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.
Notes -
The purpose of life isn't pleasure, it's agency. What are you doing to help other humans, to create beauty or to add order to the world?
If you live with a parent and many small children, then there are certainly parts of your daily environment that desperately need to be put in order, repaired, or spruced up. Can you tidy up, repair or clean one thing per day in your living space? That's valuable even if it eventually gets messed up again. I tend to think the outdoor living space is better to start on, but I don't live in Alaska.
If you live near the most-shoplifted Walmart in the entire world, then there are many areas of community life in your area where help is urgently needed. Maybe that's in direct ministry to the elderly, children, animals, maybe it's in civic areas like cleanup, archiving, lobbying, research, information management. The time of an intelligent, conscientious person who writes well is a tremendously valuable resource. As others have said, can you find an organization that is doing good and regularly contribute your time in service to them?
And unpopular take, but if you're consuming a lot of porn or other superstimulating media (including internet), cut it out. If you're already displeased with how your motivation/reward systems are working, then start by not deliberately screwing up your dopamine circuitry any more than you can help.
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