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).
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There are a million ways to manage stress, at bottom that's what many of the fun activities we do help with. Sounds like you're meditating which is a good start.
Really the best way to manage stress is to have a well rounded life. Find some activities that you enjoy like dancing, yoga, BJJ, running, hell even tabletop gaming or something. Make sure to spend time for socializing, and find a few people you can really relate to and start to build deeper relationships with. Even if you plan to move on later in life, it's irreplaceable to have that experience and understanding of how to relate to others.
This framing is not going to serve you in the end my friend. If you continue to focus on managing stress as a way to work more, you'll find your ends defeat all of the means you try. I'd recommend finding a higher goal that encompasses more. There's a reason 'saving the world' is such a cliched goal, but it's effective. Serving God is another route. For some it seems that a sort of Nietzchean self-improvement due to the Will to Power works, but I haven't found it very useful.
Figure out what sort of deep motivation works out for you, and keep your eyes on that. Not on working harder just to work harder. And you may need to try out a few different worldviews, lord knows I did. But hey if you only believe in one thing your whole life and never switch it up, you've led a boring life.
I just want to be rich and help my family, that basically sums it up, I do meditate and it helps but I cannot stop a constant humming in the back of my head of seeing others doing more than me and having better life outcomes. I have friends and tell them about my life but they are all online.
I assume I will get to relax more once I get past the steep points of the learning curve and build more momentum. What helped you? I take Sundays off.
Perhaps this goal is not meaningful enough for you, if it doesn't help you drown out the constant humming.
I'm not saying you should give up your ambitions and stop learning by any means. And in any learning process there are going to be peaks and troughs. I'm trying to talk about a framework outside of these cycles.
What helped me was having my entire being shattered and enduring more pain and suffering than I could have even imagined existed. I went through hell, or the dark night of the soul, or whatever you want to call it, which forced me to call into question many of my fundamental assumptions and goals. At that point I could either continue suffering, or figure out a way to make the suffering meaningful.
Ultimately I decided to embrace my suffering, and view it as a way to get my aims set higher. Less towards getting money and status, more towards serving God.
On a practical level, I started learning about nervous system regulation, the dangers of over-stressing yourself, and began to take my circadian rhythm, diet, and exercise habits seriously. I got a puppy (although I'd recommend waiting until your pretty stable to do that).
Most importantly though, I sought wisdom in ancient thinkers like Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Seneca, Epictetus, etc. From there I moved on to more traditional religious teachings, and worked to understand those. Readings the classics is important, but given how different our cultures are I hesitate to give you any specific recommendations here.
Now keep in mind I'm condensing an over a decade long journey into a few paragraphs, so there's a lot of nuance and context missing. But those are the highlights, so to speak. Honestly at this point, I think you might benefit from starting off listening to some Jordan Peterson lectures, or find an equivalent thinker who specializes in Hindu myths and their symbolic meanings.
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