviors, then work through them with you step by step.
Approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) have strong evidence for gradually helping people modify thought and behavior patterns.
How to change your personality FAQs
Can a person change their personality type?
You can change your personality type, though “type” isn’t really the right way to think about it. Models like the Big Five or Myers-Briggs are tools for self-understanding, not fixed labels.
What matters more than the label is whether you’re seeing progress on the specific habit or behavior you’re trying to adjust.
What causes a change in personality?
Your personality can change because of big life transitions, therapy, aging, stress, or trauma. But you can also shift your personality on purpose by setting clear goals and following through on them consistently.
Your environment plays a role too. Who you spend time with and what situations you put yourself in shape your behavior, and that behavior adds up to who you become over time.
How long does it take to change your personality?
There’s no set timeline for changing your personality. With conscientious effort, some people notice small shifts over weeks or months, but lasting change usually takes longer. The timeline also depends on how ingrained the habit or pattern is.
Is it healthy to want to change your personality?
It’s generally healthy to want to change your personality. Wanting to grow, feel less reactive, or connect better with others is usually a sign of self-awareness. That said, it’s worth noticing what’s driving the desire — change driven by shame rarely lasts.
What's the difference between changing your personality and masking who you are?
Personality change happens gradually. It takes showing up differently, again and again, until it feels natural. Masking, on the other hand, means hiding parts of yourself to fit in or avoid judgment, and it tends to feel draining.
A helpful question to ask yourself: does what I'm doing feel like growth, or does it feel like hiding?
Read more: Wondering how to be more authentic? These 10 tips can help
What parts of personality are easiest to change?
Parts of your personality that are behavior-driven, like how you react under stress or the way you communicate, are usually easier to adjust than deep-rooted traits like introversion or sensitivity.
Calm your mind. Change your life.
Mental health is hard. Getting support doesn't have to be. The Calm app puts the tools to feel better in your back pocket, with personalized content to manage stress and anxiety, get better sleep, and feel more present in your life.
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