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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Is there any way to give advice that I'm not aware of?
I have a good friend that should be doing well. He has a good job as a programmer working from home, his wife makes ok money as well, also working from home, and they have a healthy well behaved kid. They gross 230k. They rent a house because they have never saved enough to buy. They have one car despite the fact that it makes it difficult for either one of them to get away for a weekend to do something fun with friends.
When we first became friends I actually helped him discharge some medical debt and fixed his credit for him. I tried to get him a duplex in 2017 but he screwed up the loan application process and I lost interest.
They. Eat. Out. EVERY. MEAL! I think they probably spend 50k a year on it. When pressed he says, "neither one of us likes doing dishes." It is often a topic of fascination/conversation amongst our mutual acquaintances. We can't really understand how they never seem to have any money and this is the best reason we can come up with.
He also has a SERIOUS drinking problem that I have tried to talk to him about, and if I'm the one telling you you're drinking too much then it is a real problem. Our last 4 conversations this month have been about chess and about his drinking and that he should seriously think about going to rehab somewhere nice for a bit.
It finally caught up with him a few days ago and he got busted for a DUI. He passed the field sobriety test and then blew almost a .3... Shoot, a vampire could catch a pretty good buzz if he had encountered my friend on that particular evening. I hate to say something as cliché as "I hope this is a wakeup call" but I can't suppress that thought.
I've given him some advice on lawyering up and what to expect in that department, which he seems to be listening to. I can't help but think that there should have been some way to reach him before it got to this point. I think I'm a pretty persuasive guy, but it only seems to really work if I'm around someone 30 hours a week or more. I can't do that for him.
I suppose this turned into more of a venting session than I realized. Thanks for coming to my ted talk on the dangers of being a spendthrift drunk.
You should almost never give advice with the expectation of it being followed unless you have the power to force them to listen.
Rather, give advice because it would feel ethically wrong not to give it. Because a good friend in this situation would give this advice. And you want to be a good friend.
It won't so much be a change in behavior as a change in the expectation of the outcome. Do it so you can know you did it, not so anything happens.
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Is your friend actually asking you for advice, or are you just laying this on him? I don't think humans respond well to the latter, especially coming from someone who's supposed to be our friend and equal. Sounds like he's doing OK if he can hold down a job earning that much. Rather than driving drunk he should probably take Uber instead.
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My most successful advice-giving sessions have been when I build up enormous political capital by giving zero advice (like... for years in the face of obviously self-destructive behavior) and then finally "snap" and really lay into someone for being an idiot.
I think the idea if mr. easygoing yofuckreddit tells you that things are fucked up, it's a serious deal.
YMMV.
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Looking at my own life, I usually know when I'm doing something wrong. I just have trouble sticking to doing something better for longer than a couple days. Sometimes the fix is just me being more aware something is a problem- like seeing an article that brings up that deli meats aren't very healthy, even though I already knew that, so I start eating less deli meat after. But usually the solution is me finding a new angle to go at the problem- like melatonin to start sleeping earlier, creating a to-do list I check regularly, having a to-do list for my morning routine so I don't forget my keys, etc. So perhaps work with them over a few different solutions and try to find what actually fits their personality.
I hate dishes too and eat out a lot, but I usually go to fast food places and carefully look for sales and what menu items are good prices, so it doesn't usually cost me more than like $13 CAD per meal, and often less. I'm not actually eating out 3 times a day, but even if I was and doing it every day and paying for another person, it'd be $28 470 a year. Expensive, but substantially less, and again that's an absolute upper limit of if I was eating a 3 large meals a day and never just eating in. So perhaps recommend to them to eat more at cheaper places, get the restaurant apps for discounts, and don't get delivery.
I'm bored to death with the meals served at home, and I'm a gourmand so I very much look forward to food.
How do I reconcile that, while being paid not particularly well?
Well, I learned to live off a single meal a day. That means that if I find the right bang for the buck, a single delivery order can keep me going for the whole day. And the fact that I haven't lost that much weight despite it shows that at least the calorific value is there.
Win-win as far as I'm concerned. I get to eat good food, I don't have to worry about cooking, and given that it's a single meal, even the additional surcharges and hidden fees don't make it unaffordable. What else is a dude to do if he's in the live to eat and not eat to live category? I suppose at a certain point I'll have to start cooking heh.
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I'm not exactly sure how you are currently giving advice. There is a big spectrum of advice giving between "polite carefully phrased bits of advice" and "yelling at them for being an idiot".
I personally don't respond well to the more aggressive bits of advice. And I agonize over the carefully phrased bits of advice and take them very seriously.
Your friend might not be like that. Perhaps if your current method of giving advice is not working it would make sense to upgrade the aggressiveness. Usually if you are already too aggressive then the friendship is not going to last.
Of course you could already be on the edge of aggressiveness, and your friend is just not willing to accept the advice.
I hear them on hating dishes. I hate them too. Would still be way cheaper to just buy disposable dishes and eat microwave meals at home. Alternatively a maid that comes in and cleans/does dishes might strangely be cheaper than eating out constantly.
On the drinking ... maybe just try and get them to go to a doctor more often. That way you can outsource your nagging to a professional. I visit a doctor a few times a year and get told every time to drink less, and it usually helps for a month or two.
Also see if you can meet his family and get them to nag him. Or maybe his family is all just as bad as him and that is where he gets the habits. In that case maybe get him away from his family.
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Yeah, I don't have a clear model of how people's priorities are set, but I think it happens at a very deep level over a long period of time. If you only see him sometimes, it's like you're nudging a boulder that is already moving downhill. You might be able to deflect its course by a degree or something, but by the time people are out of school and fully in their careers, we largely are who we are and it's quite hard to change it. That boulder keeps going.
It's good that you're trying, though. If he hits some kind of rock bottom, it might be at that point that he actually reflects on the things you've said to him.
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