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How Much Can You Change Yourself? | Scott H Young
Arguments in Favor of Rigidity
Studies involving identical and fraternal twins (even reared apart) showed that most parts of our nature are partly heritable. Intelligence may be as high as 80% heritable, but 50% is the standard number of many of the domains, including personality.
However, being heritable isn't the same as being fixed. There might be a difference between inheriting different capabilities versus different preferences.
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Key Ideas
"People don’t judge you so much for who you are as they judge you for how you communicate yourself.&quo..."
Scott H Young
Be Funny and Interesting
- Humor: It takes a lot of practice until you can figure out the natural timing and flow of a joke. Practice makes perfect.
- Interest comes from having an interesting life. You can be interesting by telling stories or by simply being quick to bring up an interesting fact.
Interest is similar to humor whenever people discover something they didn’t expect.
Tell Great Stories
- You need to have an interesting point to make it worthwhile.
- Your most interesting point should be the last thing you say in your story.
- Keep it short.
- Keep it personal. People prefer stories about people they know.
- The more you tell a story the better you get the natural timing and emphasis.
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Key Ideas
Studying happiness
Religion, philosophy, and the arts have long considered happiness a subject important to study.
The sciences, however, have only recently caught up:...
Subjective well-being = Genes + Circumstances + Habits
- Subjective well-being is preferred by social scientists instead of happiness because it's not so vague and subjective.
- Research shows there is a big genetic component in determining the baseline you always seem to return to after events sway your mood.
- Circumstances could make up between 10- and 40 percent of your subjective well-being. But their effects never last very long.
- The one variable that affects long-term well-being and is under our control: habits.
Habits = Faith + Family + Friends + Work
- Faith doesn’t mean any faith in particular. Just find a structure through which you can contemplate life’s deeper questions.
- When it comes to your family and friendships and how they should be, just cultivate and maintain loving, faithful relationships. There is no magic formula.
- What makes work meaningful is not the kind of work it is, but the sense it gives you that you are earning your success and serving others.