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Wellness Wednesday for January 3, 2024

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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There are a variety I'm working on. A lot of them are less "major life changes" as "do [thing] at some point this year." So a 2024 goal might be something I only actually do in September, or for a weekend in June, or on one morning in February. So among others:

-- Go to our local hot yoga studio for 30 consecutive days

-- Reach a 1000 point Kettlebell Pentathlon with my 36kg Kettlebell

-- Complete 5 sets of 5 Turkish Get Ups with the 36kg Kettlebell

-- Go swimming in the Long Island Sound in February

-- Re-Read War and Peace, Herodotus' Histories, the Iliad (though it will be my first time on the War Nerd translation, I think) and Ulysses. Aim to complete at least 24 books total this year. Write in at least 12 of them.

-- Collect at least 100 signatures for candidates I support to get on primary ballots

-- Complete at least three full lecture courses on interesting topics

-- Successfully nail down at least five good recipes for soup, ideally in the vitamix

-- Throw five cocktail and seven dinner parties

-- Play five rounds of golf

-- Weigh in below 195 (without preceding illness)

-- Row over 100k meters on the erg

I find that the type of goal is what makes a difference for me. On things where I have a pretty good grasp on the mechanics (kettlebell pentathlon) I can set achievement goals, but for anything else it is all about process goals. "Be more social" is a shitty goal, it's not measurable and if I were good at the mechanics of it I wouldn't have it as a goal, so it becomes "throw parties." I have tried for years to not suck at Golf and failed, so instead I'm just going to try to fucking play enough that my skills don't atrophy further into social uselessness.