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.
No email address required.
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All this is well and good, but besides the point. As your Bible says, man does not live on bread alone. I am capable, sometimes, of enjoying myself. I can masturbate or drink alcohol or play a video game or watch an entertaining video. I can take a walk through nature or something more traditionally considered to be pleasurable. I can engage others in pleasant, polite conversation. None of these things make me feel less cold or inhuman on the inside, though they might distract me.
I have been depressed on and off for about 2.5 years. I don't think there's some biological mechanism. My moods don't seem to be correlated with sunshine days, diet, or supplementation. My testosterone is quite low but that's about it.
For for a moral inventory, I honestly don't feel that anyone has ever had a negative impact on my life (except myself).
The question, I think, is about desire and happiness. Is the route to happiness followed by putting aside or ignoring your idiosyncratic desires. And if so how do you separate your own desire from that of society.
That oft-reviled individualist, Ayn Rand, said that creating something great by your own standards of greatness is the only way to generate happiness.
There was a time about three years ago when I was struck by an inexplicable urge to build a new shed out of cinderblocks. I did not, for various reasons including the fear of hassles, but I believe it would have resulted in a satisfaction and happiness I have not felt since recreating a particular Macintosh AfterDark screensaver in Turbo Pascal on a 486 in 1996.
If you’re looking for a purpose toward which to put the work of your hands or mind, my suggestion is journaling your honest reactions while reading the book of Ecclesiastes, at least three reactions per chapter. Here’s a poignant translation.
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