Social media: because people curate everything and only post things that make their lives look amazing. Real life isn't a constant string of wins, success, and happiness. Don't let it distort your view and wonder why your life isn't the same.
Startup news: TechCrunch, Recode, Bus. Insider, and even here on HN. Post after post about YC, funding rounds, growth, and–of course–big exits. Its easy to find them but the truth is, they are outlier events. If a big startup exit is something you want–fine, by all means go for it–but don't let any article fool you into thinking its easy or guaranteed if you follow some formula. It's not. Startups are hard. There is no guarantee of success because some things are beyond your control.
Success celebrities: avoid videos, podcasts, ebooks, and online courses from celebrity entrepreneurs. These are people who have had moderate success with a blog/vlog/startup/book/whatever and now want to teach everyone else how to do it. Truth is, they just want to take your money and time. The only thing you might learn is how to be just like them (yuck).
Hope that helps. Lots of other good advice here. Find other things to put your energy into and good luck!
Decreasing the amount of time I spent on social media has increased the quality of my life by at least 10 times. Before I used to feel intimidated going to the gym, posting on my tech blog, simply because everyone else was just doing it better than myself or at least I believed so and cared. When I went on to actually do and enjoy things, I noticed how everything is so imperfect and how in essence I do not care about others. It may sound funny, but that brought back the smell of roses. Another important side-effect was an increase in amount of in-person interaction with the people I wanted to interact.
Slightly off-topic. When you mentioned success celebreneurs I couldn't help but remember the famous Tai Lopez video - "Here in my garage, just bought this new Lamborghini here.. You know what I like a lot more than materialistic things? Knawledge".
Tai Lopez is the definition of the word humblebrag.
I know this differs between people but I'd be interested to know what sites you view as the opposite of those listed.
Think more of virtue than of success. Success is a hollow word, like in nutrition “it’s an empty calorie”. Rather focus on the virtues of your life. Those are life-giving, filled with “soul nutrients”.
So ... dammit man:
Feed the cat. Take the dog for a walk. If that’s all you do today, you made it.
Help a struggling neighbour make that rent payment just this month - do it anonymously. No one needs to know. Certainly not him!
Call your mom. Tell your Dad you understand. Call your sister/brother - ask if you can help in any way you can - then help.
Try to read Robert Sapolsky - he says you really don’t have free will - crazy man - it’s rather comforting to forgive yourself thoughtfully. He is a great man actually.
Forgive. Force a smile when thoughts of failure intrude. “Eyebrow” as you pass someone today with a friendly but subtle smile. (You don’t want to be creepy)
Listen to Carl Sagan’s “Pale blue dot” speech. Then watch the Cosmos series - both the new and old ones. See if that makes you feel you’re worrying about the right stuff.
Finally, be like Francisco Goya and “paint” (write software, build a house, make music, write a poem) ONLY for yourself. Begin with the intention that your work will never be allowed to be judged by another. Keep it hidden. Chip at it everyday.
Hit the cool pillow every evening imagining that just ONE more day is good enough for you to fill it up with things like the above. Perhaps even better ones.
Been down and overwhelmed lately.It's easy to get stuck in grind mode and not take time to look around and remember what actually matters.
1) About filling up a bucket that has a hole in it (same shit different day type of thing?)
OR is my grind
2) About a journey I am on - and I've got a steep gradient ahead, a puncture or maybe I'm out of gas?
If it is 1, then please, my dearest friend, either make it strictly a 9-5 affair or find another job. I just visited my cousin in hospital who was admitted after he collapsed with cardiac arrhythmia while at dinner with his family. He's been working too hard at his new job, 4-5 hours of sleep every night and two hours commute.
If it is 2, and the end is worth it, take a break. Replenish your commitment and march on through hell. (Exercise, especially HIIT, helps with energy levels)
Arete!
Great advice. I was naturally stoic, but the daily rigors were chipping away my stoicness. A book I'd recommend reading "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" to reset your thinking and paying attention to what is really important in life.
So if you feel a bit of rush because you really want to succeed, or if you think about things that may go wrong in order to take actions to minimize the risk - that's perfectly fine and embrace it. But if it really brings you down, then it's a depression problem, not a startup problem and that's what you want to solve.
I'm sure you've heard many many times how failures are necessary learning experience and all that stuff. But if your brain chemistry is not ok, your brain will rationalize it away - "but that's my only shot" and so on. Once again, you need to fix that chemistry. HN will offer you many suggestions some of them very reasonable, but it's likely that a professional will give you some better options.
This is so true. It's all in the head. I was doing fine and felt like crap every day, and now I couldn't be more of a loser absolutely and I felt free and my creativity was unleashed and I love my life. Having nothing to lose is a great asset to have.
For me what made me love my life is finally have the guts to say to myself "Shit... I fucked up! I will have to rebuild everything again." Failures are just chances to start everything anew, this time only a bit wiser.
Just want to echo this. If the issue, you suspect, is mostly about depression, just go to a Shrink. They're about as much as a Friday night at the bar, and they really do help out. Maybe try a few of them out and decide. But really, just do it.
Also, eat right, exercise, and sleep enough. I mean, duh. But it really does help a ton.
People you perceive as “successful” may themselves be facing internal hardships. Placing self-worth in externally-controlled goals sets you up to feel bad about your place in life.
I used to beat myself up about my current progress and constantly comparing myself to others. Once I stopped doing that and instead focused on making small incremental goals, I started to feel much happier. It seems counterintuitive, but once I stopped focusing on “success”, I became much more successful in what I actually wanted to accomplish.
Curiously, I think I also get more done now because I feel better, am in a better mood and spend less time anguishing about all the things which are not perfect or could somehow be better. It has also made me aware that many people do find themselves in various hardships and my appreciation for my situation has really grown again through this.
Stop being so hard on yourself and cut yourself some slack - if you're the perfectionist type (like me) it does a lot more harm than good!
here is my advice to you. take care of your financial needs. engineer your life so that you are stable financially while maintaining the most modest life-style that is comfortable. in other words, get yourself to a point where the practical aspects of life no longer are a problem. no, i never said it was easy. after that, pursue the tangible aspects of success, or pursue anything you want to, without worry. i say that almost nobody said on their death-bed that they regretted not working harder or that they regretted spending too much time enjoying nature, traveling or spending time with the people they loved. use that fact as a guide-line for choosing what to do.
Take a look at Maslow’s hierarchy from time to time, and think about this success treadmill you’ve signed up for, success is nowhere in that triangle. Neither is power.
What are you planning to use success and power for? Are you trying to spend your way into esteem? Belonging? Force them to respect you? Do you think self actualization requires ordering people around? Do you think if you are powerful enough that the love of your life can’t die from a tragic car accident, an aneurism, or cancer?
You can’t control as much as you think you can, and sometimes that’s a good thing. Fortune favors the prepared mind, but you can show up and still strike out, or you can find more success than you deserve. Recognize your good fortune.
Remember that the guy making you coffee is a person with feelings. If everybody were like you then you’d have to drink coffee you made and take your own trash to the dump and do your own plumbing. If anything these people are doing a service to society. Charity work, if you will. Respect it.
I don't know your goals, but I felt something similar myself a few years ago. Looking back, the main cause of my unhappiness was that my idea of 'success' was what the media depicted: nice house, nice car, big philanthropy initiatives, etc and that wasn't normal. It wasn't normal for me to work hungrily towards financial success. When my friends wanted to hang out, I declined because I was 'too busy trying to change the world'.
Eventually, my scope shifted from "changing the world" to helping those around me. I taught a few friends how to code over the years and helped them get jobs. Now we all bought modest houses next to each other and we hangout all the time, volunteering together and teaching more people how to code. I'm much happier now that I have redefined my meaning of success.
I hate mainstream media and the unsustainable consumerism and desires it creates. It makes it harder than ever to find yourself. Get off Facebook and other media for awhile, hangout with your friends and family more, and I hope you successfully redefine what success mean on your terms.
Secondly, I think it is also priority. What's important to you in life? For me, I think it would be my physical and mental health, my family and other things before money. What are your priorities? Is it your top priority to be successful? Or if your priorities are like mine then where are you with that?
Lastly you can try the "vertical arrow"[1] technique which keeps asking the question "What if it was true?". So as an example:
"I will never be successful"
-> "What if it was true?"
-> "I will never have money"
-> "What if it was true?"
-> "I will never be able to impress the ladies"
-> "What if it was true?"
-> "I'll be alone"
-> "What if it was true?"
-> "Everyone will think of me as total loser", etc.
-> "What if it was true?"
Then you write the rational explanation for each with the cognitive distortions in your thoughts. I'm not an expert but do try it maybe it will help you out. It certainly is very powerful stuff to fix your mood instantly.
There was an interesting study[0] done on Facebook users in University that had the following conclusion. A quote from it:
The multivariate analysis indicated that those who have used Facebook longer agreed more that others were happier, and agreed less that life is fair, and those spending more time on Facebook each week agreed more that others were happier and had better lives.
We tend to get blasted with other peoples' expectations and visions of success. Without establishing our _own_ definition, we'll never find that illusory success that we've projected upon other people and other circumstances.
What's _your_ definition of success? Everyone's will be different. It might be helpful to shorten your question: How to stop feeling depressed? The bleak patterns of depression are masterful at creating a monster to slay, in this case, for you: "being successful". If that dark knot was gone, would it matter?
Other than that? From your question the main thing would be to stop thinking about if you will be successful, as it is not a great way to be successful. Like happiness, successfulness is not a state you reach once and for all. You can be happy at work and depressed at home, successful at your gym while still not finding the right person on Tinder.
From this, here are three personal suggestions:
- Do not only focus on work. Being successful with your friends, your family, at sports, at learning (e.g. a new language), also matters. If you are stuck at work, always have a second area where you can progress during your free time. Doing sports and learning a new language are great activities because you cannot be stuck if you actually put effort in it, and then you can share (that matters so much) with buddies you see every week at your gym or online (e.g. on Reddit).
- Write down your core values and ambitions and put them somewhere you can read them every day. I have a few post-its right in front of me right now, written 6 months ago, and they affect my life in a positive way.
- Make sure that even your shittiest days have good moments by design. E.g. I have chosen my flat so that I have to walk through a park twice a day, and even when I am not going well I still see dogs and kids enjoying life on my way from and to work. It motivates me a lot, those few minutes where I don't think about me and my problems but just enjoy the fact that things are already quite good. It makes me inspired and confident which is utterly important to be successful.
Good luck!
Is it your parents, is it your friends? Is it school?
4 year olds aren't depressed about being successful - they just live their life.
As you get older, your parents think your happiness is related to making money, having a family, stuff like that.
They're right to some extent. The crucial point is since you have anxiety about this issue, what has happened is their incompetence (this is a crucial point, incompetence breeds anxiety), has created anxiety in them, and they have infected you with it.
They're anxious you're not good enough, they're anxious your grades aren't high enough, they're anxious, anxious anxious. They're comparing you to their friends' kids and they're having an internal competition - they want to tell their friends how well you're doing. Their self esteem is tied to your 'success', success they've defined for you without asking you if that's what you want (This doesn't always happen, but it is extremely common)
All this is unfortunate and extremely common. Your parents/friends are just incompetent at being happy, sorry. They mean well, they just don't know how to live happily and spread that around.
The possible solutions are:
- to succeed, according to your parents' worldview, to shut them up
- to disagree with their worldview and create your own (redefine success for yourself)
- to do a combination of the two - succeed to some extent (get higher education), but also distance yourself away from them, so that their regular dose of anxiety doesn't get in the way of your self discovery
This is something everyone goes through, and doesn't get talked about enough, because most people are not aware of what really happened - they just think everyone is insecure to some extent, and that it's ok. It's not ok, but only a few will be curious enough to rediscover what THEY actually want out of life. That's what a mid-life crisis is - when people finally reach a peak in reaching what everyone else told them would make them happy, and they're not. So it's something you figure out now, or mid-life, or after, doesn't matter when really :)
That's not snark, it really does mean different things to different people, and your own definition will change over time.
Also consider how many people can reasonably meet a particular definition, and what they have to give up to get there.
Depending on your field of expertise, it can make a big difference. The bigger safety net reduces stress levels.
You have to separate yourself and your identity from that of your startup. Yes you live and breathe it but no you are not it. I was my startup and when it fell I fell. It took years to recover, multiple moves, etc. Your startup is just something you're doing. It doesn't matter if it is successful or not because the only thing that matters is that you have finite time on this Earth.
If you aren't capable of doing something without going crazy and losing years and years of your precious life due to panic, then you sure as shit shouldn't have been doing it.
Keep things in perspective. Success is nice, but you will learn a lot from your startup if it fails and you will be better for it. You will have a higher chance of success doing your next startup, and you will have life experience that you can't get any other way.
If you do good work there and it fails, people will still respect what it was and who worked on it.
Stay strong, keep things in perspective, and enjoy what you do. You cannot change the world if you can't stay stable yourself. The only way you can change the world is if you are okay with yourself first.
To answer the question, I echo and endorse what one user has already posted -- practice gratitude and be nice to yourself. It's very easy to get caught-up thinking we're not enough these days, and social media likely exacerbates it. I'm not going to tell you to get off of social media, but try appreciating all the things you do well and find things you like about yourself.
Lastly, I'm not too big into self-help books, but if there's one that's helped me it's The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown. The gist is start loving yourself for who you are, recognize that you are enough, and understand the difference between shame and guilt (and why guilt is ok but shame is bad).
Maybe have some other goals in life that you can achieve and be happy. A family. Painting. Music. Sport.
I'll never bee a pro-kiteboarder, but I still enjoy it.
Money as they keep telling us doesn't make you happy.
I live in an area where rich folk come to retire. It's sad seeing old men get excited about surfing, snorkelling, SUPing, kitesurfing, rock climbing... you guys could have been doing this 20 years ago, but you chased the big fat $$$ ... I guess at the time it made them happy. Successful. I don't know. Is there a real answer to the question?
Having someone you really love, that also love you back and give you support, will get you through whatever failure you do and will go through.
If you're currently in the mindset where all you can think about is taking your startup to success and not caring about anything else like personal relationships, it might be time for a change. Look not for random hookups, but seek a real relationship with someone that matters.
Personally, am fine with moderate success and having my time free to pursue interests - learning, reading, etc. But I am bothered about it, when friends ask me about it. As in general, if someone has chosen an off beat path (i.e. startup or similar or anything other than normal corporate life) people have more questions.
Also, we all wish that we ought to be more successful than we are. Am middle aged (40s), so have some regrets about not investing better. Not that have done bad. But could definitely have done better, if devoted more time on it, than focusing 100% of energy on startup.
Added later: (In the vein of some other comments) Today morning, I did an exercise, of trying to remember, how many people I have helped in life, in a way that their life got better. And also trying to remember how many people who helped me in a similar way. The exercise left me happier. Just stating it here, to say there are several ways of measuring our lives.
Failure at my company is running out of money. The mission is one I want to work on for a long time, so it's only failure if we run out of money. I'm not measuring opportunity cost, it's our own capital, and it seems to be worth continuing in a sense that we still have new ideas to try and customers to talk to and learn from, so running out of money is failure and everything else is learning and growing.
Failure in my personal life would just be failing to live up to my commitments to the people that depend on me and that I care about. I choose what my commitments are, and they are entirely internal to me and not comparable to other people, so I have a strong internal locus of control about it and don't worry about comparing myself to others.
Success is nebulous. Failure is pretty clear. If you are fear motivated like I am, the lack of an apartment is more motivating than the fantasy of the mansion. So that's how I have done it lately.
I don't know if it's on this topic, but the book "The Subtle art of not giving a f*&k" is something I want to read (or listen to) as I think it's written to help this mindset.
The best advice a mentor gave me is to realize that the destination is developing the best mindset for any journey.
There is no better feeling than learning, knowing and remembering where your compass is headed and chasing after it without thinking of success, because it is success.
Results, and progress become a product of multiple destinations on the journey. What kind of mindset?
Reframe success to be having the opportunity to try things and learn things every day. If you do the right things, and become the best you can be, success will chase you.
The other is to learn a practice of patience while working hard.
In the meantime, grow. Travel to places that make you uncomfortable to widen your spectrum of human experience - it will not only stretch you apart, it will create space for new growth. The more life experience you have, the better you'll know yourself, and the more well rounded you will become. It is a self-feeding loop of positivity.
This is true both for you, or if you're teaching to someone else. By creating smaller goals, you can achieve them and get a sense of satisfaction, which is very important to move forward.
Once you get use to this, you can extend the scope of your goals, and you'll get smart enough to view even failures as partial successes, learn from what you did bad, and build upon what you did right. But if you never experience the satisfaction, you'll never be able to distinguish it in the chaos of dissatisfaction and failure.
I'd recommend starting with 1 small easily achievable activity per week for a month or two, and grow from there. This may include publish a 1min-read blog post, create a small webpage, read N articles, etc. Don't overthink where you want to go, just start by getting things done.
I've found that focusing on yourself and not giving a shit about what other people think worked for me, that and just doing the best you can.
Face the fact that a lot of things in your life are out of your control, and the best thing you can do is steer all of your focus and mental energy away from pointless anxiety and into taking the actionable steps towards your goals.
Practice meditation to develop the skillset and mental discipline that will allow you to focus on taking actionable steps instead of dwelling on stuff you can't do anything about.
Always do your best relative to the state that you're in. Optimize your knowledge (by learning and reading a lot), and behavior (by taking the right action according to your best judgement). Beyond that - let go and let the chips fall where they may.
A good psychologist will work on understanding the root cause of your depression, make sure you acknowledge it, and change your thoughts and actions so you can cure it.
I recommend giving it a try.
You need someone to ask you probing questions about why you're depressed about it.
If you can't afford to do it just write your thoughts down. I try to work my way through my worst fears step by step writing each thought. Usually I find I end on a positive note.
Do something to the person you care about, (or) the persons who care about you. Like, go for a walk with them. Speak about all the moments that you missed to recognise/understand/been insensitive to them.
After all "Succesful" is like a user story that your product manager promised to fill the "acceptance criteria" for. That will never have an end. Succesful is a state of mind like depression and you have the choice to choose between being succesful or depressed in whatever you do.
All the best.
[1] As it happens that guy in particular who bought his 16 year old son an expensive car (for that time period) ended up in bankruptcy.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ― Viktor E. Frankl
You may find Frankl an excellent read for perspective > https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4069.Man_s_Search_for_Me...
Also, understand that success is a temporary, fleeting thing. You'll be successful, but when you'll be alone with yourself, in your bed, in the bathroom, with earbuds in in the car or the bus etc., if you're not happy or at peace, than that's worth nothing.
Are these cliches? Yes. But they are so for a reason.
My advice to you is you got to keep moving. Right now you are sitting down trying to figure things out. WRONG.
Don't try to figure things out. Take action. Move so much that you don't have time to think about how unsuccessful you are. And If you are moving, might as well do something useful.
The easiest way I know how to change my emotions is just start doing something, anything. Go for a walk. Write a blog post.
Also, if you your room is messy and disorganise, might want to start with that first.
Of course, it took me years to figure out what I would be passionate about doing that I would also earn a living off of!
This allows your metrics of success to be distributed, success in any topic on your critical list will tend to outweigh your stresses. Also your successful topic will likely rotate among these as nature allows.
argmax happiness through ensemble methods
Better to be in a position where there’s still time to be successful, rather than old, homeless, sick, estranged, destitute, and desiring only to die.
Assume you will fail. If you're right, it feels good to be right. If you succeed, well it feels good to succeed, and you can ignore your failed prediction.
Also, try lowering your standards. You must know (of) someone who is doing worse than you. Compare to them, instead of to someone who is doing better.
I don’t normally take these kind of quotes to heart but having a constant fear of failure and wondering what success is I think the above for me really helps put this in context.
I understand what you're getting at, but I don't think it helps.
You will learn something along the way, anyway.
I have some failed projects behind me, but do not regret it, it was a nice time spent with other people and it got me where I am now.
Fail again, fail better.
Good luck.
Given that over 99.99% of the population cannot possibly be defined as "successful" by most standards (unless "eating and breathing" qualify), why would you make your life even harder with that?
There are people who legitimately have trouble with that who would be thrilled if they could pull that off better.
There is nothing wrong with going to a general practitioner, trying Lexapro, and if you don't feel anything on that, trying Wellbutrin, and then on down the line.
If you administer the Beck Depression inventory to gauge your own mood on some consistent basis before and after starting antidepressants you will be introducing far more of the scientific method into the process than most psychiatrists will.
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If you have a startup or a high profile job, blog or tweet as your own persona about topics that do not fall under your line of work, but are still interesting to you.
Keep up friendships and dating and when you talk about work, only do so when it is a good story.
Socialize with people that live differently than you. There’s nothing as encouraging as talking with a bartender your same age that has a few housemates and can’t decide if they should go to grad school. You realize that you have lots of time to figure things out and to try many things in life
to add my 2c to this answer, I've found it's a lot easier if you've worked in a team in a more established company for 2-4 years. you know what you can and can't do, and don't have to "prove your worth". you can establish friendships, dating patterns, blogging, vlogging.
ultimately, I suspect the depression comes from a sense that you're not part of a bigger group with a shared identity. the above advice works to remind you that you are: you're part of the working class, a boxing gym, a family, etc.
I think this is a big part of it. I have chronic depression and anxiety but it’s pretty manageable because I work on a small-ish team and get to solve problems in a group setting a lot. In other jobs I’ve worked where I was isolated (like being the only technical person for an entire company of 100 people) I felt incredibly depressed, alone, and like I wasn’t going anywhere.
A good team early on can make a huge difference in terms of feeling supported and building confidence.
As a student I had a moment when I decided that the standard geek "identity package" of things one was supposed to like and do was ... limiting, and that it would be better to have a wider set of interests.
This is a rejection of the process of discovery of oneself and of a, somehow Nieztschean, independent and autonomous path in life.
Independent identities allow you to construct your being with many different fragments and melt them into one, like a Picasso painting or Vivaldi's Four Seasons play.