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.
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This is commonly used technology IMO - the same thing as the Pledge of Allegiance, or daily prayers. Many cultures have regular rituals designed to align the individual's psychology towards the group's values. There's no reason why this couldn't work to align the individual to their own values.
My gut feeling is that using "I am ..." statements would work better than just reciting the factual benefits of exercise. E.g. "Exercising is a priority of mine. I enjoy exercise. I am someone who exercises regularly. I am often in the mood to exercise, and even if I'm not, I will do so anyway." and so on. These target your identity, how you think of yourself, so are more likely influence your actions (e.g. I think you want to compile a list of the scientific benefits because you have as part of your identity "I am someone who updates their behaviour based on scientific evidence").
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