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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You should be proud; you know what you don't want which is a step many people never figure out. It is very true that the world will simply move on without you. No one is coming to save any of us. Isolation happens if you let it happen; it slowly creeps in as the easy friends you made from your school, job, hobbies, dwindle as the years roll on. The best way I've found to fight it is to always be active in something which makes me happy. This can be a gym, a shooting range, hiking, running club, or pretty much anything you have an interest in. Just keep moving. Good luck!
I think punching people (combat sports) would probably do it for me at the very least. Just need momentum and consistency.
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There's a lot to unpack here, but I guess I would generally agree with @Bleep
is good advice!
I realize that the top level post might be just for the catharsis of journaling one's thoughts, but in case more specific critique was actually desired I do have a few of other comments.
Think carefully about how many people you have really met and know well, well enough to know their true inner dialog. I'm my experience there are a lot of very high achieving people who are both ambitious and lazy. It was my impression that this internal tension was one of the foundational principles in the early management philosophy at Amazon. The key idea being how to reward ambition so as to overcome innate laziness of people. I also think of the classic Bill Gates quote here, “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
This doesn't seem totally precise to me. You might continue to apply analogy to general life, but I think addressing the case of working out specifically is illustrative. Looking good, a sense of achievement from doing something hard, and monthly progress can be motivating in the short term. At some point in your life though, your physique will decline. Even if you are still working our hard, eating clean, and have pharmaceutical assistance. Current Arnold's physique is a shadow of Olympia Arnold, but that doesn't mean he should give up training. It's still something he reaps enjoyment from even though progress is negative. I also think it's false that you need to train without breaks. The highest Wilks coefficient lifter I know took about a decade off when his kids were born. Yes, he will never be a strong as he was in his prime, but he is still the strongest (Wilks scaled) MF in the gym by quit a bit. It's totally fine to do something else for a while and come back when something that previously brought you joy seems appealing again. Finally, I think the time scale is wrong. You can see solid results in months at the beginning, but the people at elite level have trained for years or decades. When your training timeline is that long there will be months or even years when you see no progress. The thing that keeps you going is sense that just *doing *the activity brings you joy or is a part of your expression of self.
On romantic partners. Seeking a relationship with someone because you think their status combined with choosing to be in a relationship with you will be validating, is a bad reason to seek a relationship. It is unattractive and women can smell it from a mile away. Even if you don't have time to develop new close friendships, it's not a reason to avoid befriending more people. Casual and friendship and acquaintances are how social networks get built out, and closer friendships form.
On studying and the 9 to 5 job. I would advise against thinking you need perfect knowledge or a perfect GPA to get a perfect job now. Keep your fundamentals and skills sharp, but experience is very valuable. Get your foot in the door and work towards better, not perfect. If you work for a big enough company there might even be a few people who work there that aren't "people who pretend to be intellectuals," and are actually cool to hang out with or you can learn something from. Isolation is way more likely to set in if you ex anti reject all people you might hang out with from work. Especially in your 20s.
On a lighter note, about self therapy and things to study. Taking a quick dive into studding Stoicism might be a diversion from the draw of nihilism, or at least a bit interesting and useful. The early Stoics did a bunch of the foundational work on propositional logic that you might see reflected in CS theory. There are also quite a few interesting analogs to Eastern philosophy with respect to what the Stoics though about concepts that might be expressed as the Four Noble Truths. i.e. What is suffering, its origins, and how to live with it.
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