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.
No email address required.
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You build self esteem by making changes in your life to become more like the person you want to be and less like the person that you dislike in yourself. For me, I lost weight and took care of my body more and paid more attention to my appearance, and honed my other skills and hobbies outside of physical traits and built an inner dialogue of self respect and over time my self esteem seriously improved. It is a combination of material changes and mental ones, all done at will to improve my life.
If you are asking if thinking about others more is a change that can be made at will, it definitely is. Tell yourself that being too concerned about your own emotions is rude and selfish and that you should think more about other people in social situations. You are making people uncomfortable by being uncomfortable with them, so do your best to make them comfortable. It is rude to make people feel bad, but the answer isn't to withdraw from social situations altogether, because we all need to interact sometimes, for our own good and the good of everyone around us. You have a responsibility not to be a drag to everyone around you, otherwise you are bringing misery to the people around you for no reason. Accept that you have power as (I assume) a grown adult and accept this as a gift that you can help or hurt the people around you by the way that you act, and then act to improve the lives of others, because their lives collectively are more important than your personal comfort. It's immature to be so selfish that you are afraid of embarrassing yourself that you withhold your kindness and friendship from others.
People do this because they're uncomfortable in social situations and are running on a script. You're witnessing their self doubt and if you were better at making them comfortable they would rely less on these performances.
I think the most important advice I have is: don't project your personal insecurities onto other people. Do not seem snooty or ready to put people down. If someone likes something, do not tell them you dislike it, even if you don't like it. Try to listen to what it is they like about that thing. Be compassionate that other people have different experiences to you and try to find a common ground. Go into social situations with less self doubt and selfishness and you will find them more rewarding. Spend time with people you don't see as threatening if you need practice. Talk to children or people with mental handicaps or the elderly, people you do not feel inferior to, to get practice in showing kindness and compassion toward them. Then once you get used to talking with them, remember that everyone is equal and the people you are threatened by are no better than a kid or your grandma and you, too, are worthy of the same respect as everyone else.
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