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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2476 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for July 19, 2023

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).

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no talent

not putting much work in

Sounds like you might have the talent but not the motivation? Then the question is: why? I had a 3.0 my first semester (other STEM majors), because it took me that long to realize my "don't bother studying, just absorb the material instantly" strategy from high school but wasn't going to cut it in college. Fixing that fixed the problem.

if I put more time on studying I would probably like it

And if this is the case, then you're gold. The only thing that would worry me is if the converse is true: "if I liked it I would put more time on studying". To some extent anything remunerative is going to involve hard and/or tedious work (because otherwise many people would be happy to do it for cheap and the demand would be filled), but ideally it should be work like conscientiously brushing and flossing teeth, not work like pulling teeth.

Unless you like pulling teeth, I mean. Dentistry pays well and has great job flexibility.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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