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I don't believe that success is a life long habit for most people. I think successful people learn how to be successful through trial and error. There are form

by shingen 15y ago

I don't believe that success is a life long habit for most people. I think successful people learn how to be successful through trial and error. There are formulas for success and failure. Some people learn faster, some people learn slower; some lessons are better than others and get you there faster; some people are fortunate enough to be able to fail in more modest ways while they're simultaneously being successful in the grand scheme of things (Zuck). Sometimes randomosity bails you out of stupid choices, sometimes you hit the floor hard; the choice to learn or not is up to the individual either way. Some people become successful early, and fail late. The list of former Forbes 400 members is littered with these people. Some people fail early, and succeed later, and for the rest of their lives, having learned their lesson. In my experience, failure can feel a bit like living through a great depression. You become emotionally reflexive based on what you've learned / digested. Same way people learned to be extremely frugal after The great depression. If you learn the right lessons from it, your reflexes will keep you from making similar stupid mistakes later on. I don't know how you really learn those lessons without experiencing them (even if you do so in the 'fail small and often, while succeeding overall' manner).

swombat 15y ago
I think I might have miscommunicated. I'm not referring to success in contrast to its supposed opposite of failure. Successful people fail. A lot. However, I believe that they do have a habit/mindset of making decisions that benefit them (and, often, others, but always themselves too) rather than hurting themselves. This is contrasted with the self-sacrifice mindset, where a person makes decisions that will hurt them and benefit other people or no one. Also, worth pointing out that I never intended to imply that this "lifelong habit" can't be acquired. I'm slowly getting there, and I started from a strong self-sacrificing mindset.
- joering2 15y ago
  how do you actually know you "slowly getting there"? how do you measure that? and IF you can measure and know what it means to "already be there", wouldn't you actually... be there?
  - swombat 15y ago
    A lot of our behaviours and responses are driven by subconscious habits and thoughts. I may know that I have a bias towards doing X, but that doesn't mean that I consistently avoid doing X - in fact, quite the opposite. It takes years of re-training your subconscious to get away from behaviours which have become habitual. Knowing the way and walking the way are two different things, as they say. I know I'm slowly getting there because I can observe the direct correlation between how I've shifted my thought patterns, and how the situation around me has shifted. One could posit coincidence as an explanation, and that may be true, but the areas of my life where I don't apply this "growth" mindset are the ones that haven't grown. Try it for yourself and see if it does anything for you.
    - joering2 15y ago
      very interesting indeed. Any chances to get a real-life example out of you?
      - swombat 15y ago
        I mention a good example, about a "pushing money away" mindset that I'm slowly changing, in this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3688375 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3688375 Another example, with contrast between areas where I'm applying the mindset and those where I'm not: learning. In my work, I've blown away the excuse that "I don't have the time to learn" - I was lucky that the circumstances forced me to. As a result, I am now basically an expert on tax credits and grants, and adding more similar fields as time passes, without any hesitation. Conversely, I've had a "I just need to get things done" attitude to programming and fiction writing over the last few years, and those have budged little if at all. I know that's the wrong mindset, but it takes time to get over it. Is this the kind of example you were looking for?
        joering2 15y ago
        thanks.

by shingen 15y ago

swombat 15y ago

I think I might have miscommunicated. I'm not referring to success in contrast to its supposed opposite of failure. Successful people fail. A lot. However, I believe that they do have a habit/mindset of making decisions that benefit them (and, often, others, but always themselves too) rather than hurting themselves. This is contrasted with the self-sacrifice mindset, where a person makes decisions that will hurt them and benefit other people or no one. Also, worth pointing out that I never intended to imply that this "lifelong habit" can't be acquired. I'm slowly getting there, and I started from a strong self-sacrificing mindset.

joering2 15y ago
how do you actually know you "slowly getting there"? how do you measure that? and IF you can measure and know what it means to "already be there", wouldn't you actually... be there?
- swombat 15y ago
  A lot of our behaviours and responses are driven by subconscious habits and thoughts. I may know that I have a bias towards doing X, but that doesn't mean that I consistently avoid doing X - in fact, quite the opposite. It takes years of re-training your subconscious to get away from behaviours which have become habitual. Knowing the way and walking the way are two different things, as they say. I know I'm slowly getting there because I can observe the direct correlation between how I've shifted my thought patterns, and how the situation around me has shifted. One could posit coincidence as an explanation, and that may be true, but the areas of my life where I don't apply this "growth" mindset are the ones that haven't grown. Try it for yourself and see if it does anything for you.
  - joering2 15y ago
    very interesting indeed. Any chances to get a real-life example out of you?
    - swombat 15y ago
      I mention a good example, about a "pushing money away" mindset that I'm slowly changing, in this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3688375 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3688375 Another example, with contrast between areas where I'm applying the mindset and those where I'm not: learning. In my work, I've blown away the excuse that "I don't have the time to learn" - I was lucky that the circumstances forced me to. As a result, I am now basically an expert on tax credits and grants, and adding more similar fields as time passes, without any hesitation. Conversely, I've had a "I just need to get things done" attitude to programming and fiction writing over the last few years, and those have budged little if at all. I know that's the wrong mindset, but it takes time to get over it. Is this the kind of example you were looking for?
      - joering2 15y ago
        thanks.