Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?

Post by rayalez » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 8:27 AM UTC

mparr4 wrote: post #56

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…

I love the "Streaks" mobile app for daily habit tracking. It's simple and clean.

Post by lolive » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 10:49 AM UTC

mitsubishi77 wrote: post #109

lolive wrote: post #41

Street photography. This is a very relaxing activity, where your brain is at rest while observing the world and walking. Good things that happened to me: I travelled in all the region to diversify my pictures. I bought the books of master photographs to learn their technics, so I can now "read" a picture. And of course I watched a lot of photos on the internet to diversify my tastes. Now that I have reached a level t…

Would you mind sharing which books?

Post by babygoat » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 1:39 PM UTC

rayalez wrote: post #158

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…

This is a silly false dichotomy that many of "zen" teachings keep repeating. "I want to know the perfect complete truth + human beings can not know perfect complete truth = therefore truth is unknowable and we should give up trying." This is dumb. Just because you don't get to be perfect, doesn't mean it's pointless to try to do better. We are all flawed, but we are less flawed than we were 2000 years ago, and that k…

Post by thomasmarcelis » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 1:40 PM UTC

uoaei wrote: post #124

thomasmarcelis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it weird people keep saying they lose the ego-based view of the world after taking psychedelics, it has had the complete opposite effecf on me. I know the experience is very personal but I have never read about experiences similar to mine. I become very ego-centric and just think about how I can get the most out of the world. I do think it has affected me positively overall. I find it easier to work through to…

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…

Post by stef25 » Tue, Jan 16, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

cdl wrote: post #119

stef25 wrote: post #30

Not 100% convinced about it, but I wanted to say: that I stopped smoking pot. Told myself well in advance that I'd quit 11 months in to my girlfriend's pregnancy (EDIT - obviously the residual effects are still there. I quit 8 months in to her pregnancy. This is what drugs do, kids.) Since then (now almost a year later) my ability to comprehend and concentrate on technical things has improved a lot. I've learn things…

Curious - did you stop 100% or do you still smoke occasionally?