How to Change Your Personality in Two Steps
Do you like trying lots of new things, or do you prefer to follow a routine?

Do you enjoy spending time with other people, or do you feel more comfortable alone?

Your answers to these questions may help describe your personality.

Personality researchers often use a model called the "Big Five" to divide personalities into five key traits.

These traits include: openness to experience, which includes how curious and creative you are; agreeableness; conscientiousness; extroversion; and neuroticism — with this last one referring to your tendencies toward depression and anxiety.

While some believe these traits don't really change over our lives, Shannon Sauer-Zavala of the University of Kentucky says not only do they change, but we can actually change them ourselves.

Writing in The Conversation, Sauer-Zavala says changing your personality starts with making some simple changes to your thinking and behavior. And these changes can have an effect over just a few months.

First, she says, you need to become aware of your thoughts to see how they're affecting your personality. For example, if you keep thinking, "Nobody likes talking to me," you probably won't feel comfortable in social situations, and won't be very extroverted.

Next, you need to become aware of how you usually behave in certain situations, and then try behaving in new ways.

So if you usually avoid talking to people in social situations, they probably won't talk to you either — which might feel like it proves your thinking that nobody likes talking to you.

But if you try something different — say, actively approaching people and trying to talk to them — it creates an opportunity to change both your behavior and the way others act toward you.

As you keep actively talking to people and get better at it, you will start to enjoy it more — which would make you more extroverted. And that's a change in your personality!

It all starts with your thinking and behavior.