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Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

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Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#71

Post by dorkwood »

bananamerica wrote: post #46
dorkwood wrote: post #6

Nick Cave, on writer's block: "My advice to you is to change your basic relationship to songwriting. You are not the ‘Great Creator’ of your songs, you are simply their servant, and the songs will come to you when you have adequately prepared yourself to receive them. They are not inside you, unable to get out; rather, they are outside of you, unable to get in." https://www.theredhandfiles.com/do-u-have-any-spare-lyr…

I cannot fathom how this metaphysics would help me at all. And I’m both religious and a film major/screenwriter.

Maybe the flowery words obscured the message for you.

If it helps, I first came across the quote in a blog post by Austin Kleon[0], an author, talking about people who say they have a book in them.

"I never feel like I have a book in me. I always feel like there’s a book around me. It’s like I’m a planet and there’s all this space junk orbiting me, and all the junk starts smashing together and forming book chapters. My job is to grab that stuff around me and shape it into something."

[0]: https://austinkleon.com/2019/06/06/its-not-inside-you-trying...

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#72

Post by maerF0x0 »

cactus2093 wrote: post #47
scojomodena wrote: post #13

Passive income. Or recognizing at least the goal of increasing your income/time ratio.

> the goal of increasing your income/time ratio. Not sure that's quite the right simplification of the appeal of passive income. Your time is fixed, the appeal of passive income for many is recovering more of your time. There's always more money you could make if you just get that next raise or promotion, so the most straightforward way to maximize your income/time is just to climb the corporate ladder and make more…

An interesting issue with climbing the corporate ladder is that often your time spent actually increases. I've yet to find a role w/ seniority that is less than 40 hrs a week.

Some have even said that getting a promotion+raise can lead to less $ per hour because of a variety of factors such as more responsibility/time spent, increased requirement for dry-cleaning (suits or whatever)...

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#74

Post by jcoletti »

Steve Jobs' explanation of the simple, obvious truth that the world is made up of everyone's contributions and how much power each individual person has to contribute and influence it too:

"Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is: Everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know — if you push in, something will pop out the other side — that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#75

Post by aaron_seattle »

pendu wrote: post #38
aaron_seattle wrote: post #5

"Nothing is ever personal." The way people treat you, has nothing to do with you. They are just living out their own stories. Related idea: "You train others how to treat you." Think reinforcement learning as applied to training a dog. (And I love dogs, have the deepest respect for them). The concept isn't that different when applied to our social interactions.

Can you point to some source/material that elaborate on this ? Would like to read more about it.

https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-second-agreement-dont-take... , opening passage.

Be warned, there's a "woo-woo shit" risk factor here, which my skepticism keeps at arm's length. I'm more of a neuroscience / mindfulness meditation kind of guy. But I do cherry-pick from other areas, where my curiosity takes me. And the original quotes were good cherries.

Reframing the "nothing is ever personal" idea in more neuroscience terms: some astonishing high degree of our neurological processes (90+% ?) are subconscious or preconscious. A similar percentage of neurons are formed before the age of 18. In many ways, the quest to improve ourselves reduces down to the skill of paying slightly more attention to the activity of our minds.

So when someone interacts with you in a way that causes you stress or hostility, you can choose to recognize the above facts as playing out in the arena of their brain, in the same way as they are playing out in yours.

This is not to excuse behavior, nor disregard the need for boundaries, protection, standing up for yourself, etc. But it does take the sting off. What's better for your own equanimity? Succumbing to a feeling of being singled out? Or recognizing your counterpart as being stuck in their own behavior loop, unaware that they're (arguably) in a state of some kind of suffering?

Socializing is our most complex and wonderful skill; there are a ton of attendant instincts that evolved with it: status signaling, negotiation and exchange; hierarchies for coordinating group actions; grudges and revenge as deterrents meant to preserve social harmony (see chimpanzee behavior; then see bonobo behavior for something more inspiring). All of this monkey software can be dialed down, even outright idled at times. Because nothing is ever personal.

These are some truly advanced and empowering concepts, so apologies if I'm probably not representing them properly.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#76

Post by p0d »

Praying to God at a party 30 years ago changed my life. I guess I felt like I was broken on the inside and the idea that some higher power could help led me to pray while sleeping on someone's sofa. I was so into the idea I went on to work for a missionary organisation with no salary at 19. After 25 years in IT I am on an accelerator programme now and feel like I am 19 again... doing something out there with no money...hopefully I will enjoy being a startup as much as I enjoyed my first job.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#77

Post by JKCalhoun »

bananamerica wrote: post #56
sparker72678 wrote: post #41

Nothing (or nearly nothing) is black and white. It's shades of gray. Understand where _this thing_ is at on the spectrum.

IDK dude, some things seem black and white. The Holocaust, for example.

Yeah, seems to be just as much a fallacy to believe "all things are shades of grey".

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#79

Post by aaron_seattle »

peterangular wrote: post #63
aaron_seattle wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised how hard it is to internalize the first principle. The mind can become very attached to the feeling of being attacked / rejected / overlooked / snubbed / etc.

...And with abuse patterns a lot of us had that ingrained at a super young age as a control lever our parents/guardians installed. I think a hard part of this is that people commonly abuse these mechanisms for control in social structures. I grew up with it, I experienced it in school, I've experienced it in relationships, and I've experienced it professionally. In so many ways it's human social nature to subvert eac…

That sounds really rough man, I'm sorry to hear that. I too have struggled with being on the receiving end of other people's power trips. My curiosity on "what's really happening here, at the level of the brain" lead to some interesting reads.

Chimpanzee behavior: when a higher ranked member is smacking and harassing a lower ranked one -- the higher ranked one is literally experiencing a rise in serotonin. Their dominance becomes a self-soothing behavior that relaxes them, makes them want to repeat the behavior. It's not hard to extrapolate this "very mammalian script" into whatever workplace situation where your counterparts are just lesser skilled at valuing the well-being of those around them.

I think part of the paradox here is your counterpart can both "be a huge asshole" and also just be a mostly helpless automaton of their own harmful behavior, applying a lack of critical thought or self-reflection about their own impulses and tendencies. It's not that you're trying to reframe the situation into one where you are better than them, or that you pity them. Rather, it's just to recognize the sharp qualitative differences between the state of their mind, and yours.

The Aurelius quotes: "The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury."

and (more dramatic than appropriate here, but all the same): "Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil." -- i.e. of course these default behaviors are a starting feature of the human animal.

I wrote a lengthier reply here, it may give you a possibly new way to reframe things:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23093457

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