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Is Change Possible? Can People Really Change?

Writer: kawkapc
kawkapc
Dec 8, 2024
7 min read

Updated: 5 days ago

People change. The real question is who gets to decide.


Whether people can truly change has been argued for centuries. Skeptics say personality and habit are hardwired. Neuroscience and decades of personality research say otherwise, with one condition most change programs underestimate.


Life changes us without asking: age, loss, a new role, a move across the world. But deliberate change, the kind that shows up in how someone leads, listens, or reacts under pressure, happens only when the person chooses it.


No one can choose it for them. Not a manager, not a partner, not a coach.

If you are a leader, a change-maker, or an entrepreneur driving change, this distinction matters a lot. This article sorts out what is within your control, and what never was.


Can People Really Change? What the science actually says


The brain stays changeable for life. Neuroplasticity, its ability to form, strengthen and prune connections, does not switch off in adulthood.


In a 2008 study, adults aged 50 to 67 spent three months learning to juggle. Their brains showed measurable grey-matter growth, much like 20-year-olds doing the same task. Two details matter as much as the headline: the older learners never juggled as well as the young ones, and when practice stopped, the gains faded within three months.


That is the honest shape of it. Change is possible at any age. It does get slower with age. And it lasts only as long as we keep practising it.


Personality moves too. A 2017 review of 207 studies, covering more than 20,000 people, found that therapy and similar interventions shifted personality traits in about 24 weeks.


Emotional stability changed most, and in studies that followed people afterwards, the change held. Even without intervention, most of us grow more responsible and emotionally steady as we age.


Neuroplasticity shows that people can change, not that they will.

The same wiring that lets us learn is what keeps old patterns in place.


Why change feels so hard


Change threatens identity before it threatens habit. Who am I, if I stop being the one who fixes everything?


Habits are efficient by design. With repetition, behaviour shifts from deliberate choice to an automatic routine, which costs the brain far less effort. A new pattern has to compete with a well-worn one, and at first it loses more often than it wins.


Stress tips the balance further. In a 2009 experiment, people put under acute stress before learning a task fell back on habit instead of goal-directed choices. Later replications have been mixed, but the pattern will be familiar to anyone who has watched a team under pressure. We revert to what we know.


This is worth noting if you lead.


Change pushed through an organization in crisis mode asks people to do the hardest thing under the conditions that make it hardest.


The catalyst for change


Transformation usually needs a catalyst.


Heartbreak and hardship. Pain has a way of waking us up. Loss, failure or adversity can force us to question beliefs we never examined. The end of a relationship or the loss of a job can rearrange priorities overnight.


New perspectives. Exposure to different people, cultures and ideas widens what we think is possible. Sometimes it is one conversation. Sometimes it is years lived in another country.


In both cases the turning point is the same:


the discomfort of staying the same becomes greater than the fear of changing.

Notice who has to feel that discomfort. It is the person who is changing. Your frustration with someone is not their catalyst.


Back view of a person in a peach shirt gazing at a calm gray sea under an overcast sky

The choice belongs to the person


Here is the part most change efforts skip. People change when they choose to, not when someone else chooses for them.


Research on volitional change, change people set out to make, bears this out with a twist. In a 2019 study of 377 university students, participants picked weekly challenges to move a trait they wanted to change. Wanting was not enough. Only completing the challenges predicted change, and those who signed up but didn't follow through drifted the opposite way.


A 2021 follow-up asked a sharper question: does it matter who sets the goal? For conscientiousness, assigned behaviours worked even when people hadn't chosen them.


Organize your home, start assignments early, and you become more organized. But emotional stability, the inner work of handling worry and reactivity, shifted only when people wanted it themselves. Going through the motions because someone asked did nothing.


That distinction matters.


Structure can shape behaviour. The deeper shifts, how we meet fear, criticism and uncertainty, need the person's own consent.

Self-determination theory explains why. A meta-analysis of 184 data sets found that behaviour change is more effective and lasting when people are autonomously motivated: acting for reasons they own, not from pressure, guilt or reward. Push harder and many people push back. Psychologists call it reactance: when we feel our freedom is threatened, we resist, sometimes by doing the opposite.


You can compel compliance. Compliance lasts as long as someone is watching.

Can People Really Change? Yes, and change lasts because the person decided.


What helps change hold


Once someone has chosen, the research is clear on what helps. It is also clearer than it used to be on what has been oversold.


  1. Repetition, and patience. The 21-day rule is a myth. In a well-known UCL study, simple daily behaviours took a median of 66 days to become automatic, with a range of 18 to 254. Complex behaviours took longer. Missing a single day did not derail the process. Anchor the new behaviour to the same time and place, and expect months, not weeks.


  2. Emotion, and a lower threat level. Curiosity, hope and a sense of purpose widen our attention and our willingness to try. Fear and pressure narrow it, and stress pulls us back toward habit. Change grows better in warmth than under threat.


  3. Mindfulness, for the pause it creates. Popular claims that an eight-week course physically reshapes the brain did not hold up. The largest, most rigorous trial to date, with 218 participants, found no structural brain change after eight weeks of mindfulness training. The value lies elsewhere: attention, self-awareness, and a moment's space between trigger and response. That space is where choice lives.


  4. Effort, and feedback that points at the work. Feedback is not automatically helpful. A major meta-analysis of 607 effects found it improved performance on average, but in more than a third of cases it made things worse. It did the most damage when it drew attention to the person instead of the task.


  5. Belief, with honest limits. No one attempts what they believe is impossible, so belief matters. But growth mindset was oversold. Two 2018 meta-analyses covering more than 400,000 students found a weak link with achievement and small intervention effects. A 2019 national experiment in Nature found real but modest gains, mostly for students who were struggling, in schools whose culture supported the message. Belief is the seed. Context is the soil.


For leaders: what is yours, and what isn't


If you lead change, your job is not to change people. It is to make change possible, then respect the choice.


Within your control


  • The why. Explain the purpose honestly. Then ask what it means to them; reasons people find themselves outlast reasons handed to them.

  • Choice in the how. Autonomy over method builds the ownership that makes change last.

  • The environment. Cues, defaults, structures, time. Make the new behaviour the easy one. Structure can move behaviour before conviction catches up.

  • The pressure in the room. Lower the threat wherever you want new behaviour. Change demanded in crisis mode meets old habits.

  • Your feedback. Specific, about the work, aimed forward.

  • Your patience. Real change runs on months, not quarterly targets.

  • Your example. People watch what you do far more closely than what you announce.


Outside your control


  • Whether someone wants to change.

  • Their readiness. A person not yet considering change will not be moved by an action plan.

  • What the old pattern protects. Behaviour that looks like resistance often guards something that matters: competence, belonging, safety.

  • Their timing.

  • The decision itself


When someone chooses not to change, treat it as information, not failure. It tells you something about fit, timing, or what the change costs them. Your next decision, about role, expectations or consequences, is yours to make. Theirs remains theirs.


Final thoughts


People are not fixed. The brain stays plastic, personality keeps moving, and most of us change quietly over a lifetime, whether we intend to or not.


But the change that matters most, the deliberate kind, cannot be installed from outside. It is chosen, then chosen again in action, day after day.


Change isn't about becoming someone entirely different. It is about rediscovering and realigning with our best selves, and no one can do that on our behalf.


What about you? Is there a change you've been yearning for?


And if you lead others: is there a change you've been waiting for someone else to make?


As a coach and change partner, I help leaders uncover the strengths and stories shaping their leadership, and use them more intentionally to navigate change, expand their impact, and lead with greater authenticity. If this is the kind of work you are ready for - let’s connect.


“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” ~ Jim Rohn


Hi, I’m Monika, Strengths Coach, facilitator, social-profit organization leader, and photographer. I’m here to help you own your vision for meaningful growth and transformation, uncover your unique leadership strengths, and empower you and your team to thrive and create lasting impact. Passionate about driving change within, around, and beyond, I love supporting fellow change-makers on their journeys.


bio portrait of Monika Kawka

I hope you’ll visit often, and I look forward to connecting and working together!



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