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 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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