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A lot of religious/theological texts and frameworks talk about the balance between self forgiveness and self efficacy, and the need for perspective.

"It was said of Reb Simcha Bunem, a 18th century Hasidic rebbe, that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. One was inscribed with the saying from the Talmud: Bishvili nivra ha-olam, “for my sake the world was created.” On the other he wrote a phrase from our father Avraham in the Torah: V’anokhi afar v’efer,” “I am but dust and ashes.” He would take out and read each slip of paper as necessary for the moment."

One medicine that addresses both is a moving away from outcome based thinking and focus on performance.

Ask "did I try my best", opposed to "did I get what I want"

That's one of the main tenets of the Stoic philosophy. The hardest too.

It acknowledges the role of probability in your life. Sometimes things work out, and sometimes they don't. It's not that you have control, or you don't. You have some control, sometimes.

Games of skill that also incorporate chance are somewhat helpful for developing this. Unfortunately a lot of those games are also closely associated with gambling (e.g. Bridge, Poker, Backgammon), which is perhaps something we don't want to encourage.

I find deckbuilding games to be decent examples of this. At relatively close skill levels a bad draw can be the difference between winning and losing. It still takes a certain level of introspection to figure that out. Almost all elementary-school aged kids will conflate success with skill, even in games that are pure chance.

Wouldn't the challenge be what does it mean that 'one tried their best' ? By using the word best there, it becomes yet another goal.

I think that is a good point.

Im not saying dont have goals or desires. Im not saying to ignore if you succeed or fail either- that is important data and part of learning.

To me - Trying my best means looking back to identify things I know I could have done better with more dedication. Could I have done better with the knowledge and tools I had.

>By using the word best there, it becomes yet another goal.

This is kinda the point. Doing your best becomes a goal in of itself. You have 100% control over it and get the satisfaction of meeting it, independent of if you meet your other goals or not. It builds self respect

There is a similar idea in the book "atomic habits" by James clear : focus on process not outcome. that’s one of the best advice I ever read.

This has always been my line of thinking. Im glad I found the Stoics later to agree with me.

I will admit just this once that maybe I too readily tell myself that I did my best. Sometimes. Often? Please have this message self destruct in one hour.

There is definitely some advantages to processed based thinking, but I think it comes with tradeoffs of it's own.

I've seen a lot people personally who get stuck in a loop of trying and failing. Each time they'll say to themselves 'I did my best' but a result based framework would have told them 'what you did didn't work and you need to try something _different_ next time'.

You are absolutely right. I didnt mean to imply that these was nothing else that goes along with it.

People should totally inspect their efforts and methods in light of their successes and failures. This is how you learn and improve. Your best is not merely how much effort and sweat you put into something, but also your thoughts and methods.

On the other hand, if you think you did your best, but you keep failing... maybe you actually are wrong about something, and the world is giving you a honest feedback.

People throughout known history have tried to solve what it means to have free will yet for our freedom to be circumscribed by the world we are part of.

Denying freedom altogether is logically the simplest way out, and is often done on behalf of other people, but I don't think anybody chooses this way for themselves, not at a deep level. Psychologically, we need agency, and it's cruel to deny it to others. So we keep trying out new ways of framing it.

Or you can be _both_ at the same time.

> I can think of times in my life where each view was helpful and warranted, even if they're hard to reconcile with each other.

Almost anything is "within your power". The right sequence of muscle movements, performed by your body, could bring an end to most world conflict, cure near every disease we have, spoof any cryptographic protocol, reinvent basically every creative pursuit…

However, as a regular human, with a brain not quite the size of a planet? Your actions are constrained by your knowledge, reasoning speed, reasoning ability (honed by past experience), mental state, emotional state, alertness, distractedness, loneliness, blood sugar level, blood protein level, percentage water…

You can do more than what you can do at this moment. But you can't do more than you can do at this moment. But you can probably get yourself in a position where, next moment, you can do more than you could do this moment.

Literally nothing in your "constrained by" list is stopping me from:

> bring an end to most world conflict, cure near every disease we have, spoof any cryptographic protocol, reinvent basically every creative pursuit

The main reason I'm not doing these things is because I'm not rich and I have to work a full time job to simply not be homeless.

Sounds like you're saying we shouldn't bother trying.

> In this situation, though, what's medicine to one is poison to the other. I can think of times in my life where each view was helpful and warranted, even if they're hard to reconcile with each other.

Moral philosopher John Rawls's uses the concepts of original position and veil of ignorance for a thought experiment that is the only fair basis for making decisions about moral principles and how society should be structured. You can think of it as "What we'd all decide for the world if each of us did not know ahead of time which circumstance we'd be born into".

https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/joh...

> The Veil is meant to ensure that people’s concern for their personal benefit could translate into a set of arrangements that were fair for everyone, assuming that they had to stick to those choices once the Veil of Ignorance ‘lifts’, and they are given full information again.

> One set of facts hidden from you behind the Veil are what we might call ‘demographic’ facts. You do not know your gender, race, wealth, or facts about your personal strengths and weaknesses, such as their intelligence or physical prowess. Rawls thought these facts are morally arbitrary: individuals do not earn or deserve these features, but simply have them by luck. As such, they do not deserve any benefits or harms that come from them. By removing knowledge of the natural inequalities that give people unfair advantages, it becomes irrational to choose principles that discriminate against any particular group.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position

“Play the hand you’re dealt”