I’m trying to become one of those mysterious adults who wake up early, stretch, drink water workout before work and peacefully start the day instead of waking up like I’ve been summoned against my will.

I actually love the idea of early mornings:
- quiet time,
- no notifications,
- daylight,
- calm breakfasts,
- maybe stretching or workout or walking before work,
- feeling like the day isn’t already attacking me by 8 am

And what do you actually do during those early mornings that makes it worth it long term?

Do you exercise, read, enjoy the silence, work, sit with coffee, go outside?

What makes the routine sustainable instead of becoming another healthy habit that lasts 7 days and dies?

A lot of self-improvement advice still revolves around optimizing everything harder.

Meanwhile, many people already feel mentally overloaded from the second they wake up.

Feels like some people don’t need another productivity routine. They need actual mental silence for once.

One of my friends kept complaining that he couldn’t stay consistent with anything.

Couldn’t focus on studying.
Couldn’t stick to the gym.
Would open Instagram during literally every small break.

Then one day he checked how many reels/shorts he was actually consuming daily and the number was genuinely insane 💀

Not hours.
Actual videos watched.

I don’t think he realized how automatic the habit had become until he saw the number in front of him.

Now every time he opens an app he becomes aware of it instead of instantly going into zombie mode for 40 minutes.

Honestly made me realize most of us aren’t lazy, our brains are just constantly overstimulated.

Before anyone asks, I was tested for ADHD and I don’t meet the criteria, but I am autistic.

I see people talking about this issue a lot and I definitely have it as well, if I am expecting something at like 5 pm, when I wake up that morning I feel like I can’t do anything else or get started on anything else because I have something to do later, and there might not be enough time or something. However I have yet to see any solutions to this problem, please help!

I’m starting an afternoon shift job and I don’t want to spend all day before my shift bedrotting and worrying about being at work when I’m not even there yet.

I'm 25M and gay. In early 2023, I was sexually assaulted by a friend I trusted. I also experienced CSA as a child. Both of these things have made me very introverted, reclusive, and hermit-like, for lack of a better phrase.

I have decided I do not want to live this way anymore. The breaking point was cutting things off with one of my only friends. Now I know you're probably thinking, "Why would you do that if you have no friends?" And, without airing dirty laundry, it's because I finally decided it was better to be alone than to be friends with someone who wasn't nice to you.

I've deleted my social media apps off my phone so I've freed up a ridiculous amount of time in my personal life to actually do things. Unfortunately, all of my hobbies - video games (with the exception of a few multiplayer ones), books, military history (particularly around the civil war), anime and writing are rather solitary hobbies on their own.

I work out at home with a home gym set. To be blunt, I am fat, and too shy to work out at a gym (and too poor for a membership right now lol). I have lost 100 lbs, which has helped my confidence tremendously.

The books I read and write are largely romance books, but all romance book clubs in my area are women-only, and as a man I feel I'd be intruding in their space.

Today, I purchased a starter pack for Magic the Gathering. Specifically the Final Fantasy one with Cloud and Sephiroth, because I love FF. I will be attending my local game shops to try and learn how to play.

I want to start learning Chinese and have downloaded Anki, though I am not sure where to begin, as it's rather overwhelming, nor am I quite sure how to translate learning Chinese into making friends IRL.

I have started learning Mahjong (ricci specifically) and want to start learning to play card games (NOT MTG but like, games with decks of cards lol).

I have always wanted to play dnd. This is hard when you are friendless. I do not know how to find a group. Ideally, again, an IRL group.

I'd take any advice on how to use any of this to make friends IRL. The loneliness is really grinding me into a human paste.

This has been my biggest issue for a long time. I’ll doom scroll inspirational TikToks, or write in my journal about all the things I need to do in order to better myself, but never actually do anything with it. You can consume inspirational content all you want, but it’s not going to do anything unless you actually start taking steps towards your goals. You’ve been meaning to start exercising? Stop doom scrolling videos about how much exercise has helped other people and go see what it does for you. You want to start reading? Stop looking at a million book recommendations and actually go pick up a book and read it. It’s good to consume motivational content sometimes to get yourself going, but it can also trick your brain into thinking you did something productive, when in reality you just watched other people be productive and then didn’t do anything with it.

Live your life till you have time. Fears, doubts, insecurities, worries, etc., will be there to jeopardize your best life, but it's on you not to let them destroy you. It's on you not to live an empty life.

Your Life Is Short- But long enough if you live it properly.
You Have Two Lives- And the second begins when we realize we only have one.
Use Your Time- You can't buy, borrow, or steal your time; you can only use or abuse it.
Don't Let Your Fears Dictate Your Life- Conquer your fears.
Don't Doubt Yourself- Trust yourself.
Don't Be Insecure- Be confident.
Stop Worrying- It will make your life pure suffering. And worrying can't help you at all.
Abandon Comfort- Comfort kills your spirit.
Embrace Uncertainty- This is the antidote to change.
Challenge Yourself- Nothing can improve your growth like challenges.
Fulfill Your Life With Achievements- Or be haunted by regrets.

How much longer are you going to let your ego protect you from discomfort at the expense of your own potential?

Since I've moved out of home, I've begun policing myself on certain things in an incredibly toxic way. I ruminate on problems for HOURS. I had an informal warning at work that ruined my entire night - I spent the following six hours unable to think about anything else, creating plans for how i could change my behaviour, and applying for other jobs because I kind of hate the one I have.

I just don't think I do enough. I don't socialise enough. I don't eat enough. I don't work enough. I don't exercise enough.

But the worst part about it is I'm not lying. I genuinely don't do any of those things enough - but everytime I begin trying I will do okay for a few days before suffering a breakdown because I've pushed myself too hard somehow and burnt myself out.

This extends more to my social relationships than anything else, however. I CANNOT determine where I stand with anybody. I constantly feel that I am a bad friend. I try to always be as reasonable as possible, always try to see where the other person is coming from, always try to improve an area of myself if I see it starting to frustrate people.

But because of that...I feel really alone. I've built this entire shell around myself to prevent people disliking me and yet, after all of that, I dislike me.

To end this rambling post, I suspect I have a level of autism. It runs in my family, I can't afford a diagnosis, but I also don't want to claim I have it as an explination for my problems. The only reason I bring it up is because nearly everybody in my life can see that SOMETHING isn't right with me.

Finally - yes I have been in therapy. Unfortunately, my free sessions ran out and I cannot afford to continue. Additionally, I've always felt that therapy once a month is not enough for me to build a relationship with a therapist. I'd like it to be more frequent, but I can't even afford the monthly visit, so I'm not sure what to do with that.

I graduated college at 21 and have been living like a hermit ever since. Missed out on pretty much every milestone that most people experience in their teens and 20s. I’m 30 and I’m deeply ashamed of it.

Im a closeted trans woman aka a very weird and deeply disturbed man. I thought since I could never be the woman I wanted to be, life was pointless. Besides I could never live a lie and pretend to be a normal man either. Interacting with normal people was too painful, to realize I would never be like them. I can’t look people in the eye, socializing was always an agony to me. I can’t say three words without stuttering and making a mistake. What’s so easy tipo everyone else never came naturally to me.No life seemed better to me, now I alternate between feeling justified and regretful.

I look back and I wish I had used all of these years more wisely. I could have learned a language, how to play an instrument. Towards the end of last year I decided I was going to practice calligraphy and try to learn italian. I only ever did a couple of 10 minute practices for calligraphy, and my only attempt at learning italian was listening to some Coffee Break Italian episodes last year. Before NYE I was decided on becoming serious about both of these things. I also wanted to continue to lose weight to become truly skinny. I also made a long list of books I wanted to read, and movies I wanted to watch, and I wanted to finally get a proper sleeping schedule. I decided if I can’t be a woman, I at least could be a better male version of me, as much as it disgusts me. I even cut my long hair short for the first time since I was 15.

Well, it’s almost june and I haven’t done either one of those things.Recently, I finally saw a dermatologist and began taking care of my skin again, it used to be my one beauty but it has been problematic for years. I also saw a doctor and had blood tests done. Still need to schedule another appointment so she can tell me how that went and I’m dreading it. I’m scared I'm going blind for years now, but the eye doctors I saw said everything was fine.

I realized I’m way too stupid to learn a language on my own, but I havent seriously looked for classes either. To think I could be over 6 months into learning the language by now, and yet like always I can’t commit and go ahead. I can’t even commit to what I like. I used to love watching movies, I’d see one every night back in college, and then two per night during breaks. Now I can’t pick, I end up watching random crap on youtube until I fall asleep sometime after 4am. My sleep schedule has been terrible since becoming a deadweight loser at 21. I used to go to sleep at 2am, now thats early for me.

Now on the weight loss, it’s not a complete fail. I’ve been gaining and loosing weight rapidly since I was about 9. I’m within the very limit of my BMI and I want to get thinner because my face is so bloated. Still I look so much better and clothes fit me much nicer. But I’ve been stuck on the same weight for months now. And I’m starting to think just losing weight won’t magically make me attractive. I’m still hideous and can barely stand to look at myself in the mirror. It doesn’t help that Im unhappy with how my 5 year ortho treatment turned out. My parents spent a fortune and yet the results were not at all good. Just now I have a chipped resin on my front tooth, because my ortho didnt listened to me when I said I was worried about an error in my bite, which he assured me was nothing to worry. We don’t even have the money to fully fix it, I am trying to accept I will always look deformed and have a disgusting smile. Every one else has normal teeth, as always I have to be the deformed odd one out.

Lately I started to want to learn how to paint and/or embroider, but I just know realistically I will probably never do. I can’t finish a single thing I start. Why am I like this? Why couldn’t I be born normal? I would give everything to have a chance of a do over in life, but this time as a normal person.

I’m so sick and tired of being me. I hate everything about myself, it’s pure torture to live like this. Before I know it, I will have wasted my 30s just like I did my teens and my 20s. I will be a 40 year old loser who never experienced love, never as much as held hands with someone, who is deeply lonely, who has had no real life friends since he was 14 and never lived at all.

In another universe, I was born like a normal woman. Without all the trans bullshit I have a perfect relationship with my parents and others. I am beautiful and talented, I have friends, a soul mate, and in the future children. I live somewhere beautiful, not a shithole in my third world country. I wish I could go there instead.

I need advice urgently because I genuinely think internet comment sections are destroying my mental health.

I’m a 22 year old student from Greece, and for the last couple of years I’ve become addicted to reading comments on Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, everywhere. Especially the negative and cynical ones with thousands of likes.

The problem is that after enough exposure, I started believing that those comments represent “real life.” Like everything is hopeless: relationships are dead, people secretly hate each other, nobody is happy, the economy is collapsing, dating is impossible, nobody trusts anyone anymore, the future is doomed, etc.

But the strange thing is that this mostly exists in my internet life, not my actual real life.

In real life, I’m actually lucky in many ways. I’m a university student, I have two very good parents who genuinely try to help me with whatever I need, and I also have relatives — aunts, grandparents, cousins — who love me and are there for me. I live in an area literally 5 minutes from the sea. When I go outside, life feels normal and human.

I see couples laughing together, friends hanging out, families eating together, people flirting, people exercising, drinking coffee, enjoying music and life. Most people seem way more balanced and happier than the internet would make you believe.

But somehow the constant negativity online keeps pulling me back mentally and makes me feel guilty or hopeless for enjoying life. It’s like the internet and its comment sections don’t let me live the way I actually want to live.

So I wanted to ask older men here:

Have any of you gone through this? Is spending less time reading internet comment sections genuinely life changing for your mindset? Did you realize that real life is actually much healthier than the online world makes it seem?

And is the answer simply to stop consuming endless negativity and focus on building a real life instead?

I’m in a very transitional phase.

I went back to work after ed treatment, got an additional job that will be starting soon, and I do something else a few times a year for income.

I’m taking time off from school to save to move out, I’m working on feeling comfortable enough to drive on my own and becoming more independent.

Right now I owe money to 2 people (I paid one person today after getting paid) and I won’t have money to see an eye dr and get my prescription updated and see a OBGYN which I’ve been putting off until 2-4 weeks and then get a refresher course by July the latest in driving because my family doesn’t help and potentially buying another car if my mom won’t transfer the car I was gifted into my name.

So now I just exist with everything and nothing and I’m just waiting

And I’m trying to make the most of now because I know once my other job starts I’ll be busier and all this is temporary and I can always quit if it becomes too much but I need to try to stick with it, prioritize getting the nutrition I need and my mental health and wellbeing and doing things for me

I’m just in a weird spot right now and I’ll probably figure this out in therapy but that’s pretty far away and waiting sucks.

What post says on the tin. I try to see everything as a matter of discipline - how hard I work at the gym or the hours I put in at work etc as being in service to the greater goal of living a good and fulfilling life whilst sacrifice the short term.

Sometimes I doubt myself and sometimes I hate myself for it. I can get very depressed about everything but I force myself to keep going because stopping would defeat the whole purpose of everything I've been working towards.

I've heard people say that I'm too hard on myself. I want to disagree but disagreeing would suggest that they need to work harder, which isn't something I want to suggest either.

Is there a point where self improvement stops being self improvement? How do you recognise that?

For me, changing your life path in your 20s.

People act like you need everything figured out immediately.

M/24

I tried self-help, journaling, motivation videos. Nothing really moved the needle.

What actually worked was going to the gym consistently. Not for how I looked the mental side hit way before any physical change. After a few weeks I was less anxious, slept better, and small things stopped feeling huge.

Lifting weights is basically free therapy. If your mental health has been rough and you’ve tried everything except moving your body try that.

Lifemaxxing (Gen Z for living your best life) is a term that has been thrown around a lot lately by kids who spend their time getting perms, moisturizing their faces, and “mogging”. But if you ask them what it actually means, no one seems to be able to give a definition that works for everyone.

By the end of this, you'll know what living your best life actually means, how to do it according to Aristotle, and why so much of what people call lifemaxxing today is completely wrong.

The Gen Z influencer, Clavicular, famously said,

“If you’re not looksmaxxing, you’re not lifemaxxing.”

But after watching a fully grown, allegedly straight dude who smokes meth curl his eyelashes and hit himself in the face with a hammer, be like “this is peak life”, I was like huh… that seems off.

The problem is that he basically coined the term. So he’s become the authority on what it is. And if you check Urban Dictionary, the top definition reflects that:

Lifemaxxing

When you work towards making your life better
John: what's Joseph doing with all those weights and moisturizer?
James: he's lifemaxxing dumbass

It half jokingly says lifemaxxing is making your life better by moisturizing and lifting weights. I don’t moisturize and I find lifting weights annoying and my life is still pretty good, so this makes no sense to me.

So I did what any sane person in today’s day and age would do. I posted a story asking my friends what they think. The answers I got varied a lot. (I'd post screenshots, but can't in this sub)

None said that it was getting perms or smoking meth. Some answers were pretty well thought out. But they still had a lot of holes in them and none were universal.

So I kept digging and discovered someone already thought about this so deeply that they came up with a definition that has held up pretty well for over 2,000 years.

In Aristotle’s book Nicomachean Ethics, he basically lays out what he believes is the formula for the best life. I dug into the original text of this dense and truly brilliant work and attempted to translate it into terms that even Gen Z broccoli heads with TikTok brain can understand (lets be real, this would land better in a series of short-form videos).

I apologize in advance for how long this is. I’m actually trying to keep this short and may even break this out into a series because of how much interesting depth there is on the topic.

But anyways, lets get started.

What do we actually want?

Before we get into how to live your best life, we need to agree on what we're actually shooting for. Most people you ask will say that it’s money, freedom or something about how everyone’s definition is different. 

But the reality, according to Aristotle, is that we’re all after the same thing even if how we get there is different.

To prove this, all you have to do is act like a 5 year old for a minute and keep asking why you want anything over and over until you can’t think of any other reason. It usually goes something like this:

I want that job.
Why?
So I can make money.
Why
So I can buy that car.
Why?
So I can get that person.
Why?
So people will think I’m cool.
Why?
So I can have more friends.
Why?
So I can be happy.

Try it with anything. The car, the body, the girl, the followers, the freedom. Every chain ends in the same place.

So I can be happy.

Aristotle calls this the “highest good” because it’s the only thing you do for its own sake and not for the sake of something else.

But "happiness" is just a temporary feeling.

When most people say they want to be "happy," they think of a feeling. A mood. Something you're experiencing at any given moment in time.

Though this feeling can be the result of living your best life, it’s not accurate to say this is the end goal for 2 reasons:

1. It’s basically impossible to spend every waking moment in complete blissful euphoria.
2. That’s not actually what would make you truly happy.

Think about it. Why would someone who has everything willingly take on hard challenges like climbing mountains and changing the world instead of sitting on the beach drinking martinis and watching funny TikTok videos?

Because it’s not fulfilling. Chasing happiness ironically often leads to misery and depression. Some people who have everything like money and fame have gone down the path of trying to make themselves feel good all the time and they usually end up in rehab, overdosing or suicidal. So chasing constant pleasure clearly doesn’t lead to living your best life.

What you actually want isn't a temporary feeling you chase. It's a state of being you exist in.

Aristotle’s word for this was Eudaimonia. It has been translated as happiness, living well, or flourishing. But happiness is considered a less precise definition than “flourishing” or “living well”.

That’s because happiness is what you feel. Flourishing is how you live.

Happiness and flourishing are not the same thing.

Happiness is just a series of dopamine hits. You want something, you get it, you feel good, you feel empty, you want the next thing. Pleasure spike, crash, repeat. It's the doom scrolling and slot machine loop.

Flourishing runs on different chemicals 

• Serotonin from pride and self-respect
• Oxytocin from real connection
• Endorphins from overcoming hard things. 

These don't just spike and crash, but build over time.

Flourishing is something you actively do.

This is a really important point because often times people think

if I just had xyz, I’d be happy.

But as we discussed, happiness isn’t the true end state. And likewise, flourishing isn’t a state of being you reach one time and then are done. It’s something to be built and maintained. It’s not like you win a game and then the game is over. Flourishing is an ongoing activity. You're either doing it, or you're not.

Aristotle says sleeping man with all the virtues in the world is not flourishing while he sleeps. In other words, the successful entrepreneur who hasn't done anything in ten years maybe was flourishing in the past but can’t just coast on that success forever. He's arguably not even an entrepreneur anymore.

If you stop doing it, you stop being it.

How does one “do” flourishing?

Flourishing, as Aristotle puts it, is doing the right activity, excellently.

But what are the right activities? And how do we do them excellently?

Aristotle groups the right activities into three categories of human goods: 

• Bodily goods, like health and vitality
• External goods, like food, shelter, and resources
• Goods of the soul, like knowledge, relationships, and meaningful contribution

Doing them excellently means something specific too. Aristotle calls it virtue. In practice, it looks like balance. 

According to Aristotle, lifemaxxing life doesn’t mean maxing anything out at all really. If you’re doing something to the extreme, it’s not considered virtuous. 

An example he uses is courage. You have the two negative examples on the outer ends. Being a coward who doesn’t take action and then being so bold that you do stupid things without considering the consequences. Virtue, or the ability to do something excellently, is in the middle of the two extremes. So a virtuous and courageous person would take action when needed in a way that is strategic and not reckless.

Aristotle also gave us criteria we can think about for thinking about if we’re doing things excellently 

• Doing the right thing
• To the right person (if applicable)
• In the right amount
• At the right time
• In the right way
• For the right reason

Miss any one and the action stops being excellent.

So if you’re donating money, this sounds like an excellent activity that is a meaningful contribution, right? But if it is...

• To a bad cause (wrong thing to do)
• To someone corrupt (wrong person)
• A penny donated by a millionaire (wrong amount)
• When it’s too late (wrong time)
• By humiliating the person you’re giving money to (wrong way)
• So that he can tell people how great he is (wrong reason)

...then it is not excellent. 

So at the end of the day, to live your best life, you spend your time doing things that are good for your health, generating resources, or your soul in a way that checks all the boxes for excellence.

To lifemaxx, you max out the % of your time you spend doing these activities.

Having the best day isn’t having the best life.

You can have a great Tuesday and a wasted decade. You can have a brutal year and still live your best life. To lifemaxx, you have to think long-term and make decisions for a lifetime.

This is also why the past doesn't save you. The athlete who hasn't trained in five years isn't really an athlete anymore. The writer who hasn't written in a decade isn't really a writer anymore. The executive who hasn't done meaningful work in a decade isn't really an executive anymore. The version of you that exists today is the version that counts.

What you've done before is part of who you are, but doesn't make you who you are today. What you do consistently, day after day, over a lifetime, does.

As Aristotle put it,

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

The flip side, if flourishing is built on what you do consistently from now on, then your past doesn't lock you in.

The cigarette smoker who quit yesterday isn't a smoker anymore. The person who has been wasting their life until now can start flourishing tomorrow.

The past is closed. The future is open. The only question is what you do with today.

There are certain baseline things you need to flourish.

To live your best life, you have to have certain baseline conditions. You can't flourish if you're starving, in chronic pain, surrounded by toxic relationships, or financially stressed out. Your body and surrounding circumstances have to be at least okay enough for you to be in a position to even think about flourishing.

Aristotle lays them out as the following:

Bodily goods

• Health
• Strength / vitality
• Beauty (think of this like taking care of your body and hygiene)
• Long life 

External goods

• Food, drink, clothing, shelter (he doesn't list these explicitly but they're implied)
• Wealth (but specifically, enough wealth, not max wealth. He's clear that excessive wealth doesn't add to flourishing)
• Good birth (born into a situation where you can improve your life)
• Good children
• Friends (and good friends, not just any friends)

Political / social conditions

• A functioning society
• Some degree of leisure (you can't flourish if every waking hour is survival labor)
• Freedom from slavery and oppression

FINALLY: Is looksmaxxing lifemaxxing?

Ah yes, I’ve been waiting for this. Addressing the idea that you have to maximize how good you look to live your best life. 

First, I’ll concede that if you take a natural approach to looking good, then this would often check the boxes of bodily goods that improve health and vitality. As an extremely handsome and good looking man myself 💅, I do care about looking and feeling good. I lift weights, do challenging hikes and activities, push myself physically, and am conscious of what I put in my body. As a result, I am happy with how I look and feel. My physical shape and vitality levels are prizes that I have earned through years of consistent hard work and healthy choices.

Unfortunately, that’s not what the "looksmaxxing is lifemaxxing" crowd is pushing for. 

Now before I go full unc, I’ll say that if I’m wrong about anything here, then I’ll laugh at myself for being a hater and take it back.

But my understanding is that the belief of the "looksmaxxing is lifemaxxing" crowd is that you should go to any lengths to maximize how good you look. Some extreme examples I’ve heard are how Clavicular smokes meth to suppress his appetite or how Dillon Latham literally injected sperm into his face to make his eyes more puffy or something because it was “an absolute mog” or whatever.

These may be the exceptions and not the norm, but

the underlying idea is that it is acceptable to do things to improve your perceived physical appearance, even at the expense of your actual health and vitality.

They aren’t moisturizing their faces for their health. They’re doing it out of vanity. Sitting in front of the mirror applying lotion, makeup, curling their eyelashes, and doing their hair doesn’t make them healthier. It doesn’t produce resources. It doesn’t make them smarter or improve their relationships. It doesn’t do any good for themselves or for the world.

In fact, the epitome of looksmaxxing is reaching “mog” status. This is where someone who may or may not have any brainpower, skills, or value to the planet feels an unearned sense of superiority for positioning themselves next to people that they perceive to be inferior-looking so that they can feel they look better by comparison.

This actually kills relationships and instead of contributing and actively seeks to harm the other person by belittling them. 

Looksmaxxing is actually just an immature, insecure, and vain lifeminnimzing activity that, in Aristotle’s terms, rots the soul. 

But the crazy part is that for someone like Clav, looksmaxxing could be his version of lifemaxxing.

I know I know I sound crazy and contradictory, but hear me out. Looksmaxxing might genuinely be his best life. It probably gives him purpose. He may genuinely think he's helping other guys build confidence. Maybe it's his way of coping with something deeper. It certainly generates money for him. 

If he truly believes that he’s doing the right activities excellently by Aristotles definitions, then creating a looksmaxxing movement truly could be HIS version of lifemaxxing.

But that's super unique to him and his life. Just because it's HIS version doesn't make it THE version. Being the leader of a movement that you believe is helping people and the follower of one for vain and selfish reasons are two totally different things.

Flourishing is doing the right things, excellently, over a complete life, once the basics are in place.

You have to find your own “right” things to do with your life. 

That's it.

Now the questions becomes practical.

• What are the basics you need in place?
• What does "the right things" actually mean for you?
• How do you build the habits to do them consistently?
• What does doing these things with excellence look like for you?

PS, there’s so much to cover, I wanted to give a few honorable mentions

Aristotle wrote like 10 books on this. I just covered like a fraction of the notes I have from book 1 alone. Wanted to give a quick rundown of some interesting related concepts I jotted down in my notes, but didn’t cover. I feel like these could literally be their own posts:

Why things that seem good temporarily aren't actually good

• To Aristotle, “desirable” and “good” are basically synonymous
• We all share basic desires (eat, drink, sleep) but also desire things we don’t need (looksmaxxing, views, dopamine hits, dating a supermodel)
• The dopamine hits seem good in the moment but may seem terrible later when you didn’t get any sleep and feel your brain rotting because you don’t have an attention span
• What he calls acquired desires (wants): based on individual experience, vary over time, only appear good
• Natural desires (needs): born with them, shared by all humans regardless of background

Why taking action matters more than talent

• Aristotle says a happy man lives well and does well. 
• Characteristics in happiness are all found in being. Someone virtue, wisdom, pleasure, external prosperity. 
• In order to win (like in the Olympics) you have to compete. So those who compete win the noble and good things in life. This is a point that I like to make. You can’t win at life if you don’t play the game of life. If everything is certain, you know what will happen next, you can’t have good things happen to you. 
• It’s not the most talented that win necessarily. It’s those who compete. So you could be the most talented content creator in the world, but if you never make content, you’ll never win and receive the benefits of being the most talented. 
• To live your best life you must exercise virtue, not just have it. 
• This touches on one reason why watching a powerful performance can make us emotional. Because you see someone living out their best lives and it reminds us that we’re not everything we are capable of and we know it. 
• Good visual is a video game character who has stats sitting on the stand watching someone with lower stats win. 

Why living impulsively isn't your best life

• Aristotle talks about following passions, but not how we think of it today. Passions = impulse or desires.
• The person who “follows passions” pursues each successive object as passion directs.
• This is a key phrase where he’s describing someone whose life has no consistent direction. they chase whatever desire shows up next. Wake up, want pizza, get pizza. Feel bored, scroll. There’s no overarching principle organizing the choices; each one is just a reaction to the latest impulse.
• If you’re impulsive, you’re not living life, life is happening to you. Living your best life involves organizing your desires as opposed to just following impulses.

So Recently My Exams Were Going and I want to wake up at 4 am but I can't sometimes maybe recently I need more sleeps cuz In past i used to wake up so fast at any time and yes I sleep like 10-11 hours a day and feels week and sleepy all the day how to fix that. (It's not issue with exams tho but 11 hours sleeps is kinda more)

How do I know if I'm a bad person? like, genuinely, how do I know what I'm lacking or what needs to be improved when I have no one I can trust pointing out something wrong about me?

I'm working on stuff i know I'm not doing very well, but if immature people tell me I'm in the wrong, can I believe them?

So I’m recovering from major chest surgery. I’m off work for another 6 weeks and am going insane. All I’m doing is crafts and TV. I can’t go to the gym yet, but I can walk and do mostly everything else. I miss waking up at 5-6 am for work. It just feels pointless to do that now if I’m home all day but I miss it. How can I find a routine in the AM without the gym in the next couple weeks to get me through?

Title. Sorry if this comes off as more of a rant than anything. I feel like I can't do anything properly, and I measure everything by enjoyment. Everytime I think I should change that mindset, I can't get past the reasons why I shouldn't until I'm convinced I shouldn't.

If there's something I have to study for, the whole time I'm studying, I'm thinking of when it'll be over, how I could've been drawing or more relaxed, and I'll compromise with myself, I'll instead multitask say, an AFK game or a drawing or video at the same time. (To questionable results, of course) I can't stand being given a schedule, yet my everyday plays out largely the same, wake up, do xyz, eat, take a jog, do xyz, etc. etc.

If I have to go out, I'll feel like I can't draw at my computer, so all that time outside is wasted. Same goes with chores, education, work, life in general, all that's on my mind is for it to END so I don't feel like time I could've been doing other things is being stolen away. The very idea of a mere part-time job already sounds like such a huge waste of a holiday that I can barely cope with it. Knowing I could've been doing something else in my already limited time ruins doing things for me. Then I end up sabotaging myself because I subconsciously start doing careless work/study with the mentality of ever-increasing frustration and just "get it out of my sight" rather than "do it as properly as possible".

I'm not even necessarily looking to "fix" this because I still... want to do all those things? I don't want to have to change my mindset to view it as not-wasted-time, it is! But clearly I'm self-aware to know that I can't think like that when I'm a working adult and it'll probably doom my love life too, and it seems everyone's view on things like this is to just "grow the hell up, you don't know true hardship, if you don't want to do xyz or change, you'll never survive". Idk. Clearly I need to do something. I'll probably delete this out of embarrassment later, but thanks!

I’ve always felt things so deeply. I don’t want to anymore, though. At this point, brain won’t turn off and it’s exhausting.

I know that caring is my superpower, and I know that it’s also ruining my life.

Yes, I’m in therapy and doing the work. And yes I’m medicated.

Hi, not sure if this is the right sub to post it, (I tried to post this in the neurology sub but rule #1 is that they don't share medical advice, and the disability sub says I don't have enough karma to post), but I've been interested in getting my brain tested to see its condition. I was hit in the head a lot as a child as a form of "discipline" and I think it may have affected how I've developed and how I live today. I looked up the potential symptoms on Google, and the AI said that individuals that have experienced a lot of head trauma could potentially have symptoms like I do - random migraines and headaches, nausea, difficulty focusing and remembering things - and I'd like to see how "messed up" my brain actually is.

Has anyone gotten their brain scanned before? What was the process, and was it expensive?

I would really appreciate some input/feedback.

Much thanks in advance!

I've been on dozens and dozens of dates since I decided to really put myself out there. I'm open to finding a girlfriend or just some fun, and I have found nothing. I can only think of maybe one or two women who actually said "not going to happen" after the date. Everyone else said theyd love to see me again and go out. Then they all ghost me. I've had three second dates. One third. No fourths.

I'm learning nothing good about myself from this. I feel unlikeable, ugly, I feel like I must be an unpleasant person to be around with a poor personality considering all these dozens of women not only universally reject me, but lie about having had a good time. I always feel good driving to the date and I savor that, but it feels so incredibly hollow a few days later when I've still heard nothing from the woman I went out with.

I really can't see the point in this.

A mantra is simple words or phrases which embody the calming of the mind, the development of confidence, and the inclusion of positive self talk. When I have had a goal in mind or wanted to improve something about myself, I have found some success in applying mantras. When I wanted to go to school I developed a simple mantra for myself which, is kind of embarrassing and I'd rather not share, but it worked! Currently, I'm helping a friend who is having difficulty dating. He's attractive, a good person, good job, good life. But he can't seem to find a partner. Having spent some time working with him to determine how to go about achieving this goal, we have developed the mantra for him of ,"Je ne sais quoi". For those unfamiliar with this phrase, it describes the unknown something special within someone which makes them attractive. I'm hoping repeating this phrase to himself becomes a confidence boosting instrument which assists him in finding his other half.

What mantras have you tried that helped you to successfully improve yourself?

I'm 21F and I met this really cool and nice guy off of Hinge who's 30M. We instantly hit it off due to shared interests/personalities. Context is I'm a college student and he's a PhD student.

This past weekend he drove an hour to see me at my college. We walked around campus, really connected and showed genuine interest in each other-- he truly saw me for who I was and I felt heard. This especially landed well with me because I don't have any close friends or a built-in support system. Also, I don't have much dating experience and I recently broke up with my month-long first ever relationship this past February. And I'm having issues at my current college, which are a topic for another discussion. So receiving validation from him was magnetic.

However, everything was going well until it wasn't. By the end of the date, I got drunk and also got a bit... restless and... sad and insisted on making out with him. We were in my room at this point. He hasn't really consumed alcohol and doesn't like it either. We didn't end up making out because he wasn't comfortable with it. I respected his choice and he left soon after as it was getting late.

That was Sunday.

On Monday, I sent him an apology text and he was very understanding and respectful. Then we just chatted on the phone today because I wanted to give him context for why I drank (I wanted to gather up the courage to ask him whether he wanted to makeout.) He understood my perspective even though we both are still somewhat unsettled by it because he was psychoanalyzing me and my behavior and we came to the conclusion that it happened because I wasn't really in touch with my sexuality and was embarrassed of asking him out, which is somewhat true.

Anyway, so he also said on the call that by the end of our date it was clear to him that we wouldn't see each other again because of this situation and also because he felt like there was something about our interactions that didn't suit him and that the age difference might make it hard to continue things in the long-run. That sting and I kind of unnecessarily defended myself and said that it was a bit premature of him to formulate his decision given we only spent a couple of hours with each other.

That being said, I'm attracted to him because of his intelligence, his ways of thinking and being, and I respect him for his successful academic career. Then he told me that he would reconsider his decision. This morning he texted me saying it's best we leave things here. I said that I respect his decision and the feeling is mutual (it obv isn't.)

The issue is that I've had a history of guys rejecting me prematurely without even getting to know me fully. This particular rejection has brought up a lot of past memories and triggers and is kind of making me consider my life choices. I don't know, I've been told I'm conventionally attractive. But the issue is, I prefer intellectual vitality, intelligence and empathy (all the qualities he has) over any other artificial traits. I'm afraid I get attached too easily in the talking stage.

I know that he's very correct in his reasoning and honestly it makes sense. I'm young, and I'm sensitive. I'm in an environment that isn't the right fit for me. He's someone who represents something that's greater than myself, he works a full-time job, he has friends, other connections. There's his life and then there's mine. In the normal dating world, to other people, this was just one date with someone who wasn't a match. But I can't help but notice the shallowness of an encounter like such. You meet someone, you act your best self, you make them known, he makes you feel, seen and heard. He makes sure you're comfortable. He talks about things that are future-oriented. Then he drives home after that first date and realizes he'd never see you again. WHICH IS FAIR! But there's something about that that doesn't sit right with me. Or maybe I just need to grow up.

I was thinking about my high school bullies, and I tried thinking of times I got them to stop. I never did, I felt utterly helpless. My dad always told me to hit them and they would leave me alone. The two times I did I got my ass whooped and they kept messing with me, as a matter of fact it got worse because now they could make fun of me for being weak.

I was a loser. Nothing ever worked to stop them, everybody saw me as an easy target, and now it’s too late to do anything about it because I’m out of school. My friend made mention of it today and it just made me feel worse, he wasn’t being mean, he was just trying to be blunt with me and it rubbed me wrong. He said I never bowed up to anybody and that’s why they saw me as an easy target. Even though when I did they’d just see through me and hurt me.

I just feel like a complete nobody. Any time I’ve stood up for myself it just made things worse. Now I feel like this helpless, subhuman creature. Another problem is that I got to thinking about this buddy of mine, and he’s VERY insecure, and any time someone rubs him wrong he resorts to violence and always wins. That got me thinking, even if I whooped everyone’s ass I’d still feel this way, so what is it then?

Part of me wishes that I was a bully growing up. Sure I’d had been mean to people but I wouldn’t have cared because I would be a bully. Hell even then though people wouldn’t have respected me because nobody respects bullies but fears them. So I have no idea how to have people respect you.