I remember feeling this way for much of my high school and college years. I even told my Harvard interviewer that I really hated how everyone always harped on my "potential", like there was some mythical standard I had to live up to. I didn't get in.
When I graduated, I had some minor successes with my independent programming projects. Revamped the software for FictionAlley.org. Wrote a fairly popular Haskell tutorial. Ported Arc to JavaScript. All of these got me attention, but they weren't really things that people used, they were just idle diversions for some niche communities.
It's only in the last couple years that my career took off. We revamped the Google Search page in 2010 - the first successful major visual redesign of websearch in 10 years. Identified authors for a few million pages on the web. Made perhaps a billion people happy for a few moments with various doodles & easter eggs. And helped out with the GFiber launch last week.
What made the difference, I think, was that I stopped caring so much about living up to my potential and started caring more about being a part of important things. Basically all of those world-changing projects that you see in the news are team efforts, which many people contribute to. And we hunt for the individuals behind them because we want to find heroes, but really, there are no heroes. Only groups of people working their asses off to make things happen.
Maybe the secret to reaching your potential is as Randy Pausch said in his Last Lecture: realize that to accomplish anything worthwhile, you'll need help from other people. And then focus on being the type of person that other people want to help.
It also seems to be a lot more fun this way.
(As a side note, it strikes me how awkward the English language is when trying to describe group efforts I've been a part of. I want to use "we" to describe these efforts, because it's inaccurate to say "I redesigned the Google Search page" or "I launched Google Fiber last week" - there were a whole bunch of other people involved too. But at the same time, it's inaccurate to say "we", because there was a different group of people involved for each of those, and I'm really describing my career arc through a variety of these projects.)
What is really the difference between "living up to your potential" and "being a part of important things"?
It seems to me that landing a nice job at Google, more or less directly out of college, has probably contributed more to your feeling good about yourself than the way you think about potential.
By the same token, the OP's useless feelings probably have more to do with having little to show at the age of 30 and currently being unemployed than in lacking some "secret".
If OP gets a nice job with Google then I am sure it will help to realize that accomplishing things requires help from coworkers, but for an unemployed person without connections it really means nothing to practice "being the type of person that other people want to help."
You have done some things right and have also been fortunate, that doesn't mean that people who don't have what you have just failed to be "the type of person that other people want to help."
> What made the difference, I think, was that I stopped caring so much about living up to my potential and started caring more about being a part of important things. Basically all of those world-changing projects that you see in the news are team efforts, which many people contribute to.
Any advice on how to overcome the lone wolf attitude? I read your prior comments on this thread and found them very insightful, but I also figure a more pointed question could get me a more pointed answer. It feels like I'm almost there, but not quite...
Looking back at myself just a decade ago: Talking to young(er) people about life when they haven't lived is like trying to wake up someone who doesn't know they're asleep.
The spectrum of life lived, experiences had, and lessons positively learnt aren't wide, or often enough.
Without meaningful mentors, free of personal agendas, helping you push you push yourself, self-development can slow down.
The thing is, innovation and creativity live in the mindset of possibility, not doubt.
Building one skill trumps all others: discipline. First a healthy inner-dialogue, and improving discipline every day in every way.
We easily become undisciplined, so we seek the discipline of others instead of finding our own. Some march to someone else's orders, and follow the direction of others. Everyone's doing this framework? Everyone's building this? What am I missing out on? We feel left behind when our own feet aren't moving, let alone away from time wasting, resultless things like entreporn.
It takes a lot of self-directed effort to get in, and stay in a mindset of possibility, while not getting washed away in the self-doubt of others, or the blindness of your own.
Becoming and staying self-directed and relentless is a challenge, focussed on the right things even more, everything in life will want you to fit in if you let it.
All I know is if I'm doing what everyone's doing and using what everyone's using, I'll end up like everyone else.
It's easy to wake people up without explaining to them that they're asleep! Make a loud noise or throw water on them or just yank the covers off of the bed. They'll wake up first, and learn that they were asleep afterwards.
Does it work differently for you?
It would probably be helpful to have someone encouraging me to do what I want to do and not what they want me to do. I've been pretty successful at self-directly myself, I've for the most part had projects that have been driving me for most of the time since I was laid off.
According to the 'scientists' of the field, we are the entitlement generation, raised by hippies who broke all the rules and taught us to do the same, for the betterment of our own well-being, putting ourselves above the demands of others.
Perhaps this is what the OP, and the rest of this generation, is feeling: A constant nagging feeling that we are not getting everything we should be from life and that we are succumbing to societal pressures, letting ourselves become slaves to the Man for a measly paycheck every month?
A lot of studies have pointed to this phenomenon, f.ex. that students these days expect nothing less than the perfect job where they will completely realize themselves and be very comfortable financially at the same time.
I know that I have some of that feeling too, which is why I sit night and day in front of this screen and keyboard hacking away at my escape plan from the life of a corporate drone. I do sometimes wonder if I'd be happier and healthier taking a reality check of my ambitions, and what will happen to me if I fail and have to clip the ID badge back on and check in Monday morning at BigCo.
We are also living in the longest period of peace ever (at least that's what everybody says?), and our everyday consists of first-world-problems, which are far more complex than the problems our ancestors had, and where success is nearly impossible to measure. You want to feel unhappy or inferior? Just go to HN and find somebody who talks of stuff you don't understand (like cryptography). That was far more difficult to find 50 years ago - with our skillset (I assume the average HN reader), we would have been heroes in our local communities - teachers, engineers, perhaps inventors. There was so much low-hanging fruit for people with brains.
We are not suppressed like our hippie parents, but suppressed by our own expectations, which I consider far worse. We no longer play against 10-100 people in our field of expertise (locally), but against millions of people (globally).
Thats probably part of it, I've always feared having to get a job at a big co. But at the same time, I'm not expecting to be a millionaire (although it would be nice), my basic goal is just to be able to work in a sustainable way, ie work for myself and be able to pay the bills.
This feeling, that you are meant for something important but you don't know what it is, is the clearest signal you will ever get that you have yet to find your passion.
It gets harder to investigate your passions as you get older because you have more responsibilities to others, but the best thing to do when you don't know where your passion lies is to try as many different things as you can. Generally you can volunteer for things to get access to activities for which you want to go in with an attitude of if this isn't it then I'm going to do something different. You can volunteer through the various sciences, animal shelters, data gathering, politics, medical help, public service, television and radio, community service, environmental concerns, fishing, arts, etc. The nice thing about volunteering is that you can do your best and its always good enough because hey, its free for them right?
And while you're on this journey of self discovery you have to be aware which is to say you have to ask yourself at the end of the day, "How do I feel about the work I did today? Was it good? Was it great? Was it meaningful?" Listen to the inner you, shut out the voices of the world telling you what you should be doing, and find your center.
When you find it, build your life around it, make it your own. There won't be any more 'mediocre jobs' there will only be "This lets me work on this amazingly cool and important thing."
You are right about the passion, I've always had trouble finding my passion. Interestingly or not so, the most persistent passion has been writing, so that has been something I've been trying to work more on.
Its probably an unpopular sentiment here, but I found my "potential" to be exhausting. My guidance counselor would be appalled; I choose to live somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4. I could be more, someday I might find a cause that makes me want to be, but for now, I'm just happy taking it a little easy and hanging out with my friends and family.
Our "potential" is determined by our genetics and environment. I believe each human does his "best" and by that I mean, does what he thinks he needs to do to get the things he wants, based on his own priorities. For some people, this is sitting at home and playing games all day. For some it's writing an operating system. For some it's going to the moon.
Essentially I believe that any of us, at any given point in our lives: could not have done any better than we did. I believe we will always do what we want to do, and that's that. That will, that desire to do something by the way, it's just an illusion. It's an abstraction built upon the deterministic movement of physical phenomena.
I was told by about a million teachers in high school "oh you have such great potential, if only you applied yourself"
It took me until my mid twenties to realize that I was applying myself. I have a limited capacity for application.
Even if you aren't ultimately limited by your cleverness, your limitations in capacity for execution can thwart your career.
Thus I'm 25, no degree, hack for fun, contract work here and there, and otherwise I could care less. I can execute uninteresting work, but I have a limited tolerance for it. Perhaps its more of a blessing than I think though, because it's really cemented in my mind that I must make and sell my own products.
The last couple of years I have found myself intensely making the same thoughts, constantly measuring life by some invisible standard that is grounded on a hazy idea of what my potential is. And coming up short. Recently I've been looking around me more. I notice that not everyone has the same stringent criteria of what constitutes success or fulfillment of one's life purpose. They seem happier too.
The author states: "I wanted to be doing something greater, something more, that childhood emotional memory was back again, begging for more". I am all for aiming for the sky, putting in the hard work, getting out of the rat race, raising capital, becoming a billionaire, whatever. But then I step back and see the bigger picture; I try to suppress that emotional memory, try to stop being depressed because I am not swinging for the fences as I should (?) be doing. I stop comparing myself to the top 1% that frequents HN.
Then I become happy and content. Because I am alive and healthy. Because I don't have to slave away to secure my food. But this only lasts for a tiny bit and I again swiftly swim in my self-perceived ocean of mediocrity.
I know that this may just sound like telling you what you've always heard ("Just be happy!") but I'm going to quote my graduation speech, because in it I tried as hard as I could to express a lesson I learned about happiness.
"As I’ve said before, we’ve learned many lessons during our time here, but if there is one I could share with you, it would be the difference between greed and happiness. It is alright to make your own happiness a priority in your life—actually, it’s quite healthy. It’s not greedy to try to make yourself happy. You just have to properly understand the difference. Greed is the acquisition of enjoyment by taking what you do not have. What most people forget, is that when you get whatever it is, you’ll only want more. Greed only begets greed. Happiness is enjoying what you have. Happiness is learning to be content with that which is good about your life. There will always be something you don’t have. There will always be something you could have done better. There will always be things you fail at. Being happy is remembering that despite this, there is still plenty to enjoy in your life. If there’s anything I can ask you to do with your short time on this Earth, it’s to be happy."
Further, from a piece of writing I did:
"I have seen many people who fail to prioritize their own happiness. I work very closely with someone who does so. They work tirelessly doing something they love, and they are quite good at it. They help countless people, and they do a fantastic job achieving everything they want. But they are miserable. In everything they do, they only see failure. They see what they have not done, and what they did not achieve, and they see the same in the actions of others. Despite their successes, which they readily recognize, they fixate upon that which they did not do. And so, no matter how much they achieve, nor how successful they are, they will always have a reason to be miserable. It’s horrifying. I cannot imagine living my life in this manner. It would be a life without purpose."
And so, try to remember, there will always be more. There will always be something you didn't do, or could have done. But focus on what you did do. How you have succeed. Accept it, and enjoy it. There is no greater standard to live up to. Love what you've done, and be happy :)
I have the same feelings, and I suspect it's what makes many people keep reading sites like HN.
There are these sentences which you say to yourself as a child - mine was "little boy wants to have everything" (that's what I said, actually, my mother still often tells me :)). My life pretty much resembles that - I have much, I do much (too much?), but I'm still wanting (everything). I think it boils down to the question "What is life for, anyway?". The answer I like best (found it in some book) is "For feeling love and joy, in every moment". Sounds corny, but whenever I follow it, I'm feeling at peace and content.
Feeling unsatisfied with what you have is what drives you and the rest of humanity forward, but it's certainly not healthy to remain in this state constantly. I bet in most cases the root cause is a feeling of inferiority, instilled by our parents' believes (which we have adopted) or traumas in childhood. We do great things (or feel bad because we don't do them) to silence this nagging feeling. We ought to be great externally, because we don't feel great internally. We want to prove that we are no failures.
Face it, if we're reading HN on a Saturday, probably thinking about work, we're probably saddled with the nagging feeling that we're not achieving enough. But achievement can become a dangerous addiction that makes us unhappy.
There are common themes in the book that come up in software engineering as well, like "perfect is the enemy of the good" and "the law of diminishing returns applies everywhere". It's a rational way to think about living.
There is probably something a little wrong with all of us being on HN on a Saturday... although I see it as entertainment more then business.. its what I do to waste time for the most part.
"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. " - Tyler Durden
It's rare to see such shameless, unfiltered whining. How passive!
Ever since I was a young child I have always felt that there was something great I was meant to do, something beyond what I was doing at any present moment.
It's something you were meant to do, not something meant to happen to you.
Maybe this article shouldn't have been on HN, for multiple reasons.
But it's also pretty terrible that anyone expressing the slightest bit of self-doubt or unhappiness is publicly torn to ribbons, or at best mightily condescended to. So normatively, people must talk nothing but fake, egoistic nonsense like "crushing it" no matter where their head is really at. And severe cases of Dunning-Kruger take over the world just by acting dominant and lying about themselves, while people with knowledge and potential are left to rot just because they are shit at marketing. (Marketing is important, but it is not the only important thing)
You are right, getting what you want requires work. But please recognize that reality is not fair and is often unpredictable. So people who don't have what they want aren't just inferior people who didn't work. They are someplace you could have been with nothing but different rolls of the dice.
Even though it is whining, it is not at all unusual or impossible to understand. A little bit of compassion wouldn't kill us.
Shamelessness is probably a required 'skill' for a writer. You are right about the having to do something in oppose to waiting for something to happen, and although my article may have made life seem one way my life is quite the opposite, I'm always searching / chasing new ideas and ventures. My dad told me that 9 out of 10 business fail, so I've always been of the belief that I'd need to try at least 9 business ideas before something is likely to work. I figure I'm at about 5 or 6 now.
Derek Sivers is one of my philosophical role models, as he writes on life from the perspective of someone who already did something "great" (starting a successful business and gaining financial independence). Ironically, one of his most repeated messages is to assume being below average and excite yourself by being over your head. For example, http://sivers.org/beginner , http://sivers.org/below-average , and http://sivers.org/scares-excites-do-it all share the same basic message.
I think life is too multi-dimensional to successfully become the Übermensch.
I've been thinking about Derek, too, and I agree with many of his insightful thoughts. Yet, I think that measuring greatness by "starting a successful business and gaining financial independence" is lopsided on the business side of life.
Greatness and potential are very individual and 'multidimensional'. Not everyone who will be a great person eventually will be a great entrepreneur.
My advice would be to get in the habit of making an accomplishment every day. Little success every day, not matter what it is, will get you out of the rut.
I am reading 2% of War and Peace every day. Made it to 75% by now, and every day that I read the book I have something to look back to. Contemplative reading has second order effects as well - I feel I can concentrate better, which is very helpful given that the internet has taught our minds to jump all over the place like a monkey. I set aside an hour in the evening and do nothing but read.
Try it. If nothing else you will have read a great book. And then you will become acquainted with one of the books key characters l'Russe Bezuhoff, who seems to have had all of the same doubts that you do, only exactly 200 years earlier. :)
Wow I need to get my head in your space. I tend to view completion as the achievement, not progress. This leads to single victories amidst a million defeats. An attitude not conducive to happiness. I'll definitely make a large effort to celebrate/recognize the small victories. Separately, I am 14% through War and Peace, and still don't know who I am supposed to care about. Does that come later or have I missed something?
This pretty much sums my life up in a nutshell. I feel this a lot because I tend not to be satisfied with a lot of my work. I always critique and find ways I can do it better. That's probably why I don't have a whole lot to my name.
The world needs all sorts of people and jobs filled. Just because someone grows up privileged doesn't mean the upper echelons are their birthright. Rich parents and family are idiots for imposing their own entitlement complexes on others, instead of just letting them find their own path in life.
Sivers once told me most people do not know what they want, so if you do, you're already one step closer to achieving anything. I'd say, if you feel useless, start by setting a goal and define the first step towards it. It feels mighty to have a goal.
okay, enough lurking. this is what narcissism looks like. you are not special. you can make something great, everybody can, but you will waste your life because it is easier to just dream about how awesome you are.
"I'll do whatever it takes not to move towards success, because then I will never have failed." - you, right now.
For a moment I thought the post was an original call for hiring.
I'm not an expert in such things but the idea that he would do great things doesn't sound like narcisism. Narcisism is beeing in love with oneself.
What the OP describes is an internal drive to push oneself forward when the oppurtunity is given. A seed of entrepreneur, hero, leader,.. I guess not everyone has such strong incentive. He expect it and will find it normal if it happens. Which is good thing.
He expressed his frustration that it didn't happen yet and start to wonder if he is not wasting his life.
I find it very interesting from an AI perspective. We can clearly see a fundamental drive of the human behavior.
It's not much different from the love drive we have when young. We are also frustrated when we have to wait for it to happen. This frustration is shared and contributes to overcome all our fears and natural protections. Instead of waiting overwelmed by the frustration, one should prepare oneself for this moment to be attractive and make it a success.
So to the OP I would suggest to use the frustration as a push to prepare yourself to do great things.
He experience a valuable and positive drive. It's normal. He should now prepare himself for that to have the maximum competence when this happens. He should also keep in mind that the great thing that he is expected to do may happen when he is 50 or 70. Thus don't wait for it to happen, because it might not be soon. It's like love. Finally he should also keep in mind that he'll also have his part of the job to do for it to happen. I.e becoming President of the uSA. It doesn't fall upon you like that.
This comment may seem trollish or stupid, but it is what I would say to the OP if I met him in real life. If it doesn't sound nice that's because conversations aren't always nice.
Stop whining. Just do whatever you want to do.
As a question to everyone else here: why upvote this shameless self-pity?
Your advice is obvious, correct, and utterly useless.
Similarly, advising an alcoholic to "just drink less or nothing at all", or an obese person to "just eat less and move around more", will accomplish nothing of value.
What you did is only a hair better than advising a legless person to "just walk". One is the handicap of the body, the other is the handicap of the mind, yet both handicaps are perfectly real to the person so unfortunate. Both problems can be ameliorated with due effort, but the glib advice will only make the adviser feel good, while making the advised feel worse. The due effort lies elsewhere.
[+] [-] nostrademons|13 years ago|reply
When I graduated, I had some minor successes with my independent programming projects. Revamped the software for FictionAlley.org. Wrote a fairly popular Haskell tutorial. Ported Arc to JavaScript. All of these got me attention, but they weren't really things that people used, they were just idle diversions for some niche communities.
It's only in the last couple years that my career took off. We revamped the Google Search page in 2010 - the first successful major visual redesign of websearch in 10 years. Identified authors for a few million pages on the web. Made perhaps a billion people happy for a few moments with various doodles & easter eggs. And helped out with the GFiber launch last week.
What made the difference, I think, was that I stopped caring so much about living up to my potential and started caring more about being a part of important things. Basically all of those world-changing projects that you see in the news are team efforts, which many people contribute to. And we hunt for the individuals behind them because we want to find heroes, but really, there are no heroes. Only groups of people working their asses off to make things happen.
Maybe the secret to reaching your potential is as Randy Pausch said in his Last Lecture: realize that to accomplish anything worthwhile, you'll need help from other people. And then focus on being the type of person that other people want to help.
It also seems to be a lot more fun this way.
(As a side note, it strikes me how awkward the English language is when trying to describe group efforts I've been a part of. I want to use "we" to describe these efforts, because it's inaccurate to say "I redesigned the Google Search page" or "I launched Google Fiber last week" - there were a whole bunch of other people involved too. But at the same time, it's inaccurate to say "we", because there was a different group of people involved for each of those, and I'm really describing my career arc through a variety of these projects.)
[+] [-] slurgfest|13 years ago|reply
It seems to me that landing a nice job at Google, more or less directly out of college, has probably contributed more to your feeling good about yourself than the way you think about potential.
By the same token, the OP's useless feelings probably have more to do with having little to show at the age of 30 and currently being unemployed than in lacking some "secret".
If OP gets a nice job with Google then I am sure it will help to realize that accomplishing things requires help from coworkers, but for an unemployed person without connections it really means nothing to practice "being the type of person that other people want to help."
You have done some things right and have also been fortunate, that doesn't mean that people who don't have what you have just failed to be "the type of person that other people want to help."
[+] [-] DenisM|13 years ago|reply
Any advice on how to overcome the lone wolf attitude? I read your prior comments on this thread and found them very insightful, but I also figure a more pointed question could get me a more pointed answer. It feels like I'm almost there, but not quite...
[+] [-] readme|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j45|13 years ago|reply
The spectrum of life lived, experiences had, and lessons positively learnt aren't wide, or often enough.
Without meaningful mentors, free of personal agendas, helping you push you push yourself, self-development can slow down.
The thing is, innovation and creativity live in the mindset of possibility, not doubt.
Building one skill trumps all others: discipline. First a healthy inner-dialogue, and improving discipline every day in every way.
We easily become undisciplined, so we seek the discipline of others instead of finding our own. Some march to someone else's orders, and follow the direction of others. Everyone's doing this framework? Everyone's building this? What am I missing out on? We feel left behind when our own feet aren't moving, let alone away from time wasting, resultless things like entreporn.
It takes a lot of self-directed effort to get in, and stay in a mindset of possibility, while not getting washed away in the self-doubt of others, or the blindness of your own.
Becoming and staying self-directed and relentless is a challenge, focussed on the right things even more, everything in life will want you to fit in if you let it.
All I know is if I'm doing what everyone's doing and using what everyone's using, I'll end up like everyone else.
[+] [-] jes5199|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatusertwo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnyzee|13 years ago|reply
Perhaps this is what the OP, and the rest of this generation, is feeling: A constant nagging feeling that we are not getting everything we should be from life and that we are succumbing to societal pressures, letting ourselves become slaves to the Man for a measly paycheck every month?
A lot of studies have pointed to this phenomenon, f.ex. that students these days expect nothing less than the perfect job where they will completely realize themselves and be very comfortable financially at the same time.
I know that I have some of that feeling too, which is why I sit night and day in front of this screen and keyboard hacking away at my escape plan from the life of a corporate drone. I do sometimes wonder if I'd be happier and healthier taking a reality check of my ambitions, and what will happen to me if I fail and have to clip the ID badge back on and check in Monday morning at BigCo.
[+] [-] manmal|13 years ago|reply
We are not suppressed like our hippie parents, but suppressed by our own expectations, which I consider far worse. We no longer play against 10-100 people in our field of expertise (locally), but against millions of people (globally).
[+] [-] thatusertwo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
It gets harder to investigate your passions as you get older because you have more responsibilities to others, but the best thing to do when you don't know where your passion lies is to try as many different things as you can. Generally you can volunteer for things to get access to activities for which you want to go in with an attitude of if this isn't it then I'm going to do something different. You can volunteer through the various sciences, animal shelters, data gathering, politics, medical help, public service, television and radio, community service, environmental concerns, fishing, arts, etc. The nice thing about volunteering is that you can do your best and its always good enough because hey, its free for them right?
And while you're on this journey of self discovery you have to be aware which is to say you have to ask yourself at the end of the day, "How do I feel about the work I did today? Was it good? Was it great? Was it meaningful?" Listen to the inner you, shut out the voices of the world telling you what you should be doing, and find your center.
When you find it, build your life around it, make it your own. There won't be any more 'mediocre jobs' there will only be "This lets me work on this amazingly cool and important thing."
[+] [-] thatusertwo|13 years ago|reply
Thanks for your feed back.
[+] [-] noonespecial|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] readme|13 years ago|reply
Our "potential" is determined by our genetics and environment. I believe each human does his "best" and by that I mean, does what he thinks he needs to do to get the things he wants, based on his own priorities. For some people, this is sitting at home and playing games all day. For some it's writing an operating system. For some it's going to the moon.
Essentially I believe that any of us, at any given point in our lives: could not have done any better than we did. I believe we will always do what we want to do, and that's that. That will, that desire to do something by the way, it's just an illusion. It's an abstraction built upon the deterministic movement of physical phenomena.
I was told by about a million teachers in high school "oh you have such great potential, if only you applied yourself"
It took me until my mid twenties to realize that I was applying myself. I have a limited capacity for application.
Even if you aren't ultimately limited by your cleverness, your limitations in capacity for execution can thwart your career.
Thus I'm 25, no degree, hack for fun, contract work here and there, and otherwise I could care less. I can execute uninteresting work, but I have a limited tolerance for it. Perhaps its more of a blessing than I think though, because it's really cemented in my mind that I must make and sell my own products.
I want a degree. Maybe I'll get one someday.
[+] [-] kgtm|13 years ago|reply
The author states: "I wanted to be doing something greater, something more, that childhood emotional memory was back again, begging for more". I am all for aiming for the sky, putting in the hard work, getting out of the rat race, raising capital, becoming a billionaire, whatever. But then I step back and see the bigger picture; I try to suppress that emotional memory, try to stop being depressed because I am not swinging for the fences as I should (?) be doing. I stop comparing myself to the top 1% that frequents HN.
Then I become happy and content. Because I am alive and healthy. Because I don't have to slave away to secure my food. But this only lasts for a tiny bit and I again swiftly swim in my self-perceived ocean of mediocrity.
Help?
[+] [-] thetabyte|13 years ago|reply
"As I’ve said before, we’ve learned many lessons during our time here, but if there is one I could share with you, it would be the difference between greed and happiness. It is alright to make your own happiness a priority in your life—actually, it’s quite healthy. It’s not greedy to try to make yourself happy. You just have to properly understand the difference. Greed is the acquisition of enjoyment by taking what you do not have. What most people forget, is that when you get whatever it is, you’ll only want more. Greed only begets greed. Happiness is enjoying what you have. Happiness is learning to be content with that which is good about your life. There will always be something you don’t have. There will always be something you could have done better. There will always be things you fail at. Being happy is remembering that despite this, there is still plenty to enjoy in your life. If there’s anything I can ask you to do with your short time on this Earth, it’s to be happy."
Further, from a piece of writing I did:
"I have seen many people who fail to prioritize their own happiness. I work very closely with someone who does so. They work tirelessly doing something they love, and they are quite good at it. They help countless people, and they do a fantastic job achieving everything they want. But they are miserable. In everything they do, they only see failure. They see what they have not done, and what they did not achieve, and they see the same in the actions of others. Despite their successes, which they readily recognize, they fixate upon that which they did not do. And so, no matter how much they achieve, nor how successful they are, they will always have a reason to be miserable. It’s horrifying. I cannot imagine living my life in this manner. It would be a life without purpose."
And so, try to remember, there will always be more. There will always be something you didn't do, or could have done. But focus on what you did do. How you have succeed. Accept it, and enjoy it. There is no greater standard to live up to. Love what you've done, and be happy :)
[+] [-] billswift|13 years ago|reply
As the proverb went, It's bad enough comparing yourself to Isaac Newton without comparing yourself to Kimball Kinnison. Eliezar Yudkowsky, http://lesswrong.com/lw/y7/the_super_happy_people_38/
[+] [-] manmal|13 years ago|reply
There are these sentences which you say to yourself as a child - mine was "little boy wants to have everything" (that's what I said, actually, my mother still often tells me :)). My life pretty much resembles that - I have much, I do much (too much?), but I'm still wanting (everything). I think it boils down to the question "What is life for, anyway?". The answer I like best (found it in some book) is "For feeling love and joy, in every moment". Sounds corny, but whenever I follow it, I'm feeling at peace and content.
Feeling unsatisfied with what you have is what drives you and the rest of humanity forward, but it's certainly not healthy to remain in this state constantly. I bet in most cases the root cause is a feeling of inferiority, instilled by our parents' believes (which we have adopted) or traumas in childhood. We do great things (or feel bad because we don't do them) to silence this nagging feeling. We ought to be great externally, because we don't feel great internally. We want to prove that we are no failures.
[+] [-] thatusertwo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twinge|13 years ago|reply
Face it, if we're reading HN on a Saturday, probably thinking about work, we're probably saddled with the nagging feeling that we're not achieving enough. But achievement can become a dangerous addiction that makes us unhappy.
There are common themes in the book that come up in software engineering as well, like "perfect is the enemy of the good" and "the law of diminishing returns applies everywhere". It's a rational way to think about living.
[+] [-] thatusertwo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knieveltech|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatusertwo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Apocryphon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnal943|13 years ago|reply
Ever since I was a young child I have always felt that there was something great I was meant to do, something beyond what I was doing at any present moment.
It's something you were meant to do, not something meant to happen to you.
[+] [-] slurgfest|13 years ago|reply
But it's also pretty terrible that anyone expressing the slightest bit of self-doubt or unhappiness is publicly torn to ribbons, or at best mightily condescended to. So normatively, people must talk nothing but fake, egoistic nonsense like "crushing it" no matter where their head is really at. And severe cases of Dunning-Kruger take over the world just by acting dominant and lying about themselves, while people with knowledge and potential are left to rot just because they are shit at marketing. (Marketing is important, but it is not the only important thing)
You are right, getting what you want requires work. But please recognize that reality is not fair and is often unpredictable. So people who don't have what they want aren't just inferior people who didn't work. They are someplace you could have been with nothing but different rolls of the dice.
Even though it is whining, it is not at all unusual or impossible to understand. A little bit of compassion wouldn't kill us.
[+] [-] thatusertwo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petesmithy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gpcz|13 years ago|reply
I think life is too multi-dimensional to successfully become the Übermensch.
[+] [-] zeeed|13 years ago|reply
Greatness and potential are very individual and 'multidimensional'. Not everyone who will be a great person eventually will be a great entrepreneur.
[+] [-] delinquentme|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatusertwo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DenisM|13 years ago|reply
I am reading 2% of War and Peace every day. Made it to 75% by now, and every day that I read the book I have something to look back to. Contemplative reading has second order effects as well - I feel I can concentrate better, which is very helpful given that the internet has taught our minds to jump all over the place like a monkey. I set aside an hour in the evening and do nothing but read.
Try it. If nothing else you will have read a great book. And then you will become acquainted with one of the books key characters l'Russe Bezuhoff, who seems to have had all of the same doubts that you do, only exactly 200 years earlier. :)
[+] [-] hawkal|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatusertwo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _nist|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatusertwo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lilsunnybee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reinder|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fataxlrose|13 years ago|reply
"I'll do whatever it takes not to move towards success, because then I will never have failed." - you, right now.
you disgust me.
[+] [-] chmike|13 years ago|reply
For a moment I thought the post was an original call for hiring.
I'm not an expert in such things but the idea that he would do great things doesn't sound like narcisism. Narcisism is beeing in love with oneself.
What the OP describes is an internal drive to push oneself forward when the oppurtunity is given. A seed of entrepreneur, hero, leader,.. I guess not everyone has such strong incentive. He expect it and will find it normal if it happens. Which is good thing.
He expressed his frustration that it didn't happen yet and start to wonder if he is not wasting his life.
I find it very interesting from an AI perspective. We can clearly see a fundamental drive of the human behavior.
It's not much different from the love drive we have when young. We are also frustrated when we have to wait for it to happen. This frustration is shared and contributes to overcome all our fears and natural protections. Instead of waiting overwelmed by the frustration, one should prepare oneself for this moment to be attractive and make it a success.
So to the OP I would suggest to use the frustration as a push to prepare yourself to do great things. He experience a valuable and positive drive. It's normal. He should now prepare himself for that to have the maximum competence when this happens. He should also keep in mind that the great thing that he is expected to do may happen when he is 50 or 70. Thus don't wait for it to happen, because it might not be soon. It's like love. Finally he should also keep in mind that he'll also have his part of the job to do for it to happen. I.e becoming President of the uSA. It doesn't fall upon you like that.
[+] [-] thatusertwo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lilsunnybee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeeed|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pepve|13 years ago|reply
Stop whining. Just do whatever you want to do.
As a question to everyone else here: why upvote this shameless self-pity?
[+] [-] DenisM|13 years ago|reply
Similarly, advising an alcoholic to "just drink less or nothing at all", or an obese person to "just eat less and move around more", will accomplish nothing of value.
What you did is only a hair better than advising a legless person to "just walk". One is the handicap of the body, the other is the handicap of the mind, yet both handicaps are perfectly real to the person so unfortunate. Both problems can be ameliorated with due effort, but the glib advice will only make the adviser feel good, while making the advised feel worse. The due effort lies elsewhere.
[+] [-] thatusertwo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ninetax|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carsongross|13 years ago|reply