My hope is built on nothing less,
than Jesus blood and righteousness!
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
but wholly lean on Jesus name!
On Christ the solid rock I stand,
all other ground is sinking sand.
All other ground is sinking sand!Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?
181–190 of 243 posts
Re: Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?
#182A short collection of sayings by the stoic philosopher Epictetus called The Enchiridion. There's a free copy at http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html Sample: "Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a kind as the author pleases to make it. If short, of a short one; if long, of a long one. If it is his pleasure you should act a poor man, a cripple, a governor, or a private person, see that you act…
A question from someone largely ignorant of Stoicism, generated by the last clause in your quote from The Enchiridion:
How does a Stoic change his/her lot in life, given that Stoicism assigns choice of that lot to an externality? Or does that question lack meaning within Stoicism?
Re: Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?
#183Learned optimism - or at least this blog post - https://github.com/raganwald/presentations/blob/master/optim... Changed my whole outlook.
I keep finding that no matter how much I want to be an optimist I cannot. The problem I have with it is that it feels as if I'm deluding myself whenever I try to be optimistic about anything and I can't hold it for any significant amount of time, perhaps I get too carried away when I become "optimistic".
Maybe it's just me but would you have any tips to overcome or at least come to terms with this mentality?
Re: Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is right. Business is a suffering contest. Life ends in death. There are beautiful things in both, but more times than not, despite all signals and urges to stop or give up, you must will yourself to keep moving your feet. Those few who do give themselves the best chance to overcome adversity.
I respect your comment and the one you responded to. Being an old school nerd, only the toughest survived with a love of technology back then. I recall a stream of bullying and it either makes or breaks you. However, being a nerd is no longer the same as it was back then. What frustrates me today is how the media (collectively) have revised the history books and promote some fairly extreme bullying (see the verge's a…
>Being an old school nerd, only the toughest survived with a love of technology back then.
Ah yes, only the toughest survive. Tech nerds are so tough that they get offended when somebody doesn't like their shirt.
>What frustrates me today is how the media (collectively) have revised the history books and promote some fairly extreme bullying (see the verge's article on Matt Taylor as an example of some extreme and unjustified bullying of Matt based on his gender).
They were complaining that he was wearing a shirt with scantily clad women on it? How is that gender-based harassment? Furthermore, how does it constitute revising history?
>You are not a gender, you are not a skin colour, you are not a religion or an age group. If you can rise above these things, you are a huge step to overcoming adversity. You stop looking down on others and yourself.
Unless you are in the category of people with the highest level of privilege in our society, you are not allowed to forget these aspects of your identity. The police, public restrooms, inaccessible buildings, and other people will relentlessly remind you of your abnormality and victimize you.
Re: Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?
#185My parents worked their nuts off to pay for my education and provide security for the family - my dear old late dad woke up at 4am EVERY SINGLE DAY of the year, except Christmas Day, to work for me, basically. There's no way I'm giving up on anything. I have a ridiculously easy life compared to them, and because of them. That's my main motivation, apart from my own young family. And I surround myself mostly with tale…
Not your fault, but your comment made me subtly sad that I haven't repaid the same sacrifice and commitment from my family with as much as they deserved. They too worked very hard to provide and give a good life for me, and through naivety, youth, inexperience, laziness - I pissed a large portion of it away. I try to do better now, but I think I'll always carry some personal guilt over that. I can't fix the past, but…
Most parents know this about their children, that their sacrifices may go unappreciated in full until their kids pass some ill-defined maturity/life milestones.
They did it for you anyway, and doubtless on the whole, gladly. As another poster noted, you can pay it forward. That's likely what your parents did.
Re: Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?
#186Man, thank god for having found hacker news. The amount of incredible and worthwhile material that I constantly find here has been incredibly helpful to me to grow as a person. Cheers to everyone.
Re: Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?
#187"keep going even after repeated failures"
Lessons from the Kobayashi Maru scenario. [0] It's a fictional scenario from a TV show and used in leadership training circles to test the reaction of candidates to ^no win^ situations.
Re: Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?
#188I remember that I love what I do, and stay positive. The Marines call it "Positive Mental Attitude". The left my last employer(a start up) after they hadn't paid for a month in May, and fell pretty hard into drug addiction(meth + benzos). Since I cleaned up, I've only done a little consulting and writing, so getting another job without fulltime work has meant jobs I would have turned down a year ago aren't even getting back to me. Do I care? Yea, I do. But I can't go back, I can only move forward. Life is long, and what ever mess I'm moving out of, time is on my side. What's really helped me is making a stupidly simple plan. When situations are stressful, its hard to really make decisions, so rely on a plan to get where you need to go. This way, you can focus on doing small things everyday, and worry less when taking "big picture" risks. For me, I do a few things everyday: go to an AA meeting/write or program for my book/apply to a job or two/read hacker news/talk to friends and family.
Re: Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?
#189I realized a while ago that inspiration isn't very helpful for getting you through adversity. Inspiration gets you going, but grit and discipline ultimately help you push through. I'm going to go against the grain of most of what's being said in this thread and say that the best way to get through adversity is to discard a goal-based mentality entirely, in favor of a system-based mentality. Figure out the stuff you h…
> started with making my bed as soon as I got up every day This is exactly the advice from Admiral Mc Raven at the university of Texas commencement ceremony. He recalls it as one of the most important lessons he got from its navy SEAL training: https://news.utexas.edu/2014/05/16/mcraven-urges-graduates-t...
Thanks for sharing that. It was an awesome read!
Re: Ask HN: What inspires you to persevere through adversity?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Solid advice! Would you mind sharing some of the systems you've implemented?
Well the very first one was literally just 'make your bed as soon as you get up'. I read that idea somewhere else as a way to get a small win right away which I really needed because my startup wasn't doing so great - so I tried it and it worked. This had surprisingly large benefits. I didn't get up and start scrolling through my social media right away. I had a nice neat bed to get into at the end of the day. I coul…
I hate exercise but I know I have to do it. I'm 40 now, and I'm reasonably active - I cycle (a short way) to work, I walk a decent amount, but still. I need my heart to beat properly, often.
So this year, I've started swimming. There's a pool near me, proper 50m size.
Week 1: do 1 lap, 2-3 times that week. My girlfriend laughed at me. "1 lap?!". Yeah, 1 lap. It's just about going there and doing it.
Week 2: 2 laps.
You get the idea. By easing myself in to this, by making it a steady little habit, I'm hoping to be doing 52 laps by the end of the year. That's 2.5kms. That's not bad.