Hacker News Reader

Comment by redspark | Hacker News Reader

If you have a years worth of runway (ramen budget), you are way ahead of where a lot of entrepreneurs start out.

Do you have any ideas? What are you passionate about, or what do you have a lot of insider knowledge about?

Getting through my MBA was the toughest thing I have ever done in my life, particularly due to my psychiatric illness at the time. During this time I sought high and low for a practical, easy to understand, non-wishy-wahsy, and logical self-help book that would at the very least give me some guidance on how to deal with the stress I was under. I hated almost everything I found. I felt so trapped, I started looking at US Army POW survival manuals for clues on dealing with stress and fear.

Since then I've been hoping to write something or develop a website that would help another person going through a tough time (of any sorts) get through it successfully. Not sure how I would monetize it, but it would be cool if I could come up with a way to bring some sense to the self-help market.

Since I don't have training in counseling or psychology I even thought about going for the one year Master of Positive Psychology program at UPenn, but of course dropped the idea as it would add to my debt.

Anyway, that's the only idea I have had and only topic I really have passion for at the moment.

Maybe if I did some exploratory research on different things I could come up with some more areas I'd be interested in.

But I need to move fast as I'm terrified of defaulting on my bills when the year is out.

Some of it is acceptance. You might find that Buddhist meditation may help. You feel stressed and overwhelmed because you feel a lack of control over your situation/life and expected responsibilities. However, what you really lack is perspective because you are anxious about future unknowns. This is what drives your search through the self-help books. Caveat, if you do have a major disorder seek medical treatment. Those programs are organized around stabilizing the chemicals in your brain and at the same time providing cognitive therapies to help bring some perspective and rational decision making. Essentially you are fighting against your fight or flight responses and attempting to reengage your brain. It helps when you can stop your brain from producing too much speed or other stimulants. Likewise, for depression. We are drug responsive machines, people exercise like mad for the oxytocin high released after enough activity.

So what you search for is perspective and a feeling that everything is ok and will be ok. The thing is, you end up where you started but see things differently.

The financial issues are solved one day at a time.

Just wanted to add that I did get professional help from the excellent doctors at Mass General Hospital during my time in business school, and it is mostly to their credit that I made it through those tough times at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com