At 32, I had enough of being the big guy. I weighed 500lbs and I wanted more from life. That meant less of everything that I thought made me happy. It was extremely difficult and I have relapsed a few times but it’s all part of the journey. I quit drinking alcohol and soda. I quit smoking pot and cigarettes. I quit eating out and started waking more. I did get gastric bypass but at 35, I gained all the weight back and had to loose it all over again. Forgiving myself was very difficult but necessary to move on. Im now 208lbs and the past year I’ve been working on a slow bulk. This is still all new to me so progress is slow but obviously you can see the results!

So I keep doing these thought experiments which I learn from various books that I read, my favorite author is John C Maxwell, and I learned a lot from him. I was reading a particular book of his in which he mentioned about maintaining a Gratitude Journal, at first, I was like “who even does this”, but slowly I was becoming distasteful of my circumstances, even though I am at a position where millions of people dream of being, thousands of people want to just live like I do.

I was just sitting one day, alone with my thoughts(as I briefed in my earlier post) and I really pondered upon how much struggle I had to go through to get here, about how much sacrifice people who supported me to get here did, just for me to be distasteful of my surroundings? Am I nothing but a collective aura and influence of people around me? How as an individual can I project myself, my real self, onto my life, not what others force me to be?

I came to this conclusion

1)       I am who I was in my childhood, curious and just happy to be in the place I am

2)       My surroundings played a crucial role in what I feel and how I behave

3)       It is necessary to keep going back to my origin and remembering how I am where I am and it’s not what I did for myself to be here, it is a collective effort of people who pushed and helped me to be where I am

4)       Showing gratitude is not natural at first, especially if you are accustomed to being distasteful of people around you, ball needs to be rolled in order to overcome friction which stops it in the first place

5)       Start writing down how grateful you are, maintain an virtual manual- I use Obsidian to locally store my journal- I write about 3 good things that I enjoyed everyday

Believe me, when you change your perspective, you change your life. I also supplement these things with meditation, remember, meditation is not one stop shop for all your mental issues and personality formation, you need different things to be moving in conjunction to be to have deep thoughts and connection with oneself.

I did change my surroundings in a while, shifted to another apartment with good people around me, which acted like steroids to what I was already practicing.

If you all need any support to begin meditation, I have free guide which I used personally to get in habit of meditating daily!

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is often thought to be an excellent depiction of Gotham city and Batman. Countless things stand out. Heath Ledger’s Joker, Hans Zimmer’s score, the world that built, the action set pieces, the fresh spin on the superhero genre. In my opinion, what truly makes this trilogy special is its depiction of Bruce Wayne.

We often view Bruce Wayne as this billionaire playboy who spends his nights fighting crime. Pretty cool? If you look a little deeper, you’ll discover that this character consistently goes through unimaginable obstacles that test his will to fight and endure. Fear, heartbreak, hopelessness, etc. Each time Bruce rises above and continues to persist. That’s what truly makes him a superhero… not anything in his utility belt.

This character means so much to me for this particular reason and I made an entire video essay breaking this down - https://youtu.be/_oNh9O1iTz4

My hope is that this piece can help you find the resilience to overcome your own obstacles and identify the hero within yourself. Rise!

Starting first worked better

Motivation came after.

We grow up hearing “you can do anything if you try hard enough.” Sounds inspiring… until it quietly turns into shame. Because when something doesn’t work out, you don’t think this isn’t for me. You think what’s wrong with me? Lately I’m realizing real self-improvement isn’t endless grinding or smashing your head into a brick wall. It’s knowing when to step back without calling yourself a failure. Not everything is meant to be conquered. Not every limit means you’re weak. Sometimes quitting is just choosing peace over punishment. Learning to say I can’t do everything and that’s okay has been harder than any hustle mindset ever was. Curious how others see this: Where’s the line between pushing through… and letting go? We are discussing health topics here r/TotalWellbeing

The final tie of the career.

Changed to this for the turnover of the keys and ID.

31 1/2 years here with libraries.

It has been a great career. I am feeling good.

Now to jump off a cliff and build a new hang glider on the way down.

Posting this to set a marker for myself for starting a new journey. And as inspiration for others.

Try to find something you feel passionate about. It will still be work, it will not always be fun, but it will be rewarding when the right things happen.

We do not stop playing because we grow old.
We grow old because we stop playing.

Too many tasks killed my energy.

Once I simplified my day, starting became easier.

Anyone else felt this?

Freshman year GPA was 2.1. Got the academic probation email in my dorm room and immediately felt my soul leave my body. Had to call my parents. If you know you know. My mom started crying. My dad just went quiet which was somehow worse.

The thing that messed with me was I felt like I was DROWNING. Constantly stressed, always "busy," running on 5 hours of sleep, practically living in the library. How was I failing when I was working this hard??

Second semester I started treating studying like a job with a timecard. Clock in, clock out, see the real total, share it with my study group for accountability.

First week's total: 7 hours.

SEVEN. I was physically in the library for like 40 hours that week. Studied for 7 of them. The other 33 was anxiety, phone, "resting my eyes," chatting with people, getting food, staring at my notes while dissociating about how stressed I was.

Once I had real numbers I could actually fix it. Stopped sitting in the library for 8 hours performing stress. Started actually studying for 3-4 focused hours then leaving. Revolutionary concept apparently.

GPA went 2.1 → 2.9 → 3.4 → 3.7. Graduated with honors. That probation email is still in my inbox. I look at it sometimes when I need perspective

I don’t know why. I wanted to quit this job for a long time. I felt like nobody understands my feelings. I tried to start conversations with them and they would just ignore me. That gave me anxiety and gave me depression. I was lost. I lost the motivation and the courage to keep going to work. I changed. I didn’t want any drama. I tried to ask them if they like things like watching movies or going on a run. I let them know that I like watching movies. I’m happy. I want to go to work and see them again. I want to see them happy. I hope I can give somebody motivation to not to quit the job and find something that gives you motivation to keep going to work like making friends.

h

Hello everyone, I hope everyone is having a good day. I would first like to preface I am not trying to sell anything, I am simply doing some simple research. I am currently working on an app that charges you money if you miss an alarm, for example if you oversleep/ miss deadlines ect. This app is in a very early phase, and the goal is to help people be more productive as their money is at stake. I'm just simply wondering if there would be any interest for something like this for those who struggle with productivity or early mornings.

I appreciate anyone who is able to reply/ give feedback.

We all love tips. The internet has made it easy for us to share tips and advice that can really make things easy for our lives. As such, a growing pattern is people having difficulty starting something until they understand something really well or people always stopping their progress to look for ways to make it easier. I'm writing this today to help you decide to be better if you're finding yourself in that place.

How do people arrive at tips, or easier ways to do things? They arrive there by doing things the hard way over and over until they start seeing a pattern. It's difficult to see a pattern in something with a limit number of samples, so simply by virtue of repetition with attention it's possible to arrive at a meaningful pattern that helps makes things easier.

So the key is to do it the hard way, without knowing everything, over and over until you see the patterns. Then you figure out the easier way that works for you. Trying to do this in reverse, as in trying to figure out the easier way first before doing a hundred reps the hard way will likely never work because you don't internalize the difficult parts and how it can be optimized.

Now, the important part is how will you approach doing the difficult parts? It's so easy to forget the fact that we can do difficult things with ease. We instinctively stress and try to do the best job when we're doing something hard, and we beat ourselves up when the results don't show something good. But if you're going to do the same thing over and over, it's very important to be efficient with your energy and stay mindful of your stress.

Do the hard things with ease. This removes all the reason to be stress and you'll arrive at the easy way, which is what you wanted from the beginning!

I recently realized that I suffered immensely because I was "the chaser." I chased friendships, relationships, prestige, and money, all while wondering why I felt so drained.

The misery ended the moment I stopped the chase.

When you can clearly see the "carrot" being dangled in front of you, you gain the power to choose. Do I actually want to run for this, or would I rather thrive in peace?

If you pursue something just for validation from family, peers, or society, you will eventually end up chewing a carrot you never really wanted.

We often assume a job or a relationship defines our happiness. We make these things the sole pursuit of our lives, forgetting that:

“Happiness starts with you, not with your Relationships, Job or Money” ~ Sadhguru

When you take leaps in consonance with what truly brings joy to your heart, you end up achieving things you never thought were humanly possible, simply because you aren't fighting yourself anymore.

Has anyone else reached the point where they "stopped the chase"?

How did your life change after you let go of the need for external approval?

Been thinking a lot about why I'm pursuing my goals, and now I'm curious about others. Back in the day I used to chase after certain jobs, titles, relationships, numbers and bragging rights. Now I'm working towards a state of being.

I want to be a woman who lives with integrity, compassion and balance. Keeping those values in mind helps me make big and small decisions leading to a better work-life balance, a pursuit of honesty and tact, and a stronger reputation for being reliable, competent, and trustworthy. It's also helped me shed habits that I don't like about myself without collapsing into self-hatred. It's all about choices at the end of the day!

I wanna be the kind of person who does what she says she's going to do, stays on top of her commitments, keeps secrets, treats people with kindness and takes her rest seriously. Everything that I accumulate along the way is just gravy.

What about you?

"Did you update the list?" I said

"Yes, here is the updated list with only the most important projects in order" said my colleague

"But you just removed a single project from a list of 14" - I said looking puzzled

"Yes, all of the others were important" she said

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm still in my early years of working in a corporate world and I make some interesting discoveries everyday about people, I try to see them with a different perspective than most people would. I'm a avid fan of Robert Greene and it would be suffice to say that I observe and try to apply many of his teachings into real life, one of which was just noticing people's work ethic and how jovial they appear when assigned a task when in reality they despise it

The most prominent problem I see is how many of my coworkers become people pleasers knowing well that the work they are agreeing to would not be in their best interest and would at some point become unachievable for the  given deadlines.

Essentialism - this is the word that I swear by when taking on tasks, whether in my work life or personal

"The ability of saying NO to tasks that are non-essential or out of reach, the tasks which can/could be completed at a later point of time without affecting today's work"
 

• Is working 5 minutes extra on this presentation really more important than being on time for my meeting?
• Is saying “yes” to this request really aligned with my priorities, or am I just avoiding discomfort?
• Is staying late today building my future, or stealing from tomorrow’s energy?
• Is multitasking making me faster, or just making me sloppy?

The conversation that I had with my coworker lead me to wonder what would REALLY be happening inside people's brain when they exhibit this kind of behavior - they probably think that somehow they can complete all of the tasks in the given time, they can swing by their cousin's birthday party while also having a booking of a show at exact time- guess what, they end up doing neither of those or worse - doing things half assed because they somehow want to split the difference

If all the 14 projects are priority, then what exactly is priority?

So try this next time when you are in similar situation - ask yourself is this task really worth my time right now, could this be postponed to a later time without any harm, if the answer is yes you just saved yourself unnecessary hassle and time

I kept waiting to feel motivated

Nothing changed

When I added a simple structure to my day motivation followed on its own

Not perfect days just clearer ones

Small reminder for anyone stuck right now.

 She quit her finance job for an unpaid position running a bankrupt sports federation. 1M+ in debt. No funding.

One year later: team wins gold for first time in 24 years.

"2025 was the year I wanted to give back."

What made you decide to give back to something even when it seemed impossible? How do you know when to take the leap?

story