I’ve learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up to them;
I’ve learned that no matter how much I care, some people just don’t care back;
I’ve learned that it takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it.
I’ve learned that you can get by on charm, for about fifteen minutes. After that, you’d better know something;
I’ve learned that either you control your attitude or it controls you.
I’ve learned that no matter how hot and steamy a relationship is at first, the passion fades and there had better be something else to take it’s place.
I’ve learned that sometimes the people you expect to kick you when you’re downhill are the ones to help you get back up.
I’ve learned that sometimes when I’m angry I have the right to be angry.
I’ve learned that true friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance. Same goes for true love.
I’ve learned that just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to doesn’t mean that they don’t love you with all they have.
I’ve learned that maturity had more to do with what types of experiences you’ve had and what you’ve learned from them and less to do with how many birthdays you’ve celebrated.
I’ve learned that your family won’t always be there for you.
I’ve learned that no matter how good a friend is, they’re going to hurt you every once in a while.
I’ve learned that it isn’t always enough to be forgiven by others. Sometimes you have to forgive yourself.
I’ve learned that no matter how bad your heart is broken, the world doesn’t stop for your grief.
I’ve learned that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.
I’ve learned that just because two people argue, it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. And just because they don’t argue, it doesn’t mean they do.
I’ve learned that we don’t have to change friends if we understand that friends change.
I’ve learned that two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different.
I’ve learned that no matter how you try to protect your children, they will eventually get hurt and you will get hurt in the process.
I’ve learned that your life can be changed in a matter of hours by people who don’t even know you.
I’ve learned that it’s hard to determine where to draw the line between being nice and not hurting people’s feelings and standing up for what you believe.
When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn't your father, or mother, or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
He’s the fellow to please – never mind all the rest
For he’s with you, clear to the end
And you've passed your most difficult, dangerous test
If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you've cheated the man in the glass.
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Found this post on a subreddit - it said share and spread the love :)
This is the post for some people who tend to take their lives pretty seriously and for some who really wanted something new to read on.
If you have to try to be cool, you will never be cool. If you have to try to be happy, then you will never be happy. Happiness, like other emotions, is not something you obtain, but rather something you inhabit. It's the long-term pursuit of your goals and your ideal self that gives you fulfillment.
When you're angry at an annoying neighborhood kid, you are not self-conscious about your state of anger. You are not thinking to yourself, "Am I finally angry? Am I doing this right?" No, you're just riled up. You inhabit and live the anger. You are the anger. And then it's gone.
Just as a confident man doesn't wonder if he's confident, a happy man does not wonder if he's happy. He simply is.
What this implies is that happiness is not achieved in itself, but rather it is the side effect of a particular set of ongoing life experiences. This gets mixed up a lot, especially since happiness is marketed so much these days as a goal in and of itself. "Buy X and be happy," or "learn Y and be happy." But you can't buy happiness and you can't achieve happiness. It just is, once you get other parts of your life in order.
Happiness Is Not the Same as Pleasure
When most people think they are seeking happiness, they are actually seeking pleasure: good food, more sex, more time for TV and movies, a new car, parties with friends, full body massages, becoming more popular, and so on.
But while pleasure is great, it's not the same as happiness. Pleasure is correlated with happiness, but does not cause it. Someone developing a drug habit, for example, was probably pursuing pleasure but may end up far from happiness. Someone having an affair might hurt their loved ones in pursuit of pleasure. The pursuit of immediate pleasure rarely results in long-term satisfaction.
Research shows that people who focus their energy on materialistic and superficial pleasures end up more anxious, more emotionally unstable and less happy in the long-run. Pleasure is the most shallow form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest. Pleasure is what's marketed to us. It's what we fixate on. It's what we use to distract ourselves. But pleasure, while necessary, isn't sufficient. There's something more.
Happiness Does Not Require Lowering Your Expectations
A popular narrative lately is that people are becoming unhappier because we're all narcissistic and grew up being told that we're special unique snowflakes who are going to change the world and we have Facebook constantly telling us how amazing everyone else's lives are, but not our own, so we feel all like crap and wonder where it all went wrong. Oh, and all of this happens by the of age 23.
I think we should give people a bit more credit than that.
A friend of mine recently started a high-risk business venture. He dried up most of his savings trying to make it work and failed. Today, he's happier than ever for his experience. It taught him many lessons about what he wanted and didn't want in life and it eventually led him to his current job, which he loves. He's able to look back and be proud that he went for it because otherwise he would have always wondered "what if?" and that would have made him unhappier than any failure would have.
The failure to meet our own expectations is not antithetical to happiness. Rather, I'd actually argue that the ability to fail and still appreciate the experience is a fundamental building block for happiness.
If you thought you were going to make 100,000 and drive a Mercedes immediately out of college, then your standards of success were skewed and superficial, you confused your pleasure for happiness, and the smack of reality hitting you in the face might be one of the best lessons life ever gives you.
The "lower expectations" argument falls victim to the same old mindset: that happiness is derived from without. The joy of life is not having a 100,000 salary; it's working to reach a 50,000 salary, and then working for a 60,000 salary, and so on.
So, I say raise your expectations. Elongate your process. Lay on your death bed with a to-do list a mile long and smile at the infinite opportunity granted to you. Create ridiculous standards for yourself and then savor the inevitable failure. Learn from it. Live it. Let the ground crack and rocks crumble around you because that's how something amazing grows: through the cracks.
Chances are you know someone who always appears to be super happy regardless of circumstances or situation. But they might be putting up a false front. Positivity is fine, but always denying negative emotion can lead to deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and emotional dysfunction.
It's a simple reality: shit happens. Things go wrong. People upset us. Mistakes are made and negative emotions arise. And that's fine. Negative emotions are necessary and healthy for maintaining a stable baseline happiness in one's life.
The trick with negative emotions is to 1) express them in a socially acceptable and healthy manner and 2) express them in a way which aligns with your values.
A simple example: A value of mine is to pursue non-violence; therefore when I get mad at somebody, I express that anger, but I also make a point to not punch them in the face. Radical idea, I know. It's still okay to acknowledge that I feel angry.
There's a lot of people out there who subscribe to "always be positive" ideology. I avoid these people just as much as someone who thinks the world is an endless pile of shit. If your standard of happiness is that you're always happy, no matter what, maybe you've been watching way too much Leave It To Beaver and need a reality check. Realistically, life just isn't as placid.
I think part of the allure of obsessive positivity is the way which we're marketed to—being subjected to happy, smiling people on television constantly. Maybe some people in the self help industry that want you to feel like there's something wrong with you all the time.
Or maybe it's just that we're lazy, and like anything else we want the result without actually having to do the hard work for it.
Which brings me to what actually drives happiness...
Happiness Is the Process of Becoming Your Ideal Self
Completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes us happier than beating a video game. Starting a small business with friends and struggling to make money makes us happier than buying a new computer.
And the funny thing is that all three of the activities above are exceedingly unpleasant and require setting high expectations and potentially failing to always meet them. Yet, they are some of the most meaningful moments and activities of our lives. They involve pain, struggle, even anger and despair, and yet once we've done them we look back and get misty-eyed.
Why?
Because it's these sort of activities that allow us to become our ideal selves. It's the perpetual pursuit of fulfilling our ideal selves which grants us happiness, regardless of superficial pleasures or pain, regardless of positive or negative emotions. This is why some people are happy in war and others are sad at weddings. It's why some are excited to work and others hate parties.
It's not the end results which define our ideal selves. It's not specifically finishing the marathon that makes us happy—it's achieving a difficult long-term goal that does. It's not having an awesome kid to show off that makes us happy, but knowing that you gave yourself up to the growth of another human being that is special. It's not the prestige and money from the new business that makes you happy, it's process of overcoming all odds with people you care about.
And this is the reason that trying to be happy inevitably will make you unhappy. Because to try to be happy implies that you are not already inhabiting your ideal self, you are not aligned with the qualities of who you wish to be. After all, if you were acting out your ideal self, then you wouldn't feel the need to try to be happy.
Cue statements about "finding happiness within," and "knowing that you're enough." It's not that happiness itself is in you, it's that happiness occurs when you decide to pursue what's in you. It's the long-term pursuit of what you want rather than the trophy at the end.
And this is why happiness is so fleeting. Anyone who has set out major life goals for themselves, only to achieve them and realize that they feel the same relative amounts of happiness and unhappiness, knows that happiness always feels like it's around the corner just waiting for you to show up. No matter where you are in life, there will always be that one more thing you need to do to be extra-especially happy.
And that's because our ideal self is always around that corner, our ideal self is always three steps ahead of us. We dream of being a musician and when we're a musician we dream of writing a film score, and when write a film score, we dream of writing a screenplay. And what matters isn't that we achieve each of these plateaus of success, but that we're consistently moving towards them, day after day, month after month, year after year. The plateaus will come and go, and we'll continue following our ideal self down the path of our lives.
And with that, with regards to being happy, it seems the best advice is also the simplest: Imagine who you want to be and then step towards it. Dream big and then do something. Anything. The simple act of moving at all will change how you feel about the entire process and serve to inspire you further.
Let go of the imagined result; it's not necessary. The fantasy and the dream are merely tools to get you off your ass. It doesn't matter if they come true or not. Live, man. Just live. Stop trying to be happy and just be.
The impostor syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to see their accomplishments, dismissing them as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.
This is much more common that you'd think. It is known that lots of enterpreneurial and high-achieving women have it, but I've also found that it's pretty common in men, too.
In fact, seems like people in the software or online industries present lots of cases of impostor syndrome. The speed at which technologies grow makes you learn new things in almost every project, and may make you feel like you are not performing as you should (or that you aren't in control of what you are supposed to be an expert).
Problems start to arise and lots of times they are already solved by somebody else. In environments like that, it's easy to feel you aren't smart enough.
I've felt like this sometimes. Receiving positive inputs about my performance or work, and not believing them just because what I did was easy, or I got lucky, or I just dissmissed those opinions, thinking that if a real expert came in and looked at what I had done, he would show everyone that I was a fraud.
When that fear strikes, you start thinking that everyone is smarter than you, that there are lots of things that you don't know that all of them already know, and that they are expecting you to know them.
Overcoming it
Recognize that it exists.
When you receive some positive feedback, embrace it with objectivity and internalize it. By denying it, you are hurting that person's judgement.
Don't attribute to luck your successes.
Don't talk about your abilities or successes with words like "merely", "only", "simply", etc.
Keep a journal. By writing your successes and failures down gives you a retrospective insight about them, and by re-reading it makes you remember equally both of them.
Recognize that the perfect performer doesn't exist, and that problems will pop up eventually. Take them as little fires that make you move forward.
Be proud of being humble.
Remember that it's okay to seek help in others, and that even the best do it.
Extra tip by Hackbright Academy's blog: Accept the fact that there are thing that you do not know, there are thing that you will never know and there are things that you can decide to learn.
5. Too much perfectionism, you need clear guidelines for everything.
A programmer Tzuwei Chen writes on Quora that he needs clear spec for favors and errands. Like, "Wait what do you mean by "some eggs"? What is the lower and upper bound?"
Reason: You need to put exact and clear input in your programs; programming do not understand subtlety or ambiguity.
4. Starting to count from 0
How many times have you started to count from zero in your real life? While this may be a normal thing for you, it might appear weird to you non-programmer friends.
Reason: Most of the programming languages are arrays which are lists of values or variables. And for the reasons of computational efficiency, the elements in the array starts with a zero rather than one.
3. Wanting to use the keyboard shortcuts in real life
How many times have you wanted to use ctrl+f to find lost things and use ctrl+z to undo what you just did?
Reason: While this stands true for almost every techie but is specially true for the programmers because they are using these shortcuts for the maximum of the time, so much that they become your second nature.
2. Using syntax and programming conventions in day to day language
You have this habit is you have EverWrittenLikeThis or if you have ended your sentence like this.
Reason: Every Programing languages has its own set of syntax which every developer is required to learn by heart. And after that much of hardwork, there is a fair chance that you forget to use the normal punctuation.
1. Treating humans like computers
Are you usually frustrated because people do not act as you want? Well you have to understand that they are not computers that can be programmed, and not everything can be based on logics as humans embrace one quality that computers and machined don't, 'Feelings'.
Reason: You program and built almost every logic in your software and computer and they follow exactly what you instruct it to. Especially for every action there is a set of fixed reactions.
0. Bad eating and sleeping habits
You sleep at 3 AM and you take lunch at 5 PM and to keep yourself awake late at nights, cups and cups of coffee and chocolates are thrown inside you digestive system!
Reason: Well, that's a life of a programmer, for various reasons right from deadlines to maintain continuity we work on projects day and night which results in this!
You will come across certain people in life, whom you will love and care with all your heart and soul. But sometimes, love and care is not all that is required to have him/her in your life. Sometimes, some people are simply not meant to be yours forever.
Over the last month or so I've realised and learned a lot about people. I've realised that some people you just have to let go.
Reasons for this include:
Negative energy- Constant put-downs, people not believing in you and your dreams, people who take their stress out on you, people who make you feel unhappy to be around.
People who just don't really care- These people usually pretend to care about you but when it comes a time that you really need their support, they're not there for you.
Liars- People who tell lies, I'm not talking about small, little white lies, but lies that can affect you and others.
I find that the easiest way to let these people go is to accept that they won't change. There might have been a time in your life where they were different but it's unlikely that they're going to change anytime soon, if they do change, when they come to the realisation that they have done something wrong it is likely that they will contact you. I've noticed since doing this, that I've become a happier person and have a lot more confidence within myself.
Focus on the people who believe in you and make you feel good about yourself, keeping in mind that it's a two-way street. Treat others how you wish to be treated and usually people return the favour.
“If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.” -Nora Roberts
Think of a time you learned something new, changed, or grew. This is one of your personal stories.
There’s a moment in your story where all the sudden you were totally outside of your comfort zone: In a new country, at a new job, or jumping out of a plane.
At first it was unfamiliar, maybe even uncomfortable. Eventually you got used to it. Before you knew it, you were completely comfortable: You grew as a person, you learned new skills, you changed.
This is how all stories work. It’s how we grow. It’s life.
You cannot grow without leaving your comfort zone. People with a low tolerance for risk, whose behaviour is guided by fear, have a low propensity for success. It’s time to do something new.
"People always come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you figure out which it is, you know exactly what to do.When someone is in your life for a REASON, It is usually to meet a need you have expressed outwardly or inwardly. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, Or to provide you with guidance and support, To aid you physically, emotionally, or even spiritually...They may seem like a godsend to you, and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrong doing on your part or at an inconvenient time, This person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they just walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and it is now time to move on.When people come into your life for a SEASON, It is because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They may bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season. And like Spring turns to Summer and Summer to Fall, The season eventually ends.LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; Those things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person anyway; And put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas in your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant. Thank you for being part of my life, Whether you were a reason, a season or a lifetime..."Author – Unknown
“Before you can grow up, you must fall in love 3 times.
Once you must fall in love with your best friend, ruining your friendship forever. This will teach you who your true friends are, and the fine line between friendship and more.
Once you must fall in love with someone you believe to be perfect. You will learn that no one is perfect, and that you should never be treated as any less than you deserve.
And once you must fall in love with someone that is exactly like you. This will teach you about who you are, and who you want to be. And when you’re through with all that, you learn that the people who care about you the most are the ones that you hurt, and the ones that hurt you are the ones that you needed the most.
But most of all, you learn that love is only a concept and is not something that can be defined, it is different to each person that experiences it. And you will learn to respect each and every person on this earth, knowing that everyone only wants to be loved.”
Your app won’t save the world. Neither will that project you’re working on, or the next headline-making entrepreneurial endeavor, or the wildest technological achievement of the next hundred years. In fact, if the world is to be saved, it won’t be through human devices.
No matter how figuratively they’re used, the phrases “save the world” and “change the world” betray our true desires. We all have issues we’d like to solve, in varying degrees of Messiah Complex grandiosity. The entrepreneurial instinct is usually accompanied by a strong desire to remake the world in our own image.
Of course, we tend to wildly overestimate the amount of control we have over things. The world is governed much more by human nature than we’d like to admit, and human nature doesn’t change.
Our image of primitive man is that he was a bumbling, grunting idiot. In truth, he probably wasn’t much different than we are now. Time hasn’t made us smarter, nobler, or more compassionate. If we act differently, it is because cultural mores have changed. If we have seen farther than our ancestors, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Civilization has made us docile, but we’re still the same people underneath, and a change in circumstance could send us back into that primitive state. To quote The Art of Looking Sideways: “Civilization is chaos taking a rest.”
Our best ideas recognize the immovability of human nature. Communism failed because it requires people to be better than they are. They would need to be incorruptible by power and unmoved by desire. Capitalism worked because it acknowledges human weaknesses and turns them towards the good of society.
The world is a product of human nature. Look at any population center and you’ll see the character of its inhabitants. The city is a macrocosm of the individual, with the good and the bad arrayed on the news for all to see.
It’s in our nature to want to feel in control. When I’m unhappy with something in my life, I usually come up with some system with which to manage it. Not being productive enough? I’ll try a different to-do system. Not waking up on time? Maybe I’ll switch to a different alarm clock. We develop structures and formulas to manage our discontent.
The thing is, true progress must come from inside — no amount of external prodding can force a change of heart. That’s why we fail so predictably when we try to force an internal change through external methods. It’s why we can’t help others unless they want to be helped, and it’s why the Crusades went so terribly wrong. You can’t convert someone to a cause to which they don’t want to be converted.
Technology can help change, but it cannot drive it. No matter how many times I log into Everestor Lift, if I’m not motivated to work towards a goal, that goal won’t be accomplished. Path won’t make anyone more social if they aren’t so inclined. Runkeeper won’t make an athlete out of someone with no desire to run. LinkedIn won’t make you a networker any more than owning a hammer makes you a carpenter. We’ve built some amazing apps in the name of spurring self-improvement, but they can never be more than tools that perpetuate an existing pattern. Real change comes from inside.
We can’t save the world in any meaningful sense. We can fix the problems of the day, but while human nature remains the same, we’re just putting band-aids on a broken bone.
This isn’t as bad as it sounds. Knowing our history, if we could save the world, I’d be scared to see what state we’d leave it in. Our best conception of how the world should be is still tempered by our own brokenness, and the world remade in our image would pale in comparison to all it could be.
Of course this doesn’t mean we should stop building and hoping and fighting for change. We should chase perfection, but only with the understanding that we’ll never catch it. Human nature is static, but we can alter the context in which it operates. Keep on making things that leverage that nature into progress. We may not be able to save the world, but we must cultivate our garden.
I cut two chapters out of my book because they were too nasty.
They vented all the awful details about how my terrible employees staged a mutiny to try to get rid of me, and corrupted the culture of the company into a festering pool of entitlement, focused only on their benefits instead of our clients.
Afterwards, I spent a few years still mad at those evil brats for what they did. So, like anyone feeling victimized and wronged, I needed to vent - to tell my side of the story. Or so I thought.
So do you want to know the real reason I cut those chapters?
I realized it was all my fault.
I let the culture of the company get corrupted.
I ignored problems instead of nipping them in the bud.
I was aloof and away instead of managing or training managers.
I confused everyone by sharing my daily thoughts before they had cemented into decisions.
I announced decisions, then assumed they were being done, without following-up to ensure.
I whimsically delegated to the wrong people, avoiding the mental work of choosing wisely.
(I could list another 20 of these, but you get the idea.)
This is way better than forgiving. When you forgive, you’re still playing the victim, and they’re still wrong, but you’re charitably pardoning their horrible deeds.
But to decide it’s your fault feels amazing! Now you weren’t wronged. They were just playing their part in the situation you created. They’re just delivering the punch-line to the joke you set up.
What power! Now you’re like a new super-hero, just discovering your strength. Now you’re the powerful person that made things happen, made a mistake, and can learn from it. Now you’re in control and there’s nothing to complain about.
This philosophy feels so good that I’ve playfully decided to apply this “EVERYTHING IS MY FAULT” rule to the rest of my life.
It's one of those base rules like “people mean well” that's more fun to believe, and have a few exceptions, than to not believe at all.
The guy that stole $9000 from me? My fault. I should have verified his claims.
The love of my life that dumped me out of the blue (by email!) after 6 years? My fault. I let our relationship plateau.
Someone was rude to me today? My fault. I could have lightened their mood beforehand.
Don’t like my government? My fault. I could get involved and change the world.
See what power it is?
Yes, the word “responsibility” is more accurate, but it's such a serious 6-syllable word, whereas “everything’s my fault” is a fun rule-of-thumb, and gets me singing Nirvana’s “All Apologies”.
Try it on. Stand up, open the window, look out at the world and shout, “Everything is my fault!”
Think of every bad thing that happened to you, and say it again.
Jamie lives in a large city in the midwest. He’s a copywriter for an advertising firm, and he’s good at it.
He’s also good at thinking of reasons why he ought to be happy with his life. He has health insurance, and now savings. A lot of his friends have neither. His girlfriend is pretty. They never fight. His boss has a sense of humor, doesn’t micromanage, and lets him go early most Fridays.
On most of those Fridays, including this one, instead of taking the train back to his suburban side-by-side, he walks to a downtown pub to meet his friends. He will have four beers. His friends always stay longer.
Jamie’s girlfriend Linda typically arrives on his third beer. She greets them all with polite hugs, Jamie with a kiss. He orders his final beer when she orders her only one. They take a taxi home, make dinner together, and watch a movie on Netflix. When it’s over they start a second one and don’t finish it. They have sex, then she goes to wash her face and brush her teeth. When she returns, he goes.
There was never a day Jamie sat down and decided to be a copywriter living in the midwest. A pair of lawyers at his ex-girlfriend’s firm took him out one night when he was freshly laid-off from writing for a tech magazine, bought him a hundred dollars worth of drinks and gave him the business card of his current boss. It was a great night. That was nine years ago.
His friends are from his old job. White collar, artsy and smart. If one of the five of them is missing at the pub on Friday, they’ll have lunch during the week.
Jamie isn’t unhappy. He’s bored, but doesn’t quite realize it. As he gets older his boredom is turning to fear. He has no health problems but he thinks about them all the time. Cancer. Arthritis. Alzheimer’s. He’s thirty-eight, fit, has no plans for children, and when he really thinks about the course of his life he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself, except on Fridays.
***
A few weeks ago I asked everyone reading to share their biggest problem in life in the comment section. I’ve done this before — ask about what’s going on with you — and every time I do I notice two things.
The first thing is that everyone has considerable problems. Not simply occasional tough spots, but the type of issue that persists for years or decades. The kind that becomes a theme in life, that feels like part of your identity. By the sounds of it, it’s typical among human beings to feel like something huge is missing.
The other thing is that they tend to be one of the same few problems: lack of human connection, lack of personal freedom (due to money or family situations), lack of confidence or self-esteem, or lack of self-control.
The day-to-day feel and quality of each of our lives sits on a few major structures: where we live, what we do for a living, what we do with ourselves when we’re not at work, and which people we spend most of our time with.
Making a major change in just one of these areas will necessarily make a major change in the feel and quality of your day-to-day life. It simply can’t stay the same.
Stay in the same city, but start hanging out with a completely different crowd, and life will change significantly. You will change. Stay in the same career but move cities, and your life also will change in a major way.
It might get better, or it might get worse. You don’t know until the change is made. This uncertainty is enough to keep most people from bothering.
But they should bother, as a rule. Day to day life is more likely to get better than worse, because a deliberate change gives you a chance to see if your new situation resonates with you or not, and gives you a second angle of the old one. If the new situation does resonate, then you’re closer to finding what’s right for you, what’s optimal for your sense of well-being.
If it doesn’t resonate with you, then you have more perspective about what it is that you already do that you like so much. Your values become clearer, and you gravitate toward them more strongly. If you leave the countryside for the city and hate it, then you’ve definitely learned more about what it is about the countryside that really does something for you. That’s progress. That’s getting closer to what you want.
Living with the die roll
For Jamie, and for most of us, those four major structures were not decided consciously. The career you end up working in depends chiefly on what you saw as options when you were just starting to enter the workforce. That was a very narrow period of time, during which you were only aware of a limited number of options. You went with whatever made sense at that time. The result — what you do today — is more or less happenstance.
Friends too, are mostly in our lives as defaults. Most of us have found some incredible and inspiring people just by letting happenstance deliver them, but once we have some stable friendships we become complacent and stop actively looking for friends that really resonate with our values and interests, if we ever did at all.
Where you live is even more random, more difficult to change, and it may have the greatest effect of all the structures, because it determines the rest. You were born somewhere. If you moved, it was probably for work or for a relationship. A minority of people do move to a particular city because they think they’ll be happier there than anywhere else. They are seeking the optimum place to live for their values, or at least close to it. But most of us become too established in one place to seriously consider moving once we hit 30.
Friends, location and career tend to define the other one: what you do with your time. Your habits and your hobbies. Your routines, your typical saturday night activities, your wardrobe, your pursuits and personal projects are all suggested by (and constrained by) what your defaults are in the other categories. If you happened to grow up in Nebraska, you probably don’t surf. But surfing might just be the thing that really would turn your crank like nothing else, if you were lucky enough to discover that.
So much of our lives consists of conditions we’ve fallen into. We gravitate unwittingly to what works in the short term, in terms of what to do for work and what crowd to run with. There’s nothing wrong with living from defaults, necessarily, but think about it: what are the odds that the defaults delivered to you by happenstance are anywhere close to what’s really optimal for you?
In other words, we seldom consciously decide how we’re going to live our lives. We just end up living certain ways.
In all likelihood, what you’ve inherited is nowhere near what’s best for you. Chances are very slight that there isn’t a drastically better neighborhood for you out there, a more kindred circle of peers, a much better line of work, and a much more rewarding way to go about your day than the way you do. Your level of fulfillment and sense of peace with the world depend on how well-matched your values are to the life you’re actually living. There’s no reason to believe they’ll match well by accident.
The most natural-feeling course for your life is to do what you’re accustomed to doing, live where you’re accustomed to living, seek what you’re accustomed to seeking. So be careful. I’m convinced that all of my major problems — and many of the problems in the comment section of the What’s your problem post — are due to going with the defaults, either too afraid or too oblivious to make major changes to them.
As a culture, we do a whole lot of maintaining, rationalizing, procrastinating and reinforcing, and not very much thinking about what’s really best for us and the drastic changes we might need to make to get there.
So what does this mean? It means if you’re a normal person you can expect that a lot of categories of your life are set up in highly ineffecient ways, by default. Certain areas of life could be all wrong for you and you have no idea how good it could be on other side of the fence. It also means that wherever you recognize a persistent source of grief in your life, there is probably a different way to set up your life that could eliminate it or greatly reduce it. It could be a major change, like getting rid of your spouse, or it could just be moving to a different neighborhood in the same city.
Major changes are intimidating, but think about it — most of the time when you hear somebody talk about making a major change in their life, like changing cities or careers, a year later they’ll say it put them in a far better place. They tell you they don’t know how they lived before.
That’s a feeling worth seeking out. That specific feeling — which comes in the wake of a major change — of wondering how you ever got along before.
The bottom lines, if I haven’t been clear:
It is typical in human lives to feel like something huge is missing or unsettled.
It is typical for the major aspects of a human life (career, friends, habits and home) to be decided by happenstance, and not consciously.
The feeling of something huge being missing is probably often due to a serious mismatch between what you currently have in one of those aspects, and what is best for you in one of those aspects.
Making conscious changes to the aspects of life you’ve accepted by default can result in dramatic and immediate changes to quality of life.
Few people do this. Few people make a deliberate quest out of finding their perfect city or neighborhood, of seeking out their truly like-minded. Most of us live seventy or eight years defending what we’ve been given, because we think it’s who we are.
At any given time, the prospect of a major change will tend to seem out of the question. This is because you believe you are what you’ve been doing this whole time. From the other side of a major change, the thought of continuing the with way things were will seem absurd.
But identity is fluid. You’ve been becoming a different person this whole time, and after making a dramatic change, you might find you’re more yourself than you’ve ever been.
Why no tech giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter in India?
(An excerpt from Quora :Why India has failed to produce tech giants to the likes of Facebook,Apple,Twitter,Google)
To comment - Lets get this straight, we are in the land of innovations, but we are busy copying (rather getting inspired with) ideas that are already executed in US or to a certain extent countries which is never India and execute them here. Our Top IT companies are busy being a backend for the biggest thing in US. And lastly whenever we have the big idea, we are always bogged down by the thought that we don’t have right support. (somewhat agreeing here to some of the earlier comments)
So where does the problem start, we get a high when a company like instagram makes is big and are somewhere thinking hey I know how to create something like that. Furthermore if we are super enthu about it we will also make a product similar and launch it. With whatever success we would be going gaga about it.
Well lets get a reality check. Where do you stand in the world map?
All the products being discussed above are not only mass products but acceptable world wide and yes are for HUMAN BEINGS.
From a very limited experience and after close but specific observation, I have noticed that all these products and even more like these not mentioned above are a result of EVOLUTION
Yes, we are in the world of evolution with its top speed. The scenarios are changing at the blink of eye and the only common aspect that still remains is the human tendency. Man (Including to a Large extent – Women too :) ) is a social animal. And that’s proving right with each evolution.
TELEPHONE
And everyone remembers
TRUNK CALLS
And the obvious
LANDLINE
Skipping some of the major ones in between but then came
INTERNET
Or rather the same time we saw
MOBILE All of the above got humans together, closer which meant more sharing of information. More Learning, More Interactions, More wants, Better experiences, and more & more of socializing.
Each of these is what I call as breakthrough ideas that filled in the gap being created by the new scenario created by the latter.
Breakthrough -> New Scenario -> Created a GAP -> Another Breakthrough
And this process is what I call as evolution
Lets take a close look at Mobile + Internet with socializing aspect for time being.
Evolution Stages of my times
Socializing took a big leap with
Messengers and chat features - interactions with unknown people became seamless.
GAP - This created a Space to ‘Know the Unknown’ further in Person
And got the breakthrough of
Breakthrough - Hi5 and MySpace – we all know what happened then.
GAP – I want to know more about you and in an EASIER WAY and I want to tell my small world something too.
Breakthrough - And here we see Facebook & Orkut
Why I mentioned both is because while facebook was making it big in the states, Orkut was capturing the most populated and most socially active countries like India and other Asian countries. So why did FB emerged as a winner? Because they were responsive to what their audience was loving and hating. Orkut was just a template that worked in short run. (Remember I don’t call orkut as an evolution but it was a smart marketing move to enter asian countries). They completely got it wrong in India when the profile pictures were misused by the internet thugs. And then we saw was the rise of Facebook
GAP – I want more of this now.
Well did I forget mobile.
Oh yes
Mobile Apps on the rise.
Breakthrough - FB on mobile.
GAP – I want to speak more things about me. I have an opinion about this and I have an opinion about that too.
In the mean time SMS Chats with smart plans from operators it had already become a rage.
Im sure I will hve similar thinking people who will follow my thought process & contribute 2 the #SUBJECT. Lets convey this in 140 Characters
Breakthrough - TWITTER – great success but will not match facebook as it’s a bit niche.
Remember the ruler of Internet world Is already defined by now. i.e Facebook. Coz it has everything that a Mall has. Twitter are more like a starbucks more specific and a bit niche. And so are the next set of breakthroughs mentioned by me. Serving a specific purpose.
GAP – If I can see images then why not videos
Breakthrough – Youtube (this was no brainer)
GAP – No matter how I look I should have an awesome DP but I don’t know photoshop… and I like to click me but also many more things and I can make them look awesome too.
Breakthrough - Photo Apps – They were a big Display Pic contributors
GAP – by now ive typed a lot on FB / Twitter lot of videos seen. but I want to convey my life through Images and want to know more people like me who do that.
Breakthrough - Instagram
GAP – Forums and Discussions Era - Part 2. Women tend to type less and they want to see one subject matter in a quick glance. May be she gets something that she was unable to convey.
Breakthrough – Pinterest
By now everything is in MOBILE / TABS with Internet
GAP – I like to swipe my finger on my tab and touch screen mobile. Its like channel surfing during times when you don’t know what you are looking forward to get entertained
Potential Breakthrough – FlipBoard App (not sure if IOS has something similar already)
I missed out Quora – which really took on Yahoo Answers / Forums and Discussions to the next level. They filled a GAP too
Interesting GAP - Can we have something between images and videos
Keep Guessing. Im sure there is or there will be something
Think in these lines catch one niche, identify the gap and create a breakthrough. We are in the virtual world there are always consumers available for people who have the set up ready. It would be foolish to attempt at something that would be up against facebook rite away. But lets start with something that creates its own niche and you never know it may be part of facebook soon. The day something similar happens you will surely see India in the Innovators Circuit in a big way with many people copying (rather getting inspired with) the thought of coming up with a breakthrough.
More people should do what I’m doing right now. They should sit at their computers and bat the cursor around — write full sentences about themselves and the things they care about.
I have a selfish reason for my demand: I have a lot of friends who are thoughtful, but keep their thoughts to themselves. I imagine finding notebooks under their bed, tens of composition books packed with little print. I think about what sort of a treasure that would be.
But that’s not why you should write.
That’s the promise: you will live more curiously if you write. You will become a scientist, if not of the natural world than of whatever world you care about. More of that world will pop alive. You will see more when you look at it.
It’s like what happens to a room during a game of “I Spy”: if your friend spies something red, the red stuff glows.
When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for and generator of thought. It’s like a thematic gravity well, a magnet for what would otherwise be a mess of iron filings. I’ll read books differently and listen differently in conversations. In particular I’ll remember everything better; everything will mean more to me. That’s because everything I perceive will unconsciously engage on its way in with the substance of my preoccupation. A preoccupation, in that sense, is a hell of a useful thing for a mind.
Writing needn’t be a formal enterprise to have this effect. You don’t have to write well. You don’t even have to “write,” exactly — you can just talk onto the page.
I suggest writing emails to your friends. Writing with an audience in mind makes the writing better, and writing to a friend means you won’t get hung up on how you sound. You’ll become closer, too, to whoever you share your thoughts with, and odds are you’ll draw the same thoughtfulness out of them. Your inbox will become less of a place for coupons and bullshit than for the thoughts of humans you like.
Walk around with a pen and a scrap of paper. Write some meaty emails. Engage more intensely with this place.
Sleeping On Difficult Problems Actually Helps Solve Them
We've all decided to "sleep on it" when confronted with a difficult choice to make, usually hoping that a good night's sleep and fresh perspective in the morning will make the decision a little easier. Well, one study from Lancaster University and published in the journal Memory and Cognition shows that sleeping on it really does help us tackle tough problems.
It may seem like common sense, but if you're struggling with a major decision or life change to ponder, trying to power through it and make it on the fly may not serve you as well as getting a good night's sleep and approaching the problem freshly the next day after a little rest. Here's what the researchers found:
We presented participants with a set of remote-associate tasks that varied in difficulty as a function of the strength of the stimuli–answer associations. After a period of sleep, wake, or no delay, participants reattempted previously unsolved problems. The sleep group solved a greater number of difficult problems than did the other groups, but no difference was found for easy problems. We conclude that sleep facilitates problem solving, most likely via spreading activation, but this has its primary effect for harder problems.
Essentially, when presented with difficult problems, people who tried to solve them immediately and those without rest fared worse than the people who had the opportunity to sleep on their answers and approach the problem again after sleeping. The researchers qualify the conclusion with the fact that this only worked for difficult problems—when it came to easy choices, sleep wasn't terribly beneficial (which makes sense—when's the last time you felt the need to sleep on it when faced with an easy problem to solve?)
So the next time you have a big choice to make, give yourself a day to sleep on it.
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