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:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Notes -
As a child, I was rather reclusive. I always preferred books to human interaction, and being dragged out to be paraded before my relatives was something I very much dreaded and avoided.
I distinctly remember that around the age of 10, I felt a whimsical urge to be talkative and nice to an aunt of mine for a change. And I was so overwhelmed with positive feedback when she was happily taken a back by my behavior that it flipped some kind of switch in me, like "hey, isn't being praised nice? Maybe I should interact with people more often!". And that's what I did.
I also approached med school as an opportunity to start over with a blank slate, I faked being more outgoing than I actually am, and while that wore off eventually, I was quite well liked by the majority of my classmates and colleagues. So at least I had people around who'd invite me to places and stop me from being a complete homebody, even when I didn't initiate anything myself.
(I don't know how much weight to put on childhood memories, they can be quite unreliable. That being said, this is a pretty vivid one, that I noted as important even at the time. So my take away is that you should try to fake it till you code switch like a glove and it comes naturally.)
More options
Context Copy link