Live data from Hacker News

The Advantage of Abundant Thinking

firstround.com

91–100 of 115 posts

Re: The Advantage of Abundant Thinking

#91
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evangelical Christian concept of "abundant life" is already an attempt to monetize the religious imperative of tithing. It's the "prosperity gospel": give us money and God will make you rich. I say this as an evangelical Christian myself.

I really object to calling all evangelical Christians supporters of the so-called prosperity gospel. Whilst there are a lot of adherents, many, many evangelical Christians consider it to be an aberration and an utter misreading of scripture.

I can't imagine anything more intellectually fulfilling than arguing from imagination about the one true way to love an imaginary being

Re: The Advantage of Abundant Thinking

#92
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how true this is, but it's something I've found true for myself... I've read (or heard) that your sleep cycle is 90 minutes down to deep sleep and back, so it's best to get up after some multiple of 90 minutes because that's when you'll have cycled back to the lightest sleep. So typically I either get 6 hours or 7.5 hours of sleep a night, though if I ended up getting 3 or 4.5 one night I'll sometimes tr…

I have heard that too but never really got down to testing it out. In fact I have resigned to the fact that when it comes to sleep to each their own. For eg I have experienced better quality of sleep after taking ZMA ( I weight train ). But I have heard anecdotes where people have said that its just a placebo.

I take Magnesium every day, it has helped my sleep tremendously. I am more relaxed and less stressed during the day, too. It's like I am 10 years younger.

Re: The Advantage of Abundant Thinking

#93

Called Paths to Power, it emphasizes the importance of neutrality: The world is not fair or unfair. It simply is. The more you can suspend judgment, the more you can learn and grow your power. Not to be cynical about this approach, but having studied some of these concepts from a Mahayana Buddhist perspective, the idea of utilizing the perspective of Beginner's Mind to "grow your power" is a gross misappropriation an…

Same tool and intent, different problem level. Both Buddhism and Abundance Philosophy have the purpose of lowering contraction and pain, but while Buddhism does that on a general level, related to life/society, AP solely focuses on being creative and not missing opportunities.

On the other hand, there are parallels between the two: "noticing" and "neutrality" are mindfulness - open non judgemental attention. "Priming" is concentration meditation. "Self-compassion", "generosity" and "gratitude" are metta. They took Buddhist ideas and reused them in a corporate setting.

Re: The Advantage of Abundant Thinking

#94
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is for some people, and it isn't for others, which is why this kind of generic advice is amazing if it fits you exactly, and awful if it doesn't. I can function on six hours, but not well. I also can't easily take 15 minutes to meditate in the morning, because I have a two month old baby I have to help care for in the mornings. This somewhat limits my ability to meditate and exercise.

Six hours feels like you can function, until you can't. I think i remember seeing that people who could reliably function with just six hours exist but are vanishingly rare. Juat be honest with yourself.

It depends on the person. Need for sleep follows a normal distribution in terms of what you require.

Natural short sleepers who only need 4.5 hours exist. Most people who sleep that much are chronically sleep deprived but there are people who just genuinely don't need that much sleep.

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000804.htm

I'm not a short sleeper but I need closer to seven hours sleep a night than eight.

Re: The Advantage of Abundant Thinking

#95
post #82
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The religious version in fact seems more restrained in its promises, with the "arrested" bit at the end. (Not unexpectedly BTW; IMO comparing any such pitch to a religion is usually a compliment to the pitch, as religions of today evolved over many centuries and so are better debugged than many an age-of-reason attempt at scientific-sounding wisdom. And personally I'm deeply not religious, but still.) I did read that…

The religious version in fact seems more restrained in its promises I picked one of the more conservative sites promoting "abundance". There are much worse. See "Prosperity Theology" in Wikipedia. That, however, seems to have declined since the 2008 recession. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

Sure there are worse sites - I wasn't 100% serious there...

Re: The Advantage of Abundant Thinking

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe if she isn't interested, she just isn't interested? If she was the last woman on earth and she wasn't interested in you would that make it somehow alright to keep approaching her? I mean really, I get what you are saying here, but it comes dangerous close to a guy viewing women as a "resource" and saying that he behaves better when he views that resource as unlimited.

I think you are projecting onto the comment a bit. If the usage of the word "scarcity" was what caught your eye (as an association with women being "resources"), it was simply pulled from the article, which labels the two contrasting types of thinking as "scarcity" and "abundance".

I think the real trick the top-level comment was trying to talk about is that you shouldn't think of women as a resource at all. It just kind of got framed as a resource thing because of the context you mentioned.

Re: The Advantage of Abundant Thinking

#99
post #44

>>"Priming is engaging in any activity that boosts your emotional and mental energy ... [like] photos that make you happy." That's Asian cats from Instagram for me! I'm usually a bit skeptical of bullet point advice like this as reading it always seem like self-evident truism; I think people have to really experience it in order to understand its proper depth. But I'm glad that self-compassion is mentioned here becau…

Well, one should be fair to other people, and if possible friendly, right? Turns out oneself is a person, too :)

> I have expressed my strong interest in the mass of the people; and this is founded, not on their usefulness to the community, so much as on what they are in themselves. Indeed every man, in every condition, is great. It is only our own diseased sight which makes him little. A man is great as a man, be he where or what he may. The grandeur of his nature turns to insignificance all outward distinctions.

-- William Ellery Channing

I think that can be extended to more than humans, maybe everything.

And hey, don't knock eureka moments, especially not your own! When I was 20 and late for work in the morning, I walked by a lawn with a bird on it who was looking for worms, and looked straight at me. I didn't think about it at all, but nodded and said good morning. Then I had to laugh at myself, then I thought about it, and I never quite saw animals the same way. Suddenly it seemed so obvious, of course they're persons. Not ones who speak my language or care about my salutations, but still. I feel similarly about plants, central nervous system or not. I mean, it's not like I could tell you what I mean with "person" to begin with, where the cutoff point is, but something changed and it felt and feels right.

But compassion for animals and plants is easy, compassion for humans is trickier... and compassion* for oneself, that's the trickiest part, and as you said, the most often overlooked. It's like we understand just fine that we shouldn't dehumanize others, shouldn't hold grudges, not disappoint people or break promises, and so on, but simply affording ourselves that same respect and basic goodwill often eludes us, which we then compensate with all sorts of things which are far from both compassion and real confidence.

* which is a great way to put it.. self-love just doesn't have the same ring of understanding, patience etc. to it; like "loving Justing Bieber" and "having compassion for Justin Bieber" are two completely unrelated things.

Re: The Advantage of Abundant Thinking

#100

The main thing that has really impacted my productivity and happiness is following a set routine for an hour whenever I get up. So I do the following : 1. Brush 2. Meditate - 15 minutes 3. Write - I usually write "3 things that I am grateful for" and "3 things to focus on that particular day" 4. Exercise - 15 minute run I do this whenever I get up. So it's not like I get up at 6 in the morning everyday. I just get up…

What do you brush?
Post reply on HN