Most people should take more flights.

This especially applies if you’re young: you need to find out where you belong. If you want to do interesting things with interesting people, most of that will happen in larger cities.

For a simple heuristic, try to pin a rough monetary value on finding a best friend, partner, or the perfect job. These all become much easier if you’re willing to hop on a plane.

I had an aversion to same or next-day flights growing up. To solve this I imagined that they were just an unusually long and overpriced Uber; I could go anywhere within the continental US with a few hundred dollars in a fraction of a day, and that was a super-power.

If you can’t get into the US, work on that first. If you can’t afford flights, find events or people who may be willing to sponsor one for you. This isn’t as hard as you may think if you phrase your situation and potential future expected value to could-be benefactors.

The real updates to your gradients won’t come from reading words online, they’ll come from being exposed to stimuli in the external world. Your best life is waiting for you, but it’s unlikely to be waiting in the exact location you were born in.