Hacker News Reader

Comment by CommenterMan | Hacker News Reader

"Jumping from failure to failure with undiminished enthusiasm is the big secret to success."

I don't know the source of this quote, but it was repeated by a physicist in the documentary "Particle Fever".

But how? How could anyone's enthusiasm not be diminished by failure? Not even a little bit? If there are really people like that, that sounds like a genetic advantage.

The question is how you interpret the decision of the other party not to move forward. Call it a failure on your side, and it will be a failure. There really is some deeper truth to the remarks in the other comments to frame it as a learning moment, and to gain experience. By framing these random facts in another way, you can come out without a scratch on your soul, and this tiny bit of extra wisdom that will make you understand that (a) this random outcome of the process is nothing personal, and (b) you will be able to approach the random processes a bit better next time.

Sometimes it is just random.

I'm not sure if it's learned or innate but it goes a little like this:

No matter what happens, I'll still be breathing tomorrow, unless I die in which case it doesn't matter anyway.

I approach everything in life under the assumption that I'll reach my goal. Some things go wrong, of course, but mostly the world gets out of my way and lets me pass.

A "failure" means that your success doesn't lie with them. Move on.

Also, take some time to think about WHY you have the goals that you do. Are they really what you want, or just something that other people told you to want? The world is full of successfully miserable people.

"The world is full of successfully miserable people."

Up-voted so I feel less guilty stealing that phrase!

I don't think it has much to do with genetics. You just need to develop a certain mindset. (I lean heavily on nurture) We live in a world that doesn't cherish failure... Reframe failure to mean one step closer to success. After all, not every experiment will prove your hypothesis, but if you want to make progress you have to keep trying.

Are your capabilities learned or genetic? It's the growth vs fixed mindset that so munch ink has been spilled on recently.

To read way too munch from your comment. "that sounds like a genetic advantage" is a fixed mindset way of thinking.

Usually if you learn something that builds constructively upon who you are, then you can chalk failures up as successes. Early-stage startups very much feel this way: like a process of developing an intuition for understanding how to make something the market wants and then get it to grow. A failure-resilient mindset is actually essential if you want to go into startups. So many people test the water, get scalded, and then give up entirely, which ends up being a huge waste of time.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder is what you need to read up on...

Some people think differently to you and I, really differently, and have no ability to empathise with others. Not being loved as a child is no genetic advantage though.

"A rejection doesn’t mean you failed. It means you tried. Try again."

I like this one too.

I think one can lose enthusiasm for working at certain companies but still have a passion for programming.

Ah, that's a great documentary! I found one of the subjects kind of too overly-enthusiastic all the time, but it's still a good documentary nonetheless. And good advice!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com