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Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort (2022)

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Re: Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort (2022)

#41

My path toward personal growth aims toward discomfort. I'm confused; do other people not do this? If I shied away from discomfort, I would be an angry, lonely, sheltered person and exactly the opposite of who I want to become.

The question is, do you seek discomfort?

Or do you want to avoid the greater discomfort of becoming a "angry, lonely, sheltered person "?

I never seek discomfort. I seek the pleasure of overcoming uncomfortable obstacles.

Re: Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort (2022)

#42
post #22

>learning about gun violence. Maybe this is helpful in the USA, but I hardly see how knowing anything about this counts as "personal growth"? There are plenty of things you can know that actively make you a worse person by making you depressed and thus less engaged with things you can actively act upon.

[flagged]

Come right out and say what you mean. No sense being coy, unless you know that your hypothesis actually is encouraging hate and will not be tolerated by this community.

Re: Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort (2022)

#43
Andrew Huberman discusses how the AMC structure in the brain gets bigger when we do things we don't want to do. It is bigger in those that live longer and have great mental health- it may also represent the will to live. Its one of the main places that the brain shrinks in aging Huberman explains this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OHYynw7Yh4&t=305s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDLb8_wgX50&t=2769s

If you enjoy something- the AMC doesn't grow. Question: what if something is really challenging but you want to do it?

Friction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDLb8_wgX50&t=1235s

Re: Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort (2022)

#44
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to make you depressed and reality isn't always demotivating. Poor models of reality are a Hallmark of depression. I think that for many, learning more about gun violence could be a relief because their uninformed baseline is so bad

"Poor models of reality are a Hallmark of depression." Is that a fact? I recall from studies with pessimists and optimists, where they should self report some progress on learning something - and the reports of the pessimists were way more realistic, than those of the optimists. (But the latter probably enjoyed the whole thing)

Is there any particular correlation between pessimism and depression? I'm sure there would be something on the extreme edge but I don't see why there would be anything particularly powerful there in the median case.

Pessimism is more of an understanding that things will go wrong (which is often just factual correctness; any vague understanding of risk makes most people sound like pessimists). Depression is more of an "it is hopeless" take which is not logically sound - even if life is meaningless the sensible thing to do is leave a peaceful & cheerful existence as best can be managed.

There'd be a bit of an overlap in some cases (depression would make someone an extreme pessimist), but the pessimism that comes from being realistic doesn't lead to depression.

Re: Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort (2022)

#45

> we suggest that seeking discomfort as a signal of growth can increase motivation Can someone help me understand this please? With an example? I haven't read the paper, just the abstract. I can barely understand the abstract, I am not going to understand the paper. Per the paper, does the "discomfort" need to be in the same arena as that of the "motivation" one wants? E.g.: If I want to learn a new language, does th…

> If I want to learn a new language, does the discomfort need to relate to the language

Yes.

Comfort: Duolingo and similar. UX designed to make you feel proficient when in fact your are not, gamification, drag and drop words, point and click on things, streaks, leaderboards, etc.

Discomfort: write your own content, talk to people a bit before you are ready, seek content a bit too difficult for you, listen to a podcast many times to see how your understanding improves with each listening, deep dive onto a subject, shadowing exercises, etc.

In short: prefer harder and more efficient things even when easier and less efficient things are available.

Re: Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort (2022)

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Come right out and say what you mean. No sense being coy, unless you know that your hypothesis actually is encouraging hate and will not be tolerated by this community.

[dead]

Re: Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort (2022)

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Come right out and say what you mean. No sense being coy, unless you know that your hypothesis actually is encouraging hate and will not be tolerated by this community.

No, he shouldn’t do it, he perfectly adapted the language to the customs imposed upon us. See, customs and rules don’t change the truth.

The really hateful act is to hide the causes of violence so that we naively walk into it. That causes thousands of death per hear.

Re: Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort (2022)

#49
post #45

> we suggest that seeking discomfort as a signal of growth can increase motivation Can someone help me understand this please? With an example? I haven't read the paper, just the abstract. I can barely understand the abstract, I am not going to understand the paper. Per the paper, does the "discomfort" need to be in the same arena as that of the "motivation" one wants? E.g.: If I want to learn a new language, does th…

> If I want to learn a new language, does the discomfort need to relate to the language Yes. Comfort: Duolingo and similar. UX designed to make you feel proficient when in fact your are not, gamification, drag and drop words, point and click on things, streaks, leaderboards, etc. Discomfort: write your own content, talk to people a bit before you are ready, seek content a bit too difficult for you, listen to a podcas…

Did you switch efficient with less efficient in your summary?

I find your conclusions interesting, basically you’ve listed every modern “appified” experience as unsuitable for true personal growth. I’ve felt this way for a while but never put this fine a point on it.

Re: Motivating Personal Growth by Seeking Discomfort (2022)

#50

My path toward personal growth aims toward discomfort. I'm confused; do other people not do this? If I shied away from discomfort, I would be an angry, lonely, sheltered person and exactly the opposite of who I want to become.

Maybe things that you do for personal growth cause you discomfort, while another person doing those same things for growth doesn't experience the same discomfort as you?
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