site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1523 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 11, 2025

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).

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

So does NoFap/Semen Retention actually do anything? Or is it all a bunch of bullshit?

Positive vs negative discipline.

Positive discipline is doing things that are good but that require the completion of a behavior; working out, reading more, writing more, learning a new skill, whatever.

Negative discipline is abstaining from things - mostly that are bad from you - but, more generally, that you want to abstain from for whatever reason in order to shift habits. Drinking and drugs, obviously, are the big ones. But this is also dieting, masturbation, social media consumption, etc.

Positive discipline activities give you a generous feeling of accomplishment and instant reward. "I worked out today!" Negative discipline is more complex - while it creates, for me, a sense of "momentum" and the feeling that I'm "on a streak", if I focus too much on it it warps into an "oh no, don't break the streak!" feeling of anxiety or anticipation. So, the mental model I use is to treat it like a savings or investment account - set it up to be automatic, then don't think about it. Check in on the "balance" every once in a while and smile as it will often be larger than you remember.

Positive discipline activities give you a generous feeling of accomplishment and instant reward. "I worked out today!"

Do people really feel this way about exercise? To me it always feels like pointless effort for a reward that never comes. It's a hopeless fight to slow the pace of inevitable regression.

Are you 'Throwaway05' as well? The phraseology and semi-trolling strategy seem similar.

I am not. And this question was quite serious. I've long struggled with keeping up exercise routines because I find it hard to keep motivated due to the lack of noticeable rewards, even ones so minor as "a feeling of accomplishment" after finishing.

Try engaging in exercise that results in a reward at the end. I like walking for 2.5 miles (4 km; 5 miles (8 km) for the round trip) to the nearest Dunkin' Donuts or Chinese restaurant. There's also the pleasure of seeing all the different buildings.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats