u/Key-Structure4841

I have had a few moments where I was being disrespected. One moment it was the guy’s entire goal to get me angry. He kept “playfully” putting his hands on me while we were out at a club and then threatened to take me to an alleyway and fight me. We leave the club I get back into our car (group of 5 people) and he continues putting his hands on me and takes away my bag and threatens to stab me with my epipen. This is where I got angry and said “that is not happening” and yanked it back. He then said “hahahaha I love making people angry.” And the ride was kinda quiet the rest of the night.

I cut him off after that night but this and another altercation where some dude tackled me for pissing on a tree at a party, I can’t stop thinking about how I didn’t do anything. I just froze. I should have shoved the guy putting his hands on me and called the cops on the guy who tackled me, but I didn’t. I’m not looking for pity or sympathy here. I want to know how to stop thinking about this shit and move on with my life because it’s affecting my well being.

It was embarrassing and I feel like a failure for not enforcing my boundaries.

Thanks

You queue into a game and it’s not going too great and one of your teammates picks you as the problem, because obviously they are playing perfectly and their smurf is your peak.

They are yelling at you, criticizing your stats, and telling you to uninstall the game, like a child throwing a temper tantrum because they’re about to lose access to the cookie jar.

They end up avoiding you and you queue up another game, this time the “pro player” is on the enemy team, AND THEY GET ABSOLUTELY FUCKING STOMPED HOW DO YOU THINK THAT HAPPENED BROTHER OH WELL I GUESS YOU JUST GOT BAD TEAMMATES AGAIN

“Oh this is fine I’ll reward myself I’ve done a good job.” Nothing wrong with this every once in a while, but a lot of the time this can be used as an excuse to overindulge or continue bad habits.

“I’ll do it tomorrow when x y and z align.” This one is a little worse because if you can’t do it today, it’s going to be hard to do it tomorrow as well.

My trick is to flip these. For your good habits find an excuse to do them, the same way you find excuses to have a drink for example. “Oh I’ll have just a small drink” and before you know it you’re drunk waking up at 3am. You can say “oh I’ll just read for a few minutes.” Or whatever habit you’re trying to keep that you’ve been putting off to “tomorrow.”

The problem a lot of the time with good habits and trying to stick with them is the expectations you place on them. You think if you take a cold shower for 30 days in a row and meditate for a year that your life will magically become whole and everlasting happiness will fill your soul. Now don’t get me wrong some stuff like that does help. But the expectation is what creates such a great barrier to doing the thing at all.

It’s why it’s easier to do a bad habit than it is for a “good” one. One feels easy to do the other one feels like you’re trying to climb mount everest. Just chill out.

Use procrastination to your advantage. “I’ll do it tomorrow” when you’re thinking about having a drink or going out to eat. I do this almost every day as I’m driving by fast food. It’s tempting but I’ve been saying “I’ll get some tomorrow” for about 3 months now. I’m probably gonna get some soon, doesn’t hurt in moderation but I don’t feel like it right now *wink*.

I’ll use another example before I end this. I like making music. I want to make great music. But not only is that entirely subjective, it also creates a lot of pressure. With this idea in mind every time I sat down and got any indication that my music sounded bad I would get discouraged and not enjoy it. It was only after I gave myself permission to fail and lower my expectations to “I’m going to express myself in this song tonight” that I actually started to enjoy it again.

But above all don’t be too hard on yourself if you make mistakes. It isn’t a competition.

Whether I’m making music, playing a competitive game, or even sometimes just existing, I find myself wanting to hurry up and “make the greatest song of all time” or “play perfectly and achieve a high rank” and it sucks all the fun out of everything I do.

Failure especially is what I want to learn how to get through. When I fail it sucks and I get so focused on not failing the next time that it’s more likely to happen because of it.

I want to learn how to have fun and enjoy the process despite failing, despite not achieving the outcome I want.

This isn’t a universal truth for me per se, but it applies to something I’ve experienced recently. I recently got a job and I usually make an effort to spark up conversations with my coworkers when I can, and they just never seemed to reciprocate. Every time I was talking to them it always seemed like they could care less, would rather be doing literally anything else.

So I just stopped caring all together. I made it a game to see if I could press onward despite their lack of enthusiasm and desire to converse. I spoke to them in a way that says “you know what, this is something I’d like, I’m making an effort to connect with you and if you aren’t going to reciprocate that’s fine, I’ll find someone who does.” I didn’t actually say this, but this was the vibe I was giving off, that I could walk away any time and not have a care in the world. This is who I am. Like me or not.

And that’s when they started coming around. It never makes any sense to me but this has been my experience with so many other things. The less you care about something, the more of it you seem to get. This applies to girls, friendships, even skills. If you’re having fun there’s no way you can lose.

When it happens with people who I find unattractive I get really creeped out. Like there’s this woman that I work with, late 40s, and she has made many attempts at getting my attention, at some points just straight up staring at me.

And now every time I see her she adjusts her pants and flips her hair and I am just creeped the hell out. This is one of those situations where ignorance is bliss