221–230 of 329 posts
You should work part time for some minimum wage job for a week or two. Maybe dishwashing or somewhere that you have to deal with people constantly like 7/11.
You should work part time for some minimum wage job for a week or two. Maybe dishwashing or somewhere that you have to deal with people constantly like 7/11.
This is actually a lot harder to do than it sounds! Hiring managers will be suspicious of anyone overqualified, precisely because they know they won’t be there a few weeks later.
You are describing the hedonic treadmill. Essentially, you become used to your surroundings, and while they are objectively great, from the perspective of inside your own head, this is now normal and you / your monkey mind wants more. There have been a lot of post floating around the internet with various solutions, the most popular being Stoicism > Positive Psychology / Happiness research > Buddhism / Meditation. I'…
Correct. It works in reverse too. Anecdote: As I deployed to Afghanistan from my duty station on Okinawa things got progressively shitty. Okinawa -> Manas: Living conditions suck but they have a decent chow hall. Manas -> Camp Leatherneck: Crappy living, crappy chow. Camp Leatherneck -> FOB: wow this sucks. FOB -> combat outpost: holy shit this sucks! How am I gonna do 7 months of this?! I did. Got used to it. Was ac…
You are describing the hedonic treadmill. Essentially, you become used to your surroundings, and while they are objectively great, from the perspective of inside your own head, this is now normal and you / your monkey mind wants more. There have been a lot of post floating around the internet with various solutions, the most popular being Stoicism > Positive Psychology / Happiness research > Buddhism / Meditation. I'…
If however you're comparing the relative pain of writing documentation to lifting a 40lbs bag of building materials, holding a position in yoga/martial arts class, running a half marathon, riding a century, hiking for six hours in a cold rain, then documentation really isn't so bad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct. It works in reverse too. Anecdote: As I deployed to Afghanistan from my duty station on Okinawa things got progressively shitty. Okinawa -> Manas: Living conditions suck but they have a decent chow hall. Manas -> Camp Leatherneck: Crappy living, crappy chow. Camp Leatherneck -> FOB: wow this sucks. FOB -> combat outpost: holy shit this sucks! How am I gonna do 7 months of this?! I did. Got used to it. Was ac…
Quoted post unavailable.
Step 2: Consider taking the science of well-being course. https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being
Step 3: Find (or geek out in) a hobby that you can obsess about and that your friends and family can accept.
Step 4: If you can't find out a path toward self-actualization, ask your employer or boss about ways that you can improve the business mission goals. In that path, you should find a path toward self-actualization and go for it.
Step 5: Accept the excellent result you get because outcomes are very dependent on luck.
People who have not realized this or do not want to realize this will be stuck restless going from one thing to another. As St. Augustine famously put it: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
As for practical advice I cant offer much exept that you should build an awarness of how much is given in your life. Your job, your wealth, your wife, your kids are all given to you and can be taken from you again at any moment. Especially your life is something you did not merit by your own actions at all, life was given to you and it will be taken from you without you having much of a choice in it.
Obviously I recommend finding God, but there is no set "algorithm" for finding him. For some people its enough to be convinced intellectually, for some its not. I dont know you so I dont know what you would respond to. The only general thing I could say is that you should try to keep yourself open to God.
Sometimes just starting something new helps. I changed jobs last year after a successful decade+ run at my old job. My boss, trying to retain me said "you know there will be problems over there, too." My response was "yes, but at least they'll be new problems."
I think it is harder to choose between good choices for yourself then bad choices - choosing between a day taking the kids to the zoo versus making a significant work accomplishment is hard, you constantly wonder what you gave up to commit to the choice you did. Choosing between having to do an 8h drive in Arizona with no air conditioning versus having to go 3 days without food is easy - you don't look back at the end and wonder if you made the right choice, you know they were both miserable. It helps to get comfortable with owning your decisions - For example, I choose to spend more time with my kids because that's what I believe is right based on the information I have now. Being able to saw "I don't love this job, but I choose it because it empowers me to do other things" is empowering and helps me be more content overall.
I was there 5 years ago. My psychology was getting worse by the month as everything I did seemed more and more futile. I quit my job, travelled to some bucket list destinations like Japan, Fiji, Galapagos, machu piccu, then went on a 5 month backpacking trip across both islands of New Zealand with my (ridiculously) supportive wife. I immersed myself the whole time in zen philosophy and tried to lose my egocentric pla…
> but did nothing to erase the fundamental feeling that all of reality and my actions within it are pointless There may not be some cosmic teleology for your life, but that doesn't mean it's pointless; it just means you have a clean slate for deciding what you want that point to be. I think embracing the absurdity of existence can be liberating.