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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It's funny... I said much the same thing when I was 25. I had a coworker laugh and tell me that I was, in fact, young. And so are you, although I know first-hand how hard it is to recognize it. Think about it rationally: assuming you live to 80 (a decent run, and you could have even longer if you're lucky), you are barely past the 1/4 mark of your life. That is young by most people's metric.
But that aside, my general realization has been that people are too worried about not being young any more. And that includes me! But I'm trying to get over that. I turn 40 this year, so I guess I'll officially be over the halfway point. But I'm trying not to worry about that, because every moment I spend fretting about my youth (or lack thereof) and mortality is a moment wasted. So I figure I need to try to spend those moments doing something meaningful (or at least fun) instead.
My perspective has to be warped because my life is defined by inaction and sloth, anything that can make me change courses is beneficial, having a sense of urgency would help a lot. For many the opposite is true. I can remember being 20 and posting here, I am not old and quality of life at 80 is not the same as that at 20, more than that I cannot find fun in activities I could because my destructive behaviors seep into everything else.
I don't want to come back to this thread again in a year and lament having wasted another year of my time here. Your perspective is totally valid, I am in the camp that did not care at all so more urgency now helps balance it out.
The good thing is that you are alive, everyone I meet who is 40 is dead inside, at least here, they are alive sure but they are dead in terms of their enthusiasm for live. I like this forum a lot, guys like you and the majority of this place is people older than me who still do things in life, good things. Before hearing about Steve Maxwell or former users like unearned_gravitas, I would not have believed that you could in your 50s or in Maxwell's case 70s and still be alive in a very real sense. It is extremely whitepilling.
Yeah I've known a lot of old people in my life. And it kinda varies widely what they are like. Some have physical issues and there truly is not much you can do about that. But aside from them, it seems like it truly does come down to a mindset issue. It's really cliche to say stuff like "age is just a number" (and rationally it isn't true, your body does objectively wear out as you get older), but the old people I have known who lived a good life all had that kind of mindset.
I think that it is one of those things where the human mindset is powerful, and can shape our experiences. If you allow yourself to feel that you're old and washed up, then you will be. But if you keep up a positive mindset that you can still have things of value to accomplish and offer, you will be able to. If you want to see an interesting example, look for an interview or something with Donald Knuth. Dude is 86 and still going strong, he has a bit of the old man tendency to ramble in conversation but his mind is still quite sharp. My goal is to try to accomplish something like that - I'm not on Knuth's level by any means, but I feel like I can at least keep my mind sharp and enjoy the things I do now even if I live to 86.
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