The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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I want a degree so that I can get a job that pays well enough to let me live by myself and be independent. I do not want to be dependent on my mother my whole life.
I don't feel like I have any meaningful way to give input on changing motivations, but this part of things seems like a good area for focus. You don't need a degree to live your life and be independent. For many goals, a degree can be instrumentally useful, but if the core goal is really just earning a respectable living, you don't need one. You need to pick a specific skill, develop it, and show up and do it in a tolerably reliable fashion. Which skill? Whatever. Learn to do auto body, wait tables, drive a forklift, put shingles on... whatever. The specifics do matter to how much money and opportunity you'll have, but the point is that you'll make a respectable living and be a respectable man if you just pick something and do it well. You don't need a bullshit political science degree to make a buck sanding bumpers down for painting.
You are right I don't need one, but the lifetime earnings premium you get from a college degree is still very high despite the recent "college is a waste of money" trend. The lifetime earnings premium from a degree is still there even if you include super expensive for profit private colleges and stereotypical no money humanities degrees. If you exclude those, the numbers favor a degree even more.
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Maybe spending some time every day thinking about your goal in a positive sense (focus on what's good about it) might help motivate you?
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