Everything I've learned from psychology (and by this I mean watching psychology lectures from Yale and Stanford on youtube and reading the associated textbooks) makes me confident that I will have a short and unhappy life.

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. He talked about the optimum time to get married is 26. He elucidated the idea of your prefrontal cortex solidifying around 25, making personality changes MUCH more difficult.

Dr Sopolsky spoke about biological markers that may affect human behavior - both inherited and environmentally influenced.

At 35 I am starting to suspect that I may be on the spectrum ( I kinda expected some adult to tell me this as a child, if it's true ).

The males on my fathers side (with the exception of my uncle) do not make it past 67.

My mothers side has inter-generational trauma that I know i've inherited avoidant behaviors that limit my social ability.

So great news.

>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 stuff to stay mentally, financially and socially afloat.

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.

67 is still almost 7 decades of life!

What’re you doing for fun?

I was miserable in college but I’ve made significant changes since that have made me way happier.

I think changes are possible at any stage of life. They just might require more commitment since we’re so spongy as kids.

> He elucidated the idea of your prefrontal cortex solidifying around 25, making personality changes MUCH more difficult.

It’s true that neuroplasticity tends to decline around this age, but there are several important caveats:

- Exercise, especially cardiovascular exercise, promotes the release of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), which enhances neuroplasticity. Consistency matters, regular aerobic activity raises baseline BDNF levels, while sporadic exercise only causes short-term spikes. Studies even show that long-term cardiovascular exercise can alter brain structure.

- Belief in your ability to learn is associated with better learning outcomes and higher neuroplasticity markers. Whether this comes directly from belief or from the behaviors it encourages, it’s still practical advice. Don’t entertain thoughts that you can’t adapt or learn -- especially during exercise.

- Psychedelic experiences (with substances such as psilocybin, ketamine, or LSD) can open what’s called an “acute neuroplastic window”. During this time, brain network dynamics become more flexible and neuroplasticity increases. Surround yourself with the right people, ideas, books, during this period, and it can lead to dramatic positive change. But as this state can amplify both constructive and destructive influences, proceed with care and good research.

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.

You mention somewhere else that the lectures you watched were from 2008. That was probably at the height of the replication crisis. I'd suggest to look into more recent research, and/or to simply discard all this knowledge as bogus.

Research focuses on trends. You are a sample of 1, however, so anything is possible. Create your own path!

Have these males exercised for about 2-3 hours per week? If no, and you do not have this consistency too, that's one thing that's relatively simple to add to your life, which will also increase your overall happiness. That alone probably adds another 5 years and pushes your healthy lifespan forward too.

> He elucidated the idea of your prefrontal cortex solidifying around 25, making personality changes MUCH more difficult.

Psylocybin Mushrooms, 2.5g every three weeks. After 6 months I'm assure you that people around you won't think personality changes are difficult.

Do none of those lectures mention interventions to affect those outcomes?

It may be that those things are all predictive on average, because most people don't take steps to change them.

>Everything I've learned from psychology (and by this I mean watching psychology lectures from Yale and Stanford on youtube and reading the associated textbooks) makes me confident that I will have a short and unhappy life.

By making this prediction you already run afoul of the findings in the article!

>At 35 I am starting to suspect that I may be on the spectrum

I mean, the ample parentheticals in your comment are proof enough :)

> 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. He talked about the optimum time to get married is 26. He elucidated the idea of your prefrontal cortex solidifying around 25, making personality changes MUCH more difficult.

Some of this sounds more like ideology and less science, especially when deterministic tendencies are getting mixed up when talking about psychology.

> Everything I've learned from psychology (and by this I mean watching psychology lectures from Yale and Stanford

Also interesting that sensationalized statements always end up coming from places like that, exclusively pertaining to the rotten individualist lifestyle in the United States.

> 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.