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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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.
Your perspective on life and yourself is bad, unhelpful to you. You should try to work on that on a daily basis. Establish something more realistic and helpful. Good news: Views and beliefs are all wrong, as in never 1:1 with whatever 'reality' is; never set in stone; and can be changed. You may have heard the saying "all models are wrong; some are useful". So investigate what you've got currently, throw out the counter-productive ones and establish good beliefs. Knowing what to want is as important as knowing how to go about getting what you want.
You have no idea how lucky you are, and how many opportunities may be open to you. You're self-employed and you have a ton of money. That's not something to be ashamed of, at all. You can proudly present yourself as a consistently successful trader. Which is awesome. Maybe don't mention "crypto" to people who may have prejudice against that. Yours is an extremely good position that the vast majority of the world's population does not have. Make more use of it! Move out, into to your own place in a high quality of life area. Spending an extra 30k a year is a no-brainer to go for. You make around 10x that much each year, it sounds like. What good is your money if you don't invest it (outside the markets!) to have a good time in life? What use is your 7 figure hoard if you die a year from now? You never know when death will come for you. And time is the one thing you can never earn or replenish.
Look up the best books on refurbishing your mind and its beliefs, and getting shit done. You already know how to teach yourself difficult things and succeed at them. The advice from @OracleOutlook on having two major hobbies that build you and where you build something is a good one.
Best of luck! Back yourself, man. And please post another update at some point.
Yes, I know. Hard to brush off social pressures and judgements. I'm working on this daily.
it is, but the rational part of my brain is rejecting it. It doesn't make sense money wise, at least while I'm single. I'd be spending more for roughly the same lifestyle. And splitting home chores with other family members is a great time saver. Perhaps I'm also scared of change, I've lived the same lifestyle, for the most part, since I was 12. I know that it's one of those things that I should stop making excuses for and just do it.
It won't be the same lifestyle. Having your own nest that you chose and you take care of is very different, mentally, from living in someone else's. Are you more likely to establish a worthwhile romantic relationship while living with your parents, or while having a nice place or your own? What do you think? Do you want to spend another 16 years in this location? You'll be 44 and still living with your parents. At that point it would make sense to start talking about ending up as a loser. So steer clear of that.
I would start journaling if you're not already doing so. Write down your assumptions and look twice at them. Question if they're true. "Can I be 100% certain that this is true?" Instead of having "moving out" or "living a rewarding life" as big, vague monoliths, look closer and divide them into component parts.
"I know I should just get over the hump and do it" is a line of thought that sets you up to fail and procrastinate over and over, because the entrenched habits, promising safety, will usually win at each turn over the "threatening unknown". In a sense, you're in a wagon-wheel rut in a muddy road. The wheels slot into the grooves almost automatically. This happens before you wake up each morning. Steering out takes effort, and the wheels keep trying to fall back in. Having a simplistic "either-or" dilemma is unlikely to help. You should try to make the new path clearer and easier and more attractive to get into.
Fear of change is likely the rub of the issue. Working up some courage is one part of the solution, but it's not the most important one. If you rely on miraculously waking up one morning and getting over the threshold, years may pass without that happening. So plan things in achievable, bite sized chunks instead.
"It doesn't make financial sense to spend more money to live" is an effective attack from your mind against someone who deals with P&L every day. The human mind mainly wants to do things as it's always done (because doing so has not killed you yet) instead of trying something unknown. And it knows your weak spots. And it's shameless enough to keep hitting them to win each battle.
All valid points.
The reason why I'm thinking this way is because there's no more progression I can do towards the goal of 'moving out'. I know your image of me is probably different given what I've said about myself, but I'm not a slob that has mommy and daddy take care of him at the grand age of 28. I'm fully autonomous, I take care of myself, I cook, I clean, I wash my own clothes and bedsheets. I have the funds necessary to move out. There's literally nothing else to do other than to hop on Zillow, figure out where I want to live and start scheduling viewings.
No, I did not take you for a slob.
I figure you're posting here for a reason. If everything was progressing smoothly for you, you wouldn't be making this kind of post. You said that the obvious first step to improving your status (and self worth, I imagine) is to move out. Yet you have excuses for not doing so. So you need to decide. Staying at home while building up more wealth is a valid option. Traveling the world before taking on expensive rent payments is a valid option. Moving out right away is a valid option. Moving out and then traveling the world is valid too, just more expensive, but comes with the upside of having your own place to talk about when you meet new people on your travels. Just pick the one option that seems wise and stick to it. Not the easiest one. Not necessarily the hardest one. The wise option.
Your mind is furnished with some silly beliefs, viewpoints, verbal lines. You call yourself "unemployed" while you're regularly making good money and you're getting close to being set for life. You say you've "never had a job" - well, good. Bringing in money is the primary purpose of being employed by someone else, so you have that covered better than most people, and you don't need to worry about it. Most people's job/career does not give them a huge amount of status. And what someone does in exchange for money is not the most important thing in life. Far from it.
If there's no huge obstacle and you're still not doing what you think you should be doing, maybe you're just used to having obstacles and this primes you to look for them and act as if they are present, instead of looking for and going for opportunities.
Like I said in a previous post, figuring out what to want is as important as getting what you want. What would make your proud of yourself at the end of your life?
Forget the bullshit 'society' wants and governments want from their peons. What do YOU value and respect? Most people are full of shit and just do what they were indoctrinated to do. The masses are mostly wrong about most things. You see this in the markets, it's part of the reason why you've had success. IMO you don't need "lots of new people" in your life, or respect from most people. You need a few wise people. People you respect and who respect you (or the person you're on the path to becoming).
You're spot on. Last time I wrote about my situation, I was desperate and just wanted to pour my thoughts out, and I couldn't do it in real life because I hid my situation under the guise of just being very introverted. And it was helpful, it kind of motivated me to start working on myself because I knew that others have read the post. I'm hoping this time I get the same motivation to keep pushing, especially now because now my life doesn't seem that terrible anymore and I know it's very easy to get comfortable. I realize I could just relax, blink and boom I'm 35 living the same life I've been living and that would be horrible. I know I need to continue progressing.
I think my beliefs around having a job, status and so on are distorted by me never having one. My imaginary job that could've brought me status and purpose is not the code monkey, office slop, cog in the machine type, it's the agentic one, the one where I'd get to solve interesting problems, the one that would teach me new interesting skills or bring me around powerful and interesting people. Literally what I imagine an impressionable 18 year old's idea of a job he/she is going to have once out of college. Me never going through this cycle of actually getting a real job and getting your dreams and aspirations crushed leaves me with this idealized view and having people around me base like 80% of their personality around their work keeps me coming back to this idea of what could've been, although I fully realize I definitely would've been another code monkey that would've gotten smoked the moment ChatGPT came out because I was always a mediocre programmer (that's what I went to college for).
It's cliche, but after missing out on most of my 20s due to my condition, I just want to live a fulfilling life.. I remember when I was 13, my parents wanted to send me to a summer camp. Naturally, me being fucking terrified of socializing, I rejected the idea. Then, at 15, my parents pretty much just forced me to go to this summer camp because it was the last time I could go (16 is the cutoff), and so I did. Despite my first few days being hell, I found new friends and my social anxiety calmed down and I had an absolute blast. So, so, so many opportunities like this completely lost out on... I just don't want to have any more regrets like this. Now I don't have an excuse anymore - my condition is under control. And I'm also recognizing that now that I'm much older, I don't just get 'free' opportunities any more like I did as a teenager or while in college. Very few people around me have opportunities, curiosity and willingness to live interesting and fulfilling lives, so I can't just be a +1 to someone else's interesting life, I have to be the one that makes my life interesting and fulfilling all on my own.
I agree. But I also recognize that to find these people, I must have indiscriminate curiosity and willingness to connect with as many people as I can and that's what I hope to do.
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