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In praise of blowing up your life

sashachapin.substack.com

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Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#21

Post by npunt »

Good advice if you're already confident a number of things you find troublesome about your life cannot be resolved, such as if you've already gone through therapy or tried more focused interventions that have not worked. Sometimes you have to leap to the new platform, and its hard to see just how bad your context was until you've left it.

Question is what is the threshold for change, and are there 'blow up some things' changes that can be made prior to 'blow up everything'. Would love to see this in the form of a (How Much) Should I Blow My Life Up self assessment.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#24

Post by mattficke »

Wonnk13 wrote: post #6

I don't entirely disagree, but the first thing that this article brought to mind is the old cliche "wherever you go, there you are". I'm 34, lots of ex girlfriends and lots of past cities. There's a fine line between breaking out of the status quo hamster wheel and running away from your baggage. Moving cities, or relationships, or jobs isn't worth as much if you aren't simultaneously working on yourself

In certain contexts this is called “doing a geographic”. Notorious trap for people who look solely for external causes of their discontent and ignore internal.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#25

Post by rm445 »

zvmaz wrote: post #11

I know that intellectual charity is a virtue one should practice, but I can't resist to think that the text is mainly in favor of very dangerous gambling with the added argument that "sometimes, you can win, like I did".

To be slightly more charitable, the argument is that big changes come off better than random chance would indicate, because the psychology of status-quo-bias/loss-avoidance makes people stick in bad situations too long.

On balance I believe people who are impulsive catapult themselves into worse outcomes. This article could be dangerous advice for people with poor impulse control. I'd phrase the most workable advice as something like, 'If you are loss-averse and tend to stick at things, blowing up your life to do something new could be a good choice'.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#26

Post by jongjong »

In my case, I blew up my life every couple of years for the past 10 years or so; changing jobs and country. It gave me a good sense of what's out there and how things work on a global scale but it's been a roller-coaster experience without any net gains in the long run.

I'm like a bird floating in the updrafts to conserve energy but every time the wind changes suddenly, I have to start flapping my wings again and it feels harder each time.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#27

Post by davidw »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #13

The flip side of blowing up your life regularly like this, is you are throwing away momentum you may have accumulated in your current life.

Feels a bit like a 'hill climbing algorithm'. Sometimes staying in the same place and climbing the hill works out well - but sometimes a big jump can move you to a bigger hill.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#28

Post by dougmwne »

I agree with this post, but I don’t think he makes the most convincing argument.

Risk taking is hugely important to growth and profit. All investments come with some level of risk and riskier investments, on average, provide a higher return.

Continuing to do what you have been doing is the safe choice. Making incremental tweaks will result in incremental gains. When you make a big change, you take a big risk and you should be chasing the possibility of a big reward.

If you “blow up your life” without a reason and without a goal, I doubt it’ll go that well. But if you leap at a big bold goal, you may find yourself achieving it!

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#29

Post by Scubabear68 »

dylkil wrote: post #23
Scubabear68 wrote: post #13

The flip side of blowing up your life regularly like this, is you are throwing away momentum you may have accumulated in your current life.

momentum going down is usually what makes people unhappy, blowing up your life up kicks momentum in a new direction

I disagree. Lost momentum is lost. Blowing up your life means you start from a low state, and have to start all over again.

It absolutely can be positive. But it is not at all guaranteed.

Sometime it all works out. And, sometimes, you throw away what seems to be “bad” in the moment, and find yourself much worse off with your new choice.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#30

Post by fy20 »

valzam wrote: post #19
Scubabear68 wrote: post #13

The flip side of blowing up your life regularly like this, is you are throwing away momentum you may have accumulated in your current life.

This is particularly true when it comes to your place of residence. Moving constantly means you never "lock in" a level of expenses and will always have to earn more to keep up with inflation of housing prices (be it rent or purchase price). At least in Europe it is common to have indefinite rental contracts with a clause saying they can never raise the rent more than LOW_SINGLE_DIGIT% per year or even only for 10 ye…

That's only true in specific parts of Europe. Where I am renting is like the wild west. Last year a friend's landlord put up their rent by €100, after 2 months of their 1 year contract...

But your point still stands, here you would typically buy a property when you get stable in life, locking in a monthly payment with a mortgage. Towards the end of the mortgage the payments will feel a lot more affordable due to inflation and / or a higher salary from career growth. If you keep moving to different places that's going to be complicated.

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