You're not. You have a shit ton of time ahead of you.
Before you get into botox, get yourself a good sunscreen - nothing fucks with your skin as much as UV rays - and read up on retinoids (sunscreen is an absolute must with retinoids too). They're magical, just kinda bothersome before your skin learns to tolerate them. They work for acne too. A common name is Retin A.
Sit down and write down every single thing you wanna experience in life, literally everything that comes into your mind, no matter how silly. Put your phone away, sit down with a piece of paper and keep writing for 20 mins, don't get up until the time is over even if you think you're done earlier.
Then write down everything you want to have in your life in 5 years. Describe our ideal life, down to the smallest detail. Picture it in your mind. You won't achieve the life you want if you don't know what it looks like.
The next things is to figure out what steps you need to take to get there. Write down actionable goals that will make it possible to achieve the life you want. Example: "lose weight" or "speak French" are not actionable. You can't hold yourself acountable with goals like that. "Hit the gym 3 times a week" or "watch netflix with French subtitles for 20 mins a day" - now that's an actionable goal.
Start small. So small, failing is impossible. Watch this.
Forget big change, start with a tiny habit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdKUJxjn-R8
Stop screwing yourself over. This speech changed my life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7E973zozc
She also has a book
Consider therapy.
Find a a skill you want to master, and figure out how to get better at it. Something you've always wanted to try, or maybe something new. Start small, put the work in and watch yourself get better with time. You need something that will give you a sense of pride in yourself, and it can't be your looks or you're gonna have a bad time later in life. Maybe check out Yoga with Adrienne on youtube. Also Yogavered on instagram - she started from zero in her 30s after 3 kids. If you lack confidence to even try new things as you're too afraid to fail, you need to change your attitude. I can't recommend this book enough https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322
Stop saying things like that
>I'm a loser
Maybe someone talked to you like this once and now you're telling it to yourself, maybe there are other reasons. But when you tell yourself you're X, your brain listens, and that's what you become. Next time you catch yourself having thoughts like that, acknowledge it, say "Oh, there it is again, I'm talking shit about myself" and move on. Consider reading this book https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-English-Bhante-Henepola-Gunarantana/dp/1536610208
Good luck.
by SmallYTChannelBot 2019-11-17
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Fabricated Kindness vs. Brutal Honesty
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Hopefully we can see that the truth is always more beneficial than seemingly kind words. It takes maturity to admit when we are wrong, but when we do, we open the path of improvement.⤶⤶I tried to be less monotone, so I hope this video does a better job keeping you all interested.⤶⤶Mindset Article: https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-effort-effect⤶⤶Mindset Book: https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322/ref=asc_df_0345472322/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312049124368&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13430562145159944854&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9033348&hvtargid=pla-423142297401&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=61851652213&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312049124368&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13430562145159944854&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9033348&hvtargid=pla-423142297401
This would be an excellent subject for a standalone post: Pragmatic dharma's take on child rearing.
I've found that Fred Rogers was the ultimate master in this regard. Although he was Christian, he didn't discuss religion or religious topics on his show. Instead, he focused on basic principles of morality -- loving oneself and one's neighbor, kindness, allowing one's feelings and being respectful of the feelings of others, and so on. (Daniel Tiger, the modern manifestation of Fred Rogers' excellent program is equally quality.)
We try and follow the Fred Rogers school in my house as best we can. Apart from that, here are some of the other things we have worked on:
The importance of "ohana" or family; not just our immediate family, but a family that includes all creatures and all beings. (Lilo and Stitch is an excellent movie for teaching this principle.)
An emphasis on work and service over pleasure seeking. Work and service are "healthy foods" in life; movies, shows, and games are "dessert" that we enjoy as rare treats only if we've gotten our work done. (This principle must be taught by example, obviously. If you're preaching about work but spend all day on Netflix or grinding ranks in League of Legends, it won't work -- children have a keen eye for hypocrisy).
Dharma in the rough. Enjoying the song "Don't worry, be happy." I emphasize Buddha's parable of the two arrows in as many ways as possible. I love the beginning of this song, which goes something like: "Every life will have some trouble, but when we worry we make it double." Finding dharma in accessible pop culture that children enjoy is always like finding a diamond. I love sharing these things with the kid.
Not shying away from religion. We tell stories about the ancient masters, whether that's Fred Rogers, the Buddha, or Jesus. Kids love these stories, and there's a reason why the world's ancient religions are the world's ancient religions, even if human ignorance has corrupted the teachings at times. Delve back into those teachings and share them in a way that comports with whatever wisdom you have developed. My kid is five years old, and here is what he knows about "God" based on what I have told him (and this is a delicate conversation because his mom and mom's husband are scientific-materialist atheists with a nihilistic bent):
God is like a loving papa, a warm, loving presence that never leaves him.
My idea of "God" (see above) is just an idea and cannot fully capture the essence of "God" that goes beyond words or ideas or our imagination.
The best way to know if somebody really knows God is to tell them that their idea of "God" is stupid and see how they react. If they laugh, there's a chance they know God. If they respond with kindness, there's a chance they know God. If they get angry, they do not know God (as I have defined him). (He then told me my idea of God was stupid, and I told him: "Well done.") (N.B.: This may be terrible advice, but somehow I was moved to share it...)
Growth mindset. If you're not familiar with the concept of "growth mindset," I recommend Carol Dweck's book by this name. Carol is a Stanford researcher who has studied two mindset archetypes -- growth and fixed mindsets. Growth mindset is the belief that our qualities are not fixed, and we can grow through right effort and diligence. Fixed mindset is the belief that our qualities are fixed at birth, and we cannot change them. These mindsets fall along a spectrum, and one person may apply different mindsets to different areas of their life (intelligence, athletic ability, artistic ability). Research has consistently shown that fixed mindsets lead to negative outcomes, and growth mindsets lead to positive outcomes. Here is an example of the different mindsets expressed as statements. Preaching growth mindset is transformative. Failures and mistakes become a celebration for learning. "Being good" is de-emphasized: applying practice and effort toward a goal is cherished. It gives the household a chance to rally around the idea of constant growth, individually and as a family.
Family dinners. A great ritual to emphasize the family values. We aim to always share our "rose and thorn" of the day, state one thing we're all grateful for, explain an act of kindness that we performed, and talk about a mistake we made and what we learned from it. Depending on the night, the kid might be more or less in the mood to share, but again, a great time to emphasize values.
Anyhow, just some ideas for you based on my experience and practice with this bit of dharma. :)
by MartinMystikJonas 2019-08-24
Carol Dweck: Mindset https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322
Petr Ludwig: The End of Procrastination (Outcomes chapter) https://procrastination.com/book
Get ahead of it. Read "Mindset" by Carol Dweck, or if that's too long start here.
tl;dr If you catch yourself thinking "I put in absolutely no work" again, you can choose to think "I haven't challenged myself as much as I could. I will try not to miss out on opportunities to learn in the future" instead. You'll have a better time going through life believing that effort brings success, that failing does not make you a failure, and that it is best to seek opportunities to grow and learn and challenge yourself rather than seeking out tasks which are already easy. And you are free to choose to believe that starting now, your past doesn't have a death grip on your future.
by MartinMystikJonas 2019-08-24
The End of Procrastination https://procrastination.com/book
The key is to be open to understanding yourself. Have people praised your intelligence in the past? That can be paralyzing over time. Or did they praise your effort?
I recommend giving a book called Mindset a read. It helped clarify behaviors of a fixed vs growth mindset, and how having talent still means working hard and putting themselves out there.
This book appears well researched and is the first audio book in a whole that has been able to hold my attention.
Must've been serendipitous, but I starting reading an assignment for class and it was from Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck. It talks about growth mindset! It might be worth your time!
No suggestions on the actual gameplay front, but for the psychological side of things, this book was recommended to me by my boss and I recently recommended it to Aero on twitter. Its pretty basic as far as psychological concepts goes, but there is some good stuff in there. It discusses the two mindsets, Fixed and Growth, and how that affects the way people perceive and cope with challenges in every aspect of their life.
The general idea is that a person with the fixed mindset believes traits are "fixed" (unable to change or be improved upon). Therefore, they measure their self-worth by their success. If they fail at something, they give up, or are too hard on themselves, or get severely depressed, etc. Sometimes they avoid situations where they could fail altogether. If something is challenging, they avoid it or think that it means something negative about themselves.
Meanwhile, people with the growth mindset believe that traits can be improved upon. They see challenges as exciting. Failure does not affect their self-worth, instead its an opportunity to grow. Overall this helps them deal with challenges and inevitable failure in a healthy, productive way.
There is an entire chapter dedicated to Parents/teachers/coaches that you may find useful and how to instill the growth mindset in those you are teaching/coaching. There is also a chapter dedicated to athletes which may be useful.
Instilling your players with a healthy mindset early in life will be better for them in the long run if they wish to pursue this.. or anything really. You don't want them to beat themselves up when they lose.
by joebum14 2018-11-10
After reading the OP's reply, I think you would really appreciate this book. A lot of what he discusses in his reply is what Dr. Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford, has studied most of her life. It really dives into the idea of motivation or lack thereof.
> Now you're doing something boring, but in service of a cause that is meaningful to you.
I think this is a good balance.
Another way to look at it is from a "theory of change" [1] mindset. I discovered this idea a few weeks ago, from a HN comment, I believe. You envision some type of change that you want to bring about in the world, and then you work backwards in concrete steps in order to figure out how to make it happen. What's cool about this is that it gives you a clear purpose for going outside of your comfort zone and learning new skills. E.g. maybe you're a programmer, and you want to get the US on renewable energy. You're good at programming, but through your analysis you realize that persuading people (politics) is the most likely path to your goal. So you start improving your interpersonal skills.
EDIT: Sorry, this is really really long and I can't really give it a TL;DR, but there's a few points in bold to help you out!
1) Happiness isn't something you find, it's something you create.
This is a concept that took me a while to understand. I could see all the people around me looking happy, people on social media posting about their amazing lives, and poor little me, comparing my sad shitty life to these amazing things.
There's a few problems in there, though. One is comparison to others, another one is understanding what others' lives are really like, and a third one is ignoring the good thing. Let's start with the third point, because it ties back nicely to my first sentence.
I firmly believe that you can change your mindset from negative to positive. I also firmly believe that it can be incredibly difficult to do, and it has taken me 3 months of therapy to work out how to do it. Sure, I could explain the theory, but having someone to report to every week is what really made a difference here.
I believe that happiness is never too far away, but that you need to adjust your "happiness lens" to find it. If you've got a massive telephoto happiness lens, you'll spot others' happiness much more easily than the factors that could bring happiness to your life. Take a step back, get a smaller lens that won't do a great job of focusing on things too far from you and your life.
I find gratitude immensely helpful in understand where I can find happiness. There's a few things in life that always make me happy: going to bed, eating a tasty dish, listening to a song I used to love. These are tiny, but if you look closer, your days can be made of those happy little moments. All it takes is becoming aware of them.
Today, for example, I didn't wake up too early. Then I had a lovely warm shower, go to play the piano a little and enjoyed the sun on my way to the train station. I got a seat on the train, my book reached a really exciting point, I ate a very tasty croissant for breakfast. This was all before 10am. These are all pretty insignificant, in the grand scheme of things, right? But their magic is that they're happening all the time.
Action point: start practicing gratitude by listing 3 things you're thankful for each day (it can be having drank less, having found a useful Reddit post, having watched a cool film).
Now as I mentioned earlier, being aware of what can go on in people's lives is pretty important. In our era of social media, perfect people flooding Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. it can be difficult to put up with the awesomeness of these lives, their travels, dishes, outfits, fitness, etc. What's key to remember here, is that 1) we only see a tiny sliver of someone's life, 2) they usually only show you the really good stuff, because they care about being cool, 3) we have no idea what might actually be going on in their lives.
Keeping up appearances is a behaviour that's incited by our self-policing society, where you must look a certain way, be at a certain stage in your life doing certain things, etc. People will go very far to pretend everything is fine when they're hiding a lot of misery behind a thin veneer of happiness. An example that comes to mind is disgruntled Instagrammers who spend most of their day trying to find the perfect angle for the perfect shot - they have 100 versions of the same picture, but you only see one. They'll be thinking of the time they wasted, how another Instagrammer is gonna look better anyway, the numbers of followers they lost, etc. That smile in that picture might be incredibly disingenuous for all we know.
Action point: Try to think of the big picture. That perfect couple you see all the time on Facebook might be in a terrible relationship. Your favourite Instagrammer could be hiding a drug addiction, someone who's being quiet around you may actually be having big problems that they just haven't told you about.
As for comparison with others, it's very easy to look at what people seem to have, compared to what you do/don't have. There's an image that stuck to my mind, though, which was that if you spent your time looking at your neighbour's green grass, it was no surprise yours was patchy and yellow. So find your watering can, and focus on you, and you only. It could be that you feel like you need a life overhaul, and that's fine. Pick one thing and focus on it. You want to do 10,000 things and you feel overwhelmed? Start with one thing. Add another one when you're ok with the first thing, then add a third one, etc. Nothing comes to mind? Think of something you'd like to have achieved in your life, and work back from that. It might take a while, and the path might not be so easy, but work will help.
Learn to build discipline and habit so you have a safety net when things go awry. I really like /r/theXeffect for that, where you have a simple goal, a card with days on, and you cross out each da you've carried out the action on your card. One of mine was to brush my teeth after lunch, and now I do it automatically and don't even think about it anymore. Another one was meditating every day - this is still in progress, but I'm on a 30+-days streak.
Action point: Find something that interests you and will help you be fulfilled - a habit, a hobby, a more general life goal, and develop a system to progress towards it. This will keep you occupied and you will develop a skill that you can later focus on honing.
2) Practice compassion and self-compassion
It sounds like you have a lot of contempt for yourself and others. This ties back to having such a negative mindset that's probably very deeply entrenched in your own psyche, but being able to relate to the human condition as a whole makes it easier to appreciate others and yourself. Yes, a lot of people are dicks. What really matters here is that 1) they don't do it because they hate you, they do it because their lives have guided them to act that way ("People aren't against you, they're for themselves"), 2) we're only humans, we all make mistakes and this is something to be more accepting of.
If someone finds pleasure in criticising or judging someone else on say, their clothes, or appearance, or anything, while there might be subjective truth to it (they don't look great in that jumper), the simple act of criticising/judging shows that that person is likely unhappy with some aspect of their life and are trying to make themselves feel better by putting someone else down. It's a sucky attitude, and it reflects more on the person's character than on the victim.
A good solution for that is self-compassion. Self-compassion isn't about lovey-dovey statements about how you're perfect. Self-compassion is simply being kinder to yourself - understanding where you come from, what you've been through and accepting that even if this isn't the situation you wanted to be in, it's ok to be where you are. Failure is part and parcel of human life, and learning to see it as a way to growth will make life easier for you.
I understand your fears. My parents did so many things wrong and I was scared about making the same mistakes and pressured myself hard to make better and different choices with my kid.
I can tell you that you won't make the same mistakes. What other parents told me (before I was parent) was the fact that if I'm even worried about it now, I will already make me a better parent. Shitty parents don't worry about stuff like this.
I would suggest probably getting some therapy to work out whatever fears/issues you have before having kids. I started therapy when my kid was 2 because I was struggling (they're 13 now) because I didn't feel confident in what I was doing. Honestly, I don't know any parent that feels 100% confident, but you can feel like you're doing a pretty good job.
Children need to feel that they can succeed through their own efforts. This is why helicopter parenting is really detrimental. If you never let them strike out on their own, how will they learn and grow from their mistakes and choices? How will they gain confidence when they overcome an obstacle and succeed if you're doing everything for them?
Your kids will always need your help. Your job is to help them realize that through learning, natural consequences, and internal validation, they can and will be successful, capable, and confident adults.
This is also a really interesting read and has helped me as well: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_14?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+child+whisperer&sprefix=The+Child+whis%2Cstripbooks%2C139&crid=26CCWQN87K6MP
Also a therapy technique called Inner Bonding. Anyone can learn it and it's easy to teach to kids as well: /r/ibtherapy.
This was probably taken from the work of Carol Dweck[0]. I recently read a book she wrote (Mindset[1]) that was recommended on a thread here. The book title sounds like some corny self-help book, and honestly some of the stories in it seemed a bit sappy to me, but I think the underlying idea is solid and I definitely see it myself a lot in my day to day life (full disclosure: recovering fixed mindset person :)).
The basic premise is there are two types of mindsets, a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Those with the fixed mindset are those that believe that intelligence, ability, etc.. is basically fixed. You have some certain amount and that's that. The growth mindset believes the general range of these things may be strongly influenced ('fixed') by things like genetics, life circumstances, etc... but improvement within this range is definitely possible and the key to that is hard work and honest assessment of where you are relative to where you want to be.
This relates to the achievement vs. hard work thing because she claims children who are praised for 'being smart' or 'being good at X' tend to gravitate towards the fixed mindset (i.e. 'I get praised because I am smart, I am smart because I can do X well/X comes easily to me, if something doesn't come easily to me it must mean I am not smart/talented'). This causes them to not put in effort when the going gets tough and in fact to avoid challenges because if they fail they view it as a judgement on their core self/competency (not simply an indication of an area for growth).
The growth mindset folks (children praised for doing well because they worked hard at it as opposed to some natural talent or 'smarts') tend to seek challenges as they view them as the engine of growth/improvement.
Using these frameworks as a lens on which to view human behavior can be interesting. I have definitely seen both mindsets in action (in myself and others). I definitely , consciously, try to stay in a growth mindset now, but I think our culture heavily pushes a fixed mindset where someone either has 'it' or they don't, they are smart or they are not, they are talented or they are not. We prefer the 'instant success due to massive talent/smarts' story over the 'worked their ass off for years to build amazing talent and then succeeded due to that hard work'.
The book Talent Is Overrated[2] also touches on this and points out most people that we generally consider 'naturals' at things, if you interview them/study them/look at their past, all have something in common, a tremendous amount of effort in learning/training, above and beyond what most people put in. This also veers towards the 10,000 hour theory of Anders Ericsson[3]
EDIT: Fixed a bunch typos/misspelling I saw in re-reading. Originally typed in IE with no spell check. Area for improvement: spelling.
Interestingly, this is exactly compatible with what Andrea Dwork writes about in "Mindset" [1]: people whose identity evolves around being "smart" or "talented" are often less willing to take on risks or big projects than those who have grown up being praised for their efforts.
>I feel like I'm not this old person
You're not. You have a shit ton of time ahead of you.
Before you get into botox, get yourself a good sunscreen - nothing fucks with your skin as much as UV rays - and read up on retinoids (sunscreen is an absolute must with retinoids too). They're magical, just kinda bothersome before your skin learns to tolerate them. They work for acne too. A common name is Retin A.
Sit down and write down every single thing you wanna experience in life, literally everything that comes into your mind, no matter how silly. Put your phone away, sit down with a piece of paper and keep writing for 20 mins, don't get up until the time is over even if you think you're done earlier.
Then write down everything you want to have in your life in 5 years. Describe our ideal life, down to the smallest detail. Picture it in your mind. You won't achieve the life you want if you don't know what it looks like.
The next things is to figure out what steps you need to take to get there. Write down actionable goals that will make it possible to achieve the life you want. Example: "lose weight" or "speak French" are not actionable. You can't hold yourself acountable with goals like that. "Hit the gym 3 times a week" or "watch netflix with French subtitles for 20 mins a day" - now that's an actionable goal.
Start small. So small, failing is impossible. Watch this. Forget big change, start with a tiny habit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdKUJxjn-R8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp7E973zozc
She also has a book
Consider therapy.
Find a a skill you want to master, and figure out how to get better at it. Something you've always wanted to try, or maybe something new. Start small, put the work in and watch yourself get better with time. You need something that will give you a sense of pride in yourself, and it can't be your looks or you're gonna have a bad time later in life. Maybe check out Yoga with Adrienne on youtube. Also Yogavered on instagram - she started from zero in her 30s after 3 kids. If you lack confidence to even try new things as you're too afraid to fail, you need to change your attitude. I can't recommend this book enough https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322
Stop saying things like that >I'm a loser
Maybe someone talked to you like this once and now you're telling it to yourself, maybe there are other reasons. But when you tell yourself you're X, your brain listens, and that's what you become. Next time you catch yourself having thoughts like that, acknowledge it, say "Oh, there it is again, I'm talking shit about myself" and move on. Consider reading this book https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-English-Bhante-Henepola-Gunarantana/dp/1536610208
Good luck.
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agreed.
it's the fixed vs growth mindset.
https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=mindset&qid=1559708461&s=gateway&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322
I found this was a great book to challenge that mindset. It helped me a lot anyway.
https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=mindset&qid=1563407494&s=gateway&sr=8-3&utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app
This would be an excellent subject for a standalone post: Pragmatic dharma's take on child rearing.
I've found that Fred Rogers was the ultimate master in this regard. Although he was Christian, he didn't discuss religion or religious topics on his show. Instead, he focused on basic principles of morality -- loving oneself and one's neighbor, kindness, allowing one's feelings and being respectful of the feelings of others, and so on. (Daniel Tiger, the modern manifestation of Fred Rogers' excellent program is equally quality.)
We try and follow the Fred Rogers school in my house as best we can. Apart from that, here are some of the other things we have worked on:
Anyhow, just some ideas for you based on my experience and practice with this bit of dharma. :)
Carol Dweck: Mindset https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322
Petr Ludwig: The End of Procrastination (Outcomes chapter) https://procrastination.com/book
Seligman: Flourish https://www.bookdepository.com/Flourish-Martin-E.-P.-Seligman/9781439190760
Get ahead of it. Read "Mindset" by Carol Dweck, or if that's too long start here.
tl;dr If you catch yourself thinking "I put in absolutely no work" again, you can choose to think "I haven't challenged myself as much as I could. I will try not to miss out on opportunities to learn in the future" instead. You'll have a better time going through life believing that effort brings success, that failing does not make you a failure, and that it is best to seek opportunities to grow and learn and challenge yourself rather than seeking out tasks which are already easy. And you are free to choose to believe that starting now, your past doesn't have a death grip on your future.
The End of Procrastination https://procrastination.com/book
Mindset https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322
I recommend giving a book called Mindset a read. It helped clarify behaviors of a fixed vs growth mindset, and how having talent still means working hard and putting themselves out there.
This book appears well researched and is the first audio book in a whole that has been able to hold my attention.
https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0...
Must've been serendipitous, but I starting reading an assignment for class and it was from Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck. It talks about growth mindset! It might be worth your time!
​
[https://toptalkedbooks.com/amzn/0345472322)
No suggestions on the actual gameplay front, but for the psychological side of things, this book was recommended to me by my boss and I recently recommended it to Aero on twitter. Its pretty basic as far as psychological concepts goes, but there is some good stuff in there. It discusses the two mindsets, Fixed and Growth, and how that affects the way people perceive and cope with challenges in every aspect of their life.
The general idea is that a person with the fixed mindset believes traits are "fixed" (unable to change or be improved upon). Therefore, they measure their self-worth by their success. If they fail at something, they give up, or are too hard on themselves, or get severely depressed, etc. Sometimes they avoid situations where they could fail altogether. If something is challenging, they avoid it or think that it means something negative about themselves.
Meanwhile, people with the growth mindset believe that traits can be improved upon. They see challenges as exciting. Failure does not affect their self-worth, instead its an opportunity to grow. Overall this helps them deal with challenges and inevitable failure in a healthy, productive way.
There is an entire chapter dedicated to Parents/teachers/coaches that you may find useful and how to instill the growth mindset in those you are teaching/coaching. There is also a chapter dedicated to athletes which may be useful.
Mindset by Carol Dweck
Instilling your players with a healthy mindset early in life will be better for them in the long run if they wish to pursue this.. or anything really. You don't want them to beat themselves up when they lose.
After reading the OP's reply, I think you would really appreciate this book. A lot of what he discusses in his reply is what Dr. Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford, has studied most of her life. It really dives into the idea of motivation or lack thereof.
https://toptalkedbooks.com/amzn/0345472322
I think this is a good balance.
Another way to look at it is from a "theory of change" [1] mindset. I discovered this idea a few weeks ago, from a HN comment, I believe. You envision some type of change that you want to bring about in the world, and then you work backwards in concrete steps in order to figure out how to make it happen. What's cool about this is that it gives you a clear purpose for going outside of your comfort zone and learning new skills. E.g. maybe you're a programmer, and you want to get the US on renewable energy. You're good at programming, but through your analysis you realize that persuading people (politics) is the most likely path to your goal. So you start improving your interpersonal skills.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0...
EDIT: Sorry, this is really really long and I can't really give it a TL;DR, but there's a few points in bold to help you out!
1) Happiness isn't something you find, it's something you create.
This is a concept that took me a while to understand. I could see all the people around me looking happy, people on social media posting about their amazing lives, and poor little me, comparing my sad shitty life to these amazing things.
There's a few problems in there, though. One is comparison to others, another one is understanding what others' lives are really like, and a third one is ignoring the good thing. Let's start with the third point, because it ties back nicely to my first sentence.
I firmly believe that you can change your mindset from negative to positive. I also firmly believe that it can be incredibly difficult to do, and it has taken me 3 months of therapy to work out how to do it. Sure, I could explain the theory, but having someone to report to every week is what really made a difference here.
I believe that happiness is never too far away, but that you need to adjust your "happiness lens" to find it. If you've got a massive telephoto happiness lens, you'll spot others' happiness much more easily than the factors that could bring happiness to your life. Take a step back, get a smaller lens that won't do a great job of focusing on things too far from you and your life.
I find gratitude immensely helpful in understand where I can find happiness. There's a few things in life that always make me happy: going to bed, eating a tasty dish, listening to a song I used to love. These are tiny, but if you look closer, your days can be made of those happy little moments. All it takes is becoming aware of them.
Today, for example, I didn't wake up too early. Then I had a lovely warm shower, go to play the piano a little and enjoyed the sun on my way to the train station. I got a seat on the train, my book reached a really exciting point, I ate a very tasty croissant for breakfast. This was all before 10am. These are all pretty insignificant, in the grand scheme of things, right? But their magic is that they're happening all the time.
Action point: start practicing gratitude by listing 3 things you're thankful for each day (it can be having drank less, having found a useful Reddit post, having watched a cool film).
Now as I mentioned earlier, being aware of what can go on in people's lives is pretty important. In our era of social media, perfect people flooding Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. it can be difficult to put up with the awesomeness of these lives, their travels, dishes, outfits, fitness, etc. What's key to remember here, is that 1) we only see a tiny sliver of someone's life, 2) they usually only show you the really good stuff, because they care about being cool, 3) we have no idea what might actually be going on in their lives.
Keeping up appearances is a behaviour that's incited by our self-policing society, where you must look a certain way, be at a certain stage in your life doing certain things, etc. People will go very far to pretend everything is fine when they're hiding a lot of misery behind a thin veneer of happiness. An example that comes to mind is disgruntled Instagrammers who spend most of their day trying to find the perfect angle for the perfect shot - they have 100 versions of the same picture, but you only see one. They'll be thinking of the time they wasted, how another Instagrammer is gonna look better anyway, the numbers of followers they lost, etc. That smile in that picture might be incredibly disingenuous for all we know.
Action point: Try to think of the big picture. That perfect couple you see all the time on Facebook might be in a terrible relationship. Your favourite Instagrammer could be hiding a drug addiction, someone who's being quiet around you may actually be having big problems that they just haven't told you about.
As for comparison with others, it's very easy to look at what people seem to have, compared to what you do/don't have. There's an image that stuck to my mind, though, which was that if you spent your time looking at your neighbour's green grass, it was no surprise yours was patchy and yellow. So find your watering can, and focus on you, and you only. It could be that you feel like you need a life overhaul, and that's fine. Pick one thing and focus on it. You want to do 10,000 things and you feel overwhelmed? Start with one thing. Add another one when you're ok with the first thing, then add a third one, etc. Nothing comes to mind? Think of something you'd like to have achieved in your life, and work back from that. It might take a while, and the path might not be so easy, but work will help.
Learn to build discipline and habit so you have a safety net when things go awry. I really like /r/theXeffect for that, where you have a simple goal, a card with days on, and you cross out each da you've carried out the action on your card. One of mine was to brush my teeth after lunch, and now I do it automatically and don't even think about it anymore. Another one was meditating every day - this is still in progress, but I'm on a 30+-days streak.
Action point: Find something that interests you and will help you be fulfilled - a habit, a hobby, a more general life goal, and develop a system to progress towards it. This will keep you occupied and you will develop a skill that you can later focus on honing.
2) Practice compassion and self-compassion
It sounds like you have a lot of contempt for yourself and others. This ties back to having such a negative mindset that's probably very deeply entrenched in your own psyche, but being able to relate to the human condition as a whole makes it easier to appreciate others and yourself. Yes, a lot of people are dicks. What really matters here is that 1) they don't do it because they hate you, they do it because their lives have guided them to act that way ("People aren't against you, they're for themselves"), 2) we're only humans, we all make mistakes and this is something to be more accepting of.
If someone finds pleasure in criticising or judging someone else on say, their clothes, or appearance, or anything, while there might be subjective truth to it (they don't look great in that jumper), the simple act of criticising/judging shows that that person is likely unhappy with some aspect of their life and are trying to make themselves feel better by putting someone else down. It's a sucky attitude, and it reflects more on the person's character than on the victim.
A good solution for that is self-compassion. Self-compassion isn't about lovey-dovey statements about how you're perfect. Self-compassion is simply being kinder to yourself - understanding where you come from, what you've been through and accepting that even if this isn't the situation you wanted to be in, it's ok to be where you are. Failure is part and parcel of human life, and learning to see it as a way to growth will make life easier for you.
Action point: Pick up something by Kristin Neff - her audiobook is good if you want the science behind it.
Ultimately, what I mostly see is a lot of insecurity and lack of self-confidence that you take out on people. As a result of this negative mindset, you're finding it difficult to see the good in people, situations and life, and it's no wonder you feel so stuck. But that's ok. Sure, it's a crappy situation you're in at the moment, but you were smart enough to identify there was an issue, and brave enough to go to a doctor. Maybe your challenge could be to call that number your doctor give you and give it a chance? It might not be exactly what you feel you need, but it could also be a step in the right direction. If you're in a place where you feel you could help yourself, I recommend Mind Over Mood , which has exercises on re-training your brain to shift your mindset. I also recommend Carol Dweck's Mindset a lot, simply because it's a bit of a game changer on understanding how our brain works and how we're wired and can rewire ourselves. I've mentioned Kristin Neff above, and the last thing I would suggest you look at is Overcoming Low Self-Esteem , which has the explanation as to why we suffer from it, and some exercises to improve it.
I understand your fears. My parents did so many things wrong and I was scared about making the same mistakes and pressured myself hard to make better and different choices with my kid.
I can tell you that you won't make the same mistakes. What other parents told me (before I was parent) was the fact that if I'm even worried about it now, I will already make me a better parent. Shitty parents don't worry about stuff like this.
I would suggest probably getting some therapy to work out whatever fears/issues you have before having kids. I started therapy when my kid was 2 because I was struggling (they're 13 now) because I didn't feel confident in what I was doing. Honestly, I don't know any parent that feels 100% confident, but you can feel like you're doing a pretty good job.
Children need to feel that they can succeed through their own efforts. This is why helicopter parenting is really detrimental. If you never let them strike out on their own, how will they learn and grow from their mistakes and choices? How will they gain confidence when they overcome an obstacle and succeed if you're doing everything for them?
Your kids will always need your help. Your job is to help them realize that through learning, natural consequences, and internal validation, they can and will be successful, capable, and confident adults.
I really liked these parenting books here:
https://toptalkedbooks.com/amzn/0743525086
And this one: https://toptalkedbooks.com/amzn/0345472322
And this one here (and I'd still recommend it to parents of boys as well. Doesn't matter if you have only boys): https://toptalkedbooks.com/amzn/0553393073
This is also a really interesting read and has helped me as well: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_14?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+child+whisperer&sprefix=The+Child+whis%2Cstripbooks%2C139&crid=26CCWQN87K6MP
Also a therapy technique called Inner Bonding. Anyone can learn it and it's easy to teach to kids as well: /r/ibtherapy.
https://toptalkedbooks.com/amzn/0345472322
The basic premise is there are two types of mindsets, a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Those with the fixed mindset are those that believe that intelligence, ability, etc.. is basically fixed. You have some certain amount and that's that. The growth mindset believes the general range of these things may be strongly influenced ('fixed') by things like genetics, life circumstances, etc... but improvement within this range is definitely possible and the key to that is hard work and honest assessment of where you are relative to where you want to be.
This relates to the achievement vs. hard work thing because she claims children who are praised for 'being smart' or 'being good at X' tend to gravitate towards the fixed mindset (i.e. 'I get praised because I am smart, I am smart because I can do X well/X comes easily to me, if something doesn't come easily to me it must mean I am not smart/talented'). This causes them to not put in effort when the going gets tough and in fact to avoid challenges because if they fail they view it as a judgement on their core self/competency (not simply an indication of an area for growth).
The growth mindset folks (children praised for doing well because they worked hard at it as opposed to some natural talent or 'smarts') tend to seek challenges as they view them as the engine of growth/improvement.
Using these frameworks as a lens on which to view human behavior can be interesting. I have definitely seen both mindsets in action (in myself and others). I definitely , consciously, try to stay in a growth mindset now, but I think our culture heavily pushes a fixed mindset where someone either has 'it' or they don't, they are smart or they are not, they are talented or they are not. We prefer the 'instant success due to massive talent/smarts' story over the 'worked their ass off for years to build amazing talent and then succeeded due to that hard work'.
The book Talent Is Overrated[2] also touches on this and points out most people that we generally consider 'naturals' at things, if you interview them/study them/look at their past, all have something in common, a tremendous amount of effort in learning/training, above and beyond what most people put in. This also veers towards the 10,000 hour theory of Anders Ericsson[3]
EDIT: Fixed a bunch typos/misspelling I saw in re-reading. Originally typed in IE with no spell check. Area for improvement: spelling.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-The-New-Psychology-Success/dp/...
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-World-Class-Performer...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Anders_Ericsson
http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Success-Carol-Dweck...
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Success-Carol-Dweck...