That mental health and having friends is more important than being in a relationship with someone.
I learned it the hard way as I willingly stayed in a toxic relationship way longer than I should have. I was afraid to be alone, I was afraid I couldn't find anyone else and I was ignoring red flags, because you know...sex...
It was a huge relief when it ended and I cursed myself for not breaking up earlier.
I was afraid to be alone, I was afraid I couldn’t find anyone else and I was ignoring red flags, because you know…sex…
Another thing I would tell my younger self is that how much sex you have isn't a measure of how successful a relationship is. It's important to have a functional relationship outside of sex, especially if you want your romantic relationship to last a lifetime. There will be a point for all of us where physical health will preclude a normal sex life, so you best be comfortable with that before it happens.
What matters is they care for you, you care for them, and you both having matching values. Anything past that is just a bonus.
I am sorry you had to go through that. Interestingly, I’m almost the reverse. I had a group of friends I thought I was close with. Started dating a girl, everyone got along. When I proposed to her the friends all felt that I betrayed my then-roommate friend, and they all bailed on our friendships. I tried to explain how I felt, I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.
They took, spouting all kinds of hurtful things to me and my girlfriend like how we’d never last and how she was my “trophy”. Years later we’re still together, happy, and (mostly) healthy. While at least one of them has been divorced (only mentioning that to point out the irony).
So I ended up losing a whole group of friends in exchange for my wife, who is my best friend. As much as that time hurt, if I had to do it again I would never choose them over her.
The importance of all types of maintenance, including cleaning.
When you take care of things right, they can last forever. I have clothing from 15+ years ago due to proper washing, storage, and a little sewing.
I genuinely didn't understand or care until my late twenties. That was a lot of wasted time and broken things that I could have salvaged.
Whether its cars, computers, your home, or whatever else: regular cleaning and maintenance on a tight schedule is key to preventing interruptions and lost time.
Starting with good quality is important. No amount of maintenance will keep poor quality products good forever. Certainly, negligence can ruin good quality things, but poor quality will degrade with regular use.
That said, 1 pair of good boots is cheaper than 10 pairs of bad ones.
Oof, the list of hard-earned lessons is long. These two stand out the most:
Actually, don’t waste time in general.
Or perhaps don't waste time without purpose? Also, it depends on what one considers a "waste of time." A hiking picnic in an idyllic meadow may be worth the time and effort to some, but perhaps not to others. I personally prioritize time with friends and family over other pursuits simply because some of the top complaints people have on their death beds are "worked too much" and "didnt spend enough time with friends/family." However, society doesn't necessarily reward us for prioritizing those, either.
Anyway, as long as you get value out of what you are doing, it is not time wasted.
Agree 100%
Invest a portion of your savings. Inflation is inevitable and letting your money sit in a regular savings account just means you get poorer every year. I regret not doing it earlier and only started in my mid 30s.
Also, take care of your teeth.
Take some time every now and then to consider why you're doing the things you're doing. You may do them out of fear, shame, perceived obligation, to avoid doing something else, because your parents want you to, etc. Or you may do them because they genuinely bring you job, help you in some way or make the world a better place.. Anyway, we people are weird creatures. We get stuck in situations, relationships, obligations, bad habits, destructive patterns without realizing what's happening. Try to stay aware, honest to yourself (and others) and keep learning :)
Emotions aren't a weakness, and suppressing them isn't strong but stupid. I felt so much "better" than other people because I was "rational" and "logical" while they where irrational because of their emotions. Turns out, as it often does when people feel better than others, that I was the one who was thinking the wrong way. I'm so happy that younger me never heard of people like Jordan Peterson or that "facts don't care about your feelings" guy because I would've turned out a completely different person.
I thought I was introverted.
Then I spent 4 months in Antarctica for work, and holy shit. No. I’m not introverted. I need my friends and family around me at all times.
You can still be introverted and need those close to you.
You would most likely prefer smaller groups to crowds, maybe self reflect and retreat into your own mind more than others, probably think before you act. You would also most likely feel tired after being in a crowd, feel comfortable being alone(doesn't mean 4months alone would be ok), and have few friendships but you are very close with those friends.
I am an introvert but I still need my partner, my family and my friends. I just don't need them that often and I am fine being on my own but I would definitely prefer to be with them than without them. That is why we chose them, right? Because we enjoy their company.
If you don't mind me asking, what kind of work? That sounds interesting.
I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to internalize it when I was younger, but I would really like my younger self to understand that diligence is one of the most important skills a person can have. Being able to plug away at the boring stuff will get you much further in life than being good at the novel stuff.
that being good at your job doesn’t define you. it’s not a “trait”, it’s not a label. sometimes you’re good, sometimes you’re bad and sometimes you just are.
it’s just a job after all and a job should never be more than that: just a job
Learn your boundaries or if you don't have any (or are unaware of them) find them, like yesterday! And get comfortable speaking to people directly when you need to express how you feel as long as you do so respectfully and in a way that is very clear.
When someone violates your emotional space or you do that to them, everybody loses because it is basically either low-key or high-key emotional rape that is occuring. Even worse, if boundary is violated and then one person attempts to gaslight and "persuade" you to feel differently, thats far worse. Its like when someone rapes another and when confronted, says "You wanted/asked for/deserved it" and forces the victim to revise their understanding and feelings about it to comport with the perpetrators purported attempt to establish their actions as warranted and rooted in objective reality.
Boundaries == no, do not cross this line that otherwise causes me distress.
Theft, rape, assault, murder, sexual abuse are all classic and extreme versions of this but it can be something as mundane as continually bringing up a distressing topic or memory with someone who has expressed their distress and request for the other not to do so.
Learn your and other's limits or there will be no end to the extent to which you will be exploited by the world and life abstractly
An important concept when determining your own and others limits is to learn to distinguish what you need and what you merely want and to realize that this varies from person to person. An introvert might really need that alone time while it might just be nice to have for you and an extravert might really need social contacts frequently while you can take it or leave it. A person with health issues might need the rest or a depressed person might need someone else to initiate to maintain a friendship.
Thats important because boundaries are a dance in terms of whether you can have a healthy relationship with another. If you have opposing boundaries like:
Person A: I find others' boundaries triggering so my boundary is nobody else can have boundaries but me
Person B: I want to respect A's boundaries the best I can but unfortunately I need to be able to set boundaries to keep me safe and ok and I am triggered when people can't accept reasonable boundaries
Prolly not gonna work. You must take care that your boundaries are in fact needs and not simply a preference like your fave saltine cracker because you need ti vigorously enforce needed boundaries and they will limit the people you are able to safely interface with and if you have too many triggers+boundaries nobody will want to be around you
You need to get on anti-depressants because all your problems were solved when you got your ass level.
Wear hearing protection when you do anything loud. Mowing your lawn, going to concerts, working in a factory. PROTECT YOUR EARS. Once you have hearing loss, you can’t get it back.
I’m barely over 40 and I get to get fit for hearing aids in a few weeks. Those will cost me around $4k. Insurance won’t cover all of it because apparently hearing is a luxury that people don’t need. It also may or may not help solve the tinnitus problem I’ve had for a while now, which is slowly driving me insane.
That a general feeling of peace cannot be attained by controlling your environment, only by adjusting to it.
Among all the lessons, I think this one relates more to me, what else can you tell me about this one?
A scholar would point out that I’m really just flippantly paraphrasing like, the entirety of stoic philosophical thought so the first thing I should say here is read some Epictetus and some Aurelius because those texts will pad out the space we are discussing here in a very comprehensive fashion.
With that said let me try to flesh out my OP a little.
I’m going to give you some examples from my own life and I’m using “we” and “our” here in a personal sense, drawing from my own circumstances and experiences. These utterances are subjective ones - please don’t read this the proclamation of some universal truth, YMMV.
I grew up subject to some challenging circumstances that led me to a deep need for self sufficiency. I had to believe that I could do anything I set my mind to because the alternative was a horrific life that I did not want to fall into at any cost.
In my twenties and thirties I made several huge efforts over several years to improve my circumstances. I met a woman, she already had a small child and so the urgency to make a success of my life increased further as I became responsible for a small family.
I pushed myself harder.
Believing that all I needed was to keep working at making sure everything was in its perfect place. I was a savage. If you crossed my path at work and I decided you were not an asset I would destroy you. If you competed with me professionally I would work day and night, forsaking everything else to beat you.
I lost myself in “succeeding” despite which that monkey on my back from my childhood never left me. Homelessness, abject poverty and having no value in the world was just one lazy day away for me. Even when I became objectively wealthy, started several businesses and had all of the outwardly visible trappings of success, inside I was still the same teenage kid, lost in the world with nowhere to go and deeplY, deeply afraid.
My forties rolled around and I became increasingly aware that something wasn’t right. I’d look at my family, my home, my work and everything seemed to be in its perfect place. I’d run out of things to “fix” and I was lost, just deeply unhappy and I couldn’t figure out why everything I had done had led to this feeling of emptiness. Why I was still running from nothing for a decade or more?
Over time and with the help of my wife I began to see that I was on a path to destruction. A long, winding one that disguised itself as so many things but a path to destruction none the less.
She would say to me: “I can’t bear to see you so unhappy, I can’t understand why you are sad and I’m scared that you’ll do something awful if things stay like this.”
Slowly I began to realise I needed help so I went to my GP and told them what was happening. They referred me to a psychologist and this was a real stroke of luck for me because the woman they referred to me to, we just hit it off instantly. If you’re reading this and considering therapy then just know that it can take a while to for the right person but I was incredibly lucky to find this person immediately.
It took over a year of therapy for me to arrive at a place where I could allow myself to be and not always do.
We grow up in a patriarchal society that rewards and values aggression at the cost of inner peace and I had taken that belief system down hook, line and sinker. That internalised Hunger Games world I was living in was destroying me slowly, one closed deal, one Mercedes Benz, one Rolex at a time and I was trapped because every signal I received from friends, family, the media, from society at large was that what I was doing was right, was righteous and I was “succeeding”.
It took a year of therapy and a lot of personal growth to start coming round to the understanding that I was mistaken about the nature of things. That being good at being, just being, is more important than doing. Took me a long time to be able to get off the gas and just enjoy the view out the window a little bit.
When I learned to just be I learned to find the good in things. Not simply to take everything apart trying to find the bad thing I had to fix, and that changed me fundamentally as a person.
I’m now see myself as a participant in the world. The good things and the bad things. I’m no longer the person at the wheel, ultimately responsible for everything in a finite human life that is guaranteed only of ultimate obliteration.
Learning to integrate to my life and not just struggle in futility to control every aspect of it has made me a better version of myself. More loving, more able to see goodness. More peaceful inside and less prone to anger. Easier on myself and others too as a result, and now when my wife or one of our children smile or laugh I’m right there watching it, experiencing it and feeling that for once I am in my perfect place and not just everything around me.
Take the time to develop more understanding, and therefore empathy for yourself and others. You'll never truly do anything worthwhile without empathy.
Listen to your mother, eat vegetables and go outside.
Read, read, read .... then read some more. Don't just read entertainment and easy fiction. Read history books and works by famous writers. Look up a list of top 100 books that are highly recommended and read them. Read about famous people, famous places, famous battles, famous periods and moments in history.
Read so that you'll have a better understanding of why we live in the world we live in.
If you don't figure out for yourself what this world is and why it is the way it is ..... someone else will do it for you ... and that someone else will not have your best interests in mind.
Having a broad knowledge of many things also protects you because it will allow you to speak for yourself with confidence. You may not get everything right, no one ever fully does but at least you'll be able to speak for yourself. You'll also more easily be capable of seeing bullshit in the world and form your own opinions. Just remember to be kind, to learn empathy and understanding ... if the ideas or writers or personalities you follow teach you anger, fear and hate, then you are definitely headed into a dark place.
I read on my own more often now but I just wish I had done more so when I was younger.
.... and like others have said, take care of your teeth, eat less sugar, the better your habits the more likely you'll stick to those habits for life.
You are autistic. Go look it up, read what it is, get diagnosed.
I forgot to include this one:
In a 1954 speech, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was quoting Dr J. Roscoe Miller, president of Northwestern University, said: "I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent."
I have always taken this to mean that we should focus on long-term goals and not get distracted by today's minor crises.
It's okay to say no, even when violence is necessary to enforce your no
"Accept that you're not attractive for most people and stop looking for love in high school. It won't happen."
"Cultivate friendships as the most valuable and close relationships to aspire to. Romantic love can happen, but it's extremely unlikely. Search for your fulfillment elsewhere."
Think about the portion of a relationship (friendships, family, romantic) you contribute. Is it always more one sided? Try to keep it even so you don't burn yourself out emotionally. This is self care too. It's not just baths and massages. It's okay to say I am unable to help with this and offer no excuse.
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