<story><title>Excellence is a habit, but so is failure</title><url>https://awesomekling.github.io/Excellence-is-a-habit-but-so-is-failure/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wccrawford</author><text>Life is about taking risk.  We make daily decisions that involve big and small risk constantly.&lt;p&gt;Choosing to enjoy life today instead of waiting for tomorrow for that enjoyment isn&amp;#x27;t a &lt;i&gt;failure&lt;/i&gt;, it&amp;#x27;s a choice.  It comes with risk and tradeoffs.&lt;p&gt;Everyone thinks there&amp;#x27;s a magical line that everyone else should take that straddles that line between enjoyment today and tomorrow.  That lines doesn&amp;#x27;t exist, and isn&amp;#x27;t even the same from day to day.&lt;p&gt;Looking back and regretting a lifetime of decisions is caused that the consequences from those earlier decisions.  Once that weight becomes too heavy, the regret sets in.&lt;p&gt;IMO, the way to combat that is two-fold.&lt;p&gt;First, in the moment, be conscious of what the risks are, and if they are worth it.  If they aren&amp;#x27;t, take &lt;i&gt;pride&lt;/i&gt; in settling for less at the moment so you can safeguard your future.  You&amp;#x27;re doing something hard and good, and it should feel good in itself to do it.&lt;p&gt;Second, when you look back, &lt;i&gt;remember&lt;/i&gt; the joy you had at the time.  It was judged, to the best of your ability, to be worth it &lt;i&gt;at the time&lt;/i&gt;, and you should continue to feel warm and fuzzy from that joy today, even if bad things have come about as consequence for it.&lt;p&gt;For instance, like the author, I gained rather a lot of weight.  Then I lost most of the excess.  Then I gained half of it back.  Every day is now a struggle to try to get my weight back down, and my blood pressure is back up so high I couldn&amp;#x27;t have dental surgery safely the other day, and I&amp;#x27;m back on medication.&lt;p&gt;According to the author that&amp;#x27;s a failure, but I had a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of really, really enjoyable meals.  I ate the vast majority of them with friends and family.  Many of them were either cooked by family, or were special occasions.  Calling those meals &amp;quot;failures&amp;quot; now would be saying that it was a mistake to enjoy that time with my family and friends, and it absolutely wasn&amp;#x27;t.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sph</author><text>&amp;gt; Choosing to enjoy life today instead of waiting for tomorrow for that enjoyment isn&amp;#x27;t a failure, it&amp;#x27;s a choice.&lt;p&gt;This conveniently papers over a critical mechanism of how biological brains operate: we do not choose 99% of our actions. It would be extremely inefficient and energy-consuming.&lt;p&gt;99% of our life we are on autopilot, driven by our habits engaged as response to sensory and internal stimuli.&lt;p&gt;Habits explain neatly concepts like addiction, while the choice story applied to concepts like addiction or self-destructive acts is reductive at best, and catastrophic on a societal level. Yet the majority of people, those that have been &lt;i&gt;lucky&lt;/i&gt; not to have yet felt the grip of addiction, tend to have this opinion that addicts are just weak-willed idiots. This is not referred to you in particular, I am generalising based on common and frustrating opinions about addiction and recovery by well-meaning, but ignorant people.&lt;p&gt;Functionally and neurologically, there is no difference between a heroin addict and someone that has been going on a run every day for a decade. It&amp;#x27;s just that their autopilots have been trained to prefer a different action in response to similar stimuli, and brains respond and adapt much more readily to super-stimuli found in drugs and other destructive habits, than with natural and healthy &amp;quot;highs&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I recommend the book &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;The Biology of Desire&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt; by Marc Lewis, an ex cocaine addict turned neuroscientist.</text></comment>
<story><title>Excellence is a habit, but so is failure</title><url>https://awesomekling.github.io/Excellence-is-a-habit-but-so-is-failure/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wccrawford</author><text>Life is about taking risk.  We make daily decisions that involve big and small risk constantly.&lt;p&gt;Choosing to enjoy life today instead of waiting for tomorrow for that enjoyment isn&amp;#x27;t a &lt;i&gt;failure&lt;/i&gt;, it&amp;#x27;s a choice.  It comes with risk and tradeoffs.&lt;p&gt;Everyone thinks there&amp;#x27;s a magical line that everyone else should take that straddles that line between enjoyment today and tomorrow.  That lines doesn&amp;#x27;t exist, and isn&amp;#x27;t even the same from day to day.&lt;p&gt;Looking back and regretting a lifetime of decisions is caused that the consequences from those earlier decisions.  Once that weight becomes too heavy, the regret sets in.&lt;p&gt;IMO, the way to combat that is two-fold.&lt;p&gt;First, in the moment, be conscious of what the risks are, and if they are worth it.  If they aren&amp;#x27;t, take &lt;i&gt;pride&lt;/i&gt; in settling for less at the moment so you can safeguard your future.  You&amp;#x27;re doing something hard and good, and it should feel good in itself to do it.&lt;p&gt;Second, when you look back, &lt;i&gt;remember&lt;/i&gt; the joy you had at the time.  It was judged, to the best of your ability, to be worth it &lt;i&gt;at the time&lt;/i&gt;, and you should continue to feel warm and fuzzy from that joy today, even if bad things have come about as consequence for it.&lt;p&gt;For instance, like the author, I gained rather a lot of weight.  Then I lost most of the excess.  Then I gained half of it back.  Every day is now a struggle to try to get my weight back down, and my blood pressure is back up so high I couldn&amp;#x27;t have dental surgery safely the other day, and I&amp;#x27;m back on medication.&lt;p&gt;According to the author that&amp;#x27;s a failure, but I had a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of really, really enjoyable meals.  I ate the vast majority of them with friends and family.  Many of them were either cooked by family, or were special occasions.  Calling those meals &amp;quot;failures&amp;quot; now would be saying that it was a mistake to enjoy that time with my family and friends, and it absolutely wasn&amp;#x27;t.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vimsee</author><text>&amp;gt; Calling those meals &amp;quot;failures&amp;quot; now would be saying that it was a mistake to enjoy that time with my family and friends, and it absolutely wasn&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;If gaining weight is the failure in this context, the mistake would likely be the excessive intake of food.
Time spent with friends and family would not be the mistake.
This might have come off a bit harsh.</text></comment>