Ask HN: What is something that had the largest positive impact on your life? Could be a person, book, diet, lifestyle change or really anything you think had a very positive impact on your life. |
Ask HN: What is something that had the largest positive impact on your life? Could be a person, book, diet, lifestyle change or really anything you think had a very positive impact on your life. |
I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's not a perfect church, and there's definitely some weird stuff in the culture that it's so often tied to. I don't like a lot of the strange tacked-on culture stuff. And I don't think the organization is perfect.
That said, I am deeply grateful that I'm a member of this church because it's given me so many chances to help people from very different walks of life that I wouldn't have come into contact with otherwise. I've gotten practice teaching, running meetings, getting out of my comfort zone, helping others, getting help myself.
Then there's the gospel: I've gone through life much happier believing that there's a purpose to life, that death isn't the end, that family can be together forever. Christ's teachings have pushed me to be a kinder, more understanding, and more forgiving person than I otherwise would have been.
I know there are plenty of atheist and anti-theists here. I respect you! I hope you can appreciate that my religion has done fantastic good in my and my family's life.
- Save 10+ hours a week in commuting. - Save $$ on lunch - Spend more time with my family. - Get more done in both work and personal stuff.
A few comments here refer to religion, but I think this is a better label.
I've restarted life a few times, moving to foreign countries where I didn't know anyone.
Each time, it isn't as if I landed and just instantly had a group of people I related to and enjoyed spending time with. It usually has taken a year, and it's a tough year when I was thinking "maybe I made a mistake".
It wasn't as if I didn't have "friends", but I didn't feel like the people I was spending time with were "my people". Which was fine.
But then, sometimes, you find a group that you really click with. The nice thing about this is that you really appreciate how rare it is to find your tribe, particularly when you've been spending time with people who aren't yours.
I think this might be along the same line as religion and parenthood. Though parenthood is kinda forcing the world to accept that you're making your own tribe, but maybe we just ignore that.
You can also belong to more than one tribe, which is nice. I have my social tribe, and my work tribe, and I truly feel connected to both of them.
Growing up, I never had a tribe until I moved away from home, and even then, I knew that the friends I had wouldn't be friends for life.
I think most people accept that their family is their tribe, and though I'm still close with a few of my siblings, I probably wouldn't have known what it feels like to be free of a family which isn't your tribe, unless I had moved away (which I did in high school).
I've gained much more focus and I live more in the moment.
I also don't care as much about work things.
Loads of technical debt, unsustainable roadmaps, weird coworkers, bad bosses, who cares?
I have realised too late that my coping mechanism for dealing with the complexities of the world is retreating to a safe space when I need to. That usually involves getting away from everyone and playing a computer game for a few hours, or going for a long hike, or just driving somewhere to be by myself. And it needs to be frequent.
I cannot do that any longer. Our kids are so challenging that leaving one partner to cope by themselves is too hard. I never get to escape and I find it bordering on impossible to deal with the world. I have been suicidal at times. I'm on medication for it.
I could write out this exact same sentence. You're not alone with your overall experience.
But your spouse/partner may also need to be able to get away. (My wife did, though not as often as me.) Maybe you could tag-team breaks for each other?
- Homo Ludens by Johan Huzinga (The highest calling a human can partipate in is play). My goal in life is to have has much play time as possible, it is all I am aiming for right now. Probably How I will measure how my successful my life was (how much did I play?)
- Adam Curtis Documentaries (Power & how it shapes societys). Opened my eyes to what exactly political struggle is. I don't see politics the same way again after watching those documentaries. I rewatch one every few months. There is so muc to learn from them.
- The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. Got me to start taking computers seriously.
- Hacker News. This is the highest quality social community that I am part of. I learned so much from here. And it feels like the only place where I can meet and have a conversation with like minded people. I genuinely feel like I have an edge in life over other people just by being part of the HN community.
I think what matters is having a core, something you accept as absolute truth. Make new assumptions around this truth. What happens when science conflicts with your truth? You abandon the lower truth and follow the higher truth. Abandon lower truths for higher ones, like a bubble sort. Is scientific evidence the highest truth? For many it is, but you should get there by thinking rationally.
This absolute truth is bigger than yourself. It makes everything else seem really tiny by comparison - you could lose a limb, a child, your wealth, your life, and that's fine. It's an incredibly solid shock absorber.
Then what's the meaning of life? It's difficult to define by life itself, but you can look at the absence of life -- death. What does dying mean, what happens after, and what should you do before? If you're about to die, do you travel the world? Do you shoot up bullies? Do you write a book? All of us are about to die, some are well past half our lifespan. Religion answers a lot of these questions.
Then you work on things with the urgency of someone who is about to die and who knows what they need to do.
That compass is important. It doesn't have to be a god, but if you believe in the highest power, why wouldn't you do whatever they say? Some are polytheists with indifferent gods, but they still have an idea of what happens after death. Your compass can be the world, you can be out to save the world. It can be yourself - plenty of people leave their homes in search of themselves. You'll have yourself through all your life. Why not look after yourself? There's a religion for that too.
Getting into outdoor activities (kayaking, climbing, hiking etc). Made the best friends, travelled worldwide, saw interesting places, got fitter
Music, listening and playing instruments. (and I guess programming to an extent) always nice to have a skill and something you can do when nothing else is going on. Quite meditative too.
Like many nerdy tech guys I spent most of my teens and 20s on forums. I'm 30 now, younger than many here, but I've come to realize spending more than an hour per week in them is a waste of time.
LASIK. Crossfit / weightlifting. Learning programming and getting hired early at a unicorn.
* Weather (over 300 sun days)
* Health improvements
* doing more outdoor sports (e.g. swimming in the sea)
* Culture difference, Cypriots are friendly people
* Living a slower paced life (and different life)
* More (new) friends than ever
* Lower taxes
* Lower cost of living
* Less crime
* More freedom (personal and business wise)
leaving reddit
avoiding marriage&kids (okay actually i only bring it up cuz the default replies seemed incredibly un hacker news to me, more like boomer news "religion, marriage, kids" lol, bruh one of my college buddies is big into religion and now he is married and has a kid and he used to be almost as smart as me now he probly couldn't program his way out of paper bag)
keeping a productivity computer where I have youtube&hacker news banned via host file
Certain choices work for some people and make them happy. Perhaps your friend doesn't give a rats ass about coding out of a wet paper bag and sees you as a miserable shut-in.
there's plenty of venues where you can find people advocating for those lifestyles, hn shouldn't be. the replies to this should be something more like "wrote my own emacs extension" or maybe like "took venture capital from some specific vc" or something...
this kind of ironic self hatred stuff is a big part of why leaving reddit is on my list...
It seems to have impacted me far worse though, for whatever reason. I never knew what depression actually was before I had children.