Self improvement thread

Hi there,

last year I decided to make some pretty big changes in my life, with the focus of improving my health and being a much better person in general. For context, I'm 30 years old and was quite a sedentary person. This are the changes I've made at the moment:

1. Stopped drinking alcohol (15 months ago).
2. Stopped consuming soda drinks, coffee and caffeine (12 months ago).
3. Quitted smoking (11 months ago) [smoked for 12 consecutive years]
4. Stopped biting my nails (6 months ago)
5. Started going to the gym and to a nutritionist (5 months ago)

I'm going to explain how I did it and how it has influenced my life in detail, because I think they are pretty nuanced topics and each one require their own post. My intention with this thread is to be able to help some of you that may want to quit some bad habits but struggle with it, I hope my experience is useful to you.

If you also could quit a bad habit, please share here how you did and what worked better for you. Same applies to learning good habits, such as the discipline to exercise and have a balanced diet, to name a few.

 

1. Stopped drinking alcohol (15 months ago).

The first step of my journey. Since I've started partying as a teenager for the fist time, every time I drank I always did it without any kind of moderation, and most of the times ended up with pretty hash hangovers and not even remembering half of what I did the last night. We are talking about every weekend, drinking liters of beer, wine or a bottle of whiskey with friends, so quite big amounts of alcohol.

What I did first was to analize my situation, and came up with a plan to quit drinking:
I've realized that I only drank in the weekends, and didn't consume alcohol the rest of the week, so my plan consisted in no going out for a month, to be able to be without alcohol one entire month, and after that, go out with a 2 liter bottle of water always, saying to myself that I was just thirsty instead of wanting a beer. While everyone was drinking alcohol, I was drinking water the whole time. This worked out way better than I could imagine, because I still had fun going out on the evening or night with my friends, and made alcohol redundant to me.

I still wanted to test if I was an alcoholic, so this Saint John I went out with my friends like I did many years ago, and tried to drink some beers to test if I had any kind of anxiety or wouldn't be able to stop drinking. I only drank two beers in 9 hours, and lots of water in between, with basically 0 desires for more alcohol, I just was thirsty so water was perfectly fine to me. Insane contrast compared to years ago. I'm very proud of this.

 

2. Stopped consuming soda drinks, coffee and caffeine (12 months ago).

I drank lots of coffee, like 6 or 7 per day since more than 10 years ago. I was always with some kind of hand trembling, and with very little patience and over reacted to basically everything. On top of that, I've always had difficulties to sleep well, so my sleep schedule was quite messed up and always had low energy.

I wanted to quit this hell of a drug as soon as possible after seeing my success with alcohol, so also made up a plan for it:
Replace the coffee with decaffeinated coffee, and drink small amounts of Coca Cola if I have caffeine withdrawals. Did this for two weeks, once I saw myself capable, I've replaced decaffeinated coffee and Coca Cola with milk and water respectively, which are the only two things that I drink currently (no diet coke or band aid stuff like that, just a glass of milk with breakfast and water the rest of the day).

The outcome of doing this was extraordinaire, because I set myself to go to bed at 11pm, with the mission of being fully sleep at 11:30pm tops. I've put a clock alarm at 9am, but always wake up alone earlier at 8:30-8:45am, everyday, like a clock, fully fresh and full of energy. I took this sleep schedule incredibly seriously, like the highest paying job in the world...and it definitely paid up dearly, I can't recommend this enough. Not needing caffeine to function properly and having a solid sleep schedule is priceless, at least to me.

 

Thanks, I might have to do what you did. Too much stress these days.

 

3. Quitted smoking (11 months ago) [smoked for 12 consecutive years]

This is going to be the less glamourous one, no fancy methods like medications or elaborated tactics from smoke quitting blogs. I didn't read anything about quitting, just wanted to end this filthy, disgusting habit so I've transformed myself into a master gasligther and lied to myself for this.

My reasoning was extremely simple: "I don't have to quit smoking if I never smoked".
You are reading right, I tricked myself into believing I was a non smoker, so didn't smoke and quitted cold turkey. Only had withdrawal simptoms 3 times the first 5 weeks, all of them lasting like 10-20 seconds at most. Was quite easy to quit with this method (at least to me). I live with my sister who is a smoker, and didn't ask her for help, to also quit or anything, I just did it for myself because I wanted to do it. It's very important to think of you smoking as something disgusting and dirty, because most of us started smoking for the opposite reasons ("it looks cool, it brings good memories, it is social, etc"), so you need to associate the opposite meaning to it to quit successfully IMO, if not it is quite close to impossible because no one wants to abandon something they like, so better start with changing your concept about it before.

I went out many times, had people smoking next to me and had 0 desires to smoke every time, so I feel awesome about it. My breathing improved drastically and also my teeth, which now are not yellow due to smoke. Also now I can wear colognes without wasting their smell with tobacco, so it's a win in every possible metric to me.

 

One thing I did in the past months was to stop worrying and overthinking too much. Very difficult.

I picked up Chess again. Any thinking game that forces you to go step by step and makes you look at things like a "process" instead of "do it now."

In the months after December I had to decrease the stress levels and force myself to calm down. The loss of a loved one can open pits of hate you did not think you had. A game like Chess helped me to manage and process a lot.

 

You are welcome! Let me know here if you want some help or tips. What worked best for me was, when going to sleep: no tv, no book, no phone, windows closed, lights out, face to pillow and don't think about anything, just sleep, 0 distractions...that's how I could start sleeping properly everyday at the same hour.

Overthinking is something that happened to me many times, a very stressing thing. It stills happens but way less. I did not play chess or learn any game at all (because I've thought it could trigger my overthinking), what I did was telling to myself "no one cares, you are not that important or that's not that important (depending on context), breathe and be calm" over and over again when I'm very stressed and overthink about anything.

Yes, the loss of a loved one is something terrifying. I hope you can continue with your life in the best possible way.

 

4. Stopped biting my nails (6 months ago)

I did this since I was a child, and after quitting smoking it was getting out of control because I needed to bring something to my mouth instead of cigarettes. What I did was to put my hands in my pockets when I wanted to bite my nails and drink a glass of water instead. When 3 weeks passed and I had long nails, I had a manicure done. After that the impulse went out and finally have good looking nails instead of the unhygienic mess of before.

 

5. Started going to the gym and to a nutritionist (5 months ago)

This is the most difficult one, because to cope with all of the above, I started eating way more than before, what resulted in me gaining 15 kilos (35 pounds) in 4 months. In january I started going to a nutritionist and got a gym membership. Using the discipline learned doing all of the above stuff resulted in me losing those 15 kilos/35 pounds in 5 months. I still would need to lose around 10-12 kilos (20-25 pounds) more to have visible abs (which I should get before the end of the year at this pace) so I'm still halfway my goal here.

The most important is that now I'm in my normal weight of before without doing any kind of cheat (smoking, nail biting, alcohol, coffee), and I feel better than ever.

I highly recommend everyone to go to a nutritionist and to the gym 3-4 times per week, the amount of self esteem and well being that it brings to you is priceless.

 

I also have a life long problem with biting my nails. By age 35 I had done enough damage to my front teeth where it was hurting my sex life (yes, women mentioned it). I went out and spent $4,000 on veneers and the problem went away but I still haven't stopped biting my nails, which is bad. I'm going to try your method and see if it works.

 

Good luck with it! Is a very bad habit and many people underestimate how bad it is. As you said, it affects teeth negatively due to the constant force applied to them by the nails over the years. Also very impractical in this Covid times we live in, better not to bring the hands to the mouth frequently just for that reason IMO.

 

Quitting Smoking.

Giving up smoking is easy: I've done it lots of times!

So how to do it the final, successful time?

Whoa, Clever stuff! Nicotine seems to work by mental tricks as much as by physical symptoms: you out-manoeuvred it. Nice.

I'll tell my method. I do believe I could sell books, but five words is not enough for a book: Make an absolute, irrevocable decision.

One has to throw away words like attempt, try, and the useless cutting down. One has to do it. As final as walking off a cliff. No going back. Once upon a time they might have called it something like an oath. Make it that serious.

So I set myself a date three months ahead, by which time I would be a non-smoker. And whatever awful, terrible things life might throw at me, the one thing I would never do was lighting a cigarette. Then I eased the path with patches, and was nicotine-consumption free about two weeks ahead of target.

There are probably heap of other things in life where doing something is actually a matter of choice, rather than testing capability. One can, perhaps, try to climb higher, walk further, etc etc, but with something like smoking, trying is just bullshit. Don't try: do it.

Quitting Alcohol.

Didn't really take much effort. It had never been one of my most favourite things. I didn't give it up: it faded away.

Biting finger nails.

Nothing wrong with it. Bite your finger nails. Enjoy. Or don't. Maybe do it in private and refine the method so it doesn't hurt your teeth. I remember, as a child, realising, one day, that it was just plain unhygienic to bite my toenails!

High-sugar fizzy drinks.

That just faded out too. I'm sure I still consume too much refined sugar, but I'm astonished at the amount that fizzy-drinkers take in.

I get a craving for 7-up, lemonade, etc, when feverish. When I recover I forget it.

Being, Generally, A Better Person.

Ahhhh. You've got me there! Same with exercise and general fitness.


Footnote.

I was on a channel-tunnel train, and got talking to the guy in the next seat about addictions. I told him my tobacco story, and he told me his alcohol story. He had been a real, hard-case alcky. He got to the point where he understood that he had a problem. He then spent time researching what to do, how to get help, and, in the middle of this thought, "Sod it! I'll just stop."

And if you reach for the bottle before even getting up in the morning, that is tough. He did it.

Very best wishes to all those who have such struggles. And to those who have taken them on and won: thank you, you are an inspiration to the rest. You help to show us yes, it can be done.

 

Always great to read your experience and opinions about any topic, glad you posted here!
100% agree with you on "don't try, do it", the action of quitting must always be firm and concrete, half measures only lead to not making any change in the long run IMO.

 

Thank you! I fumble and fart my way through life, making various silly noises in a frightfully English accent --- occasionally, I have something useful to say.

Frankly, it does amaze me that people write books on giving up smoking. Because, in the end, it's that simple. But they do. And they come up with methods that work for some people, so that can't be bad.

I have a curious story about coffee. I used to regularly visit a psychic lady. I grew up with that stuff, and yes, I do believe it. Even without that, she would have been a damn good counsellor. Anyway, that day, I was able to tell her that I had given up smoking. She looked at me and said, "Good. Well done. But you don't realise that it never did you as much harm as the coffee you drink does."

It took me two years to realise that was right, and go through the de-caff stage. And, of the things I gave up, it is the one I most miss. Still.

By the way, my becoming a non-smoker was helped by a several-year health issue. Point: doctors took me so much more seriously as a non-smoker! It did end in major surgery, and turned out not to be caused by smoking. But hey, I was not going to take it up again!

The guy on the train was an inspiration to me. Sadly, though, I've known more people who lost the battle with the bottle.

 

Alcohol, etc... I'll admit this: I don't care for alcohol, but I would not mind a legal alternative, as in something which takes the edge of inhibition with a touch of fun thrown in. Kava is the closest I've found, but even that is not legal here now. Anyway, that is talk for another thread --- except to point out that giving stuff up doesn't necessarily mean being a total puritan and giving everything up.

 

I accept my crazy-hours, nocturnal and cat-napping sleep cycle. It may not be the very best for my health, but I don't have to fit in with stuff like office hours any longer so, sod it.

I did read something recently about our cycles and how they are influenced by light. It seems that we do have photoreceptors apart from rods and cones, and getting a good blast of light is as good as a cup of coffee.

OK, so it has long been known that light and dark affect our cycles: I think the new research is more to do with the physical how. So giving yourself a dose of outdoor light as soon as you can after getting up might be an experiment worth trying.

(I have one of those sunset/dawn bedside lamps: I love it! Especially as my sleeping hours are way off actual dusk and dawn)

 

She was right, coffee is incredibly harmful, quitting it was the most satisfying for me, because I could finally sleep well and have energy and good mood through the day by myself.
Very few people can beat the truly hard alcoholic addictions (the ones where they drink every day at every time), so he really is a true inspiration for many if he could.
I'm glad your operation turned out well! Doctors also take me a lot more seriously now, before it was like listening an angry dad talk to a kid (don't smoke, bla bla), now they really have to do their job when they see me and save the "don't smoke, do exercise kid" to lazier people. It's kind of amazing because you see that they are very used to dealing with smokers and sedentary people (at least my doctor) and I could see the genuine surprise on his face when I told him about my newly acquired habits.

Exactly! I'm open to drink a little bit in special ocasions now, but really needed to quit for more than a year to balance myself and learn self control, otherwise it would have been almost impossible. Definitely not going back to smoking, that's for sure.

 

I got lucky on this one. Moved to a new antidepressant about 20 years ago because the current one was mucking with my sleep. About a month later it just dawned on me that I had gone a week without one. Just like that. Been cold since.

I'm all for whatever self-hypnotism is in the bag if it works for you. But I do want to mention here, if you're struggling with this, don't be afraid to talk to your GP about it. Maybe pills aren't the answer for you (or maybe they are), but in the US now many health plans cover patches and whatnot as preventative treatments. If your GP is more interesting in shaming you about your BMI than helping you make a goal, find another one.

Father, uncle, two cousins... I may crack jokes on calls about glasses of wine on 10 AM Zoom calls, sure, but I have seen it swallow people whole as well, and it's as frightening as it is sad. I feel like I could go down a whole new thread on this topic alone, so I'll just say I'm thankful I managed to dodge that particular genetic curse.

 

If depression is someone's problem I recommend researching the work being done with psilocybin, which is slowly becoming more mainstream. I've known since college there was value in less potent hallucinogens and they were unfairly being swept under the rug along with (or in favor of) more dangerous drugs.

 

I am very lucky. I grew up with no parents raising a kid brother 5 years younger than me. We lived in empty houses, parks - we were in an immigration camp for a year; we weren’t immigrants, just poor white trash. I was probably an alcoholic by the time I was 13.
I’m very lucky I met my father and his brothers nearly 30 years ago - I took a good look and attended my first AA meeting the next day and have been sober ever since. Still attend, always done volunteer work and both the little brother and myself live ‘happily ever after’. Self help never stops though IMHO, I’m learning every day and still find, the more I help others; the more my own problems die of neglect.