In 2017, I starting going to therapy to deal with depression and anxiety. I also started working out at a local gym and lost 35 pounds. I'm able to cope with my depression and anxiety much better.
Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?
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Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?
#82After having my first child and deciding I want my kids (and to a lesser extent me) to be proud of what I've done with my life.
Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?
#83Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?
#84Leadership training. I always thought "leadership" was a nebulous concept that you achieved solely through experience. I later learned that there is an entire curriculum of exercises and reflections one can do to improve their desire and ability to step up.
Do you have recommendations or specifics?
Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?
#85I did a lot of "naked* into the wilderness"-style survival training when I was younger. It showed me that I could reach what I thought were my absolute limits of physical and mental exhaustion, and then push far past them. It changed me from someone who frequently gave up to someone who doesn't give up.
This school[1] is a good place to start (though I haven't been there since the 1990s). I highly recommend this kind of wilderness training.
* not literally naked, but meaning that the goal is to remove the equipment-lifeline back to society. No gear is allowed except what you create yourself (stone knives, brain-tanned deer hide, etc.).
Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?
#86Not too long ago, I read a piece indicating that growth is held back by our strengths, not our weaknesses. I have consistently been willing to abandon my strengths and put myself in situations outside my comfort zone. This has been a tremendous source of personal growth.
For example, I lived in the same house from age 3 to adulthood. I graduated high school with some of the same people I had gone to kindergarten with. I couldn't go anywhere in town without running into people I knew.
Then I became a military spouse and moved elsewhere. I knew no one and the town was utterly unfamiliar and nothing worked like I thought it would.
Such experiences cast a lot of light on unstated assumptions, why what works for one person may not work for another, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?
#87The internet.
Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?
#88A string of good mentors at companies where this was a valued activity. (Though it left me wholly unprepared at places where that’s not the norm)
Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?
#89I started accepting that im not a machine to be optimised and a human- stopped reading growth articles, said no to drugs and other chemical 'enhancements' and stopped driving me into social isolation with work.
Re: Ask HN: What influenced your personal growth the most?
#90For me, it was reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” — one small part of it especially.
Long before Pirsig begins asking fundamental questions like, “What can we know?”, and “What is the meaning of Quality?”, he mentions the seed of his destruction — his realization when studying biochemistry that there were an infinite number of possible theories that he could propose to explain any observation, and that there was no way he could ever know which theory was right, nor would he live long enough to soundly validate any hypothesis he might invent of his own.
Pirsig's ensuing battle with subjective thinking and eventual mental decline as he lost faith that objectivity was fruitful as a way of life, much less realizable... This was my first glimpse into the futility of pursuing a life dedicated to exploring objective reality, i.e. science.
In the 30 years since, I can only confirm that epiphany — there is far more to be gained by telling people what they want to hear and by self promotion than in persisting with reality. Storytellers are far more beloved than are sticklers for the truth.