81–90 of 352 posts
Do not take life advice from someone with the blind confidence of a mediocre white man.
What does race have to do with any of this?
not everyone can just move to thailand, become bartender and write a book about. that's a very specific trajectory.
Sure, sometimes people are actually in a rut and want to do something drastic to reset their life. But what about people who made a change just because? Is it incomprehensible that some people have the spirit of adventure in them and take life altering courses of actions just for the sake of it?
Alternatively, never blow up your life! Live near your family and lifelong friends, establish hardcore roots with your community, always be surrounded by love. A road less taken by the educated elites, but a happy and fulfilling road nonetheless. The Onion’s take: https://www.theonion.com/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfil...
The Onion's take ten years on is a bit different: https://www.theonion.com/women-explain-why-they-became-tradw...
I have a theory that this is the Monty hall problem effect in practice [1]. When you blow up your life you are opening an unknown door... But after you have narrowed your options, so the outcomes are likely to be better than your status quo. [1] https://link.medium.com/N6HaHXgyAAb
So maybe this analogy doesn't really work...
I blew up my life when I moved to Denmark for an MSc studies. I moved to a new country, amidst covid, without a social support system, without speaking the language, without having financial security. I was terrified of doing that … but it was around the time in 2020 when r/WSB was growing, and saw people “yolo ing” more money than I ever had. So I said yolo. I barely made it through; got super depressed due to isola…
Hey! I am about to move to (Copenhagen) Denmark in a few weeks from Australia. I am also going in not speaking the language. Any tips / suggestions?
When you register your residency, your municipality is obliged to provide Danish lessons to you in some way. Take advantage of this. It’s a good way to meet new people.
Be prepared for the weather. Besides darkness, Denmark also exports rain, so have something to wear at all times.
Make sure that your curtains or blinds are actually good. In the summer months, the sun is shining for almost 18 hours, and even after sunset and before sunrise there’s quite a bit of light. The quality of your sleep will deteriorate if you are bombarded with sun and don’t get enough of it.
If you are a student, know that life can be expensive, getting a student job will help and you will make some acquaintances.
Don’t expect to mesh with the Danes quickly, the Danish society is very tight knit, but if you find yourself getting invited to hang out with a few people at an apt, it’s a good thing! It means you are becoming part of the group!
Danes can be brutally honest, so be prepared for that. It’s not because they intend to be mean, it’s because such is their society. They don’t intend malice, but they provide constructive criticism and you will find them to be quite friendly!
Get acquainted with the language asap; use anki cards and watch shows on Netflix to learn the sounds. As you get better, switch to audio description and you will improve your skills quite quickly.
Hope I helped!
I love articles like this. The writer seems to have no idea they're revealing severe psychological trauma to the readers, and despite it they try to pass it off as sage life advice. Like telling everyone you spit in the soup at work but it helps strengthen people's immune systems so everyone should be unsanitary.
So much of the article and the comments are focused on "blowing up your life" as a result of negative situations. Here's a sample of some of the negative verbiage seen here: "Baggage", "socially underdeveloped", "chore", "needs improving", "psychological trauma". Sure, sometimes people are actually in a rut and want to do something drastic to reset their life. But what about people who made a change just because? Is…
Alternatively, never blow up your life! Live near your family and lifelong friends, establish hardcore roots with your community, always be surrounded by love. A road less taken by the educated elites, but a happy and fulfilling road nonetheless. The Onion’s take: https://www.theonion.com/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfil...
Interesting topic. When you are socially underdeveloped, the strange sheep, the sightly bullied, the not-taken seriously, well it’s not so bad to go twice around the globe a few years and come back. There’s debate. I’ve lost a lot of social fabric. I’m workaholic because I don’t have enough friends. But I’m millionaire, own my startup, own my house, and I can get advice on how to manage at work, get a psychologist, e…
Being someone who has the odd combination of seeing problems everywhere and yet willing to take risks, it was great for me to do so and break out of my cycle/neighbourhood/city and do things nobody in my family (and extended family) bothered to do. Some things spectacularly failed and left scars that will last a lifetime but taking those risks brought me to places/experiences and gave me a life radically different from my peers in my school/family/background. Its not radical as in taking war time photos as a profession and volunteering for UN between projects, but, sufficiently different from what most people back home are doing.
The trick is to take risks that you have thought about and are convinced about; so even when they don't work out, you are not cursing yourself that you did something you were not 100% willing to do.
I don’t think it really counts as “blowing up your life” if you don’t go through a period (say, longer than a few months) of regret. You need to do enough damage that it hurts without a clear safety net. Otherwise what you did was “moving” or “quitting” or “breaking up”. I mostly agree with the premise though. Pass the dynamite, I think I might be due…
DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS GUY!!! Blowing up your life is exactly that, a big frikin mistake. I've made several decisions that later revealed themselves as life blowing. It's not worth it. In youth it's easy to imagine that you have infinite tries to get it right. This is totally wrong. Decisions that set your life back years can only be overcome so many times, and never completely. So, instead of blowing it up, add it up…
I've made big moves, with no plan, and more often than not it's been a good experience. Even the moves I regretted ended up teaching me more about myself.
I'm sorry it hasn't worked out for you, but there's no guarantee it would have worked out if you had stayed put either.