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Ask HN: Words of encouragement for someone lost in life?

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Re: Ask HN: Words of encouragement for someone lost in life?

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP did not say anything negative about dressing femininely. OP said "sincerely evaluate your style of dress".

The advice does play into classic masculine stereotypes though. Almost like a movie trope where the hopeless nerd finds out he really was a cool jock the entire time. Throw away your nerdy shit, get ripped in the gym, learn martial arts and dress well. All that’s fine if that’s what you want but I don’t think it’s particularly aspirational for everyone. Even if elements like regular exercise and broadened activities…

OP is suggesting a starting place for people who feel unmoored. It's an anecdote giving him a formula to try on for size.

The kind of person who has strong feelings about their sense of style (for example dressing more feminine) already has achieved a kind of center or "normal" for their personality that the person who posted this lacks.

Re: Ask HN: Words of encouragement for someone lost in life?

#202
So, you find yourself the way you are, with the options you know of, much time left to explore and no direction?

There seems to be a problem of situational knowledge and direction. You don't seem to know where the tasty options are for you, and when they are best taken advantage of.

For example, travelling alone is best done out of season for tourist heavy locales (which are the places other people want, so you might enjoy). And travel is entirely different experience as a couple, a group or a lone traveller. Such that a couple might have better luck end-of-season, and just before season start is a lucky time for groups.

You can only find out what I'm talking about from doing it. How I know it, how significant a consideration any of this is for a given travel opportunity, do you care for the experience of lone travelling at all, and what with as a couple.

In short, you sound like you're forgetting to spend time outside the house doing things, working your environment for interesting opportunities, making acquaintances and exploring their map of your shared surroundings. No business is going to come to you if you don't hustle for it mate.

I know it's tempting to package your identity and present it in some gallery -- someone might notice, someone might be approving, interested, appreciative. That would be supportive to your self worth. But chances are you won't hear back from any of this, and those are just the chances, even if you're otherwise an exceptional specimen. So if you don't hear back, that is evidence of the base landscape of chance, you shouldn't care. Put 20 more profiles up on other services. Amplify your effort. Still means nothing.

They guy flying a plane is a pilot. They guy commanding everyone's attention is the instructor. The guy discussing his supply with a chinese seller through a translate tab on his side-b's handy at 4am night before product launch is a business man.

Notice, none of these people are comfy at home. They are all engaged in high-stakes environment manipulation.

It's all about how you spend your time. When you catch yourself having the option and the compulsion to engage in something you don't want to be the -man of, have a ready-good option of doing something that does represent what you think you could be. Could you be the one taking walks? Take a 20 minute walk with no phone or purpose instead of 20 minute coffee with FB/Twitter. Doing so is in and of itself a successful realization of what you think you could be.

And don't be busy or money-tight. People that are engaged in those two have bad luck doing anything else at all.

In general, set time aside to explore. Think about what you like, and how it could be better enjoyed. See where your fear is, what it is, how it would all go bad, how would it be if it didn't go that way. If you think much on some other person and what they want, then try to understand why, try to see if that is something you want at all. Every day you should explore, adjust, assess.

Talk to yourself, ask yourself things. What's next, John? Are we going to enjoy it? What is the game if not? How will it go, what should I have prepared and on-hand? What will it do, how do we feel about that?

Actually try it. Like, the way I typed it. Quite literally.

Re: Ask HN: Words of encouragement for someone lost in life?

#203
As another man your age, there's nothing of value to gain on Tinder. It's a meat market and you're viewing carefully crafted advertisements. It's a system that dehumanizes all involved.

My advice is to stop thinking and start doing. Go do something that's actually interesting (to yourself!). Try to keep an open mind for other people and take a "why not?" approach to social activities and talking to people, but the most important thing is to be actually doing something cool.

Re: Ask HN: Words of encouragement for someone lost in life?

#204
I ran an incubator and I saw future billionaires at their worst. You need a social form of exercise, and a focused technical/industry community to interact with personally. This is neither of those. If you can, pick one old friend to go with you that you wouldn’t mind working with for the next 10 years. You’ll be amazed at how well this can work out for you.

Also. If you’re on Tinder/etc because you’re depressed, just try to find someone nice. Nopeing on popular profiles will boost your chances.

Re: Ask HN: Words of encouragement for someone lost in life?

#205
Just quit this marketplace of egoboosting and lonely attention junkies (almost all of them, even girls with beautiful photos).

Focus your attention on something real, meaningful, whatever it may be. Something that will fulfill you, not give some cheap dopamine to your ego.

Re: Ask HN: Words of encouragement for someone lost in life?

#206
I've been where you are more than once, for more than one reason. I've survived those trials, so far. I'm 61 years old now, so it's doable.

You've survived, so far, too. We have that in common. We might have been dead by now, but we're not. Every new day is a bonus life for us, now. We just have to decide what to do with it.

We'll probably make some wrong choices, and our screwups will be painful. Every mistake can be made better with some effort, though. We can learn from it. We can address the damage it does.

Every mistake except one: ending your life is final. It's the one mistake you can't fix up afterward. So be very sure you've looked thoroughly at all the other options before picking that one.

Your issues are not superfluous. They are essential and unavoidable. Every human being has the problem of figuring out how to live a good and worthwhile life. None of us is guaranteed to get it right. There are a lot of ways to get it wrong, and there are a lot of things outside our control that work against us.

But there's good news. We also have some things going for us. We're intelligent. We can learn. There are learnable skills that are applicable to these problems. There are worthwhile things that are actually under our control.

We aren't born knowing how to be happy. We're born knowing how to recognize pleasure, but happiness and pleasure are not the same thing. Pleasure is an ephemeral experience that comes and goes. We can chase it, but it remains ephemeral, and chasing it turns out not to be wise or rewarding in the long run.

Happiness is different. It's something that you can learn how to build and refine. It's hard work, but you can get better at it with practice.

Some other commenters have suggested seeing a therapist. That's a good idea. Find a good one. Good therapists are teachers. They teach you about what tools and skills exist to help you build a happy and worthwhile life, and help you get started learning how to use them.

Therapists are not mechanics. They can't fix you. They can tell you about the tools, teach you the basics of using them, and sometimes offer some training wheels to get you started, but in the end you have to do the work yourself.

We get better at what we practice. That goes for mental as well as physical skills. You already know this: you learned programming and mathematics.

You get better at what you do over and over--so pay attention to what you do. Pay attention to what helps you and what hurts you. Learn to distinguish them. Focus your attention on what helps you.

Training our attention is tricky. Any thought or feeling we give attention to gets stronger. So supressing bad thoughts is not a winning strategy. Suppression is just another kind of attention. It makes the suppressed thoughts stronger.

It's more effective to find constructive thoughts and feelings and direct your attention toward them. You'll have to do it over and over, because our attention is fickle. It jumps here and there and it likes to revisit anything it's visited a lot lately, and it's attracted to every shiny new thing. But we get better at what we repeat, so put your attention on constructive things, and then, when it wanders, put it back on constructive things again, over and over. Be patient. You'll get better at it with practice.

Learn to recognize what you truly find valuable and seek that. Learn to recognize what's under your control and what isn't. Put your attention and effort into valuable things that are under your control, and practice leaving the rest alone.

For example, you can't control whether this person or that person finds you attractive; they do or they don't.

When you use Tinder, you're hoping that someone will find you appealing and that something pleasant will come of it. That's a low-percentage strategy. You're looking for value in things outside your control, and the value you're looking for is fleeting: pleasure. You're better off looking for happiness instead of pleasure, and better off looking for it in things that you can deliberately cultivate than in things outside your control.

So what's something you can control? You can control whether you are working to advance some goal that you find valuable. So focus on that. What about that connection to another person? Other people care about things that they find valuable. Some of them will value some of the things that you do.

Some of them will offer to help you in your goals, because they share them. Accept their help with gratitude. Help them when you find their goals worthy. You'll make friends. Some of them will find you attractive, in part because of your shared values. Some will turn into something more than friends. Some will become ties that you cultivate and that reward you for years to come.

You won't control exactly which people that will be or when it will happen, but if you focus on what you truly value and what's up to you, and if you make yourself available to social ties that arise from what you truly value, it'll happen. We're social animals. We work as a species because we're inclined to help one another with shared goals.

When it does happen, the ties you form will be based on things you truly value. That will be better and longer lasting than any ephemeral moment of pleasure that random chance grants you.

I've lived through moments like the one you're describing. If I survived it, you can too. The best things in my life have come after my nights in the abyss. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happens to you.

Re: Ask HN: Words of encouragement for someone lost in life?

#207

Unpopular opinion: I’ll start by assuming you’re in a first world country as Tinder is a first world dating app. Drop tinder immediately and forget about dating women from your country. Something happened over the past 50 or so years and first world women’s standards have become unrealistically high. Maybe it was social media, or dating apps, who knows, but the fact is, the majority of them have adopted this “impress…

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion because it is misogynistic garble. I think you should spend less time giving advice and more taking it.

Why dismiss booleandilemma as misogynistic ?

My observations do match what he had to say, I estimate that a large number of marriages ( 50-80%)are dysfunctional and when a divorce happens, if you are a man in the first world you are screwed up financially and emotionally _permanently_ . The courts nearly always side with the woman. If young men need advice they need to see realty as it is.

Re: Ask HN: Words of encouragement for someone lost in life?

#209

It's literally a therapist's job to help you figure this out, I don't want to undermine this. Please speak to a professional, you are not alone. In the meantime, here are some of my own "no bullshit mantras" I found comforting in similar times, mostly from Zen Bhuddism : * You are not supposed to be anywhere. Your only real obligation is to be you, now. * There is no "better" version of you now. There is no other way…

> There is no "better" version of you now. I mean, if someone is fat and unhealthy, then sure is a better version of them. If someone has wishes, goals and plans for themselves, then there is a better version of them, when they achieved everything they wanted. If it's not, then why try to improve yourself? If you are the best you ever were, then why try to reach for a higher purpose? As an eastern European, this kind…

The other commenter takes this somewhere interesting, but to me the main point is to not get trapped by guilt. That's why I say "you now" and not just "you". I'm not implying that you're the best you ever were, only that guilt (or pride) does nothing to change what you are in the present.

In other words, it's okay to just be you. In fact, the world is only better for it if you can live without guilt. Achievement and ambition are much less real to me.

Re: Ask HN: Words of encouragement for someone lost in life?

#210

It's literally a therapist's job to help you figure this out, I don't want to undermine this. Please speak to a professional, you are not alone. In the meantime, here are some of my own "no bullshit mantras" I found comforting in similar times, mostly from Zen Bhuddism : * You are not supposed to be anywhere. Your only real obligation is to be you, now. * There is no "better" version of you now. There is no other way…

This stuff works only when you fully understand it; that means when you are over 40 and you don't need advice because you have some life experience. It's a catch 22.

Could be. I hope the intent is still encouraging!
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