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).
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One mental trick that's worked for me:
Tell yourself constantly that you'll procrastinate later. Make a deal with yourself. "If I do X, then I get to do Y later". If you don't do X, then you don't get Y.
This is a mental trick that helped me a fair bit; I also had trouble going to class. It wasn't the class I minded, it was the whole process, especially if the class was far or I needed to do significant prep work before class. Eventually I sort of turned it into a whole process where I'd get up early on the day I had to go to class, get a long shower, enjoy the walk, go to campus early and have a long, leisurely meal and coffee before class actually started and then finish it. If I didn't go to class, I didn't get to go through that whole process.
Similarly, childish "no movie tonight because I didn't finish this paper first" works. I find with this kind of bargaining that I do with myself, I end up enjoying the rewards more because I worked to balance them in my mind.
Also, look at your lifestyle and see what small habits you can build up to help you cultivate a sense of ownership and responsibility. Judging from your post there's a bunch of stuff you don't feel responsible for, both in your own life and that of others, and so naturally you are letting it slack. It doesn't have to be anything massive, like the health and wellbeing of your family members, but start small, like paying the bills and utilities for the house (mostly possible on even a minimum wage salary in 2024). Those responsibilities become guiding lights if used properly - you will know, always, that if you don't pay the power bill you will have no electricity, so you will make damn sure you pay it.
I can't speak for medication and therapy, In my own experience I found therapy mostly expensive waste, but I know others who've been on medication and they've said it helped.
I've tried similar things to this, but I either do something else I want to do that isn't part of the rule, literally forget my own rule and break it by mistake, or just break my own rule intentionally (and then feel really bad about it afterwards)
This is interesting. Maybe it can explain why I manage to go to work but not go to class? When I don't go to work, it's just a few people that work per shift, so I know it would be a huge hassle for the manager to call someone in, or if no one can come in, everyone else would just have to work harder to cover for me being gone. So, I feel responsible for all the extra work I'm putting on them. However, when I miss class, especially big lectures, I am able to slip through the cracks. No one really cares one way or the other if I show up or not. This also might explain why with some classes, it takes longer for me to stop going. With those classes, I usually made acquaintances with someone in the class, or I participated in class with the professor a lot in a small, discussion type class. A lot of those classes I still end up not showing up to eventually, but some of them I managed to actually pass. I need to think about how this fits other situations in my life
I have to say though, if this is correct, the solution is scary to me because it is basically "be more intertwined and interdependent with other people" which seems opposite to my goal of independence.
The latter is a good point, but nobody is really truly independent in the modern age. You use a product built off the back of hundreds of people and over a dozen different suppliers with their own unique supply chains to access the internet.
Instead of obsessing over how reliant you are on others, try becoming someone others are dependent on. Your whole mindset changes once you realize you've become that someone. I can't recommend climbing that tree too high, as it's awful for stress, but great for many things, not least of which is money.
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