Ask HN: What is something that had the largest positive impact on your life?

For me it's my religion. I say religion to encompass: things I personally believe, the core teachings of my faith ("the gospel"), and the church that supports it.

I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's not a perfect church, and there's definitely some weird stuff in the culture that it's so often tied to. I don't like a lot of the strange tacked-on culture stuff. And I don't think the organization is perfect.

That said, I am deeply grateful that I'm a member of this church because it's given me so many chances to help people from very different walks of life that I wouldn't have come into contact with otherwise. I've gotten practice teaching, running meetings, getting out of my comfort zone, helping others, getting help myself.

Then there's the gospel: I've gone through life much happier believing that there's a purpose to life, that death isn't the end, that family can be together forever. Christ's teachings have pushed me to be a kinder, more understanding, and more forgiving person than I otherwise would have been.

I know there are plenty of atheist and anti-theists here. I respect you! I hope you can appreciate that my religion has done fantastic good in my and my family's life.

WFH.

- Save 10+ hours a week in commuting. - Save $$ on lunch - Spend more time with my family. - Get more done in both work and personal stuff.

Finding your tribe.

A few comments here refer to religion, but I think this is a better label.

I've restarted life a few times, moving to foreign countries where I didn't know anyone.

Each time, it isn't as if I landed and just instantly had a group of people I related to and enjoyed spending time with. It usually has taken a year, and it's a tough year when I was thinking "maybe I made a mistake".

It wasn't as if I didn't have "friends", but I didn't feel like the people I was spending time with were "my people". Which was fine.

But then, sometimes, you find a group that you really click with. The nice thing about this is that you really appreciate how rare it is to find your tribe, particularly when you've been spending time with people who aren't yours.

I think this might be along the same line as religion and parenthood. Though parenthood is kinda forcing the world to accept that you're making your own tribe, but maybe we just ignore that.

You can also belong to more than one tribe, which is nice. I have my social tribe, and my work tribe, and I truly feel connected to both of them.

Growing up, I never had a tribe until I moved away from home, and even then, I knew that the friends I had wouldn't be friends for life.

I think most people accept that their family is their tribe, and though I'm still close with a few of my siblings, I probably wouldn't have known what it feels like to be free of a family which isn't your tribe, unless I had moved away (which I did in high school).

Kids.

I've gained much more focus and I live more in the moment.

I also don't care as much about work things.

Loads of technical debt, unsustainable roadmaps, weird coworkers, bad bosses, who cares?

- The Incerto by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. My entire way of life, my persuits, career choices, health choices, life choices are based on this.

- Homo Ludens by Johan Huzinga (The highest calling a human can partipate in is play). My goal in life is to have has much play time as possible, it is all I am aiming for right now. Probably How I will measure how my successful my life was (how much did I play?)

- Adam Curtis Documentaries (Power & how it shapes societys). Opened my eyes to what exactly political struggle is. I don't see politics the same way again after watching those documentaries. I rewatch one every few months. There is so muc to learn from them.

- The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. Got me to start taking computers seriously.

- Hacker News. This is the highest quality social community that I am part of. I learned so much from here. And it feels like the only place where I can meet and have a conversation with like minded people. I genuinely feel like I have an edge in life over other people just by being part of the HN community.

Religion. I want to ride off the top comment here, but I have a slightly different take on it.

I think what matters is having a core, something you accept as absolute truth. Make new assumptions around this truth. What happens when science conflicts with your truth? You abandon the lower truth and follow the higher truth. Abandon lower truths for higher ones, like a bubble sort. Is scientific evidence the highest truth? For many it is, but you should get there by thinking rationally.

This absolute truth is bigger than yourself. It makes everything else seem really tiny by comparison - you could lose a limb, a child, your wealth, your life, and that's fine. It's an incredibly solid shock absorber.

Then what's the meaning of life? It's difficult to define by life itself, but you can look at the absence of life -- death. What does dying mean, what happens after, and what should you do before? If you're about to die, do you travel the world? Do you shoot up bullies? Do you write a book? All of us are about to die, some are well past half our lifespan. Religion answers a lot of these questions.

Then you work on things with the urgency of someone who is about to die and who knows what they need to do.

That compass is important. It doesn't have to be a god, but if you believe in the highest power, why wouldn't you do whatever they say? Some are polytheists with indifferent gods, but they still have an idea of what happens after death. Your compass can be the world, you can be out to save the world. It can be yourself - plenty of people leave their homes in search of themselves. You'll have yourself through all your life. Why not look after yourself? There's a religion for that too.

My family always ate wholegrain products when available, many years ago gave up adding sugar to tea/coffee and reduced all sugar consumption. Ultimately switched to Mediterranean diet (not for weight loss) due to its excellent health benefits. Became aware of the Pareto Principle and how often it applies to every day situations. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/04/health/mediterranean-diet... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Living abroad outside the US for a considerable amount of time. Not because America is terrible and Europe is amazing (both places have their positives and negatives), but because it becomes easier to understand America and what being American means from the outside. It’s not an accident, I think, that Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby while in southern France. Being outside of something helps you understand it more, and I think this is not an experience that a lot of people are lucky enough to have.

Having children. It was the best of times, it was (almost) the worst of times.

Getting into outdoor activities (kayaking, climbing, hiking etc). Made the best friends, travelled worldwide, saw interesting places, got fitter

Music, listening and playing instruments. (and I guess programming to an extent) always nice to have a skill and something you can do when nothing else is going on. Quite meditative too.

Going to be ironic and say reducing my time on forums massively.

Like many nerdy tech guys I spent most of my teens and 20s on forums. I'm 30 now, younger than many here, but I've come to realize spending more than an hour per week in them is a waste of time.

Finding a romantic partner and getting married, easily. The person I was before meeting my wife and the person I am after being with her for a year are unrecognizably different.

Spending less time on the internet, and more time in real life.

Growing up in the mountains and spending my childhood in nature.

LASIK. Crossfit / weightlifting. Learning programming and getting hired early at a unicorn.

I took up swing dancing (originally Lindy Hop and now Balboa). I'm a very different and much happier person as a consequence. YMMV.

Ritalin.

Moving to another country.

Going full indie.

leaving religion

leaving reddit

avoiding marriage&kids (okay actually i only bring it up cuz the default replies seemed incredibly un hacker news to me, more like boomer news "religion, marriage, kids" lol, bruh one of my college buddies is big into religion and now he is married and has a kid and he used to be almost as smart as me now he probly couldn't program his way out of paper bag)

keeping a productivity computer where I have youtube&hacker news banned via host file