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I rewired my brain in six weeks

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Re: I rewired my brain in six weeks

#51

Post by thunderbong »

bheadmaster wrote: post #31
guntherhermann wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For being able to see For having all of my digits Clean drinking water Effectively infinite light at my fingertips (most of humanity couldn't do much when it got dark). The world's knowledge. So much food that I have to monitor how much I eat so I don't get too fat. For having a loving family, friends. For being given the opportunity to go to university. For having a career that pays well. That's just on the top of m…

I'm not asking for reasons. I'm asking: whom are you grateful to?

Grateful to life, I guess.

And not so much as grateful to but more like grateful for.

Re: I rewired my brain in six weeks

#52

Post by mdp2021 »

psiops wrote: post #50
bheadmaster wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not asking for reasons. I'm asking: whom are you grateful to?

In your case, just substitute "feeling gratitude for positive things in your life" with "consciously acknowledge positive things in your life".

No, that is "run" vs "make an inventory sitting at the desk".

Re: I rewired my brain in six weeks

#53

Post by rewmie »

igor47 wrote: post #24
bheadmaster wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Different people derive benefit from different things. Why not just leave it at, "the other stuff didn't work for me"? Different people have different opinions. Why not leave it at "I think the other stuff is not new age hippy trash"?

Your correction wasn't my point. I would prefer to live in a kinder world. I explicitly appealed to the parent's likely desires for same. If you prefer to live in a world where people are casual dicks to one another, then I guess there's nothing to take away from my original comment.

> I would prefer to live in a kinder world.

OP is being kind to everyone by allowing them to avoid the frustration of wasting time with something that adds no value.

You on the other hand are being needlessly confrontational just because someone has an opinion you don't like.

Re: I rewired my brain in six weeks

#54

Post by raffraffraff »

igor47 wrote: post #36
bheadmaster wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I would prefer to live in a world where people can say what they mean, without having to censor or sugarcoat their speech because someone else prefers not to hear their words. Different people have different preferences. Can't you just leave it at that? Why do you have to go around telling people not to say stuff you dislike in a public forum?

If you truly believe what you just wrote, why did you write it? Didn't you, in effect, dislike what I said and tell me not to say it? The whole point of forums is to productively disagree and hopefully learn something. It's not sugar coating to avoid being casually mean or dismissive -- it's advancing the very reason we're supposedly here.

I don't normally get into this type of conversation, and I don't mean to pile-on either, but I think that the target of the dismissiveness is a distinction worth pointing out. The post that you originally replied to was dismissive about some mindfulness techniques. You made it more personal, accusing the poster of being dismissive. This is directed at a person. It's less abstract, and their more likely to cause offence or annoyance.

My general rule is that I try to have thicker skin when it comes to assaults on ideas, and be careful not to offend persons.

Re: I rewired my brain in six weeks

#55

Post by raffraffraff »

Jensson wrote: post #43
igor47 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you truly believe what you just wrote, why did you write it? Didn't you, in effect, dislike what I said and tell me not to say it? The whole point of forums is to productively disagree and hopefully learn something. It's not sugar coating to avoid being casually mean or dismissive -- it's advancing the very reason we're supposedly here.

Original attacked a concept, you attacked an individual. Don't equate the two. The first person who starts to attack an individual will be told to stop, that is the only reasonable way to make people stop attacking individuals so we can argue freely.

Oh snap. I just said a long-winded version of the same (didn't see because HN is gloriously old-fashioned)

Re: I rewired my brain in six weeks

#56

Post by mdp2021 »

atoav wrote: post #49
mdp2021 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the time In order to correct a bad tendency, you have to exercise effort (as resistance) in all the spans in which the tendency may show. Suppose for example you are standing: you have consolidated the function and the effort is optimal - but if you tended to fall you would have to spend more.

I don't think so. If you want to be more sporty, because you are overweight the lasting solution isn't going to be to try to be sporty all the time , because that is a too big jump. It is going to be to move more when you can and have make a small sustainable habit of doing a sport acrivity — and you do this on top of adressing other root causes of your overweight, which may be psychological and have to do with the f…

> If you want to be more sporty, because you are overweight

Then you would be in a very different context from that which I was mentioning: you brought to topic two, that of some discipline and that of "people with issues". I was explaining why discipline can be a full time job.

> Don't fet me wrong

You are probably getting me wrong, because I never said I am defending proposals from Harvard.

> who do not come across as the balanced individuals

Where is the surprise? Already since students are not qualified teachers by definition. (And there are evident reasons even before that, about the different categories called by some interest.)

> I still don't believe

Are you sure you understood what should be understood with an imprecise expression "all the time", with reference to what I wrote in the parent and which may have little to do with the practice that the people with issues described to you?

Re: I rewired my brain in six weeks

#57

Post by Karrot_Kream »

atoav wrote: post #11

I can't help but feel that obsessively mindful people always seem to have some deeper underlying issues that they need to cope with. I know a guy who for years went into all kind of new-age seminars, practised mindfulness constantly and then in a moment he told me about his traumatic event that has plagued him since childhood. All the mindfullness was practised because deep down he felt at unease. Don't get me wrong,…

You're definitely not wrong. Mindfulness tends to appeal to three types of people: people who want to "hack" their consciousness (these types often experiment with drugs, usually psychadelics), people who have mental health issues and don't want to use drugs, and spiritual/religious sorts who are looking for some form of spiritual meaning. Often you'll find people with some mix of these desires in the community. I think this makes sense though; the kind of people who are going to deliberately cultivate some property of the mind is generally someone who cares a lot about their mind for some reason or the other.

Re: I rewired my brain in six weeks

#58

Post by PlunderBunny »

guntherhermann wrote: post #30
bheadmaster wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grateful/thankful to whom, exactly? It seems to me that the popular (American) practice of gratitude is just a substitute for Christianity, filtered out not to mention any deities explicitly, but still containing references to them implicitly. I consider universe a random and chaotic place. In that worldview, there is nobody to be grateful/thankful to, so the practice of gratitude doesn't make sense.

For being able to see For having all of my digits Clean drinking water Effectively infinite light at my fingertips (most of humanity couldn't do much when it got dark). The world's knowledge. So much food that I have to monitor how much I eat so I don't get too fat. For having a loving family, friends. For being given the opportunity to go to university. For having a career that pays well. That's just on the top of m…

I try to do the same, and I find a good time to do it is as soon as I wake up in the morning, before I even get out of bed. It puts me in the right frame of mind to tackle the day.

Re: I rewired my brain in six weeks

#59

Post by scns »

igor47 wrote: post #9
guntherhermann wrote: post #8

I took a 'mindfulness' course a couple of years back, and the biggest benefit for me was learning to be grateful. It sounds riduclous typing it out but there it is. Practicing gratitude daily, e.g. giving myself reasons to be thankful for my lot in life is 1) really easy to do, and 2) takes about 5 minutes. The rest of it felt like new-age hippy trash, if I'm completely honest.

Ugh this is so dismissive. I'm glad learning gratitude helped you. How would you feel if, instead, I said "your gratitude practice is actually new age hippy trash"? Different people derive benefit from different things. Why not just leave it at, "the other stuff didn't work for me"?

Maybe because being grateful and acceptance/tolerance (in contrast to being judgemental) are to different things?

Re: I rewired my brain in six weeks

#60

Post by bheadmaster »

keyrat wrote: post #42
bheadmaster wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grateful/thankful to whom, exactly? It seems to me that the popular (American) practice of gratitude is just a substitute for Christianity, filtered out not to mention any deities explicitly, but still containing references to them implicitly. I consider universe a random and chaotic place. In that worldview, there is nobody to be grateful/thankful to, so the practice of gratitude doesn't make sense.

Serious question: are you making this comment to justify being cynical? I can’t tell if you’re being neutral or not.

I am making this question because I am trying to understand what exactly people mean when they say things. In this case, I'm trying to understand the full context of the phrase practicing gratitude.

A definition of the word "gratitude" I've found online is:

    the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness
Which implies that someone has shown kindness to us, and we're feeling grateful for their kindness.

So when you say "I'm grateful for being alive", to whom exactly are you grateful? Who exactly has shown you kindness by letting you be alive? More generally, who exactly has shown you kindness by giving you everything good that you're grateful for?

The only entity that could possibly be responsible for everything is a hypothetical omnipotent entity - a god. So outside the religious frame of mind, the answer is "nobody", and the word "gratitude" here means something else than it usually means when used in everyday context. In that case, I'd like to know the exact meaning in this special case.

But I think I've got my answer in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37566516

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