Believe me: what you do really matters
For a long time, I wondered whether it truly matters in the long run what you do, or if you simply grow into a certain personality. I’ve tried both approaches. Believe me: all those small choices really do make a difference.

You can’t look at the brain without looking at everything else
It’s great that you can identify depression in a brain scan. But that’s completely irrelevant if you don’t consider everything else.
Imagine someone lives like this:

  • Very little contact with other people

  • No purpose in life

  • Unhealthy diet

  • Substance use

  • No exercise

  • Never goes outside

Now they go to the doctor. The doctor says: “You have depression.”

The correct answer is: yes, of course you have depression. Anyone living like this would have depression.

And now comes the classic discussion: do you have depression, and that’s why you do nothing? Or do you do nothing, and that’s why you get depression?

The problem is almost statistical. The chance of someone spontaneously developing depression is infinitely smaller than the chance that someone has been doing things structurally wrong for a long time. There are simply so many factors to consider if you want to be healthy and depression-free: social contact, exercise, work, laughter, crying, being silly, feeling fear, living lovingly, resilience, quiet moments, structure, sleep, healthy eating. The chance of doing all these things wrong, and doing them wrong for a long time, is very high. The chance of depression dropping out of the sky is minimal. You should really see it as a 10–20 year build-up leading to depression.

I don’t want to scare you into thinking depression is always lurking. But don’t underestimate that doing things differently actually makes a difference for your long-term mental health. I see many people around me who spend all day on their smartphones. What do you think will happen? Anxiety and depression will increase dramatically, because what you do matters. Putting your smartphone down really makes a difference (I’ve done it myself).

It’s Not the World That Shifted. It’s You.

The state you are in → how you look at the world

Have you ever taken public transport after work? It’s not the same as before work. That’s because the state you are in makes you look at the world differently.

I think this often gets mixed up with the observer effect. Because we have changed, we think the world is a different place too. This is surprisingly tricky. When you are in bad shape, you might think the world is an evil place as well. It’s not. You have changed.

In the 90s, life was way easier than now. We didn’t get bombarded with social media, there was far less news. Probably the same amount of bad things happened, but people were, in general, more happy and peaceful.

I think the “observer effect” mostly comes down to believing that everything around you has changed, while in fact, you have changed. You’re not looking at a change in energy — you are changing, while you look at the thing changing.