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Comment by hathawsh | Hacker News Reader

As a child I was obsessively aware of other people's opinions of me, so I was afraid to make mistakes. Today, I am much better at putting myself in the learning mindset because I have learned a basic truth: learning is essentially the same as temporarily making a fool of myself, but in a safe place. That's how we all learned to walk, talk, and read, after all. If we can learn such complex skills as those then we can surely pick up a lot more skills, with effort.

I wish I had understood that as a child. I tried to learn to dance and act, but I mostly failed because I didn't really put myself out there. I did learn to sing thanks to choirs. I got into computers partly because all my mistakes were completely private.

There's no reason I can't continue to learn new skills. I just need to shed my ego and try things without reservation.

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> As a child I was obsessively aware of other people's opinions of me

1. Young people care what others think of them

2. Middle aged people don't care what others think of them

3. Old people realize that nobody thinks about them

I'm old, and I'm still at "don't care". Except when it matters, of course. But I have noticed that old age helps with blending in, and attracting less scrutiny. Also, one gets some deference. So hey.

I was told when I get older all my fears would shrink. But now I'm insecure, and I care what people think.

- Twenty One Pilots

Both of those guys are still in their 20s. Hardly at middle age or old age yet :)

And, the lyric is timeless.

Sure, but 28 is twice 14 :)

In other words, you can only learn to do by doing. However, I don't agree with the "safe place" bit. Sure, some things require a safe setting to practice in because of the danger the real thing entails, but that's not most things. You need to meet reality as it is and as you are--that's when the gears really click into place and you begin to grow. It's why pretense will always stifle learning because you're too busy shutting yourself off from a real encounter. It's a retreat from reality and into the blinding comfort of the ego. Indeed, humility, so often confused with modesty, is actually the honest appraisal of the self, strengths and weaknesses, and the willingness to examine them as fully as necessary. Those who lack humility ultimately lack the courage to go out and to gladly be subjected to all the feedback, good and bad, constructive or not. I have found that it profits a person immensely to stop trying to appear smart and to be fully honest and open to being affected, changed and improved. It's the only way to learn and to learn about yourself. Only then can the hunger of ignorance be fed with knowledge and understanding and the shackles of error and confusion be broken.

There is no practice life. You learn by living.

This is what I love about circus training. When you fail, you fall down. Or worse: you collapse on your partner.

If you can learn to handstand on someone else's hands without, you can do just about anything.

The point being: you have to just go for it. You WILL fail at some point, in any and every endeavor.

But the reward is that you might just be doing a handstand on another person :)

I find this mindset both admirable and deeply troubling, of people who feel that being able to do a handstand on another person is a worthwhile trade-off for the considerable risk of injury to yourself and the other person.

I'm almost 64. I will get my CSP (Certified Scrum Professional) certification soon. I am learning Python and taught myself Java at 52-54.

I can run circles around some of my younger associates in terms of critical thinking, design thinking, and integrative thinking. My job requires this and I do it whenever needed.

The following is attributed to Bob Hope:

When I was 20, I worried what other people were thinking about me.

When I was 40, I didn't care what other people were thinking about me.

When I turned 60, I realized nobody had ever been thinking about me.

Yep. It is all in our heads.

There was a saying in the military: pain is weakness leaving the body.

I always thought the corollary was: feeling stupid is ignorance leaving the mind.

Well said!

I think a lot of people can relate to this. I was always afraid of asking questions when surrounded by people more knowledgable than myself. I didn't want to appear stupid, or ignorant by not knowing something I assumed I should have already learned. I later realized that it makes so much more sense to bite the bullet and ask the question the first time. The longer you go pretending to know something, the more embarrassing it becomes when you have to eventually ask what it is later. The people who do this are the ones who appear knowledgable in later situations.

It's been said, "You learn nothing from succeeding".

To grow, we must learn how to fail well. I agree; the goal is to succeed or fail egolessly: efficiently and productively, without regret, even do it eagerly as one explores a new path... then failure becomes merely a lesson in what not to try, before you try again.

It's true that we ought to be comfortable experimenting without fear of embarrassment, as well as to learn to tolerate more serious failure on occasion, and certainly unexpected failures can serve to draw attention to symptoms of deeper issues worthy of rectifying before they cause you even greater trouble down the road.

However, I will point to Richard Hamming's advice to learn from our successes rather than our failures.

"There are so many ways of being wrong and so few ways of being right that it is much more economical to study successes."

And:

"Study successes. If you study successes, when your time comes, you'll know how to succeed. If you study failures, then you'll know how to fail. So study success very closely: not only yours, but other people's. Why did Galileo do what he did? How did Newton do it? Try as best you can to study other people: how they succeed, and what the elements of their success are, which elements of that can you adapt to your personality. You can't be everybody, but you have to find your own method. Studying success is a very good way of informing your own style."

(The latter quote is from 25:30 of https://youtu.be/a1zDuOPkMSw)

As a young person trying to build things which change the world, I appreciate the wisdom found in the link. Thanks!

I see it was a matter of how you view your self-worth in the face of a mistake. Society in general likes to put one down for making a mistake regardless of how small or insignificant.

And one's inner dialogue tends to be the nastiest critic and chips away at motivation when learning something new.

It doesn't help that many humans tend to put down others more easily if they perceive them as weak regardless of similar or different identity. Being of the same age, gender, ethnicity, etc. doesn't matter. And people strive really hard to reframe their perspective to view others as weak too.

If I've a child, the one thing I'll teach her/him is not to give a damn about what others think.

I've gone through this as a child and it was paralysing. You always play it safe and that results in you not giving 100%.

but you need love, don't you? That's when you need others to think positively about you, isn't it?

Love is more about giving than taking.

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