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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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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Learning social cues, self-perception and being in the moment (long post, slightly incoherent :) )
I noticed something interesting recently, ever since I started cold approaching, I can now read sub communications fairly well. A few days ago I saw my parents arguing where I could somehow see what they were actually trying to say vs what they were saying. It's somewhat like watching a movie with subtitles on and its in a different language. We try to hide so much whilst talking, many day-to-day habits that are unconscious copes similarly. The internet provides good feelings instantly, like a girl, its feeling, has zero net benefits but hey, we all want to feel good.
Most of my life, I sucked with girls. I used to hang out with nerdy kids since i wanted to go to a decent uni, my uni had no attractive girls at all, the guys hated doing anything besides bedrotting so I met zero girls via uni believe it or not (this is the average south indian experience btw, dont let others fool you). Many here would remember my post from 10th march 2021 on another wellness wedesnday thread where I was super upset about a girl meeting other dudes as I was stuck inside my house thanks to covid and my parents.
She was the first reactionary adjacent girl I knew. I never have met her but she lived about 5 hours away in the capital. Back then I believed in the obviously false Madonna/whore complex, wishing to just get a girlfriend who I could marry. Being around hindu twitter did not help as it only has losers, lo and behold they convinced me that pre-marital sex is bad and people doing it are unmanly. I always had these intense dantes like crushes on girls I would barely talk to. This girl saw me for a chode that I was back then. She did give me some crumbs of attention but I ended up just being super desperate and she met other guys. Which is how I learnt about cold approach.
Once I finally started cold approaching, I started liking women again. At a point I really hated them, that was because I was low status and saw no quick solutions. The day I got drunk last week, I texted a bunch of girls, including the one I met in pai. She looks ok but I just connected with her really well, first time i actually liked a girl again after my horrible oneitis situation. She did remember everything about me even how I cannot drink because I had bought concerta there though I stopped taking it before pai. "I have very few encounters, I remember you verywell" but later said "dude, what is the point, you are in India".
She was right, she could sense that I was simply texting her to get some validation or have sex, with the latter being impossible rn and the former being extremely needy. This is how I started actively paying attention to more cues and instantly saw a lot of things most people miss out on since I have done far more than most have with girls or ever will as most never approach.
I write this because I recently read parts of the tyler digest again and came across the rsd blog that has been dead for 14 years. Tyler the guy who started it had mild autism and his approach to pickup was one where you focued more on being a better person. I highly recommend you check out the tyler digest, in particular, stuff like "points of change", "the way that you percieve the world", "self limiting beliefs" etc. Seriously read the one titled "the way that you percieve the world", it is barely 3 pages. This blogpost is on the same line as that post.
The post rings true, for years I would write about my issues here on a forum that is mostly about culture war discussions. With my irl friends or the ones from far right hindu circles, I would eventually get mocked for trying to get adhd meds or being depressed but here people would appreciate me for being honest. Many would come text me that I write well despite me sounding like a lunatic half the time, or how they looked forward to reading more about my life. quite a few even added me on other platforms and helped me as much as they could. Almost all of them are happier people than the ones I used ot hang out with online, way more succesful too. This is also what I am trying to be like now.
My issues with girls existed primarily because I was not just low status but also deep down extrmely negative. My mind would find ways to tear everyone, literally everyone down so that I could feel good about myself. Unfortunately most people I meet are like that. It is rare to meet someone who is doing well and genuinely happy in a way that he/she can sense good in others. Most people think that pickup is where you go and learn a bunch of tricks and tactics to get a drunk girl to sleep with you yet this is simply untrue. Girls can sense how a guy feels, in most cases better than the can sense how is he is feeling himself because most of us lie to ourselves. The routines people crammed were just ways for them to not act like a scared person as their brains would feel calm when repeating the routine, therfore their subcommunications were not needy. Over time the person would get accustomed to positive outcomes and would shed all the routines.
Themotte does not like pickup and that is fine, in fact most suggestions I got from people here about not doing this stuff were well thought out and in good faith. I still wanted to share this article and the thought behind it. I would feel a little bad if I were to get a ton of downvotes on my commetns but that is sorta silly anyway.Now, just be happy or positive is cliched self help advice yet are we not all better off trying to appreciate things that are good instead of just trying to tear them down. Results come from actions, for years I was told to walk around the world pissed off, pissed off at my situation, at others and especially myself so that I would act yet it does the opposite. I would argue that trying to find genuine joy but still having habits that help you act in the direction you want to be in regardless might be a better way of looking at things, as at least you wont have crippling anxiety, after all what is the point of either negative or positive emotions if you are so result focued and if you simply focus on results, would being happier not help since then you will be able to work more?
I see trying to find joy in stuff as a better path towards ultimately doing more as the alternative made me feel worse. My brain always painted the past in a good light or make the distant future look good, it was finally when I took a week off after stopping work with my roommate and going to pai for a week that I felt good again. No matter how much I want to, I can only live in the now and present times are not as bad as I make them to, leaving culture war aside. My fondest memories up until then were me in high school, somehow stuck in 2016. It sounds very cheesy, I will get downvoted for wriitng another inchorenet rant but I don't want to lie about stuff. There I finally felt like life could be happy again, this sounds fucking crazy if you think about it. It was not even some high end vacation, I was living in mud huts with 4000 baht in my wallet for 7 days. My life condition was not any better as i did feel like shit once I came back and wrote updates, all my problems still existed which somehow could not prevent me from enjoying the present moment, even the little things.
A 23 or younger version of me would have tried to tear that place down, as talking about positivity and just being in the moment can be hippy talk, which it is to an extent and pai does have a ton of hippies. You can be present in the moment, work a lot and also have a positive outlook towards the world. This would seem like a cringe self help lesson to me but after experiencing some stuff and thinking about it, I would want to live this way. Ever since I started taking my meds, I can sense people around me having similar issues as I did. Most are unhappy, they lie about it and constantly seek validation and tear others down, barely get any work done and end up just sulking all day. A very sad sight, I am not above them by a lot, but I did get lucky to at least have had a bunch of unique life experiences which make me try my hardest to be that way.
The only two girls I ever liked as an adult were girls who were genuinely happy, something I was convinced was impossible up until a few days ago. They both looked good, way above average but not the kind that would make every guy drool, I met a few of those too. In ways I wanted to be like them, both were far more productive than any of my friends and somehow saw good things in me more than my friends did.
So yeah tl;dr try to look for the best in everything and be as productive as you can.
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