Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself | Hacker News Reader

Advice to young people, the lies I tell myself

jxnl.github.io

148 pointsamrrs72 comments

I see a lot of comments here criticising the post. May be my point of view is different on this, but I liked the post. It's raw and seems honest, like an un-edited version of a stream of thoughts (the author mentions he used speech to text).

The author may have been from a privileged background, but seems to have had his own struggles. I especially liked the following pieces:

>>>>>

1. I believe many young people struggle with the insecurity of being intelligent. They often feel the need to prove their intelligence by overthinking, excessively planning, and acquiring knowledge before taking action. However, this approach is a waste of time. The more you research, the more you realize how little you actually know. Instead, you just have to do it, even if you're scared.

2. Mike Tyson once said, "If you're favored by God, you're also favored by the devil." It's alright to strive for greatness, but it's equally important to choose goodness. Don't neglect your loved ones for work; time is fleeting. Appreciate people and sincerely express your love for them. Grief is the result of unexpressed love, and the key to avoiding grief is to love abundantly.

3. It is crucial to start practicing self-love. While successful people may attribute their success to their struggles, I believe a significant part of it is simply coming to terms with those struggles. Each person's pain is maximum to them. You have already endured hardships. Seek success because you deserve it and learn to love yourself, rather than punishing yourself for not being good enough.

>>>>>

Agree. Have similar thoughts here. I totally understand where he comes from. Competitive upbringing and schools (U of Waterloo is of the top CS universities and it's grueling, look it up), faang and silicon valley experiences, I have met many people from the similar backgrounds.

If you want to succeed in this environment, either you are 1. naturally talented to deal with all the pressure and competitiveness; 2. relentless work until you burn out; 3. actively develop some kind of coping mechanisms to help you progress.

I work in faang and I am not type 1. I did type 2 and then tried to recover from type 3 route. I did have many similar conclusions as he had. Actively work on your mindset does help you to work under such environment.

author here:

>actively develop some kind of coping mechanisms to help you progress.

i think this is why i titled it lies i tell myself. i gotta just believe i can choose to be happy.

Hey! Original commenter here. Loved your post. Like I said it's raw and unedited. Good luck!

> Grief is the result of unexpressed love, and the key to avoiding grief is to love abundantly.

This little bit I'm not sure I agree with. There absolutely is a grief from unexpressed love, but that's not the only grief. There is also grief from something good that ended. "I loved this person for X years, and I expressed that love to them, and they to me, but now they're gone and I can't love them and enjoy their love any longer." There's real grief in that. It may be less bitter than the grief from unexpressed love, but it still hurts.

This article has a section titled "how to get a job." The author then mentions straight away that he has never had to apply for a job in the traditional way. Following this, he questions his own success and implies that there may be factors other than merit that played a role. A few paragraphs down the author then laments people with imposter syndrome.

Yup. I'm not sure how you can read this without being irritated. Is this the tech equivalent of a social media influencer?

Well, it's about life.

Right. It might be because I have no idea who the author is, but this post read like a bunch of useless incoherent ramblings

author here:

it was incoherent ramblings! Its my first time writing something thats not technical documentation.

context: my sister was talking to me about feeling stressed about going to college i wrote this with speech to text. I have personally not read it yet. I shared it on twitter this weekend to get some feedback.

>Is this the tech equivalent of a social media influencer?

Yes. They have existed for a while. There are always sheep to herd.

My impression: it reeks of someone who's self aware enough to know they're insufferable and privileged, but then goes on to be insufferable anyway. Evidence: jiu jitsu, Waterloo, free diving, refers to themselves as a "social media influencer" on their Twitter bio. Also, never interviewed for a job and says "oh, just be likeable," as if that's somehow the whole secret to life.

Sorry to say, but it is not. I won't hire a likeable bumbler, and I'd bet he wouldn't either. Merit does matter, but only once one reaches the point where merit can be demonstrated. That point is often not during the interview process, because interviews are very rarely all that much like the actual job one would be interviewing for.

And, nobody should listen to someone who's maybe all of 30 on how to live life, and especially not on how to be a father. Half of what's there isn't actionable; half of the other half reads like one of those "I just bought my first home: here's how I did it," articles that tries to bury the lede and stick the fact that their parents paid the down payment in the middle of so much inconsequential bullshit you'll skip over it.

It's pretty plain this guy has never seen the other side of what his life looks like. As the great Jean Luc Picard said, "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life." For every one of him there are five others out there who committed as many or fewer mistakes as he did, but just lost out to dumb luck. But, it's pretty hard to see that being as far up one's own ass as he appears to be.

Agreed.

The entire post reeks of unwarranted self-importance and posturing and contains equal measure platitudes and balderdash.

He needs to watch the documentary Waging a Living to get some real-life perspectives (this documentary legitimately made me very angry at the "American System") - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waging_a_Living and https://www.pbs.org/pov/films/wagingaliving/

Seems like it is available on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIXFyLXSBuo&t=6s

Yeah, the guy and I have lived completely different lives.

For starters, I've never gotten a job via referral, it's always been applying, busting my ass off during interviews and tests, and getting in...

We have all lives different lives.

I come from a poor first gen immigrant family and got all my jobs + conventional success from referrals. I don’t even think I’m that good at networking (introvert, feel very shy in groups of strangers), but I do have strong bias for action.

> Yup. I'm not sure how you can read this without being irritated

By taking it as a good faith chat about one person's perspective. I found it enjoyable, though yes there were some inconsistencies, couldn't be more than my own.

Please note, he says "he has never gotten a job by applying", not that he has never applied to jobs.

My ratio isn't 100% but being referred or (in older times) called first have probably been the better experiences in my experience.

Do I respond to nitpicking with my own nitpicking? The language of the parent post implies a lack of necessity (due to having success through other means).

Well, this is fun.

author here: i got rejected by almost every job i applied to conventionally.

Also, don't forget that recently you got an offer that came with basically a two-level demotion.

> Is this the tech equivalent of a social media influencer?

this has been a thing for years mon ami, and regularly flogged here on HN.

I’ve also not ever applied to a job the traditional way.

The first job I got was because I went to a career fair and had a human connection with a recruiter at a company no one wanted to work at.

She was manning a booth that everyone was passing by because the company had some reputation hit in the news and I talked to her for 30 minutes. I got hired because they had a hiring quota and like 2 applicants.

Every other job I got because of my reputation at previous jobs. I’ve never applied to a job in the traditional way.

Also immigrant. Also grew up frugal AF.

I found this to be a remarkably sincere article. It focuses on the author's personal experience and strategies or mindsets they've found helpful in various situations.

It's not the generic platitudes for all readers in all circumstances, but that's what makes it valuable to me. It's a perspective quite different from my own, with more experience in some areas and less in others, shared concisely and powerfully.

author here:

its a lil' platitude-y but i think its cause its also titled `the lies i tell myself.`

I just try to share the stuff i've written in my journal for myself as i send these notes off to my sister whos going to college soon.

> Seek success because you deserve it and learn to love yourself, rather than punishing yourself for not being good enough.

The idea that I "deserve" success, and to be happy, is something I've heard repeated many times but have always struggled comprehending. I think to myself, well, why do I deserve it? Just for being alive?

I feel like there's a better way to think about this, but it eludes me. Does anyone have any advice?

Nobody deserves anything. That implies some kind of cosmic force or entity that is keeping track of who does what and enforcing some kind of justice. People get what they figure out how to get and they keep it as long as they figure out how to keep it. Random luck (good or bad) can happen to anyone at any time.

It may not seem "fair" (whatever fair means), but it makes a lot more sense given the data than other explanations.

> Nobody deserves anything. That implies some kind of cosmic force or entity that is keeping track of who does what and enforcing some kind of justice.

You’re right that it relies on a divine judge which is why there is a moral argument for the existence of God[1].

1. https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-ex...

Or, phrased differently: it's yet another reason why the teachings of modern religion, i.e. some are more deserving than others, is yet another piece of evidence they're a little questionable?

I do not understand how can anybody take seriously this simplistic dichtomic way of looking at world. It's like the only thing that you learned about abstractions/modeling is boolean logic and now off you go to proving there is supreme being that has properties you want it to have (like caring about you). What if the reality is really only probabilistic? Or just chaos all the way down with some general models only kinda working on top of that but only if you don't look hard enough?

Just taking this axiom into considetation : "Either the atheistic view of reality is correct or the "religious" one" - what if we live on a world where its true for some people and not true for others - lest say that some are selected by some random beings and they have "moral obligation" imposed and others were not so lucky and are left to themselves without any judgment waiting.

The opposite view also implies some sort of cosmic order, it implies that "deserving" is some type of natural, objective currency and that X work must be performed to achieve it.

But that's not how it is, "deserving happiness" or "deserving success" are self-defined thoughts.

Did I "deserve" to eat ice cream yesterday? Yes I did, because I decided that I did.

You're conflating these abstract concepts with a more scarcity mindset about whether you deserve a specific job or accolades or whatnot. If that's how you narrowly define your own success, then you yourself are deciding that you don't deserve it (assuming you're not realistically working towards that specific goal).

i dunno man, pessimists are losers.

> The idea that I "deserve" success, and to be happy, is something I've heard repeated many times but have always struggled comprehending. I think to myself, well, why do I deserve it? Just for being alive?

I get that. Some of it is because Success and Deserve are imprecisely defined - while I Deserve is declarative (and kind of precise). It makes the concept a weird fit.

Past that: I think the point of 'I Deserve Success' is to break the association between Deserve and Effort. I suspect you aren't sure those two things should be broken apart. *

As for what might work better for you: Considering whether or not you are welcoming of success when it arrives. If you aren't, Imposter Syndrome might be on the table. If you do welcome success, maybe you're already okay.

    * I know I'm hesitant to break Deserve and Effort apart. It's tied to my negative feelings about telling kids they're smart - because kids can't earn intelligence. I think the unearned elevation (here, anyway) skews expectations and makes learning harder

It’s some kind of self suggestion or fake it till you make it towards oneself. I myself think more in line with your reasoning and have trouble claiming that success unless there’s a lot of hard work involved or just a big dose of luck.

Perhaps success is not deserved, but with enough anxiety you somehow can miss important milestones and the feeling of progress. So you "deserve" to experience that by making and effort to live in the now.

author here:

yeah from 15-25 all of my successes were just 'this has to happen, if i fail, I'll just be poor and a fucking loser'

of course i got into college, i have to, my parents left china so i could be here of course i got a good job, i gave up so much of my childhood to try to get ahead. of course people think x, i gave up so much to have y.

at some point i realised this was just like... not a great way to live my life.

---

Nowadays i feel much better. Even if have coffee a friend, its like "wow im so grateful, my friends love me and spend time with me"

Its definitly woo woo self help, but again these are the lies i tell myself.

You're actually posing something close to a religious question; nobody has any way to organise shoulds and deserves and suchlike happen without a faith-based argument.

However, as a practical matter, most fields are stuffed with people who are either not or barely competent. If you focus on not making exactly 0 beginner mistakes then in my experience that is usually enough break into the top 10% of people and achieve success. Sometimes better than top 10% in uncompetitive fields. No competitive spirit or questions of merit required.

Although making no mistakes is quite challenging. Don't get worked up if things go wrong.

I'm right there with you. I struggle to make sense of it, but I've found those messages useful as a counterbalance to the messaging or received from a religious upbringing, "I don't deserve any good thing," and martyrdom "real, true believers^TM will suffer. "

It's also helpful escaping the American bootstraps mentality, "hard work will bring you success," and my personal corolary, "if you're not working hard/struggling/suffering, you aren't doing enough."

The thought that success and happiness could just be available to me and that's okay and I don't need to feel shame about it is a pretty radical message that helps to counter my earlier programming.

This is the correct way of looking at it. It's about how the thought contributes or hinders your own success/happiness.

If you were to find, empirically, that believing that you're not deserving of happiness is more likely to lead to happiness, by all means do that.

But to pose that it is an objective truth is more likely to be a justification for why you're unhappy.

I'm guessing you're imagining an entitled person sitting around and demanding things.

But the advice is targeted to the kind of people who would pass up a job offer they want because "I'm not clever enough", or break up with their girlfriend because "they deserve something better." It is useful for them to realize that they deserve good things to happen to them just as much as other people do, not inherently less.

It is unfortunately common for abusers to attack their victim's self-worth. "If not for me you wouldn't have any friends", "You should be grateful I'm taking care of you, you horrible child" so people grow up thinking that way.

> why do I deserve it? Just for being alive?

Yes. Every person deserves love and happiness, as a baseline. That doesn't mean that they automatically get it.

Because there's no real objective truth about it, it's just what you tell yourself.

If you think people only deserve success because they worked X amount, that's a thought formed by social norms and, most likely, what you were told and how you were treated by your carers when you were growing up.

The question is which of those beliefs will be more conductive towards actually achieving success and being happy?

Instead of trying to guess which is true on some abstract sense, adopt one or the other, and empirically live your life by it for a while, and see the results.

author here:

it takes time, after i hurt my hands from working too hard i basically lost all my equity at the company, i thought i'd never be able to make money again.

i tied most of my self worth to being able to make money. and when i realised i might not ever be able to code again it was a painful 2 years of really feeling worthless and being in pain everyday.

You just have to practice, try the inverted thinking!

a story:

I had this thought before of not want pets cause they do no "work". I grew up in rural china and so even a pet dog was really a "guard dog". when my ex wanted to get a tiny dog and i just thought " what a useless animal it does nothing". she basically said"the point is just to love it and be loved"

I still don't think i'd be ok with a useless pet like that, but i'm coming around to being able to accept that people do love things just on the basis of existing.

like... if people can love a 5 pound dog with a breathing problem, maybe I could just be loved too? maybe the people around me could just like me for being me. I dont have to claw at the acceptance.

But it starts with yourself, and being ok with loving others for just being alive and realising its possible and others are already doing it to you

---

theres also something partiarcial about it, but I'd recommend `the will to change by bell hooks`

Rather than looking for better ways to think, realize the limitation of thinking itself and observe for yourself how thoughts about your self-worth, what should or shouldn't be, and our obsession with constantly measuring and classifying others and our ourselves leads to so much wasted energy and misery in our lives.

Also notice that searching out "better" and "worse" ways of thinking are more of the same pattern. Thinking has its place, but it's more important to be aware of what's going on in our mind, rather than trying to use one fragment of thought to control other fragments.

In other words, don't feel the need to have a system of concepts about yourself. You are so much more than what can be expressed in language, no matter how sophisticated. Spend that energy becoming more aware of when you get trapped by thoughts of what should be vs. what is, and laugh when you realize how futile it is to try to think your way out of the problems that were created by thought in the first place.

The imposter syndrome comment straight up pissed me off and I immediately core dumped and killed the process, sorry. This “advice” (thanks at least for admitting you’re not qualified to give advice) was a very soft and ambiguous primer on being a bullshit artist.

Take it easy; dude is just sharing his own personal opinions on life. YMMV. No need to get all exercised about it.

What really caught my attention was the date format: 2024/06/01, YYYY/DD/MM. This is first time I'm ever seeing anything like this.

Really? It's very common to use YYYYDDMM. It sorts well numerically if you're wanting to group them even slightly.

Uh, WHAT?

How at all is YYYYDDMM better than YYYYMMDD? Is there any single advantage?

Yeah my bad. I thought it was YYYYMMDD.

YYYYMMDD sorts very well chronologically, but YYYYDDMM would only be useful in a very specific set of circumstances (generously speaking I can only really think of it being useful in cases where you have events that occur once a month on the same day, and for some reason it's more important to have those grouped together than to separate them by month).

I suspect you misread and mistyped, but if not, I'd be really interested to hear cases where YYYYDDMM is actually practically useful!

I thought it was YYYYMMDD. Woops.

It also caught my attention, presumably these are represented internally as files in numbered dirs - so in this instance you end up with a strange hierarchy where the day of the month you published has a higher precedence than the month. Which doesn't seem particularly valuable to me..

author here: i fucked up lol, but now the link is fixed so im scared to change it

> In the short term, you would be much happier if you accepted and admitted to yourself that the reason you don't have what you want is simply because you do not want it badly enough.

Lost me here lol

I felt uncomfortable reading this but found it hard to explain why. Weird thing is, I started out enjoying the article, but as I continued, I grew more and more uncomfortable. Curious, I scrolled back up to the link to his twitter. There is said “Social Media Influencer”. Was that it? Did I somehow feel that I was being influenced?

The worse the advice the more generic.

Generic advice sounds like: “to get good at golf … you really just need to hit the ball more. With the club.”

Nothing was said. Nothing objectionable. Mass audience can understand it.

That is roughly the quality of most advice.

The really good advice in my experience is never popular or even said out loud.

The really good advice would make you dislike the person saying it, usually.

Example: “if someone is doing something valuable but they are really bad at marketing, if you can get away with it, steal their idea and remarket it and go to market before they find out what you did.”

I have seen many people get rich doing that approach.

I have never seen anyone getting rich off of Naval threads.

Another piece of actual advice:

“If you want to get rich, form a private group chat with your friends and coordinate to fool the general public and trade insider information.”

Because that is what the rich people actually do.

Would you say that out loud? No, everyone would hate you if you did.

Or maybe …

“If you want to create a popular fitness channel, do a little steroids (you can take smaller amounts) and pretend you just exercise and eat the supplements you are selling a lot. And rent a lambo for $2K and stand in front of it for Instagram photos.”

“Go on shady websites and pay an engagement farm from India to like all your posts so you seem popular.”

All the shit that actually works and people actually do no one ever says out loud.

> “to get good at golf … you really just need to hit the ball more. With the club.”

On one hand, it sounds generic, shallow, and self- evident, but on the other hand this is basically how the entirety of the Tao Te Ching reads. It is possible that people find value in hearing things repeated to them that they likely already know.

I liked it. Seems like the author has spent a lot of time in self reflection. In particular the section about the cost of being a champion resonated with me. When I was younger I wanted to be the best at everything I did, and there is a high cost to that. Now I more or less just want a job that I mostly enjoy, allows me to do the hobbies I love and spend time with the people I care about. On many days that feels more than enough.

The statement "You make your own luck" is both true and false.

From a Psychological and Behavioral Perspective, the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy supports the idea.

From a Probabilistic Perspective, it's false as there are external factors you just can't influence.

If author’s parents didn’t immigrate to Canada, it would have been an uphill battle.

So not sure “you make your own luck” is true in this case.

Man yet another "tech guru" trying to start up his blind following by not actually saying anything worthwhile but wrapping it up as if it is.

People really feed off their desperation on "influencers" like these. Kinda sad.

Agreed. Also, I lived with him for a year and he left his Soylent containers all over the apartment floor. It was maddening.

Maybe my morning coffee didn't kick in yet, but where are the lies? Or why dismiss them as lies and then go on a "I've succeeded (or think I had) and this is what I think" monologue?

author here:

i think the idea there is that these are just the stories i tell myself to push me through the difficult parts of my life. I tell myself that i can choose happiness, and that am choosing to be good instead of great.

these could be lies! maybe I'll never be great, and this is cope.

Maybe i could work hard forever and never get better. Maybe there is talent and I'm convincing myself i could be an olympian but choosing not to be.

Hi folks, close (maybe even best?) friend of the author here for about 10 years. I agree, he is insufferable.

Happy to answer any questions about Jason I can, including what it was like to live with him for a couple of years.

Tell him HN can be full of self righteous "know-it-all"s so don't take the criticism to heart. If you are only joking tell him welcome to our corner of the intenet, he'd fit right in with the self righteous and know-it-alls :)

This is a wonderful blog. That is all.

This is nonsense from a child in a bubble of privilege. His family connections got him jobs, and he has the hopeful optimism of a an upper-middle class child living in a gated community and going to private school. Of course he "found luck," it's easy to come by when you have wealth and resources backing you.

He's just repeating a bunch of woo woo self help books, calling other people losers for being members of reality, and taking credit for what his family gave him outright.

I wonder, where did you get all that about privilege, upper-middle class, gated community, and private schools? Do you know the author personally? According to his bio at https://jxnl.github.io/blog/writing/2024/01/01/whoami/

> I was born in a village in China. My parents were the children of rural farmers who grew up during the Cultural Revolution. They were the first generation of their family to read and write, and also the first generation to leave the village.

> Growing up, I had always been interested in art and science. In high school, I went to a public art school and studied digital animation and design for 4 years. Then, in college, I went to Waterloo to study mathematical physics.

To me, it sounds like he was an ordinary 1.5 generation immigrant from a poor background, who happened to have some talent and very good luck (e.g. being an early hire at Facebook).

author here: Not early! I didn't even get stock... i lost most of my money when sfix fell rip

author here:

Not sure where you get this from.

I came to Canada in 1999 and my parents worked at a best buy and a mattress store for 10 years. And we rented someone's basement for the first 6 years. I moved out of my parents when I was 17, I paid for my college tuition myself through tech internships. After graduating college I had saved about ~1000$ and moved to SF to work my tech job.

I asked for my first pay cheque in advanced before I flew to the US so I could pay the deposit.

---

Its weird you say "members of reality" when you yourself are critiquing a phantom character in your own mind. Not sure where you are in life, but the older I get, the more I realize the woo woo self help its just the lies we tell yourselves to keep moving forward. Cause the absent of that work is even harder.

Get the help you need.

Hey,

I've been thinking about what you said, and I believe it has helped me gain some clarity about myself. I have written a response specifically for you, and I hope that as someone who is in touch with reality, you can sense the sincerity in my words.

https://jxnl.github.io/blog/writing/2024/01/09/self-loathing...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com