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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Has anybody here ever substantially changed their personality? I don't mean a simple increase in confidence or developing a taste for beer. I mean a fundamental shift in polarity -- going from an introvert to an extrovert, a risk-averse nerd to an overconfident jock, etc.. Do you think there's any limit on the changes people can make in themselves, barring traumatic events or assistance from drugs?
I believe this applies to me. I have gone from: highly introverted (and I mean never spoke unless spoken to, never attended a single social event, etc) to extremely extroverted (arranging the social events, and being a hub of my social circle instead of a spoke.) The shift was part gradual, part lurching, and quite difficult. The largest shifts were when I joined an improv troupe, acted in a play, and began going dancing at clubs. No drugs, no alcohol, nothing of the sort was involved.
Basically I think the crux of it was forcing myself to do things that were completely contrary to my nature for an extended period of time (constantly for months). Eventually the nature gave out and adapted to the situations it was forced into. Any extended period where I went without social contact resulted in me getting reset very quickly. It has to be maintained for years to stick.
After a couple years with basically 0 days without extended social contact, something flipped in me and I actually enjoy it now.
Why did I do this? I deeply believe that wide social connection would cure effectively every social ailment of the postmodern era, and was determined to make my own little piece of the world a bit better. It has largely worked, though the work never stops. Such is the nature of good things.
That's amazing. I too was (and to some degree still am) introverted, to the point that I'd need to just escape to silence sometimes if I had to spend a lot of time around people because of some quasi social activity (eg school). In my early twenties I experienced some fairly dramatic changes abroad and when I returned home I, too, was arranging reunions and social get-togethers and hosting parties.
But then it stopped. I think the catalyst was a situation where a girl I really liked basically began completely ignoring me after a sexual encounter. I chalk it up to my expressed neediness in the face of her confidence--I can remember at a traffic light as I sat in my Volkswagen Jetta a Camaro pulling up and she was in the passenger seat laughing at the aside of a guy with this long blonde Fabio hair--not at all like me, and not at all like what I would have thought she (intellectual, Jewish, nerdy) would like. Lesson learned. Anyway right about then it was as if my confidence had been deflated like a balloon.
In the many, many years since I've forced myself, similar to as you describe, into a career where I daily stand in front of people (my typical lecture is in front of 100+) and this has helped forge me into someone no longer so choked up it's hard to speak, but I still think I'm am introvert.
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