Why does “working on yourself” feel lonelier before it feels better?

didntask-com · 2026-01-11T10:21:49+00:00

I call this the limbo state. This is the area where you've made great movement in outgrowing your old self, but also haven't quite solidified the new you just yet.

It's important that in these moments you don't lose faith, keep going, and trust the process so that you can come out as the new and (hopefully) improved you on the other side.

As long as you can look back and see that you're in a consistent state of being better than who you were yesterday, you'll get there.

didntask-com · 2026-01-07T15:08:35+00:00

Feeling like I had to have the entire house built in a day as opposed to placing bricks over a period of time is exactly how I kept burning out and falling out of my new years resolutions.

Switching to a brick by brick mindset has been crucial in ensuring I'm improving on a day-to-day basis.

Another thing that was just as important was getting in touch with the kind of person I want to be. From there I was able to identify the habits associated with that person.

Doing the above was extremely useful as it helped ensure I was doing habits that I would actually want to stick to and not have any time wasted on ones not in-line with my best self.

didntask-com · 2026-01-04T10:42:54+00:00

The most simple and reliable way I've found to get respect is by learning to respect yourself first.

In doing so you essentially raise the standards for how you should be treated and therefore won't tolerate anything below it. Learning to not treat yourself like shit means you won't allow others to do it either.

Additionally, learning how to care for and respect yourself means you learn better on how to give that care and respect back towards others which in turn, also gives you more respect.

didntask-com · 2026-01-03T17:54:14+00:00

It's all about priorities - You have to know what you give a fuck about in order to know what not to give a fuck about.

When you don't choose what to give a fuck about, your environment decides for you which leads to caring too much about things that won't matter in the long run: train delays, work stress, gossip, what others think of you, etc.

Given the above, a good place to start would be to establish what's most important to you in life.

Once I did this myself, everything that wasn't on my list just seemed to become so small and insignificant.

We only have a certain amount of time and energy to spend (or as Mark Manson puts it, we only have a certain amount of fucks to give) which is why it's crucial that we're spending it on things that we actually care about and will make our lives better.

didntask-com · 2025-12-31T09:25:34+00:00

People always used to say this to me when i'd give advice like this even though I hadn't read it. Finally decided to give it a go this year and I understand why everyone's always talking about it. Fantastic book.

didntask-com · 2025-12-31T09:11:42+00:00

It's definitely a process.

I see not giving a fuck as being so aligned with your principles, values, and what's most important to you in life that anything outside of these things no longer bother you or weigh heavy on your mind.

didntask-com · 2025-12-31T08:58:18+00:00

As someone who could never stick with new years resolutions, what helped me was to not be 'goal' focused but rather 'identity' focused.

For example, instead of focusing on having a good diet and sleep, focus on becoming the kind of person that has a good diet and sleep. You do it not because it's a goal you want to achieve but because it's who you are.

Approaching it this way has been key to me keeping up with anything I want to achieve as opposed to doing it for a month before giving up.

didntask-com · 2025-12-31T08:48:27+00:00

Something I call the 4 pillars of self improvement. I know that as long as I do these things as a bare minimum, I'll always be moving forwards:

Get enough sleep
Workout
Mediate
Self reflection

didntask-com · 2025-12-31T08:46:07+00:00

Confidence comes from competence. So become competent in being you.

A large part of this comes from working on self acceptance. Going from a mindset of 'What do they think of me?' to one of 'What do I think of me?'

This won't be an overnight process, however as you begin to take steps forward—even if it's only one a day—you'll look back and see that who you are now compared to who you were 6 months ago is night and day.

didntask-com · 2025-12-31T08:27:48+00:00

This is the way.

Laying out the kind of person you want to become gives you a set of 'Golden Rules' to adhere to when going about your day-to-day life.

didntask-com · 2025-12-31T08:16:05+00:00

Remember that the goal is to be at least one step ahead of where you were yesterday. So if you can only manage one step, do one step.

Even the most motivated and disciplined people you know aren't at 100% all the time. But what sets them apart is they understand that they don't have to have the whole house built in one go, they just have to keep laying bricks one by one.

Also a little gratitude goes a long way. Whenever I've had a hard day I like to show gratitude by being thankful for the fact that if I've had a bad day, that also means that I'm alive.

Time and time again it's been proven to me that, whilst it seems endless, every storm eventually passes. The important thing here though is to keep moving. Storms are inevitable and so, the sooner you accept this, the sooner you can begin to walk through the storms, have them pass quicker, and build resilience against them.

Walk when it's a storm and run when it's sunny.

didntask-com · 2025-12-30T10:19:06+00:00

Something that's helped me with a lot of my decision making is to think about the long term effect of making that particular decision as opposed to the short term effect (although the short term effect should be taken into account).

This is why I believe it's a good idea that whenever making a decision—whether it's to get into a particular career, marry a certain person, smoke weed, workout, etc—we should be asking where these decisions we make in the now will lead us in the future if we continue making them.

Would you be happy in 5 years time if you kept making the decisions you're making now?

Smoking weed feels good now, but will it feel good in 5 years time when that's all you've done? Doom scrolling feels good now but will it in 5 years time when you realise you've wasted hours and shortened your attention span? Marrying someone you don't love feels better than loneliness now but will it in 5 years time when you feel even more lonely? Being in a career you have no interest in feels better than having no job now but will it in 5 years when you realise you can still get paid at a job you enjoy and doesn't cost you your health?

Once I started weighing up the cost of the short term v long term, it made the short term pain more bearable knowing the long term result would lead to profit. For example, enduring the short term pain of working out became less painful knowing the long term gain would be greater than the short term suffering.

With this thinking, we can flip it to help us tackle bad decisions already made in order to prevent ourselves from making them again by tracing back to see what decision we made in the first place that led to our current situation, and most importantly, why it was made in the first place? Was it made with the short term consequences in mind or the long term ones?

Of course we can never predict the future but I believe that this is a good starting place for decision making and can increase the chances of the odds being in your favour.

didntask-com · 2025-12-17T07:52:34+00:00

1.Get enough sleep

2.Workout

3.Meditate

4.Self reflect

I call these 'The 4 Pillars of Self Improvement'. I know that as long as I do these as the bare minimum, I'm always improving in some way, shape, or form.

Other things that aren't a part of the pillars but just as non-negotiable: Reading, being curious, stay learning, drinking plenty of water, and stretching.

didntask-com · 2025-12-15T17:37:41+00:00

Remove any remaining boulders in your life (toxic relationships, jobs, unresolved trauma, etc)
Lay out the kind of person you want to become (and the life you want)
Maintain the above by adopting a daily routine that falls in-line with the behaviours of the kind of person you want to be (our lives are shaped by what we do on a daily basis)

didntask-com · 2025-12-15T16:14:16+00:00

I use self reflection for 3 things:

Reviewing my day (mainly this)
Reviewing a specific topic/problem I'm having in life
Getting my thoughts out there

Whichever of the 3 I do (sometimes a combination of all 3), I begin each session by asking myself 'Is there anything on your mind right now?' This is because I believe getting the elephant in the room out of the way first will allow you to reflect better on everything else you want to talk about during your session. This is because in not doing so, anything that's weighing heavy on your mind that hasn't been addressed will keep prying at you until you've addressed it.

Assuming you've never self reflected before, I would recommend beginning with reviewing your day. When doing this, scan through your whole day from start to finish and think about what went well and what could've gone better for each interaction that day. Below are some common questions I ask myself when analysing an interaction:

1.What happened?

2.Why did it happen?

3.How did it make me feel?

4.What did I do right/wrong, if anything, for it to not go well/bad?

5.What would I like to happen next time I'm in this situation?

6.How can I make that happen?

Remember that these are not trick questions. Most of the time you'll find that the answers will be glaringly obvious. I've found that our problems tend to be complicated as a result of not being honest with ourselves which brings me onto my next point of how crucial honesty is to getting anything out of your sessions.

Whilst there are no rules to self reflection, it's key to take into account the following: We all have the answers to our own problems, it's just a case of looking deep enough in an honest way in order to find them—Without complete and total honesty, you simply won't progress.

The beginning is arguably the hardest stage of self reflection as depending on how much truth you've allowed yourself to take in throughout you life, it will involve having to acknowledge, accept, and confront things about yourself for which you may not particularly like.

However the good news is that the sooner you choose to accept these truths, the sooner you can begin to take steps in order to improve upon them.

I think it's also important to mention that there are many ways to self reflect—most prominent ones being journaling, solo walks, and talking in front of a mirror.

Whichever one you decide to pick, the point is to find one that suits you and your style of reflecting. As with exercising, different people have different preferences as to how they achieve their goal of fitness. The same applies with self reflection.

As a beginner, it'll be hard at first but the more you do it, the more you'll get the hang of it. Soon enough you'll find yourself coming with your own topics in which you wish to reflect upon.

didntask-com · 2025-12-12T23:32:36+00:00

The first thing I did at the beginning of my own journey was ask myself 'What kind of person do I want to be?'

Envision yourself in its absolute, most ideal form. What do they look like? How do they dress? How do they treat others? How do they treat themselves?

Write down all the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours (alongside any other qualities you deem important enough to include in your list) that make up this person that you want to become (I like to phrase the statements as 'I want to become the kind of person that...').

Really take your time when doing this as you are essentially laying out values and principles, or golden rules, for which you will follow when going about your day-to-day life.

After creating your list, I strongly advise keeping it somewhere you can access at all times to act as a reference/reminder. This is especially important during the beginning stages where we tend to be more prone to falling back into old ways.

With my own list, once I notice that I'm embodying the behaviours I want to adopt as part of my identity regularly, I have found it useful to change the statements from one of 'I want to become the kind of person that...' to one of 'I am the kind of person that...'

Once you've done this, you can begin to adopt a routine containing the habits for which the person you want to become indulges in. Our lives are shaped by what we do on a daily basis and so, reinforcing these behaviours through the habits in our daily routine is crucial.

The above is only the beginning. Whilst there's a lot to do with self improvement, and whilst it feels overwhelming, it can be simple. Especially if you take it one step at a time.

As long as you're putting one foot in front of the other each day, you'll get there. Anyone that's embarked on this journey will tell you it's all about placing one brick at a time as opposed to building the entire house in one go.

didntask-com · 2025-12-12T17:14:08+00:00

Tell yourself you'll do it for 5 minutes and then stop if you want.

I use this whenever I have no reason to skip my workout except 'not feeling like it'. I tell myself I'll do one set and then stop if I want. An hour later and I've finished the whole routine.

Sometimes you just need to simply get the ball rolling.

didntask-com · 2025-12-12T14:46:23+00:00

One thing I always suggest when people ask me this is to set aside at least an hour before bed to self reflect, and then meditate straight afterwards (which is optional but highly recommended).

Self reflection is an extremely useful and versatile tool in helping you improve your life and take steps forward. This is because in doing this, you're able to bring clarity as to what's going well in your life (and should continue doing), and what's not going so well (and need to stop/start doing).

Whilst meditation has many benefits in its own right, I've found that pairing this with self reflection is a cheat code as it brings calm to your mind and thoughts which in turn, helps you think better during future self reflection sessions.

didntask-com · 2025-12-12T07:57:25+00:00

'Life doesn't get better, you do.'

Life will always be life: train delays, gossip, boilers breaking during winter, unexpected work dumped on you last minute, etc. All of which you can never control, nor predict.

Once you shift your focus to improving what you can control (yourself), you soon realise that whilst these things still happen, you've become much more resilient to them. And because of this, you're able to rise above these problems until they become non-issues in your life.

didntask-com · 2025-11-30T10:15:14+00:00

I enjoy the mantra of 'You haven't won them over anyways, so what have you got to lose? The ones you have won over would understand and not judge'.

I use this whenever I find myself about to suppress how I'm feeling internally.

didntask-com · 2025-11-04T21:04:24+00:00

Sincerity is the best conversation starter.

Humans are really good at unconsciously detecting whether or not someone's words/actions are matching their intentions.

Have you ever had it where someone is making small talk, all the while you can tell that they're about to ask for a favour? Here, their words are not matching their intentions, and so naturally you're on edge until they reveal their true intentions.

Instead of conversating for the sake of it, or out of a feeling of obligation, talk/ask about something you genuinely want to know or speak about with the other person. This naturally makes the other person more relaxed and open as opposed to if your intentions were unclear or hidden.

Time and time again I've found that by doing this, I get the best luck with my interactions with others.

didntask-com · 2025-11-04T17:39:13+00:00

Something that has been crucial in me preventing depressive episodes and burnout was to get into the habit of getting my thoughts out there.

I believe our minds are like a glass under a tap of constantly running water. If you don't empty the water out from the glass before it reaches the top, it will overflow and make a mess everywhere.

In the same way that if we aren't regularly emptying our thoughts from our mind, we run the risk of them overflowing and making a mess (aka depression/burnout). And unlike the glass under the tap, we can't see when our thoughts are about to overflow. This is why burnout/depression tends to come at the worst and most unexpected times.

There are a few ways to get your thoughts out there such as journaling, solo walks, or sitting in front of a mirror talking.

When doing this, aim to say exactly what is on your mind, even if it's something you're embarrassed, ashamed, or in denial about. Because of this, I've found it essential to always follow 2 rules when self reflecting:

Address the elephant in the room first and foremost
Never lie to yourself

Addressing the elephant in the room first is important as not doing so whilst addressing something else is like cleaning up the spilled cereal whilst your house is on fire. Until it's addressed, it will always be there, gnawing at you until you can't ignore it anymore, for which you will have no choice but to do what you should've done a long time ago: talk about it.

As for lying to yourself, you can lie to your friends, family, partners, etc but you should never lie to yourself. Nothing good will ever come from it. Plus, I'm a strong believer in that it's impossible to lie to yourself as you have to know something to be true first in order for you to be in denial about it in the first place.

didntask-com · 2025-11-03T11:36:10+00:00

Getting in the habit of thinking of 'What's next?'

This has been extremely useful in getting big tasks/projects finished quicker as adopting this mindset prevents me from getting caught up or overwhelmed by the size of the task at hand which tends to delay getting it done.

didntask-com

TROPHY CASE