Daily Dose of Integrity If you're someone who feels that you can't control your anger or you feel that you're really powerless, helpless and things are unfair—just know you're doing this to yourself. You're doing this to yourself by disrespecting yourself when you're irritated and, instead of speaking your mind or at least leaving the situation, you just sit there, suppressing and tolerating shitty treatment. That's not other people’s fault. You're choosing that. You're enduring that by choice. When you change that decision, you'll change your whole life and you'll change your relationships with other people. I speak from the heart and from my own experience. This is something I had to go through myself. There's been plenty of times where I've put others in danger because I didn't manage my anger properly. I didn't realize that it's because I'm letting other people, who haven't earned that right, walk all over me. To dive deeper into this topic, check out the original video here: https://youtu.be/Z-fyUyzBeuY

I am 24, from Czech republic. I am currently working on regaining self respect and decisiveness. I have largely been an actual nice guy when growing up, endlessly giving without expectations or being sour about what I get in return. Just genuinely enjoyed helping my close ones. It was only when I started my last relationship, now of nearly 3 years with a girl that is honestly incompetent, maturity of a teenager and ego as tough as wet tissue paper that I started souring. I have been housing and feeding her, and while surviving her constant tantrums I have put myself into the martyrdom of being her surrogate father basically - the only other choice was making her homeless which I am even now unable to do. This led to me also realizing how bad my family and friends reacted to my setting of boundaries on my time and help, which led down the rabbit hole of realizing that there was always so much bitching and moaning from all those important to me whenever I needed even minor help when growing up. The relationship is in shambles and we broke up temporarily while I still housed her, as am now, during which time she sought the attention of men who "make her feel like a woman" and generally her increasing the abuse and putting me down even more as she tried to rationalize that our lack of chemistry and love is caused by my inferiority to other men. So working on getting past this right now, trying to let go of the 10% of the time my girlfriend was very lovely, and trying to reconnect with my family, friends and hobbies that I all stonewalled due to focusing all my energy on being a "parent" walking on eggshells and constantly using kid gloves for years now.

Interesting conversations with my kids. With my son yesterday ‘How are you feeling mate with the pain - sorry I don’t ask you that. ’…. You don’t have to ask me that Dad - Mum does it all the bloody time. ‘This must frustrate you. The whole thing with being at home must be frustrating - I bet you miss all your mates. How that makes you feel must be worse than being in pain,? Not much of a reaction from him at the time, but he opened up later in the day and included me in some Lego time, which he hadn’t done for weeks. Can’t expect too much from him with respect to sharing how he feels - considering his role model up to now. @Daniel Munro Cheers Dan was great to feel some connection with him. Conversation still felt controlled, but it’s a start. And with my Daughter today on the drive to school apologising to her for being stuck in my head with thoughts and not feeling well when I picked her up yesterday. ‘That’s ok Dad we all get like that and feel like shit and don’t always know why - I feel like that a lot and don’t say anything - you are just the same as everyone, but it still sucks. I know it had nothing to do with me’… At 17 she can express Empathy better than me at 51. Hope she doesn’t feel she needs to try and manage my feelings though. Probably need to give credit where credits due for how she has turned out - to my Wife. It’s an interesting concept to me interacting with others from their perspective, rather than from my own self-centredness. Allows the space in response to choose not to follow the automatic victim pattern but to accept what’s in front of me. At least that’s the overanalysed theory in my Nice Guy mind. Now to turn that back on myself and show empathy for my behaviour in the Now, rather than judge myself on a past or future imaginary story which only exists in my mind.

I’ve pretty much had the same hobby for 25 years. But given a big tangled mess of issues (the same ones that bring me to Brojo) it’s become more stressful and depressing than entertaining. So I’m on the hunt for alternatives. For reference, I’ve been dancing one or more of salsa/bachata/kizomba/zouk since 1999. It’s pretty challenging finding something that fills the gaps in fitness, social intros, nights at the bar, IRL tinder, and regular travel destinations for big events. Plus of course finding something I find interesting. So, let’s have a discussion about what you guys get yourselves up to. PS, I’ve done a few PT boxing sessions at the gym, which has got me to look at the nearby boxing gyms and Krav Maga options. I plan to check out a few trial classes.

One of the things that did come up is that in general the project I am working on is very challenging, and so spending 60-70 hours a week on math is necessary in order to develop the research successfully. Overall I mostly enjoy, and can, as Brojo suggested, cultivate enjoyment of all of the actual momentary activities of it. However it doesn't leave much time for other things. But at the same time other things are not so valuable. Emotionally I do have a desire to practice music more than the 5-10 hours a week that the work regimen allows me for. But at the same time I suppose it is purposeless recreation. That is, I did fail as a musician and am generally poorly regarded as a musician and performer in general. So I don't add much value to the world by playing and so engaging with music is self indulgent. Now, with pickup and sex I've made peace with it, but that was easier because I at least had the experience of being sexually attractive and having a highly pleasurable exciting sex life in my 20s, at the sacrifice of having to spend a full time job worth of time on pickup study and practice as well as drug use to make myself more charismatic. And with hedonism rather empty at the end of the day, I can look back at an active sex life as simply a nice memory from my youth. And since I don't want kids there's no external reason to pursue women in that respect. However, with music, I never had the exciting experiences of performing for large audiences. So it's a bit more difficult emotionally to say that I will treat it as a hobby to enjoy myself and refrain from pursuit of performance beyond occasional open mics or busking and refrain from recording and releasing my compositions. I suppose one possibility is having some point in the future to aim for, say in 5 years, when I am successful enough to obtain a semblance of professional security and be able to reduce my work hours closer to 50 and then spending more time on music then. But that's a big if. So is this a matter of simply emotional processing, that is "grieving" that dream of the "compelling musician" experience?