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>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.

If it’s true then this is a propensity and not a rule.

My mood in college was suicidal. My mood by my 30s was better than most people I’ve ever met (sans hiccup from a year of no sleep with a newborn).

Looking back my horrible mood in college was probably caused by isolation, no sleep, high pressure course load, and too much alcohol. And I’ve noticed my mood drops dramatically when I get it in my head that I need to be more successful, at any point in my life.

It's probably you! My personality has been basically the same since I was 4. I also live abroad and have for the past 5 years, though, so I guess I just lucked out and got a personality that works well in most conditions and with most people.

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.

This is also my experience. I was miserable from 13 until 35yo. Then made big changes.

I think it is extremely dangerous to make that affirmations, that may take away any hope some depressed folk may have, being 25 and having a hard time.

The rationale about 25 years and the cortex should be much better explained, I think.

67 is just long enough to die as I'm able to draw benefits from social security, meaning all 45 years worth of contributions have 0 benefit for me.

> 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.

It sounds like therapy would be really nice for you, but here are my 2 cents.

1. I have never been more depressed as I was in grad school. My life has gotten way better and stayed there after college.

2. I got married at 30 and I have friends that got married older. This same statistical logic is what you hear about marriage (52% divorce!). What you don’t hear in that statistic is that a lot of people make terrible decisions. My point is that not being married early is a proxy for having a bad attitude, which I suspect they’re really measuring.

3. Intergenerational trauma may be a thing, but you have tools at your disposal. Cognitive behavioral therapy is something I stand behind and recommend to you personally.

Just remember: things won’t change in your life without faith that they will change

almost every comment misunderstands my point. I'm pointing out things in my life that are correlated with longevity.

I'm reflection on indicators that are present in my life and how it relates to OP's article.

I appreciate your opinion and anecdota, but again misses the point that I (apparently) in-artfully expressed

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

> 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.

I have a hard time dismissing the teachings of field experts lecturing at the US's most prestigious higher education institutions as 'ideology'. Maybe it is easier for you through me as a conduit since I provide no evidence, studies, and am only a layman relaying conclusions

Thats my fault

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.

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.

spending time in the bay area with some people who have done this to themselves has given me great reason to NOT do this ;)

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.

I'm not disagreeing with an actual doctor on the topic, but:

- I was a moody mess in college. Having an income and stable partner made life much better.

- I'm glad I didn't marry that young. The partner I have at 37 is much more compatible with me and we have a solid and compassionate relationship with space for the child we've had.

- I exercised more in my 30s if I factor in running. All I did was lift weights before, thinking I was healthy.

- Trauma therapy helped a lot. I can't dramatically change who I am, but life went from bearable to enjoyable.

Good luck :) 67 isn't that bad, at least you might avoid the really bad years.

>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 :)

well shit ;)

> 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.

is it? thats good to know - the lecture series I watched was recorded in 2008

Mine does not work that well, and I am in 30s. So, I keep hoping for better days. Maybe it's a biased take, but I feel like I have seen some better changes in my 30s and my 20s.