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Okay, sure, but: many physical attributes, social perceptions, and pervasive mental habits probably do become increasingly solidified, even if fatalism about it

Okay, sure, but: many physical attributes, social perceptions, and pervasive mental habits probably do become increasingly solidified, even if fatalism about it is counterproductive. Sure, there's plenty of late bloomers, but how many of them do you get from a broken late starting point, and how many do you get from people who worked slowly and methodically and did the right slow things earlier on, taking care of their minds, bodies, social connections, growing their resources, gaining experiences, broadening and/or fine-tuning their abilities, and so on? Do fit/rich/popular/etc. 35-year-olds regularly get there from a truly broken (including internally!) state at 31, or is it more that they actually took all the advice about regular exercise/investing/graciousness/etc. back when they were 25, kept taking it, and maybe despaired in the moment about it not seeming to work while actually stacking up tons of invisible long-term bonuses? I'm trying to come off about a decade of poor habits myself, due to a number of factors which are undoubtedly my responsibility but which it's not clear whether I could have realistically avoided. I've had some minor successes but have never really stabilized so far, including in all the little things like the above. I don't usually see this case handled clearly in the “it's okay to be a late bloomer!” inspiration crowd. (More personally, it doesn't help that the things I most want to do in life probably require being exceptional in specific ways that I'm not sure I can predict in advance and not just “successful” in a generic sort of way, and beyond a certain limited extent, I don't consider the wanting-what-I-have approach to be a viable one (except insofar as having that attitude on the face of things may make it more likely to reach my original desires anyway).) I'm trying to convince myself to try anyway and it's hellishly difficult.

cecilpl2 7y ago
> I'm trying to convince myself to try anyway What else are you going to do? You are where you are right now, and you can either put in the effort to make your life better or you can give up now. The time's going to pass anyway, you might as well make the most of it.
- dasyatidprime 7y ago
  If that worked enough of the time, articles like the OP wouldn't get written much. Emotionally speaking, giving up is actually a pretty sticky idea! The potential for putting a pile of effort in, finding it wasn't really enough, and being confronted afterward with all the things you did wrong with no chance to correct them now is paralyzing; it's “safer” in a way to not try, never know, and only experience the one, easily-dampened gnawing failure of having wandered off the path, rather than having a hundred different failures confirmed through hard work and inadequacy. I think a lot of people experience this in at least some areas of life, and it's a big source of deciding to lowball, or of blaming the environment (which isn't always factually false, but I'm referring to the emotional interpretation) or making various rationalizations surrounding “talent” or whatnot. So cognitively I know that's a common problem with an obvious answer, but it doesn't mean I can just skip to the end without convincing the rest of me.
  - slfnflctd 7y ago
    That was brutally real. Our short attention spans keep giving us new chances, though. If you decide to give up, you can't just do it once (okay, you can, but please don't)-- you have to keep deciding to give up every day. Eventually you realize you're going to need to give up on giving up, at least some of the time. However, I know what you mean quite fully. I've given up on everything from academic hopes, to artistic dreams, to multiple types of fantasies I was taught were real as a child, to career possibilities and more. Learning to rest in the knowledge that someone out there is already doing whatever cool stuff I could've done, better than I could've done it - and training myself to be mildly comforted by this - has brought me no small amount of peace. Sentient existence is weird and hard. Giving up is an important life skill.
    - dasyatidprime 7y ago
      Thus “know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em”. Which still isn't good to use as an excuse for fatalism, of course. “Knowing when” may be superficially similar to giving up out of raw emotional weakness, but it's not the same underneath at all.
  - 7y ago

cecilpl2 7y ago

> I'm trying to convince myself to try anyway What else are you going to do? You are where you are right now, and you can either put in the effort to make your life better or you can give up now. The time's going to pass anyway, you might as well make the most of it.

dasyatidprime 7y ago
If that worked enough of the time, articles like the OP wouldn't get written much. Emotionally speaking, giving up is actually a pretty sticky idea! The potential for putting a pile of effort in, finding it wasn't really enough, and being confronted afterward with all the things you did wrong with no chance to correct them now is paralyzing; it's “safer” in a way to not try, never know, and only experience the one, easily-dampened gnawing failure of having wandered off the path, rather than having a hundred different failures confirmed through hard work and inadequacy. I think a lot of people experience this in at least some areas of life, and it's a big source of deciding to lowball, or of blaming the environment (which isn't always factually false, but I'm referring to the emotional interpretation) or making various rationalizations surrounding “talent” or whatnot. So cognitively I know that's a common problem with an obvious answer, but it doesn't mean I can just skip to the end without convincing the rest of me.
- slfnflctd 7y ago
  That was brutally real. Our short attention spans keep giving us new chances, though. If you decide to give up, you can't just do it once (okay, you can, but please don't)-- you have to keep deciding to give up every day. Eventually you realize you're going to need to give up on giving up, at least some of the time. However, I know what you mean quite fully. I've given up on everything from academic hopes, to artistic dreams, to multiple types of fantasies I was taught were real as a child, to career possibilities and more. Learning to rest in the knowledge that someone out there is already doing whatever cool stuff I could've done, better than I could've done it - and training myself to be mildly comforted by this - has brought me no small amount of peace. Sentient existence is weird and hard. Giving up is an important life skill.
  - dasyatidprime 7y ago
    Thus “know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em”. Which still isn't good to use as an excuse for fatalism, of course. “Knowing when” may be superficially similar to giving up out of raw emotional weakness, but it's not the same underneath at all.
- 7y ago