It would be rational for things to work that way, but personalities and emotions are not very rational.

There are some people who seem like they have everything in life going for them, and they're still pessimists, their narrative of the world is petty and ugly, or cruel.

Conversely, there are other people who have suffered tragedies that I might consider literally unbearable (i.e. suicide-worthy), and they are still optimists.

I think these are more fundamental personality traits. You can see it in siblings that grow up in essentially identical conditions, but one has a "sunny disposition" and another is anxious and worried.

Your mindset absolutely has an influence on outcomes - how you come off to other people influences how they react to you and treat you. How you look at a problem influences whether you decide to engage with it, and how.

This exists in a gradient space - some things are more readily influenced in this way, others are not, a few are (nearly) completely untouched.

Existence, that is - the Universe, is a complex system. We know at least a few things about those:

- they behave in unintuitive ways. Attempting to predict the behavior of a complex system has an inverse relationship with the granularity and specificity of the prediction.

- the behavior of the whole is unrepresentable in the behavior of the constituent parts (you cannot drive an axle to work, unless it is part of a car)

- they are very resilient against attempts at control, but more susceptible to influence

- they can exhibit features like recursion, inertia, and attraction. Each of these has specific consequences for the behavior of the whole.

The relationship between outlook and outcome is bidirectional - one influences the other and vice versa. This structure has a high chance to exhibit recursive reinforcement, which is why I think we're used to seeing very optimistic and very pessimistic outlooks, with not so many 'middle-of-the-road' types. It does provide a lever to push, however, if one has the fortitude to push through the failures on the way to that tipping point.

I have a brain and as my wife once told me in a moment of frustration.

"You're just happy to be here" and that is true. I didn't ask to be born and I've generally not enjoyed it, I'm only here because random luck geographically and temporarily allowed me to just squeak by surviving childhood and adolescents, I am a few years away from a cardiological surgery I could easily die in.

But, it's all so damn funny isn't it, what an odd thing to be alive, a little cluster of atoms arranged human wise. I hope I die not having achieved what I want to achieve, I hope, like sharks, I never keep moving.

Humans generate meaning, we are the known, empirically observed generators of the mosy complex meaning in existence and we still don't know and haven't created most stuff, it's early days yet. In the meantime, we're part of the entropic cycle, and we emit meaning the way stars emit photons.

People will say we aren't special, but we are, special and rare and should be preserved, dolphins, et all should be too, but let it be observed that it will be humans and not dolphins that deflect asteroids for the foreseeable future.

Many times when things got bad I thought I'd kill myself, I woke up from so many surgeries I started getting disappointed when I'd wake up, but I was too damn curious about what happens next, I can always end it tomorrow, nbd, I look forward to the perma nap, I'm an accident that shouldn't exist and I can exert casual leverage on the world with mere speech.

Who knows what the future holds, let's give dolphins thumbs, let's give silicon rockets to explore the universe, let's engineer long life so we can start worrying about solving entropy instead of whether or not a single spinning rocks "mid air collision" or 5 degree increase in temperature will cause total societal collapse and put an end to our weird little epicenter of meaning generation.

Maybe we solve entropy, maybe we figure out how to change the topology of spacetime, maybe we don't, it's too early to tell.

Optimism is just the headspace to try again, it's not emotional ignorance, it's not positivity, it's the curiosity to keep trying new experiments, and the humility to not be intellectually certain of despair.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 :)

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.

...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.

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.

Not wealth specifically, but income is probably as good of a controlling factor.

> "For NAS, the demographics model includes baseline age, being white, being married, education, *family income*, and father’s occupation"

Anyway, this definition of optimism

> or the belief that the future will be favorable because one can control important outcomes

Isn't what one colloquially means by it.

Though it is eye catching that it will make a positive impact even if you don't, actually, control important outcomes, like by not smoking

> These relations were independent of socioeconomic status, health conditions, depression, social integration, and health behaviors (e.g., smoking, diet, and alcohol use). Overall, findings suggest optimism may be an important psychosocial resource for extending life span in older adults.

Pessimists look at anything good as an unexpected bonus.

All the good humorists are pessimists.

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.

Which makes even more sense, since stress affects all cause mortality and all kinds of outcomes, and even mere positive disposition towards a treatment is found to make a big difference in patients.