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 -
10 months ago, I made this post. I'm sure nobody cares, but I wanted to write an update, mainly for my own sake - putting this all out in the open should light a fire under my ass. When I wrote the original post, I was recovering from an injury that made me homebound for 3 months and for that whole time I was just trapped with my thoughts with no ability to release that energy anywhere. It got so bad, I was even getting panic attacks every other night before falling asleep. It's gotten better since, but I've still got a long way to go until I'm satisfied. I got in shape, fixed my health, and got significantly more social. Selank was a silver bullet for my social anxiety and I don't know how I've lived my life before it. The levels of stress I was experiencing in social situations were insane, even the times where I would rate my stress level a 4/10 would probably feel like a 7/10 to a normal person, I was just so used to being stressed. Now it feels like I don't have social anxiety. I still have some, what I imagine, normal anxiety here and there, but it's not crushing to the point where I can't function in social situations. My only issue now is my own beliefs and mental limitations that prevent me from getting better. I'm slowly working through them, but it will take time. In those 10 months, I've become a lot more proactive with my existing friendships and that yielded a lot of results - I've got something going on almost every week, and I've taken a few trips with friends. I even was an extra in a commercial my friend produced, something that I would've definitely avoided doing before Selank. My social life genuinely did a 180, and I imagine I'm currently at the "this is what an average 28 year old's social life is like living in the suburbs" level, which is great, but I'm not happy.
All this socializing just makes me face my inadequacy - sometimes people would ask me what I do these days and I would freeze and mumble 'I trade equities and crypto', and I can feel the judgement coming because it usually either means that I'm an unemployed loser or one of those course peddling scammers. And if they learn that I still live with my family, it pretty much confirms their judgement. Not everyone does this, but when it happens it feels horrible. I've caught myself trying to overcompensate for it by doing absolutely retarded things like wearing my expensive watch when I absolutely had no reason to or trying to squeeze status indicators into conversations just to make sure they know (no, my former classmate doesn't need to know my tax bill for the year is 6 figures). It's embarrassing to even write about it. And all this ties to my other issues - I haven't met any new people at all. In fact, I don't even try. Still living with parents at 28. Unemployed, never had a job. Yes, I have some money and I'm doing better than ever, but on paper I'm a chud and I'm embarrassed of it. It's funny, because the solution is so easy - it starts with just moving out, I can definitely afford it. But then I'd be spending an extra ~$30k/year, probably living a worse lifestyle than I do now. My monkey brain is rejecting this idea. Not to mention, that it still doesn't solve the other, more complex parts of the issue such as lack of identity. Trading is a snoozefest, I don't even get dopamine hits from winning trades anymore. I probably have 2-3 more years of it in me, but then what? Not to mention that never having a real job and making money off trading just destroyed my perception of money - losing $50k on a trade is okay in my head, but somehow spending $30k-40k/year on a my own housing is an unacceptable expense.
Anyways, I'm fucking weird, I'll have to get over it and 'grow up'. At the very least, crippling social anxiety is no longer the main issue and that feels liberating. The plan is to wrap all the business up by the end of the year and do some solo traveling. I can be someone else while traveling, so no feelings of inadequacy and no mental limitations to prevent me from meeting people. I'll also be around a bunch of new people that are my age and are willing to socialize, an environment I haven't been in since college. After that, I'll do month long stays in young people hubs - NYC, Austin, etc. Hopefully that gives me some clarity on what I wish to do with my life.
One note: don't disdain social signals. Get some nice clothes, a good jacket (or whatever is culturally appropriate for well-to-do young men where you are), pay to have your shirts ironed by a service if you don't want to do it yourself. Wear your nice watch every day because that's what you do with a good watch - I've worn my nice watch every day since getting it on my 18th birthday. Get some good leather boots or expensive trainers or whatever.
It will send the true, correct message to your friends and family: I'm all right, my current lifestyle might be unconventional but it's working out, you don't need to be worried about me or pity me.
And by doing so, it will relax you a little as well.
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