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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To me the sting of defeat is always worse than the joy of victory. I’m a very non-competitive person, usually the first to turn down any kind of casual tournament or game. I never play PvP. I always concede first where it’s an option, unless I know with great certainty that I’m going to win.
It’s not that I don’t like winning, it’s that to me the joy of it is far more fleeting than defeat Where I Really Tried, which stings and which I think about long after the event. Recalling defeats hurts as if the loss was yesterday, while recalling triumphs doesn’t seem to capture any of the pleasure of the moment of victory. Being a loser in some competition doesn’t make me angry and aggressively motivated the way it seems to do to a lot of people. I can concede and feel no seething jealousy, no particular resentment, and whether I win or lose I usually forget about it quickly, unless it really feels serious in which case, as mentioned, losing is always worse than winning is great.
I don’t mean to sound like one of those depressives for whom every happiness seems temporary and every setback permanent, because I’d say I’m a pretty happy person. It’s more that I think I just don’t get as much out of both victory and defeat as other people do. Neither particularly motivates me, my happiest memories are all things like conversations with friends and loved ones, entertaining experiences, falling in love, that kind of thing. I can’t recall one real moment of personal triumph in the competitive sense that sticks with me, stuff like getting the job I wanted or getting into a good college was ten minutes of happiness (although really more like relief) before I continued with my day.
I think I’d like to become more competitive, but this attitude is holding me back from doing so. Has anyone made themselves more competitive?
What an interesting prompt, I'm sure you will get a lot of feedback on this one.
For some context, I have always been a very competitive person myself. Where other people enjoy hiking, creating art, or unstructured socializing, I always wanted to play sports and games. Something with some level of competition with a clear winner and loser. I've lost many such contests over the course of my life, in soccer, tennis, golf, baseball, board games, card games, poker, debates etc. And every time, I have been unhappy to lose. This doesn't make me enjoy the competition any less, it just makes me want to play again and win.
One of the interesting things about this aspect of my personality is I don't enjoy games where I don't have at least a fighting chance to win. For example, I don't terribly enjoy basketball, it's a sport I've never been good at, and I lose frequently. So I don't play it. I've never been good at chess, and I don't particularly like being overmatched intellectually, so I don't play it. So my recommendation (if you could call it such) would be to find a competitive event where you have potential and are actually interested in. This might be something as simple as a card game like Hearts, or it might be something more nebulous like debating. Do you have any interests that have a level of competition? If so, I would focus on those activities and see if it can be transferred to other areas of your life.
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