Thought about it, snce it’s near New Year’s.
In my opinion, exercising/training/stretching atleast once a week would be a good thing for most people.
Just go for a walk. Calling it exercise scares people into thinking about running, cycling or the gym but for the last month or two i just make it my mission to go for a long-ish walk once a day. Nothing strenuous, some days I walk a couple of kilometres to the nearest big supermarket to pick up some stuff, or i’ll get something delivered to a post locker thing or I’ll just go for a nice walk around the nearby park and bring my neglected camera with me to take pics of some birdies.
You would be surprised how many calories it adds up to and how much better your well-being can get from some sunlight and fresh air.
That’s it! Walking solves so many problems automatically, it’s possibly the best general answer.
I’ve been trying to motivate myself to go out for walks more. I really enjoy hiking, but especially over the winter, the weather is always an easy excuse not to go out (I’m in the PNW, so winter means rain).
I just bought some nice waterproof hiking shoes that will take away at least one excuse. I’d get wet feet using running shoes, and cleaning mud off was a pain too. Having the right equipment can make going out way more pleasant. (Also it can be exciting to try out new shoes or whatever it is)
This is very important. It’s easier to do regular “exercise” if it’s part of your daily routine than having to go out of your way to go to the gym.
The fittest I’ve been on the last years has been when I could bike to the office
Reading books on daily basis. It’s a qualitatively different experience from reading websites or consuming other form of media. If you have trouble getting into reading, I recommend picking a particular time and place, then reading at least a few pages every day. Eventually, it will turn into a habit and you’ll be reading for longer periods. Another thing I recommend is finding books on topics you’re interested in, be it fiction or non fiction, and don’t feel bad about abandoning books if you find you’re not enjoying it.
Emotional processing. Just sit or lay down for a moment and let that stuff come. Go straight into all of it. Awkward and painful moments. Frustrations… It’ll feel so much better afterward!
Something to avoid would be letting others set your standard. You set your own standard.
Learn stuff, don’t eat processed foods and get exercise - gardening and foraging are good places to start for most people. Stay far away from negative, manipulative and lying people.
Floss daily. Brush your teeth twice daily.
Use a tongue scraper.
The amount of people I used to meet through tinder back when I was single that seemingly or self-admittedly did none of that, just brushed once a day, was very concerning. Still is.
Did you really talk about dental care on Tinder? Just curious, I’ve never used it.
Waking up at the same time every day, no matter if it’s a weekend or a weekday and no matter if you stayed up too late and won’t be getting full 8 hours of sleep.
As obvious as this might sound, this has really helped me to regulate my sleep schedule, something I’ve really been struggling with for pretty much my entire life.
Make your bed as soon as you wake up.
But I’m still in it!!
I work from home and tried to do this, but it’s easier to just wait until lunch. Once you’re in the habit though you won’t know how you ever didn’t do it before.
I don’t know if the mental benefits are outweighed by not airing out your linen. might depend on the weather.
Never start nicotine
I’d also like to chip in that alcoholism is sneaky. Be careful with drinking
Yeah alcohol really sucks. It’s so embedded into society most people expect you to start drinking regularly as soon as you can. I think it’s getting better but still people are nowhere near as cautious about alcohol as they really should be it accounts for 10% of deaths worldwide, that is just mind boggling.
I had to avoid alcohol for a while because of a medication I was on and it drove me mad when people would press me after I said “I’m not drinking”. I think it makes people feel weird about their own alcohol use? But if they’re that self conscious, maybe they need to do some self reflection about whether their alcohol use is a problem.
A phrase I’ve been seeing more in recent years that’s a small thing that feels impactful is stuff that says “alcohol and other drugs”. It is a drug and needs to be treated with respect, and ideally caution
Does it really matter why you aren’t drinking? I tend to avoid asking questions like that especially immediately after I find out that is the case. No matter what reason someone has it won’t (or at least it shouldn’t) change there choice if I know.
That’s exactly my point, it’s a ridiculous question to ask. Like, there are so many bad outcomes to asking it.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future…
sunscreen…
would be…
it.
The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists.
~ Baz
I wear a sunhat everywhere in the summer. People seem amused by it but I’m 50 and have lovely skin.
Goals!!
This is my skincare routine; wash with Dove soap, put the original Nivea creme in the blue tin on as day lotion, pat dry. Just before you leave add sunscreen. I don’t use makeup beyond eyeliner and very occasionally lipstick. I barely had pimples as a young woman even.
jokes on you buddy, I don’t go outside
Which was written by Mary Schmich: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_Sunscreen
For me, it’s reading or watching philosophies. Philosophy can change how we view things around us.
Biased take but you can’t remove meditation and mindfulness from its traditions specific goals. I get they have side benefits but therapy acting like they invested god through spreading it is just watering down what could help so many people
Do you care to elaborate?
I’ve tried getting into both a few times, to the point of noticing some benefits, but I fall off the wagon bc everything I read about it quickly goes into religious territory.
Since it appears you dislike all religion I’m not sure my main point fits your tastes but I could say many of the various goals of Buddhist meditation such as realization emptiness of self or of phenomena, realization of impermanence, especially dhyana are all absent from whitewashed or medical meditation. I would say these can all be labeled as helpful but not necessarily religious goals but ontological.
To me this does two things, one it presents a false narrative of meditation by displacing it from its thousands of years of tradition. Two, it robs the practitioners of multiple goals and benefits, instead presenting it as simply calming. Which was never its goal, except maybe samatha meditation.
Essentially, I feel western mainstream and medical meditation denies meditations long history, makes up some goals and benefits that are not within the proven one’s, all while acting like they did it themselves.
Reminds me of the Duke University Koru counseling group which gave a talk on how their program came up with walking meditation…
I hope that’s helpful or at least clear. I do prefer traditional what you would call religious Buddhist mediation but even traditional does not have to contain things you dislike. For instance traditional Chan/Zen and vipasana teachers have been quite open to all students while teaching the full meditation
Thank you for taking the time to reply and thoroughly so.
I think the best differentiation you made between ontology and religion is key. My issue with religious texts is that they (usually but not always) demand a full commitment with other practices and beliefs that I don’t find fitting for me personally, and it seems like an all or nothing approach, so I end up quitting.
Let alone as you mention how these ancient practices have been stripped of their original intentions to be made more palatable to western audiences. Not only that, but now some people have even tried to co-opt them by sticking a western religious approach, further (imo) disrespecting and confounding.
I’m being kinda contradictory, and this is why I haven’t sorted out my internal conflict between the search for inner peace -I wouldn’tbe so pretentious as to call it enlightment-, and my unwillingness to submit to religious dogma (I’ve had enough bad experiences, and not only with one religion).
Absolutely lifting weights has been my all time favorite self improvement thing, would highly recommend it
I second this as a non-sporty person. I bought a couple of barbells (15kg apiece) for use at home and 20-30 minutes of just messing around with them daily has solved so many joint aches, it’s almost ridiculous…
Just to note, the form has an impact and can cause more negatives than it solves if not done properly.
Duly noted and you are very right! I looked up a couple of simple exercises beforehand as I’m really not keen on getting a herniated disk or something.
From what I’ve seen, as long as it’s nothing fancy like advanced calisthenics and power training, the exercises are straightforward and easy to grasp.
That’s why you start off light until you get your form down then work your way up.
Getting an electric toothbrush, and flossing daily. My dental hygienists love me.
Just use a password manager, FFS it makes all of your online interactions safer.
Once setup, it is easier than not using one.
Which app would you recommend/suggest?
Bitwarden is the best in my opinion
I use keepass XC, and keep it up to date on all my devices using syncthing.
I have considered bitwarden with self hosting, but keepass had always worked well.
Have used LastPass before it was shit, self hosted bitwarden and KeePass synced with nextcloud (whatever cloud service works). I ended up using KeePass with nextcloud and set KeePass to automatically save changes. Use it on Android with KeePassDX that also includes auto fill across apps. KeePass doesn’t require much setup whereas you need to setup server with bitwarden. Also had some weird sync errors with bitwarden. Having said that, bitwarden is a great piece of software.
Doesn’t hosting your password database in the cloud make it vulnerable to cracking? If it transmits across a network, then an ISP (at the very least; this assumes no malicious actors) will have seen it, and you can no longer be certain no one else has access to it.
KeePass is open source and is easy to sync via whatever service you use, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or something.
I’m seconding Bitwarden. I’ll also say that whilst self-hosting (if one can do it securely) may be more secure than using a service, security is always going to be a sliding scale trade off of convenience and security.
I recommend Bitwarden to everyone, but I’m sure there are options that are probably equally good. But most people could probably benefit from a password manager because we have so many different services demanding we make accounts that I reckon it’s next to impossible for any reasonable person to avoid reusing passwords across services (that’s one of the biggest security risks that hit regular people).
Start up tips: make sure your master password is strong and memorable. I found Bitwarden’s password generator for this. A passphrase tends to be more memorable than an equally long password — a good master pass phrase would have at least four words (four is sufficient for most people). Write this down in a physical place, as a backup, ideally not your wallet. it doesn’t necessarily need to be locked away, just make sure you’ll know where to find it if you forget it (I forgot mine a bunch at first and had to reference my backup a few times).
Password managers and security in general can feel overwhelming because of the instinct to do things properly, which might include things like self hosting a password manager, or only avoiding biometric sign-in on the phone app version rtc. However, the best password manager is one that you use, and if bits of convenience like this help, then it’s a good trade off.
It reminds me of the joke about two people who see an angry Grizzly bear in the forest, which starts charging at them. One of the people starts running away, and the other shouts “Where are you going, you’ll never outrun the bear”. The running person replies “I don’t need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you”. That’s a bad paraphrase, but the sentiment is that using a password manager at all puts you way ahead of many people, in terms of security. Obviously, you’d feel more secure if you knew you could outrun the bear, but if we spent too long being anxious about our ability to do that, we definitely will get eaten. (Apologies for such a long comment. I always do this when I’m procrastinating going to bed. I hope you have a nice Christmas, if you’re celebrating that wherever you are.)
Read books.
Really anything, philosophy is great but some don’t have the patience for it.
If it’s graphic novels or “kids” books, it’s all good. Spend a bit of time every day reading.
And to add, if reading just doesn’t seem to work, be open towards audio books. They are every bit as good as the books (unabridged, anyway) but can be a better fit for some.
I have adhd and most of my reading has evolved to be listening. It works well so I can get some stimming while doing boring like dishes or whatever, and this way I actually finish books.
Don’t listen to anyone telling you it’s “not reading”. It is. Whatever works for you.
What I’m getting at, is not about finishing books, it’s more about the time.
Slow down, take the time, even 10 minutes, to improve your mind. Reading, any type of reading, improves your thinking.
If you are not used to, at first it may be difficult to pay attention to the audio and understand it. Sometimes for me, the audio becomes background noise.
I listen to several podcasts, while it’s not the same as an audiobook I started doing it to practice languages until I found some channels I like and it’s now part of my daily activities
Couldn’t agree more.
Secondly, never ask for book recommendations on Lemmy or Reddit. You’ll just get a list of pretentious, wanky suggestions that people pretend to like
The best fiction is sometimes just a trashy, edge-of-your-seat thriller
I wouldn’t go that far - oftentimes people actually do like those books that get name dropped for clout.
I would say if you take a recommendation and aren’t digging the book, drop it with absolutely no guilt. If something like (for example) Infinite Jest just feels like a slog with no payoff, and you just wanna kick back with something trashy, do it and fuck the haters.
But you may find you dig it - you won’t know without giving it a shot.
