Now this "accepting" is not just something you (can) just do, it may be exactly what you need a therapist for. Because you may have to undo years of thinking and redefine your default thought patterns, this is very hard work.

For all the parents, I think this is a pretty important thing to teach your kids. Telling them: "If you work hard you can be whatever you want to be!" Is, imho, damaging, because it is not true, you are setting them up for disappointment in themselves.

In short: Happiness = Reality - Expectation

Don't burden yourself or your kids with unrealistically large expectations.

I second this. From my experience you have to START WITH ACCEPTING the status quo and honestly looking at it without judging or being ashamed. It helps me to tell myself: "This is not terrible. I am alive. I have a job. My body is still working OK."

From there FOCUS ON THE DELTA: What can I do today that will bring me into a slightly better position tomorrow.

Avoid thinking about the past ("I ate too much today.", "I did not exercise all week."). This is done. No way to change it.

Don't set high expectations. You only need to know where you want to be, and that you are going into the right direction. It does not matter much if you arrive there in one week or in five years.

- you set the delta of “what can I do today to achieve” to be low enough that it’s actually realistic and not what you wish it was (while still being high enough to actually mean something), and,

- if you still fall short, you don’t kill yourself with shame & guilt, recognising that you actually lose more time in that process.

Not easy to learn, and not easy to stay in that space. Meditation helps (after a long long time of doing it).

(Oh and if you have ADHD - undiagnosed or otherwise - please forgive yourself for it, and forgive yourself each time you get thrown off the rails because of it - yes, even if that is multiple times per hour. Everything else flows from that forgiveness and self acceptance.)

This[1][2] is what he has to say about depression. It's largely about acceptance.

[1]: https://markmanson.net/youre-okay

[2]: https://markmanson.net/the-uncomfortable-truth

Mark Manson says The Uncomfortable Truth is that our lives are meaningless and when we die, nothing we did will have mattered. That the human condition requires hope so we invent narratives, as individuals and as society, to create a mental framework that makes life worth living.

That's all well and good, I was hoping to get some solution or suggestion but I got to the end of the essay and it was essentially "now buy my book to understand more".

I'm going to assume link [1] is of similar quality and conclusion.

Tell a college kid to lower his expectation and he will feel like a "unmotivated" person, tell a 30's/40's that and he will feel like a failure, all his struggle for nothing, and tell a late 20's to lower his expectation and that goes against every self-motivation influencer and (probably) what his surrounding successful peers suggest.

I think most people understand that the answer is acceptance, but how to reach that point, is so different for each person. Because some people overcome it by sheer grit, while some through therapists, it's hard for a person in the grind to realize what course of action is the best, and before it's too late.

Many of the things that are bubbling up in society seem all too much the same. Whether it's school or employers or whatever, there's this kind of overvaluing phenomenon, where the rich and/or successful get more rich and/or successful and we attribute their [increasingly, given increasing inequities] freakish success to something about them, as opposed to being in the right fitting environment at the right point in their careers, or corruption, or something broken in the system, or what. If you're too old, too black, too caring, worked at the wrong place, the place changed, didn't go to a prestigious enough school, were too rebellious as a young adult, whatever, don't know the right people, you're screwed.

I'm not sure what my point is, except to say this acceptance-struggle tension you're referring to is even more complicated because it's not just about lowering or raising your own personal expectations or standards, it's about everything else as well, about accepting or struggling against what's broken in society (at the risk of sounding too idealistic or self-righteous).

What do you do when it's not self-hatred vs acceptance, but self-hatred vs societal anger vs acceptance?

That might sound obvious, but it's really easy to maintain a large set of relationships without ever talking about those things. Politics, science, arts, sports, etc. are so easy to fill a conversation with that it's a common pitfall to hardly ever broach the subject of who we are and what we're doing.

Nothing wrong with working hard of course, just make sure you like what you do and who you are while doing it.

So the real key to happiness is to set your expectations as low as possible!

Don't have just one most important/critical thing your life, like your professional life for example.

Very serious advice, go outside and exercise.

Find a friendly real life community to be part of. Fans of movies, fans of some sport, fans of science, anything, just any group of real people that you share sami-regular or regular friendly time with.

Human beings are not made to be alone, regardless of how introverted they are. They are not made to be isolated. They are not made to have little to no physical exercise. We are however made to become easly obsessed to get the job done, so make sure you have more than one fun challenge to become obsessed with.

The second step was weekly self-assessments regarding how well my actions matched my values.

It didn't take long to meaningfully and permanently improve my unconscious behaviors.

Then there is motivation...

For me, the biggest improvement in motivation came from asking myself questions:

What do I really want to be working on and would enjoy working on?

Lucky for me, I already had experience when I was young writing software for myself and others which made it easier to do more things on the computer. I stayed up all day and all night, focused, motivated, and productive.

I was not motivated by money, deadlines, nor having to have a roof over my head and pay insurance, nor wanting to prove myself to anyone. I was just coding, and all I needed was some sweetened black tea in large quantities...

Another question I asked myself was, what does the world need right now, which would make it a better place, that no one else can provide except me?

This one is not as easy to answer, and the answer may not be the same today as it was yesterday. But if you keep asking yourself this question and pondering the answer, something will come of it.

Another question you may want to ask yourself and ponder on the answer:

What am I better at than anyone else in the world, and how can I help others using it?

Personally, the issue for the longest time was that I didn't understand my own issues. I went way too long without seeking a diagnosis, because I mistakenly believed that medical treatment wouldn't be helpful or attainable as an adult. Turns out medical treatment (psychiatrist - not a therapist) helped me a whole lot. So did doing detailed research on ADHD. The work of Dr. Russel Barkley on ADHD as an executive functioning disorder was particularly informative.

As for trying to reconcile my ADHD with a (healthy) sense of motivation - the best thing I found was actually from some random blog post that basically summarized the information in this article (https://www.additudemag.com/secrets-of-the-adhd-brain/ ). The brief summary: most people without ADHD have behaviors which are motivated by the concepts of Importance, Rewards, and Consequences. People with ADHD are aware of all of those things existing, and often do "care" about them - but if you look at the behavior of people with ADHD - those aren't the things which actually motivate us to action on a regular basis. Instead, we are motivated by Interest, Challenge, Novelty, and Urgency. It's not ideal, but even with medication, I've realized that is true for me - and I can't change it.

For some jobs, like my first post-college job working as a Support Engineer for Amazon AWS - those motivators were actually great. Tickets have really short-term SLAs and are often urgent, AWS was a challenging and interesting work environment, and for the the first year it everything was very novel. However, when I progressed in my in career towards more of a DevOps role, I started working somewhere which practiced two week sprints for everything - which was a total disaster. Kanban worked a good bit better, but no matter where I worked - the novelty, interest, and challenge of the work eventually wore off - and relying on crunch time to motivate myself was causing burnout.

I did think the consequence of guilt or shame from disappointing my teammates was a motivator and felt stress related to that. But in truth, that feeling was something that I mostly felt after I had forgot to do something or ran out of time - and not something that drove me to get work done.

So now I'm just leaning in to the whole thing, risks be damned. I left a pretty cushy remote-work salary job to build a startup, and I've started doing some freelance work on the side for extra income. I pick what I work on, so I'm super interested, I'm challenged frequently, it's novel (for now) and the freelance stuff is urgent because I don't get paid til I deliver. For stuff that is boring and executive functioning related (paying bills, scheduling meetings) - I try to automate as much as possible and be sure notifications for things go to both me and my non-ADHD co-founder who can nag me if I miss something. If I see a lot of success, I would like to pay a personal assistant or secretary to keep things organized / handle boring communications on my behalf. I spent a few years working for an executive who clearly had ADHD, and having an assistant was incredibly helpful to him.

I'm aware this could all crash and burn - but my daily needs are being met and I'm enjoying my life a lot more. It does feel like I'm working smarter. Though I am technically working harder too.

Holy cow. You've just described my whole life in a single phrase. I need to go away and ponder this. Thanks.

I had every problem you describe, and it leads to horrible procrastination. I don't think I would be employable at all without my anti-anxiety medication.