I saw a lot of interest in personal growth and betterment so this is the place to tell us what you’re proud of and hype up other community members 💚
I’ve been trying to cultivate my home as a place my friends feel comfortable showing up to. There’s a bunch of people (too many) in my life who are going through tough stuff, and lately more and more they just show up for a chat, reading a book in peace and quiet, or sleep over and have a night away from home if they need it.
It’s not so much them being welcome that feels like an accomplishment (because that’s just a given), but rather that they seem to have internalized that it’s OK to ask for help/support and feel comfortable enough with me/us to come here.
As I’m typing this out I’m not sure if this fits in the “betterment” category, but it’s a positive change in my life I’ve noticed and worked on lately, so submitting it anyway. 😊
As someone who has needed a friend’s couch to crash on during periods of instability, just in order to keep other portions of life from falling apart too, I think what you’re doing fits well.
This absolutely fits. Creating a safe space and a sense of community amongst friends (and beyond!) is exactly what we want more of. That is such a beautiful goal to work towards and it sounds like you’re friends are feeling the love and support ❤️
I’ve been trying to be more present. I too easily find myself always eyeing the next target, thinking that’ll stave off this existential emptiness lol.
At the risk of sounding like a self-help book, the pain or discomfort of the present serve their purposes. It’s helped me remind me to appreciate my partner in the here and now as well, so that’s been a plus :)
I sometimes wonder what constitutes betterment. If it is happiness or on the contrary feeling temporarily unhappy to feel happier later ? Is it attaining values that contemporaty society has deemed desirable?
Health sounds like one aspect that is objective. Physical fitness, mental wellbeing. But what if things that society put on pedastal degrade our mental and physical health? Is it worsement ?
I guess the question is collectivism vs individualism
I see betterment as a progression toward being satisfied or content more of the time. Now being content means different thing for different people, but I specifically feel it is not the same as chasing “happiness”.
I can feel sad but content, or know that I’ve messed up but be content in my self evaluation and steps taken to do better. To me it’s all about crafting a better journey, the processes behind what I do, and good outcomes are just pleasant results of a better journey. For example being healthy might make me more confident in the interactions with people, or give me more energy to do more comfortably, but in practice the betterment tied to that might be finding a way to exercise in a way that I enjoy, and I can measure, and that I can improve upon over time.
As for individualism vs. collectivism I think it’s a balance. I think hurting yourself because someone expects it is never good, but if you have extra capacity to help others that is very positive. I don’t think any person needs to feel like they are expected to move mountains, but as long as we all are careful to have only neutral or small positive impacts (not negative) then collectively we’ll be moving forward.
As for society’s unhealthy priorities (consumerism is a big one): over the last several years I’ve been learning to try to think back to “first principals” with respect to what I want in my life and attempt to remove other people’s expectations and especially society’s expectations from the equation entirely. I choose to do things because I want to, or because it contributes to the rule of not being negative above. If I do choose to do anything only because society expects it, it’s only to better situate myself to further ignore society’s expectations in the future.
The manager of another business in the area called us the other day out of the blue to ask if we’d help them recycle a few hundred trays for potted plants (we run a small nursery). Branded pots will be taken back by the larger nurseries, generally speaking, but unbranded pots and nearly all trays are left to the chances of the municipality’s recycling program and the downstream problems. It’s just a small portion of the bigger problem, but it’s helping us bring food to folks in our community more easily, and we’ll be able to donate some of them to the volunteers at other plant sales for good causes so they can do the same. Plus it felt super awesome to have a total stranger reach out because they felt encouraged to keep things out of the waste stream.
I’ve recently started biking to the gym 💪 it’s less than 20 minutes there and back so really quite doable, and it feels good not to drive that short distance. I also like to do some cardio at the end of a workout anyways
