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Confronting failure as a core life skill

buildinghealthier.substack.com

71–80 of 96 posts

Re: Confronting failure as a core life skill

#71

> How do you talk about your failures? The big ones like shutting down your company, going unemployed for months, or getting fired. OK, those things can be upsetting, and create some unexpected chaos in your life. But if that's the worst you ever have to deal with, you aren't really doing too bad. "It could be worse" can sound like small comfort, but really, it could be worse.

He's taking about failure, not misfortune.

Re: Confronting failure as a core life skill

#72
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reply is dismissive of the OPs grievances they shared with us all. Suffering, and life, is a relative experience.

I think the poster wanted to be encouraging. "We all know it could be considered as something, but, that given, let us just turn perspective and say: it's nothing".

Yes, my goal in sharing my story is not to garner pity but to give hope that it is possible to recover from even great loss and come out on the other side stronger. Blessings to everyone suffering right now.

Re: Confronting failure as a core life skill

#73
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the poster wanted to be encouraging. "We all know it could be considered as something, but, that given, let us just turn perspective and say: it's nothing".

Yes, my goal in sharing my story is not to garner pity but to give hope that it is possible to recover from even great loss and come out on the other side stronger. Blessings to everyone suffering right now.

So you agree: "From the point of view of the scientist, it is something. From the point of view that matters, it is nothing".

Re: Confronting failure as a core life skill

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear you have suffered, happy to hear you've found peace with how life has treated you. I wouldn't say I'm a deeply spiritual person in any way, but I've seen many people around me find solace in spirituality when going through hardships. What did your path to spirituality or religion or however you'd like to call it look like? How do you look at the world now, or how would you describe what you practice?

Perhaps the most important event of my life was discovering I have autism at age 33. Many things that didn't make sense suddenly did. I pointed my hyperfocus inward to my own mind, at first because I had lost the ability to code and make a living, and wanted to heal my "coding injuries" as I had called them. I had become an atheist at age 20 and primarily had used psychology to try and figure out what was happening.…

This is insightful, thank you for sharing your personal life so openly. How does one go about starting to study Buddhism? I feel like it's a recurring topic that I stumble upon every now and then, but beyond reading up about it myself, it feels a bit impenetrable. I'm already familiar with the general core ideas and such, but applying them seems well out of reach.

Re: Confronting failure as a core life skill

#75

It feels like I have failed in every way that is possible. I have lost my wife, my child, my parents, my grandparents, my friends, my house burned down with all of my possessions. I lost my ability to code due to burnout and had to spend several years doing nothing. During my burnout experience I was basically forced to confront the roaring void of existence. I spent time at a monastery and contemplated the futility…

Read the book of Job.

Re: Confronting failure as a core life skill

#76
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, pretty much every job I've worked at has been like that. There's a surprisingly common psychological fallacy that, if someone loses something another person gains something. It's an incredibly common fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_thinking . Of course there have been a few decent people along the way but I'd say the majority of people would walk past someone dying on a side walk. Millions of sto…

I can tell you that there exist environments which are not cut-throat and that are cooperative. Rational individuals understand immediately that cooperation gives more return than its opposite. If you show to be an asset, you are everybody's asset. Sure, there is an epidemic of irrationality - but it did not hit every environment, and there exist cultures which had that idea of cooperation permeated societally. (Espe…

I appreciate what you're saying, but honestly, my experience is that zerosum thinking is the norm not the outlier, and honestly I've seen more than two handfuls of people's lives get fucked up because of it over the past say 2-3 years.

Re: Confronting failure as a core life skill

#77
post #23
post #17

Learning to deal with frustration is probably one of the most important skills one can acquire.

Any tips?

Different perspective, that got a lot easier for me once I started taking ADHD meds (methylphenidate/ritalin in particular for me).

Re: Confronting failure as a core life skill

#78

To paraphrase Richard Pryor, I support anyone trying to do anything at anytime. It’s so, so easy to be a passive consumer, a critic. It is so much more dangerous and vulnerable to put yourself out there and make something - anything - beyond simply doing what you are told. Whether it’s making art or making businesses. If you start businesses, you will fail. Fact of life. Happened to me many times. You know what inves…

> To paraphrase Richard Pryor, I support anyone trying to do anything at anytime.

What's the actual source quote here? Your paraphrase is excellent in and of itself.

Re: Confronting failure as a core life skill

#79

To paraphrase Richard Pryor, I support anyone trying to do anything at anytime. It’s so, so easy to be a passive consumer, a critic. It is so much more dangerous and vulnerable to put yourself out there and make something - anything - beyond simply doing what you are told. Whether it’s making art or making businesses. If you start businesses, you will fail. Fact of life. Happened to me many times. You know what inves…

I really needed this right now. Thank you. We had some negative customer feedback come in last night and a contract was canceled because of it. I wish this customer had responded to my emails asking for feedback over the last three months but they didn't. Now it's over and done with and some of the most damning feedback we've ever received. It breaks my heart, I'm in a low place today. But as you say, business is har…

I'm going to guess that they got a lower or more competitive bid from another vendor which is why you lost the contract and it is less about you more about them. You know just like dating. If they actually wanted to work with you they would have given continuous feedback since responsiveness to their concerns is usually part of the deal.

Re: Confronting failure as a core life skill

#80
There was this Chinese proverb from this kung fu manual this old martial arts school printed that I used to go to. I had this saying "invest in loss". I immediately fell in love with that saying but every time I go to cross reference it online I never hit anything. Is anyone familiar with that Chinese proverb?
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