Ask HN: How do you hack out of your last failure? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you hack out of your last failure?

5 pointstathagatadg4 comments

I discovered HN a few months back probably in the most difficult phase of my life - professional failure, losing dad, in the country of my dreams where sadly nothing was going right for me. And reading HN has been therapeutic to say the least! My interaction with the community is primarily passive - I hardly comment on anything. But just reading the posts and comments - it gives me back makes me think, that its not only me. I've become aware that I do too much stupid shit that are tangential to the main project (just for the fun of it) - I was overdoing it to the point of not completing anything and trying to make everything perfect. I'm trying to change all that - but over the past year, I've stopped communicating with my old real world (brilliant & never-failing) friends - just to avoid embarrassment. I now seek new groups (online) who would never judge me (doesn't this emphasize the terribly important use case for a pseudonym feature? lulz :D) ... Its difficult to keep smiling and all happy when Murphy's law takes control of your life. So how do you hack out of your last failure?

With failure, I think it's important to remember that the universe has no continuity. In the grand scheme of things, there's no plan, no story - just a sequence of events. If you flip a coin a million times and it comes up tails every time, there's still a 50% chance the next will be heads.

The idea that you need to overcome failure is based on the fallacy that failure makes success less attainable. That's a narrative you're building on top of the disconnected events of reality. As long as you still have the resources to think and to create, what does it matter whether things are "going right?" Failure only lasts until you start your next project.

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to read and providing such an wonderful answer. I re-read it a number of times - and it just makes me feel a lot lighter. Funny how we try to extrapolate from non-correlated events and project an absolute image ... it went very deep man! Thanks :D

I logged in just to say thanks for this answer. In my thoughts I have been close to this question many times but have been unable to understand it as well as you have put it here.

Thanks a lot.

First, I will note that avoiding your old friends may be a good thing. People tend to hang out with people similar to them. If the way you were then in some way caused your failures, it might be for the best to leave the friends from that era behind. (I'm some pathetic bleeding heart idealist with financial problems who at some point realized all my close friends could be described the same way. I decided I better start making new friends. Blaming the world for not appreciating the importance of my ideals was not going to pay the bills. Those people are no longer part of my inner circle. My finances have been gradually improving.)

A couple of movies I like: "Beyond Rangoon" and "Citizen Jane". I am thinking both are based on true stories. Beyond Rangoon is basically about a woman who had something really tragic happen to her, is mired in depression and then travels someplace where people have much bigger problems and makes her peace with her losses. Citizen Jane is about a woman whose second husband robs her blind and murders her beloved aunt for the woman's money and about her search for justice. There is a very good scene where, after her house is foreclosed on, a friend offers to let her live with them in their nice upscale house so she doesn't have to move to some really crappy apartment. She replies "I got myself into this mess and I will get myself out." I have some pretty big problems I am working on resolving. It's a scene I think about often. I could use assistance from somewhere in terms of figuring out how on earth to do certain things but I really am not looking to be rescued. Getting rescued won't give me the skills I need to have lifelong financial security. "Give a man fish..." and all that.

Best of luck.

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