Objective: Maximize stress resilience, social support, sense of purpose. Eliminate bad moods. Key tactics:
Meditation. It definitely works. This deserves a separate post. But in short, I meditate daily, and found that it has significant benefits. The biggest is that recently I started to realize that the “self” and “free will” are cognitive illusions, and that makes it very easy to dissipate any negative moods, desires or emotions. I recommend the book Waking Up by Sam Harris here (as long as you are not an easily-offended religious person). https://www.samharris.org/waking-up
Psychotherapy. Also a separate post. In short, I come to my therapist (who is also a Stanford/Harvard neurobiologist focused on helping high-performance people perform even better) with questions like “how do I enhance my intelligence?” “how do I eliminate bad mood days?” “how do I find it trivially easy to always chat with girls I find attractive?” etc. and we discuss concrete strategies based on research, other high-performer patients he sees etc. If you have not tried psychotherapy you really should, it is awesome.
Never, ever lie about anything to anyone. Counterintuitive, but this seems to be a huge social hack and people like you a lot more if you always tell everyone the truth, no matter how embarrassing or hurtful. I used to lie a lot and am trying to completely stop. Also recommend the awesome short book “Lying” by Sam Harris which outlines this argument better than I ever could. https://www.samharris.org/books/lying
For me, it took awhile to figure out what I want from sex. Eventually I realized there are two major disagreements I have with how society approaches it, and the key to mental health in my case is to say “fuck social norms,” and just do what you want (as long as all participants consent and nobody is hurt). Specifically: I want to be public about my sexual habits, fetishes, porn preferences and the like because I believe they are nothing to be embarrassed of. I want to be in relationships with awesome women I find extremely attractive, but at the same time openly (i.e. with everyone’s consent and participation) have sex with other women. Constant sexual novelty/excitement, emotional closeness and complete trust/transparency are all non-negotiable for me. Society says one can’t have it all in this regard. Personal experience and some knowledge of the intimate lives of other people clearly say otherwise.