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Comment by jebarker | Hacker News Reader

For me this has 100% been the main source of unhappiness in my life. I wish nobody had ever told me how smart I was as a child. The reality was that I was above average but in an unremarkable collection of kids mostly. I’ve done fine in life academically and career wise but I’ll never live up to the expectations that were planted in my head.

Thankfully you can get over this/yourself and let go of ego, ambition, achievement and all that unnecessary crap.

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What's interesting to me is how all of it is true. You were and are in an elite tier, the measure is purely how we care to slice it.

Reminds me of the aphorism "whether you think you can or can't, you're right." I find this saying really insightful and true. Others may find it flippant and void of any meaning.

The sports analogy of what you shared is: "there are levels to this". At any given level-child, minor, high-school, college, division of college, semi-pro, overseas, pro, olympian, elite-pro, champion- it seems legitimate that the praise is bound to the context.

And getting to the next level requires more growth and effort to think it's even possible. Maybe you won't, but whether you think you can or can't...

Just some thoughts.

This gets to the heart of why visualization works. When you’re conscious mind visualizes outcomes, around say work or sport performance or really anything, your subconscious mind can’t differentiate it from reality; the better you are at visualizing the harder it is for your subconscious mind to tell this. It is why visualization is such a powerful performance technique. Negative self talk is really bad for you.

This is more or less the basis of a lot of western esotericism and ceremonial magick. Consider it a weaponization of the placebo effect, or the closest thing to creatio ex nihilo one can personally experience. Dialogue with the purveyor of negative self-talk is another modality in this space.

The coolest thing about the placebo effect is that it works even if you know it’s a placebo so the more you believe in science the more you can pick some random bs and be like “This will help me because I think it will, and the placebo effect is real” And it will actually. fkn. work.

Your brain is just like: okay, it works, the conscious mind knows what it is talking about. <performs it works hormonal and mental response> lol

A great number of people believe they can when they can’t, the reverse is less frequent. Which is likely the outgrowth of saying to anyone “you can do it” being much easier and safer than a more realistic assessment.

Instead I like to say “that will be a lot of work” which is generally true, can help someone succeed by focusing on something productive, and even failure at the given goal often results in something positive. Hard work simply pays better dividends than dreaming about what comes after success.

Very true. Many comments in this overall post arrive at the nuanced stance that it's the effort that is key to focus on and relate. Everything else there is no way to connect to causality.

I want to add that "belief" in yourself, though as you say is rather a biased pathway, is still to me so essential and valuable. Because it is the thing that in some socioeconomic circles is taken for granted and in others is completely assumed in the reverse. So from a humanist perspective I'd rather people fall short of their dream than to never even be able to dream at all.

I guess I am saying it is the lived experience that counts. If you are blissfully naive then is it a better life? iono maybe! but that's reminds me of beautiful animals. And the difference between humans and animals, so far as we come to believe, is that we can choose to suffer. and understand happiness and in that be so utterly unhappy. hah

There is a HealthygamerGG video where he talks about gifted kids as special needs kids bc of this factor. I found it really enlightening. I definitely had to confront it in my own life.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QUjYy4Ksy1E

There is also one where he talks about how about half of his suicidal patients are not delusional and don't have some mood disorder, but are correctly recognising that their lives objectively aren't worth living.

(Which is something he tries to fix.)

How?

euthanasia, I assume

How can they give a life some worth to begin with?? That’s messed up.

I take it's the one about Congruent Depression?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDhqTf5eJH4

Same thing happened with me. By the time I was halfway through high school, everything was so boring I couldn't focus enough to actually do any work. Most days I would just skip class and I rarely did any homework at all.

The principal told by parents "we have nothing else to offer your child", so I dropped out and started working fulltime. As much as I know I should be advocating to stay in school, I don't regret it for one second. As soon as I turned 18 I already had enough money to move out on my own and never looked back. Never went back to school.

As far as work qualifications goes... writing software, I have always gotten work based on my experience alone, nobody that I actually wanted to work for ever cared about some piece of paper, only what I could do.

If people would not tell you how smart you are, you would blame your unhappiness on low esteem and on the lack of support in your childhood.

Which one would you prefer?

It's all postfactum explanation attempts, that create links that usually are not there.

Another, internally happier, positive and more cheerful person would be the exact opposite - would always find ways to spin things around for the positive.

It's all about the perspective.

"If people would not tell you how smart you are, you would blame your unhappiness on low esteem and on the lack of support in your childhood."

It depends how it was told. Being told "you are smart" vs. "you are the smartest kid" makes a big difference.

As is not saying anything about your smartness vs. being actively told that you are dumb.

Radical examples should be compared with each other, as should more balanced ones.

In both cases I would prefer to be told about being smart.

In a vacuum, self-confidence in kids is more useful than lack of it.

I think you’re right that I’m a negatively biased person, so the praise may have been received differently if I was a more positive person. However, the outcome of the praise was that I was never self-confident and had/have low self-esteem. I think what I received was closer to “you’re the smartest kid” and that set me up believing I was destined to be the _most_ successful adult even if I never felt capable of achieving that.

Do you honestly think that your self-esteem would be better if people around you would praise you less?

I think easier said than done. I was similarly labelled as "gifted" as a child and have struggled my entire life with being ok with where I was, in academics, career even romantic relationships.

Looking at what I've accomplished and obtained, they're objectively better than average along pretty much every dimension. But, I still struggle to be satisfied. I know this is a me issue, but I also don't know how to change it.

Have you tried therapy? For many people, it works.

Why not all?

There are a lot of mediocre therapists out there. And even if you do get a reasonably good one, they might not click with you in terms of personality/approach/cultural background.

I can definitely relate. If you find a solution, please ping me :)

I think most kids in this situation eventually hit a wall where things become difficult and being "smart" on its own is not enough. And people hit that at different age, maturity and availability of support. They need to transition to working hard and that is tough.

Yep, I’ve hit this a couple of times. I think it’s the reason I left academia at the end of my PhD - that was a way of escaping the discomfort of the required hard work. The second time was as my tech career progressed and my field (ML) grew. There was less low hanging fruit and more competition and the only way to continue was to work harder. That wasn’t until my late 30s though!

The reality as well is being smart 'enough' isn't truly all the rare. No matter how smart one is, there is always someone smarter. Thus, I believe it's important to value and cherish other abilities as well. For what is being smart worth without creativity, charisma, empathy, etc.?

Isn’t there a danger though of running into differences between oneself and others and concluding that the cause is oneself being “weird” and not the inherent difficulty of bridging the intelligence gap and correspondingly different ways of thinking? Like I could see a very bright kid ending up with low self esteem due to being different if they aren’t told that the differences may be due to their intelligence. Like someone with average intelligence may have difficulty understanding and modeling someone with two or more standard deviations above average intelligence, and all social groups are definitionally numerically weighted towards the mean and away from the edges so absent some filtering the very bright kids will be unusual.

Do you mean that there may be some harm in "hiding" from children their intelligence? I can see that maybe at early ages, but certainly they'll eventually catch on with grades and such? I don't know when different parts of personality manifest, maybe some child psychologist can chime in. But my hunch is that maybe not saying anything until grade 2-3 could potentially help. Above all, I think the key is to tell them that it's trying hard that leads to getting what you want. Obviously that's a bit of a lie, but I think acceptable until a later age.

> Above all, I think the key is to tell them that it's trying hard that leads to getting what you want

Totally agree. This is now the approach I’m taking with my 4 year old who is clearly quite bright.

Yeah that’s what I’m saying.

I don’t think grade 2 or 3 grades will paint the picture for them. Elementary school grades saturate quickly, there isn’t enough dynamic range. What IQ do you need to get perfect marks in elementary school? Sure, you’ll know you are above average, but the social experience for someone with a very high IQ is extremely different from someone with a slightly above average IQ.

I think the real problem is not providing enough challenge, so they get used to succeeding without trying and never learn the emotional side of trying and failing, until they can’t keep up anymore, which for really bright kids may not happen until they are basically adults.

If you praise for doing what they can do without trying, you get this problem. If you meet them at their level and actually challenge them from a young age, while also praising them for being clever, I suspect you won’t see this problem.

By analogy, is it harmful to tell a kid he’s naturally good at soccer, while providing the resources and coaching necessary to take advantage of the potential? I imagine the dynamics should be similar from the skill acquisition angle, the difference is just how the activity to perform is generated.

Lot of interesting views in this thread.

One thing I loved from Osho (spiritual guru) is the notion that everyone thinks they are "extraordinary" but actually the happiest person is the person who is ordinary. Being ordinary and just eating breakfast and sleeping and doing a job is - in fact - extraordinarily rare.

The same Osho who ran an expensive cult in the 70s and 80s?

Putting that aside, it's hard for me to associate simple with happiness. That's the opposite of motivation, from my unenlightened perspective. It's hardly a rational or smart choice since not being challenged also makes one a bit narrower when it comes to seeking out new experiences. But even if you take the intellect out of it, it 'feels' wrong. And some things are challenging to achieve and bring fulfillment.

If you haven't done so already, you should probably read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.

If you have read it already, you should probably read it again.

I used to really have a problem understanding why people hold peace as some ideal. It's not that i want violence, it's that if i expand on the idea of peace, I always end at "nothing". Like the idea of heaven, it's pure peace, it's… the lack of all these challenges and struggles and pains on so on. it's nothing! How does that even make sense to strive for a state of nothingness?!

This bothered me for so long until at some point, I just grew up. Peace is not nothing in the sense of null. It's nothing more in the sense of empty. I got this from some buddhist writing: emptiness is not the same as nothingness.

We are vessels and such. I found this tremendously helpful. Peace is like… space for being.

And so simple happiness, I'd say is not rudimentary, it's more like essential? The more I think on it, it's hard not to see the "core" happiness-es as quite profound. Like happy to exist. To experience each sense and such. I'd say that's quite amazing to get to that level of happiness. and we wouldn't call that "complex" happiness?

For me result brings fulfillment. Challenge is a problem, not something desirable.

Expectations are planted in you in school and linger for entire life? I don't remember anything like that. I was told how smart I am, but the exact citation is "don't solve all problems, let other kids solve some too". Maybe I was obedient and did what I'm told without asking for more pressure.

Well, we most likely went to different schools and had different parents.

Sounds familiar. I did fine in my career, but it never felt like enough and I missed a couple of major opportunities, so I'm not even sure how smart I was. Just high IQ, high test scores, yadda, yadda, yadda. Just wanted to really "kill it" just once, but so far no and now I'm 52.

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