Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What book changed your life?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 539 posts

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#421

Post by GGfpc »

vibrio wrote: post #174
yashg wrote: post #86

Atomic habits. Last year I had just came back from 3 days in Hospital for extremely high blood pressure. I took up walking as a daily workout and listened to Atomic Habits audiobook. It provided me enough motivation to continue and build a new habit which has not become a part of my daily routine. I am healthier and in a much better space mentally as well.

I’ve not read Atomic habits, but keep hearing it recommended. If it is appropriate for me to ask, how do you distinguish the motivation derived from the book and that from 3 days in hospital with extremely high blood pressure? I live with a fear of hypertension because of genetics. My diet and exercise (what I can control) is at front of mind and so far so good, but my high level of motivation is driven by knowing wh…

The book isn't about motivation, it's about steps that you can take that make creating new habits easier. In fact, the book tells you that motivation wanes quickly and we need to force ourselves to create determination instead

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#422

Post by roeles »

ISL wrote: post #57

The Tao Te Ching has given me more contemplative moments per page than anything else I've read.

Yes, very much this. I listened to the Stephen Mitchell audiobook during a week of patiently sanding something down.

That was the seed for a slow but radical change of perspective on life.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#423

Post by emptysongglass »

nprateem wrote: post #251
escapegoat wrote: post #127

_The Mind Illuminated_ Hasn't changed my life yet but it might (found it three days ago out on hoopla.com). I say this as someone who has given meditation practice a good college try (more than a year at a time of daily practice) on a couple of occasions. Most books say just keep going and you will eventually fart pixie dust. This book says you can reach advanced practice in under a year BUT requires a consistent one…

Check out Goenka's lectures on YouTube - search "Goenka 10 day". Blew my mind. So much clearer than TMI

I would say TMI is much more technical because it's written for the "Hardcore Dharma" community which is far more technique-oriented than Goenka. Goenka doesn't approach the stages of insight adaptively, which can easily frustrate practitioners of mindfulness whose first intro to meditation is body-scanning. I would rank body-scanning as one of the least efficacious techniques with very poor results when applied to the physical pain that often results from long sits.

Good meditation teaching is equipping the practitioner with a toolset with the right tool applied for the appropriate stage of practice.

TMI and Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha are necessarily complex because they are treating the entire path toward nibbana as a segmented map of attainment. I can think of virtually no technique which can be applied from the beginning to the end except for very difficult-to-approach techniques such as shikantaza ("just sitting") or the ekayana ("one vehicle") techniques of the Quanzhen ("complete reality") Chinese Buddhism schools. If you think TMI is obtuse try and approach the Shurangama Sutra which is really a mindfuck. But here's the thing: unconditioned existence is a mindfuck so we often need "lesser" graduated techniques to approach the paradoxical nature of reality.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#424

Post by Existenceblinks »

mywaifuismeta wrote: post #409
Existenceblinks wrote: post #329

None, seriously. Sorry for not giving any inspiration. I have only read technical books like Static/Dynamics mechanics, TCP/IP, Material Science, mostly engineering stuff etc. Because I wouldn't want much reading about someone else's opinion or view of truth. People may find they are useful for learning broad spectrum of perspective, but I find that they all fall into limited set of views that I never be surprised to…

How old are you? I used to be like you, but ever since I've hit mid-30s I started to find more fulfillment in books that are not engineering and science focused. Unless it's something directly relevant to what I'm currently working on, I would end up never using concepts from scientific books in real life and forget them after a couple of years. And if I really need to learn something relevant to my current work, I c…

I am a couple years younger than you. For non-technical stuff, I'm more comfortable with video format, and there's going to be several videos on the same topic, better than getting narrow story from single book. Podcast is kinda ok too. Knowledge these days need competitions, you likely to just buy single book for a set of topic based on reviews. But for video or audio content, there are plenty!

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#426

Post by Revisional_Sin »

geocrasher wrote: post #406
Revisional_Sin wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the name "Jehovah" is a misunderstanding. It comes from applying the vowels from "Adonai" (my lord) to "Yahweh" (the name of God). The Hebrew alphabet initially didn't have vowels, so the name was written as YHWH. When vowels were introduced they decided to write the vowels for Adonai above YHWH, to remind readers not to say his name, as it was too holy. Eventually people forgot this logic and assumed it…

Even so, it's the most recognized way to pronounce the name in English. Yahweh is also acceptable, but isn't as widely used. The funny thing about it is that we also don't know how Jesus' name would have been pronounced for the same reasons, but nobody ever has an issue using "Jesus", but people say "Jehovah" and it causes a stir. ¯\(º_o)/¯

Well Jehovah's witnesses think it's important to use the personal name of their god, so it's a bit amusing that they get the name wrong. It's like they fell at the first hurdle.

To be fair, the mistranslation predates them. I see they acknowledge the issue and think it doesn't matter.

I guess it's a bit of a coordination/communication issue with other JWs and with the world at large. The fact that they stick with this mistake doesn't mean that individual Witnesses, or the group as a whole, are stupid, or don't understand their own religion.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#427

Post by itsmejeff »

W1nning - Tim Grover

Never Split the Difference - Chriss Voss

Three Laws of Performance - Steve Zaffron

Peak - Anders Ericsson

All of these books fall into the category of rounding out my world view. I’m an engineer, and spent nearly 100% of 10-12 years of my life (school plus early career) focused solely on engineering topics. These books have made me drastically more effective at achieving personal and professional goals, especially ones that require cooperation of other people.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#428

Post by rg111 »

cinntaile wrote: post #207
foogazi wrote: post #21

Peak by Erickson and Pool There is no innate talent - it takes practice and repetition to build those capabilities Scary

It's better to believe this because it motivates to practice but it's definitely more nuanced than claiming there is no innate talent.

I am vert certain that,

    talent == nature + nurture
And in my opinion and understanding, talent is at least 51% nurture. But, this is what I think.

Re: Ask HN: What book changed your life?

#430

Post by robbiep »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #370
tasty_freeze wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nihilism then?”. The Bible unabashedly says “yes, if you don’t have God” I am not trying to argue theology here, just giving another perspective. I was raised an an observant Catholic household, and I went every week from ages 5-19 and missed only a few times due to illness. But I never believed, I just don't have a spiritual bone in my body. None of what you quoted from Solomon about the impermanence of our materi…

> It is a colossal failure of imagination to think that without God people must believe nothing matters. I haven't ever talked to an unbeliever who believes nothing matters, though I've heard of nihilist philosophers. I suspect non-philosophers who believe in nihilism usually have something from which they're trying to escape; they're not being honest with themselves. Of course each moment matters - it's a time of li…

> On the other hand, as a Christian, I'm accustomed to thinking a lot about eternal destiny and how things will end up in an ultimate sense. For me, the idea of no God existing opens up a yawning chasm of eternal emptiness I find frightening to imagine -- it would mean when I die, there's nothing more for me; and when we all die and no humans are left, that'll be it for all of us. At that point, will anything that transpired previously matter at all? I suppose for those who consciously or subconsciously know they're guilty of sin, the idea of annihilation is far preferable to facing judgment for their sins in the past, so I can see how atheism would be an attractive option, ultimate meaninglessness notwithstanding.

But that’s the thing, you’re completely failing to understand how a non-believer (speaking for myself) feels about there not being an afterlife. What you’ve said is not in any way how I feel - I die, but the actions and efforts and (hopefully) descendants I put out there go in to hopefully contribute positively, in this magical thing we call life; and even in still there, the bits of me continuing to be recycled in the universe. As someone who has had many psychedelic experiences my non-believer side still has a spiritual axis to it; I can’t believe we all get to walk into a place where everyone who’s ever died is cutting around alive again; and Jesus and some older dude who created the universe sit at the head of the table, but that doesn’t have to be true in order for a life to have meaning, and it’s a failure of imagination (and really, and I don’t mean this to belittle your faith, but ultimately an indoctrinated fear - you use the word yourself - that is- ‘frightening yawning chasm of emptiness’) to believe that unless that is the way it pans out then everything is pointless and people are subconsciously compensating or blocking out that fear because they’re sinners.

Post reply on HN