Ask HN: Advice to your younger self
If you could send a single sentence of advice to your younger self, what would it be?
Let's assume it could not be a lottery number or investing advice.
For me it I would tell myself to find a successful mentor
Let's assume it could not be a lottery number or investing advice.
For me it I would tell myself to find a successful mentor
Trust your inquisitive nature and question things., people and choices, especially if they feel off.
Most people fake it, most of the time.
Remember what your inner compass feels like. Use that feeling.
Remember that you exist.
Anyone who tries to sell you your own divinity is a scammer.
Anyone who tries to define you sees themselves your master.
Anyone who tries to punish or reward you sees themselves your master and wants you to accept that role.
Your parents (and guardians) are often piloted by the blind forces of trauma patterns. What they do at these times is not parenting but seizures of madness, of which you are the audience and often the victim. This is not your fault, not your doing, and is not right. You are good to the core, but happen to be on the receiving end of these seizures.
This is true for every occurrence of unkindness, humiliation, or abusive interaction by a person who has power over you.
Sometimes it’s helpful to see beliefs, stereotypes, even language and habitual ways of thinking as forces that have colonized humanity. There’s space and life beyond these. Follow your curiosity about that dimension. It exists and is vast — infinitely more expansive than the mind’s ability to think.
Humanity/society is multilayered. The shittiest layers get most of the publicity. There are many, many awesome people living in integrity, creating with open hearts and rich imagination. You can be one of them; the easiest way is to join their communities and friendships.
Friendships are sacred, and deserve your utmost integrity, attention and honesty.
You’re good and you are able to recognize the people who have not broken/fallen to the dark side. Trust that.
> There are many, many awesome people living in integrity, creating with open hearts and rich imagination. You can be one of them; the easiest way is to join their communities and friendships.
This is what I struggle with the most. (As do many others in my generation, I think.) How does one discover such communities?
One in n will be open to a conversation. Feed the relationships that give you the space to be yourself and seem to want from you the contributions you love giving. Being yourself means being vulnerably honest with the aspects of yourself which you don’t yet love. I think that’s most obvious with artists.
And please give it time. Took a decade to have some of my acquaintances get distilled in into friendships.
You tend to forget this simple fact and just live your life which is always a problem.
The last two points are also valuable and you tend to forget it even if you are aware of it. This should be a poster, so thank you
Focusing on the sense of I-amness, of exist-ing, is an old practice. I did not invent it. I am here to remind you that it works.
I have come to a handful of important conclusions in my life that resulted from nothing more than hearing myself say out loud the things I believed in silence. Some might argue this is the role of family and friends but I think you're very lucky if you can rely on those people to be a mostly neutral sounding board for your more embarrassing or guarded beliefs.
Besides, I would be highly critical of anyone who claims to know a variety of languages since it probably means they are only familiar with a strict subset of their standard libraries and quirks. Or that knowledge is incredibly outdated.
Learning the syntax is one thing, the more time-consuming for development part is always knowing the quirks and patterns used today.
Well with that argument, learning brainf*ck in depth should give you all the programming experience you need to solve problems efficiently :P
Learning even the basics of a functional programming language for example (Haskell in my case) lead me to understand why things are the way they are in a few other languages. Sure you can write some solution in a few nested for loops, but why not use a list comprehension if it's more clear and less error prone for the situation? Specializing in one or two languages isn't a bad thing, but I would argue that learning even just the basics of other languages is beneficial. Understanding what tools are out there and what they're best suited to is a good thing if you ask me.
Being on call 24/7 is not conducive to being available for parenting responsibilities of young children.
It's more of a paradigm shift in the way you think about time -- you're suddenly not just responsible for yourself and your accompanying todos, but a whole nother human life, and their accompanying todos (which are manifold greater because they're dependent on you for even the simplest of needs).
Didn't say that. I was saying something to my past self who thought I was busy at the time which was the point of all this.
And, no, you're not in full control of how busy you are when you're a parent. You have kids? Because no parent I know would ever say that.
Also don't listen to anyone else's idea of what you should do who who you should be. Following your own instincts and succeeding is sweet, following your own instincts and failing, well that just builds better instincts.
On the serious side though - It's a lot harder to get yourself in heathy shape in your 40s than in your 20s, and it's a LOT easier to keep a good habit than it is to make one.
Health above all things.
How about 11 good ideas?:
1. Dance More
2. Women are attracted to confidence, nothing else (I'm heterosexual, hence women. Probably works for any romantic partner to be)
3. Stay with your dog when they put her down, she deserves that at least that
4. Wear good clothes that fit well
5. Life is harder if you are dumb
6. So get smart, define 'smart' as you go
7. Take care of your health
8. Take care of your friends and family
9. The world is only getting crazier, so learn to surf
10. Really, I'm serious, dance more
11. Go Giants!
I made a whole book with 1001 other little pithy bits as a gift for a friend's newborn. Let me know if you want a copy and I can send it to you.
https://www.quora.com/I%E2%80%99m-a-25-year-old-who-has-a-lo...
You're locking into that decision effectively permanently. Don't just jump in blindly and hope your good luck will give you a good outcome.
I would want my younger self to struggle, experience, learn and grow just the way I did. With my current knowledge I would create a rich MoFo who would be clueless but "respected" for no other reason then being rich.
So to the younger me: go fuck yourself thinking this is going to be easy.
Message 2: Thanks.
Say 'Yes' to anything you would have said 'maybe' to, and follow through.
In other words, I should have taken the entrepreneurial route right away. My environment wasn't promoting that at all back in the days so it's easy to say today...
P.S: I'm an Indian, working in Bangalore.
(That's the youngest self I think would have taken any advice.)
You've got roughly from your mid 20s to your late 40s to have kids 'responsibly', is that really a small window? Or are you perhaps (incorrectly imho) simply feeling that you've missed out on parenthood even though you're still fully capable of being a great parent?
Our youngest of 3 is 19 months old, and we're in our early to late 40s (i'm not saying which of us is which), and yes - certain things were harder this time vs 10 years ago (100% sleep related things).
On the other hand, there are a ton of things that were way easier this time around - we're both more patient, have more realistic expectations of each other, and we've found a much greater capacity to enjoy her 'baby-ness'.
And finally, don't under any circumstances rule out adoption. I cried more at the final adoption hearing than I did at the births of either of the first two. It's a slightly different bond, but by God it's no less strong...
It's a collection of mostly life lessons I find interesting similar to comments from here.
2 - Never too early or late to start a fitness regime
3 - Don't Over-plan
Also, get a height adjustable desk.
Maybe invent a practical way to code whilst walking/jogging.
be patient and go with the flow of life
you are on a speck of dirt spinning in a vast space of nothingness
If you're on companies that are actually creating value, in a position where you're creating value, this is not that stark.
You can be more charitable and use stuff outlined on How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie rather than actual ass-kissing.