r/selfimprovement

21M, I started gym around June 2025 hence decided to give myself a challenge to test my potential and push above limit. Just an act of self improvement

I used to try a lot of self-improvement stuff.

Habit trackers, morning routines, weekly resets, all that. I’d stick to something for a few days, maybe even a couple weeks, then it would slowly fall apart and I’d feel like I was back at zero again.

And every time I’d think okay cool, I just need more discipline.

What I never paid attention to was the first 10 minutes of my day.

Most mornings I’d wake up and grab my phone before I was even fully awake. Just checking things. Nothing urgent. Scroll a little. Reply to something that could’ve waited. Open one app, then another.

It felt harmless. Everyone does it. I didn’t see it as part of the problem.

But later in the day when I’d try to start something important, it always felt heavier than it should. Like my brain was already kind of scattered. I’d sit there staring at the thing I needed to do and feel this low resistance for no clear reason.

It took me way too long to connect that feeling back to how I started the day.

So I didn’t build some big routine or add five new habits. I just stopped touching my phone right away. That’s it. Some mornings I just lay there half awake. Or get up and move around without filling the silence.

The first few days felt weird. Almost uncomfortable. Like I was missing something.

Nothing dramatic changed. I didn’t suddenly become super productive. But starting things stopped feeling like such a mental fight. My head felt less noisy. Like I hadn’t already spent energy reacting to random stuff before even standing up.

I (24F) live a pretty boring life. In childhood, my life was go to school, come home and play with Legos or video games, occasionally see a friend on a weekend, repeat

Now, I’m a college graduate working full-time, and…that’s still my life. I go to work, come home, play video games or doomscroll on my phone, see a friend once every month or two, repeat

Meanwhile, all of my friends I follow on social media are constantly having outings with their close friends, going on trips, attending events, etc

Maybe that’s just social media tricking me into thinking their lives are more interesting than they are, but I never even have anything to post about period

I just don’t even know what sounds fulfilling or interesting to do, I’m severely bored and exhausted but I want to stop feel like I’m wasting my best years

How can I spice up my life?

A book just changed my life. Not slowly over time. In one sitting.

I’ve spent months studying behavioral psychology, Stoic philosophy, Buddhist concepts, handwriting frameworks in notebooks trying to understand why people and myself suffer and how to stop.

Yesterday I read “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” by Joseph Nguyen and something cracked.

The distinction that hit me, there’s a difference between a thought and thinking. A thought is neutral. It appears and passes like a cloud. Thinking is what we do to that thought, we grab it, build a story around it, attach meaning, project a future, relive a past. That’s where suffering begins and ends. Not in what happens to us. In what we think about what happens to us.

After reading I went for a walk. No music. No phone. And for the first time I actually SAW my city. A father playing with his daughter. The white and pink of a flower bush I’ve walked past a hundred times. The breeze on my face. Skyscrapers against the sky. All of it was always there. My mind was just too loud to let it in. Joseph calls this the “non-thinking state.” Think about when you were a child before the world got to you. You were naturally joyful, curious, present. We don’t need to become something new. We need to get back to what we already were.

This book didn’t change my life by itself. It was the capstone on months of learning that standard education never taught me. But if you’re out there struggling and you don’t know why start here.

Have an amazing day.

Top 1 – definitely TikTok.
All kinds of content, good and bad trends, tempting products, hot guys dancing, social drama, catchy music… but overall, most of it doesn’t really help me at all. It just wastes my time and rots my brain because I get so addicted to scrolling that I don’t know how to stop. This app is actually dangerous because it makes us heavily addicted, leading us to spend hours scrolling and ending up feeling tired and like we’ve wasted our time. - Deleted.

2 – Instagram
I got addicted to consuming English reels motivational stuff like David Goggins, “try hard or die young,” etc because it felt like I was “learning something” or “moving forward” while watching them. But in reality, I could spend the whole morning scrolling reels and then realize it wasn’t even helping my listening or boosting my motivation. I was just sitting there thinking, “I’ll find one video that motivates me, then I’ll start studying,” but in the end, no video actually did that.

I’ve basically doomscrolled through all those motivational videos already, and watching more doesn’t change anything. There’s nothing new to see, and no motivation left to gain if I keep relying on that cheap dopamine from reels.

Instagram – not deleted yet because it’s the only app I use to post photos and keep memories of my daily life. I’ll try to stop using it for doomscrolling, especially during the day.

3 – Threads
This platform feels like a place where people can interact with others without actually going out into the real world. You just scroll, post, and comment, and after a while, a few people interact with you, which feels nice, especially for introverts like me. The content is very diverse: funny, sad, clickbait, scams, study materials, and more.

I think the app suggests random posts, which makes it easier to get interactions. Users feel like they’re being heard after getting a few likes and comments, which creates a sense of engagement. That can lead to FOMO and eventually addiction.

I haven’t deleted this app yet because I still use it to keep up with study materials. There are a few accounts on here that share really useful resources. But I don’t feel the need to use it much anymore since it’s gotten quite boring, and there’s more toxic content than positive.

4 – YouTube
I often use YouTube to listen to super catchy remix music—it’s so addictive that I end up forgetting to study. Besides that, there are also motivational videos telling me to stop doomscrolling, stop procrastinating, “do it now or never,” “you don’t have time”…

I’m really hooked on that kind of content. It’s like I keep doomscrolling just to find videos that tell me how to stop doomscrolling which sounds kind of stupid

I can not delete this app because I still need it for reviewing study materials and watching lectures related to my major. I’ll try to limit listening to remix music and watching random, useless videos.

5 – Facebook
This app is sooooo boring, most of the content is just people selling things or posting affiliate links, and my friends on facebook only post like once a year. There’s nothing really interesting left on it.

I still keep it just to stay in touch with older family members like my grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

6 – Reddit

The content here is quite engaging and diverse, and there aren’t many sales or affiliate links. Most people use English, too. I don’t use it much, just occasionally go on to read a few posts to improve my reading skills (English is my second language)

But using it too much isn’t good either. People mostly post about their own personal issues, which doesn’t really have anything to do with me, so there’s no point in reading too much.

7 – X
There’s a lot of p*rn content and unmoderated material, with some pretty disturbing stuff on this app. If you use it too much, you can easily become addicted to p*rn. It’s very time-consuming and drains your energy.

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In general, I feel like social media platforms make users feel heard and recognized, while also creating FOMO if they miss out on something online.

Reels and posts work like a slot machine, they give me this feeling of not knowing what’s coming next, so I just keep scrolling try to find sth fun. In general, I feel like social media platforms make users feel heard and recognized, while also creating FOMO if they miss out on something online. And when I’ve gotten bored of scrolling, it’s already dark outside and I’m completely drained from consuming too much cheap dopamine.

Consuming too much cheap dopamine from social media also makes studying - something that is already difficult and boring - even harder, because it gives much less dopamine compared to reels, making it harder to stay focused.

Recently, I’ve had to turn my phone to grayscale to make it less appealing. I also put the screen time display in home screen, so I can see how long I’ve been using my phone and know when to stop instead of scrolling more.

Now I’m trying to avoid doomscrolling and only use my phone for essentials like setting alarms, checking messages, and making calls. Using social media and watching reels too much really makes me feel dumber, even if my screen time rarely reaches double digits, just around 7 or 8 hours of scrolling is already enough to mess with my brain.

Now I’m trying to keep my screen time to just 4–5 hours a day even though I know it’s hard. If anyone has any advice on quitting phone addiction, feel free to share.

For one month and half, I had an unstable sleeping schedule, half of it was waking up at 12 PM, the other half was waking at 7/6 AM, after that I decided to fix my sleeping schedule but I failed miserably, what I usually do to fix my sleeping schedule is I wake up early like 6 AM, and do a tiring activity during the day like traveling or something, then stay up during the day without any nap and then sleep at 11 PM MAX, so the next day I can easily wake up at 9 AM, but what happens now when I try this method is I sleep at 11 PM (23:00), and wake up at 12 PM (12:00 Mid-day), Yes, 13 hours of continuous sleeping, no matter how many alarms I set to wake up at 8, 9, 10 AM, no result, I end up hitting snooze while being asleep and wake up at 12 PM, I genuinely need help on this, I've tried everything but I still ended up failing every single time.

was sitting in school and one group of girls sat where I was and they all left to do something and one girl who I talk regularly only left.

I asked her where she was from cuz I was curious,and she went oh me you mean me,and she had the biggest smile ever and was being all happy and told me where she was from.

Genuinely why would someone be that happy cuz I asked where were they from.

I am 17

I've currently got this on my to do list that I try and do daily. Workout 1-2 hours, running, eating clean, reading, studying, skincare, some form of steroids or peptides, sleeping and working 8 hours a day and making at least £100 passive income every day. I mostly fail in the passive income part but I feel incredibly stressed and feel like I'm missing out on something.

Should I start taking caffeine pills? Am i missing out on essential biohacks that could help me get more stuff done? Appreciate the advice.

An underestimated method to improve your focus and grow your thinking is to embrace boredom.

The human mind is built in a way that makes it always look for stimuli to keep working. That’s precisely why we always stick to scrolling on social media, sometimes with no purpose, just to keep our minds busy on something.

According to some research, when we pick our phone with a social media app already open, an average of the first 40 seconds is spent on that app before getting to the real reason that made us pick up the phone at first. And that’s only one image of many that shows how we lose our focus if we get used to stimuli.

On the other hand, when we embrace boredom without trying to fight it by scrolling, our mind becomes sharper and focuses on what really matters. Because boredom means empty time, and with no social media at hand, our mind tries to replenish that free time with more thoughts.

That’s when brainstorming becomes more efficient, and that’s when we really visualize our real life, trying to solve our problems, thinking, and planning the next steps of our life.

By taking more breaks from social media, we experience this process more often, and we can then enter a phase I call the deep phase, involving boredom, thinking, and deep work.

guys I’ve done it all!! I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 15 and noticed it in my inability to focus in classrooms but I could always get stuff done (medicated) at home. However, when I got to college I found it much more difficult to remember to do things, even if I really wanted to do them. Here are the things I have done that have really changed my life:

1. I really struggle waking up in the morning before my meds kick in so even taking them without falling back asleep is hard. I sleep with my pillbox in my bed with water directly beside me. It minimises the risk as much as possible. When I’m dating someone, I often ask them to wake me up to give me my meds so I can fall back asleep and wait for them to kick in.
2. I also sleep with my planner in my bed so that I look at the planner instead of random shit on my phone. I find it pretty hard to even remember my name most mornings so it really helps me set my intentions or at least remember 2-3 important things to do.
3. I also don’t remember any of the things I have done that I have successfully completed, both large and big things. Every day I write down what tasks I did in my notes app so I am aware that I am making progress and am not just floating aimlessly through time and space.
4. Everything showers twice a day 🌟 I cannot do a morning routine sequentially. I don’t know what it is, but I do something different every time. Like I put my socks on and then brush my teeth and then stop to do something else and then I don’t remember to do the rest until way later in the day. So I just keep all of my face wash, toothbrush and etc in my shower so I can just do it all in one go. My anchor is just getting into the shower, and the novelty is I switch up one small thing every time so it doesn’t feel repetitive. I’ve been loosely tracking that with Soothfy App , and for me, it has made a huge difference.
5. One thing I do in the kitchen is use a pour over coffee maker. The time it takes for the water to boil, I can usually do the dishes and pick up my kitchen. Crazy how quick you can do it under the timer. It's like last minute procrastination for me.
6. I really struggle with interrupting people in conversation and an insane trick I learned is crossing your fingers if you need to say something and the other person is still talking. People with ADHD often want to blurt out the thought to “get it out” often to not forget it. Doing something small and unnoticeable (someone suggested crossing their toes) helps your brain acknowledge what you want to say. This helps not only give your brain a pause so you can better regulate when you speak but also remember what you wanted to say.

I still struggle with this but it has really helped me.

I often hold myself accountable for mistakes I’ve made for way too long. Whenever I have a chance to apologize or take an action to right my wrongs, I do. But regardless of if I’m forgiven or if I’m even given a chance to apologize, I harbor that guilt indefinitely. It’s especially difficult for me if someone I hurt is still affected by what I did.

Letting go of guilt feels like rejecting accountability, and I’ve learned that other people see it that way too. Society seems to be cruel to people who openly state they’ve moved on from their mistakes, reminding people that those they hurt can’t just move on and they’re not committed to change or growth.

When can I feel like I’ve done enough? When can I forgive myself? Everything I do to forgive myself feels like I’m justifying bad mistakes that badly hurt others.

EDIT: it’s especially unhelpful when I hear people talk about how watching those who hurt them move on with their lives without being affected further by it is so incredibly damaging for them and hurts them even more

Not sure if this is just me but I don’t even drink that much anymore, yet the next day (sometimes even 2 days after) I feel way worse than I should.

Not even a proper hangover — just sluggish, a bit off, low energy.

I’ve changed a couple of small things recently and it’s helped more than I expected.

Just wondering if anyone else gets this?

Briefly, I was secretly seeing a girl who's in a relationship she hates. She was very toxic and manipulating but also incredibly caring at times and one of the best conversationalists I've ever come across.

But she treated me terribly over and over, used me, lied etc etc. I know she was toxic but....

Anyway it's ended now and she's ghosted me and I really just want to be a terrible person and destroy her life with everything I know, it would honestly crush her.

I know I have presented myself in the best light but it's just what happened and I'm trying.

But this vengefulness is so uncontrollable, I don't want to be this person. How can I change this feeling?

Short excerpt from the article...

"You see, you must first respect the facts of your addictions; they are doing you some good. These things exist because there is nothing better in your life. Addictions fill a deep inner void. The TV shows, videos, drugs, or other things didn’t force themselves into your life; you sought them out. The videos don’t suddenly pounce at you after midnight—you are the one clicking the app, scrolling, choosing, and binge-watching."

The core thesis is that the human mind cannot remain empty. If it is not occupied by a Higher Purpose (The Gold), it will naturally fill itself with Digital Distraction (The Garbage).

The author suggests that "willpower" is useless against binge-watching because you are trying to "delete" a habit without "installing" a life. You don't quit your old habit by restraining it; you quit it by finding a project, a study something higher or a cause that makes the older one look pale and uninteresting in comparison.

Full article link provided in the comments for deeper clarity.

There is so much Ai in every thread. I can't believe how many people are using chat GPT to speak for them, or to answer other people's questions. I can't take anyone seriously in the sub or any other any more. Is this the beginning of the end of online communication?

We can’t live without emotions. Most people want to eliminate them, but it would not be a life. You can barely exist without emotions.

Also, not knowing how to regulate your emotional reactions can cause major issues in your life.

Be Aware Of Your Emotional Reactions- If you are unaware of them, you can’t control them.
Understand Emotions- Emotions are reactions caused by your subjective logic.
Your Mental Representations Trigger Emotions- Emotions are mostly reactions to the interpretations of events, not to events themselves.
By Changing Your Values You Change Emotional Reactions- It is a slow and hard process.
Postponing Emotional Reactions- This is the easiest way to control your emotions.
Deep Breathing- This is a way to control your emotions by calming your body.
Emotions Aren’t Equals Behavior- You can choose the behavior that you want.
Between Stimulus And Reaction, You Have A Time Gap In Which You Can Choose Your Response
E+R=O (Events+Response=Outcomes)- By changing your responses to a situation, you can change the outcome of a situation.
If You Don’t Control Your Emotions- They will control you.

What’s the secret to winning the daily battle between what your mind knows and what your heart feels?

"Evaluate your entire life with the same scrutiny you give your financial investments."

This is one of the best single sentence advice I got from Acharya Prashant. Our structural conditioning is such that we pursue external achievements without ever asking: “Where did these goals actually come from?”

It turns out, a lot of what we call “my ambitions” are collected from upbringing and surroundings. It feels like they are ours, but they’re often just habitual reactions to the world around us. What would happen if you did an honest, no-BS investigation into whether these goals are truly worth your one life?

About a year ago I was deep in the goal-setting cycle that most self-improvement advice pushes. Quarterly goals, weekly reviews, tracking apps, the whole thing. And I was miserable. Not because the goals were bad, but because every single day felt like I was falling short of some imaginary benchmark I had set for myself three months earlier when I was a completely different person in completely different circumstances.\n\nThen I read a book called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned by Kenneth Stanley and Joel Lehman. These are AI researchers, not self-help gurus, and their argument shook something loose in me. They had built these algorithms that were supposed to solve problems — navigate mazes, teach robots to walk — and found something bizarre. The algorithms that were told exactly what to achieve (the objective) failed almost every time. But the algorithms that were told only to find something novel, something different from what they had tried before, solved the problems far more often. In one experiment, the novelty-seeking algorithm solved a maze 39 out of 40 times. The goal-directed algorithm? 3 out of 40.\n\nTheir explanation is what they call deception. When you set an ambitious goal and measure your progress toward it, the measurement itself becomes a trap. It tells you to move toward things that look like the goal, but the actual stepping stones that would get you there often look nothing like it. Vacuum tubes do not look like computers. A video dating site does not look like YouTube. A playing card company does not look like Nintendo. Almost no prerequisite to any major breakthrough was created with that breakthrough in mind.\n\nThis hit me hard because I realized I had been doing the same thing with my own life. I had set this specific career goal and was judging every opportunity by how directly it moved me toward that goal. And in doing so, I was systematically ignoring experiences that seemed unrelated but were actually the most valuable stepping stones I could have taken. A side project I dismissed as a distraction led to skills I use every day now. A conversation with someone outside my field changed my entire perspective on what I actually wanted.\n\nSo I tried something different. Instead of setting goals, I started following what the authors call interestingness. Not random wandering, but paying attention to what genuinely captured my curiosity and pursuing it without needing to justify how it connected to some five-year plan. When something felt novel and opened up new possibilities I had not considered before, I leaned into it. When something felt like I was grinding toward a metric just because I had written it down months ago, I gave myself permission to let it go.\n\nThe result after about a year of this is that I have ended up in a place I never could have planned. New skills, new relationships, new projects, a different understanding of what I actually care about. None of it came from setting the right goal. It came from collecting stepping stones I did not know the purpose of at the time.\n\nI am not saying goals are useless. They work fine for simple, nearby things — getting to the gym, finishing a report. But for the big, life-direction-level stuff, I think obsessing over specific outcomes can actually make you less likely to achieve anything meaningful. The path to something great almost never looks like a straight line toward it.\n\nCurious if anyone else has experienced something similar. Has letting go of a specific goal ever led you somewhere better than the goal itself would have?

As the title suggests, I feel envious towards others often times. I notice it’s mostly just with people in my age group (I’m 15 so like 14-19). It’ll be anyone, but especially friends of mine and even my best friend sometimes. It makes me feel like a horrible person and friend to feel this way, cause then it feels like my supportiveness for them is not genuine. And overall, I tend to compare myself to others for all sorts of reasons: looks, money, clothes, lifestyles, who their friends with, what they have, how they appear on social media, etc. It’s ironic, because many of my friends and even many of the people I follow deem me very cool and even would complain they didn’t have things or qualities that I have (I’ve been several times to my face). I hate feeling this way, because not only does it make me feel shameful and horrible, but I feel like I’m wasting my energy focusing on what others have. I think what gets me the most is seeing others with friends and being praised for their looks and styles. I have friends, and a best friend as I said before, but I don’t really hang out with anyone. My best friend and I hang out every now and then, but even she has other friends that I don’t really know about, and it makes me feel jealous she has this whole other life I’m not really apart of (we go to different schools, yet we’re still very close). I’ll try focusing on myself, by doing things like working out, listening to music I like, doing hobbies I like, deleting Instagram (though I’ll just redownload it like an hour later), etc. I just want to stop feeling this way. What are some ways I can work on this to stop feeling envious of people and be happy with who I am and confident in all that I have?

it makes you less thinking all the time about scared for the future or hopeless but now instead of just enjoying things you think about how this might be the last time i ever enjoy it. idk so many reasons to leave and not enough to stay. just don’t make a plan to start with ofc because it only gets harder to unplanespecially when the date gets close. but also it helps to plan other things instead like if you were going to do that then you might as well try approaching random girls and maybe one of them will say yes (tho unforch, i’ve never gotten a yes). or do something wild. like after i had my cliff fall incident it was much easier to go skinny dipping with girls because i was just off the rails entirely. i’m really sorry if you can relate to any of this and im also dealing with this right now so i just want to post this to share what ive noticed with everyone