It's Never Too Late to Be Successful and Happy
invincible.substack.com
invincible.substack.com
Even the quote used:
> “Comparison is the thief of joy.” —Theodore Roosevelt
Isn't 'success' a form of comparison? How do you quantify success? Is it binary? Is it a validation from peers?
Do your own thing, be excellent at it, have fun.
Is it necessary to excel to be successful and/or happy?
It is possible to be excellent at enjoying a simple life (most of us are terrible at it).
It is possible to enjoy being terrible at something because it's fun(ny) or reminds us of our youth.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language gives the two meanings
- The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted.
- The gaining of fame or prosperity.
of which the first one is entirely void of comparison. Your biggest desire is to live in a nice house in the country side with a wife and two kids? If you achieved that, congratulations, you are successful!
Overcoming your own limitation is a much better form of success. At least there is a form of control that you have on it.
If you're happy and have achieved your goals, you're successful. No external quantification or validation required.
You still need to compare your state with your desired state, but that's it.
"Don't be mad 'cause I'm doin me better than you doin you" - Childish Gambino
Figure out what that means for you, and you'll be successful. That's my theory anyway. The amount that I believe that theory varies from day to day, but I use it as a mantra to keep me level.
I considered my manager an egotistical jerk; he even called our 1:1s lessons. He told me that any part of my personality that didn’t line up with what the company would score on a Meyers Briggs was a problem. A senior engineer decided he was my mentor but constantly put me down. My team dangled the promise of a promotion if I could the job at my level and fulfill the job description of an open headcount two levels above me. I worked overnight every Tuesday sleeping only 4 hrs on my couch. I was miserable and in the end they said I couldn’t be promoted because the work I had was already stressing me out too much (I gave notice between reviews being finalized and revealed to make it clear this wasn’t a tantrum over my review)
My takeaway: it doesn’t matter what the maximum possible achievement is in a job; you’ll only rise if you can enjoy it. Successful people aren’t happy; happy people are successful.
In fact, many successful people with strong drive, very competitive etc. are deep down continuously unhappy. I mean, happy competitive person is a textbook oxymoron. At least that's how people I know with this trait are - always looking up to somebody faster, better, richer and not stopping and enjoying the moment.
Employers try to convince you that your success is correlated with what they want to do, but it is not the case. They are paying you to do your job and that's all.
Ads try to convince you that success depends on purchasing their stuff, but it is not the case. There is always more stuff to buy. In fact it might hinder your success if it puts you in debt or prevents you from becoming financially independent.
Parents often try to convince you that success depends on the agenda they created for you.
Fuck all of this. Success is what you decide it is.
If you like to write software, work on becoming a better developer. The market being as it is, the workplace success is then a side-effect.
Obviously all of this is a bit simplified but not being pushed around helps a lot for being happy I find.
-- Marcus Aurelius, http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html
He was an idiot. In an ideal society such persons would only work in the circus...
The other strange thing that I found for myself (and I think it's different for different people) is that "goals to have done something" are just not satisfying for me. I get no pleasure from having achieved anything. I only get pleasure achieving things. I love being successful. I'm completely neutral about having been successful.
For me, being successful really truly brings me happiness. I therefore choose to do things where I will likely be successful in a sustainable way.
Indeed I was wondering why completing tasks is absolutely unsatisfying for me: it's because I wish I would have done them (earlier).
Because success is external, it is not fully within your control. For example, your environment, other people, your physical circumstances all have an impact. It does not have a definition - it can literally mean whatever you want it to be.
Because happiness is internal it is fully within your control. If you have control over your mind and emotions you can be happy in an instant, if you consciously chose to do so.
And if you are happy, then success becomes easier as you are free to use your mind to identify what you want and the things that you need to do to get that.
It reminds me of a quote I remember from an old article on T-Nation that goes something like "Its true that the majority of bodybuilders started due to some insecurity. However, its probably a lot healthier than the way that most people deal with their insecurity".
1. I am getting older and not doing anything remotely impactful. 2. People half my age know all the programming I know. I don't bring anything special to the table. 3. Is this what life is all about?
Now, I don't say the problem is with the world. Something could be wrong with me. But damned if I know.
1. Very few people leave a legacy. The people that do often didn't do it deliberately or intentionally.
2. They don't. There might be a few people half your age that know as much about programming as you do, but the majority don't. In any case, you are the worst person to judge what special thing you bring to the table. Go and ask one of these young people that you fear / respect / admire / think are knowledgeable and ask them to tell you what value you bring. The answer will surprise you.
3. A lot of people have pondered the meaning of life. Opinions differ on whether we've made any progress on that question. It's OK to go on a journey of "spiritual discovery" at 37; it doesn't require heading overseas to a monastery.
It's extremely common to gradually move into a state of mind where you denigrate yourself – and the effort you've put forth in life. You need to ensure your own happiness, and no one in here, or anywhere else, can tell you how to do that. Mindfulness is a great tool, because it allows you to become more certain of yourself. To discover what it is that you feel and where it is you need to go.
That being said, here's what works for me: Acknowledging that creation is hard, but that I love creating and helping people around me. That family is important and love even more so. I also remind myself to do something new every day that somehow moves the boundary of what it means to be me.
Added note: A book that also helped me realise my own tendency to create barriers around myself was "The Flinch" by Julien Smith. It's awesome and I highly recommend giving it a read – and practice some of what it champions. I suspect you will gain a lot from it, but then again: Only you can know that.
I don't know if that speaks to your situation at all. Either way, I wish you (individually) self-understanding and happiness. ^__^
Serious question.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/in-praise-...
Moreover, there are so many things that need doing that are plenty impactful and just require discipline to do it frequently; that you never bothered to think of other ways to make an impact shouldn't mean you should dissuade others from finding out new ways to make an impact.
Lastly, there is precisely zero evidence that you get another shot at life so it's grossly irresponsible to push people into thinking that their dreams and their real life should be readjusted into some bullshit dichotomy of fantasy vs real life.
(I have heard people in their early 20s giving this same advice; Good god could you imagine the world if people stopped following their dreams so early in life)
(I was a C/D student in STEM subjects by the end of high school. I can't imagine what my life would be like if I didn't kick it into overdrive, thereby managing to get involved with some of the most prolific scientists on this planet and getting my name on a few papers; actually I can imagine, I would have blown my brains out because my life was incredibly miserable up until then)
“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world.”
If you are in your mid 40s you are not going to become great at something new to you (painting, quantum physics, chess, programming, etc etc). It is nice to dream of that, but it does not happen.
You might become decent and contribute to society in your new skill but that's different.
Who are those people who have made a single great contribution at an advanced age (let's say past 50)?
The few that I can think of (like that obscure mathematician who didn't get tenure and did his research alone) labored in their calling starting in their 20s at the latest.
The one exception could be business success which indeed is possible even at a very late age(Colonel Sanders etc)
Business success and greatly contributing to the society in the way that most people dream of aren't mutually exclusive. You might not be the kind of person with a PhD who made a scientific breakthrough and finally developed a great self-driving car, but if you created a business that managed to achieve that same thing, I see no reason why it wouldn't count.
"Good god could you imagine the world if people stopped following their dreams so early in life"
I imagine it would be indistinguishable from the way it is now. I don't see that the world is built on "great contributions to humanity", just the slow layering of knowledge upon knowledge.
I'm glad you made yourself happier by applying yourself more diligently to your studies when you were in school, but "try harder" is not a helpful response to the parent comment. Almost none of us make any impact beyond our immediate social circle, and even if you do that impact will very quickly become indistinguishable from noise. You don't need to accept that, but it's true, and if you do accept it your life will be better
That's a very interesting statement. Almost all people I know here in Poland, including myself, dream of having a life devoid of external pain, obligations, limitations etc., so that you can do whatever they choose to do. Rarely if ever anyone mentions anything about wanting to have a greater impact.
Maybe that's the next step of rich consumer society that US is at and that Poland hasn't reached yet - one in which people are aware that living (surviving in relative comfort) is easy, so they need to raise the bar for themselves somehow or they'll get depressed over the lack of challenges.
Or maybe it's just a cultural difference? American society is very much a culture of doers, while Polish is not. There are societies even richer than American, for example the Quatari, where people seem just content to mostly do not do anything particularly ambitious and just hang out.
Over time, I realized that this situation occurs because there's something that I must/need to do but I am procrastinating. That surfaces as anxiety and my mind ends up "translating" it into a spiritual discussion - all in my head - with questions like "is this life", "is this all"?
Expectations of self can be hard and confusing.
I always figure the point of spiritual malaise and existential wandering is to prune away the false hopes and beliefs that keep us mildly entertained and encourage us to seek out eternal hopes that provide daily rejuvenation. Ecclesiastes is always a comforting read whenever I feel that way:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+1&...
Where do you go when you keep asking "I'm dying, not much time left, is it worth it?"
I mean, is it?
LessWrong has it's problems, like lots of jargon, but this series seems like good tool to clean up life a bit. Especially I recommend having look at the Aversion factoring and Goal factoring, those two seem to be the most useful ones to deal with having lost some kind of "life purpose". Though I have to admit I still haven't found my solution, so take my post with a grain of salt. But at least I feel like I'm working on it in the right direction.
I'm trying to come off about a decade of poor habits myself, due to a number of factors which are undoubtedly my responsibility but which it's not clear whether I could have realistically avoided. I've had some minor successes but have never really stabilized so far, including in all the little things like the above. I don't usually see this case handled clearly in the “it's okay to be a late bloomer!” inspiration crowd. (More personally, it doesn't help that the things I most want to do in life probably require being exceptional in specific ways that I'm not sure I can predict in advance and not just “successful” in a generic sort of way, and beyond a certain limited extent, I don't consider the wanting-what-I-have approach to be a viable one (except insofar as having that attitude on the face of things may make it more likely to reach my original desires anyway).)
I'm trying to convince myself to try anyway and it's hellishly difficult.
What else are you going to do?
You are where you are right now, and you can either put in the effort to make your life better or you can give up now.
The time's going to pass anyway, you might as well make the most of it.
So cognitively I know that's a common problem with an obvious answer, but it doesn't mean I can just skip to the end without convincing the rest of me.
Our short attention spans keep giving us new chances, though. If you decide to give up, you can't just do it once (okay, you can, but please don't)-- you have to keep deciding to give up every day. Eventually you realize you're going to need to give up on giving up, at least some of the time.
However, I know what you mean quite fully. I've given up on everything from academic hopes, to artistic dreams, to multiple types of fantasies I was taught were real as a child, to career possibilities and more. Learning to rest in the knowledge that someone out there is already doing whatever cool stuff I could've done, better than I could've done it - and training myself to be mildly comforted by this - has brought me no small amount of peace.
Sentient existence is weird and hard. Giving up is an important life skill.
Which still isn't good to use as an excuse for fatalism, of course. “Knowing when” may be superficially similar to giving up out of raw emotional weakness, but it's not the same underneath at all.
Consider an obese man looking at a fitness model and saying "I want to look like that". He might never reach it but if he loses weight and becomes fitter and healthier then his effort paid off. He might think he failed but he's landed in a better position. I often remind myself that when I'm doing something I don't want to that I'm paying it forward to a future version of me.
In the first few pages the protagonist decides to end their own life. He is absolutely committed to ending it. Once the decision was made he realized that there is no longer any significant consequences to anything. So he will do whatever he wants until he eventually kills himself. In the end the adventure he went on helped him realize that there is something to life and he backed off.
Giving up can be freeing. It is a declaration of emotional bankruptcy.
This is only true in US and perhaps a handful of other countries. In most of the world, society tells you to NOT follow your dreams, as they know from experience that this will usually end badly for both you and those close to you. I.e. even if you want to be a painter, your family in India or Eastern Europe will work very hard at convincing you to become a doctor, an engineer or something else "safe". They do it for your own sake (only minority of art students make it and are satisfied with their careers) and also for their own - it's no fun supporting a grown-up son/daughter that is a financially struggling and possibly depressed.
Intellectually, I understand that much of the success of my peers of which I'm envious, has nothing to do with my abilities, per se, but more to do with luck and personality differences. I am who I am, and that affects the probabilities of who I meet and when, and what opportunities I'm willing to chase when they arise. I know this, and realize the, primarily, financial success of my peers does not imply that I'm a failure. But. It sure feels like I'm a failure. Mostly because of the expectation that I was supposed to succeed sooner.
But, as the article states, I do try to remember to compare my current self to my past self instead. When I do that, I can objectively see great life improvements and milestones achieved. Just not at the same times as others I know.
I have to constantly remind myself all the time of the sort of advice found in this article: to realize just how far I've come on my own journey, and that the journey is far from over.
It's not always about talent. Knowing that your parents have millions allows you to think in a way someone struggling to pay rent can't.
I wasn't able to think long-term and actually build something until I hit my late 20s. Until then, I couldn't think past the short-term goal of just making money.
So much of success literature focuses so much on skills or hard work when in reality, all these intangible and tangible factors are equally important
For me, what works is to stop worrying about what others say- so what if I misspeak and call an end effector an "endofactor" once in a presentation if it's spelled properly on screen?
Now that I've written the above I realize that I'm best when I prepare as much as I can.
Here's an example.
I'm very introverted, and was at a company outing many years ago. Myself and another dev who started at the same time at the company as me (a startup in Seattle) found ourselves sitting at a table with the investors of the company. I'm not one for idle chit chat, and really had no burning questions to ask them, so I talked to them very little. They asked very little of me as well. But, the other dev sitting with us was super outgoing and extremely socially engaging. He peppered the investors with questions and eventually they really opened up to him. Over the next year, he continued this at every company event they attended. Then they started inviting him to social events at their houses. Over time, one thing led to another, and he eventually ended up starting a new company with the investors and left our company. I heard he ended up selling the new company for some $$$.
There were lots of lucky breaks along the way I'm sure, but the point is, I compared myself to him and felt like a failure. But, the reality is, I am just not like that guy, and though he achieved financial success, it is entirely possible that he may not have. I ignore the other equally socially engaging folks I knew at the same time who did NOT end up starting and selling a company.
I am not that guy, and he is not me. My only true comparison is my past self. And compared to that guy, I'm doing pretty damn well.
In retirement many people have to face the question for the first time, "Who am I?" Before retirement it was easy to answer the thought with your job description, but really that is what you do, not who you are.
I think it would be beneficial to ask questions like that before getting to retirement so the transition isn't so jarring, and you might find it causes you to reevaluate your priorities. "Does what I do make the world better, or does it just make a paycheck?" "Will what I do make a difference after I'm gone?" "Who would care if I disappeared tomorrow?" "When I'm on my death bed, what will I regret having done? Not done?" etc These questions don't have to result in an all-consuming angst, but it is important to think about them at least a bit every once in a while.
1. work for myself, not for any company - that's hard to start because of mortgage and kids which are taking 90% of my free time
2. Earn around the same money I have now
3. Have something that can grow, doesn't have to be fast growing, just a bit quicker than inflation.
So, instead of thinking 'how do I make as much money working for myself as I do now', think about building up savings and investments so that in future you can afford to take a pay cut without cutting your lifestyle too much. Try to limit the inevitable lifestyle creep if you get pay rises or promotions so you are saving more than you spend of the increase.
Then focus on broadening your network in the job you are doing at the moment. This might or might not be helpful in your future endeavours but again it gives you a better safety net - so that if it doesn't work out then you are morel likely to be able to quickly get a job to fall back on.
Finally, assuming you're not a single parent, could your partner step up more if the need arose financially? Are there things you could do to improve the value of that safety net?
Buy rental properties on the next real estate crash
Never give up. Always be striving. Be grateful for the things you have, and it's not bad to be working for something a little bit better.
This kind of thinking will lead to a fulfilling life.
"1a : to come next after another in office or position or in possession of an estate especially : to inherit sovereignty, rank, or title " and "2a : to turn out well, b : to attain a desired object or end "
When people use the word to mean securing a good position in a corporation, are they consciously using the 1a definition?
In casual use I always thought it's just a practical word to mean whether you attained your goal in a specific contextz, so general "success" should naturally mean whether you are content with your life.
As far as I know, the definition 1a is unrelated and specifically meant to describe sequence relations, usually for positions of power. For example, "Trump succeeded Obama as president" means Trump became president after Obama. Related words are "succession" (e.g., "succession of the throne" refers to the process of transferring power in a monarchy), "successor" (e.g., the successor function in mathematics takes an integer n and returns n+1), and "precede" (the antonym of "succeed").
If Bukowski had never written a thing until he was 45, then it would make sense