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Comment by rubyist5eva | Hacker News Reader

> The self congratulatory back-patting (even if it's just "everything is fine, we're doing great") is treating success like an achievement. Success requires vigilance. Excellence is not an achievement, it's an activity.

I used to wonder why friends of mine would get gifts for things like graduating elementary school or even high school. I asked my father for something because I was graduating highschool on the honour roll, and he told me completely stoned faced "i am not going to reward you for things that you are just simply expected to do". That sticks with me 20 years later and I apply that to everything I do in life, especially work.

If you aren't succeeding, you are failing - and I was expected and taught to succeed by default.

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> If you aren't succeeding, you are failing - and I was expected and taught to succeed by default.

Nitpicking, but you were expected to succeed by default, and also taught to strive for success by default (and presumably also taught the tools and approach to maximize likelihood of success). People cannot be taught to "succeed by default", anymore than someone could be taught to "win the world series by default".

And then that unpacks the challenge of this particular world view (and points at why the 'self-esteem thing' is a thing), is that learning to strive for success, and learning the tools and methods to achieve success does not mean you will actually reach success (this would just be a variant of the just-world fallacy). The challenge is how do you create the motivating factors and structure for as many people as possible (hopefully everyone) in your society/culture to earnestly strive for success, but not crack apart when they encounter continued failures.

I've had my fair share of failures that's for sure. I'm do not expecting to actually succeed every single time, but I am putting in the best effort to at least try to succeed instead of just trying to coast along or shrug it off being like "meh, just wasn't in the cards". I also don't expect massive celebrations when I actually do succeed - success is what is expected. If I'm supposed to make the big sale, I don't get a party after I just move on to the next big sale. It's what is expected, not exceptional.

That's fair. And to be honest, I have a very similar mindset - so I'm super not judging.

Just making an observation that scaling this up to a population level is tricky. Easy to mangle up the nuances when trying to impart this to children. I suspect you need a relatively stable environment for this to really take hold as well. And finally, you do actually need to be able to feed the child some degree of external success to get them to actually buy into this.

that’s bleak

why not have some joy?

you might say you do have joy, but I’ll say it doesn’t look like it and so to bring it back I wouldn’t want to work for you

This is why companies are always pushing the “winning” narrative.

to be clear I’m only commenting on how your philosophy is perceived vs how it actually feels, since I can’t know that.

Maybe I’m not articulating myself correctly because I certainly do not want to imply or say that there is no joy in my life. I guess the “joy” in my life is just intrinsic rather than extrinsic? I get immense satisfaction out of my work itself and “succeeding” in and of itself is motivating. I also find mentoring/helping others succeed to also be extremely rewarding. The greatest joy I get in life is seeing how my actions have improved the lives of others in some way.

I also feel very fulfilled from my personal relationships, family and lifestyle that my “success” affords me.

I feel sorry for you that your father never got you that gift for graduating high school. My father got me an HP calculator and it's still one of my treasured possessions. It has had no negative impact on my success.

You can still get gifts but that comes from love, not as reward for something mundane.

My father has gotten me plenty of gifts, for a variety of reasons and sometimes for no reason at all. Don’t get me wrong, I love my dad very much and he is a very generous man :)

In Brazil, where I am from, the big achievement that warranted a celebration used to be graduating from university (I guess you call it college in the US). For many families the celebration was also the gift — those things don't come cheap.

But in the last 30 years or so, I have noticed that many now celebrate completing high school, completing primary school, or even completing kindergarten (!) — and not just something symbolic or small, but big events.

Maybe I'm just old and grumpy, but this rubs me off in the wrong way: I also believe that these "achievements" are things that you are simply expected to do. Congratulations and positive reinforcement are always welcome, but when there is an expectation of a reward then to me it crossed the line into something unhealthy.

In Canada (I don’t know about Brazil myself) it is very very difficult for children to “flunk out” of the public education system. The system is setup to push every line through as much as possible. So to me, the “participation trophy” culture which is similar to what you describe in Brazil is especially egregious to me.

It comes from a time when it was not so mundane. My grandfather on one side was the first in his family to truly read and write well enough to have a job involving it.

That is a big deal and far from a default.

Yes, now graduating high school is not an achievement, but it used to be quite one, especially for the average person.

> If you aren't succeeding, you are failing - and I was expected and taught to succeed by default.

That sounds messed up too. Maybe you need a break now and then from trying to succeed all the time.

I work 9-5 and have 6 weeks of vacations on top of government mandated holidays, I do pretty good :)

I hope that your definition of success is healthier than your definition of failure.

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