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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Notes -
The ritual aspect is a huge part of it. Since I'm WFH, my routine is: finish last meeting and clock out (lol Japan) -> pour drink -> family time. I think I use it to help me transition between my work and home life since the shift can be pretty jarring. I've started going on a "pseudo-commute" where I go for a 20-30 minute walk directly after work before coming back home and going full dad mode. That seems to have helped.
I'm hoping you're right about the first few days. This morning (Day 5) I've felt the best yet, so perhaps the worst is already behind me. Though when quitting addictions and habits, I find that it will feel like smooth sailing for a bit until some unexpected stressor pops up, and then the temptations will come back stronger than ever in that moment. So I'm trying to be mindful of that.
When I've gone for my company-mandated health checkups here, I usually get a mild, friendly chiding from the doctor about my liver and my drinking habits (and also my weight... BMI 26.0 is pretty fat in Japan). It might have to do with my clinics being in hip, modern areas of Tokyo where the doctors are all younger. My experience with older docs here has been that they mostly just want me to GTFO ASAP.
Also chuckled at your wife's reaction. My wife also thinks I'm fun and outgoing when I drink, and she says that she thinks it's cool that I can hold my liquor far better than any of our family friends. I think you're right that drinking is seen as just part of (male) life here, although I've also spent a lot of time wondering how that's so considering the high rate of alcohol intolerance among Japanese.
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