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Comment by marcus_holmes | Hacker News Reader

> The confidence damage from failing is still huge compared to the confidence boost from succeeding

Not if you practice at failing, and get good at it. I can fail to get out of bed in the morning and feel fine about that. In fact, feeling OK about it was the key to getting over my depression.

I had a really nasty inner critic, that used to beat me up over every little failing I had. Hard to sleep at night when my inner critic was going over every aspect of the day and making sure I knew exactly how badly I'd done.

Accepting that I'm not a perfect human being was the key to getting over it. I will fail at things. A lot. It's OK. I'm not a perfect human being. Allowing myself to fail also allows me to experiment with things, to see what works, because it doesn't matter if I fail.

So yeah. I'd be snug in bed, reminded that I hadn't exercised, and stay there without a qualm. Life's too short to get that hung up on succeeding at every little thing.

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there should be an alternative cult of patiently and kindly listening to one's needs and wants rather than overriding them with force (or little monetary incentives). i mean, there's already a bunch of those cults, but if you mention them around here you'll quickly learn that those methods are not "effective" (at forcing any kind of premeditated results)

I there is a strange little book called “the care and feeding of homo sentiens” that approaches this subject through a stoic paradigm.

thanks for the tip, I'll search it out :)

I was going to post something like this. I would even argue that you didn't fail. You did exactly what you actually desired

This is an opportunity to introspect on why your actions didn't align with whatever goals you set. Maybe you don't actually want to reach the goal at all.

As with anything else. The value of the journey isn't an illusionary destination, but rather what you learn along the way. You'll likely find that you don't follow the path you imagined, likely because you found something more exciting along the way.

It's as if the goal is some sort of sacred object for change rather than something to be obtained.

This is an unhelpfully reductive view of needs and wants. Many of the systems humans have in place for regulating behaviour towards needs and goals are intensely focused on the short term.

The point of these incentives is not to override your actual long-term needs and wants, but rather to artificially bring their consequences up to the near term so that you work with your inherited systems rather than against them.

You shouldn't set a goal to exercise daily if doing so makes you feel bad. You should set that goal specifically when you have recognized it makes you overall feel better, even if it costs a discomfort in the moment.

Some people can easily align their behaviour with their long term needs and wants. If you are such a person, these incentive structures will not help you and you will be confused about the need for it.

> You shouldn't set a goal to exercise daily if doing so makes you feel bad.

Daily is probably excessive, but regular exercise will very likely be a bit unpleasant for most people, and that's not really a reason to avoid it.

My comment was not about avoiding unpleasure. My comment was about learning to listen to yourself, instead of tricking and forcing yourself as the default mode of behavior. Unpleasure is a very interesting and helpful thing when you're learning to understand yourself, by the way. But only if you pay attention, rather than "Use every motivation strategy you know, every trick in the book".

What scares me is that such a method might end up just overriding any kind of long-term-goal adjustment from the inside. If you force yourself to write daily (and god forbid, publish what you wrote!), do you know how to make this forced writing actually attentive to yourself? Or do you just do it because you promised yourself, and ignore any inner protest? Could it end up a daily article about, say... forcing oneself to write?

> regular exercise will very likely be a bit unpleasant for most people, and that's not really a reason to avoid it.

My point is that there is a group of people for whom that is practically reason to avoid it. The unpleasure is large enough that it doesn't happen.

Some people can force themselves by just "listening to themselves" whereas others get more mileage out of first listening to themselves, and then setting up a commitment scheme.

I recommend the book "Self Parenting - The Complete Guide to Your Inner Conversations" by John K Pollard

In the book it specifically teaches how to "patiently and kindly listening to one's needs"

https://www.amazon.com/Self-Parenting-Complete-Guide-Convers...

completely agree - being ok with your own failings is a step forward not backwards

Not to mention that so much of life is simply out of our control.

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