This makes the wrong assumption that happiness comes with success. Success doesn’t bring happiness. If anything, being happy in the first place is what gives you a better chance at achieving success.
Success is surprisingly fun. However, allow me to make a distinction. For a lot of people instead of wishing to do something, they wish to have done something. So for example, they may say that they wish to make a lot of money, but actually they want to have made a lot of money. The idea in their head is lounging on the beach with cute waiting staff at their beck and call. However the thing they end up doing is working themselves to the bone making money. It's really important when you set goals for yourself that you understand the distinction. Personally, mostly avoid going after goals in the shape of "to have done something" and rather go after goals of "to do something". If I don't like studying Japanese, then I don't do it and I don't have a goal to have learned Japanese. If I don't like running I don't do it and I don't have a goal to have run a marathon. And if I don't like doing what it takes to make a lot of money, I don't have a goal to have made a lot of money. Those kinds of things are in our ability to choose.
The other strange thing that I found for myself (and I think it's different for different people) is that "goals to have done something" are just not satisfying for me. I get no pleasure from having achieved anything. I only get pleasure achieving things. I love being successful. I'm completely neutral about having been successful.
For me, being successful really truly brings me happiness. I therefore choose to do things where I will likely be successful in a sustainable way.
Reminds me of a career limiting move I made at my first job. I was a rising star and got head hunted to be the first member on a new team for a critical project. I took the opportunity because it had a higher potential for career growth, but I ended up leaving the company.
I considered my manager an egotistical jerk; he even called our 1:1s lessons. He told me that any part of my personality that didn’t line up with what the company would score on a Meyers Briggs was a problem. A senior engineer decided he was my mentor but constantly put me down. My team dangled the promise of a promotion if I could the job at my level and fulfill the job description of an open headcount two levels above me. I worked overnight every Tuesday sleeping only 4 hrs on my couch. I was miserable and in the end they said I couldn’t be promoted because the work I had was already stressing me out too much (I gave notice between reviews being finalized and revealed to make it clear this wasn’t a tantrum over my review)
My takeaway: it doesn’t matter what the maximum possible achievement is in a job; you’ll only rise if you can enjoy it. Successful people aren’t happy; happy people are successful.
I would refine this a bit; happy people define their success through internal metrics. Don't let other decide what success means to you.
Employers try to convince you that your success is correlated with what they want to do, but it is not the case. They are paying you to do your job and that's all.
Ads try to convince you that success depends on purchasing their stuff, but it is not the case. There is always more stuff to buy. In fact it might hinder your success if it puts you in debt or prevents you from becoming financially independent.
Parents often try to convince you that success depends on the agenda they created for you.
Fuck all of this. Success is what you decide it is.
If you like to write software, work on becoming a better developer. The market being as it is, the workplace success is then a side-effect.
Obviously all of this is a bit simplified but not being pushed around helps a lot for being happy I find.
> But among the things readiest to thy hand to which thou shalt turn, let there be these, which are two. One is that things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within. The other is that all these things, which thou seest, change immediately and will no longer be; and constantly bear in mind how many of these changes thou hast already witnessed. The universe is transformation: life is opinion.
> Successful people aren’t happy; happy people are successful.
In fact, many successful people with strong drive, very competitive etc. are deep down continuously unhappy. I mean, happy competitive person is a textbook oxymoron. At least that's how people I know with this trait are - always looking up to somebody faster, better, richer and not stopping and enjoying the moment.
> Isn't 'success' a form of comparison? How do you quantify success?
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language gives the two meanings
- The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted.
- The gaining of fame or prosperity.
of which the first one is entirely void of comparison. Your biggest desire is to live in a nice house in the country side with a wife and two kids? If you achieved that, congratulations, you are successful!
"Don't be mad 'cause I'm doin me better than you doin you" - Childish Gambino
Figure out what that means for you, and you'll be successful. That's my theory anyway. The amount that I believe that theory varies from day to day, but I use it as a mantra to keep me level.
Even in day to day life, in my personal experience, being happy results in a creative, productive day full of happy curiosity in which I get a lot done and plan a lot of things to do in the future. Presumably that's the kind of day that builds to material success (if it's not what 'success' in itself looks like).
This is a very important distinction to make. Success is external: it is a certain set of arrangements in your exterior circumstances. Happiness is internal: it is a certain state of your mind and your emotions.
Because success is external, it is not fully within your control. For example, your environment, other people, your physical circumstances all have an impact. It does not have a definition - it can literally mean whatever you want it to be.
Because happiness is internal it is fully within your control. If you have control over your mind and emotions you can be happy in an instant, if you consciously chose to do so.
And if you are happy, then success becomes easier as you are free to use your mind to identify what you want and the things that you need to do to get that.
I agree with your overall point. However, I think that there's also a sense in which to many people it is important to be able to succeed even if the success itself isn't important. It's the classic "got something to prove" situation. I think that in many cases the process of proving themselves brings happiness.
It reminds me of a quote I remember from an old article on T-Nation that goes something like "Its true that the majority of bodybuilders started due to some insecurity. However, its probably a lot healthier than the way that most people deal with their insecurity".
I think happiness comes most from acceptance, and then from having good company and people that care for you. Like you say, success is orthogonal, in fact, I think it's mostly unrelated.
It also makes some horrific assumptions about 'success', borrowed unthinkingly from one narrow strand of contemporary hyper-consumerist crap culture. I certainly wouldn't call Kroc nor Sanders 'successful'.
That was my thought, what does "successful" mean if not "being happy". Someone living comfortably and loving every day is more "successful" than someone stressed out and crying on their private cruise liner.
Posts like these give me some hope. I am 37 and lost. The work and career which once brought pleasure now seems drudgery. The daily morning battle is: "Is it worth it?". There is no answer to the question.
Are you really lost if you can recognize you're lost?
I always figure the point of spiritual malaise and existential wandering is to prune away the false hopes and beliefs that keep us mildly entertained and encourage us to seek out eternal hopes that provide daily rejuvenation. Ecclesiastes is always a comforting read whenever I feel that way:
Feeling quite similar and only a little bit younger than you. I just rediscovered LessWrong (because of Pokemon fanfiction) and I think it might be worth for you to have a look at the Hammertime series: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/qRxTKm7DAftSuTGvj
LessWrong has it's problems, like lots of jargon, but this series seems like good tool to clean up life a bit. Especially I recommend having look at the Aversion factoring and Goal factoring, those two seem to be the most useful ones to deal with having lost some kind of "life purpose". Though I have to admit I still haven't found my solution, so take my post with a grain of salt. But at least I feel like I'm working on it in the right direction.
You listen for the small voice inside of you that knows what it wants, you protect it from all the other voices inside of you that will shout at it for being unrealistic, or selfish, or naive, etc. And you follow as best you can...
1. I am getting older and not doing anything remotely impactful.
2. People half my age know all the programming I know. I don't bring anything special to the table.
3. Is this what life is all about?
Now, I don't say the problem is with the world. Something could be wrong with me. But damned if I know.
I have nothing to do with this thread, but felt like answering anyway...
1. Very few people leave a legacy. The people that do often didn't do it deliberately or intentionally.
2. They don't. There might be a few people half your age that know as much about programming as you do, but the majority don't. In any case, you are the worst person to judge what special thing you bring to the table. Go and ask one of these young people that you fear / respect / admire / think are knowledgeable and ask them to tell you what value you bring. The answer will surprise you.
3. A lot of people have pondered the meaning of life. Opinions differ on whether we've made any progress on that question. It's OK to go on a journey of "spiritual discovery" at 37; it doesn't require heading overseas to a monastery.
Thanks for your reply. I would love to take a break and explore the spiritual side of me, but it would need too much of rearranging my life and it may not be worth it. As such I am scared of drastic change, this would just add to the anxiety. Anything I can do with my current flow of life?
I feel compelled to answer here, mostly because I've been and to a degree still are where you are.
It's extremely common to gradually move into a state of mind where you denigrate yourself – and the effort you've put forth in life. You need to ensure your own happiness, and no one in here, or anywhere else, can tell you how to do that. Mindfulness is a great tool, because it allows you to become more certain of yourself. To discover what it is that you feel and where it is you need to go.
That being said, here's what works for me: Acknowledging that creation is hard, but that I love creating and helping people around me. That family is important and love even more so. I also remind myself to do something new every day that somehow moves the boundary of what it means to be me.
Added note: A book that also helped me realise my own tendency to create barriers around myself was "The Flinch" by Julien Smith. It's awesome and I highly recommend giving it a read – and practice some of what it champions. I suspect you will gain a lot from it, but then again: Only you can know that.
Check out The Power Of Now audiobook. As soon as you realize you are not living in the present moment, all of a sudden you are living in the present moment. It’s hard while coding. But stepping back even if you have to set a timer every few minutes to fully feel your body could help. Also, getting and staying in the flow state is very similar. That’s a worthy goal to start with. Hope that helps.
Not all impact needs to be at-scale. Perhaps you can make a difference outside of work, and/or at a local or individual level? While the systems crowd that congregates on HN may discount this kind of "last mile" effort, it can be deeply fulfilling (we are social animals after all) and have life-altering positive effects on recipients.
I don't know if that speaks to your situation at all. Either way, I wish you (individually) self-understanding and happiness. ^__^
What has helped me is talking in person to someone who is close. Realized that sometimes I just need to vent my inner confusion and at other times I need them to shake me because I am living too much in my head.
Over time, I realized that this situation occurs because there's something that I must/need to do but I am procrastinating. That surfaces as anxiety and my mind ends up "translating" it into a spiritual discussion - all in my head - with questions like "is this life", "is this all"?
There's nothing wrong with you - I'm guessing you just had, like most of us, a fantasy about shaking up the world somehow. Time to give up on the fantasy and engage with your actual real life instead
Good god this is awful advice. There are plenty of people that have made their only great contributions to humanity in advanced age (not that late 30s is even remotely advanced). If you gave up on dreams, fine; but don't go on encouraging others to do the same just because you lack the drive and became complacent with giving up.
Moreover, there are so many things that need doing that are plenty impactful and just require discipline to do it frequently; that you never bothered to think of other ways to make an impact shouldn't mean you should dissuade others from finding out new ways to make an impact.
Lastly, there is precisely zero evidence that you get another shot at life so it's grossly irresponsible to push people into thinking that their dreams and their real life should be readjusted into some bullshit dichotomy of fantasy vs real life.
(I have heard people in their early 20s giving this same advice; Good god could you imagine the world if people stopped following their dreams so early in life)
(I was a C/D student in STEM subjects by the end of high school. I can't imagine what my life would be like if I didn't kick it into overdrive, thereby managing to get involved with some of the most prolific scientists on this planet and getting my name on a few papers; actually I can imagine, I would have blown my brains out because my life was incredibly miserable up until then)
I'm surprised at the vehemence of your reaction, and don't really know where to begin responding, so I'll just pick out this sentence:
"Good god could you imagine the world if people stopped following their dreams so early in life"
I imagine it would be indistinguishable from the way it is now. I don't see that the world is built on "great contributions to humanity", just the slow layering of knowledge upon knowledge.
I'm glad you made yourself happier by applying yourself more diligently to your studies when you were in school, but "try harder" is not a helpful response to the parent comment. Almost none of us make any impact beyond our immediate social circle, and even if you do that impact will very quickly become indistinguishable from noise. You don't need to accept that, but it's true, and if you do accept it your life will be better
“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world.”
If you are in your mid 40s you are not going to become great at something new to you (painting, quantum physics, chess, programming, etc etc). It is nice to dream of that, but it does not happen.
You might become decent and contribute to society in your new skill but that's different.
Who are those people who have made a single great contribution at an advanced age (let's say past 50)?
The few that I can think of (like that obscure mathematician who didn't get tenure and did his research alone) labored in their calling starting in their 20s at the latest.
The one exception could be business success which indeed is possible even at a very late age(Colonel Sanders etc)
>The one exception could be business success which indeed is possible even at a very late age
Business success and greatly contributing to the society in the way that most people dream of aren't mutually exclusive. You might not be the kind of person with a PhD who made a scientific breakthrough and finally developed a great self-driving car, but if you created a business that managed to achieve that same thing, I see no reason why it wouldn't count.
> There's nothing wrong with you - I'm guessing you just had, like most of us, a fantasy about shaking up the world somehow.
That's a very interesting statement. Almost all people I know here in Poland, including myself, dream of having a life devoid of external pain, obligations, limitations etc., so that you can do whatever they choose to do. Rarely if ever anyone mentions anything about wanting to have a greater impact.
Maybe that's the next step of rich consumer society that US is at and that Poland hasn't reached yet - one in which people are aware that living (surviving in relative comfort) is easy, so they need to raise the bar for themselves somehow or they'll get depressed over the lack of challenges.
Or maybe it's just a cultural difference? American society is very much a culture of doers, while Polish is not. There are societies even richer than American, for example the Quatari, where people seem just content to mostly do not do anything particularly ambitious and just hang out.
Ah, that's different then. However, even among "us", I think there's a pretty big split among those who want to have an impact (which sometimes goes hand in hand with wanting to "be the kind of person who is impactful", i.e. being ego driven) and those who just want to learn and do things for its own sake. The Jobses and the Wozes if you will.
I had the naive, wide-eyed, ideal belief in my younger years. There are still sometimes spurts of excitement to change the world. But I have grounded myself and accepted that I may never have a bigger impact than my immediate surroundings. I gave up on the fantasy years back.
"...demanding excellence in all that we do ...steals from us one of life’s greatest rewards — the simple pleasure of doing something you merely, but truly, enjoy"
Okay, sure, but: many physical attributes, social perceptions, and pervasive mental habits probably do become increasingly solidified, even if fatalism about it is counterproductive. Sure, there's plenty of late bloomers, but how many of them do you get from a broken late starting point, and how many do you get from people who worked slowly and methodically and did the right slow things earlier on, taking care of their minds, bodies, social connections, growing their resources, gaining experiences, broadening and/or fine-tuning their abilities, and so on? Do fit/rich/popular/etc. 35-year-olds regularly get there from a truly broken (including internally!) state at 31, or is it more that they actually took all the advice about regular exercise/investing/graciousness/etc. back when they were 25, kept taking it, and maybe despaired in the moment about it not seeming to work while actually stacking up tons of invisible long-term bonuses?
I'm trying to come off about a decade of poor habits myself, due to a number of factors which are undoubtedly my responsibility but which it's not clear whether I could have realistically avoided. I've had some minor successes but have never really stabilized so far, including in all the little things like the above. I don't usually see this case handled clearly in the “it's okay to be a late bloomer!” inspiration crowd. (More personally, it doesn't help that the things I most want to do in life probably require being exceptional in specific ways that I'm not sure I can predict in advance and not just “successful” in a generic sort of way, and beyond a certain limited extent, I don't consider the wanting-what-I-have approach to be a viable one (except insofar as having that attitude on the face of things may make it more likely to reach my original desires anyway).)
I'm trying to convince myself to try anyway and it's hellishly difficult.
If that worked enough of the time, articles like the OP wouldn't get written much. Emotionally speaking, giving up is actually a pretty sticky idea! The potential for putting a pile of effort in, finding it wasn't really enough, and being confronted afterward with all the things you did wrong with no chance to correct them now is paralyzing; it's “safer” in a way to not try, never know, and only experience the one, easily-dampened gnawing failure of having wandered off the path, rather than having a hundred different failures confirmed through hard work and inadequacy. I think a lot of people experience this in at least some areas of life, and it's a big source of deciding to lowball, or of blaming the environment (which isn't always factually false, but I'm referring to the emotional interpretation) or making various rationalizations surrounding “talent” or whatnot.
So cognitively I know that's a common problem with an obvious answer, but it doesn't mean I can just skip to the end without convincing the rest of me.
Our short attention spans keep giving us new chances, though. If you decide to give up, you can't just do it once (okay, you can, but please don't)-- you have to keep deciding to give up every day. Eventually you realize you're going to need to give up on giving up, at least some of the time.
However, I know what you mean quite fully. I've given up on everything from academic hopes, to artistic dreams, to multiple types of fantasies I was taught were real as a child, to career possibilities and more. Learning to rest in the knowledge that someone out there is already doing whatever cool stuff I could've done, better than I could've done it - and training myself to be mildly comforted by this - has brought me no small amount of peace.
Sentient existence is weird and hard. Giving up is an important life skill.
Thus “know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em”.
Which still isn't good to use as an excuse for fatalism, of course. “Knowing when” may be superficially similar to giving up out of raw emotional weakness, but it's not the same underneath at all.
At a very low point of my life, I read a book that had an idea that tickled me out of it.
In the first few pages the protagonist decides to end their own life. He is absolutely committed to ending it. Once the decision was made he realized that there is no longer any significant consequences to anything. So he will do whatever he wants until he eventually kills himself. In the end the adventure he went on helped him realize that there is something to life and he backed off.
Giving up can be freeing. It is a declaration of emotional bankruptcy.
The society will not like your attitude; expect to experience continuous peer pressure. Nearly everyone is hard-coded with the unconditional "never give up", "hope dies last" and so on. The common arguments "might as well make the best out of it", together with the anti-suicidal "if you are going to die, sell everything and give your life another chance", I find annoying. All attempts require efforts. Sometimes you know in advance that a reward will not justify an effort, sometimes it's a giant gamble of many years and you decide not to take the risk. I don't want to put an unbearable burden onto myself only to end up regretting it in the end, where I will know that I inflicted the pain of all efforts and the pain of the final defeat with my own hands. When you know that you could've idled while being sufficiently content and happy with your "unsuccessful" level, but you succumbed to momentary inebriation of inspiration and drove yourself into a trap where you are not happy with your prospects, but you don't want to give up because you already invested much efforts. Because of their inexhaustible fountain of optimism people tend to ignore that efforts are unpleasant, and one cannot sign oneself up to a giant contract of work just because muh "might as well make the best out of it".
> The society will not like your attitude; expect to experience continuous peer pressure. Nearly everyone is hard-coded with the unconditional "never give up", "hope dies last" and so on.
This is only true in US and perhaps a handful of other countries. In most of the world, society tells you to NOT follow your dreams, as they know from experience that this will usually end badly for both you and those close to you. I.e. even if you want to be a painter, your family in India or Eastern Europe will work very hard at convincing you to become a doctor, an engineer or something else "safe". They do it for your own sake (only minority of art students make it and are satisfied with their careers) and also for their own - it's no fun supporting a grown-up son/daughter that is a financially struggling and possibly depressed.
Hi You sound naturally ambitious but scared of failure because of the perfectionism. This might seem very off-topic but "helping others" seems to have a strange but good effect on this psychological debuff. I am not going to try and explain it, probably something along the lines of realising there are people who are even worse combined with the natural social programming to feel good when you help the group. That combo seems to help overcome fear. Build something because you care about the people who will benefit from it and it will bring them joy. Also consider that maybe the other guy doing it better than you prices it out of the reach of people who need it? Your unique contribution to society is still sorely needed by many, many people.
Success isn't the best possible outcome vs worst possible outcome scenario you're describing. I made a decision at 30 to improve my life and three years later I'm reaping benefits.
Consider an obese man looking at a fitness model and saying "I want to look like that". He might never reach it but if he loses weight and becomes fitter and healthier then his effort paid off. He might think he failed but he's landed in a better position. I often remind myself that when I'm doing something I don't want to that I'm paying it forward to a future version of me.
Intellectually, I understand that much of the success of my peers of which I'm envious, has nothing to do with my abilities, per se, but more to do with luck and personality differences. I am who I am, and that affects the probabilities of who I meet and when, and what opportunities I'm willing to chase when they arise. I know this, and realize the, primarily, financial success of my peers does not imply that I'm a failure. But. It sure feels like I'm a failure. Mostly because of the expectation that I was supposed to succeed sooner.
But, as the article states, I do try to remember to compare my current self to my past self instead. When I do that, I can objectively see great life improvements and milestones achieved. Just not at the same times as others I know.
I have to constantly remind myself all the time of the sort of advice found in this article: to realize just how far I've come on my own journey, and that the journey is far from over.
Have you ever seen the kind of backgrounds people who are frequently lauded in the media for being successful early come from? Most had some luxuries that you probably did not - wealthy parents, extensive training in their chosen field, etc.
It's not always about talent. Knowing that your parents have millions allows you to think in a way someone struggling to pay rent can't.
I wasn't able to think long-term and actually build something until I hit my late 20s. Until then, I couldn't think past the short-term goal of just making money.
That is very true. I grew up relatively poor (we were the kids with literal holes in our shoes going to school, free lunch program, etc), and didn't get my first computer till I was 26. I didn't get it till I was 26 not because I couldn't afford it (I was the first in my extended family to go to college, and I got a physics degree), but because I was so used to not buying/having things cause that's how I grew up. When I was 26, I had already been working for a few years (left grad school to work full time), and was like, wait, I could totally buy my own cool stuff now.
I can relate to that, too- I'm intellectually smart, but socially awkward, which kinda stinks- I say the wrong things, goof up, and mess up wording often.
For me, what works is to stop worrying about what others say- so what if I misspeak and call an end effector an "endofactor" once in a presentation if it's spelled properly on screen?
Now that I've written the above I realize that I'm best when I prepare as much as I can.
I've learned to lean heavily in to my nerdiness. I have just learned to accept it's who I am, and if that means I am not the dude who goes out after work for drinks (for various reasons), then that is the way it is (lots of relationships are formed there). I tend not to go out of my way to 'network', and have missed opportunities as a result, but it really just isn't me. I've forced myself on occasion to be better at it, but even after many years, it has not gotten deeply into me enough to become a habit.
Here's an example.
I'm very introverted, and was at a company outing many years ago. Myself and another dev who started at the same time at the company as me (a startup in Seattle) found ourselves sitting at a table with the investors of the company. I'm not one for idle chit chat, and really had no burning questions to ask them, so I talked to them very little. They asked very little of me as well. But, the other dev sitting with us was super outgoing and extremely socially engaging. He peppered the investors with questions and eventually they really opened up to him. Over the next year, he continued this at every company event they attended. Then they started inviting him to social events at their houses. Over time, one thing led to another, and he eventually ended up starting a new company with the investors and left our company. I heard he ended up selling the new company for some $$$.
There were lots of lucky breaks along the way I'm sure, but the point is, I compared myself to him and felt like a failure. But, the reality is, I am just not like that guy, and though he achieved financial success, it is entirely possible that he may not have. I ignore the other equally socially engaging folks I knew at the same time who did NOT end up starting and selling a company.
I am not that guy, and he is not me. My only true comparison is my past self. And compared to that guy, I'm doing pretty damn well.
Don't compare yourself to others, compare yourself to yourself yesterday, last week, last month, last year. I don't know where this saying comes from, but to me, it's the only motivational saying that matters.
That might work for some people, especially in the phase of life where things are on the upswing. But when you get to be 60 or 70, it is important to find satisfaction in other ways too, since for the great majority of people, comparing to what you used to be capable of will lead to a bad outcome.
In retirement many people have to face the question for the first time, "Who am I?" Before retirement it was easy to answer the thought with your job description, but really that is what you do, not who you are.
I think it would be beneficial to ask questions like that before getting to retirement so the transition isn't so jarring, and you might find it causes you to reevaluate your priorities. "Does what I do make the world better, or does it just make a paycheck?" "Will what I do make a difference after I'm gone?" "Who would care if I disappeared tomorrow?" "When I'm on my death bed, what will I regret having done? Not done?" etc These questions don't have to result in an all-consuming angst, but it is important to think about them at least a bit every once in a while.
Life is a zero-sum game. Give your full attention to whatever it is that you are doing at the moment - mopping the floor or solving partial differential equations. Live.
Aside of success != happiness - I really do NOT know what I'm supposed to do. I'm in corporate world since 2005, I'm doing OK, but not great and I'm dreaming of success, which to me means:
1. work for myself, not for any company - that's hard to start because of mortgage and kids which are taking 90% of my free time
2. Earn around the same money I have now
3. Have something that can grow, doesn't have to be fast growing, just a bit quicker than inflation.
Feels like what you need to do is to work on creating a safety net for yourself so that you can take a risk when the time comes and you can take a short term pay cut without impacting on your family's lifestyle. View this as part of the longer term project.
So, instead of thinking 'how do I make as much money working for myself as I do now', think about building up savings and investments so that in future you can afford to take a pay cut without cutting your lifestyle too much. Try to limit the inevitable lifestyle creep if you get pay rises or promotions so you are saving more than you spend of the increase.
Then focus on broadening your network in the job you are doing at the moment. This might or might not be helpful in your future endeavours but again it gives you a better safety net - so that if it doesn't work out then you are morel likely to be able to quickly get a job to fall back on.
Finally, assuming you're not a single parent, could your partner step up more if the need arose financially? Are there things you could do to improve the value of that safety net?
Mixed feelings on this post. I like the author's insistence on late success being something worthy of striving for, but there's still a significant amount of bitterness in the form of "oh look at those poor souls with early success, it destroyed their life, good thing we're not like that huh" which is a toxic way to feel good/inspired.
As a Hindu who believes in reincarnation, it gives me a sort of patience that certain things may not be possible for me this lifetime, and that's ok. It doesn't make me try for any less, but I am less attached to the outcome.
Same here. I am not really a Buddhist and don't really believe in reincarnation but it still gives me a sense of peace that maybe this life is not really that important. rationally it doesn't make sense but it gives me peace.
That’s all well and good but I don’t see how having confidence will help. When you’re sitting in an interview being questioned why you’re 40 applying for an entry level position are you supposed to explain that they’re wrong for asking? Success is a function of social status and higher class people don’t have the setbacks you find on poor people’s resumes. You can waste years studying to be a software engineer and end up unemployed because you’re too old.
Language question as non-native speaker: (M-W) dictionary definition of "success" refers to "succeed" which goes..
"1a : to come next after another in office or position or in possession of an estate especially : to inherit sovereignty, rank, or title " and
"2a : to turn out well, b : to attain a desired object or end "
When people use the word to mean securing a good position in a corporation, are they consciously using the 1a definition?
In casual use I always thought it's just a practical word to mean whether you attained your goal in a specific contextz, so general "success" should naturally mean whether you are content with your life.
It's usually meaning 2, but “success” as applied to life can refer by contextual metonymy to success in any number of areas of life, so securing a good position in a corporation can be considered a particular form of success. Career-oriented advice shows up a lot on HN, in which career-focused successes are likely to come up as central examples of the idea of life success, even though they aren't necessarily a representative class of all successes.
The more common usage is 2a/b, as you point out. I believe "success" is specifically derived from this meaning of "succeed", not 1a. Typically, securing a position in a company is still in the sense of definition 2a/b.
As far as I know, the definition 1a is unrelated and specifically meant to describe sequence relations, usually for positions of power. For example, "Trump succeeded Obama as president" means Trump became president after Obama. Related words are "succession" (e.g., "succession of the throne" refers to the process of transferring power in a monarchy), "successor" (e.g., the successor function in mathematics takes an integer n and returns n+1), and "precede" (the antonym of "succeed").
For those that say success != happiness, I'm on your side but... know your worth, don't let others leech off your work, not give you adequate pay, or dangle promises of a promotion for years on end. It's one thing to like what you do and be happy doing it and it's another thing to be successful. It is my opinion that people will bank off your talents if you let them and I think that that will eventually make any person unhappy and possibly kill your drive for doing what you like.
I don't believe everyone's definition of success and happiness is the same. Some people feel successful with simple achievements where others need large achievements to meet their goal of success. It's a similar situation with happiness which is achieved with considerable variability between individuals.
Bukowski isn't the best example because while he became successful late in life, he'd been working on his craft for decades earlier. He didn't take up writing at 50; he just started getting published at 50. He already had decades of experience.
If Bukowski had never written a thing until he was 45, then it would make sense
He wrote of being refused by publishers when he was younger. It was his perseverance that brought him through. He never gave up on writing or drinking.
Ray Kroc was already a successful salesman by most ordinary standards, and then became extraordinarily successful. Walter White narrowly missed out on a place as a co-founder of a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company. Neither is really a late bloomer.
