You know - the only thing you can really control at all is yourself. So it can be true that the world sucks, but making yourself suck is not going to do anything except hurt you, yourself. And make the world a little bit suckier.
So regardless of the outside circumstances, the best action is always to work on yourself. Generally speaking that does make you look differently at your circumstances too, so that you might be able to improve your situation with some action but even if those circumstances don’t change you are still better equipped to deal with them.
Seems like a good time to bring up that I just created [email protected].
I would even say don’t worry too much about self-improvement. It’s a vague concept that encourages you to be perpetually dissatisfied (possibly to sell you stuff).
You can always be satisfied with who you are. Remember how Mr. Rogers likes you just the way you are? You can extend that kindness to yourself. Once you’ve done that, then you are in the right headspace to lose some weight or improve your income or whatever.
I don’t think you are totally wrong here, but I also want to push back a bit. I’ve seen this kind of take before, and heard it in a different form when I was struggling in my dating life. It took the form “you need to figure out {internal issue} before you start dating.” And the more I read it, the more frustrated I got, because the advice seemed to boil down to “you will only be ready to date once you have committed to a buddhist monastery, meditated for 10 years straight, and achieved enlightenment. Once all desire has left your heart - including the desire to date someone - you will be ready to date.”
Which is, of course, ridiculous. Overcoming your internal struggles or learning to love yourself is a process. It is a process that almost everyone is engaging in. And no one (or almost no one) really reaches the destination permanently.
Furthermore, we should recognize that overcoming your internal struggles can’t happen in a vacuum - or at least it will be a lot harder that way. Like, really, what should our incel friend do with their time? Literally the exact same thing they’ve been doing their whole lives, except they go to therapy once per week? If that is really all they can manage, I totally support that and applaud them for putting that effort in. But realistically, that needs to be a first step that leads to further action if they ever want to see significant changes in themselves and their lives.
If they have social anxiety, to overcome it they must go out into the world and talk to people. And by actually going out and doing something with the intention of improving yourself and your life, you learn to love yourself more. In this case, you might learn that people are generally nice, and will be nice to you. You might be proud of yourself for overcoming your fears and doing something that was difficult for you. And you might love yourself more because you have experienced that you have the capacity to change and become more like the person you want to be.
Of course, if you are truly dedicated to leaving the wheel of samsara, then certainly, focus all your attention on learning to love yourself. But my personal experience is that when I improved myself, my life got better, and I became happier - even if that initial spark of wanting to improve came from feelings of inadequacy or self hatred or frustration or rage. And through the process of improving myself, I was forced to confront my inner demons in a far more visceral way that helped me overcome them. And now that I have improved myself and my life, I am in a much better place to work on my internal world and learn to love myself more.
It’s okay to chase the dragon of self improvement, or of achieving worldly desires. The buddha is equally found on the meditation mat and in the snake oil in the GNC pre-workout aisle.
You’re right. I probably phrased that a bit poorly, especially with respect to “do ___ before ___.” The point I was trying to get across is that this push for self-improvement is often extrinsic and possibly unnecessary.
If chasing money or muscles (or whatever) is something that genuinely excites you, then by all means do that. But if you’re doing it because others tell you that’s what you need to find contentment, then I just want people to know there is another path.
Like, really, what should our incel friend do with their time?
Can’t speak for every incel friend but the one in our group needs to be working on regulating his emotions and not spending so much time on incel forums. Getting comfortable with himself and the fact that not every woman who is nice to him is going to be interested him romantically. He’s in his 30s and still acts like a fucking teenager when he gets rejected. At least 3 of us at different points in time have had to pull him aside and have a talk to him about how his behavior is making the women in our group uncomfortable and explain that if he doesn’t get that shit under control he’s not going to get invited out anymore. Even when he does take up a hobby or work on himself he talks about it like he’s checking off a box so that he can finally deserve to get laid. Then, when that doesn’t work out for him because he reeks of desperation when he interacts with women, he goes back to his bad habits.
I like the idea of self-improvement in the sense of becoming even more yourself. I believe there is some kind of path(s) in each of us. It takes effort to recognise it – you can say: accept it – and even more to actually pursue it filtering out from the external noise all influences that do not fit. We all have ideas, dreams and wishes, but we have to listen carefully to hear them.
I agree, in that “self improvement” is a fairly nebulous concept and acceptance of the self is a positive trait, but they should probably still look to improve themselves. Exercise, volunteer, pick up a hobby outside the house, cut off your toxic community and find another, etc… Volunteering and community tend to go together, from my experience, so I’d start there.
Isn’t self-acceptance considered self-improvement?
Very well said.
Love from others comes after a love of self.
Damn. I know the community tab here says I’m not suppose to agree with anon, but damn, I have to
This tab seems to be written for the mod to deflect accusation of supporting the Lemmy-unapproved dark sides of 4chan that may come up in green texts.
This was a test. You failed.
And by that, I mean you passed.
You… bothered to read the rules… in a 4chan focused community?
Yes
I mean, there’s nothing wrong with improving yourself for the sake of improving yourself.
But what if you improve yourself and then become a better person for nothing? :P
Then you’ll be more valuable to your corporate masters. Everybody wins!
Surprise, surprise, you reached Nirvana.
Robots arms it is
Incels hasn’t been about that in a long time. It’s already evolved into “self-improvement” by adopting far-right extremist ideology. In particular that of being a hyper-masculine bigotted conservative man. Their underlying theory of world is still the same. Love is fake and women cheat and leave you taking all your money unless you become the strong man chad and dominate her. Instead of the pit of self loathing based on the premise that everyone is out to get you. You become the biggest alpha over every other guy. Fundamentally the ideology is the flip side of the same coin. It’s a very dark misanthropic view of the world.
It’s surely been some sort of cult brainwashing. Tear guys down with crab bucket mentality. Then build them up according to their doctrine.
There are some women who want exactly that kind of man. OTOH, even around the reddest part of Florida, most women put something on their dating profile to reject those men. Dated more than ever during the pandemic, yeah, weird, I know, but here’s what I saw and heard.
- Profiles outright saying MAGA can fuck off.
- Profiles saying either they’re “not political” or “no politics”. That’s a dog whistle for no MAGA (more on that).
- Plainly stated liberal views, again, no MAGA.
- Laughingly told one woman before we went out that I was pretty redneck. “Uh, just how redneck?” “I fucking loathe Trump if that’s what you mean.” “OH! Whew. OK.”
- More than one date told me guys either went OFF about Trump or went off on THEM about Trump, on the first date.
- Either they gently probed me on politics or flat out refused to speak of it, at least until they knew for sure I wasn’t MAGA. See note about about first dates.
Despite being a middle-aged white guy, my looks and profile were clearly, to me anyway, liberal. Did quite well! LOL, friends and neighbors were making fun of me regarding all the women in and out the house. (That wasn’t on purpose, most just didn’t work out.) As I said, there were a handful of profiles saying “conservatives only, no liberals”. Given the politics of the region, those were shockingly rare.
I can only imagine that going red ain’t working out so well for incels. And the downward spiral continues.
EDIT: I worked hard on the meme. Please clap.
They took “self-improvement” to mean physical health while completely ignoring mental and emotional health.
physical health is great for passively improving both of those
Being physically healthy makes it much easier to be mentally/emotionally healthy, but they still don’t just get better unless you actively work on them.
Jon Arbuckle dances to the lyric “I’ll either live or die alone”.
Actually, Jon scores 2 by the time The Survey is conducted.
Link is NSFL. Seriously.
Banger!
I mean, so unreal and non hetero.
Anon didn’t even suggest incels and femcels trade virginity
If anyone hasn’t seen Femcel spaces, you could always go and browse reddit.com/r/femaledatingstrategy
Which is why the Lemmy equivalent has banned that type of thinking/posts.
thinking is overrated anyways
It’s about the same as incel shit really. You’d think it would get banned like incel stuff is, but it’s tolerated because men are not a protected class.
“Misery loves company.”
Stephen King’s Misery 2
The same is true on a political level which is a crab bucket when they tell you that things can’t improve and that you shouldn’t even have any hopes.
Whenever there’s a post about a protest, or a politician actually works to block a Trump bill, there’s always someone who pops into the comments to go “iT wOn’T cHaNgE aNyThInG.”
It’s pretty clear who’s never taken any sort of political action before in their lives. Those that participate in activism know that change doesn’t happen in one big event, but momentum snowballs over time. Discouraging people who put effort into change only works to empower those who oppress us.
What makes someone’s personality attractive (there are limits to what you can do about appearances) is self confidence and giving the impression that you have something interesting going on. Essentially you need to seem exciting to be around. That doesn’t even mean like skydiving but just having hobbies you are passionate about.
Self-improvement might be one way of getting there but it’s mainly a case of being comfortable in your own skin. I think this is why so many incels get confused about going to the gym not immediately making them desirable.
Lastly, you need to be genuinely interested in any potential partner as a person. People can sense when they are talking to someone with ulterior motives. This might be the biggest hurdle for hetro mysogynists who don’t see women as people.
Based anon
Goddamn right, Bob.
