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Self Improvement
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.
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Starting a new lift routine after I stopped for awhile after a non lifting related rib injury.
Lessons learned that I'm bringing into it this go around:
While I've professed and lived by the mantra of "start slow, build slow", for any kind of exercise routine, I've never really considered the importance of staying slow. As soon as I start feeling the benefits of my slow, but steady and gainful progression, I'll get excited and jump weights and do whatever else weird stuff. This time I'm just going to stay slow.
In conjunction one of the most challenging moments for me is the time right before/after and then beginning a new routine. The emotional buildup, relief, and then uncertainty that often comes in those moments leaves me vulnerable to getting out of my rhythm. I get so focused on completing my goal, that I don't really know what I want to do next, so I can go from pure motivation/accomplishment to really aimlessness after.
So anyway to address that I'm committing to a longer routine, this one is set for 48 weeks, and I'm going to avoid setting medium goals like get to X weight, or beat my PR on this lift. I've used those in the past to motivate me to lift, but those aren't my goals, my goal is to continue lifting for 48 weeks.