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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I have no good advice for getting to where you want, since I'm on the same journey. I would make a point about beginning or not though.
I guess what I'd ask you is to seriously - seriously - consider how tolerable you find your current life. Is this desire to improve just because you think it's something you should do or you legitimately feel some social deficit?
Cause, having been here, it was easy to write off improvement because I was "naturally" introverted (not really true: I was more extroverted when I was younger before certain events caused anxiety that made social interaction legitimately painful).
If you're anything like most people and do seriously miss those benefits indulging this line of thinking will do nothing but cost you more time. If you're prone to FOMO or the fact that you're aging past the acceptability of being a hermit/weirdo then it'll make the psychological burden you have to carry and the hill you have to climb even larger.
The desire for the benefits will never go away and you risk sinking into some purgatory or trying to redo all of this...except at 35.
I feel you. An annoying thing about the West is the icebreakers like "what makes you special" (which would seem dangerously narcissistic back home) or "what are your hobbies". I don't really consider "reading" (my main activity) a hobby which makes things more awkward for me.
It happened just yesterday at a work thing. I think I did a good job of brushing it off with humor but social retard so...
Depending on what books you’re reading, if I met you at the office I’d be super interested in having a conversation about that. I’m a big reader myself and know very few people in my life who read books consistently. People who talk about their passions (especially if their interests are similar to me such as books, golf, history, movies, theater) are almost always interesting to me.
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Recently I've been saying "I'm looking for a new hobby in the city, what's something I should try?" It's still awkward and fake though. I wonder if it might be necessary to develop a normal "hobby", or at least learn enough to talk about it casually, just to make these moments go more smoothly.
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