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Root for your friends

josephthacker.com

131–140 of 175 posts

Re: Root for your friends

#131
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, but the post briefly alluded to this: > Even if you root for the “wrong” friends, it’s still the best way to live. Life is better not feeling jealous. You can sleep so much easier at night by genuinely being happy for your friends, even if they’re a bit jealous of you.

you would need to be the Buddha to feel nothing. And note jealousy type things, but say someone who you thought was a friend but was sabotaging you or bad for you... a toxic person. Jealousy is inane.

The point is not to feel nothing, the point is not to get lost in the feeling. There’s a big difference.

Check out The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

Re: Root for your friends

#132
The blinking thing after the author's name in the sidebar is terribly distracting, why make it impossible to scroll past it, or just not have this infinitely running animation? Great article otherwise.

Re: Root for your friends

#134
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, but the post briefly alluded to this: > Even if you root for the “wrong” friends, it’s still the best way to live. Life is better not feeling jealous. You can sleep so much easier at night by genuinely being happy for your friends, even if they’re a bit jealous of you.

you would need to be the Buddha to feel nothing. And note jealousy type things, but say someone who you thought was a friend but was sabotaging you or bad for you... a toxic person. Jealousy is inane.

I think Buddha would feel it, sit with it, and let it go on its own.

Re: Root for your friends

#135
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with the other commenters here. I used to be the same way, I'd be happy for my friends when they got a win, but I wouldn't be happy about it, because I saw it as a zero-sum game, where someone else winning meant I was somehow losing, or wasn't good enough. One day, a friend told me about how a founder he knew had raised a round, and I said something like "damn, it's always everyone else" and my friend w…

> "why would it make me feel better that my friend also had this bad thing happen to them?" Sometimes people feel alone in their failures. Knowing that something similar has happened to others can help the person feel less alone.

I like to bring up a similar anecdote to the faux pas that just happened. For example, a friend taking a wrong turn, adding time to the ride and making the party somewhat late. It halted the conversation in the car, and to ease the tension I pointed out how I "do that at least once per every drive to X" to try to make the driver less self-conscious and so the other passengers aren't sitting in awkward silence.

Re: Root for your friends

#136
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a big factor of that is that usually most people just do the positive feedback and don't say anything negative or constructive. You are most certainly right. But whose fault is this? HR and CxO.

Theres a nice chinese saying Nail that stands, gets the hammer

OTOH, "squeaky wheel gets the grease"

Re: Root for your friends

#137

Hey, I see these greyscale images (the one at the top of the article) quite often these days. Can you please give me the prompt?

I opened it up to look at the metadata, and I'm surprised OpenAI doesn't include any information like that (I believe ComfyUI generated images do by default). All it says it's by ChatGPT.

Re: Root for your friends

#138
post #4

For a long time, I’ve been this person for other people, but don’t feel like I have anybody to do this for me. That’s okay — I don’t feel bitter about that or anything. And I don’t wanna overstate what a good friend I am or whatever, I just do this a decent amount. But some part of me does wish I had someone celebrating my wins. This: “No one comes to mind? Maybe you haven’t really trusted anyone with your wins yet.”…

> "Maybe you haven’t really trusted anyone with your wins yet"

At the end of one of her interviews on youtbue, Kelly McGonigal explains that -- paraphrased -- being praised to the face creates an intimate context around the praiser and the praisee, in which it's the praiser that sets the tone and initiates the dynamics. In a way, they find themselves in a position where they evaluate you. This is why taking praise gracefully is not trivial; people being praised usually show bodily signs of stress. It takes a real effort for the praisee not to dismiss or belittle their own achievement, just to get out of those dynamics as soon as possible.

At the end of said interview, the host praised Ms. McGonigal to her face. In response, she drew his attention to the fact that while he was talking, speaking those words of appreciation, she swallowed. The act of her swallowing was a kind of stress-relief (IIRC). (I'm sure we can all relate to choking up slightly when praised to the face.) She highlighted the dynamics of being praised to the face live, mid-interview, through her own reaction.

You may be avoiding sharing your wins with others because you instinctively might want to avoid the situation where others qualify you. In that situation, you experience being the subject of an evaluation, and that -- i.e., being talked about -- might feel like a subordinate position to be in, even if the judging is 100% positive. My remedy is to just yield, lean back, give in, permit the other person to be in control, allow them to have all power in that context, and just bask in the glorious warmth they're sending your way. It can be an experience that you remember for decades after, and you're going to start to crave it. (Peer recognition can be a huge motivator, i.e., doing things for recognition. Whether that's good or bad, is a separate topic :))

Re: Root for your friends

#139

The blinking thing after the author's name in the sidebar is terribly distracting, why make it impossible to scroll past it, or just not have this infinitely running animation? Great article otherwise.

Agree, I blocked it with uBlock

Re: Root for your friends

#140
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting - had they acted this schadenfreude out at all? Or did this confession come completely out of the blue. From what you said, it is the latter - and if so, should this person be judged for this unappealing inner thought, if they take pains not to let that thought influence their behaviour or actions?

I have thought about this a lot over the past few weeks. And I think I should stop thinking about it because it's becoming unhealthy, because I've analyzed our whole relationship back years and gotten into too much speculation in my head.

Does this person make your life better in anyway? Why do you put energy into the relationship?

Sounds like they kinda suck.

Edit: I saw your other comment, I'm sorry to hear that you are doing through such a hard time. I'm coming out of a multi-year one myself, wiser and stronger than I was before. Rooting for you! :)

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