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Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

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Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#101

Post by DoreenMichele »

jugg1es wrote: post #98
DoreenMichele wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but you did essentially shoot down someone else's statement about what led to their growth. You can't have it both ways. You can't shoot them down and assert they are wrong because your experience disagrees with it, then say it is all just opinion, man. Either respect their opinion about their own life experience or defend your assertion that they are wrong with something stronger than personal opinion.

I take your point. I did not intend to shoot them down or suggest that his personal growth was imaginary. However, I think you missed the main point of my post, which was to suggest that perhaps there was a comorbid reason for his perceived cognitive deficiencies that were not a direct result of marijuana, but related to known side effects, such as REM sleep disruption. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC46…

It comes across like your point is "Stop implying that I, personally, need to quit toking every day." Because the idea that drugs impair cognitive performance is hardly novel.

It sounds like you feel personally threatened and you feel some need to shoot down the well established scientific fact that drugs impair cognitive function.

There may be more going on in his life than marijuana impairing cognitive function, but you have absolutely no basis whatsoever to assert that they are wrong about their own life and there is some other explanation for the cognitive effects they experienced.

Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#102

Post by sjg007 »

randcraw wrote: post #90

For me, it was reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” — one small part of it especially. Long before Pirsig begins asking fundamental questions like, “What can we know?”, and “What is the meaning of Quality?”, he mentions the seed of his destruction — his realization when studying biochemistry that there were an infinite number of possible theories that he could propose to explain any observation, and th…

Except that the story tellers would've died without the discovery of penicillin, vaccines, etc.. Maybe even from a lack of hand washing! There are an infinite number of theories sure, only those that are testable are worth consideration and of the testable ones you find one that is correct at the current level of resolution and move forward.

Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#103

Post by kendallpark »

Prayer. Though I can't claim to be some rock star prayer monk.

When I was young, I had a routine that on the bus ride to school I would read a chapter of the Bible then "pray"--which amounted to jotting down notes in a journal. My prayer had three sections. In the first section I would reflect on the previous day and list any wrongs I had committed. This could be as big as lying to evade punishment or as small as procrastination of a task or envying another person's accomplishments. In the second section I made a list of things for which I was thankful. In the last section I jotted down positive intentions for myself and others. Stuff like, "help me be more humble" or "please comfort Sarah during her parents' divorce," etc.

Then the bus would pull into the school lot and I would start my day.

I found this sort of self-reflection immensely formative. In the bustle of everyday life, it is easy to lose context of yourself and how you fit into the world around you. It was helpful that every day I was reflecting on the great many blessings I had, my own inadequacies and needs, and the needs of others. I suspect it made me more likely to apologize to a friend for something snide I said the other day. And more likely to go out of my way to do something nice for an acquaintance that was having a hard time. Perhaps this is partially my own personality, but I was also rather content with my life at all stages, even during rough times. Cultivating an attitude of thankfulness probably contributed to that contentment.

When I turned sixteen and started driving to school, my prayer routine went out the window. It never quite resumed the consistency of those early years. More recently I've started attending morning prayer at the local parish.

Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#104

Post by SeeDave »

stevenkovar wrote: post #48

Sleep, diet, exercise, and a means to reflect. Sleep: I think we undervalue the importance of sleep. This is the time when your body gets to improve itself. Without good sleep, your diet and exercise will be much less effective. Diet: Your mental and physical well being is a rolling average of the things you eat. Cheat days are fine; cheat weeks are not. As long as your diet is always trending in the right direction,…

>Diet: Your mental and physical well being is a rolling average of the things you eat. Cheat days are fine; cheat weeks are not. As long as your diet is always trending in the right direction, you'll find life becomes a little easier to manage at an increasing rate.

You're totally right, and would like to stress that you get 1000 meals a year. I prefer to think of "cheat meals" rather than "cheat days" so... splurging once in a while isn't always a bad thing.

Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#106

Post by vajrapani666 »

I started writing myself weekly letters. I would, in narrative form: tell myself what I really enjoyed; what was stressful; and what didn't work out. I came up with a list of affirmations and things to keep in mind for the coming week. I would treat the suggestions I came up with as "sudo me" and put in extra effort to abide by them.

Over the course of several months, this weekly process got me into a trajectory of positive self-improvement. I went vegan, started exercising regularly, began drinking tons of water every morning, started daily meditation, and put in place several behavioral controls around going out late at night.

The process was so successful, that I began doing something similar at the beginning of every month. I would lay out high level goals for the month, and list the major events I needed to prepare for. I would go over my overall level of happiness the previous month and identify trends from the weekly letters and come up with powerful ultimatums for the coming month.

The process worked so well, that when 2018 started, I spent 2 weeks going over the month-letters of the previous months and worked on distilling high-level intentions and affirmations for the coming year.

The biggest changes that have come out of this process are my focus on meditation and how I care for my body and mind. Through this process, I've identified my weaknesses in communication and self-care and flooded myself with resources and lectures to help me develop those skills.

Through this process, I've taken courses on REBT, NLP, NVC, and Public Speaking. I've focused on my written and verbal communication skills. It's now infinitely easier to speak to my co-workers, friends, partner and family. I'm not rushing around before events. I almost never feel stressed out, because I've went through taking-care of myself in advance.

TL;DR; Treating myself like a team has opened up a new way to pour energy into my personal growth.

Here's a list of the resources that have helped me grow in the last few months.

- _World Peace Diet_ by Will Tuttle

- _The Artist's Way_ by Julia Cameron

- Non Violent Communication (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LuPCAh9FCc)

- All of Shani Raja's courses on writing

  - Punctuation mastery

  - Secret sauce of great writing

  - Writing like a ninja
- Julian Treasure's courses on listening and speaking

- REBT by Libby Sery on Udemy

- Alinksky's _Rules for Radicals_

- Insight Timer

  - Meditations by Sarah Blondin
Edits: Punctuation, Resources

Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#107

Post by killjoywashere »

Getting hit by a car while riding my bicycle home from work. Spent my convalesence hanging out with my surgeon in clinic and the OR. Ended up going to medical school, doing research on prostate cancer, then my dad got prostate cancer while I was in residency, so it became impossible to not do the research. But to do the research, I had to stay in the good graces of the residency, which probably is what got me through residency.

Most of the events that influenced my personal growth seem to have been born from the silver lining of some unforeseeable catastrophe (9/11, Katrina, Rita, a near drowning, Fukushima). At this point, the list is getting quite long and I'm probably running out of reasons to not be dead. But whaddaya gonna do?

Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#109

Post by mitsubishi77 »

lolive wrote: post #41

Street photography. This is a very relaxing activity, where your brain is at rest while observing the world and walking. Good things that happened to me: I travelled in all the region to diversify my pictures. I bought the books of master photographs to learn their technics, so I can now "read" a picture. And of course I watched a lot of photos on the internet to diversify my tastes. Now that I have reached a level t…

Would you mind sharing which books?

Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

#110

Post by Jimpulse »

killjoywashere wrote: post #107

Getting hit by a car while riding my bicycle home from work. Spent my convalesence hanging out with my surgeon in clinic and the OR. Ended up going to medical school, doing research on prostate cancer, then my dad got prostate cancer while I was in residency, so it became impossible to not do the research. But to do the research, I had to stay in the good graces of the residency, which probably is what got me through…

My goodness, were you personally involved in all those events? You seem to have 9 lives.
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