To Anyone Who Thinks They're Falling Behind in Life(huffingtonpost.com) |
To Anyone Who Thinks They're Falling Behind in Life(huffingtonpost.com) |
This article is unfortunately what it epitimizes the most -- a self-help conundrum. Advice given from the perspective of a workaholic. But alas, what tools does it actually provide to take action? Walk away from everything? Should I take up meditation or yoga? Relax by putting and put my mind at ease by playing a videogame or laying on the beach?
What most people won't see is the key line of advice burried in the middle, which I believe the rest of the article counters is: "We have to put in our best efforts and then give ourselves permission to let whatever happens to happen". Putting in our best efforts is what opens doors to adventures and opportunities. Putting in our best efforts is what drives us forward to find passion in what we do.
Sure, we all need to realize that we're not robots with unlimited capacity, but the next step is to stop reading self-articles and start doing things that actually matter, instead of filling our time with arbitrary tasks.
Want to not "fall behind in life"? Don't be a lemming by following other people around trying to find meaning and value in your life. Make meaning and value in your life by being creative, self-reflective, and getting outside your horse-blinders by actively trying to experience life in other people's shoes.
Falling behind in life is a synonym for running the hampster wheel. Get off the damn wheel and do something that scares you even just a little bit today. Then do it again tomorrow.
A friend once shared how surfing illustrates how having a process driven approach vs. a result driven approach is beneficial.
In surfing you start off knowing the basics of how to get on the water, standing up on the board, and riding the wave. You may know the basics, but until you actually go out in the water, you're not going to know about what will happen. The waves may not be the right size to your liking. You could be having an off day and keep falling. Or you may be having a great day on the water. All of this are factors to you actually enjoying surfing.
Instead of focusing on trying to catch a good wave or catching many waves, you can focus on the process that is surfing. This way you can make incremental improvements to how you surf. You'll then see each wave as a new opportunity to gather more experience/data for the next time you try. And you can replace "surfing" with entrepreneurship, science, and many other areas.
With this mindset, you'll be able to let whatever happens to happen. Life is too short to always be chasing after the end goal. From my experience, after you attain the goal, you'll always have another goal in mind. You will never be truly satisfied.
It is not about working hard to make meaning or to 'fix' things that are broken or that you are not happy about but rather to 'let go'. To let go to the fact that you cannot control everything and that you cannot always have it your way. Yes do your best and do what you need to do in life but you must acknowledge at some point that things are generally out of your hands. Once a person realises this, then the pressure of not succeeding or reaching their goals, is lifted and a more realistic perspective on life starts to form. One rooted in reason, realism and the fact that we are all human and that sometimes even if we can do better, it may just not be the time, that other things are in play that keep us from reaching these goals and that it is entirely not the case that the person is not trying hard enough.
The whole concept of running the hamster wheel in the first place is flawed; who are you "falling behind" if not comparing yourself to other people.
The article wants us to "take a fucking step back for a moment, stop beating ourselves up into oblivion, and to let the cogs turn as they will". What I'm saying is don't put yourself in that situation in the first place. Take joy and find meaning in the day-to-day of what you're doing, instead of setting the expectation that you're supposed to be "better than anyone else", at anything, really.
joslin01 said it pretty well in another comment: "It's best to be honest with yourself and come to terms with where you are in life and where you want to be. After that, unless you put action into your belief, you will be sad. Even if you fail, but put action into the belief, you'll be happy and have grown."
So, I implore you, what is something you're actually going to do with this self-help article's new-found insight that you "can't control everything" and need to "just chill"? Will it bring you more happiness knowing that anytime you're running yourself ragged you can "step back" and reassure yourself that you're "just human"?
From here it's miles to a place where I have the right to urinate, and tens of miles to a place where I have a right to sleep, and to my knowledge there is nowhere in my country where I have a right to do subsistence farming, or steward any kind of ancestral resource.
Humans are farmed like poultry - City humans are caged chickens, suburban humans are the "free range" variety.
Corporations want to see more humans per square feet because that's more profitable for them. The energy savings we contribute to by living in big cities ultimately end up in the hands of corporate executives and shareholders as cash.
That said, how do corporations force you to live in cities? How do corporations then profit from you living in a city? How does either city or suburban living map to whether you are a member of the capital class or not.
…and rural humans are space aliens.
That's a brilliant statement, on many levels.
One might chose to refine it by changing "legally" to some other word, such as "practically". The rich are not governed by the laws of men.
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
The author is a curious case of 'got the right idea, haven't internalized it fully'.
She seems to be coming from a place of trying to convince herself that she doesn't need to try so hard, etc.
Maybe it's frustration with the world she finds herself in, where everyone has a 'bunsen burner up their ass' as a buddy of mine put it :)
Good article overall though, I'm glad to see this on HN :)
maybe being happy, not successful is all it takes
I think it's good to give everything your best effort, to strive for greatness, and constantly check yourself to make sure you're giving it your all.
But then, if you don't succeed, find peace in life's way. Be okay with yourself, your progress, and your place in life. When you step back and realize how truly random everything is, then just knowing that you played your cards to the best of your ability, should bring happiness and a sense of peace.
Hemingway
The problem with those surveys could be the question as much as anything - one driver considered themselves above average because they can drive faster, another because they're safer, another because they have better fuel economy, ..., most drivers can be better than average as the meaning of average each driver users isn't being rigorously defined.
It's best to be honest with yourself and come to terms with where you are in life and where you want to be. After that, unless you put action into your belief, you will be sad. Even if you fail, but put action into the belief, you'll be happy and have grown.
This article has utility for over-achievers who need to learn patience, but anyone else (especially anyone who struggles with motivation) should ignore it. It aims to make you feel good "you're doing the best you can" and has cute, but vapid lines like "let timing do what it needs to do" or "it's just not the fucking time if it's not the time."
If you need help with motivation, you probably don't need to be told you're already doing a great job and should just succumb to some external force of "timing". This is probably the thought that's actually holding you back. If you feel like you work hard and are never satisfied, it's true that you should just chill. The strongest people in my opinion are the ones who are able to keep a calm & humble mind while steadfastly pursuing their goals.
Can we please admit that it is terrifying to be an economic failure?
If you try and fail, have police at your door because you can't pay rent, spouse leaves you, children are ashamed of you. You are going to feel intense anguish and shame.
This article was more for the rats stuck in the "affluenza" maze, not the chronically depressed or others struggling with more fundamental issues than 'keeping up with the Joneses'
Yeah, I learned a whole lot about my blind spots (in being taken advantage of, ignoring issues, actively avoiding them...) and processed some really deep seated issues, but the cost right now still seems a bit too high. It is a bit disheartening. In another decade or 2, it certainly won't matter, but in terms of "falling behind", I am at the extreme of the bell curve, I'm afraid. But maybe that was my overall path, extreme self-knowledge... At least I am an exceptional special snowflake!
"The Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan Watts is recommended reading if this article affected you in some way.
And yes, I read the comments here about working hard, then letting the chips fall where they may. But that was not the message of the article. It was just one line smashed between a bunch of crap about accepting where you are in life. WTF is this junk?
If your life sucks, make it better. No one will do it for you. Period.
It seems to be emphasizing an external locus of control. Which is unuseful. Sometimes things won't turn out the way you want. But you still have to put the effort and time in.
The way she's writing she seems to dismiss effort and time as useless.
The author is clearly saying "We have to put in our best efforts and then give ourselves permission to let whatever happens to happen". And then that after we've put in our best effort, we must accept that some things are out of our control and impossible to accurately predict: things like timing!
She doesn't dismiss effort or time: she just says that you can't rely on them to produce predictable results at specific times. You will work hard, and you will succeed most of the times you work hard at something. But probably not when you predicted you will succeed. And maybe not always at the thing that you initially wanted to succeed at. And accepting lack of control doesn't mean loosing motivation. Even her points about motivation I read them as saying something along the lines of: "don't try to pump up yourself with artificial willpower and motivation, just persist at working in your natural rhythm, and things will work out fine, even if you can't control when they will work out fine".
It's very biased towards the "accept the lack of control" part, indeed. But the bias is necessary to counterbalance the pov of people like you that keep throwing up the "work harder, work more" (or "just put more time, more effort") mantra to everyone they meet! This kind of advice is useful for some people. But horrible for others! Some need more to find a "a natural rhythm" and "let things happen", and unfortunately you rarely see this advice. Others may indeed call what I would say it's "my natural rhythm", something like "extremely hard work and perseverence", and maybe these kinds of people need your kind of advice.
...and there are also those that are simply "born to be lazy", and throwing the "work harder, work more" thing at them will only viciously turn them against whoever yelled that at them, transforming them from harmless slackers into people that will instead steal or kill or be corrupt and spread corruption, or otherwise sabotage the system just for the "fun" (read "revenge for being bothered") of making others suffer simply because some self-righteuous know-it-alls couldn't simply "let them be".
And you comment about "born to be lazy" holds no water. If you want to be lazy, you have to accept that you won't have opportunities non-lazy people will have.
If you're "born to be lazy", that's fine unless you want to be somewhere that non-lazy people are. If you're sitting on your butt cause the inspiration for your novel hasn't come along because it isn't time yet, you're not working hard enough.
But I agree, encouraging constructive action is better than complacency.
I don't know if you've read much self-help, but there's a lot of "you-can't-help-it" contained within. "Letting the moment pass" is a micro-solution to an entire-life size problem.
Speaking as someone who experiences some of the same emotions described in the article, it's far more effective to reduce stress and anxiety by removing non-essential tasks from your list than it is to "just chill". People don't need to "step back every once in a while", they need to learn how to say no.
I'm not a writer, but I assume that a writer can simply go on with his life, doing other useful things, and postpone writing that novel until true/natural inspiration comes to him/her. I've read enough crappy writings imbibed with the stench of "synthetic/forced-through-work inspiration" that the only advice I could give to writers is: wait until you have something to truly write about, and wait until you actually get the right perspective of things, and the "inspiration", and only then go and work hard to inflict your literary masterpiece upon the world.
The world is full of "forced art", "forced architecture" and "forced industrial design" made through "working hard enough" instead of actually exploring around until you bump into a "good perspective".
And about:
> If you want to be lazy, you have to accept that you won't have opportunities non-lazy people will have
In the real world things don't work like this at all. Maybe all I want is to sit around in my hut in the rainforest... maybe I'm even content and at peace with the fact the only one of my two children is statistically likely to reach adulthood because malaria or whatever... and being ok with this I just do the bare minimum hunting and enjoy living in nature... until some "hard workers" show up with chainsaws or mining equipment. I'm not a lazy person, but I sympathize with the people that just want to "live their life in their own natural rhythm", but end up being forced out of it by some who worked hard enough to buy the property of the land underneath them, or worked hard enough to make the money to fully "buy off" the government of their peaceful tropical country and then start exploiting it.
As an engineer I love hard work. But when it comes to art or politics I think we need less of it. Less bad art and literature. Less dehumanizing enterprises.
If you're a writer and you're not inspired to write, you're not going to write your magnum opus. However, you still have to write something or another - spend 3 hours writing uninspired writing just to practice your skills. If you're a musician and you're not inspired to compose, you'll still have to practice your scales and do little throwaway compositions to get better at it. Thinking that inspiration can flourish when you don't have practice with structure, realistic dialog is unrealistic. In fact, the more you force yourself to write the more easily you can recognize when real inspiration comes along, and the more you won't waste it.
As for your second example, we're seeing it all over the place in San Francico right now. A lot of people didn't optimize their financial situation, working as artists or painters and social workers, and now are being forced out by people who did optimize their financial situation, the programmers. Is that right? That is personal opinion, but the fact of the matter is had you been prepared with more money from savings or a more lucrative job or a cheap home somewhere else that you bought, you have options that you currently don't have.
http://www.myspiritgarden.com/Cotton-Scroll-The-journey-is-t...