Identify a remarkable trait in anyone, then either copy or avoid it
knowledgeartist.orgI think this is how you get highly superficial people with layers that don't make sense stacked on top of each other.
I've done this. Don't waste your time. If you'd like to do this in a real way, identify the values in the other person that lead to that trait. Then compare it to your values. Then pretend you're doing it and see what fears come up along the way. Talk to your fears about it and see if there's a way around it -- your fears are a part of you after all. And they're very much able to engage in conversation if you push a little consciousness their way and bring them to more of a conversational and not trauma-time-all-the-time kind of place.
The first approach may seem to work at first and will get you near and close, but not truly intimate with people. It's the loneliest kind of isolation and misery possible -- thinking you're the person that you've aspired to be, but still missing everything.
Learn from my mistakes on this one and please, I'd absolutely encourage that you avoid the author's advice too, if you can help it! :)))) Real and silly > perfect and pristine, any day, not matter what or how the opinions of others strike us (much to the despair of the parts of us that deeply rely on others and the opinions of others for our own self-worth).
Just my two cents! :D :))))
Trying to cargo cult your way into being just like someone else is destined to fail.
However, there's nothing wrong with genuinely following in the footsteps of someone who has achieved what you want to achieve.
A good example is fitness: If you see a fit person, you can't simply capture the benefits of being fit by drinking the same brand of protein shakes they drink. You have to also do the work, going to the gym regularly and making fitness a priority in your life. Seeing that person as an inspiration can be a healthy way to pave the way to better habits, but it's still up to you to do the work and earn it.
In sports especially, I've found that the people I admire within that discipline will readily dispense gear advice, and not knowing any better myself, I take their advice full and whole. I got into mountain biking this way. A couple years in, I now have formed opinions about components, know what kind of riding style I have etc. but it's helpful at first to substitute someone else's preferences for your own so that you don't get caught up on details when you're starting out.
Advice is great, but you can’t become a great mountain biker just by buying the right gear. Great riders on $500 Craigslist specials will run circles around amateurs on a $10,000 top of the line bike.
The point is that you can follow in someone’s footsteps, but you have to do the work. You can’t simply pretend to imitate people or their mannerisms or their gear and expect the same results.
But the point you are missing is that if you focus on doing everything "correctly" at first, you're not gonna get anywhere (and may do the wrong thing).
Imitating other people's gear isn't "correct," but shipping matters more. You will do the work eventually, and it's better to get a little experience so you know the right work to do.
My original point was that cargo culting is a trap, but following in the footsteps of someone else is not. I don't think that disagrees with what you're saying.
Most professionals in sports are paid by gear manufacturers to have a specific opinion.
There's a much better path here: Don't develop preferences until you have enough experience to make informed decisions.
I think we're saying the same thing. I meant taking advice on where to enter gear-wise from not professionals, but personal friends who ride at a level that's maybe 95-98% in the sport (but still far from pro)
Haha. Ive never met a cyclist in any discipline who gave advice for improvement based on buying more gear unless I was in a bike shop and they were selling something. The “real” advise is always along the lines of “it never gets easier, you just go faster”, etc.. (Although the tongue in cheek joke about triathlons are its the one sport you can get better at by spending tons of money on gear..)
I can be more specific. I was looking for an entry point into MTB. My experience with bikes was things that cost 100-200$ on craigslist, and initially I set a budget that would have netted me a bike-shaped object, or at least something that I would have traded up from by now. I trusted them enough to substitute their knowledge for my own, and the result is that I'm 2 years into a sport and am just now coming across aspects of my equipment that I want to change.
It’s a start though. The article failed to articulate inspiration.
Most Instagram people start by following the template of showing off foods they like, then nice pictures of landscapes. What inspires them is the want to share their appreciation of the world.
Fetishization is when it mutates into the template manifesting into vanity. That your appreciation of the world just turned into mostly selfies of you. Or clinically, that these things are ‘extensions’ of you, which is the laughable clinical explanation of narcissism. It’s standard self absorption. The shrinks that came up with the clinical explanations should honestly be put in jail (DSM) for creating the language of demonization of an evolving personality.
Iterative process for sure.
The analogue in tech is ‘behold me demonstrating this technical how-to in a blog’. Vanity is a real problem in the modern world.
So it brings me to that weird old saying, paraphrasing, ‘the unexamined mind ...’, as in, most of us have tremendous amount of self reflection left to make sense of all that we are absorbing.
Did we really digest it into a good source of nutrients, with a solid chunk of shit pushed out at the end. It’s almost like being a traffic controller in your own digestive system. The curse of consciousness.
The longing to just be a dog, but burdened with the responsibility of humanity (where nothing is every thrown away, and nothing is ever lost on you, and that you accumulated it all into the faintest white tone as not to be noticed, but still incorporated on the white background of the picture).
>Most Instagram people start by following the template of showing off foods they like, then nice pictures of landscapes. What inspires them is the want to share their appreciation of the world
Maybe I'm too cynical, but my take on it is that most people are already at the vanity/self-absorption phase, the appreciation is lacking, and what's desired most is to be perceived as someone who really appreciates food/beauty/life in general. Or alternatively that they are in some way vaguely unhappy, had expectations of life fed to them by society but they don't quite fit and aren't self-aware or introspective enough to realize it and choose for themselves. And their response is to project back into society the appearance that things fit, both to convince others and to convince themselves. It's especially sad considering that if you found a better fit, modern society is mostly large enough to have a place for it.
Yeah, I hate to say the shrinks have a point, but I’ll reference America Psycho (or rather, the artists have a point):
Narcissism is caused, among other things, and to my best understanding, by the equivalent of an emotional autoimmune disorder to self love.
The DSM has many flaws, notably being a categorical tautological discretization of some stateful, high-dimensional networked process.
But one thing they do get right is the constancy of causes in the different families of personality disorders. NPD, for example, is not an 'evolving personality', it's only classified as NPD if it's rigid, generally unchanging, and pervasive by its very nature.
Misunderstanding some group of people then claiming action like 'throwing the shrinks in jail' based on that misunderstanding is quite frustrating to me. In addition, the DSM was never meant to be an official manual, just a lingua franca, at least in the early days. You can blame the prevalence of needing discrete billing codes and the stubbornness of the APA to change in more difficult parts of it for its prevalence today.
Please understand the difference between temporary self-absorption and clinically significant chronic self-displacement into secondary, superficial images of self. The first one is growth and struggle, the second is a supremely painful disorder (arguably all of the lack-of-self-love/Cluster B/reactive disorders are, I'd contend).
Right with you on destigmatizing. But that being said, people with narcissistic traits are generally not safe at all, in the least, to be around with any kind of emotional proximity, to be honest as I can with my personal experiences in and around the world. Not that you, or I, or anyone else should stigmatize or hurt anyone on the NPD spectrum 'just because', but I feel very strong that it's basically impossible for anyone on that spectrum to not involve you past a certain point due to the deep desire and need for others for self to feel safe -- that's where I'd argue with the crossover of BPD is with narcissism, although hyperempathetic as opposed to low to literally no empathy at all.
Just my 2 cents, hope this helps clear things up a bit.
I don’t condone any of the personality traits of the narcissist (in fact I am admitting they exist). What I admonish is the labeling and judgement of it as an innate trait (as in, this is you, born a demon), and the cartoonish clinical description (almost as laughable as how Borat described Jews as having ‘claws’). I encourage anyone to read the wiki articles on it.
Your post is a good example of how deep the language of demonization is. The language is used freely by anyone that has a problem with someone in their life and immediately resort to the language and label that person ‘the worst person ever, dangerous to be around’. Your own post might as well have described a boogey man.
If I had to be clever, and cleverly make a point at how stupid the label is, I’d point to the fact its very name is based on a Greek mythological character that is self obsessed. The ‘narcissistic mirror’, or literally the pond Narcissus stared into.
It is one of the most childish clinical explanations I’ve ever read.
>If you see a fit person, you can't simply capture the benefits of being fit by drinking the same brand of protein shakes they drink
Your perception of what makes them fit is incomplete and doesn't translate unless you're at a similar fitness level and are built similarly. There are better ways to get fit than to copy someone you think looks good.
This reminds me of the book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck" by Mark Manson. The distinction between behaviors and values is one of the central points that book conveys. Despite being quite introspective myself, I found a lot of inspiring new personal truths in what the author points out (and it was neither as gratuitously profane nor nearly as single-minded as the title might suggest).
I looked into that a while back (and again today) when browsing around the books I could read. I appreciate the ideas covered, though I think I found the self-aggrandization on the part of the author to be somewhat grating, to the point I'd not want to invest the time reading through it to get the insights.
However! I am starting some search through some of the old Taoist traditions and am finding some very good pieces of wisdom (the parable of the horse and the broken leg is quite a good one). The humility in that religion, at least upon surface level (and brief interactions with one Taoist individual) was striking.
I've also heard the stoics are quite good, though I've yet to find a stoic book I can stomach yet that bridges it to the modern day (albeit in a very cursory search). I may have to go back to the old ones.
If you found TSAoNGAF to be appealing, maybe the above would be a good starting place for a journey of your own. I'm just starting mine through those areas, and on the words of other's I've based it on. It's been quite fruitful for me.
> I found the self-aggrandization on the part of the author to be somewhat grating, to the point I'd not want to invest the time reading through it to get the insights.
My retrospective is that the author just uses his (and others') experiences as examples. But he discusses both his highs and his lows in the book, and as such it really didn't rub me the wrong way at all. Maybe it depends on personal preference (or how inspiring you find the actual content), hard to say.
> I've also heard the stoics are quite good
Maybe that's a path to happiness, but I found the following point of TSAoNGAF to be incredibly enlightening (and, retrospectively, fully in line with my experiences thus far): Happiness stems from the act of overcoming challenges. It is expressly not some state you eventually reach, but a transient in the process of getting somewhere you want to be. Probably the main takeaway from the entire book for me is that the single most important thing for achieving happiness is choosing what problems you are going to deal with day to day. (That's also the deeper point behind the title: Choosing what to give and what not to give a fuck about.) The idea of finding the right mental framing for the world around you instead of letting it rule your emotions is the same as e.g. the parable you mentioned or the stoics (I guess).
Ok, enough of my rambling. If you do read the book (I'm not set on changing your mind) I'd be happy to hear your thoughts on it, and maybe even how the ideas within compare to the ones from Taoism or Stoicism. I'll keep my mind open to the sources you suggested too. :)
On the other hand, since you know it happens, you should set a good example. Especially if you're a parent because kids copy like parrots. :)
When you say talk to your fears, what do you mean? I have heard that before
Presumably, this person suggests role playing a conversation as your ambitious self and a persona that is centered around that fear. By 'centered around' I mean a stereotype of a person with that fear, like 'crotchety old man' or 'flippant 90s valley girl'.
Staging a dialog is a framework for thinking that can force expression of otherwise amorphous thoughts. People suggest journaling for a similar reason. Rather than 'forgiving' myself when I repeat the same point in my brain, it is in front of me and instead of feeling like there are 'a million' reasons why not, I can see it is really just three or whatever.
You could stereotype, if that helps.
I think my personal (and admittedly strange) experiences have led me to believe that due to some of the inherent structural aspects of personality, as well as some of the dissociative barriers that come up due to past traumas, that it's easy for us to just leave fears in the subconscious and never really address them. For some people, it's more severe than others.
I have a rather extreme version of this due to some complex historical trauma, so 'dialoguing' with myself is... basically a daily occurrence.
The idea of bringing parts of the brain stuck back in trauma to the forefront isn't new or special, necessarily. I do personally find the construct of a casual conversation to be really helpful, though it takes a little bit of wrangling to get to know the parts of ourselves carrying a lot more fear.
For people with more complex trauma, especially developmental, those parts of our heads can turn into individual personalities (DID, 1-2%, or OSDD, about 12-ish percent from what I know). But the same principles hold in subclinical space.
I think stream-of-consciousness journaling is really good for ekeing out those parts of yourself for conversation. Also, just simply talking out loud and switching 'camera view' between the two points of your brain.
The real kicker is when people have lots of really deep and conflicting traumas, coupled with a lot of amnesia in the switching of personality states and etc. That's a really tough one. But I'd reckon for most people, the lighter version of those DID-adapted tools to 'talk to one's self' still works in what I'd consider to be a subclinical (not a doctor or psychologist) presentation of internal dissociation/fragmentation.
There's other 'bits and pieces' of those frameworks scattered throughout the standard psych world that seem a bit strange by themselves -- the child inside, talking to the different parts of yourself, etc. They're all parts of a framework that really does make a lot of sense on the whole once you're able to get it at scale (in my opinion), it's just that the pieces alone admittedly look ridiculous.
If either of y'all want any info on that or have any questions about the exercise (or the above post), just let me know and I'll answer as best as I can. I think the main thing you'd stand to lose is a bit of time and/or personal shame if it went wrong, in which case, you should probably ask the part of yourself that's feeling shame about why they're feeling shame, and resolve the shame there and then as much as possible.
And then you'll hopefully get something either way!
> There's other 'bits and pieces' of those frameworks scattered throughout the standard psych world that seem a bit strange by themselves -- the child inside, talking to the different parts of yourself, etc. They're all parts of a framework that really does make a lot of sense on the whole once you're able to get it at scale (in my opinion), it's just that the pieces alone admittedly look ridiculous.
> If either of y'all want any info on that or have any questions about the exercise (or the above post), just let me know and I'll answer as best as I can.
I'll take you up on that offer :D
I don't think I have any major trauma lurking within me, but I do find that I have an internal divide between my "unemotional, technical, calculating" and "in the moment, emotionally unrestrained, lost-in-music" sides. Not expecting spontaneous therapy here, but I've found your posts in this thread very informative already, so I'll gladly soak up whatever you feel like sharing :)
From a New Yorker article about another Chinese proverb， 邯郸学步：
"One of the best known is “Handan xue bu” (“learning to walk in Handan”), which refers to the story of a young man from the provinces who hears that the people of Handan are so sophisticated that they walk in a special way. He goes to Handan to learn, but, years later, he still hasn’t mastered the gait. Dejected, he heads home. He finds that he can’t remember his own way of walking, and has to crawl. The moral: don’t copy others, or you’ll lose yourself."
Ha, I was thinking on a different axis.
"All my life I wanted to be somebody, but now I see I should have been more specific." - Lily Tomlin
That was my thought as well after reading the first comment on this page, about identifying the roots of these traits and about avoiding superficial copies.
It is important to try to be yourself, know your strengths and accept your weaknesses. Because if you don't and blindly try to copy others' qualities, you are likely to have a wrong and superficial understanding of the way these traits are acquired. Due to the superficial understanding, the attempt to copy the traits is likely to fail in some cases, and get you crawling desperate about how you could not achieve your target.
Naturally, there is truth on both sides. Maybe the piece advice should have been: *be attentive* to remarkable traits in people around you, then *be inspired* by their good traits and try to avoid replicating their bad traits. The important parts are the self-consciousness and the effort to improve oneself.
When I was in college, this video really stuck with me: https://youtu.be/FxF-mxuv4uI
The relevant quote (and my favorite quote from it) is:
> Stop trying to be Mark Zuckerberg, because the best you can possibly do is second place.
Author here. Wow this got a lot more attention than I had expected. Thank you all for sharing your thoughts, including critical ones.
The point about not being superficial/artificial and instead "just being yourself" sounds fair. To clarify, the copying/imitating I was referring to was much closer to the "imitate, then innovate" sense. That is, even if you make the best attempt to copy someone you admire, you end up with a mutated copy that is uniquely yours (because of your biases and life experience).
And to the point about it being shallow and simplistic — I agree, and the brevity was intentional. I treat this a mental model that is not universally correct, but is sometimes useful. To make sense of the world, I would use an ensemble of these models.
And I love the quotes in the comments!
who is yourself ? are you much more than amalgamation of those around you ?
Sometimes this trait turns out to be "spent a significant percentage of their life thinking about and doing a particular thing". Copying it tends to require a similar time investment, in my experience.
So I've determined Einstein had the remarkable trait of mathematical and physical intuituon. Also Pavarotti had a remarkable ability to sing. Now all I have to do is copy them, sweet.
If you can just find a young person and a rich person, you'll be sorted.
I'll start with the trait of vastly oversimplifying things and avoid it.
That's the idea! :)
It would help if the author gave some more concrete explanation because otherwise this seems like really bad advice.
Things are really just not that simple. You can't for example look at someone and say "Wow, they're really compassionate" and decide that you're going to be compassionate too, if you aren't already. It took a series of experiences, not to mention some mix of biological predisposition, to instill that trait.
Attempting this strategy will just result in a series of shallow parroted behaviors that could actually risk alienating people who end up seeing you as insincere and lacking substance or "courage of your convictions". Traits aren't simply chosen, they are arrived at as the on-going result of an endless process.
Steal Like An Artist bypasses all the middle-brow arguments about superficial copying versus deep understanding. You can attempt to learn from the comments here but the faster way is reading that book.
Perfectly captures the philosophy, very short, and recommended by many.
But reading one book is just one dumbasses opinion. Read the comments.
"One dumb opinion, bad. Many dumb opinion, wisdom."
-- Burt the Caveman, 19870 B.C.
Alternatively: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.” – Matsuo Bashō
Not sure if I follow the conclusion. The first half (copy it) makes sense -- the things that most keep me alive as a creator are constantly learning and selectively taking the parts I like from new trends and integrating them into my toolbox.
But the latter point (avoid it) is pretty dangerous, in my opinion. I used to do that, and it resulted in me missing the boat in some really retrospectively stupid ways. Instead, I take a more neutral wait and see approach for most things, reserving my avoidance for things I can tell are wrong.
Neutrality is important. Giving new ideas which aren't fully formed the space to breathe is a key part of any kind of innovation process. Prematurely abridging that in one direction or another can cause unforced errors. That doesn't mean you have to move slowly when you /do/ know. But it does mean that you should be cautious about trying to compress parts of the process which are fundamentally incompressible.
I now truly believe that you can not know if a trait is good or bad.
Based on your previous experiences, knowledge and views of the world you might view a trait as bad or good.
Look at the exact same trait 10 years for now and you might realize that now you view it as opposite.
For example the hustle mentality: you see someone who manages to work 12hours per day and be very productive and you might think WOW, that is a good trait, I want that. Then you might later realize that life is not all about working, and that having difference experiences and enjoying life might be a better trait.
Maybe the goodness or badness of a trait depends on context, and sometimes that hustle mentality is very useful, but other times is an impediment.
I think it is important to have an open mind and realize anyone can teach you something. However the way the author positions people and relationships seems to commodify people.
'The Master said, "When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers. I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them.'
Just googling for that proverb gave me a translation that makes much more sense. I don't think Confucius would imitate....
I think what everybody is missing in this post, is that is much less about copying and much more about OBSERVING. If you can see what you want to be, you are that much closer to actually being it. The observation is not just a property of the other but yourself.
Copy and Clone are already traits.
I like to think of people's traits as immutable, environment somewhat mutable, patterns of behaviour as mutable and thought patterns as most mutable of all.
Folks who don't recognize this hierarchy and only try to change matters on one or two of the levels are often setting themselves up for limited success or failure.
It does make for a great self help industry however - telling people they can be so much more, if only they just control those thought patterns via meditation apps, 'clean their room' via Jordan Peterson, etc :)
One doesn’t simply copy traits. Actions are often driven subconsciously by emotions and it’s not always a case of choice. It can take ages to learn and rewire your brain.
I've done this my entire life and it's extremely useful. Identifying useful strategies is extremely important and in no way makes you artificial.
The moment you start using strategies to deal with someone, you are already artificial.
That would make being artificial a meaningless term for me. You have to use strategies to deal with kids, coworkers, spouses, and anyone you want to interact with. Most times subconsciously.
Even being well kept and dressing tidy is a strategy to signal you’re organized. Some people are naturally organized, and some people aren’t and have to consciously try to do it. I don’t see what difference it makes though.
Definitely agree. Also this idea that strategies are artificial is (with all due respect) total nonsense. Automatic strategies are strategies nonetheless.
It reminds me of the famous Hacker koan (delivered from memory here and hence butchered): When Sussman was a novice he was once coding up a neural net when Minsky walked up to him and asked him why he was randomizing the initial weights. When Sussman remarked that he didn't want the net to have any preconceived bias, Minsky reacted by closing his eyes. Sussman asked him why he was doing that, to which Minsky answered, "So that the room will be empty".
If there were one terrible thing that I would change about American culture, it is this notion that analysis and learning is somehow artificial as opposed to subconscious uncontrolled reaction to the environment.
It's the same source viewpoint that rejects things like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and that creates this idea that encountering uncomfortable ideas is instantaneously harmful (because your automatic responses are held as the prime understanding).
> Even being well kept and dressing tidy is a strategy to signal you’re organized. Some people are naturally organized, and some people aren’t and have to consciously try to do it. I don’t see what difference it makes though.
The problem of course is when you're dressing tidy while being unorganized. In that case you're being artificial.
I think there's correlation. If you are able to consistently "act" tidy (or whatever) then you actually have tidyness. A real slob can't fake it.
Authenticity is a concern for many, but I’ve found that for the people who don’t care about it, they simply can’t understand the people who do.
Artificial is when you’re aware you’re emulating someone, when you have to think “What would X do? How would they do it?” Once you don’t have to do that you’ve learned. Even if you started out as a perfect copy of the person you’re emulating your own experiences and mental and physical characteristics mean you’ll diverge from them. This is a technique for learning faster.
Two corollary suggestions along the lines of what's already been suggested:
1) Fall in with a good crowd.
2) We all have a friend we shouldn't have and who is best avoided.
Is it easy to even identify a remarkable trait, let alone copy it? Here, try this: tell me what's remarkable about warren buffett and then what I should copy? Also, characteristics, not traits? Lastly, this is a very strange (to me) ethic to advocate when viewed through the lens of individualism. Is the idea here self improvement?
It seems remarkable that a short post with a shallow opinion, which only serves to confuse people who do not have a good grasp of themselves and others, is getting so much traction here.
Note to self: avoid it.
Sometimes you meet people where you just feel like you have seen them before... in a movie or a TV series, perhaps?
Be yourself, not the idea of somebody else.
I've found this happened naturally for me in terms of smaller mannerisms and phrases or silly voices. Nothing load bearing, mind. That's all hard work and self discovery.
or let them keep it and love them for it :)