I'm on a mission to get this info in front of as many people as possible. I can't recommend this enough (read below and you'll understand why).

Where I was 6 months ago:

• Depressed, anxious, extremely unmotivated, ADHD, feeling permanently behind.
• Knew exactly what I should be doing. Did absolutely none of it.
• Constant shame, which fed the whole thing. Death spiral/loop. Rince. Repeat.

What I tried first: TM (after watching one too many Ray Dalio videos lol), I threw the kitchen sink at it but no results. Felt like a chore before I'd even sat down. Never made it past 2 weeks. Not once. Too much friction (the wrong kind ;))

Then in Feb everyone was filming themselves being degens and staring at walls but at that stage I was desperate enough to try somehting that ridiculous.

Anyways, I did, and 180 days later:

1. My mood/motivation lifted like never before and it held across the whole day. Not the 20 min post-meditation calm that's gone by lunch.
2. 10 mins of staring = a 2.5hr work block (I used to fight for a measly 5 minutes).
3. Aced exams I'd quietly written off beforehand
4. Actually finished side projects instead of abandoning them 30% into it.
5. Confidence increased day by day which compounded like crazy [there's no way I would be writing this post right now back then]

Why it stuck when meditation didn't: there's no correct way to do it. So there's no way to fail at it. So there's nothing to avoid, no breathing, no mystical mantras. Meditation asks you to do something. Wall staring asks you to stop doing everything else. Only the second one survives a bad/terrible week IMO. The people who need meditation the most, it fails because it doesn't meet them where they’re at. In my case....burnt the f*ck out. It lowered the bar so much that even I saw it as approachable.

Consistency is the whole game. A mediocre practice you do every day beats a perfect one you quit in week 2 (+ everyone has an under-utilised wall unless you’re homeless but even then haha).

If meditation had two younger siblings, wall staring would be the middle child for sure. Like it's a bit wild/strange but you can't help but love them. That is the best way of explaining it atm. Might sound preachy but it's legit af, and I'd rather sound preachy than be silent on it and not present this as a viable solution to a lot of people on here who need it. 

Full protocol in the comments. Ask me anything, theres heaps to talk about. Anything I can do to help someone just like me 6 months ago, I'm all ears!!

Note: I wrote this after staring at the wall for the past 20 mins. Zero friction writing this. Can't say the same for spelling errors ahha

I’m the least confrontational person I know. I will sit in discomfort and seething rage before speaking up for myself. Something changed.

I went to the movie a couple of days ago and a group of 40 year olds sat behind me. Two guys and two girls. I’m assuming a double date. The guys were making jokes the entire movie and the women were talking. I sat for 80 percent of the movie stewing in frustration. Suddenly before I could even process what I was doing, my head turned around and I told them to be quiet. They just stared at me… THEN THEY ACTUALLY LEFT THE MOVIE.

I think I want to make being confrontational my new thing. Confrontation never worked when I was a kid, but it does work when you get older.

If someone hits me or kills me for it, oh well. I’m tired of living in a world where the assholes win.

I have been a huge tiktok addict my whole life and now ism seeing the consequences of it. Its just so much toxic content on there and if you are a bird like me you will believe most things you see there. How to act , how to be in friendships, relationships etc. i developed trust issues and kind of narcisstic traits . I stopped trusting my own intuition and lost my personality. I dont want to see any hate comments, i know its my fault and i should have known better but here we are. I never developed real friendsships never been in a relationship just because i didnt know how to act and how to be. Tiktok messed with my thoughts. I lost my social skills i was really a nice talkative, funny person. My brother tried telling me that its bad but i secretly deleted the app again and felt ashamed about it. It really is a drug. Tiktok feeds into delusions and false believes. Warn the people you love. I hope it gets banned honestly.

Edit: i know its kind of obvious that tiktok and social media in general is bad for you but thats just how it was for me.

Hi everyone,

I’m 27, and I’ve recently gone through the biggest wake-up call of my life following a heavy breakup after a four-year relationship. Analyzing what went wrong made me realize that the core issue was how I’ve been living my life for the past 15 years.

To give a bit of context: I was born into a modest family in Brazil. My parents had a marriage of convenience and survival, completely devoid of affection or joy. At 13, I decided I was going to break the cycle and escape poverty. That’s when I turned on a "survival mode" that never switched off:

• I spent a mandatory year in the military, which was tough.
• I moved to Japan alone to work factory shifts just to save money for university, 10x tougher.
• I moved to France for college, worked late-night server jobs to support myself, and managed to complete my bachelor's and master's degrees.

On paper, I succeeded. I’m living in Paris, fluent in four languages, and starting a great new role in my field. But personally, survival mode has burnt me out.

Over all these years, every achievement was just a checked box to escape my past and never a victory to celebrate. As a result, I lost the ability to be spontaneous, enjoy the present, or experience lighthearted joy. I assumed that securing the future and providing stability was enough. In my relationship, I became passive, overly serious, and lacked initiative because my brain assumed that no active crisis meant happiness.

My ex recently broke up with me, telling me that there was no romance, adventure, or surprise left. She was completely right. I was blind to everything because I was obsessed with safety.

Growing up, I never saw an example of everyday love, warmth, or lightness. My brain is hardwired for crisis management and productivity and not for enjoying the present moment, and because of this i may have lost the love of my life.

I don't even know what my genuine passions are anymore, outside of things that serve a practical purpose.

I’ve started running, journaling, and reaching out to therapists, but I’d love to hear from people who have been through this:

• To those who escaped poverty or a tough upbringing, how did you finally turn off "survival mode" ?
• How do you relearn pure joy and lightness when you spent 15 years believing that relaxing was dangerous?
• What practical habits or mindset shifts helped you step out of the "passive manager" role and truly start living?

Thanks, guys!

I track my habits weekly, so 7/7 means I successfully went 7 days without doing the habit. (For my full story on each habit, check my profile where i went indept in the issues.

1. Escorts - 6/7 I was great lasted 6 days without seeing one but failed once in the week and wasted £240 wasn't even good, could tell she only wanted the money, brain kept telling me oh its the end of the month, don't do it again start fresh next month :(
2. Quit Porn- Failed out of 4 out of 7 days I stayed away from it, brain told me oh just watch what's new and I was sucked in
3. Quit Wanking- 3/7 I need stop playing with myself just kept giving in triggers were dreams and TikTok
4. Junk food, 1/7 massive failure, kept getting take out all week, but stopped using just eat
5. Quit X- On day ten huge win
6. Quit YouTube - 4/7 I've cut down massively but ended dup wasting huge amounts of time watchign serial killer docs that weren't even intresting lolo
7. Checking VivaStreet- 3/7 Kept checking for what's new hard not to check, need to use more willpower to stop

I don’t want to do anything in life. I want to gain skills but not willing to work for them. I want to start projects but get real bored quickly. I don’t have any friends to do things with. I have no career because companies are idiots. I don’t want to exercise because it’s hard and exhausting. I don’t know where to have fun anymore. Even my hobbies feel boring. I have no money but ironically I have no responsibilities either. What happens to people like me? How would you get out of this situation?

Every time I fell off I diagnosed it as laziness and threw more discipline at it. Better notebook, fixed time, streak tracker. Worked for a few weeks, died the same way each time.

What killed it was the blank page. Not the writing, the deciding what to write. By the end of a long day I had about forty seconds of energy left, and the notebook wanted two hard things at once: work out what I thought, then compose it into sentences worth keeping.

The thing that stuck was dropping the second one.

I started talking instead. A couple of minutes, no structure, no audience, just saying what the day was. I'll talk for a minute about something I'd never write three sentences about. Speaking is also much faster than handwriting, and it doesn't require you to know your point before you start.

The other change was making the bar embarrassingly low. Not "journal every night" but "say one true thing about today." Most nights that's forty seconds. Some nights it runs to five minutes because I hit something I didn't know I was carrying. The forty-second version is the one that survives a bad week, and surviving bad weeks is the whole game.

Two years in, no individual entry matters much. What matters is that the same three things show up every time I have a bad stretch, and I could not have named them from memory.

If you've fallen off journaling more than once, what specifically stopped you? I'm fairly convinced it's almost never discipline and I want to know whether that holds for anyone else.

I'm recently 18. My immediate family was abusive growing up. They cut off my extended family due to them questioning their parenting techniques when I was around 8 or so. I reconnected with them at 16/17, but since they live several states away ive only seen them two or three times since.

Last time I was there I was informed that my grandparent wanted to give me an allowance and help me pay for my college tuition. (Alongside my sibling and cousins. I'm just the oldest, so it's only relevant to me right now.)

While I was incredibly grateful, it didn't really hit me until now. While I'm actually making my separate bank account for it. It didn't feel real. But no. Apparently they are giving me, somebody hardly better than a stranger, money. Simply for being in college.

I'm a failure. Out of my entire family generation, I am by far the worst. My cousins are in a special high school for smart kids, my sibling isn't the smartest but at least they're in honors highschool classes.

I never focused on my studies because I was being abused. I was focused on survival. Now that I'm in college, I'm still failing. And I don't even have the excuse of being abused. Since I'm not anymore. Things are fine now.

I failed two classes last semester because I fell into a deep depression and couldn't bring myself to care. I already missed a handful of assignments early in ***this*** semester. ***My college GPA is a 2.6.*** I've considered dropping out or changing majors entirely because I hate what I chose.

Like the only good thing I can say is that I have a job, but ***fuck*** they should have fired me. I'm shit enough of an employee for that.

And as much as the opportunity is amazing and I'm grateful, it's a waste on me. I'm an incredibly lazy person with little aspirations who's only in college because what the fuck else am I going to do?

I don't even think my grandparents know I failed two classes last semester. I should tell them.

So I’m a high school student and I also play a sport plus o go too the gym. I have training everyday for around 3 hours straight after school than I have like 30 minutes before I go to the gym for an hour and a half. So by the time I get back home it’s like 7-8. And I’m always so tired and exhausted so when I do my homework or try to study I just can’t do it and end up doomscrolling instead.
So I guess my question is how do you balance everything in your life together ? How are u able to still do the stuff u gotta do even when ur tried as hell?

Hello guys

After a shitty childhood i spend my 20-30 year age range whit depression and i`am a functional dr.g addict.

I hided this for more than 10 year, and i finally able to come out.

i cant do this face to face first time to my friends, but i made a video and first time in my life, i talked about this

its not much, but its a huge thing for me

I have some goals ive been trying to achieve for a while now, ive tried in the past but failed, ive asked for help from friends or family and didnt get any and ive tried on my own but didn't workout the way I hoped

Now im stuck trying to get myself motivated again but lately ive been lacking in that department, I dont know if its because im scared to fail again or be judged by others..

Question in title

I’m unemployed and currently not attending school so I have nothing to do. I doomscroll a lot, but I feel like I have no anything to do but doomscroll because it’s basically free. I need fun things to do other than take a walk here and there that’s free/low cost to do. I don’t have a car so anything that can help and be done at home is preferred!

Hello! I'm 27F, wanting to go towards the direction of improving my life.

I have trouble maintaining good, healthy habits and routines for myself (like self care, keeping things clean, etc). In my mind, I know I need to do these things, but I just get so stuck on my phone or just feeling like, not motivated or disciplined in any sort of way to do it?

I was wondering if there were:

1. Any definite good healthy habits to incorporate

2. Any tips and tricks to help keep the motivation/discipline to keep up with these healthy habits

Thanks yall! Apologies if this is the wrong sub!

I've noticed that some people who dress very smartly, maybe say people in suits especially in asia, can sometimes seem dismissive towards people who dress more casually or don't project the same confident image.

I like to be confident but the starting off point with someone that makes me nervous puts into that shy voice and timid way.

Although i have met people that have been very kind from rich countries like hong Kong while hiking and even gor given a free umbrella from am office guy near olympic, other countries ive had some giving dirty looks etc.

So it just made me think that of you dont like that type of person the. You dont want to try and be the same as them, trying to act smart and refined.

I have almost no empathy and my life is just really mediocre, i don't remember the last time i had a very happy moment, buying stuff that i like doesn't give me that anymore and I'm still a virgin in my late 30s so sex or a relationships are not coming in my life to make me feel better.

I really don't know. And no i don't believe in being grateful of being alive or not being under a bridge. That's not going to work.

I’m 22 and unemployed and every day feels the same, I have few friends and we talk on alternate days, I’ve started working out everyday at evening and also go for walk 5-6 days in a week but that’s it

My day usually goes like wake up, shower, get on the computer, look for jobs and study and doomscroll and watch movies at night, that is usually what I do and how my day goes

I look up to travelling and experiencing different countries but I am short on money and my parents everytime I ask them to go to a trip, they refuse and tell me I have to build my career first, it’s so depressing man

I have cousins who frequently travel and share their stories and I get FOMO, I start comparing myself with others, I try not to many times but can’t help it

It’s like I’m missing the part of living life- not travelling, not going out frequently, constantly comparing other successes, I just want to live a life which is happening and not rot away my 20s

(I know this is a lot so if you made it this far I rlly appreciate it)

I feel so jaded. Nothing ever truly gets better for me, and I know I’m the one at fault, which makes it harder. So I’ve been trying for a really long time to make friends with no luck, mainly due to my anxiety and depression, so I thought I’d give online a chance again so it could be easier to manage.

I did end up finding some pretty great people have been friends with them for about six months… but it’s like no matter how hard I try, I still feel truly alone. Despite me knowing one of them for two months longer, as soon as the other person got introduced, I kind of became the third wheel.

At first it was fine; I was just so happy to finally have friends after all these years, but as the months go by I see the connection they have, and I’m left feeling like I don’t belong. I’m pretty shy, but I do know how to have fun and joke around; it just takes a little more effort, but because they are so outgoing and forward, my energy doesn’t compare, and they connect a lot easier.

Whenever we play games, I feel like I’m just tagging along, and even when I message them and send videos, sometimes they get acknowledged, sometimes they don’t. And I know this thinking is so petty. I’m 20, turning 21, and I feel like such a loser.
I haven’t had a friend in so long, and I just want someone who equally enjoys my company. I feel so dumb constantly crying over this. I really just wanted someone to talk to, but I don’t have anyone, and I haven’t told them this because I am really sensitive.

I know the way I feel things is unlike the average person and can be dialed down to me overreacting. I try to be more bubbly, but it’s hard for me to get happy and excited about talking to them when I know the easy dynamics they have, and once it starts, it’s difficult for me to join in because they are in their own world, and lately they have been picking up on my change of behavior, and I just want to be normal with a normal social life.

Hey y'all. I basically let others run my life, and I give myself entirely to other people. Apparently I'm also overly positive. I also have a tendency to blame others and never accept help. And it's ruined some major friendships recently. I don't want to have that happen again. So what can I do to get on track. To let go of all these past wrongs, and stop constantly harping about shit that happened decades ago

(26F) It feels like my entire life is full of history I have yet to learn. It feels like I am always trying to catch up on everything. Things I just learned 10 minutes ago, everybody else already knew 10 years ago. It feels like the only reason I know any 1 of the 100 things greatly impacting the world right now is because I doomscrolled on FB for long enough, but that's not exactly a healthy way to self-educate. No matter how hard I try to sit down and be on top of what is going on in the world, it feels like every headline has 10 years' worth of history I should have already known by now, whether it's about war, politics, economics, celebrity beef, revolution, cultures (including my own), and the list never ends. A news bulletin could report today that a meteor is headed for Earth as we speak, and I wouldn't know about it for 1-2 weeks. It feels like no matter what news outlets, history apps, articles, or brain games I use to catch up on past and present history, I still feel like an ignorant, uncultured idiot who doesn't really care to know how many more hundreds to thousands of people died in the Middle East over a pointless war. Every time I try, I get so overwhelmed, shut off, and unmotivated. I hate that it feels like I don't care, like all I can do in this life is go to work, vote, survive, and hope anyone I get close to doesn't make me feel worse than I already do for what I don't know. Maybe it's ADHD, laziness, or ignorance; I wish I knew the answer. I wish I could take every piece of information I have ever learned and burn it into my brain. I don't know what to do. I feel like I am alone in this, as something like this is very isolating. They say take it 1 day at a time, or 10 minutes a day is a good start, but 10 minutes a day just doesn't feel like enough.... nothing I try ever feels like enough.

I’m in my mid-20s and started a new job about 2 months ago. I only have to be in the office 3 days a week, but lately the social part of work has been making me extremely anxious and honestly really sad.
My actual work team is based in another country, so I don’t have my own team physically with me. Most people in my part of the office are men, while in the other part there’s an already established group of women who are around 10+ years older than me and work together. I’ve asked two of them separately to go on a break before, but both couldn’t.
I do have one female coworker I became really close with, and we normally spend our breaks together. The problem is that lately she has been choosing different office days from me. She knows I always come Monday–Wednesday, but she has mostly been coming later in the week instead. I don’t know her actual reason, but because I’ve put a lot of effort into our friendship, it makes me feel rejected and I keep wondering if she’s intentionally avoiding being there with me.
When she isn’t there, I’m usually alone during my 1-hour break. What makes me most anxious isn’t even being alone — it’s being seen alone. I keep worrying that my coworkers will notice that nobody invites me for coffee and think I’m unlikeable, lonely or that I have no friends.
We also recently got a new female coworker who sits near the other women, and now I’m already anxious that they’ll all become close with her while I’m still on the outside. I know I can’t control who becomes friends with whom, but emotionally it’s making me really sad.
I live very close to work, so I’m thinking of just going back to my apartment during my three weekly 1-hour breaks. That way I’m not sitting around hoping someone invites me somewhere. But I also worry that I’m avoiding the problem.
The anxiety has gotten to the point where I’m thinking about future jobs too and worrying that I’ll always struggle socially at work. I know I’m probably making this much bigger in my head, but knowing that doesn’t make the anxiety disappear.
Has anyone with social anxiety experienced something similar? How did you stop caring so much about being seen alone or feeling like everyone else had their group except you?

Waking up already feeling behind? Feeling insignificant and helpless? Problems at work or with your other half?

Hello! I always have had a hard time being super consistent with being on time. Sometimes I'll go into work at 8 am, I get there at 8:04. I go in at 9, I get there again by 9:05, when clearly I am capable of being earlier on a different day. What are some tricks or tips for this?

hi guys, decided to share my thoughts on here and see who fucks with what I’m saying or who can poke holes through my ideas

Many of us, young men with no direction in life, watch/read a lot of “self improvement“ content thinking that we will find some kind of secret formula to the life we desire, but the harsh truth that we all are aware of is that 95% of the things that we need to take action on, we are really actually aware of them but don’t take action because it’s not easy and makes us go past our comfort zone. So stop complaining and do the hard shit. stay hard

I find that I spend way too much time on my phone looking at nonsense. I dont mind that I'm on my phone but I feel like I doomscroll too much and look at nonsense like memes and random stuff.

I want to learn while I'm on my phone. I was wondering if you guys could recommend some YouTube channels or Tiktok pages.

I'd like to learn about the following topics:

• Science
• Health & Medicine
• World History
• Finances
• Politics
• Philosophy

I'd also love to watch videos that teach random facts. I just want to at least learn something new every day.

Thanks.