[axegon_]

It's probably not universal for all people but I can tell you what changed things for me: what I'd call a "critical mass of unfortunate events". At one point in my life(early 20's) I ended up alone, far from my parents, lost my closest friend, the economic crisis was at it's peak, close relatives stabbed me in the back multiple times and overall I was left to deal with life on my own.

So in that aspect - it was necessity over anything else. I guess it pushed me into a slightly stoicistic way of thinking about life in general. Two books (which contradict each other a lot) helped me to tweak my thinking by finding a path somewhere between them: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. I find myself re-reading them once a year as a matter of fact. Finding the sweet spot between them is what made me go forward - on one hand don't stress too much about the outcome and simply try to do the best to your abilities and on the other look for the collective gains from every idea/aim(product). With the appropriate amount of dedication, it's worked for me even with the largest challenges(of which I've had a lot in recent years as well). Not as I would have hoped but better than the alternatives.