Have you ever had a life wake-up call?

[Rain Man]

The Rashee Rice thread makes me wonder how often people might have a "wake-up call" to change a behavior. And then I wonder if it's ever permanent.

So...in thinking about things that you might have done that were risky in a bad way, did you ever have a wake-up call that made you permanently change a behavior? If so, what happened and what behavior did it change? And was it a permanent change?

Similarly, have you ever had a temporary wake-up call on something, but then slipped back into the bad habit?

This can be any bad behavior. Maybe it's drugs or alcohol or eatting fatty foods or not wearing a seat belt or engaging in unsafe sex with third-world bargirls or robbing convenience stores or kidnapping hitchhikers or hitchhiking or starting fires by spitting gasoline out of your mouth or doing tightrope walks over deep canyons. Use your imagination.

[ThrobProng]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

To make a long story short, he and I were both out on separate business trips and were going to miss a particular meeting. However, I happened to get back early and got there. He didn't know that.

So the next day at work, he came into my office and shut the door, and proceeded to tell me an egregious lie about another employee who was a friend, with the goal of damaging my relationship with that person. It wasn't even work related. It was just pure malevolence.

But he didn't know that I was actually there, and I knew exactly what had happened in that meeting. So I sat and listened to him lie and saw with profound and sudden clarity the type of person that he was. I had already concluded that he was an evil person so I was already in a job search, but this was shocking even with my existing misgivings. As soon as he left my office, I called my wife and told her that I was resigning as soon as possible. I'd been pondering starting my own company, and this event prompted me to do it. It led to a lot of good outcomes for me and a lot of bad outcomes for him, which makes me grin.

Few things are more satisfying that sticking it to a terrible boss, and coming out better on the other side after doing so.

[ThaVirus]

My most recent wake-up call was a lot lower stakes than a lot of what I’m reading here.

Near the beginning of COVID, I fell into a routine that was starting to make me unhappy. Typical day was wake up, work from home, go to the gym, go home, eat, watch some TV, go to sleep. I was probably getting like 45 seconds of outdoors time each day, just from the walk to and from my car to go to the gym. Spending all day every day in boxes was ****ing with my spirit and I could feel it.

Personally, I’ve never struggled with mental health issues and I would consider myself a very positive, happy person, but my mom definitely did. I remember she’d spend four days straight pulling 12s in the factory, then spend the next three days in her room watching TV/movies in the dark. She was the type to put a blanket over her window to make it extra dark too.

I suppose there’s a greater debate on the root cause of mental health issues like depression but in my opinion, you’ve gotta give yourself a fighting chance with your lifestyle choices. I was nowhere near clinically depressed but I was certainly unfulfilled in a major way so I made the effort to get some outdoors time each day (as well as upping my fruit/veggie intake with a daily smoothie for lunch).

It’s crazy the effect a simple 15-30 minutes being active in the sunlight has on my psyche.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by KCJake

Checks out

Of course it does, I'm not a n00b. I knew someone would call BS and since I had kept the old pics from 39 ago, proof would be easy to provide.

Ever since the poster who went to Jamaica with his GF when its obvious BS, we are a skeptical lot. Which I understand. Lying on the internet is common.

But, in here we have known each other for decades in some cases. There is some fudging, enhancing a story or post allowed socially here but outright lies? that's not okay with most on here. That'll get you ostorized like the guy who went to Jamaica.

[GloryDayz]

The first time I swam out of a submarine through an escape trunk in the middle of the night gave me a WTF moment of pause. It was a brief moment but that, "I volunteered to do this" thought flashed through my mind...