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How do I stay motivated to actually improve?
(hexbear.net)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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Self Improvement
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A community which focusses on improving yourself. This can be in many different ways - from improving physical health or appearance, to improving mental health, creating better habits, overcoming addictions, etc.
While material circumstances beyond our control do govern much of our daily lives, people do have agency and choices to make, whether that is as "simple" as disciplining yourself to not doomscroll, to as complex as recreating yourself to have many different hobbies and habits.
This is not a place where all we do is talk about improving "productivity" (in a workplace context) and similar terms and harmful lifestyles like "grindset". Self-improvement here is intended to make you a generally better and happier person, as well as a better communist, and any other roles you may have in your life.
Rules and guidelines:
- Posts should be about self-improvement. This is obviously a wide category, and can range from advice, to finding resources, to self-posts about needing to improve in a certain area, or how you have improved, and many other things.
- Use content warnings when discussing difficult subjects.
- Do not make medical decisions solely because of a discussion you have had with any person here (e.g. whether to take or not take medications; diagnoses; etc.) as we do not vet people. All medical problems should be discussed with a real-life medical professional.
- Do not post harmful advice here. If this is seen, then please report it and we shall remove it. If you are unsure about whether it's precisely harmful advice or not but feel uneasy about it, please report it anyway.
- Do not insult other users and their lifestyles or their habits (unless they ask, I suppose). This is a place for self-improvement. Critique and discussion about a course of action is encouraged over shit-flinging. Don't talk down to people.
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The point of working out is not to lose fat per se, the point of working out is to get stronger. You do a muscle motion to the edge of your ability enough times, and your muscles get better at doing that muscle motion. If you can do pull-ups and a respectable number of push-ups and run a mile without walking... if you can move yourself in the way you want to move, that's all that matters.
I'm on the skinny side, people have often wondered aloud to me "why don't you just bulk up". It's not really in my biology. I wish I had a layer of fat so that you couldn't see my ribs. But if I can hoist 80-pound bags of cement, I can jump and pull myself onto things, that's all that matters. I really don't need to do the stupid gymbro numbers game.
A big part is lifestyle. My fitness is integrated into my lifestyle (bicycle transport, manual labor). Another big thing is habitually cooking for yourself. Even if it doesn't make you slimmer, then hey, at least you end up as a capable cook, and able to take the agency for your own sustenance instead of accepting it from a ready-made source.
Take the college courses that are intrinsically valuable to you. Learn what you want to learn. Taking a few courses doesn't immediately force your commitment into a 40-year career; lots of things will inform your experience indirectly. And at a community college, you can take a 3-credit class for a total sum of less than $1000.
I promise you, 95% of Americans (and 90% of American college graduates) can't use the word "ontologically" in legible prose. In the age where everyone seems to make heavy use of assistive technology, you can put together a coherent thought.
A lot of what you're experiencing is the effects of alienation. Being able to get into the nuts and bolts of something, instead of assuming "this is entirely the purview of someone else" has been one of the biggest mindset shifts of my life.