Optimism Associated with Exceptional Longevity

There's nothing wrong with being unhappy, IMO - you can still channel those emotions into something meaningful.

But if you do want to be happy, you can find stories, if you look hard and long enough, of "outliers". People who, against all odds, defied "statistics" and broke out of whatever expectations society and "facts" projected onto them.

I tried "everything" until age ~27 when I finally found one dial (very specific elimination diet) that made the rest of my body act mostly normally. Other changes were easier to make from that point onwards, altho there's a lot of damage to undo still. Diet is just one factor, for others it could be completely different.

My point is - I thought I would never be healthy. This stuff runs in my family too. But I just kept trying things. There's no other option.

You are a unique human being and soul who has something valuable to contribute to this world. Even if that's being unhappy.

Hope that doesn't sound condescending, it's something I tell myself too.

>Dr Bloom spoke about how your overall mood during college is a good predictor for how happy you'll be as a person throughout your life.

Welp, I guess I'm dead then.

>around 25, making personality changes MUCH more difficult

Maybe it's just me but my personality keeps changing every year or so, based on the positive and negative experiences and challenges from living abroad alone, having to always adapt to new shit.

I assume it's different if you spend your whole life in the same place you grew up in with the same people doing the same things. Maybe the brain checks out from the repetition.

>avoidant behaviors that limit my social ability

Move aboard to another country where you don't speak the language.

> the idea of your prefrontal cortex solidifying around 25

...which is bunk; the studies that are cited as showing this actually showed changes in the prefrontal cortex up to the oldest people in their study, which was 25-year-olds.

Current research suggests that it continues changing throughout our lives.

What are the reasons for Snapchat? :.

+1, I’m off the apps and it’s been so liberating.

Social media like all addictions fulfill needs that you can't satisfy other ways in your current state. Mostly human contact and validation.

If you start getting out there and communicating with real people on intimate level - most addictions melt away by itself.

It makes more sense to focus on the root cause instead of fighting the symptoms.

It might also be something like: people who experience relatively little psychological distress are optimistic, and also live longer.

We don't like to talk about it, but there is a biological component to how happy or anxious someone is. Not to say that everyone is doomed to be a certain way because of their genetics, but I've known people who are basically never sad, and it's not because they've found some kind of secret of happiness. I have a friend who has the temperament of a golden retriever.