Volunteer someplace. Helping someone else will get you out of your accomplishment mindset.
Ask HN: How to not base self worth on your own work?
61–65 of 65 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to not base self worth on your own work?
#62The answer to this question is relatively straightforward, and has been well developed by the psychology community. Focus on process, not outcome. Don't focus your mental energy on the awesomeness of your projects. (Even if they are awesome.) Focus your mental energy on the production of them -- the process. Ultimately it is the process -- the way you are doing things -- that your life is made of. What you do is who…
This seems intuitive. Scott Adams expresses a similar idea as focussing on 'systems' rather than 'goals.' Failing to meet a goal leaves you with nothing if the goal is all you focus on, but what you learn from the system is more reusable.
Re: Ask HN: How to not base self worth on your own work?
#63I have experienced the same problems during my life.
I found that even though I intellectual understood the process vs. event based life I could not quite let go of celebrating events and being grumpy about past unfair events.
Then I read Simon Sineks "Start with why" and finally figured out my why (happiness) and integrated it into my way of making decisions.
Since then I have really found that my self worth has grown and become more balanced - because the decisions I make is right for me and since the ring true to my why I do not care (as much) what others think.
Re: Ask HN: How to not base self worth on your own work?
#64Maybe base it on how much effort and progress you're making instead of the immediate result or the current level. But to be honest, if your worth is not based on your work, then what could it be based it on? Your looks? Your hair style? I can't really think of anything more significant.
your relationships? the difference you make to other people's lives? how kind, funny, generous, intelligent you are?
Relationships? Rather transient ..
Difference you make? Part of your work ..
"Kind, funny, generous, intelligent" are all nice to have, but not enough to get the amount of respect from other people that can satisfy your self esteem .. (at least for me)
Discipline, self control, vision, direction .. all seem more important to me.
Re: Ask HN: How to not base self worth on your own work?
#65I'm going to go against the grain here and say that your self-worth IS tied to your accomplishments. People will tell you "just be happy with who you are". This is in my honest experience completely bullshit. Doing great things or things that others value makes people feel good about themselves. That's just reality as I've observed it. However, doing great things does not necessarily mean programming or starting a business. I like bicycling and "doing great things" in that area means winning races, or garnering street cred on instagram and through other social avenues.
I think your problem is that you need to be smarter about the projects you do, or find something else to excel at rather than random open source programming.
The people who tell you that you should not tie your self-esteem to your accomplishments in my experience are just compensating for their own personal failings (this will be the majority of people you're surrounded by). They don't want you to be happy from succeeding at something because they're unhappy with things they've failed at.