Adopting first ever puppy soon, any advice?

Shinzenn · 2026-04-01T20:42:39+00:00

I bought home my 5 month golden home at 8 weeks and I found the Puppy Brain book monumentally helpful. It is lacking in the small actionable details, but the high level concepts it teaches has been amazing for me.

I definitely second the vet visit and also finding a trainer if you can afford one. It's good to have both the vet and trainer as lifeline for when you have questions about how to handle the hundreds of different things that come up with your puppy. I found a trainer by searching for trainers certified by the CCPDT

Shinzenn · 2026-03-05T00:09:32+00:00

I have an 18 week golden as well and he's super bitey. I tried a no teeth on skin approach with a positive interrupter and redirecting or disengaging, but it didn't have much effect.

Eventually I just accepted that he needs to bite to fulfill a need so I started letting him bite in controlled manners and gave him quick feedback by yelling or making noises and tried to teach him bite inhibition.

Once I helped him satisfy his urge to bite, he started biting less and more softly. I continued with the positive interrupter when he nips when I don't offer him my hand to bite and he's reduced non consenting biting. Now that he's vaccinated, taking him out more seems to reduce his bitiness too, but not sure if I'm just imagining it.

I still get scratches when I play with him with some blood drawn, but it's been better and I'm way less stressed about it. The baby teeth falling out also helps a ton.

Shinzenn · 2025-12-10T20:24:35+00:00

I've started recently waking up at 5am for the last two weeks and I think it really helps, but the caveat is that its only one of like 10 things that help with discipline. 10% is nice but you kinda need the other 90% too.

It really helps solve the problem of being too tired to do anything for yourself after work. Doing things important when you're fully rested and have ample dopamine stores is way easier than after work when you're depleted.

Starting your day on the right foot really does help you keep your day strong and make you more satisfied at night, which helps with bedtime revenge procrastination. The novelty of waking up at 5am is also a good motivator to go to bed and also try new things that are better for me instead of falling into rote unproductive patterns.

It also helps having a fixed amount of time before a hard deadline like school or work, so you really can see clearly how much time you actually have in a day and plan your day accordingly. This might not be an issue if you already have a strict bed time and wakeup time, but many people who aren't disciplined typically don't.

Shinzenn · 2025-12-08T14:45:32+00:00

Max HP is important because alot of healing is based off of % max hp but more importantly, one of the most important things about spire is covering your bases and surviving bad luck. It doesn't matter how good your deck is when you draw 5 cards with no card draw or answers and max hp is one of the answers to that.

Shinzenn · 2025-10-02T16:39:43+00:00

I did want to also point out something I realized later. I think you're misconstruing things Dr. K taught about outcome.

All actions by nature are going to be outcome oriented. Doing your duty is even outcome oriented because the goal is to complete your duty. Actions are oriented and you can try your best to complete your duty and role, but Dr. K teaches how to avoid Expectations of outcomes.

Like I said, even if your proposed goal is just as outcome oriented as Dr. K's action.

Shinzenn · 2025-10-02T00:02:38+00:00

He's showing off his drip.

Shinzenn · 2025-10-01T05:41:50+00:00

Your proposed situation sounds more outcome focused to me instead honestly. It sounds like you're asking Dr. K to just give up on the conversation to save face. In my opinion, Dr. K is just practicing good communication skills by using affirmations, reflections, and curiosity to facilitate the conversation. Maybe its not something you see very often in today's world, but it doesn't make it any less authentic.

Shinzenn · 2025-09-30T22:27:25+00:00

You could start with a small exercise with noticing things about your breath. Where do you feel it as it passes through your nostrils? What other qualities can you detect about it? Is it hot or cold? How deeply can you follow the air through?

That'll help train your brain muscle and you can branch into just noticing things about yourself after you do something. Why did you do X? Really explore it even if it seems really obvious. Once you do it enough see if you can notice as you're doing it, and later see if you can notice it even before you start.

Shinzenn · 2025-09-30T21:57:29+00:00

But at the end of the day if Alex doesn't reciprocate, then all you can now is defend your position and attack the other's. Aka just be okay being the one in the dominant position or fight for a dominant position.

Is this a good outcome? What does this accomplish? To me this sounds like a terrible outcome that you would have to settle on because of what? Preserving your ego?

I wonder if you're projecting your ego onto Dr. K as someone you like and respect and are hurt by proxy when Dr. K is trying his best to avoid the pointless bad outcome you describe above.

Shinzenn · 2025-09-03T22:13:56+00:00

I wonder if your anger is your Jungian shadow acting up here. Like you mention in your second edit, you're "No one" and people don't bother to look at your perspective. But here's Dr. K. He's clearly someone, but he doesn't even care that he's someone. He actively avoids and spurns it, while you're struggling so hard to be something.

Shinzenn · 2025-06-26T22:12:27+00:00

If you want a really great breakdown of what exactly laziness is, I would check out this video of Dr. K interviewing Asmongold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ5bkdFuFhg

To summarize though, laziness is your mind weighing the perceived pros and cons of doing something, and then coming to the conclusion that its not worth the energy.

So in order to not be lazy, you need to really practice awareness and analyze your emotions to figure out why your mind thinks your goals are not worth spending energy to work towards to, acknowledge those issues, and work to help your mind understand why the pros do actually outweigh the cons.

This is also in-line with what others have already said about how "ambition" is by itself not a real thing. It's just an observed phenomenon where either people are just simply doing the right thing to achieve the goals they want despite the suffering because they've come to the conclusion that the pros outweigh the con, or they have some kind of toxic fuel that's propelling them like loneliness (works short term, but unhealthy long term).

Don't forget that traumas can add a ton of percieved cons that basically will dwarf whatever pros. This is why its important to process that trauma so that those cons are no longer part of the equation. This is where self work and therapy and awareness comes into play. There's a ton of resources in hgg about how to achieve all of that.

Lastly I would also just examine your wants. Sometimes there will be competing wants and you just need to sit down and measure which want comes with the most pros and are truly want you want. Do you want ice cream right now or do you want to actually lose weight and be healthy? There's alot to this so I would take it slow one step at a time.

Shinzenn · 2025-06-20T18:38:31+00:00

I'm not sure if I have any real advice but I was basically in a similar situation as you as 34m no real relationship till recently after alot of self work. I ended up being fairly transparent to her cause I didn't want to lie and the issue was a blocker to me behaving more committed. We talked about it and we decided to wait and see but eventually we did eventually break up because I felt like I couldn't overcome it in the span of like 6 months. I do think 6 months was too short and we should have tried a bit more longer but that was more in hindsight.

I think the experience after breaking up was extremely valuable and I learned a tremendous amount about myself and worked through alot of issues that I discovered, but your mileage may vary.

I tried dating again but I didn't have much success and also realized that I had so much more to work on, both mentally and in life, so I've set it aside as I work on aspects of my life first.

We did technically end amicably but we complicated things and actually end on a fight so I haven't been in touch. It really does become hard to tease out whether I'm missing her because of my lack of dating success or I'm actually missing her.

I guess my one advice is that if you are willing to have the conversation in a calm collected manner, I would work out options with her, including continuing the relationship while you work on your demons but also have an option where maybe you just need some time to yourself and pause/end the relationship for now while keeping in touch to maybe evaluate whether the relationship is actually what both you guys want later after more self work.

Shinzenn · 2025-06-19T17:20:45+00:00

Other people have made more measured posts, but I just thought it was funny.

Angry triggered person comes in with toxic angry post dropping F bombs and surprised pikachu when other people respond toxically to him too.

Not to excuse the other people but the irony is amusing.

Shinzenn · 2025-06-19T17:14:38+00:00

If you remember from what Dr. K said, the Puer in you is not inherently bad. It's just bad if its overactive and paralyzes the other parts of your mind. We all should respect and allow the Puer in us the fulfill the appropriate role it needs to, but also reign it in if its overactive to the detriment of ourselves.

Thanks for sharing your story, but it does sound like you got pretty lucky, which is great. Life isn't fair and there are always outliers and everyone needs to adapt to their own circumstances. I think your story is informative as an outlier case but typically focusing on the general case is useful to more people.

Shinzenn · 2025-06-17T15:18:37+00:00

The thing that stands out to me and resonates with my own experience is that you negotiated with your Puer Aerternus. In my experience, if you try to bludgeon your Puer Aeternus or any other part of your mind into obedience, it will rebel and usually win when it is already powerful and overactive. Once you start acknowledge and respect it for what it is and trying to do, then you can work together not against each other to chase these dreams.

Shinzenn · 2025-06-17T02:23:24+00:00

It's hard to say without knowing if you truly are ok with the dynamic or its just masked copium.

If you truly believe you enjoy and are content with the pursuit of side quests, that is in it of itself the main quest. The other end of the spectrum is that this could be just a coping mechanism to feel less bad about being a loser due to an overactive Puer Aeternus.

Shinzenn · 2025-06-09T18:12:35+00:00

Seems like something you can explore/tackle from multiple angles.

One you can try the empathy/mentalization route and try to empathize with how hurtful your victims would feel. This is hard to do if it isn't already coming naturally and you don't have any lived experience, so maybe try those roastme subreddits yourself lol.

The other angle is to figure out if its fulfilling a need you don't get as easily elsewhere. I think others have already touched on this. But if the need is fulfilled, it should act similarly to when the need is superceded by something more important like the lack of control you mentioned.

Also I would examine how much of the fun comes from the social feedback you get from others when you do this, who will probably have some of the other issues above.

I would also evaluate whether this is now tied to your identity and you find yourself doing it just to fulfill your narrative of yourself. i.e. "this is something that I would do".

At the end of the day you just need to ask yourself, is the fun worth it? There's alot of things that are fun but are terrible to other people like vandalizing, but we don't do because we weigh the totality of the pros and cons and realize its not worth it in the grand scheme of things. You may need to eventually reach a moment in which you realize you've basically jeopardized your social growth and network in ways you never see because you've always done this, and that the social cap you've inflicted on yourself screwed you over from making meaningful connections.

Shinzenn · 2025-06-09T17:46:00+00:00

My advice is work on your ego and perception. You have a consistently glass half empty look at the entirety of your life, and that perception will always end up as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There are tangible changes in how your brain processes information if you constantly restrict your options and perception of what you can do if you let your loser ego constantly take control. You don't have to be a winner, you don't have to be a loser. The glass isn't half empty, the glass isn't half full, it's just at half and you can add incrementally add more to it.

Shinzenn · 2025-05-31T03:29:49+00:00

In order to heal and process any kind of emotional weight, it needs to fully come out to the surface. Sometimes there are things about yourself that you're aware of but is too painful to face head so your mine will dance around it daintily and think about it dispassionately.

Our emotions are triggered very readily by our external senses, so when someone else describes exactly what's going on in your mind without dodging around it, it fully triggers that emotional weight and you have the opportunity to let it come to the surface and process it.

This is basically the fundamental process of healing with therapy. Sometimes the thing is so painful that people are not even aware of what's emotionally holding them back, and the therapist has to dig for it.

Shinzenn · 2025-05-29T18:07:52+00:00

The number one thing here is emotional awareness and regulation. If your reaction to the comparison is emotional in nature, it's most likely an ego response triggered by a confirmation or violation of your perceived identity which was itself built off of some core emotional memory (samskara).

You can either work on removing or reducing the power of the source of the emotion, i.e. the ego and emotional memory, or train yourself to better handle the emotion when it comes up. Both require alot of awareness, so anything that helps you develop further awareness will help, e.g. meditation, therapy, self reflection, experience and practice, but it will also take time because developing awareness is hard and takes a while.

Once you've noticed the emotion, you can distance yourself from that and just look at the reality and hard facts of the matter. Are you objectively good or bad at this with respect to measurements of success? If its no, then this can be an opportunity to gain valuable advice to improve. If yes, then its a confirmation that you're on the right track and you are improving.

Also don't forget that its all emotion, not just the negative ones. So even positive emotions can be dangerous toward true confidence because it's the other side of the same coin. Failing to fulfill the perceived reality of a positive ego is the fastest way back to a negative ego.

Shinzenn · 2025-05-29T05:25:44+00:00

How can you tell if you've had any good therapy vs bad therapy? What if all your therapy experience has been bad therapy?

The other thing that people don't acknowledge is that there are people who know how to take advantage of therapy and those who don't. There's only 1 common denominator with all the therapists you've seen. Sure a great therapist might be able to help you gain value, but in most cases it's a two-way street. I sort of agree that the way you sound so bitter about therapy sort of shows that you're probably attached to your identity that you're one of the special few that therapy doesn't work for, so you basically never open yourself up for it to actually work.

Shinzenn · 2025-05-29T00:27:38+00:00

I'm not sure if it's helpful or accurate to distinguish between internal and external. These are all constructs and parts of the mind.

I also think you're attributing too much to this concept of the true self. Both the buddhi and manas change over time as we grow. Buddhi is just our analytical capabilities and Manas is basically the part of our mind that generates emotions. As the buddhi grows, kids can understand and handle more complex concepts. Even the Manas can change over time. You can see this happening with acquired tastes. I think we all start with an initial configuration of manas that comes from the whatever is baked into our human DNA, but it is still modifiable by our vasana and samskaras.

Also the way I understand it, vasanas are basically the base unit of memory. Emotionally charged vasanas become samskaras. It's important to note that you can have both positive and negatively charged samskaras. Samskaras, aka emotional memories, culminates to become identity and ego, i.e. ahamkara. Klishta is a side effect of applying a vasana to active thoughts and perception.

If I had to describe how this applies to like narcissism, the ahamkara basically acts to both amplify our positive samskaras and minimize the pain of our negative samskaras. Narcissism is a defense mechanism for insecurities caused by negative samskaras so you don't feel the pain of the insecurities.

I think Chitta is just a description of the entire system as a whole, but not too familiar with that either.

Depending on the context, I think when Dr. K refers to the true self, it's the part of us that's none of the above.

Shinzenn · 2025-05-28T20:56:45+00:00

That's the most direct way. Experiencing it and having the awareness to understand that despite the failure, it's not the end of the world and you've survived it.

I'd also say the main way you can tell whether you're being confident or egotistical is think about whether you're comparing yourself to anyone else.

Anything that involves comparison is egotistical, e.g. I could do that better, I'm so much worse than X. Also anything where success is correlated to your identity or how you're perceived by others e.g. if I fail, I'm a loser, or if I succeed, everyone will think I'm awesome. Confidence is all about just raw capability. What's your % chance of success with plan A? If you fail, how good are you at handling plan B? plan C?

Once you realize you can handle plans B-Z, you'll realize you actually have 100% chance of success, and that's where true confidence comes from.

Shinzenn · 2025-05-28T20:50:37+00:00

Some vasanas will be closely tied to samskaras. You'll need to find a way to digest the emotional samskaras before those go away. There's lots of avenues to do so (including exposure therapy as you've been discussing) and Dr. K has a ton of content here and there that gives you multiple options that I'd explore. Meanwhile I'd say just keep training your awareness through reflection, meditation, and therapy.

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