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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This is just the same point I'm making, but with the valence reversed: You start out feeling good, and you keep feeling good. You get better, no doubt, unless you pick a really stupid hobby with no depth. But at first, you feel good because you are effortlessly succeeding, and isn't that nice to succeed without effort? And then, as you get better, you feel good because you are getting better. Your net self esteem barely changes, even if your talent level improves.
12/2025 FiveHour could absolutely manhandle 12/2024 FiveHour on the mat. I can tell because I dominate the big strong novices that join now. A 6'2" strapping blonde college kid just joined the gym a little before Thanksgiving, and I ran into him for the first time at the Thanksgiving open mat. I don't give new guys too much slack when I first roll with them anymore, got surprised and embarrassed too many times by guys I thought were new who had previously experience, so I tapped him twice pretty quickly with my A game. Arm drag to back take to RNC, then back to the feet snapdown to ankle pick to side control to americana. That all took about a minute and a half. I took a breath and realized that he was really new, and I shouldn't be a dick, and instead work some stuff that I don't normally hit and only take subs on a silver platter. So I laid down and let him work from standing, let him get me in bottom half and bottom side and bottom mount. I still tapped him three more times, just taking stuff that was so obvious and easy I couldn't let it go without making an even bigger fool of him. After, he tells me my guard is "terrifying, I never know what's going to happen."
And that round feels good for a minute or so, it's a huge sense of victory to win a round, even a meaningless open mat in rural PA on Thanksgiving morning. Last year this time I would have been euphoric about that performance, when barely ever hit any subs on anybody. Now, I shrug, I'm still frustrated by some of my performance that day. Because earlier in the open mat I rolled with Chad and while I held him in half guard he dominated me with head pressure all round; and Big John still stumps me and what's the point of my Jiu Jitsu if I can't beat somebody bigger than me? The standard I expect myself to reach has changed.
BJJ is probably also a bad fit for my neuroticism, in that I too quickly (for my own mental well being) recategorize guys from "peer" to "he's smaller/weaker/newer, I shouldn't be a dick to him."
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