How to Talk to People - Introducing: How To Start Over

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

In this series, Atlantic staff writer Olga Khazan analyzes what it takes to change our relationships, our work, and our perspective—with a practical approach to one of life’s greatest mysteries: how to start over.  Change can be really hard. Inertia is powerful, mortgages and marriages are long-term, and personality traits can feel pretty hardwired. But we’re in an era characterized by change. This series is your guide to starting over in the ways you’ve always wanted, why change is so hard, and whether it is, sometimes, overrated. This series was produced by Rebecca Rashid and hosted by Olga Khazan. Editing by A.C. Valdez and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Sound design by Matthew Simonson. If you have any questions, stories, or feedback, please email us at [e-mail] or leave us a voicemail at 925-967-2091. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey there, I'm Arthur Brooks, Harvard professor and happiness correspondent at The Atlantic. You may remember me from the first season of this show, How to Build a Happy Life. Today, I'm here to officially announce season two of the show, with a new host, Meet Atlantic Staff writer Olga Hassan. Hey Arthur, I'm excited to take over podcast hosting duties this season. We're coming out of a long period where the luckiest among us, where confined to our homes, left to ruminate over everything that's right and wrong, about ourselves and our relationships and the people around us. I found myself sort of itching for a reset. Olga, you're killing me here. What is the show called? It's called how to start over.

I sent him this email that basically said, I'm a bossy, demanding woman, and you just need to know that upfront. That story reminds me of I had an ex-boyfriend who one time told me the thing I like about you is that you're not anxious at all and I'm probably the most anxious person who's ever lived. Last summer I went on a journey to change my own personality and if I learned one thing it's that change challenges our natural instincts. It forces us to be introspective and it makes us realize just how hesitant we can be. Becoming a new parent can be challenging as it is. But what is it like when you struggle with your own parents?

As you become a healthy person, you could always re-engage with your family and see how that is, right? It may not always be a permanent thing. Or starting over in your work. What makes midlife career changes feel so hard? It took a really long time for me to say, when people ask me what do you do, to say I'm a writer or I'm an author. I was like, well, I don't know, I'm a stay-at-home mom and I used to be a lawyer and I kind of write, yeah.

And of course, the challenge of starting over in romance, especially when the way we behave in relationships can feel pretty hardwired. There's a lot of people that are willing to change or that would change, but the pain of not doing anything, the discomfort of inertia has to outweigh the change for them. I had to decide staying the same was going to be so much worse for me than doing the work. This series is your guide to starting over in some of the most challenging areas of life, with a practical approach to big picture questions. I'm Olga Hazan and this is How to Start Over. to start over.