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For a long time, I’ve been this person for other people, but don’t feel like I have anybody to do this for me. That’s okay — I don’t feel bitter about that or a

• rez0123 1y ago
  I’m so glad that line helped. It was a last minute addition, and I was thinking about how so many of my friends just don’t share the awesome stuff they do with the world. Share more!!
• darth_avocado 1y ago
  > For a long time, I’ve been this person for other people, but don’t feel like I have anybody to do this for me. For the longest time I was this and unfortunately I got bitter over time. But then a couple of years ago I got back into the mindset again. A few bad years later I realized that the more happy you are for your friends, the more happy you are. Do it for yourself and nobody else.
  • danielrm26 1y ago
    Why not both?
    • saghm 1y ago
      If I'm understanding the parent comment correctly, I don't think they mean not to be happy for others, but that being happy for others is worth it even if you choose to do it purely for selfish reasons. The benefits of cheering on others are worth it even if you ignore the effects that the cheering actually has on the person you're cheering for. If you're asking why not have both motivations for it, I think that their suggestion is based on the assumption that some people might be struggling to do it for altruistic reasons if it doesn't seem like the people they're cheering deserve it. Even though it's somewhat counterintuitive to my, in my experience this is a pretty common way of thinking, especially when people feel like rewards they had to work hard for come easily for those who get them later. As a (partially made up) example, imagine if you obtained a degree where one of the requirements was a grueling, difficult course completely unrelated to anything you're trying to study, and the year after you graduate, the university finally recognizes that the requirement was unreasonable and removed it. Following the line of thinking from the article, the response that would be the most beneficial would be to be happy for those students who no longer have to take the course, but from what I've seen, it's at least as common for people to instead be upset about the unfairness of having to do the unnecessary work. For people who feel this way, I'd argue that the more compelling reason to try to feel happy rather than resentful isn't how it affects the students who get to avoid this extra work, but because the resentment doesn't really achieve anything other than making you feel bad. While it's not as easy as just "deciding" not to feel that way, I do think that we have the ability to influence our own mindsets in the long term, and I genuinely believe that actively leaning into the idea of celebrating the good thing happening for others each time a circumstance like this happens will eventually make it easier to let go of the resentment when it happens again in the future.
• protocolture 1y ago
  Ditto. What gets me is when I have a few times found the people I am hyping for are actually putting me down, or selling me out to management.
  • borski 1y ago
    Fair, but the post briefly alluded to this: > Even if you root for the “wrong” friends, it’s still the best way to live. Life is better not feeling jealous. You can sleep so much easier at night by genuinely being happy for your friends, even if they’re a bit jealous of you.
    • anshumankmr 1y ago
      you would need to be the Buddha to feel nothing. And note jealousy type things, but say someone who you thought was a friend but was sabotaging you or bad for you... a toxic person. Jealousy is inane.
      • te_chris 1y ago
        The point is not to feel nothing, the point is not to get lost in the feeling. There’s a big difference. Check out The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
        • saghm 1y ago
          I think this is something that easily gets lost in discussions about feelings/emotions. There's a difference between how you feel and how you act based on it; feeling an emotion is a natural response that you can't control, but that doesn't determine how you act based on that emotion, even if it does bias you towards certain actions. In my experience, being able to maintain a distinction between those things is hugely important in being able to consistently choose how to act independent of that bias. The key for me is understanding that the emotion itself isn't a choice, and therefore isn't something I need to try to control it feel guilty about. Feeling angry or jealous or sad is unavoidable, but feeling those emotions without acting in ways that fuels them without any other reason often ends up making people feel worse for longer. I don't want to make it seem like I don't struggle with this as much as anyone else, but the times when I've been able to follow my own advice about this pretty much universally have ended up better for me than the times when I let my emotions dictate my actions.
• stavros 1y ago
  Well, I'm glad you had this realization, and I'm excited for how this will turn out for you. Sometimes you have to show your friends you're excited about something for them to be excited in turn. Good luck!
• noduerme 1y ago
  There's nothing wrong with being humble. It only takes one small display of pride to make most people quietly hate you. For example, I opened this blog post and within 20 seconds I loathed the person who wrote it. I find your approach to be much more decent.
  • cootsnuck 1y ago
    But now you seem miserable and bitter so what's the point? Don't dull your own shine and don't yuck other people's yum.
    • noduerme 1y ago
      I'm not. I'm just making a comment about how people work. When you publicly compliment yourself, they tend to think you're an asshole. Your comment reminded me of a teacher who told me to "put more sugar in your coffee" when I asked a pointed question. That's when I realized he was an asshole who had nothing to teach me. People say things like that (or "yuck"/"yum") to make themselves feel superior. A good word for it is smarmy. It's funny, 'cause my comment here only drew responses from people who needed to justify themselves - no reaction was required. I don't know you. I wasn't talking to you personally. I was only saying that no one likes a braggart.
  • mipt 1y ago
    [dead]
  • Profan 1y ago
    Damn, why not just be happy for people? We're all different, and I might be an outlier here but I think very few people actually "hate" people, unless they've wronged them in some very particular way, at least for me personally someone has to have gone very far in wronging me or my friends for me to "hate" anyone!
• xattt 1y ago
  How much of it is some form of a subliminal superstition where you feel that if you tell your success, your success will be jinxed?
• samlinnfer 1y ago
  Let's take this to the extreme, you just won the lottery, which one of your friends will you tell?
• nthingtohide 1y ago
  I have borrowed some "wisdom" in how particles interact. They exchange particles back and forth which strengthen their interaction. That's what I do generally in real life. I sort of share happenings in my life as a sort of nano-influencer within my group of friends. I would say the advice in the blogpost works, sort of. Even if my "contributions" go into a blackhole, I think atleast the ephemeral Universe is watching what I do.
  • tome 1y ago
    > I have borrowed some "wisdom" in how particles interact. They exchange particles back and forth If particles interact by exchanging particles, how do they interact with the particles they exchange?
    • saghm 1y ago
      I'm not sure I understand this question. If I hand someone a book, we're both interacting with the book as well as each other, so why wouldn't this also hold true for particles?
      • lupire 1y ago
        Is it particle turtles all the way down?
        • saghm 1y ago
          I don't see why the answer to that question affects whether particles can interact by exchanging particles with each other. To be clear, I'm not taking a stance on whether that's an accurate description of how particles work, but I don't think that it's somehow logically incoherent.
          • tome 1y ago
            The point wasn't that particles can interact that way, but that that is how they interact. But that requires infinite regression. (That needn't necessarily be a problem, but it does need a justification.)
• Mofpofjis 1y ago
  > "Maybe you haven’t really trusted anyone with your wins yet" At the end of one of her interviews on youtbue, Kelly McGonigal explains that -- paraphrased -- being praised to the face creates an intimate context around the praiser and the praisee, in which it's the praiser that sets the tone and initiates the dynamics. In a way, they find themselves in a position where they evaluate you. This is why taking praise gracefully is not trivial; people being praised usually show bodily signs of stress. It takes a real effort for the praisee not to dismiss or belittle their own achievement, just to get out of those dynamics as soon as possible. At the end of said interview, the host praised Ms. McGonigal to her face. In response, she drew his attention to the fact that while he was talking, speaking those words of appreciation, she swallowed. The act of her swallowing was a kind of stress-relief (IIRC). (I'm sure we can all relate to choking up slightly when praised to the face.) She highlighted the dynamics of being praised to the face live, mid-interview, through her own reaction. You may be avoiding sharing your wins with others because you instinctively might want to avoid the situation where others qualify you. In that situation, you experience being the subject of an evaluation, and that -- i.e., being talked about -- might feel like a subordinate position to be in, even if the judging is 100% positive. My remedy is to just yield, lean back, give in, permit the other person to be in control, allow them to have all power in that context, and just bask in the glorious warmth they're sending your way. It can be an experience that you remember for decades after, and you're going to start to crave it. (Peer recognition can be a huge motivator, i.e., doing things for recognition. Whether that's good or bad, is a separate topic :))