
Ask HN: Is it possible to escape mediocrity? - athrowaway12e7
Yes, I know: old, cliché crisis, but I&#x27;ve been bothered recently. I have no friends anymore, and limited contact with my family, with a rough past with them as well. It&#x27;s been this way for a few years, and I really don&#x27;t see anything changing anytime soon. Given this, I&#x27;ve always considered that the one facet of life I could succeed in was career. Ofc, this hasn&#x27;t been the case. I&#x27;m probably a below average software developer, not terrible, or anywhere near the horror stories you might read about online, but not very good either. I&#x27;m not great at the business side of things either. (perhaps I bit better than many of the <i>good</i> engineer&#x27;s I&#x27;ve met, but not remotely near good enough to be successful there). I don&#x27;t believe I&#x27;m stupid, but I believe, I&#x27;m not innately smart enough to go where I want to go and that&#x27;s frustrating. I feel slightly guilty though, because I&#x27;m in a better place than [probably most people around me and at my young age am much better off than any of my family before me, but I&#x27;m not happy. I basically go to work to work on things I don&#x27;t care about &#x2F; am bored by, only to reach the weekend and do absolutely nothing by myself in my apartment. and if this is going to be my life for the next several decades, I don&#x27;t want it. I know that many people would kill for that, but idk.
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yesenadam
>much better off than any of my family before me

How so? I doubt it. That sounds like a terrible life, with no enjoyment in it
of any kind. A life worth living doesn't build itself! Really sounds like you
are torturing yourself. Being very mean to yourself. It's easy to do - we
aren't taught that _you_ are someone in your life you have to be kind to, the
most important person in fact, as it's virtually impossible to love others
while being so mean to yourself. I had to learn about _loving myself_. _Treat
yourself like you would treat someone you really love_.

Imagine someone you really really love, then you forcing them to live how you
are living. Doing a job they hate, no friends or family visits, not involved
in anything, no joy or pleasure in life.. It would be obvious that it's a very
cruel way to treat someone, amounting to torture. People don't enjoy those
things, or being deprived of so many things. What things do people enjoy?
Imagine a rich, fulfilling life, and work on giving that to the person you
love - yourself.

Self-help books helped me a lot with this stuff. They're the main thing that
helped, I guess, apart from being directly inspired by other people and
inspiring books. Everyone has their own favourites, but some that helped me -
SARK's first half-dozen books, Paul Kurtz _Exuberance_ , Carol Lloyd _Creating
a Life Worth Living_ , Joanna Field/Marion Milner's books starting with _A
Life of One 's Own_, Richard Bach books, Austin Kleon books, _Zen and the Art
of Making a Living_ , Tristine Rainer _The New Diary_ , Ben Zander _The Art of
Possibility_ , Gracian's _The Art of Wordly Wisdom_. Montaigne. Plutarch.
Emerson. Susan Faludi's _Stiffed_ may help you understand yourself, your
world, your work, your life better than any of these. Good luck!

 _To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance._ – Oscar Wilde

