On growth

Sat Jun 14 2025

tags: public featured life

if addiction is the progressive narrowing of the things that bring us joy, growth is the opposite: it's the progressive widening of the set of situations we can be comfortable in.

We are all prisoners to our own neuroses. The way to grow past that is to deliberately expose ourselves to uncomfortable situations.

My explicit goal in 2025 was to actively and aggressively seek out uncomfortable situations; to "surf the edge of my discomfort", and by doing so become more comfortable with discomfort. I wanted to deliberately seek out failure and put myself in positions to get rejected more. Some personal examples:

  • Forcing myself to speak only German in Berlin
  • Asking girls out in person
  • Walking around Singapore barefoot
  • Going to social dances (this was by far the hardest one! When I first started I really hated dancing; I have two left feet, I'm super uncoordinated, I was pretty awkward touching people)

Discomfort should be carefully calibrated -- too much and you'll be paralysed into inaction, too little and it won't grow you maximally. How I "titrated" my discomfort:

  • Learning German: I first started sounding out the letters to Celine, who (as a kind-hearted person and my partner at the time) was obligated to be patient with me. Then I signed myself up for an intensive German course in Singapore. Finally I signed up for an intensive German course in Berlin and forced myself to speak German to strangers.
  • Asking girls out in person: I started talking to random guys at the gym, just to build up that "talking to strangers muscle"; it's a pretty low-stakes environment. Then I started going up to people at parties and introducing myself. Finally I started asking girls out in appropriate contexts (maybe don't do it on the MRT, but after a class or an activity/meetup seemed to work well enough for me)
  • Walking around Singapore barefoot: I first started going around my neighbourhood shirtless, then started wearing a sarong out, then finally started going about my day barefoot.
  • Learning to dance: What helped was going with a bunch of my classmates. Even today I have to psych myself up, I have to muster up the activation energy to leave my bed, and then I'll do some self-talk: "I'll just ask one person to dance". And then I go there and I ask one person and then it becomes easier and easier!

Many times our neuroses turn out to be unjustified or exaggerated. People are a lot nicer than you think! Examples:

  • I thought that people would make fun of my german in berlin but it turned out everyone was mostly VERY patient and very helpful (sometimes they switched to english when they were tired babying me, which, I completely understand, but 99% of the time they were amazing)
  • I thought I was a weirdo wearing a sarong out and I was super self-conscious about it, but people just thought I was Burmese or something. It was fine! One time someone shouted to get my attention in the street, I turned around, it was this Indian man wearing a sarong as well, he was like "Good job!" gave me a thumbs up lmao.
    • The barefoot stuff was a lot weirder, people would come up to me saying "where are your shoes", I just said "I left them at home".
  • Some girls turned me down, some girls said yes (yay!) but even when they turn me down they do it in a very friendly and kind way. And of course, even one girl saying yes was a HUGE win, and made my week.
  • I was MORTIFIED going into social dancing, but people were mostly very friendly/patient; the not patient ones were cordial enough, and the best ones came back to ask for dances on their own accord, even gave me feedback and taught me new moves

Things won't be perfect; not everyone is going to be OVERJOYED THAT YOU ARE TRYING TO LEARN GERMAN, for example. Some people will be a little "black face" or mean, but by and large it's going to be A LOT BETTER than you think.

Xenophon on Cyrus:

Of all Cyrus’s many qualities: willpower, strength, charisma, glibness, intelligence, handsomeness; Xenophon makes a point of emphasizing one in particular, and his choice might strike some readers as strange. It is this: “He did not run from being defeated into the refuge of not doing that in which he had been defeated.” Cyrus learned to love the feeling of failure, because failure means you’re facing a worthy challenge, failure means you haven’t set your sights too low, failure means you’ve encountered a stone hard enough to sharpen your own edge. He’s found a cognitive meta-tool, one of those secrets of the universe which, if you can actually internalize them, make you better at everything. Failure feels good to him rather than bad, is it any surprise he goes on to conquer the world? (source: REVIEW: The Education of Cyrus, by Xenophon)