Lifestyle Self-improvement thread

[Fishy]

lately for self improvement i have been employing a concerted effort to drink more water, moisturize my skin at least ONCE a day and get my body moving or my heart rate up for at least 30 minutes.

being unemployed and doing schoolwork from home, it dawned on me that i don't have many reasons to leave my apartment if i don't want to!! the cold weather impacts that a bit even though i'm still in a sunny state where snow doesn't exist during winter

i'm about to finish 2 more classes and start another 2, but i'm so close to finished with everything that i think i may have my second bachelor's degree complete by the summer!!! it's already a great year that is incrementally getting better in a lot of ways

 

[Wildfiree]

lately for self improvement i have been employing a concerted effort to drink more water, moisturize my skin at least ONCE a day and get my body moving or my heart rate up for at least 30 minutes.

being unemployed and doing schoolwork from home, it dawned on me that i don't have many reasons to leave my apartment if i don't want to!! the cold weather impacts that a bit even though i'm still in a sunny state where snow doesn't exist during winter

i'm about to finish 2 more classes and start another 2, but i'm so close to finished with everything that i think i may have my second bachelor's degree complete by the summer!!! it's already a great year that is incrementally getting better in a lot of ways

Wow that’s amazing I’m so glad things are going well for you. I hope you continue to prosper in all you do! Thank you for the post I love seeing stuff like this.

 

[antemortem]

This post is me beginning to document something I hope to be two-fold over at least the next couple of weeks in an optimistic attempt to establish a longer running precedent for myself: journaling with purpose. That is to say, journaling prior to bed with the intent of summarizing the day and setting the immediate intention for both the rest and the following morning.

I used to journal infrequently after a therapist said, “you’re a writer… so why aren’t you writing about your days?” to which I had no productive response. However those attempts at journaling were sporadic due to their generally uncurated nature SO with that said the past few nights I’ve been summarizing the events of the day and showing my gratitude for certain things. But then I’ve ended the journal sessions with a note on how I felt about my warm/wake up that morning and what I want to do differently the next morning.

My main love language for myself is words of affirmation so I know there’s some power in speaking shit out loud or writing it down (manifestation is real bitches, but I’m not sure y’all are ready for that.. prove me wrong?) So when I consciously write that my morning will be spent throwing a podcast in my ears as soon as I wake up, getting on the floor and stretching, followed by purposeful hydration (and I mean a shitton of water, if I can help it), and then a surplus of caffeine, I’m more likely to do all these things mindfully and not get lost in all of the shit that’s piled up that I have to get done in a day.

Last couple of days have clearly been test runs, and therefore inconsistent as hell, but I have a lot going on in the next week so I’m gonna keep track of how each one goes, see if there’s any level of consistency in my future lol

 

[Wildfiree]

This post is me beginning to document something I hope to be two-fold over at least the next couple of weeks in an optimistic attempt to establish a longer running precedent for myself: journaling with purpose. That is to say, journaling prior to bed with the intent of summarizing the day and setting the immediate intention for both the rest and the following morning.

I used to journal infrequently after a therapist said, “you’re a writer… so why aren’t you writing about your days?” to which I had no productive response. However those attempts at journaling were sporadic due to their generally uncurated nature SO with that said the past few nights I’ve been summarizing the events of the day and showing my gratitude for certain things. But then I’ve ended the journal sessions with a note on how I felt about my warm/wake up that morning and what I want to do differently the next morning.

My main love language for myself is words of affirmation so I know there’s some power in speaking shit out loud or writing it down (manifestation is real bitches, but I’m not sure y’all are ready for that.. prove me wrong?) So when I consciously write that my morning will be spent throwing a podcast in my ears as soon as I wake up, getting on the floor and stretching, followed by purposeful hydration (and I mean a shitton of water, if I can help it), and then a surplus of caffeine, I’m more likely to do all these things mindfully and not get lost in all of the shit that’s piled up that I have to get done in a day.

Last couple of days have clearly been test runs, and therefore inconsistent as hell, but I have a lot going on in the next week so I’m gonna keep track of how each one goes, see if there’s any level of consistency in my future lol

I’d love to hear the updates thanks for your post !

 

[Myzozoa]

This post is me beginning to document something I hope to be two-fold over at least the next couple of weeks in an optimistic attempt to establish a longer running precedent for myself: journaling with purpose. That is to say, journaling prior to bed with the intent of summarizing the day and setting the immediate intention for both the rest and the following morning.

I used to do this type of mindful journaling/writing exercise (summarize your day) pretty frequently, very good just to get writing flowing which has many practical applications.

As for journaling and self-improvement, I myself have been known to use journaling to work on processing difficult feeling and events in my life (break-ups, deaths, mental health challenges), and I do all of this journaling without ever sharing it with anyone, as I prefer privacy, not to say that people who share their journals publicly are doing anything wrong... but to say that it can be a surprisingly powerful tool without ever being shared. I sometimes use this journaling as a precursor to sharing stuff with ppl irl, gathering my thoughts in preparation to relate myself to others and ask for their support.

 

[Ashaebi]

What are your strengths and good traits as a person? What is your undesirable traits how do you feel you can improve as a person?

As a strength I definitely consider myself is discipline. Since getting a job that's shifts are 0600 - 1200 and sometimes 1400 on weekdays I feel like I need to force myself to go to bed early so I can consistently get up at 0500 in the morning. That alone I def consider a valuable trait.
As for undesirable traits, I feel like I have a terrible habit of often having unreasonable expectations for people and myself. Since all of us are human, the absolute best of us and those we look up to and respect unfortunately are not free from errors and most certainly commits mistakes from time to time. It often creates unnecessary disappointment which doesn't have to be that way.

 

[antemortem]

As for undesirable traits, I feel like I have a terrible habit of often having unreasonable expectations for people and myself. Since all of us are human, the absolute best of us and those we look up to and respect unfortunately are not free from errors and most certainly commits mistakes from time to time. It often creates unnecessary disappointment which doesn't have to be that way.

Out of curiosity what are these abnormally high standards you normally set yourself to?

 

[bdt2002]

(The following post was originally intended as a personal profile post, but let's just say that this is very clearly longer than 420 characters. Feel free to PM me for more details. -bdt2002)

Hello, everyone. It's me again. This is my first time posting on the forums in any way since I announced my leave of absence, so to speak. It's hard to say when I'll fully be back to my usual self just yet, but I've figured for a few days now that some updates are needed.

First and foremost, I want to address why I left. The month of April was, to put it lightly, a very stressful time for me this year. During the week leading up my announcement on the 14th, I was going through what I'd best describe as "an intense mood shift where I wasn't feeling like myself". Among other issues, my grades in a particular class or two were starting to slip, and I was also starting to show signs of mild aggression towards other people. Normally, this alone would not have warranted my decision to leave these forums altogether. On paper, I could just talk about it once or twice, take a break from the Internet until I'm in a better spot, and then come back later. Things were not that straight forward, unfortunately. I needed more than just a break from everything that was going on. I also needed to isolate myself from the sources of this strange behavior. It eventually came to my attention that my increasingly sad feelings towards the Pokémon franchise were but one of the many things I was irrationally dwelling about all the time, something I've been guilty of to this day. In other words, I cut myself off of more than just these forums for a good portion of the month of April, in some cases even going as far back as the second half of March if you want took at it the way I did.

Second, I'd like to address why I'm still hesitant about coming back to this community. The issues are nothing any of you did wrong, not by any stretch of the imagination. I hate to sound so cliché at a time like this, but it really is just me this time who needs personal improvement. Ever since my later-then-usual introduction to Generation 4 in 2010, all the way back in the third grade, Pokémon has shaped my ways of thinking- and even my ways of life- in more ways than I could have ever imagined. It's been a childhood dream of mine to feel like I have my place of belonging in this fanbase. Feeling welcomed was one thing, but at the time, I wanted nothing more than for a group of people, literally anyone, to acknowledge that I could be- and was- a part of their community. Almost a dozen years have passed since then, and all I've felt in the past five years or so is the opposite feeling. Instead, I found that my interest in the series was dropping much faster than other childhood hobbies.

I'll end this post off by saying this. We're all very different people than who we choose to be online, and not a single one of us will ever achieve perfection. For a while now, I feel as if I've been trying too hard as a Pokémon fan to feel that sense of belonging I described earlier. If that's the kind of fan- let alone the kind of person- that I'm going to become in real life, I would rather not be a Pokémon fan at all. This, in turn, is why I feel more hesitant than ever before both about my time in the Smogon Forums and as a Pokémon fan in general.

 

[Ashaebi]

Out of curiosity what are these abnormally high standards you normally set yourself to?

Getting up at 0400 every single weekday to head to the gym and do 500kcals worth of cardio. The idea is if I do my cardio the very first thing in the morning I can forget about it for the rest of the day and place my focus on other tasks. The difficult part isn't pulling this off but CONSISTENTLY pulling it off. Something I'm still trying to find ways to improve on.

Also keeping my body fat percentage under 10% feels ridiculously difficult year round. I only found out the hard way most athletes and bodybuilders don't actually have under 10% body fat year round and only present their absolute best condition during events. Also there's a pretty good chance performance enhancing drugs and hormone replacement therapy is involved within professional sports and bodybuilding.

In other words, trying to compare yourself to others is extremely foolish since most of us have no idea what an individual has went through to obtain the results they have today. Probs something I likely need to continue to improve myself on.

 

[Ashaebi]

Here is a bit more to add to my previous post that I feel like another big thing to improve on but here's a bit of context before I proceed.

Checkitis (or checkitis syndrome) is a state of condition where you are performing a task/operation some factors (can be either internal or external or both) induces anxiety, loss of self confidence or overall demoralization to yourself. The process hinders your overall performance and causes tunnel vision in you which will increase the likeliness of you committing more errors and further worsening your ability to complete the task/operation at hand and ultimately further compromising your self confidence and even more demoralization of yourself.
This can very much snowball out of control and you can find yourself completely compromising the task at hand.

So what's the big idea here? Lets say you are a student and you plan to do 100 math questions by the end of the day. You plan to get up at 0700 and work as hard as you can to reach that 100 mark. However you actually got up at 0800 realizing you are 1hr late and behind. This one error alone of getting up late completely demoralizes you because you feel like you just lost valuable time and puts you in a very bad state of mind. You then don't feel 100% and only manage to complete 60 questions instead of the usual 100. You then go to bed feeling rather disappointed and have poor sleep quality potentially compromising tomorrow's ability to be productive. Given enough days you will feel like you have wasted more time than necessary and you feel like you're extremely unproductive.

While I'm not certain if checkitis in general requires professional help I feel like this is something I go through all the time and the very important yet difficult part of this dilemma is understandably when you are performing a list of tasks, if for whatever reason you commit an error, NEVER spend time dwelling on it or never let one bad task/bad day alone completely ruin your ability to do other tasks that follows otherwise you will end up wasting valuable time and never reaching your full potential. Or alternatively always have a backup plan when your original plans go south. Very important to remember everyone is only human and there is a random chance the first plan doesn't play out the way you wanted.

Obviously this is infinitely easier said than done thou.

 

[Wildfiree]

As a strength I definitely consider myself is discipline. Since getting a job that's shifts are 0600 - 1200 and sometimes 1400 on weekdays I feel like I need to force myself to go to bed early so I can consistently get up at 0500 in the morning. That alone I def consider a valuable trait.
As for undesirable traits, I feel like I have a terrible habit of often having unreasonable expectations for people and myself. Since all of us are human, the absolute best of us and those we look up to and respect unfortunately are not free from errors and most certainly commits mistakes from time to time. It often creates unnecessary disappointment which doesn't have to be that way.

Glad to hear both your strengths and weaknesses. Discipline is something I’m working on. Cool to see a person who is very adept with it. Good luck with your expectations wish you the best on that.

 

[Ashaebi]

Glad to hear both your strengths and weaknesses. Discipline is something I’m working on. Cool to see a person who is very adept with it. Good luck with your expectations wish you the best on that.

Hope It will happen one day! Fortune favours the bold after all

 

[Daki]

In the last few months my sleep schedule was totally disturbed, I was spending a lot of time on PS! or Smogon or on my console and it was really not good for my health.
I decided to get my act together and go to bed at reasonable hours, and since then, I've been living a healthier lifestyle.
I finally realize that I am really passionate about the projects I am doing on this site and that I love spending time with the people I have met there but also that, unfortunately this passion must be controlled so that I don't have to put my health at risk.
I am glad that this is now in the past.

 

[Wildfiree]

In the last few months my sleep schedule was totally disturbed, I was spending a lot of time on PS! or Smogon or on my console and it was really not good for my health.
I decided to get my act together and go to bed at reasonable hours, and since then, I've been living a healthier lifestyle.
I finally realize that I am really passionate about the projects I am doing on this site and that I love spending time with the people I have met there but also that, unfortunately this passion must be controlled so that I don't have to put my health at risk.
I am glad that this is now in the past.

Glad to hear ive also been sleeping at more reasonable hours it definitely is a lot better.

 

[Stallion]

Getting up at 0400 every single weekday to head to the gym and do 500kcals worth of cardio. The idea is if I do my cardio the very first thing in the morning I can forget about it for the rest of the day and place my focus on other tasks. The difficult part isn't pulling this off but CONSISTENTLY pulling it off. Something I'm still trying to find ways to improve on.

Also keeping my body fat percentage under 10% feels ridiculously difficult year round. I only found out the hard way most athletes and bodybuilders don't actually have under 10% body fat year round and only present their absolute best condition during events. Also there's a pretty good chance performance enhancing drugs and hormone replacement therapy is involved within professional sports and bodybuilding.

In other words, trying to compare yourself to others is extremely foolish since most of us have no idea what an individual has went through to obtain the results they have today. Probs something I likely need to continue to improve myself on.

Under 10% year-round without being a genetic freak, on steroids or a marathon runner is exhausting at the best of times and damaging at the worst.

Glad you've come to the realisation that it's not sustainable for most people!

 

[Ashaebi]

Here's some more information regarding just general improvements on yourself that I personally found extremely valuable.

Every time when you decide to plan to improve yourself to reach a new threshold, level or milestone in life regardless what it might be not only is it important to plan realistic goals but to CONSISTENTLY achieve them. There is one number that always pops up in my mind when I think of the term 'consistency' and that number is 95%.

Without going too much into the mathematics and statistical theory, allow me to simplify things so that it is more easily comprehended. Lets say you're a part time employee at a call center and you work 100 shifts a year. Your shifts always start at 0900 and ends varyingly. If your attendance follows a normal distribution and out of that 100 shifts, 95 shifts or more you find yourself signing into work before 0900, statistically there is enough evidence to suggest you are an employee who is consistently on time (remember being a second late is still by definition late). Otherwise if you have less than 95 shifts signing in before 0900, that's not to say you're someone who is often late but you just lack the evidence to call yourself someone who is consistently on time in a statistical point of view. It's called accepting or rejecting a null hypothesis for a given data that follows a normal distribution for those who are interested.

This principle I feel like can be applied in any situation if success and failure can be clearly defined. To expand on my previous post not only do I plan to do 500kcals worth of cardio on an exercise machine but I also hope to achieve it under 1 hour which is totally doable and reasonable if you have enough training. So in order to assess that, I'll take account every time I train am I hitting the 500kcal mark before the timer strikes 60 minutes. If this is happening 19 out of 20 times or more this is statistically a reasonable and consistently achievable goal and improvement. Otherwise if i constantly find myself having more than 1 bad day out of 20 days I would need to self evaluate if my target is either unreasonable or to identify what's causing me to miss that magical 95% mark, make self evaluations and what to do from there.

I feel like 95% principle acknowledges that everyone is human and from time to time you will unfortunately have a bad day and fail to achieve something but also high enough to ensure I need to aim high, be strict and demand accountability, quality and consistency. It also acts as a 'golden standard' to determine am I being reasonable with my targets or is it time to lower the threshold at least a little.

I owe my old math teacher a massive debt for teaching me this statistical principle and making 95 officially my favorite number.

 

[bdt2002]

Has it really been over a month since this thread's last post? Whether or not that was true, does it honestly even matter that much? What matters is that we're all helping ourselves and each other.

At the time of typing this, I got back from an evening social event about 30-45 minutes ago. I got a lot out of it, and it was... kind of fun (I'll be the first to say that I'm horrible at every form of golf), but for the sake of this thread, what I wanted to address was something I've only just now started thinking about. My family and most of my friends have known me as what some might call "an old soul" for a while now, but this comes at a heavy cost. I'm turning 20 in three weeks from today (assuming this post goes live before midnight), and I have consistently not been much of a fan of my own generation. I'm talking, like, going out of my way to avoid people within a few years of my own age to hang out with people my parents' ages. And that's just a light-hearted example. I've managed to convince myself that some of my behind-the-scenes behavior habits are getting much worse, even if they don't necessarily affect me or anyone else at the moment.

This is where our thread comes in. I'm sure you've all heard words like "racist" and "sexist" several times before. Yeah, well... I'm only just now starting to realize how ageist I've secretly become, specifically against my own generation. In recent years it's been next to impossible for me to pick out the good things of my generation relative to older ones, whether it be small things like what hobbies we have or bigger things like political discussions. Thankfully, this post isn't all bad news. I would like to make a sincere apology for some of the things I have thought about us (that is, our age group) that I don't necessarily post about here on Smogon. In addition to this, I've made the executive decision that I'm ready to give my age group- and myself- the respect we deserve, and hopefully put an end to my ageist behavior. However, I'm going to need some help with this adjustment, and I'll take everything I can get. Please note that I am not, under any circumstances, asking for any of your ages or any other personal information here. What I am asking for is ways that some of you have been able to more easily establish healthier connections with others around your own age.

P.S. Thank you for your help in advance, everyone :)

 

[MellonCaullie]

I've been going to the gym three days a week for the last two years.

But lately I've been having an anger problem. I was with someone who granted my patience down to zero and now I just keep blowing up and I don't know how to get rid of this rage. I used to not be like this and I don't like it.

 

[Wildfiree]

I've been going to the gym three days a week for the last two years.

But lately I've been having an anger problem. I was with someone who granted my patience down to zero and now I just keep blowing up and I don't know how to get rid of this rage. I used to not be like this and I don't like it.

I think finding ways to relax yourself when your feeling rage is a good way to help it. Mine is working out and music.

 

[antemortem]

I've been going to the gym three days a week for the last two years.

But lately I've been having an anger problem. I was with someone who granted my patience down to zero and now I just keep blowing up and I don't know how to get rid of this rage. I used to not be like this and I don't like it.

I personally try to think about rage/anger as something not to be holistically removed or overcome, but rather something to learn to control when it peaks. you’ve probably heard before that anger isn’t necessarily an emotion. it’s a response to an emotional shift. so if you’re a planner to a tee and your foresight doesn’t culminate exactly as intended, that could pull an enraged response out of you. so it’s really about, in my experience, validating your feelings and then reframing the situation so that instead of just “being angry” at/about something, you move through it with grace and compassion for yourself and whatever you were angry at/about

 

[Wildfiree]

I realized I never posted in this thread so here it is
My strengths: Im very caring,understanding, and I tend to put people I love first before myself. People I know would also say I’m polite.
Weaknesses/undesired traits: I can be quite pessimistic at times always thinking the worst that could happen, I tend to have a bad habit of being tardy as of late, I can be quite shy (probably due to my social anxiety)

One thing I will always try to make sure is not to give in. I will keep challenging myself overcome these traits as they don’t have to forever be apart of me. I will challenge myself to get the discipline to be on time , speaking positively, and also dispersing the fear of public areas. Anyways thanks for listening was cool to revive this thread.

 

[awyp]

strengths: im caring, very pleasant person to be around

weaknesses: im super competitive (ill leave it at that), im extremely lazy

improvements: when i used to be on this site 12-13 years ago i think i had a slight anger problems because of my household life, as ive gotten older ive learned to control my anger pretty well, and im chilled back 98% of the time, you are a product of your environment.

 

[Wildfiree]

strengths: im caring, very pleasant person to be around

weaknesses: im super competitive (ill leave it at that), im extremely lazy

improvements: when i used to be on this site 12-13 years ago i think i had a slight anger problems because of my household life, as ive gotten older ive learned to control my anger pretty well, and im chilled back 98% of the time, you are a product of your environment.

Thanks for the post and it’s never easy to share your weaknesses. I’m also glad you were able to make progress on keeping your anger in check and yeah you are right we are all a product of our environment despite that we can change as you proved. Good luck in all you do.

 

[bdt2002]

Following some... uh... "recent developments" regarding the American Politics thread (trust me, you're better off staying out of it), I've had some time to think in between sending messages and conversations with other users whose identities I won't be listing here, and while this may sound like a strange question, I just have to ask.

Have I been a burden to this community? Moreso than a benefit? I would like to think that when I was onboarded as some kind of "mini-moderator" I guess?, the people behind that decision must have seen something in me that I don't see in myself.

Over the past few weeks, though, I've learned a lot about myself through the nature of some of the posts I've sent, a number of which have since been deleted. I felt this thread would have been the most appropriate place to address the feelings of toxicity that part of me knows I have been lately, but part of me also thinks I'm being way too hard on myself over things that don't matter as much as I'm making them out to be.

I recently tried to re-commit to posting in these Forums, but understanding the repercussions my posting behavior may (or may not be) having (again, I don't know), I wanted to know what some of you thought before I made any final decisions as for what to do with my Smogon account. I would rather this community not have to listen to me at all than have to listen to a toxic version of me.

 

[Wildfiree]

Following some... uh... "recent developments" regarding the American Politics thread (trust me, you're better off staying out of it), I've had some time to think in between sending messages and conversations with other users whose identities I won't be listing here, and while this may sound like a strange question, I just have to ask.

Have I been a burden to this community? Moreso than a benefit? I would like to think that when I was onboarded as some kind of "mini-moderator" I guess?, the people behind that decision must have seen something in me that I don't see in myself.

Over the past few weeks, though, I've learned a lot about myself through the nature of some of the posts I've sent, a number of which have since been deleted. I felt this thread would have been the most appropriate place to address the feelings of toxicity that part of me knows I have been lately, but part of me also thinks I'm being way too hard on myself over things that don't matter as much as I'm making them out to be.

I recently tried to re-commit to posting in these Forums, but understanding the repercussions my posting behavior may (or may not be) having (again, I don't know), I wanted to know what some of you thought before I made any final decisions as for what to do with my Smogon account. I would rather this community not have to listen to me at all than have to listen to a toxic version of me.

I think personally don’t overthink it do what you like to do regardless smogon or Pokémon in general. Honestly I only involve myself with this forum (only a several threads here) and smogoff as that’s the forums I feel comfortable in. Also it’s just a hobby don’t think much of it just enjoy it whenever you can. Also it’s always good to hear opinions from other people yourself included. If you feel you need to take a break and get some breathing room that’s fine I done it. Just make sure it’s something you enjoy and not something that makes you miserable. Lastly, don’t let other people dictate how you feel about something. I hope this was a help you keep doing what you are doing.