edit : + things you say no/avoid while persevering.
I'm going to go against the grain of most of what's being said in this thread and say that the best way to get through adversity is to discard a goal-based mentality entirely, in favor of a system-based mentality. Figure out the stuff you have to do every day. Get disciplined about doing that stuff. The 'small wins' you get from just executing the loop over and over again build up a lot of momentum over time.
I started with making my bed as soon as I got up every day, and just built on that. When there's something new I want to do, I set up a system for it. When the system isn't working, I change the system. Rather than deciding whether I wanted to do something or not before doing it, I'd just do it, then reflect afterward if that made things better or worse.
This approach got me through some really really bad times, helped me get fit, got me through tough, stressful workloads, calmed me down in times of chaos and helped me make the right long-term choices. I'm overall happier.
Here's some resources:
- http://www.slideshare.net/Scottadams925/goals-are-for-losers... - https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-You/dp/14555091...
edit: oh and one other thing I got out of this approach. People absolutely can change, it just takes a lot longer than people usually put on. I'm a different person from who I was ~4 years ago, mostly in a positive way.
So the next thing was 'drink a glass of water after you've made the bed'. I read somewhere that lethargy after waking up was to do with dehydration overnight, so I drank the glass of water. I don't know if it made me less lethargic or not, but it did make me wander out of my room and into the kitchen to get the glass, and made me feel like I'd started my day.
So then it was 'ten pushups'. Then after a little while it was 'another ten pushups before bed'. Then it was 'run 5k every 3rd day' then every 2nd, then 10k if it was a weekend day. At some point I'd also added in going to the gym, because I noticed I'd been jogging past one on my route, so now I just ran to the gym. Routines to build on routines. I never set myself a goal like 'lose 10kg' or 'Squat 100kg' but in the end I did. It was hard to get over not really wanting to run, but when I kind of internalized that it didn't matter whether I wanted to or not, I just got to doing stuff. And of course it's kind of hard to feel bad about going running after you've done it, so it made sense to just keep doing it.
For work stuff, the first thing I did was 'before going to bed, write on an index card every task you need to get done tomorrow'. So I did that. Small thing, big improvements - first thing was that now I had an index card on my desk first thing that I had to deal with, so I had to read it before opening up my PC and just surfing around. Next thing was because I had the card there on my desk, I glanced at it every now and then and asked myself 'well did I do any of that in the last hour?'. And finally when I wrote the next index card, I had a little list of the tiny wins I'd made that day. Plus the index cards stack up over time so there's this physical reminder on the corner of my desk that I've done all this stuff, and the next day is just a tiny part of that. Now as a bonus I'm mindful about my work. I didn't set out to 'have 8 productive hours a day', I just made the little index cards over and over. But I get a productive 8 hour day most days.
Well I had the index cards now, so I have a record of what I've been up to, so I might as well do summaries - and that's how I started journaling regularly. When the stack gets x high, review the stack, write down what your thoughts are, repeat.
Now I look at stuff in terms of the systems I'd have to adopt to do it, and figure out how I can fit them in. I'd love to learn the guitar and work on a bunch of personal projects, and by figuring out the daily stuff I have to do I can see whether it makes sense to do it now or some other time, because it kind of naturally squares with priorities.
I've lost some of those habits since I moved for grad school, but I'm working on reestablishing them in the same methodical way. I'm still working on making my systems a little more resilient to that kind of disruption. One thing I did add to my system though is 'Saturday is a personal day, always, no email, no phone, unless it's a hair-on-fire thing in which case Sunday is a personal day'.
YMMV but the point to evolve this stuff organically.
It seems like good lives are built the same way as good companies: one small task at a time compounded over years.
This is a fantastic approach.
* Work on my book[1] every day.
* Exercise twice a week.
* Run every weekend.
* Then a few ones around what I eat.
I allow myself to tune those rules over time to better optimize what I'm going for, however I don't let myself change a rule right when it's in play. If it's Sunday afternoon and I haven't run yet, I don't get to decide if I'm going to change my running schedule. Past me set that rule, and present me must follow it.
After I run, I can consider tweaking it. But, then, of course, I find that after I've run, I feel pretty good about it and end up sticking with the rule.
I started using Insight Timer and am now meditating every single day for the first time.
That's something I could really use.
Turns out pretty much everything works the same. Maybe the trick is that I didn't really do anything that wasn't incremental, just a day at a time, but you just kind of keep going with the momentum.
Now I tend to just do that reflexively because it's just worked so many times in so many different areas.
If you choose to do the "right" thing or the "wrong" thing in any given moment, that will reinforce your tendency to either persevere or to give up, in the future.
So while some moments of decision may seem more important than others (with obvious / immediate consequences), these moments are in fact all supremely important.
Over time these decisions solidify into habits and character traits. Ultimately, they will determine your fate in life.
So this year, I've started swimming. There's a pool near me, proper 50m size.
Week 1: do 1 lap, 2-3 times that week. My girlfriend laughed at me. "1 lap?!". Yeah, 1 lap. It's just about going there and doing it.
Week 2: 2 laps.
You get the idea. By easing myself in to this, by making it a steady little habit, I'm hoping to be doing 52 laps by the end of the year. That's 2.5kms. That's not bad.
"you may want to see a doctor, sometimes these things need medicated" seems like reasonable, responsible advice. But handing out specific drug recommendations - WTF?!
I experienced the same thing when my American cousins were over last summer. Unsolicited and highly dangerous medical advice tossed out like a TV show recommendation.
EDIT: I realise I do not actually know the nationality of the previous poster, and that their statement referred solely to themselves, yet I still feel it is dangerous and will leave the original message intact.
From branded medications to diet books, "health" foods, and trends ad nauseam, there's a pervasive culture of cure-all objects and systems.
Then again, we don't have fine physical understanding of most mind disorders or the medications we use to treat them so if your doctor is effectively throwing darts at a board then why not internet strangers?
Everyone in this thread trying to say general ignorance is something Americans have a monopoly on is silly. It's a human condition, nothing to do with country.
Many wealthy European countries have a much more suspicious attitude to health vendors. Then again we often ban their advertisements.
This is important, and why it is ok to say it IMO, and I'm glad GP did. It's an honest and real response.
I have a huge problem with the way some of these drugs are over-prescribed. But I have an even bigger problem with stigmatizing people who are availing themselves of a resource that might be of help to them.
Also I don't see why being a Brit would make a difference, I'm an Australian and hearing that a drug helped someone isn't that mindblowing to me.
On top of that, he'd have to convince a doctor to actually obtain the drug.
It just isn't the culture here to talk about specific medications. People are more likely to focus on the condition, and urge someone to go get checked out (often to 'demand a consultant' but I've never seen somebody explicitly or implicitly told to request a specific drug).
About being happy, to me it's a matter of considering what plausible futures might be. I get stressed a lot about little things. To relax I think past the immediate imagined disaster and what its consequences might be. Usually the consequences aren't that bad. You can always make more money and you can always meet new people. Health/safety is the only thing that's not worth risking.
A psychiatrist prescribed Zoloft to me a while back, but I found diet, exercise, and meditation (in the sense I described above, not traditional counting breaths, etc.) to be more effective.
I dislike modern psychology's labels as if there's some threshold that separates normal people from abnormal. We're all on a spectrum of various personality characteristics, with no boundaries on that spectrum.
The funny thing is, my wife now says I'm one of the least stressed people she knows. It makes me think of when the Hulk says, "the secret is I'm always angry." I appear relaxed because I'm always stressed and keeping a lid on it.
Business is a suffering contest. Life ends in death.
There are beautiful things in both, but more times than not, despite all signals and urges to stop or give up, you must will yourself to keep moving your feet.
Those few who do give themselves the best chance to overcome adversity.
What frustrates me today is how the media (collectively) have revised the history books and promote some fairly extreme bullying (see the verge's article on Matt Taylor as an example of some extreme and unjustified bullying of Matt based on his gender).
I believe overcoming adversity is recognising you are not a victim and recognising there is something bigger than you. You are not a gender, you are not a skin colour, you are not a religion or an age group. If you can rise above these things, you are a huge step to overcoming adversity. You stop looking down on others and yourself.
I can't help but feel our society is further from this goal than I have ever seen in my lifetime. While it doesn't impact me personally, it disappoints me at how much we've regressed in even the last 10 years.
Ah yes, only the toughest survive. Tech nerds are so tough that they get offended when somebody doesn't like their shirt.
>What frustrates me today is how the media (collectively) have revised the history books and promote some fairly extreme bullying (see the verge's article on Matt Taylor as an example of some extreme and unjustified bullying of Matt based on his gender).
They were complaining that he was wearing a shirt with scantily clad women on it? How is that gender-based harassment? Furthermore, how does it constitute revising history?
>You are not a gender, you are not a skin colour, you are not a religion or an age group. If you can rise above these things, you are a huge step to overcoming adversity. You stop looking down on others and yourself.
Unless you are in the category of people with the highest level of privilege in our society, you are not allowed to forget these aspects of your identity. The police, public restrooms, inaccessible buildings, and other people will relentlessly remind you of your abnormality and victimize you.
No, you would know it was due to real, physical bullying back then. Not "someone said something I don't like on the internet", but injuring someone and/or degrading them publically due to them loving technology.
Oh, while we're at public degradation. >They were complaining that he was wearing a shirt with scantily clad women on it? How is that gender-based harassment?
He was wearing a shirt his female friend made for him. She wasn't harassed for making it, he was - because he is a white male in a science field, the social justice warriors of the internet decided he is a target for abuse and public degradation, that a shirt is a reason women aren't getting into science. They decided he is a "misogynist" and a "sexist pigdog". That's abuse. That's bullying.
>Unless you are in the category of people with the highest level of privilege in our society, you are not allowed to forget these aspects of your identity. The police, public restrooms, inaccessible buildings, and other people will relentlessly remind you of your abnormality and victimize you.
Really? And let me guess, that would be a straight white male. You're doing a good job of reminding people of their abnormality and victimizing them.
When exactly is "back then" though? I went through school about ten years ago and was beaten up for nerdiness all the time, why people think they can leverage this into a lifetime of misogyny is beyond me. Everyone takes shit in grade school, kids are mean.
>He was wearing a shirt his female friend made for him.
That doesn't make it not sexist.
>She wasn't harassed for making it, he was - because he is a white male in a science field
No, she wasn't harassed because she wasn't wearing it.
>the social justice warriors of the internet decided he is a target for abuse and public degradation, that a shirt is a reason women aren't getting into science. They decided he is a "misogynist" and a "sexist pigdog". That's abuse. That's bullying.
It's too bad a man was called a misogynist on the internet, it must have really hurt his feelings. I thought people like you think SJWs need to grow a thicker skin? Resilience is a two-way street, pal. If you expect us to be tolerant of your abuse, you'd better be tolerant of ours.
>And let me guess, that would be a straight white male.
Good boy! Here's your cookie.
>You're doing a good job of reminding people of their abnormality and victimizing them.
There's a certain kind of conservative who seems to think that any discrepancies in equality in modern western culture are due to individual failings of will because we made sexism and racism illegal like, last century, dude. I don't need to remind people of their abnormality, it's impossible for them to ignore.
I know because I'm neither straight nor a male. (though I am most certainly white) Far before anybody could tell me I was oppressed, I experienced oppression. In particular people in grade school beat me up for expressing femininity, because it is considered unacceptable for men to act feminine in our culture. Telling me I'm not a victim while I'm lying in a puddle of my own schoolwork mixed with other peoples' spit getting the shit kicked out of me doesn't make you clever or objective, it makes you a sadistic asshole.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp/1...
In short, I guess it's about getting over yourself, to find a new part of yourself that you didn't know about.
This is exactly the advice from Admiral Mc Raven at the university of Texas commencement ceremony. He recalls it as one of the most important lessons he got from its navy SEAL training: https://news.utexas.edu/2014/05/16/mcraven-urges-graduates-t...
I've been building on the Web and Internet non-stop since the early 1990s, and that's the only method I've found that works consistently to stave off giving up when things inevitably get really hard. One of the fastest ways to giving up, is to fail to tackle one giant task, and have it grind you up and burn large amounts of time; when you spot that happening, it's critical to switch to smaller tasks / goals that you can knock out quickly, so as to get any modicum of progress going again.
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."
I am guilty of procastination, analysis and obsessive research my whole life. Its not going to help if you spend a month finding out the perfect diet or perfect vacation and then realize you could've done something instead - perfection is an unattainable goal.
I extended this by doing yoga. Apart from the well known health benefits, the total concentration, even in the painful parts, gives the mind diversion and that is as good as if not better than rest. The cumulative affect is one is refreshed.
So for me the yoga and the discipline from a few small things as helped me work through mild depression, shitty (although mostly self-created) relationship crashes, and lack of motivation.
To put it all simply: learn to enjoy the small things done well every day.
If I may ask, initially did you have any means to implement a system from scratch (i.e. no passion, and no motivation) to consistently performing and developing that into a habit? That would be the heart of discussion here (to be aware of audience diversity here). It has to start from an emotional pain, or an emotional need to get to a specific short-term goal in the first place.
E.g. working out. One starts with a short-term goal of running on treadmill with the intention to lose a few lbs, or to develop some better sleep. And then, gives up after the goal is achieved; some give up unable to follow-through. Then, you get frustrated about not following through the following year, continuing to be mediocre. And then, you develop a better momentum, better sense of following-through, and better discipline, only to give up after a little bit longer (excuses can be formidable). And then...you develop enough persistence, enough discipline, enough grit, just to make it into a habit. Once you turn that into a habit, you just don't care for goals, excuses or motivations.
But I found that incredibly hard to achieve (over the years). At least, this was my path. When I was put in a stringent disciplined system in 20s, I resisted. I always wanted to break such patterns, routines & rules because I thought they hinder creativity. Now, I am at a full-circle back to implementing such a system of grit & discipline.
Given these, if I were to start something new today e.g. Taekwondo, I would implement grit, discipline and just following-through. But I won't have goals, or I don't care for passion either.
Matt Cutt's "Try something new for 30 days" TED talk did help:
https://www.ted.com/talks/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_3...
- Kafka on the Shore, Murakami
Under immensely troubling times - not as bad as war or famine, but much worse than a startup or relationship failure - these books kept me going:
- The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday
- Mastery by Robert Greene
- Courage Under Fire by James B Stockdale
- Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
- Being Mortal by Atul GawandeI have a ridiculously easy life compared to them, and because of them. That's my main motivation, apart from my own young family.
And I surround myself mostly with talented friends who work their nuts off too. Failures are no big deal, unless you don't learn something.
I try to do better now, but I think I'll always carry some personal guilt over that. I can't fix the past, but I can work harder and try to correct some of my mistakes.
edit I neglected to note that you mentioned your dad to have passed. Take reassurance in that a brief comment on the internet, I think you've done him proud.
They did it for you anyway, and doubtless on the whole, gladly. As another poster noted, you can pay it forward. That's likely what your parents did.
Like I am like you said, 'ridiculously easy life' 100% like this, why am I not doing what I want to do? Where is the struggle? Why don't I work my butt off?
Can the undergraduate major I did to be blamed? Is it really too late for me 25 year old to get into software development scene? What's stopping me?
Yes I don't have the opportunities like i would had in the US where many of my high school classmates went turns out one of them is working at "Glassdoor #1 company to work for " as Account executive. But even living in a third world country, warm bed, hot water, running electricity, warm meal, no rent, high end PC, I'm easily about 99 percent of the people here. What's stopping me? Why don't I take these things to my advantage and work towards something which been back of my mind for the last 3 years!
Aside from maybe 2 basic courses in college. I never took any other cs classes before I went back to college at 27. First time in college(mechanical engineer) I barely broke 3.0 gpa because I was a slacker, when I went back I had a 3.9 because I got my life on track. Later got my Masters at 30. Now work at Microsoft earning almost 3x as much as I did before and significantly happier with where I am and headed in life. I know a friend who just did same thing but started at 28. He was a business major the first time. Now he is at Google with a masters in CS as well.
It's legit never too late. I personally know of a dozen people who started at older age than you or even me.
You have your entire adult life ahead of you. Take a little time to identify what you want to achieve over the next 2 years. Define realistic goals. Then, map out a step by step path to them. Get to work.
Take comfort in the fact that success is about a lot of little steps over time.. not one big step in an instant.
Its never too late. :)
A while ago I went to China. After visiting Hong Kong, where I had a few friends who lived there to help me out, and the city itself is fairly westernized and friendly to foreigners, I flew directly into Xi'an.
Xi'an is where the Terra Cotta warriors are, but despite those being a fairly large tourist attraction, the city itself is very...Chinese. Very few people speak English, and for myself who had never been alone in such a foreign place before it was bewildering. I finally understood the concept of "culture shock".
I was only planning to be there for one day, and I wasted most of the morning trying to get a train ticket to Shanghai. It was getting late and I couldn't figure out how to actually get to the place where you could see the Terra Cotta warriors. I'm a naturally shy person and the idea of flagging down a stranger who didn't speak my language and trying to gesticulate and get my point across was terrifying.
Still, what it came down to, was that in all likelihood I was never going to be here again in my life. And did I really fly halfway around the frigging world just to get there and NOT go see the damn Terra Cotta warriors? There was no way I could let that happen.
So, ultimately, I just got over it, walked up to the first friendly looking person I could find, pointed to the Terra Cotta warriors section in my guidebook (where the name was written in Mandarin) and made some inquisitive noises. He ended up pointing me towards where I could catch the bus, so I got there with plenty of time to see them and make it back to catch my train.
I know as far as "adversity" goes it's pretty lame, but it was a big deal for me. What inspired me to persevere was the simple fact that, really, it was the only way to get what I wanted. That's what it comes down to. Do you want the thing you're going after more than you want to avoid the obstacles in the way? If you do, you'll keep going.
One thing I started doing was to find the least friendly looking person and ask them. Great way to break stereotypes based on looks! Or (in a public place), ask the guy who looks like a gangster. Of course, in a foreign country, you also want to ask the person most likely to speak the language you speak.
This is how I go about life no matter what the obstacle.
From quitting smoking to making it rich (I've done one of these so far...)
"Just do it." It's a pretty simple, definitely hard though & certainly worth it.
I did gain considerable experience with the language, and I found a way to do or obtain anything I wanted (sometimes by asking for an English speaker to help me).
My mom still wonders how I did it -- find my way in a completely foreign country where the language and customs are so thorought different. I keep telling her, it's just a matter of having the gumption to do it. Knowing Japanese helps, but learning as I went (as I was forced to do) helped me more.
What helps me is knowing that I have people who care deeply for me,and who I care for just as much.
I could quit, but, given all my blessings and the support I have, I wouldn't be able to face myself if I quit.
I've had / survived some very difficult times (borderline starvation, seen my partner pass away due to cancer, been subject to significant violence and have been the source of similar violence..), so I don't think I'm being facetious.
What keeps me going is my friends and family. And ironically, given all my experience(s), an enduring faith in humanity, that, over time, the future will always be better than the present.
To paraphrase Churchill, "you can always count on humanity to do the right thing after it has tried everything else"
The quote is actually:
"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities."
But of course the same sentiment can be generalized for any group. Even though Churchill is credited there is no actual record or evidence of him ever saying this. And he likely never did.
I'm not trying to nitpick, but as big Churchill fan I only found this out fairly recently and so thought I would mention it :)
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternatives...
I wonder whether this is a fair statement, as the original quote can be interpreted to mean that the group in question has terrible efficiency and/or is unreliable until their hand is forced.
I am a fan of Winston Churchill the war-time Prime Minister that stood up to Hitler and helped save Britain and Europe from the Nazis. There is no shame in that. Does that mean I agree with everyone of his personal views? No of course not.
Where do you get off passing judgement, being the moral police, and projecting onto others like that?
Paraphrasing and attributing a quote to a specific individual are two entirely different things. Paraphrasing is approximating the quote, not who said it. It sounds like you might not understand what paraphrase means.
This is a discussion on Hacker News where discourse often unfolds in different and tangential directions.
I even stated my intention was not to nitpick but that I thought it was interesting as its such an oft-citied and well-known quote with its own uncertain history(provided in the link)
You did however. You called me insensitive and a fan of racist imperialism. And no, thats not acceptable or fair. It's just lame.
And the fact that you continue using your own twisted perception of something as justification for your uncalled for remarks is lamer still. Grow up.
If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough.
The search space for successful strategies is vast, you must experience failure in order to determine direction to success.
If I'm seeking inspiration, I look to a higher power - Bill Gates, Poe, Arxiv Papers, GitHub. Find inspiration in observing what is greater than yourself
My simplest answer is to pick the right goal. You know its the right goal when you can envisage countless possible setbacks but it would seem absurd that they could cause you to abandon your goal. Give up on reaching the Olympics because you run out of money, have a bout of flu, or a parent dies? It should feel like a non-sequitur. Your goal needs rise above the inevitable twists and turns of life - it should not just be a "fair weather" goal you would drop when clouds pile in.
Your interest in the goal should be deep. It should not be for the moment it can be said it is done but for the transformation that achieving that goal brings. You must not simply want to reach a finish line, you have to want the life that comes after crossing that finishing line. If life after reaching a goal is little different or you are indifferent to that life, it is a weak goal, it won't sustain you through the hard times.
Maybe not 'the', but 'a'?
What do you think "the hallmark" is?
I don't think anyone said anything about 100+ hours/week. I was hoping that commenter #2 might appear and give us some deep insights, but that appears to have been a bridge too far...
I don't have a 9~5 working for the man, but there is very little that happens during my waking hours that I wouldn't classify as related to work. I'm fortunate that this is not one task, so it doesn't weigh on me like fighting with a C compiler while sitting under florescent lights in a cube farm might. That's kind of work is fine - I like that too - but I couldn't do it for more than about 70-80 hours/week.
Pro-athletes are probably a bad example for anything other than being pro-athletes. I have got the impression from some of the interviews with swimmers and tennis players that they utterly loathe training with a passion especially when their way of life is was designed for them by their parents before they ever had any self-direction.
There's a free copy at http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html
Sample:
"Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a kind as the author pleases to make it. If short, of a short one; if long, of a long one. If it is his pleasure you should act a poor man, a cripple, a governor, or a private person, see that you act it naturally. For this is your business, to act well the character assigned you; to choose it is another's."
It has some interesting similarities to Buddhism but is, in my opinion, much more suitable for engineers. There is a strong emphasis put on logic and understanding the world around you through science. While ancient stoics did base some parts of the philosophy on religion, it is no where near an essential part of the philosophy, whereas buddhism is slightly more difficult (though far from impossible) to decouple from mysticism.
Epictetus is a great source, as are the writings of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca (the younger).
A few that work for me:
"Marcus Aurelius: Be a boxer, not a gladiator, in the way you act on your principles. The gladiator takes up his sword only to put it down again, but the boxer is never without his fist and has only to clench it."
"Remember how long you have procrastinated, and how consistently you have failed to put to good use your suspended sentence from the gods. It is about time you realized the nature of the universe. Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it."
"Every hour be firmly resolved, as becomes a Roman and a man, to accomplish the work at hand with fitting and unaffected dignity, goodwill, freedom, and justice. Banish from your thoughts all other considerations. This is possible if you perform each act as if it were your last, rejecting every frivolous distraction, every denial of the rule of reason, every pretentious gesture, vain show, and whining complaint against the decrees of fate."
"Stop jumping off the track. You don’t have time to reread your diaries, or the lives of the ancient Greeks and Romans, or the passages from their writings that you’ve collected for your old age. Throw off vain hope and sprint to the finish. If you care about yourself at all, come to your own aid while there’s still time."
"Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, ‘How unlucky that this should happen to me!’ Not at all! Say instead, “How lucky that I am not broken by what has happened and am not afraid of what is about to happen. The same blow might have struck anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation or complaint. "
"How at this moment am I using my mind? This is a question worth asking all the time. So is this: ‘How do my words and deeds measure up to the ruling reason within me? And who owns this mind of mine anyway? An infant? A boy? A woman? A tyrant? A dumb animal? A wild beast?’"
"How shameful and absurd it is for the spirit to surrender when the body is able to fight on!"
"Everything – horse, vine, anything – exists for a purpose. Is it any wonder? Even Helios the sun-god will say, “I have a job to do,” and the rest of the gods will say the same. So what will you say? “I’m here to have a good time?” The very thought is beneath contempt."
"Attend to the matter at hand, whether it be an object, an action, a moral principle, or the meaning of what is being said. You get what you deserve because you would rather become good tomorrow than do good today."
"In the make-up of a rational being, I can see no virtue incompatible with justice, but I do find a virtue at odds with pleasure: self-control."
And a bit of a longer one:
“In the morning, when you can’t get out of bed, tell yourself: “I’m getting up to do the work only a man can do. How can I possibly hesitate or complain when I’m about to accomplish the task for which I was born? Was I made for lying warm in bed under a pile of blankets? ‘But I enjoy it here’. Was it for enjoyment you were born? Are you designed to act or to be acted upon? Look at the plants, sparrows, ants, spiders and bees, all busy at their work, the work of welding the world. Why should you hesitate to do your part, the part of a man, by obeying the law of your own nature? ‘Yes, but nature allows for rest, too.’ True, but rest – like eating and drinking – has natural limits. Do you disregard those limits as well? I suppose you do, although when it comes to working you are quick to look for limits and do as little as possible. You must dislike yourself. Otherwise, you’d like your nature and the limits it imposes. At the same time, you’d recognize that enjoyment is meant to be found in work too and that those who enjoy their work become totally absorbed in it, often forgetting to eat and drink and seek other forms of enjoyment. Do you think less of your life’s work than the sculptor does his sculpting, the dancer his dancing, the miser h is money, or the star his stardom? They gladly forgo food and sleep to pursue their ends. To you, does the work of building a better society seem less important, less deserving of your devotion?”
How does a Stoic change his/her lot in life, given that Stoicism assigns choice of that lot to an externality? Or does that question lack meaning within Stoicism?
― Friedrich Nietzsche
If the outcome you're working towards is sufficiently worthy, and you can feel yourself making even just a little bit of progress toward that outcome every day and every week, then you can get by just fine.
These days I know it pretty well and basically manage it out of habit and experience.
This doesn't prevent events from pushing me into a depressive episode, but it does mean I know what steps I need to take to get through and get out. Because in the depths of suicidal depression, I know in my bones that it's pointless, meaningless etc. But I know in my head that this is just a feeling, no matter how real it feels, and that it won't last forever.
I did a talk about living with depression and ADHD last year, which might be of interest[0].
[0] http://original.livestream.com/pivotallabs/video?clipId=pla_...
It's a marathon though, and you have to keep it up. The body doesn't exactly make it's feelings clear either! Anyway not trying to simplify your problem, best of luck.
For me, these prevent or ameliorate some, but not all, of my depressive episodes. I must periodically rely on medication to protect myself from myself.
I draw this distinction because people with depression are commonly given advice by well-meaning associates that exercise, diet and sleep will fix their depression.
For severe depression it probably won't, and in many cases, severely depressed people are not able to pick up even minor changes without what feels like a great deal of effort.
In general, if you think you have depression, you should seek professional attention. For most people it is highly treatable.
Then I breath.
I remember that keeping faith is about accepting failures : there is no win if there is no risks.
Fear and anxiety kills the spirit. I know they are direct consequences of failures, and I accept them. It does not mean I let fear rule my life.
Then, I remember our wold is about luck. So, I plan my next try at doing something, and I look back at my failures to see what valuables lessons I learned.
Basically they boil down to: work hard, keep it simple, and don't get tricked again in investing your time/money/energy/emotions in stuff that don't make you feel good. Love your self and who you are not a cool picture built for being accepted by others. Life is no popularity contest.
Failures taught me I can rise again. Success taught me it is all about luck. Failures and success taught me that the only way to potentially win is to try again.
And why do I try that much? Because, well, it is in my Nature, and the more the competition is unfair like nowadays, the more it makes me want to defy the odds because I am bored.
I don't know what your motivations are, I just know mine.
But failures should have taught you a great load of things you can use to understand your true self and empower it.
Failures are so valuable I regret not having failed when I was younger. There is a curse in being lucky, I am glad my curse was lifted.
Following stoicism helps. I read the book listed below that explains it well. My main takeaway from that book was that it is much easier to be happy if one stops caring about two things - External validation and Instant Gratification.
"One of the great fears many of us face is that despite all our effort and striving, we will discover at the end that we have wasted our life." - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5617966-a-guide-to-the-g...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26043368-the-gita-for-ch... answers questions like 'How can one win a war when it involves killing ones own family?' with teachings like 'Do your duty with single minded focus and great sincerity, without worrying about the results of the work'
As a programmer / engineer / whatever label you want to give, it is a little easier for us to adjust to changing labor conditions because our careers, as long as not overly specialized, require constant learning.
But I'd prefer not to live a life competing with people all over the globe, or being blindsided by some tech that can execute a majority of my responsibilities as an employee.
* purpose - if I am up to something meaningful, that carries me through dips
* team - I don't like letting people down, so having a team I care about matters
* habits - things like my Sunday run to the ocean keep my life going automatically, meaning setbacks feel less like catastrophes
* friends - everybody has failures; friends support me through mine and tell me about theirs, which helps with perspective
* seeing feelings as transient - a meditation practice has helped me recognize that feelings come and go, and to breathe through them
* "Be a light" I can bring joy to other people in the world, and that there is still so much more to do.
* "Bask in the light of loved ones" The love of friends and family, even when I feel like I've let them down.
* "Don't be so hard on yourself" A self-love that allows me to forgive myself for my many fuck-ups. Not always without regret and never without reflection and learning, but eventually I do get there.
* "Don't stop dreaming" A deep-seated desire to help all fellow humans reach their fullest potential; to express themselves with their fullest freedom. This one is the most abstract, the "farthest" of my North Stars; it's so faint I'm sometimes not sure it actually exist. Perhaps this is the closest I come to that thing called "faith".
When you treat each experience in life as a learning experience, it becomes much easier to persevere.
Another very useful skill, it not running away from pain or failure. This is not to say 'learn from your failures', but 'let the pain and anguish sink in'. Remember this pain, realize it is there and what caused it. Next time you encounter fear or hardships, the intuitive memory of the past pain - the one you didn't run away from or tried to suppress - will help you. I know it helped (and helps) me many, many times.
Here's a link: "Episode 56: Getting Unstuck" http://one.npr.org/?sharedMediaId=507930318:507930414
While the title is a bit on the nose, Manson's premise is basically that we need to identify what is important in our life, and then eliminate our worrying about all the trivial things we run into every day.
For me, this was my family and religion (yes, religion). I realized that as long as my wife and kids were there, and I had someplace to dump my personal issues (religion), my job really didn't matter much, since my skills are transferable elsewhere. I didn't quit my job, but I certainly don't rank it in the top-ten important things to worry about, like I used to.
Seeing as my job is about 90% of the adversity I face in life, just making that mental change resulted in a tremendous amount of joy and satisfaction.
I love this speech by Coach Wooden and highly recommend watching: https://www.ted.com/talks/john_wooden_on_the_difference_betw...
PS. Also, having kids is a huge motivator. You realize that you are a living role model to them and what you do and how you behave will influence them for their entire life. And as you want to show your kids the best of humanity and positive qualities, you simple have no choice but to show them in yourself !
Maybe not the healthiest way to do it, but I've never been one of those positive can do types -- or at least cultivating that kind of mindset never seems to carry the day for me. Operating out of anger and trying to make the world fair seems to be what gets the best results for me.
However, it may not work for others, wanting to see fair outcomes is a very deep seated compulsion for me, so I can latch onto that to drive motivation.
Unfortunately, I am rarely able to convince others to follow along.
My company is extremely successful and our spectacular failures (often discussed on HN) pales in comparison to our success. I worked for several groups that lost multi-billion dollar markets because they were unwilling to make simple and obvious changes. For example, don't focus on our success and claim victory; look at our failures and make corrective actions. Seems pretty simple but maybe due to the innovator's dilemma, no one seems to care.
Maybe it's just me but would you have any tips to overcome or at least come to terms with this mentality?
This hasn't always proved possible for me. You mention relationships: I haven't ever found a way to make failing in those fun.
1. A wise mentor once told me never to get all my satisfaction from one source. If I give everything to my job when it's going well, my job can take everything away when it turns bad. Keeping several balls in the air means that at any given time at least one of them is likely to be spinning well. For me at the moment it's developing software, making music and keeping fit. 2. Habits have saved me more than once in times of crisis. There are a lot of decisions I never need to make because they're already habitual. I don't find this makes life boring; rather, it frees me to focus on the important. 3. When things are tough, I buy some deferred gratification. This could be seats at a concert in three months time, a ticket in next week's lottery or arranging to meet friends for a coffee on the weekend. 4. When things get grim, I cut alcohol completely from my diet. A drink or two may seem a temporary escape from the pressures of the situation but, for me at least, alcohol is a poor ally in adversity. 5. Under extreme pressure I've observed that I usually start by looking for a way out of the situation, become depressed when I can't find one, and eventually discover the inner determination to master the problem. I remind myself of this pattern when I see trouble coming.
I know that I'm not, statistically speaking, entirely possible. I'm "supposed" to be dead, in prison, on drugs, homeless, and a missing parent, on welfare, and pretty much every other not-great thing I could be.
When someone sits in front of me and judges me unfairly, I can be upset with them and feel like I need to work harder to fit in with them, or I can simply be happy that they will never understand the person they are talking to, and for that, I should be grateful for their naivety and for the fact that I accomplished enough to even talk to them in the first place. I can choose to go home and be angry, or I can choose to go home and continue working and seek out people that matter. It's all about mindset: talking to this person, in isolation, was a failure, but the fact that I got to sit in that chair is the culmination of all of my prior hard wok and victories.
If there is one thing I've learned over and over again, adversity is only as permanent as you want it to be. This doesn't mean your dream job is just around the corner; it means that no matter how low you go, you can always do one thing better to improve every single day, and that adds up. Consider your options, learn to walk tall and walk away from bad moments, and understand that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Seriously. Make sure you have enough enjoyment in today. That is your starting point.
(E.g. Fresh scents on a walk. Startling at the sound of a goose's wingsweep, overhead. A good cup of coffee. A good, perhaps even spontaneous -- or, especially, spontaneous -- conversation. Enough sleep and exercise.
Not big, "I should" goals. Here and now.)
I'm known as a relatively unflappable person who excels under pressure, but that's not entirely true. The reality is that after spending a few years in my teens couch surfing and sleeping under park benches, supporting myself with off-book babysitting and other more dubious gigs, I just have a very different definition of "adversity".
Got food and shelter? It's not a disaster, just an interesting challenge.
I wonder how differently I might approach things had I never started a family.
And knowing that we have it better than they ever did - despite our challenges - is humbling.
It cuts out any notion that you 'deserve' anything and reminds you that setbacks don't matter. Just keep going.
- Understanding your limitations
- Thinking "How can you not make the same mistake again"
- Understanding that for every public success there are tens or hundreds of failures that have not come to light
Setbacks are normal. The only way to avoid sequences of them is not to try new, ambitious things
Don't compare yourself to other people, but recognize that you're probably incredibly lucky to have any opportunity to fail at in the first place. Think about your accomplishments and setbacks as a set of experiences that will only ever help you in the future -- not as liabilities on paper.
Finally, don't complain. It's difficult at first, but it'll help keep you away from self-pity.
When starting a project, one of the inevitable outcome is failure so it's worth thinking about what would happen in that case. I.e. plan for the good but also the bad.
Also, it's important to look at the longer goal. You can either succeed or fail, but make sure it gets you closer to that goal.
My hope is built on nothing less,
than Jesus blood and righteousness!
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
but wholly lean on Jesus name!
On Christ the solid rock I stand,
all other ground is sinking sand.
All other ground is sinking sand!But is a coin of two sides, that's why you can see people that are so attached to what they do that they find impossible to give up things, even when it doesn't make sense to continue.
To me I'm afraid of the opposite that you are asking to persevere when I shouldn't. What I do to deal with this concern is to try to be aware of how I'm attached to what I'm doing, re-evaluate time to time, and think if I'm with the right people in the journey, if I'm enjoining it and if I believe on what I'm doing. All these kind of questions.
Another thing I vaguely remember reading here on HN: you probably make 10-12 major decisions in your adult life. Nobody get's a 100% right. So everyone has a quota of two or three major screw-ups in life. Treat it that way, push it to the past and move on.
Additionally failure is a big part of the learning process, and each failure brings you closer to success because you now have a life experience that you can use to shape your future choices.
In addition to inspiration, managing one's emotions certainly can help.
One thing I always tell myself is that if the current struggle doesn't work out, there are always family members whose basement I could live in. So a failure in one struggle is not an existential threat. That makes it less stressful to keep going.
I also try to focus on doing one thing at a time and the physical actions required. Be in the moment and you are out of your head. Progress is taking one step at a time.
Seligman called these differences our explanatory style. Some people were naturally inclined to believe that bad things will keep happening to us and that they are our fault. Some were naturally inclined toward the opposite—bad things are happening now, but they’ll stop and they’re not our fault. The former were those who were prone to depression; the latter were those who tended to bounce back. Seligman believed that humans, like dogs, could be taught to become more resilient, a phenomenon he called learned optimism. … In 1984, he published a review of the evidence. First, he and his colleagues had found that the way people explained bad events to themselves really did link closely to depression risk. It was true in students, in people from low socioeconomic backgrounds, in children, and, predictably, in depressed patients. And, importantly, training people to change their explanatory habits—to more narrow, external, and transient—seemed to help them overcome existing depression and, in some cases, prevent its onset even when other risk factors were high.
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/theory-psyc...
Life is hard enough without intentionally making it harder.
2. "This too shall pass", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_too_shall_pass Nothing is permanent, the good days and the bad days
Now, that might be true for more limited contexts, but when applied to big things like "your life", what a damaging mentality to adopt.
In my twenties in particular, I had several periods of adversity, and there was nothing poetic about it. Fatalism, cynicism, inspiration, motivation, none of that had any meaning really. The only thing that mattered was just sheer dumb doggedness. Sometimes you persist even when there's absolutely no reason to. Do it anyway, because fuck you. That's what it felt like honestly. Doesn't make sense to continue, but fuck you.
And then it gets better, and then you have a good talk with your past self ("wow, look - it worked out even when it seemed impossible that it ever would - remember that") so your future self has something to fall back on in future times of adversity. Resilience.
2. Thinking of how your "ideal self" or your "real life hero" would've handled the situation. Would he duck for cover ? Would he have thrown and given up ? Would he have backed out to survive the day (eventually to fight another day) ? This kinda helps in bringing in a fresh perspective to the situation. It no longer looks like a pain, more like a challenge/problem that needs to be faced/solved !
I know that it is sound like new-age-hippie stuff, but this idea has worked for me. I hope it helps.
Well now I know another way not to do it
The key to things is discipline, spend a certain amount of time focusing each day, commit to it in small batches at first and continue each day. If you go off the rails, give yourself permission to resume the next day without beating yourself up over it.
Beyond that there really isn't anything more to it. Basically be a stubborn son of a bitch to yourself and commit to doing it. The only way to fail is not to try.
The general gist of both Stoicism and Buddhism are generally the same in principle. The only things that can control us are what we allow to control us.
That doesn't really mean that we have free will or the ability to control our world. More we have the ability to change how we interpret the world we live in.
And if you approach adversity as a bad thing, you're already losing from a thought perspective. You have to look at adversity as a friend, gently nudging you along to an easier path. Or a friend that needs to be bulldozed over or through to get to the goal. Or perhaps avoided entirely.
Looking at adversity that way what you realize is the only control you have is how you respond to it.
I recommend reading Epictetus, the eponymous Marcus Aurelius, any other early stoic philosopher. Note, take some of what they say with a mountain of salt. Their views on things like the overall universe are... a product of their time.
For more things I'd say also read The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. And read up on Buddhism possibly with more modern views in the theravada traditions. Feel free to ignore any of the things that make no sense, even the buddha himself said to abandon any practices that turned out wrong.
I approach all of this philosophy in the style of Bruce Lee, take what works from wherever you find it. Leave what doesn't aside.
Good luck in your journey!
Once I moved over (after giving up my previous job, school districts, etc), it was clear the entire operation was a sham -- the $7Billion endowment was non-existent, most workers had side-jobs (during the day!) and there was no ML research at all to speak of.
I persevere knowing that the golden land called the United States of America still awaits me. Just need to wait out the schoolyear.
I would rather do and fail than do, give up & be assured of failure. At least with the former, I can be proud of my effort, and not have any shame over quitting. You're going to fail at something - might as well face it and fail with dignity when it happens, or succeed through the effort. The importance is building for the long haul, and not forgetting that.
"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." -- Calvin Coolidge
Lessons from the Kobayashi Maru scenario. [0] It's a fictional scenario from a TV show and used in leadership training circles to test the reaction of candidates to ^no win^ situations.
And yes I realise that quote isn't stoic per se - that's a simplified illustration of my point. Going into more detail - Meditations by M Aurelius.
- Support: Find quality friends that are positive, creative, and understanding. (Eliminate the doubters super quick, cultivate a great network)
- Mindfulness: Remind yourself of the little triumphs and how far you've come. Create a list in a doc as you grow, you'll be surprised. Perform a retrospective once every couple of months.
- Gratefulness: Remind yourself that those accomplishments probably weren't possible without your network, give thanks to them privately and publicly. I do this in my retrospective.
- Silliness: Life and time are finite. You should be willing to sacrifice what you want to accomplish what you want, because... well nothing matters in the end. We're all little pieces of meat walking around on a rock flying through space. The sheer probability of existence is simultaneously a miracle and a joke.
- Love: You reap what you sow. Be up front with what you want, who you are, and don't compromise. From there pay into it with as much love and compassion as you possibly can.
- The Big Questions: What are we here for? What does it all mean? Just think of life as a game where you work hard because maybe there is something in the end that will make the journey all worth it. (Some people can float through life, I'm not one of them.)
- Outlets: Find reasonable outlets, whether it's art (my personal favorite is oil painting and making music), or working out, or dancing. Try something new when you can.
- Partners: Absolutely 100% don't stop until you've found a co-founder that you trust, respect, and offers a set of complimentary skills. Literally exhaust every channel (no matter how stupid) you can until you find this person. Managing your own psychology is hard, but having someone help give you a kick in the pants with an alternative point of view is sometimes a lifesaver.
- Self: There are going to be a lot of 'voices' that have an opinion about your life. They can be online or off. Remember that you're the only person that has to live with you, and in the end you're what matters most. To have a happy life, make yourself happy, but make sure that happiness magnifies the positive energy inside others as well. Stay true to your vision, and let that guide you.
- Inspiration: I have some personal things that I find comfort in. I like looking at inspirational posts on instagram, nice cars, inspirational videos on youtube. These serve to help pep me up sometimes. I like to imagine having the nice things that might be a result of my hard work, but the older I get the less material items matter and the more relationships and compounding the good in the world matters.
Also if anyone is in San Francisco and wants to grab a coffee, take a walk, and chat about life, the universe, and everything -- hit me up. :)
[Forgive any spelling/grammar errors. I'm tired and about to sleep.]
Why you want what you want and why you won´t settle for anything else.
Once you have that cristal clear you just got to know that failure is not final nor definite, but rather an opportunity to try again.
1) Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHWUCX6osgM
2) Reminding myself of my blessings in life. Most of us have many things to be thankful for, even in our worst moments
Whatever you do, do not seek sympathy from others. It can be very comforting to vent your frustration to people and get their sympathy, but it does absolutely nothing for situation and only enforces your despair.
And don't tell me that you don't have them. Everybody has them.
Fulfilling tasks gives you a socially-understood purpose and a sense of security within your social environment. Failing at them leaves you exposed to other's judgment or your own.
Inspirations and motivations can allow us to dust ourselves off. At least for a while. We retell our minds that it's not over yet, we've not yet failed and can keep moving towards our goals. At least I learned. I'm just not winning ...yet. Growth Mindset.
They are guard rails so that we can correct our behaviour and not lay around feeling humiliated.
However, while internally we can save face, can we do so externally? One might tell themselves they are persevering but to others they might be flailing. You need good marketing. And if it keeps happening perhaps a behavioural compass tuned better to your abilities.
Whatever you might achieve, realise that this is only your self trying to maintain favourable relations with the outside world. The best protection against that being self-respect, respect of others and consciousness of this relation.
It just dawned on me that I probably have theory for this, because I am bad at it in practice.
---
I didn't respond to the question of how to keep going at whatever you're doing, because the practical considerations outside of what I said are basic. To be seen as 'determined' and full of 'grit' simply do one hard day's work and then repeat it continually unabating. And, get a good night's sleep. And, try to be more skilled than your competition. Etc.
Actually there are a few ways to hack motivation. The easiest is to simplify or localise a task, but the deeper and more fundamental way is by internalising 'I do not need a concoction of extrinsic motivations to do things, I will just start now and not stop'. I am not sure how to teach other's how to jump-start that belief, but I suspect you'll be able to work it out.
The honest truth is that it's a bit like 'going through the pain barrier' in that there is no barrier that you'll pass through and no longer feel pain. You'll merely be exposed to the pain of 'motivatedness' enough that you'll learn to live with it. Does that sound bad? Well ...it is. Continual pain is a sure-sign that you're trying to do something that you're not meant to do. I think you'll find that you'd be much happier if you avoided adversity, however the important thing to remember is that you have a choice here.
First, I recommend anyone asking this take a moment to do a double-check on your mental health. At least for depression and insanity. Looking in the mirror like this is not as bad as a prostate exam but it does take longer...
1) Depression. If you think you might be suffering from depression or any mental disorder or don't know enough to decide, please go seek professional help. If you are unsure what this means or think the odds low, consider going to see a professional and getting a diagnosis anyway at least it rules things out.
2) Insanity. I mean this in sense attributed to Einstein of "doing something over and over again and expecting the same result".
There is no "keep going" or getting back on "the track" after a failure. If you have failed then it's over - it requires "starting anew". The track you will be on is new too even if it points at the same goal as the old one.
Now, if you're talking about pushing through setbacks and obstacles but not a real failure, there is a difference. In HN-YC-gobbledygook; are you in a "trough of sorrow" or back on your mom's couch after bankrupting your company and you're browsing Craigslist job ads/casual encounters posts? Big difference between setbacks and failures.
If it's failure. I don't celebrate it. But I would be stoked about the gap of time between a failure and starting anew. This gap of time gives one a chance to pause and figure out what happened. Plus it's time to fix what you can about yourself and how you operate or realize it's better to move to something else you are better at. Call it the "trough of who the fuck cares but I ain't making that mistake again"...
This step involves thinking about: were things your fault? Were they someone else's fault? Was the failure just bad luck? Really? There should be no repeated failures of the same kind. That is insanity. Don't keep doing stuff if you haven't analyzed and fixed things that caused it. This involves thinking about if failures could have been anticipated and avoided...
If failures are just genuinely just bad luck, not a deficiency of ability on your part nor a failure that could have been avoided beforehand, there is nothing to do. Good luck happens and bad luck happens. But you know this. Be mentally prepared beforehand for whichever way the dice fall. I know of no gambler who walks into a casino with $100, knowing his odds and walks out depressed when he loses the $100. I know many people who walk into a casino not knowing their odds, having looked up the rules of craps 5 minutes beforehand on their phone and fully expecting to win - then being shocked and upset when they lose $500.
No one else's inspirations can inspire you. Figure out a goal you want and what achieving it involves.
If you can't figure a goal that inspires you, then that is your goal. Finding a goal is your goal. Frankly that is fucking super exciting too; getting to treasure hunt and discover something that is new and inspiring, something you will really want and want to work towards sounds very exciting. Best of luck.
Obviously you're not exactly an engineer, so you can't make any inventions from the next hundred years in your garage - you just know generally how they work.
A sane course of action under these constraints would be to get identity papers somehow (after all, you're stateless), get a patent on a future invention that you understand well-enough to describe clearly, then get financing for it and build it.
You're an educated and very high-IQ person with degrees, so after minor set-backs around getting jobs and papers, you get set up, very clearly and eloquently describe your invention (in a patent filing), wait for it to be granted, and now you are free to get money from anyone. You send the patent papers to 150 vc's without a response, which you consider odd. You send them to a further 500 people in a position to help but still get no response.
You go to your alma mater, of course you don't recognize any faculty, it's from before your time, and they ask you if you have a prototype - you say no, you're not an engineer. They ask you how you know it would work. You hem and haw and say,it's all written down very clearly. They suggest you build a prototype. This is actually beyond your skills - you're a theoretical physicist not an engineer.
This is very frustrating for you.
This is when you post "what inspires you to persevere through adversity."
But the answer is that you should realize that the 2017 idea-stage funding climate is not sufficient to fund you. It doesn't matter if your idea patent can be the basis for a $20 billion company, which is enough to finance your Alpha Centauri demonstration.
You're stuck. You know very well what will happen if you don't intervene (though actually, you're not certain - the physics here isn't clear, whether the same timeline is likely to repeat.)
At any rate you GIVE UP trying to fund your patent. Instead you decide that you will finance it yourself by doing something completely different. You do remember that around 2025 or 2026 there is a huge bubble followed by an unfathomable crash, and you had actually just read - before your travel - the biography of a founder in that era who quickly built dynastic wealth. Since you are very smart and just need funding for your prototype, and anyway you have sixty years to get rich, there's no hurry, you decide to find him and be one of the first ten founders. You tell him some simple inventions from the future in just a few words, and to your great surprise he is completely on board and instantly agrees that they are all viable, he straight-up gives you 50% equity in his company, you start pulling 120 hour weeks and seven and a half years later you have exited with $20 billion and start doing your space stuff. (You muse that this was all thanks to working on whatever HE wanted, even though it had nothing to do with anything you knew about - you started with ZERO knowledge of 2017 web tech. All that knowledge of one hundred years of technical development paled in comparison to a name you recalled offhand - thereby proving the old adage, it's not WHAT you know, it's WHO you know.)
Anyway, a few years later your space research shocks the world - oh, also you read something about telomeres - you can't BELIEVE you forgot about that, you've always hated and hardly paid any attention to biology but you remembered you actually know enough to slow aging by 90% especially in the skin, and back in your time all babies were given telomere extension shots, which has been going on since shortly before your birth in 2090. Since you're a billionaire with a lot of time on your hands you read up on it, order a small animal and then human experiment, and long story short you give about 8 billion people longer, happier lives by inventing something in 2030 that was slated for 2085, even though you didn't even care.
Oh, and as for your original first patented invention, on a lark you wonder if anyone would finance it now that you have $20 billion, you have the spiffy prototype built, hold a big VC meeting on a private island where anyone who's anyone shows up with three partners - and still nobody has any interest whatsoever. As great at it is, whatever it is, it turns out it's not fundable. The world's just not ready for it.
Moral of the story: sometimes you should just give up, and the sooner you give up, the sooner you can start making some kind of progress.
If you're a theoretical physicist in 2117 you have a pretty good idea of what was figured out in 2020 and you can front that and collect your Nobel prize in physics and most importantly its funding.
Meanwhile most of the modern world is built out of creative concepts. Huh we can create seemingly arbitrary organic chemicals what happens when ones with free double bonds get triggered into single bonding with neighbors, nobody never thought of anything that crazy and its a bazillion dollar industry now. Uranium, well, it turns glass artistically yellow otherwise pretty boring. Silicon, well, it makes a nice metallurgical addition to steel and aluminum and is "easily" purified to ridiculous levels but otherwise not terribly noteworthy. And then there's things that don't amount to anything, multiverse, strings, skip all that stuff to gain progress. Electric cars were not a "thing" for their first century, but their second is looking pretty interesting.
You will probably have other people you admire; look for times they made mistakes. What's important is realizing everybody makes mistakes all the time. In the end, what makes a great person is their ability to pick themselves up and keep going. Never stagnate.