Is it true,that due to the brain having been fully developed,it is impossible/extremely hard to change your personality and go from shy and awkward to charismatic after 25?

35 comments

1. The brain remain plastic throughout our lives, but all change requires effort. What efforts are you making that you are losing hope with?

2. No, people can change drastically at any age.

   The fact is that most people don’t want to.

   If you put effort forward, you can achieve whatever you want, at any age

   (realistically though, you probably won’t be 95 years old and suddenly a gymnast)

3. Fully developed means you have all of your mental capacity. It doesn’t mean that it’s set in stone. But it also means that you need to put in the effort to change and work on it. It’s easier to do with professional care, imo

4. No, everyone changes as they mature. Maybe you’re fundamentally quiet and reserved but maybe your shyness has been holding you back and you’re really not. Maybe you’ve been sheltered or helicoptered and never had a chance to be yourself. What’s the harm in trying to improve? I can’t think of any

5. If you have a desire to change you certainly can. You have to put yourself in situations You’re not used to enough and eventually you’ll see a new side of yourself.

6. I sincerely doubt that. I have changed a lot since I was 25. It’s just a question of wanting to change and making little steps in that direction continuously. The brain develops with practice, like a muscle. The more practice, the more significant the changes.

7. Most of my social skills were developed between the ages of 28 and 34. There is always room for growth, but you have to make the effort to change.

   You will always be you, but your personality will adapt from your life experiences. You don’t need to be charismatic to be likeable. The characteristics I worked on were being more kind, more open and less guarded. I also put some effort into treating my anxiety, as it was one of the causes of my social awkwardness.

   I’m still not especially outgoing, but people say I’m kind, calm and pleasant to be around. This year, I’m working on being more flexible with new situations. It’s going ok so far, but sometimes it can be stressful. I try not to worry about it. When I feel stressed in a new situation, I remind myself that growth is always uncomfortable. Once I adapt to new things, it won’t be as uncomfortable.

8. Not true.

   Like everything else, socializing is a skill. Some people have an image ability towards it sure, but anyone who practices at it and puts in genuine effort will continue to improve that skill over time.

   It might never come completely naturally for you, and may be something that always takes some effort, but the more you do it, the easier it will get.

9. Some people use minidoses of psychedelics, they increase brain plasticity.

   Generally, though, research has shown that good psychotherapy will actually physically neurologically change the brain and re-wire it in a healthier way. Even with no meds involved.

10. It is not! The key thing is that we’ve developed certain habits that we’re comfortable with (that don’t necessarily serve us well!), and we conclude, “That’s just WHO I AM.” Well, that is NOT true. It’s just what you’re comfortable with doing “up until now.” You can absolutely make the change from shy/awkward/quiet to friendly/outgoing/charismatic.

    The problem is, no one tells you EXACTLY what to do, how to do it, and how to make it a super comfortable part of A NEW YOU. Just as an example, Dale Carnegie’s book *How to Win Friends and Influence People* is a GREAT book on human relations. It’s got a lot of great advice. BUT! He does not tell you how to “connect with people.” He tells you things like ‘take an interest in other people’ because everyone loves talking about themselves. And sure, that’s true to a certain extent. But knowing that is NOT enough to make you outgoing or charismatic or confident. It isn’t even enough to make a friend! Because you have to do more to make friends than ‘ask questions’ and let them go off on a monologue about themselves.

    I haven’t seen any books/articles that I think that are really great at explaining this.

    Anyway I’ve been recently motivated to create a new subreddit to REALLY address the issue of exactly what you’re saying: how does one go from shy/awkward/quiet to fun, outgoing & charismatic?

    And I’m speaking as someone who was SUPER shy as a schoolkid. I went on to a career in public relations and I had to learn how to BECOME outgoing, how to make friends easily, how to establish a comfort level instantly. Once I realized the secrets to all this (and they’re pretty simple!) I concluded the problem is NOBODY teaches this! I have no idea why, and it’s super frustrating because it’s the one thing that can REALLY improve your life over whatever you’ve got going on.

    Okay rant over!

    Anyway my sub is brand new, so not much going on yet, but I LOVE to answer questions, and I plan to put up regular articles. I hope it’ll be a great complement to THIS sub, which deals with much broader issues and general topics.

    Sub name is **CPR For Your Social Life.**

    Thanks for asking this question noAstronomer!

11. Brain is not the same thing as personality. Lots of psychological research already support this but a quick analogy: brain : personality :: computer : software.

    Your personality is very much flexible: it depends on your choices, and it’s better to think of it more like a habit. If you would like to change your personality, you just have to practice it repeatedly until it becomes second nature.

12. I didn’t grow into my self until around 25/26. I was pretty uncomfortable before than. Maybe not as shy or awkward as some people but I didn’t feel comfortable. My therapist told me the other week (I’m 27 now) that I have genius level social intelligence.

    Things can change

13. No, while the Brain is wired to follow a hierarchy of patterns it has learned.. neurons that fire together wire together. It is possible to re-wire, sometimes quickly, but it has to be something MORE than a want.
    Why? At the core you brain has a series of identity statement – I AM SHY, I AM INTROVERTED, I AM A SMOKER. As a coach and hypnotist I have to work at a different level to help people change these identity beliefs. As a client you have to be willing to break past these limiting beliefs

14. We can re-wire our brains whenever we choose to. Not saying it’s easy…but it’s definitely doable

15. Nope very possible, I’ve completely changed since my divorce six years ago. 52yo

16. I’m 27 and have been a shut in for most of my life. I started a retail job about 10 months ago, and within that time I have almost cured my social anxiety. I still have some bad days, but so does everyone. It is possible to become less shy and awkward, but you have to accept that it will take time. I was the quiet awkward guy at work, but after about 5 months I noticed I felt less and less awkward, and now after 10 months I can talk with coworkers very easily without any anxious thoughts.

    Maybe you could try striking up conversations with coworkers? It may work for you like it did for me.

17. I would say I would use that science to say the exact opposite. Because of the fact that the brain is fully developed after about 25, you have the ability to fully use yourself to the best of your abilities to make changes you’d like. Neuroplasticity exists your whole life. There are many elements to psychology though and how your past experiences/genes affect you, but neuroplasticity is a fundamental part of our brains. Therapy would maybe benefit you, depending on your past or what you currently struggle with. Or maybe just practicing interacting with more people in your daily life. Either way though, you can definitely make changes.

18. A fully developed brain doesn’t mean a rigid brain. Brain, by design, is plastic. We continue to learn and adapt all our lives, if we choose so. Living with rigidity and closed mindedness can definitely lead you to stay dissatisfied with your social skills, but forcing yourself out of your comfort zone — because what you want to achieve is worth more — will get you amazing results. You just need to be willing to have a growth mindset. Trust me, I’ve done it and I am painfully introverted. I balance it with some quiet time with myself after the social gatherings.

19. No, it’s not impossible. Where there is a will there is a way.

20. I lead many large teams of people from blue collar to Sr Mgt. what I used to say to them was that I could not nor would I expect to change their personality but as the organizations leader I could expect certain behaviors and that it was their job to make these behavior changes for them to be successful.

21. A person with a hint of shyness can be incredibly charismatic, See Diana Princess of Wales or George Mallory.

22. Not at all. The developing your brain does in adulthood is your prefrontal cortex, basically making you able to decide things less impulsively. Your brain will continue to change and is incredibly context dependant. Huge change is always possible

23. Nope. I’m 30 and still developing socially every year, I have tons more confidence and self assurance now than when I was 25. The more you live the more you change.

24. I don’t think so, I think anyone can change and learn things at any age. I personally would try being more social and it would only last about a week. I think I have just accepted the fact that I am a quiet person and I only talk when I feel like it, and with that has come a lot of peace. But if it’s something that you really want to change, I don’t see why you can’t. But also, don’t be afraid to be yourself..even if that is quiet/awkward. There’s nothing wrong with that either.

25. Ever hear of neuroplasticity?

26. Am going to say it depends. These things heavily depends on feedback. I guarantee you if you took a charming confident guy and went back in time to their childhood and changed that environment to one where they were always bullied to the point of their personality changed they would not grow to be the same person. What people don’t understand is that we never choose our personality and it’s basically a response of our environment and genetics. Saying everyone has a potential to change is like saying “your childhood doesn’t matter you’ll still have to become the same person as someone who had a childhood that made them this way” which is just unrealistic. Though if you truly want to change your personality then go talk to a therapist and not get advice from redditors because planning on doing it alone will just lead to a failure.

27. I changed alot in my 20’s I started listening to new ideas and thoughts outside of those in my small circle.

    The world became open to me. I moved away from that small town. Went to school, met new people, moved again, met more new people. Repeat in my 30’s.

    I now have more friends than I ever dreamed. My personality falls on the line between introverted and extroverted. While I enjoy time with others, I need to recharge for it alone. So basically if I go out 2 nights a week, I need the other 5 to recover.

    You can

28. Okay, there are several separate issues here.

    * Personality change — no, that’s not possible and, if it makes you feel better, it never was. You haven’t missed the boat developmentally because there was no boat to miss. You’re born with certain personality tendencies; your life only influences how you come to express them. For example, someone who was mildly anxious and had a good upbringing will still get anxious thoughts, but they will manage them better; whereas the exact same person, if they had suffered trauma, might end up with a full-fledged anxiety disorder.

    * Brain development — in your early twenties (i.e. in your immediately preceding life stage), the most brain development you’re going to get revolves around better self-control and increased capacity for abstract thought. These are called the *executive functions*, that help you become a more efficient and effective worker and member of society. What you’re looking to develop about yourself, presumably, namely gregariousness and self-confidence, are more developmentally (and evolutionarily) primitive traits; the biological basis for them was present probably by early childhood, and faced the most rapid development from puberty to late adolescence.

    * Shy/awkward to charismatic — while I’d be the first to agree that psychological processes ultimately boil down to biological phenomena, this is actually one of the more “software”-level aspects of a person’s psychology. Social skills are skills. You acquire them by practice. While I’ve just said that the associated personality *traits* are inborn and developmentally more primitive, that just means you may lack some of the springboards for social success that other people have benefited from. Something clearly shaped you into who you are today. Maybe you don’t feel lonely as often, and that makes you less likely to expose yourself to opportunities to learn social skills. Maybe you’re not a very warm and kind person, and those types are more likely to alienate others. But regardless of your “factory settings”, you absolutely have a social, confident side to yourself that you can develop.

29. Try do something you’ve never thought you could do. I started with rock climbing and paragliding a year ago. I’m 28 now, came exactly from a shy introverted girl to an extroverted self-confident person, not afraid to do dynamic moves on the wall and jump from a cliff with a glider. Change of personality happened somewhere on the way, never thought that I’d be the person laughing the loudest at a climbing hall or a glider airfield.

30. I am 54 and without a doubt can tell you that at each decade of my life…. I was a different person ,personality wise,because of the experiences I had. Marriage, kids, having a job no matter the stress, kids leaving and everything in between will cause changes in mental understandings and your personality.

31. We can change at anytime (this brain myth has been debunked), but what we don’t understand, I think, is that change is not easy. Not easy is an understatement. Why? Because your brain’s main job is to keep you alive, and since what you do right now is keeping you alive, the brain thinks change will jeopardize this stability with uncertain outcome.

    In my experience one good catalyst of change, especially when we are mentally weak, is a small personal change, very small, with some positive external feedback (people underestimate the power of external feedback, maybe because we don’t have control over it, yet it’s very impactful, especially at the beginning). For example, you’re unemployed and depressed. You don’t believe you can get a job, but out of desperation you applied for a job, and you got an interview. This would give you more energy to apply for more jobs and edit your cv … Etc

    For shyness, I think the same applies.

32. I’m 33. I went through a huge growth in my personality in the last 5 years or so in big thanks to therapy. I do think we have who we are at our core, but there’s a lot of flavor surrounding that core that we can mold. Don’t think about it as your brain – thing about it as your heart, you as a *whole*. Growth is something we can experience at any age, no matter how old we get. You just need to be open to pushing your discomforts, even if it’s a little at a time. I’ve found that a lot of my concerns about not changing, not growing, etc., took care of themselves as I worked on becoming okay with *me*.

33. Growing into something you want to become takes time and practice. You’re shy, try and do something that takes you out of you comfort zone everyday. Tell a joke to a stranger or something. You’ll find it becomes easier over time. Then move to small talk. Then begin telling small stories about yourself, which should entice them to share a story. Stuff like that. But build towards what you want to be over time. But first…baby steps.

34. I think people in this reddit have been seriously misled about what it means to be human. OP, your problem isn’t that you can’t be charismatic. Your problem is that you keep trying to be charismatic. By the very nature of “trying” you are failing to “be”. Instead of trying to be charismatic, just be yourself. Target the things in your life that you want, and go get them. No, you do not want to be charismatic. That is just what you think you need in order to get something else. Ask yourself what it is that you want. Also ask yourself if this is something you are capable of obtaining now. Or if you should be working on something else. When you are truly doing you, no matter how awkward or uncharismatic you think you are, people will naturally respect you. You won’t need to “try” at that point. Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric that charismatic people are better than you. They are not. They have failings too. And you have your strengths.

35. A few things… it’s 25 on average, and that’s not how the brain works. If we couldn’t change any part of our behaviour after 25 we wouldn’t make it far as a species. You can definitely change, stop limiting yourself with this belief. I see it in the comments that you think you can’t. Possibly look into solutions like therapy IF (big if, not saying you need to) you have some serious concerns or self-esteem issues, not sure where to start. Therapy doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you, but it’s a place to learn about your problems or yourself and work on them.

    Think of it like you’re done growing after a certain age. The male finishes puberty, but can they still build muscle, become more flexible, jump higher, run after, run longer? Similar concept. The brain has finished “‘maturing” but it doesn’t mean you can’t grow. The brain also has no “storage” limit.