

Ask HN: How do you hack out of your last failure? - tathagatadg

I discovered HN a few months back probably in the most difficult phase of my life - professional failure, losing dad, in the country of my dreams where sadly nothing was going right for me. And reading HN has been therapeutic to say the least! My interaction with the community is primarily passive - I hardly comment on anything. But just reading the posts and comments - it gives me back makes me think, that its not only me. I've become aware that I do too much stupid shit that are tangential to the main project (just for the fun of it) - I was overdoing it to the point of not completing anything and trying to make everything perfect. I'm trying to change all that - but over the past year, I've stopped communicating with my old real world (brilliant &#38; never-failing) friends - just to avoid embarrassment. I now seek new groups (online) who would never judge me (doesn't this emphasize the terribly important use case for a pseudonym feature? lulz :D) ... Its difficult to keep smiling and all happy when Murphy's law takes control of your life. So how do you hack out of your last failure?
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sgentle
With failure, I think it's important to remember that the universe has no
continuity. In the grand scheme of things, there's no plan, no story - just a
sequence of events. If you flip a coin a million times and it comes up tails
every time, there's still a 50% chance the next will be heads.

The idea that you need to overcome failure is based on the fallacy that
failure makes success less attainable. That's a narrative you're building on
top of the disconnected events of reality. As long as you still have the
resources to think and to create, what does it matter whether things are
"going right?" Failure only lasts until you start your next project.

~~~
tathagatadg
Firstly, thank you for taking the time to read and providing such an wonderful
answer. I re-read it a number of times - and it just makes me feel a lot
lighter. Funny how we try to extrapolate from non-correlated events and
project an absolute image ... it went very deep man! Thanks :D

------
Mz
First, I will note that avoiding your old friends may be a good thing. People
tend to hang out with people similar to them. If the way you were then in some
way caused your failures, it might be for the best to leave the friends from
that era behind. (I'm some pathetic bleeding heart idealist with financial
problems who at some point realized all my close friends could be described
the same way. I decided I better start making new friends. Blaming the world
for not appreciating the importance of my ideals was not going to pay the
bills. Those people are no longer part of my inner circle. My finances have
been gradually improving.)

A couple of movies I like: "Beyond Rangoon" and "Citizen Jane". I am thinking
both are based on true stories. _Beyond Rangoon_ is basically about a woman
who had something really tragic happen to her, is mired in depression and then
travels someplace where people have much bigger problems and makes her peace
with her losses. _Citizen Jane_ is about a woman whose second husband robs her
blind and murders her beloved aunt for the woman's money and about her search
for justice. There is a very good scene where, after her house is foreclosed
on, a friend offers to let her live with them in their nice upscale house so
she doesn't have to move to some really crappy apartment. She replies "I got
myself into this mess and I will get myself out." I have some pretty big
problems I am working on resolving. It's a scene I think about often. I could
use assistance from somewhere in terms of figuring out how on earth to do
certain things but I really am not looking to be rescued. Getting rescued
won't give me the skills I need to have lifelong financial security. "Give a
man fish..." and all that.

Best of luck.

