Ask HN: What thought (or idea) has changed your life the most?

Friends and I were drinking about 40 years ago and my best friend confessed he had become a christian. Drunkenness is not exactly very christian but we were teenagers and my friend had just become a christian. Just before going to sleep on my friends sofa I prayed to myself, "Jesus, if you are out there, will you come into my life?"

I have travelled and worked all over the world because of my christian faith. More importantly I met the most wonderful woman who shares the same values. We have two wonderful adult children now. Having left home at 17, feeling bruised by life, I can't believe how things have worked out.So my idea is an old one, there is a God. I am now in my 50s and still talk to God. I was asking him this morning to help my work team as the management want to shut our department down. Hopefully the peace God gives me will help me in my discourse with my very anxious colleagues.

Nassim Taleb's Concepts of Mediocristan and Extremistan, Uncle Points & Optionality. i.e the Incerto Book Collection.

My biggest regret in life so far is that I did not start studying his work earlier. (I first got into his work when I was 18 and seriously at 25.)

His books & ideas have changed my entire world view. If I had read him earlier I would exactly know.

a) What activities I should spend my time on and those I should spend less time on.

b) How I should have structured my career & a curation of what skills I should have accumulated.

c) What I should have done with the first serious amount of money I made.

d) What risks I should have taken and those I should not have taken.

The entire body of work gave me an insight into the disorganised thinking I was prone to. It exposed me to things (I did) that I didn't even know we're mistakes.

The books also offered me actual solutions to dilemmas I was constantly encountering in life.

If I read the body of work seriously earlier say in my mid teens. I would genuinely be so far in life satisfaction.

I genuinely think that people that read & understand the Incerto genuinely have an edge in life.

If I had kids, I would prepare them to start studying it 13.

Alot of people confuse it for a finance book. But it's really a philosophy book about, business, ethics, productivity, history, & above all decision making that is focused on error avoidance not emergency room surgery.

[0]: https://people.wou.edu/~shawd/mediocristan--extremistan.html

"Keep your goals to yourself" from this TED talk I saw more than ten ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4

I revisit it every few years as a reminder and have been following this advice ever since I first saw it If I talk about my goals or something I plan on doing too soon, I'm less likely to follow through with it. Now I shut up and don't talk about it until I have enough momentum.

This quote from the Talmud is up there:

“We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”

Not easy to identify the very most changing, but some things along the way can be pointed to.

"Be excellent to each other!" could be really good for everybody.

"Pray toward heaven but row toward shore." is more applicable to the sailor out of fuel, or even worse in his lifeboat after being shipwrecked.

That if I worked harder than most people, and used a little bit of common sense designing my career, that I would have only myself to blame if I didn’t get ahead. I live in the USA which means I pretty much had opportunities that few others in the world could hope for.

One of my key observations was that people not smarter than I was got further ahead, simply because they persevered and put in the hours.

Our thoughts are not who we are, they are often motivated manifestations of our subconscious and often mal-adapted to our present circumstances.

Evil doesn't exist as a true motivation; there are only disordered senses of good.

You can only build on strength

A little learning is a dangerous thing.