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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?

#131

Post by Toast_25 »

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…

How do you mitigate the effects of marijuana on REM? I (mostly) quit even light drinking because I need a good nights sleep to function.

I don't smoke much anymore, but more because I don't feel like I have a safe place to kick back and smoke than anything else. When I do smoke I feel tired the next day.

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

#132

Post by Toast_25 »

BjoernKW wrote: post #117

Freemasonry, which I'd describe as a sort of meta-framework for living a good, ethical and worthwhile life. Freemasonry among many other aspects can serve as constant reminder to behave ethically and make the most of your life. It also allows to get to know people from all walks of life and backgrounds that otherwise you probably wouldn't have met. Apart from being a great way to discover novel ideas and broaden your…

What is being a freemason like?

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

#133

Post by Toast_25 »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #121
superasn wrote: post #6

I think sticking to things I start has contributed the most personal growth for me. I think for anything to have any effect on you, you have to stick with it for at least 6 months or more (though it definitely depends on each activity). In the last 2 years I have been able to lose 8kgs, increase my business, cure my chronic backache and become a lot happier using this one trick of sticking to things daily without fai…

How did you cure your chronic back ache? I'm having issues right now which I think are being caused by anxiety but I'm not exactly sure how to address them. I've started doing a lot of exercise though, perhaps that will be all I need.

Planks helped a lot with mine. Also, deadlifts, but I urge you to learn proper form.

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

#134

Post by Toast_25 »

JoshMnem wrote: post #85

I did a lot of "naked* into the wilderness"-style survival training when I was younger. It showed me that I could reach what I thought were my absolute limits of physical and mental exhaustion, and then push far past them. It changed me from someone who frequently gave up to someone who doesn't give up. This school[1] is a good place to start (though I haven't been there since the 1990s). I highly recommend this kind…

Thanks, this is really interesting to me.

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

#135

Post by JoshMnem »

Toast_25 wrote: post #134
JoshMnem wrote: post #85

I did a lot of "naked* into the wilderness"-style survival training when I was younger. It showed me that I could reach what I thought were my absolute limits of physical and mental exhaustion, and then push far past them. It changed me from someone who frequently gave up to someone who doesn't give up. This school[1] is a good place to start (though I haven't been there since the 1990s). I highly recommend this kind…

Thanks, this is really interesting to me.

If you have questions, feel free to send me a message. I went to a variety of "primitive wilderness skills" training programs over an 8-10 year period, but that one was the most field-based. My email address is on my profile.

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

#136

Post by mod »

subcosmos wrote: post #69

Two weeks after earning a PhD in medical research, I was driving down the highway and saw a terrible accident right in front of me. I pulled over and attended to an unconscious man in a crushed vehicle. Myself and several other good Samaritans tried to resuscitate him, but failed. It was fathers day. I would later find out he was about 40 with two kids. Way too young. For a time I blamed myself for not being a "real…

I was once a certified lifeguard & first responder, and pulled a man from a river during a vacation. He had been underwater several minutes (the man couldn't swim), as he could not be seen--the water was murky & visibility was It's been about 12 years now, I think.

I made some mistakes which I think could have been avoided. Not the mistake of standing by, but I didn't keep my training at the front of my brain. Namely, I did not ensure 911 was called before we found the body, and I did not spend a few seconds trying to recruit more people to look for the body. Both of those may have saved his life, it's hard to say.

I haven't found a silver lining, and I don't expect to. I simply hope that I can perform better in the event that such a thing happens again.

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

#137

Post by m_fayer »

milkytron wrote: post #123

I'd have to say my significant other. Before we met I was working at a car wash, selling weed, and barely passing my classes. She inspired me to be the best I can be and pushed me out of my comfort zone. Since we met, I got A's in every class afterwards, built an app that got me a job at a software company, and now I'm working a job a love at one of the best companies in the industry with a career I find satisfying.…

That's sweet and inspiring. We shouldn't overlook the importance of being loved by a person that believes in us, can provide just the right kind and quantity of push, and is truly happy when we're happy.

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

#138

Post by BjoernKW »

Toast_25 wrote: post #132
BjoernKW wrote: post #117

Freemasonry, which I'd describe as a sort of meta-framework for living a good, ethical and worthwhile life. Freemasonry among many other aspects can serve as constant reminder to behave ethically and make the most of your life. It also allows to get to know people from all walks of life and backgrounds that otherwise you probably wouldn't have met. Apart from being a great way to discover novel ideas and broaden your…

What is being a freemason like?

There are perhaps as many specific answers to this question as there are freemasons.

In a nutshell, being a freemason is about trying to become a better person as well as trying to help others to do so as well.

Lodges usually meet once a week. Lodge meetings typically consist of open discussions (excluding arguments about party politics and religion), someone giving a talk or merely brothers sharing things they might find noteworthy or interesting to the others.

About once a month there's a special meeting where the Masonic ritual takes place. This ritual basically is part allegorical play, part lecture and also includes elements of meditation and contemplation as well as music.

Being a freemason also means being part of worldwide community and therefore being able to visit fellow brothers in virtually any somewhat larger city (and many of the smaller ones, too) in the world.

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

#139

Post by yesenadam »

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…

So you gave up science and searching for truth, for manipulating people/lying to them (I guess by "telling people what they want to hear" you don't mean the truth) and self-promotion? Sigh.

More to be gained? What's more important in life, what you give or what you get? We make a living by what we get, but a life by what we give.

Sounds like some kind of category mistake, or a few. Science isn't as totally impossible as you make out. Evidently. It sounds a little like the crises ex-christians have about the world, dizzying and demoralizing themselves with similar grandiose dramatics. (existentialists, Bergman etc) That biochemistry crisis sounds like a Zeno's paradox, stultifying oneself with the abyss of the infinite. "There was no way he could ever know which theory was right" - isn't that absurd exaggeration?

But sure, I guess you mean, you realized a life of science wouldn't perhaps be a wonderful bountiful one, but a hard, thankless one, maybe ending in total failure. But why blame science or philosophy if science doesn't guarantee you a pleasant life? Or to be beloved. Well, maybe it's only for the cantankerous few, those mountain goats crazy enough to love the solitary labour (in science, philosophy, mathematics etc) for its own sake. And it's good to realize such a life wasn't for you.

In the sequel Lila (although not sure if recommending Pirsig to people is a good idea) there's a lot against academic anthropology, but even more presenting what he evidently sees as objectively how the world works, (societies, cultures, people) what could be called sociology I guess. And it's very interesting and insightful stuff.

Ok sorry about that ramble.

To this day, my whole philosophy totters after an hour’s sympathetic conversation with total strangers: it seems so foolish to me to wish to be right at the price of love, and not be able to communicate what one considers most valuable lest one destroy the sympathy. – Nietzsche, letter to Gast, 1880

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

#140

Post by yesenadam »

a-priori wrote: post #127
uoaei wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious. If you don't mind answering on a public forum, what was the ratio of your dosage to bodyweight? For instance, my experiences were usually around the ratio 5e-5. It is true that some people's egos "fight" the drug more than others. All the bad trips I've seen in others have been the result of a person's ego refusing to relinquish control over the body, and fighting to remain relevant to the host. They were dr…

I find it really interesting that psychedelic drug users frame their experiences in Freudian terms, using terms like 'ego' and its struggle against other entities within the mind.

What's so really interesting about it? Well, what other term would be so readily understood by people?

Also, I guess with LSD/mushrooms there's usually a lot going on, and you can either go with it or try to resist. Going with it is advisable, but it can get scary - e.g. horrific death/maggot/slime-based imagery. You have to trust in the experience, which is so huge the self disappears.

I guess a similar thing happens in everyday life, but not so unmistakably. A similar thing came up for me when writing orchestral music - I quickly learnt just to be a tool for the music, to follow the flow, never to impose my ideas "I want this to happen here/next" - that never worked; just to write down what I heard in my head. I guess a lot of pursuits are like that.

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