Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?

edit : + things you say no/avoid while persevering.

― Friedrich Nietzsche

If the outcome you're working towards is sufficiently worthy, and you can feel yourself making even just a little bit of progress toward that outcome every day and every week, then you can get by just fine.

- Support: Find quality friends that are positive, creative, and understanding. (Eliminate the doubters super quick, cultivate a great network)

- Mindfulness: Remind yourself of the little triumphs and how far you've come. Create a list in a doc as you grow, you'll be surprised. Perform a retrospective once every couple of months.

- Gratefulness: Remind yourself that those accomplishments probably weren't possible without your network, give thanks to them privately and publicly. I do this in my retrospective.

- Silliness: Life and time are finite. You should be willing to sacrifice what you want to accomplish what you want, because... well nothing matters in the end. We're all little pieces of meat walking around on a rock flying through space. The sheer probability of existence is simultaneously a miracle and a joke.

- Love: You reap what you sow. Be up front with what you want, who you are, and don't compromise. From there pay into it with as much love and compassion as you possibly can.

- The Big Questions: What are we here for? What does it all mean? Just think of life as a game where you work hard because maybe there is something in the end that will make the journey all worth it. (Some people can float through life, I'm not one of them.)

- Outlets: Find reasonable outlets, whether it's art (my personal favorite is oil painting and making music), or working out, or dancing. Try something new when you can.

- Partners: Absolutely 100% don't stop until you've found a co-founder that you trust, respect, and offers a set of complimentary skills. Literally exhaust every channel (no matter how stupid) you can until you find this person. Managing your own psychology is hard, but having someone help give you a kick in the pants with an alternative point of view is sometimes a lifesaver.

- Self: There are going to be a lot of 'voices' that have an opinion about your life. They can be online or off. Remember that you're the only person that has to live with you, and in the end you're what matters most. To have a happy life, make yourself happy, but make sure that happiness magnifies the positive energy inside others as well. Stay true to your vision, and let that guide you.

- Inspiration: I have some personal things that I find comfort in. I like looking at inspirational posts on instagram, nice cars, inspirational videos on youtube. These serve to help pep me up sometimes. I like to imagine having the nice things that might be a result of my hard work, but the older I get the less material items matter and the more relationships and compounding the good in the world matters.

Also if anyone is in San Francisco and wants to grab a coffee, take a walk, and chat about life, the universe, and everything -- hit me up. :)

[Forgive any spelling/grammar errors. I'm tired and about to sleep.]

Additionally failure is a big part of the learning process, and each failure brings you closer to success because you now have a life experience that you can use to shape your future choices.

These days I know it pretty well and basically manage it out of habit and experience.

This doesn't prevent events from pushing me into a depressive episode, but it does mean I know what steps I need to take to get through and get out. Because in the depths of suicidal depression, I know in my bones that it's pointless, meaningless etc. But I know in my head that this is just a feeling, no matter how real it feels, and that it won't last forever.

I did a talk about living with depression and ADHD last year, which might be of interest[0].

[0] http://original.livestream.com/pivotallabs/video?clipId=pla_...