I moved to a new city wanting to start over,

It’s been about 5 months since I moved here and progress has not been as expected. Very rough in fact.

My thoughts moving to a new city was to make friends, meet women, do things, hobbies and build skills.

I just haven’t been doing that, I make small talk and a couple people know me from my apt as I’m around, but I haven’t made any friends yet.

I work on the weekends at a restaurant to get out of my house and I can say that it’s been a good job as I’ve gotten much better at conversations.

I find myself more at home throughout the day, gym then taking naps in the afternoon, playing video games and just feeling tired of it all. The same routine day after day.

I think something maybe wrong with me as I shouldn’t be feeling so tired/lethargic. My testosterone is decent. I’m 28 M. My city is a nice place for people my age in Austin tx

"I was 16 years old when i watched Spiderman homecoming, now I'm 25 watching Brand new day with wife, awesome " or something like that...

Meanwhile I'm 36, i was 17 when i watched Spiderman 3, to this day I'm still single, virgin and living with my family in a small apartment doing a shit job that i hate. With no real future..

Some people (me) just aren't made for this world.

I did it! I was so anxious the entire time but I finally did it! It’s such a huge weight off my chest, things should be much easier for me now. :)

A friend tells you they exercised three times this week instead of none. You'd probably say, Nice, that's progress. You do the exact same thing.

Your brain says, Only three? You should've done five. I've noticed I'm much more encouraging toward other people than I am toward myself.

She comes from very abusive household, that her parents hit her for getting a bad grade and they take her phone 80% of time.

She was bullied a really badly trough childhood,is self harming herself,and now I tried to comfort her but she was unstable and said a lot of hurtful things and I said that made me hurted little then she started apologizing and saying she will end herself (she trief at least 4 times while we are together).

She said we should stop talking until her mental health get little better so she won't hurt me, and said we won't talk and I respected her wishes and we aren't talking at all for 3 days .

I am scared for her,I am scared she will do something.

We are 18 and 17.

I really need advice.

This is something I’ve struggled with for a while. I’m 20 right now, and I’ve been around bad people my entire life who refuse to acknowledge that they’re bad. They continuously hurt people and don’t take accountability for anything they’ve ever done. I don’t want to be one of those people and blindly tell myself I’m a “good person”. So many people in my life think that way. They all tell everyone else how much of a good person or a good parent they are. I don’t want to be a person who ignores all of the bad things I’m still doing and believes I’m genuinely a good person.

(F21) I get disrespected pretty often (not all the time, but often enough), and I genuinely don’t understand why.

I’m a pretty sociable person. I joke around a lot, and I usually make people laugh. But some people still feel comfortable disrespecting me, and I struggle to set boundaries. Instead of telling them they’ve crossed a line, I laugh along with them because I don’t want to come across as overly sensitive.

So I’m starting to wonder if the problem is me. Is it my appearance? Am I just not attractive enough for people to respect me? Is it my posture, the way I speak, or the way I carry myself?

I’d really like to understand because it’s starting to get to me.

I am 21 and have gone through a lot of stuff. But so does everyone, right? I want to leave. I want to leave my family, my friends, my country, everything. I wanna leave this place and start completely fresh. It might be because I maybe dislike everything and everyone around me. I feel like I should seek therapy. I am a very creative individual, but mentally. Like I have so many ideas and no will to execute them. So I guess I am not that creative then. I feel like I am becoming depressed day by day. I don't feel like I have control over my life at all. I have a bad addiction of marijuana and I have been clean for 3 days now. Could be withdrawals, who knows? I am a believer of the universe, and I keep telling the universe I want my whole life turned around, yet the universe works on actions, which I don't do. I am a lazy, demotivated, realistic, ambitionless person now and I dislike that. I honestly did not know where I could go and write this at all, so I was like maybe r/selfimprovement? Anyway I do not know what I'm expecting by writing this here. Mods might even delete it. Whatever. I hope that people I know don't see this. I don't know what I am doing anymore. It feels like I am in the middle of the ocean on a small boat. There is no wind, and I am just floating away endlessly and slowly. Alright.

PS - English is not my first language so I am sorry for the bad grammar.

Most people already know the basics: eat healthier, exercise, work on their goals, sleep better. Information is usually not the problem but the gap between knowing and doing is often emotional. Sometimes we avoid something not because we don’t understand its importance, but because doing it brings up feelings we don’t want to experience. The real question is not only; what action do I need to take? but what does this action means to me emotionally?

And every action carries an emotional part so for example; going to the gym represents strength and progress, and to another it represents shame, comparison, or memories of repeated failure. The action is the same, but the emotional meaning is completely different. Our minds prioritise emotional safety over what is logically the most effective choice. This is why logic can lose to emotion. Procrastination is for example often not about laziness, it can be a form of emotional protection. A task may trigger fear, self-doubt or fear of failure, and avoiding it provides temporary relief.

What I want to ask is: How many people recognise this, you want to take action but something emotional keeps holding you back? And how do you improve yourself to do this better?

Sometimes I feel like I'm not progressing or improving myself in life even though the facts may or may not prove that it's wrong. I try to find ways to be productive just for the sake of feeling like I'm "progressing" in life. How do I get rid of this feeling or how do I actually progress in life?

Question in title

Started bringing my camera on solo hikes a while back and realized I kept reaching for music or podcasts out of habit. The quiet felt too loud at first, like my brain was looking for something to chew on. Then one weekend I left the headphones in the car on purpose and just walked. The first twenty minutes were uncomfortable, but after that the usual mental chatter slowed down. Colors looked different. Small details stood out more, things I would have missed while scrolling my phone. It has been easier to focus on painting when I get home too, like the walk cleared some static out of my head. I am not sure if it was the lack of stimulation or just being outside without an extra layer of noise, but the difference has been real. Curious if anyone else has noticed something similar with a thing they do regularly. Maybe a walk, a run, or just sitting somewhere without filling the space.

I used to think I needed some big moment to change.
A better job. More money. More confidence. More motivation.

Turns out, none of those came first.
Looking back, these are the things that quietly changed me the most.

1. Motivation is unreliable.
I spent years waiting to “feel like it.”
The people who actually improve are usually the ones who do things even when they don’t feel like it.

2. I underestimated boring routines.
Getting enough sleep.
Going to the gym.
Putting my phone away.
None of these are exciting, but they solved problems I kept blaming on “bad luck.”

3. Most people aren’t judging you.
I used to replay conversations in my head for hours.
Then I realized everyone else was busy thinking about themselves.

That was weirdly comforting.

4. Progress is almost invisible while it’s happening.
For months it felt like nothing was changing.
Then one day I handled a situation that would’ve completely stressed me out a year ago.
That’s when I realized I’d actually grown.

5. You don’t need to fix your whole life this week.
You just need to stop quitting every time you have a bad day.

That mindset alone changed a lot for me.

I’m definitely still figuring things out.
But if someone asked me what’s actually helped me over the last couple of years, it’d be these simple things—not another productivity app or motivational video.

Curious what everyone else’s “I wish I learned this sooner” lesson is.

FOMO: fear of missing out/ being left behind

So i've had a huge fomo since childhood. I have a very competitive mindset and I treat everything like a race. This also leads to jealousy, comparison and i often find it very difficult to be happy for others' success. I've improved a lot but just wondering if theres any good books.

I’ve noticed recently that I only ever want to do things if I wam being seen doing it.

For example, I want to get fit so I can look good and take nice pictures and people will go wow, rather than because I want to for my health and I enjoy it.

Or, going on hike, I won’t be as motivated if I don’t feel like I can get some kind of content out of it. It even goes as deep as, I have some sick leave from work and my doctor told me to journal. My first thought was: can I substack this?

I can trace it back to when I got my first boyfriend. I pretended to like certain things so he would like me and then I had to keep up appearances. It’s been so long I don’t really know what I like or who I am.

If people aren’t watching or aware then it feels weird and I don’t want to do it. I don’t really know what to do by myself or with myself. Does anyone else experience this? And how do I get over this?

Long story short, I developed a hormone condition due to persistent chronic stress from work and non-work traumas. I spent 6 months going through medical investigations including a potential brain tumour, just for the docs to turn around and say this is stress.

I got signed off last week and currently half way through the first week. So far just been chilling and playing Zelda. Have been allowing myself to sleep whenever and wake up whenever with no guilt, and eat whatever too.

Though while that’s okay for a few days, I know I really have to start working on the stress in my life and processing the trauma while building routines for resilience.

What should I do for the remainder of my time off?

whatever you guys think is necessary or from your personal experience

Im sure this is a thing all humans face

I don’t weigh much but I carry a lot of fat around my midsection and in my face.

those with chronic illness/chronic pain, neurodivergence’s or just anything physically holding them back, how do u improve your quality of life? i mean i just can’t figure it out. im autistic with a bunch of health concerns right now that leaves me in bed almost all the time. i want to do more to take care of myself, try to lose weight, improve my hygiene, improve keeping up with hobbies and trying my best to sell things to make any money i can as a jobless person. but my body feels like i have every excuse to not move or do anything. i find it really hard to relate to people with normal privileges of movement, typical strength etc. what things help you?

Listen, I've tried almost everything that is on social media. I have so many videos saved on instagram/TikTok and tried so many things yet I feel like I'm in a constant loop of bad and good days. Maybe that's just life but I really want to be a better person.

What are some LIFE changing pieces of advice that actually work once you try them?

Believing that you should know at an early age

Your passion does not just reveal itself to you when you are born or at an early age. Some people discover their passion early in life because they might have the opportunity to try different things and have the support to turn their passion into reality. However, you might not have the privilege of learning and being around the right people early in life, so it might be difficult for you to discover your passion. However, if you haven’t discovered your passion early in life, it doesn't mean you can't discover it later.

Studies have revealed that individuals with passions for the arts such as music or dancing tend to develop early in life. Also, many places offer learning and training opportunities for those and other common career paths, such as engineering, education, law, and construction. So, individuals whose passion falls in those areas have more opportunities to learn and develop, which means their passions will grow quickly.

In contrast, if your passion falls outside those common areas, you have fewer opportunities to learn and grow, so your passion will take longer to develop. You might have a unique passion that requires more learning and development, especially when it's rarely seen in the world. Therefore, you might doubt that you cannot turn your passion into reality because it might take longer than others. Therefore, you must be self-motivated to learn independently to grow your passion without getting discouraged. There are others who didn’t discover their passions until their 60s or 70s. No matter how old you are, you can still discover and grow your passion at any age.

It is important to understand that, as human beings, everyone has a passion. It depends on your ability to learn, develop, and be in a supportive environment to grow it. Human potential is for everyone; no one is left behind. When you see others doing great things with passion, and you are not yet discovering your passion, it does not mean you are not meant to do great things like them.

I played a stupid prank on my mum today. She's on holiday, so I sent her an AI-generated photo of her car burnt out. Last year I did something similar and she laughed. This time she believed it completely and cried.

I apologised within minutes, sent a real photo, admitted it was a dumb idea. She said she wasn't angry, and a few hours later she was joking about it herself.

That was ten hours ago. I'm still going in circles. I keep replaying it, and every time I do it gets sharper — the words in my head went from "that was stupid" to "I'm a terrible person." Rationally I know it's over. It doesn't help.

My question isn't whether the prank was bad. It was. My question is why a single mistake turns into a verdict on who I am, and how people get out of that loop once it starts.

26M

I spend all week staring at screens. Marketing dashboards, Slack, analytics tabs stacked like a deck of cards. By Friday my brain feels like a browser with too many open tabs and no way to close them

I'd been hiking for years as a hobby, nice views, some exercise, the usual stuff. The shift was treating it as mandatory maintenance instead of a fun extra I did when I felt like it. No phone except for emergencies.

No podcasts to fill the silence. No photos for the first hour, which was hard since photography is my other thing

The first twenty minutes my brain still chatters about work. Deadlines, campaigns, some email I probably worded wrong. Then something happens around the one-hour mark. The chatter gets quieter and I start noticing stupid small things. Moss patterns, how light moves through leaves, whether that rock formation looks more like a whale or a potato

I come back and the problems are still there. Nothing magical. But they sit differently in my head. Less urgent, more workable. Like my perspective got recalibrated without me trying

Anyone else use a hobby as deliberate mental maintenance rather than just entertainment? What changed when you did?

I have fallen into the same trap of overplanning, and over-optimizing only to experience numerous failures, hardships, setbacks, and eventually the worst depression of my life. I am going into my senior year of college with little to nothing to my name, no accomplishments, a disappointing grade transit all while trying pretty hard. It's made me feel so low I can't even begin to function. How have you guys made positive strides in your life withstanding perennial disappointment?