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You have two options: Change your mindset or continue burying/ignoring your ambitions. Burying your ambitions can make you relatively satisfied in life, but I

by aik 12y ago

You have two options: Change your mindset or continue burying/ignoring your ambitions. Burying your ambitions can make you relatively satisfied in life, but I believe they will always haunt you regardless of how hard you try. You can change your mindset by developing habits that turns your mind into a force for achieving your ambitions, instead of an obstacle that prevents you from achieving your ambitions (which it appears to be now). Through this you will achieve MUCH more, and I believe be much more satisfied in life. You're only 30. I would suggest you continue reading, looking inward and learning about yourself, and continue searching for answers concerning why you aren't full of passion and motivation for achieving your ambitions. Everyone's journey is different, however here are a smattering of books/resources that may be insightful and have helped me: 1. Carol Dweck on mindset: - Mindset: The New Psychology of Success - Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Essays in Social Psychology) 2. About the inner journey of high performance, removing mental obstacles, cross-disciplinary learning, and nature vs. nurture: - The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence - Josh Waitzkin - Way of the Peaceful Warrior - The Talent Code - Coyle - Bounce - Syed 3. Add some insightful structure to your perspective. Do you have a pessimistic and deterministic mindset that is a detriment to your success? - http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-13-notes-essay http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-... 4. Learn how self-control and willpower works and overcome it: - The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It - McGonigal 5. Strengthening your mind: - The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training For Climbers - A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting 6. Find famous people in history you admire and feel you can relate with, and read their biographies. A few suggestions: - The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Titan (about Rockefeller) - Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War - Steve Jobs - Isaacson - River of Doubt (about T. Roosevelt's dangerous journey through the Amazon river) 7. Don't worry about things you can't change and place all your focus in the things you can. Stoicism: - Seneca - Meditations 8. On how the people who have become masters in their field became masters in their field: - Mastery by Robert Greene 9. Very intriguing characters that display incredible strength (mixed with some controversial philosophy): - Atlas Shrugged - Rand - The Fountainhead - Rand

sriku 12y ago
I'm guessing that this is likely to be more depressing. I like to consider myself as one of those amateur physicists who Hooft talks about. .. but instead of the deep academic physicist researcher kind, I prefer to be the playful kind. I've filled a notebook with such play. It is likely to be of no use to a professional physicist, but I certainly had fun thinking about things. A couple examples - 1. I tried to work out a formula for refractive index of a material assuming that photons get slowed down by it through repeated absorption and re-emission. 2. I asked "what if gravity obeyed maxwell's equations?" Iirc some approximate calculations based on it turned ou something like newtonian laws would hold if we're living on the inside of an exploding blackhole (or something like that). I don't know whether I went anywhere with those, but they were interesting to think about when I knew enough math to do them. I'm quite sure such play is well within the reach of amateur theoretical physicists even if you may not end up solving the domain's pressing problems.

by aik 12y ago

sriku 12y ago

I'm guessing that this is likely to be more depressing. I like to consider myself as one of those amateur physicists who Hooft talks about. .. but instead of the deep academic physicist researcher kind, I prefer to be the playful kind. I've filled a notebook with such play. It is likely to be of no use to a professional physicist, but I certainly had fun thinking about things. A couple examples - 1. I tried to work out a formula for refractive index of a material assuming that photons get slowed down by it through repeated absorption and re-emission. 2. I asked "what if gravity obeyed maxwell's equations?" Iirc some approximate calculations based on it turned ou something like newtonian laws would hold if we're living on the inside of an exploding blackhole (or something like that). I don't know whether I went anywhere with those, but they were interesting to think about when I knew enough math to do them. I'm quite sure such play is well within the reach of amateur theoretical physicists even if you may not end up solving the domain's pressing problems.