
Ask HN: How do I stop caring about success? - 8af9461f4377
I feel that I am overly obsessed with success. Making money. Attaining prestigious degrees and working for the right companies. Having an understated Twitter bio with 200K followers.<p>I recognize that it is a flaw that mostly serves to make me feel needlessly inadequate, even though I know it has also done some good in my life. But it&#x27;s not exactly a switch that I can turn off.
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KZeillmann
From just what you've written, it seems that this has more to do with your
measure of success rather than success itself. You're looking for external
factors to validate your success - Twitter followers, salary, names of
companies on your resume. Ultimately, you have no control over whether someone
decides to follow you on Twitter, hires you, or offers you an awesome
salary/decides to invest in your startup. Sure, you can do all sorts of things
that will motivate others to do those things, but that's not ultimately in
your hands.

I think you would be better served if your measure of success came from
within. What do you want to do? What goals do you want to accomplish? Which of
those are in your power to do? I can make an awesome web app, but I can't make
someone buy a subscription to it.

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thefastlane
i can relate to what you're saying.

perhaps you have been listening to a certain set of messages, too loudly, for
too long (the media is good at doing that to us.). you'll have to address this
fact if you want to stop caring about external success. be honest with
yourself: do you really want a phd bad enough to sacrifice 5 years and put in
a lot of hard work? and sacrifice all the other things you won't do in those 5
years? maybe you do, maybe you don't, but it has to be something internal that
drives you ultimately.

replace all the inputs going into your brain with some good reads and a
journal to take notes in.

A couple good reads: \- Seneca. he talks about not worrying about what fortune
can give and take away, and to focus on things like virtues instead.

[http://stoics.com/seneca_essays_book_1.html](http://stoics.com/seneca_essays_book_1.html)

\- James Allen's "From Passion to Peace" \-- he explores the conflict between
passion vs aspiration

[http://james-allen.in1woord.nl/?text=from-passion-to-peace](http://james-
allen.in1woord.nl/?text=from-passion-to-peace)

And serious fiction is always great too: Hemingway, Raymond Carver.

Hemingway: "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true
nobility is being superior to your former self."

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gravypod
It's not a flaw. It's a drive. It should push you to better yourself and
others around you.

Don't fall into a slump, just continue to learn and create until you are that
successful.

