I'm currently trying to get my life back on track (focusing on work, fitness, relationships, cutting out bad substances) and looking for videos/podcasts to listen to while exercising and cleaning etc. But I find so much of that stuff to be sort of stupid and sterile and shallow. I guess a part of the identity I'm trying to move away from instinctively "rejects" the very concept of self-help to begin with, so I guess I'm looking for stuff that will help me stay high energy and motivated without alienating me. If this makes any sense, please respond with stuff that has helped you. Basically the opposite, aesthetically speaking, from the kind of video in the pic.
No.7356
Anonymous
2025-08-31 13:10:02
Touch grass
No.7357
Anonymous
2025-08-31 13:22:02
Nietzsche (a la Beyond Good and Evil) is always an invigorating read for me, I don't know about him being "self help" in the "wash your penis" kind of way. But I find his emphasis on action to stir a desire and passion to want to do things, rather than just drift through life.
Yeah, your old self is fighting against annihilation and is alienating your future. You need to make peace with the fact that you might have to give up everything to change.
Just keep an open mind and try everything (except psychedelics if you have substance abuse issues like you seem to imply):
- Try a shrink (maybe the more result oriented ones)
- Try the 12 steps traditions
- Try the silicon valley self-help (Atomic Habits, The 4 hour work week, Nassim Taleb etc.)
- Try religion (avoid cults)
- Try the old school self-help (Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie)
- Try asking directly advice from people you want to emulate
...
You might also just pick a pen and paper and write down what you want from yourself, find out who looks like that, and start with a biography - just to get an idea of what it takes to be what you aspire to.
You're not above the fray, and if you're looking for help, it means you can't do it on your own (no one can). So look outside of you, look everywhere, and be ready to contradict and betray your old self.
Just keep an open mind and try everything (except psychedelics if you have substance abuse issues like you seem to imply):
- Try a shrink (maybe the more result oriented ones)
- Try the 12 steps traditions
- Try the silicon valley self-help (Atomic Habits, The 4 hour work week, Nassim Taleb etc.)
- Try religion (avoid cults)
- Try the old school self-help (Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie)
- Try asking directly advice from people you want to emulate
...
You might also just pick a pen and paper and write down what you want from yourself, find out who looks like that, and start with a biography - just to get an idea of what it takes to be what you aspire to.
You're not above the fray, and if you're looking for help, it means you can't do it on your own (no one can). So look outside of you, look everywhere, and be ready to contradict and betray your old self.
>>7358
>your old self is fighting against annihilation and is alienating your future
What does this mean? That somehow the "old" part of you has a desire for self-preservation and wishes to stay alive?
>your old self is fighting against annihilation and is alienating your future
What does this mean? That somehow the "old" part of you has a desire for self-preservation and wishes to stay alive?
No.7364
Anonymous
2025-09-01 00:15:42
>>7362
Yes. By default we fight against change, that can involve justifications ("self help is for other people" but you want to be other people).
Yes. By default we fight against change, that can involve justifications ("self help is for other people" but you want to be other people).
No.7377
Anonymous
2025-09-02 07:56:34
No.7378
Anonymous
2025-09-02 09:04:45
Start with self-compassion. I recommend Tara Brach's Radical Acceptance for that.
I am not looking for "self improvement content," but I sympathize. I'm not looking to get my life back on track as much as I am trying to find what track to even align myself to. Unemployed and listless, I don't really know what to do with myself. Most people tell me to "self-reflect" and "really think about what you want to do," but I find myself drawing a blank. I don't consider myself *that* stupid or unreflective, in fact I probably draw into myself too much, but I guess I have a problem with commitment and with the very concept of the future. As in, I am pretty present, and don't sketch things out far, because I'm occupied with trying to get things grounded now. I like writing, but I've already made one poor decision (liberal arts undergraduate) so I don't know if I should throw my chips in with another one.
>>7380
>but I find myself drawing a blank
I've been on that path for a while, and it just takes time and a lot of teaching misses. I've accepted that "becoming what I am" is the work of a lifetime, or rather, a work bigger than one human life.
The main issue remains time: you need to identify time-sensitive things you might want in the future (the usual: expertise, grand-children, becoming an astronaut or an athlete,...), otherwise, you're more or less choosing today to give up on them just by not considering them.
>but I find myself drawing a blank
I've been on that path for a while, and it just takes time and a lot of teaching misses. I've accepted that "becoming what I am" is the work of a lifetime, or rather, a work bigger than one human life.
The main issue remains time: you need to identify time-sensitive things you might want in the future (the usual: expertise, grand-children, becoming an astronaut or an athlete,...), otherwise, you're more or less choosing today to give up on them just by not considering them.
No.7385
Anonymous
2025-09-03 13:19:34
>>7382
Yeah, I've been just doing whatever comes my way (employment, or otherwise). I worry about becoming just a drifting loser, but maybe I need to stop worrying and learn to love the uncertainty.
>I've accepted that "becoming what I am" is the work of a lifetime, or rather, a work bigger than one human life.
An interesting point. I fall into a bad habit of idolizing, and sometimes it just seems that the greats never questioned that much. Or, if they did, they made the right choice. They simply inhabited an existence without much dread or fretting. It's obvious that I am no great though so maybe I need to just knuckle down and accept that.
Yeah, I've been just doing whatever comes my way (employment, or otherwise). I worry about becoming just a drifting loser, but maybe I need to stop worrying and learn to love the uncertainty.
>I've accepted that "becoming what I am" is the work of a lifetime, or rather, a work bigger than one human life.
An interesting point. I fall into a bad habit of idolizing, and sometimes it just seems that the greats never questioned that much. Or, if they did, they made the right choice. They simply inhabited an existence without much dread or fretting. It's obvious that I am no great though so maybe I need to just knuckle down and accept that.
There's 0 reason to believe this, and there's 0 hipster cred in it, but I got into stoicism shortly before it became cool. But, like, I was reading about stoic metaphysics, stoic theory of mind, and Chrysippan logic. I was into a more religious, emotionally literate version of stoicism. It was good insofar as it became the work of my 20s to accept my emotional life and learn to work from it constructively, sincerely, and authentically. Because of that, I feel deeply embarrassed about the ideology it's become -- less about domesticating the passions, more about keeping up the appearance of a conservative masculine self-image.
But I also have to admit that my stoic period was basically a quagmire in my ability to solve problems in my life. I was basically stymied under an abusive boss and I should have quit after a few months of his mistreatment. Instead I tried treating myself as the problem for years. I developed a serious hang-up about avoiding email that was based on this interaction between my boss and excessive self-blame. I basically got stuck in this doom-loop where I tried to respond to all of my problems by just getting my intentions straight, becoming more and more morally conscious. It did not solve my problems and the email problem has remained a kind of "real life OCD" fixation to varying degrees.
Here's what has worked for me in my better periods. Early pragmatists, and especially Brandom's interpretation of them. Emerson is good. William James is good. Dewey is good. Rorty is gentle but not so useful.
This is basically my summary of what I get from them:
- You can try to attain a top-level metaphysical view of your life, who you are, and what it's all about, but this is one description among many possible descriptions and each can be judged on the basis of the practical dis/advantages it facilitates in the course of your life.
- You can alternately try to work on lived problems from the bottom-up, in the order in which they appear in your life, and strictly on a pragmatic and experimental basis. This has considerable advantages so long as you're willing to indefinitely forestall big questions. (NB: this is how the normie lives and thrives.) I am not constitutionally capable of doing this.
- Your life is more or less defined by the alignment between your inner symbolic system and your environment. The exact character and meaning that your symbolic life (the totality of all of the semiotic stuff you use to interact with your environment) will develop depends on how well this system is adapted to your environment. If you would like to change something about that alignment, you can adapt your symbolic life.
- The parts of your adaptation that work basically *disappear* from phenomenal existence. (This is the Heideggerian zuhanden.) You are probably ignorant about how well your behaviors are adapted to your environment until something falls out of alignment (vorhanden).
- Adaptation can take the form of selecting and promoting some behaviors, attenuating and disrupting others. You can use real, pragmatic feedback from your information to guide the selection of behaviors to promote and behaviors to demote. You can treat it like a bunch of experiments and follow what works.
- There's a phrase that's a bit overused in this moment about things living in your head "rent-free." If you take the phrase seriously for a minute, we can distinguish different symbols and behaviors as choices that either pay rent or require us to pay rent. That is, there are some things that bring us an increase in the depth of meaning, significance, and vitality, and there are some things that cause us to give up a bit of our depth of meaning, significance, and vitality. There are some things that are worth paying rent on -- like committed attachments and values. There are also some things that we are not worth the rent. Bad habits, upon examination, are usually things that we pay rent on. They ultimately cost us more than they provide. The difference between the rents that are worth paying and the rents that are not is ultimately a matter of choice.
But I also have to admit that my stoic period was basically a quagmire in my ability to solve problems in my life. I was basically stymied under an abusive boss and I should have quit after a few months of his mistreatment. Instead I tried treating myself as the problem for years. I developed a serious hang-up about avoiding email that was based on this interaction between my boss and excessive self-blame. I basically got stuck in this doom-loop where I tried to respond to all of my problems by just getting my intentions straight, becoming more and more morally conscious. It did not solve my problems and the email problem has remained a kind of "real life OCD" fixation to varying degrees.
Here's what has worked for me in my better periods. Early pragmatists, and especially Brandom's interpretation of them. Emerson is good. William James is good. Dewey is good. Rorty is gentle but not so useful.
This is basically my summary of what I get from them:
- You can try to attain a top-level metaphysical view of your life, who you are, and what it's all about, but this is one description among many possible descriptions and each can be judged on the basis of the practical dis/advantages it facilitates in the course of your life.
- You can alternately try to work on lived problems from the bottom-up, in the order in which they appear in your life, and strictly on a pragmatic and experimental basis. This has considerable advantages so long as you're willing to indefinitely forestall big questions. (NB: this is how the normie lives and thrives.) I am not constitutionally capable of doing this.
- Your life is more or less defined by the alignment between your inner symbolic system and your environment. The exact character and meaning that your symbolic life (the totality of all of the semiotic stuff you use to interact with your environment) will develop depends on how well this system is adapted to your environment. If you would like to change something about that alignment, you can adapt your symbolic life.
- The parts of your adaptation that work basically *disappear* from phenomenal existence. (This is the Heideggerian zuhanden.) You are probably ignorant about how well your behaviors are adapted to your environment until something falls out of alignment (vorhanden).
- Adaptation can take the form of selecting and promoting some behaviors, attenuating and disrupting others. You can use real, pragmatic feedback from your information to guide the selection of behaviors to promote and behaviors to demote. You can treat it like a bunch of experiments and follow what works.
- There's a phrase that's a bit overused in this moment about things living in your head "rent-free." If you take the phrase seriously for a minute, we can distinguish different symbols and behaviors as choices that either pay rent or require us to pay rent. That is, there are some things that bring us an increase in the depth of meaning, significance, and vitality, and there are some things that cause us to give up a bit of our depth of meaning, significance, and vitality. There are some things that are worth paying rent on -- like committed attachments and values. There are also some things that we are not worth the rent. Bad habits, upon examination, are usually things that we pay rent on. They ultimately cost us more than they provide. The difference between the rents that are worth paying and the rents that are not is ultimately a matter of choice.
No.7404
Anonymous
2025-09-04 19:55:08
Your point about the contrast between one's inner symbolic system and one's environment (or sensory input) is absolutely true, I think. This in fact is the essence of life. The concept of predictive programming is just an attempt to formalise it, but it goes back as far as Kant, and even Plato. The world, as we experience it, always involves our high-level concepts about reality (including our own position within reality) interacting with our moment-to-moment interactions with the world. Optical illusions work this way: they trick us by scrambling the relationship between conceptual reality and experienced reality. The temptation here is to then assume the solution means rearranging our concept of how the world works. In fact, it's much more complicated. Concepts only harden when they've been vindicated by the sense-data of real life. This is where your idea about treating life like a bunch of experiments comes in. The truth is, if you're a fairly rational person, you can only reshape your world-concept (and self-concept) by forming a new hypothesis, and then testing it against the chaotic world. The problem is that this is scary. People aren't corporations or institutions: they are vulnerable creatures who bruise easily. So I would conclude that bravery is actually necessary to begin this process of change. Bravery, famously, being the one virtue that can't be faked. Even pretend-bravery is indistinguishable from the real thing.
No.7405
Anonymous
2025-09-05 02:10:25
>>7395
>There's 0 reason to believe this, and there's 0 hipster cred in it, but I got into stoicism shortly before it became cool.
Same. I believe it because it's zeitgeist shit. People were always going to get into that about this time.
>But, like, I was reading about stoic metaphysics, stoic theory of mind, and Chrysippan logic.
Ah I was scrolling past your comment until I saw "Chrysipp.." but I hated that shit. It was always the ethics for me, Stoic or not. Philosophy is so silly outside of it. If you want to tackle the big questions, either work your ass off like Feynman or sit until it's leathery with calluses like Milarepa's. Words, words, words ain't it.
>William James is good.
Big yes. Poor guy had to have a boring name.
>There's 0 reason to believe this, and there's 0 hipster cred in it, but I got into stoicism shortly before it became cool.
Same. I believe it because it's zeitgeist shit. People were always going to get into that about this time.
>But, like, I was reading about stoic metaphysics, stoic theory of mind, and Chrysippan logic.
Ah I was scrolling past your comment until I saw "Chrysipp.." but I hated that shit. It was always the ethics for me, Stoic or not. Philosophy is so silly outside of it. If you want to tackle the big questions, either work your ass off like Feynman or sit until it's leathery with calluses like Milarepa's. Words, words, words ain't it.
>William James is good.
Big yes. Poor guy had to have a boring name.
No.7422
Anonymous
2025-09-08 14:56:39
>>7386
>I fall into a bad habit of idolizing, and sometimes it just seems that the greats never questioned that much. Or, if they did, they made the right choice.
Yeah, it's only one retrospective moment, a very tiny thing compared to life.
Recently, I understood I had realized an old dream. Took me one year to notice, and it was just "Huh, neat", then onto the next one.
It's like the excitement of a child with a big $100 bill in a candy store, and that same child, now an adult, with an extra $100. Satisfying the child you used to be is fun, but not an end, and definitely not a life.
>I fall into a bad habit of idolizing, and sometimes it just seems that the greats never questioned that much. Or, if they did, they made the right choice.
Yeah, it's only one retrospective moment, a very tiny thing compared to life.
Recently, I understood I had realized an old dream. Took me one year to notice, and it was just "Huh, neat", then onto the next one.
It's like the excitement of a child with a big $100 bill in a candy store, and that same child, now an adult, with an extra $100. Satisfying the child you used to be is fun, but not an end, and definitely not a life.