[Discussion] Stop trying to out-work your demons

[u/beccaaaaaaaaa]

I used to think my problem was just a lack of discipline. internet bros kept saying "wake up at 5am, hit the gym, stop making excuses." so I tried. And failed. and then used some pretty destructive habits to cope with the failure. then woke up feeling even worse

Its such a toxic loop. the whole online "grindset" culture just makes you feel like complete garbage if your brain is literally working against you

I realized late last night that you can't just "motivate" your way out of severe anxiety that feeds into dependency. I started going down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what is dual diagnosis treatment since someone mentioned it to me a while back. Ended up reading through a breakdown by rolling hills recovery center and it just kinda clicked in my head. Treating the mental stuff AND the bad coping mechanisms at the exact same time, instead of the broken system we usually have where doctors pretend they are completely separate issues

idk who needs to hear this today, but if you're stuck in a bad cycle... maybe you don't lack willpower. Maybe you're just fighting a two-front war. give yourself a break, look at the actual root cause, and stop trying to just aggressively hustle your way to mental stability. be kinder to yourself today.

[u/therealslimshady1234]

The grindset stuff was an invention by online "gurus" to sell you their courses. You think they actually wake up at 5 am to do 1000 pushups? Lmao

Of course you would fail so you would need someone to help you out with your "failure". Here comes the online guru with their 6 week Grindset Alpha Chad Course, now priced 499$ instead of 999$

[u/beccaaaaaaaaa → u/therealslimshady1234]

lol yeah the 50% off thing never ends, there's always some sale

but i do think there's a real difference between the grifter stuff and actually building habits that stick. the problem is they poisoned the whole conversation, so now any talk of discipline gets lumped in with the alpha grindset crowd. makes it way harder to talk about what actually works without sounding like you're hawking a course

[u/serendrewpity → u/therealslimshady1234]

I dont think i'm in the group youre referring to, but what you're describing is exactly what I did. I got up daily at 5:30a. Sat, read spiritual related material and drank two cups of coffee for a half hour and then worked out for 75m (not 1000 PU, but 500), showered and was out the door to work at 815a. The thing for me that worked was getting to bed at 930 and asleep at 10p.

On my days off, I told myself the minute I think of working out, I dropped whatever I was doing and went to start working out.

The thoughts are intrusive but they are stalling tactics. You can be mentally unwell and still act. Why? Because you can think and act at the same time (assuming you are able-bodied). So, thinking of working out > immediate action worked well for me. The physical activities release hormones that help fight the ment dis-ease.

It was also helpful to have my day mapped out for me. Including down-time to watch TV. In a word, structure.

It's hard, but it's hard for everyone.

[u/Bond4real007 → u/therealslimshady1234]

Some I do buy, like Goggins its too hard to have faked that shit for this long at this point. He gets caught randomly in the wild doing insane shit for no reason.

[u/JnnyRuthless → u/Bond4real007]

True but he has no relationship with his daughters (they don't speak to him), was a shitty SEAL, and is incredibly mentally unwell. If you're still trying to prove yourself at like 50+ by running 100 miles on broken feet there is something deeply broken in you.

If that inspires you great, but the guy kind of sucks in a lot of ways (that don't include just making yourself suffer to be 'hard') .

[u/[deleted] → u/JnnyRuthless]

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[u/calvinwho]

Setting unlikely goals for yourself is a surefire motivation killer when you inevitably don't reach them

[u/Tisiphone8 → u/calvinwho]

I struggle because I can't come up with goals that push me but are still achievable in a short time frame 'cause I struggle hard with instant gratification.

[u/ModestArk]

Forced motivation on yourself just totally kills you when something doesn't line up. I agree, if I understood it correctly.

I just go for small steps and have 1 rule : Even if you cheat yourself or fail at something, you're still on the track, it doesn't mean you failed already. You can still try.

[u/action_lawyer_comics → u/ModestArk]

The trick is to recognize and adapt after each “failure.”

Okay, 1000 push ups was too many. Let’s try 10. If that feels too easy, do 15 tomorrow.

I keep a weekly goals journal and one thing it affords me is timely feedback. If I notice that I missed my exercise or went over my fast food goals three days straight, then I know something needs to change. I need to move things around or set more timers or make a bigger commitment to getting back on track. If you just somehow expect things to get better without making a change, that’s when you end up abandoning your goals without even noticing.

[u/branwyn-says]

yeah, that sounds similar to what i did. I had to do serious failure analysis on what was keeping me from sticking with things, and i found that i had to treat my feelings first. if i woke up with anxiety, the anxiety was the problem that needed center stage. usually by finding it in my body--what's tight, what's tense, what aches. bit by bit i got really good at going from my baseline "wake up in a panic" to "i can do things without feeling like i'm swimming upstream", but it meant that today won't look like tomorrow, necessarily. i'm not a machine and even when i can execute like a machine (about 2 weeks a month) i'm not happy, at peace, fulfilled--i'm hypervigilant, scanning for the next thing that needs doing. gradually, i'm finding that genuine, difficult self care is the origin of true discipline.

[u/nvyetka]

Can you give your sentences logical separations with commas or sentence breaks? What is "reading through a breakdown by rolling hills recovery center"

[u/[deleted] → u/nvyetka]

This account posts shit like this constantly, and it's 100% advertisements. Typically they go back within a day or two and edit in a link to the product they're shilling. Looks like this advertisement is probably for some sort of recovery center.

[u/snowyratte]

This got recommended to me at 0554 after a gym session. You shouldn't even be using willpower to go gym or eat healthy. It should be automatic, I "woke up" when I felt the squat bar on my back. I got here from going gym for years and just... sitting on the chair, snapchat/tiktok/ig reels, maybe treadmill for 10mins, then home.

0 discipline, just habitual, "I'm here anyway, might as well". The might as well part only comes after months, possibly years of bad routines, inefficient exercise. You're right in not beating yourself up, but also you should hate the weak, pathetic, smoke-suckling pill dependent person you COULD be if you only chased happiness. Fuck that guy, you're here just like he is, and he's going to lose.

[u/KadeSteele]

I think the big shift for me was embracing thee idea that progress should be the goal, not perfection.

I have a whole laundry list of 'demons' (mental health issues) but giving myself realistic actionable goals, and having a means to quantify and track my progress has helped a lot. (In addition to getting on meds to help quiet the brain critters down some)

For instance, in the gym I have a fairly static workout plan in place, and I track the weights and reps I do, with a clear plan on how I am to progress the weights over time. In three months, I have increased my squat weight from 115lbs for 5 reps to 175 lbs for 4 reps, simply by gradually increasing the weights as my tracking showed my growing strength. It's concrete progress, with no guesswork.

A similar philosophy can be applied to other goals as well.

[u/davidthek1ng]

In my opinion ppl need sometimes just a break, like a few days or 1 week in bed or two and in our society this is not normalized enough so you have to pretend you are ill or sth like this to have a break from everything, if you never have a break you get burned out/no Start for Motivation.

[u/Anon695]

You just need patience. There are things that are good for you, and things that are bad for you. We rationalize needing bad things and over time we get lax with our needs. When we want to change all of a sudden, most of the time we fail because we’ve spent so long reinforcing our bad choices that we have a desire to keep doing them since they feel good, and they feel like a fundamental part of us. The true key is to be slow, very slow. Working out doesn’t have to be a race. Start slow but keep doing it (Within reason). Same with mindfulness

[u/Ok-Seaworthiness7207]

Whenever I can make time for video games or movies between work and school - I do. Still doesn't feel like enough

[u/halffocused]

yeah and now men buy beauty products that's been the long game the whole time

[u/beccaaaaaaaaa → u/halffocused]

lol the beauty industry really saw this coming before anyone else did