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Comment by yusee | Hacker News Reader

Don't solve for people's feelings. If you have good intentions and are useful to others, they will be attracted to you.

Sometimes you will offend or annoy people. These negative experiences are growth opportunities. Apologize. Learn a social lesson. Next time you won't make the same mistake.

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To coin a strategy from Tony Robbins, sometimes it takes offending or annoying people to snap them out of the mode they're in and make them pay attention. So while I appreciate what you're saying, these are not always negative experiences or mistakes that want to be apologized for. Sometimes this act of disruption is used with good intent, for a good purpose and with good results. Of course, most of the time we offend or annoy people it's not with this in mind and we do it thoughtlessly or carelessly, so with that in mind, I agree with your sentiment.

Agree except for the apologizing part. Especially if you're the kind of person that over-thinks things, like me.

There are two situations that I can think of where apologizing is appropriate and appreciated:

1. You did something bad, rather than just saying something. Like puking on a friend's couch. Go out of your way to make amends.

2. Immediately after you said something and realized how insensitive or offensive it was. Conversation moves fast, if it hasn't already moved on briefly retract and apologize, then let others talk for a while.

I tend to fixate on things I've said in the past that I regret. I have a rotating roster of my "most awkward moments" that my brain likes to randomly replay for me without prompting. In the past I used to go out of my way to find a way to apologize for these moments. Almost always the encounter was awkward enough to give me something new to fixate on. Most of the time they don't even remember the conversation in question.

Don't take yourself too seriously. There's a certain amount of hubris in assuming that something you said in passing deeply affected anybody else. Forgive yourself and let these small fixations go and others will too, probably much faster than you do.

I replay awkward (or bad) moments occasionally, too. You can actually break that habit, though. When you catch yourself remembering them, just make the effort to blank your mind. "Don't think about cheese" and all that.

Fine, then I could write the same article about the traps inherent in trying to be useful to others.

Eh, I agree it's kind of a strange choice of words, but you don't really expect people to want to spend more time with somebody who doesn't provide any value? Just being pleasant company is useful and has value.

If you have good intentions and are useful to others, they will be attracted to you.

Am I the only one that finds this statement darkly utilitarian?

Useful probably isn't the best word choice. "Create value" is probably better substituted here. You can create value for others without the "being useful or used" connotation.

Although "create value" brings up images of corporate board rooms for me. Attempting to talk about interpersonal relationships without invoking capitalism is difficult. :(

How about "Be helpful"?

Oh god. It makes sense, but still sound awful.

If you are a good person and your company has a positive effect on them?

Well, at least get the variable(s) representing the person's feelings on the left, equated with the appropriate expression on the right. But you don't have to actually evaluate it; just leave it in algebraic form.

Does this actually mean anything? It reads like a pataphor.

Leaving in algebraic form means you aren't finding a solution, but can see that, e.g. with '3x = 2y/12z' increasing z will decrease x, but increasing y will increase x. So you know the trends for the variables, and which ones can be usefully manipulated. Reasonable advice, if a little glib.

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