Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The illusion of being stuck

the-simulation-strategists.beehiiv.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 119 posts

Re: The illusion of being stuck

#91

Post by benoitmalige »

maxverse wrote: post #89
knallfrosch wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy reading them, thinking I'll change myself. Then I'm done, I don't apply anything and put the book on the shelf. It's its own kind of horror for these books.

This is an interesting topic of its own, but there have been a few books/ideas that have made a significant difference on how I operate day-to-day. There are many more books and ideas I nod along to and never implement.

You’ve touched on something profound here—our interaction with knowledge is dynamic, not static. A book that speaks to us today might whisper different wisdom 5 years from now, as we grow and our perspectives shift.

Re: The illusion of being stuck

#93

Post by 0xfedcafe »

I fully agree with this article, based on my experience, which I achieved purely empirically.

I was stuck for a long time and couldn't do new, challenging things for myself; it felt almost impossible. The solution was to get more and more challenges in life. This happened almost accidentally, but a lot has changed. After all the discomfort that occurred bit by bit, it has become much easier to do something new. Even if it feels disgusting and you want to shout, the only solution is to just do it.

Also, building new habits helps a lot because it takes at least several weeks, so you have to accept this challenge and do it.

Re: The illusion of being stuck

#95

Post by stevenjgarner »

I personally found "The Neuroscience of Change" by Kelly McGonigal [1] most useful in becoming "unstuck". Essentially for myself it was being taken through the realization that life is change, how with every breath the trillions of cells in my body undergo substantive transformational change, that my self-delusion of being stuck became comical.

[1] https://www.soundstrue.com/products/the-neuroscience-of-chan...

Re: The illusion of being stuck

#96

Post by axchizhov »

haswell wrote: post #20
noufalibrahim wrote: post #15

I've come across these kinds of articles before and they always seem to suggest that you rewrite the metaphorical firmware of your brain so that it operates in a way that is advantageous to you. There's some notion of self discovery from first principles. I'm not convinced that this is generally a good idea. It makes a person unmoored and open to anything ("so open minded that your brains fall out"). It's also often…

My perspective on this is one of a person who underwent years of complex trauma in childhood and my stuck-ness was a series of overly sensitive protective mechanisms that had been built up by the experience. “The illusion of being stuck” also sounds a lot like “Learned Helplessness”, which is a maladaptive conditioning of the brain to strongly believe that not doing something is the best option because doing somethin…

Learned helplessness was disproved, by the way. If I remember correctly, there is even a recent paper from the original authors confirming this.

Helplessness isn't learned, it's a result of not knowing how to deal with the situation. So, try new things, search for the solutions and don't give up — that's the recipe.

Re: The illusion of being stuck

#99

Post by gnum4n »

Aside: I hate the popup subscription CTA that asks for my email address in the middle of reading the article. How could I know whether I want to subscribe before I finish reading, and why interrupt my reading the article at all?

There are clearly marked "Subscribe" buttons at the header and the footer of the page that I could use if I wanted emails. But there's no RSS/Atom feed.

I'm just a grumpy programmer that gets annoyed by unnecessary interruptions. I'll see myself out...

Re: The illusion of being stuck

#100

Post by haswell »

axchizhov wrote: post #96
haswell wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perspective on this is one of a person who underwent years of complex trauma in childhood and my stuck-ness was a series of overly sensitive protective mechanisms that had been built up by the experience. “The illusion of being stuck” also sounds a lot like “Learned Helplessness”, which is a maladaptive conditioning of the brain to strongly believe that not doing something is the best option because doing somethin…

Learned helplessness was disproved, by the way. If I remember correctly, there is even a recent paper from the original authors confirming this. Helplessness isn't learned, it's a result of not knowing how to deal with the situation. So, try new things, search for the solutions and don't give up — that's the recipe.

Thanks for pointing this out - I was not aware of the recent new findings. After reading through some of the recent updates my understanding is that the recommended reframing exercises (the “Learned Optimism” part) are still effective, even if the original understanding of why helplessness occurs biologically was backwards in the original research. So perhaps a better descriptor now is just “helplessness”.

From a practical standpoint, this is critical to note because if someone is trying to address their stuck-ness, this book is still an excellent resource that is not affected by this detail and is focused on learning new skills to move forward.

I think this also underscores the importance of taking active steps to retrain our brains when necessary.

Post reply on HN