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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A month ago I made a post exploring whether nicotine could be used to addict oneself to housework. Since then, I've received a number of private messages asking for an update. I happily report overwhelming success. Last month I couldn't have imagined making my home presentable. Now it's clean and organized from top to bottom (even my storage room and closets are tidy), tastefully decorated, and I've even hosted friends a few times, something I hadn't done in years. And the best part is it took absolutely no discipline. In the same way an alcoholic isn't using willpower to trudge a couple miles through the snow to the nearest liquor store, I just go into autopilot and let my addiction take over. I can't get over how absolutely life-changing this has been at the cost of zero effort. I'm not recommending this to anyone else, but if you're already addicted to nicotine please consider which habits and thought-processes you're reinforcing and which ones you'd like to reinforce.
I've had similar success but with caffeine instead of nicotine.
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I like your sense of humor. :)
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I'm already addicted to Nicotine. Badly. I take maybe 100 hits of my vape daily.
I don't have issues with doing good things. My room is spotless, I lift, run and work 10-12 hours a day. But I do have a problem with doing bad things. I vape, masturbate, and waste time on the computer much more than I'd like. I'd like to make the list of bad things shorter before I make the list of good things longer (even though I will eventually get back to this).
Any idea how I can perhaps work in a negative reinforcement habit?
If said masturbation is accompanied by porn usage, I've had great results by cutting porn out. YMMV but masturbation generally leaves me feeling lethargic, so no porn = less masturbation = more energy. Not to say I haven't found plenty of other ways to waste time at the PC.
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If you vape at or around your computer it's probably reinforcing the browsing and masturbation, I've spent a third as much time online since I started this and now I can't remember how I was able to spend all day scrolling. My best suggestion would be to avoid any nicotine during the things you're trying to avoid, and find better or neutral behaviors to replace them with so you can still vape. I'm not sure your specific problem with masturbation but I wouldn't be surprised if the gooning phenomenon were directly correlated with vaping.
TMI section: One part of this reinforcement I didn't mention is that along with the housework, I've started taking a hit right before and as I orgasm, but at no other point during masturbation.1 I used to like edging and opening tabs for hours but this has made me eager to finish quickly, saving me time and dramatically improving my sexual stamina. I'm also aroused more often and have more sexual fantasies while I'm out and about, which I consider healthy and preferable but might not be a goal of yours.
1 this is part of my longstanding efforts to give myself a sex addiction
What is the gooning phenomenon? I learned of this term probably within the past couple years, and I just thought it was just zoomer slang for masturbating a lot, which men have been doing since the invention of hands. Is it just that people are now forming an identity around this as a hobby?
My whole-language-method understanding of the term as it's used on the imageboards is that it denotes masturbating to material in the broad-spectrum information overload hyperstimulus style that certain zoomer subcultures are into.
(Also another instance of C(C)ooC being a sound pattern largely reserved for slurs and base behaviours in English)
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If you are having trouble filling out the "Other Interests" section of your resume...
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Where is your partner in all of this?
I'm single.
Having a partner will stop you from blowing big clouds. Because A. It looks trashy and no decent woman or man would stand for it. B. You won't feel the need to fill those empty moments with anything but clever banter!
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Could you explain the exact procedure? Maybe I didn't read your original post carefully enough, but it wasn't clear to me exactly what you were doing. What is the dose/timing/delivery method, etc? How do you avoid just consuming the nicotine and not doing the housework?
Work for twenty minutes, draw liberally from a vape device while appreciating the work you've completed, then go back to work. The timing can be adjusted, I found I was using a lot less than before I started this project. I think vaping/smoking will give better results than patches because it's overwhelming and direct instead of a subtle feeling, but it might be different for non-smokers like Gwern in the linked article. I don't know anything about the gum so can't compare.
I've not had any temptation to cheat, I included exercise as a reinforced behavior so I'm only 90 seconds away from a reward if a craving is intense (that's for one set, then I'll reward myself and go back to lifting so the activity surrounds the enforcement behavior). All this work is easy enough I'd be really disappointed in myself for cheating, and since starting I've been able to quiet my mind and focus on my tasks when before I could only clean for a few minutes before getting distracted.
Now that my place is clean I've broadened the reinforced behaviors to include other things I'd like to address in my life (omitted for redundancy and to avoid personal info) and it's been very successful. It's important for me to find new tasks to reinforce so I continue having a reason to reward myself.
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