Summary: Understanding nostalgia is the key to overcoming it.

Nostalgia (n.) "a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time."

Nostalgia is the fear that the best has already passed. There may be special occasions where this passing is true, but it is almost never the case. Did you ever have a favorite movie that was eventually replaced by a newer favorite movie? What about a favorite food, favorite book, or favorite song? Surely, this is the case. Why, then, can this not happen with what you have nostalgia for? If anything, you know what you're capable of experiencing, and you can aim for better situations.

For example, if you miss your old friends and you feel as if no new friends could ever compete, you are telling yourself that your old friends were the best the world had to offer, and that your friendship with them was the best you had to offer. This is not true. In the same way that your friendship capabilities have improved over time, the friendship capabilities of other people have also improved (or declined -- which weeds out certain individuals), and this should mean that greater friendships are indeed possible. Think about it: why would you draw an arbitrary line about where the "greatest friendship" lies when you have not experienced every possible combination of friendships? You cannot know the best until you have tried everything.

Nostalgia is limiting yourself. It's like getting a single score on a certain hypothetical game and thinking that it's good -- that it's the best -- without knowing how the game is scored (is a high score good or is a low score good, like in golf?) or how everyone else has scored in the past.

To be blunt, why the fuck should your (input age)-year-old past-self deserve or be capable of achieving and maintaining better circumstances than your current self? Surely you have improved, and thus the answer to the question is this: he doesn't.

Nostalgia, however, is a good place to look for new goals. Use your past to motivate yourself now. Seek better than what you have already accomplished. Such is the way of the Red Pill male.

Lessons learned: You possess much more potential than your past self. Stop seeking to return to how things were when things can be much better now.