Key Takeaways
- Reddit can offer crowd-sourced insights from real people when you’re looking for support during a tough time.
- Online communities can be a helpful tool if you need outside perspectives or if people in your life can’t relate to your challenges.
- Advice from Reddit is not a substitute for therapy or clinical treatment.
Consider these common scenarios: You’ve been trying to build healthier habits but can’t seem to make anything stick. You keep hearing about all the benefits of meditation, but you’re really not sure if it’s working. Your friend keeps canceling plans, and you’re starting to wonder if you should end the friendship. What do they all have in common? They’re probably things you’d ask about on Reddit.
Medically reviewed publications like Verywell Mind can be massively helpful during times of need, but so often what we really crave during our late-night-panic-googling session is personal experience.
While we certainly don’t recommend Reddit as your sole source of wellness advice, it can help to get some additional crowd-sourced perspective from real people. Thus, we scoured some of the most popular mental health-centric subreddits—such as r/selfimprovement, r/mentalhealth, and r/motivation—to bring you this list of oft-repeated wellness tips, tricks, and pearls of wisdom that struck the biggest chord among Redditors.
Mindset & Self-Perception
Advice like the following encouraged folks dealing with negativity or self-esteem issues to keep things in the proper perspective:
- No one thinks about you nearly as much as you think about yourself.
- Ask yourself, “What would someone who truly loved themselves do right now?”
- It’s okay if growth takes time—the time will pass either way.
- If you can’t beat the fear, just do it scared.
- Treat yourself with patience and kindness. Avoid negative self-talk, and speak to yourself like someone you care about.
- Remember, your toughest critic is you. So give yourself some grace.
- Never evaluate your life when you’re tired.
- Remember you’re more than you give yourself credit for.
Discipline & Personal Growth
Redditors in search of motivation found these tips to be some of the best ways to stay on the path of self-improvement:
- Get disciplined with at least one key thing in your life and stay consistent with it. This practice of discipline in one area will carry over to other areas of your life.
- Cultivate a mindset of lifelong learning.
- Motivation comes and goes, but discipline keeps you moving.
- Keep showing up, even when you don’t feel like it.
- If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing it badly. If you can’t handle doing it perfectly or finish it, half-ass it at least.
- If you stop using a skill, you lose it—whether it’s physical strength, knowledge, social skills, or anything else.
- Pay attention to how you’re moving through life and try to be mindful of all that you do.
Physical & Mental Well-Being
While these might seem like obvious pieces of advice that you’ve heard a million times before—whether on Reddit or IRL—there’s good reason for that: They actually work.
- Get at least 8 hours of sleep a night as often as possible.
- Exercise. Exercise is the foundation of almost every other good habit.
- Eat breakfast—seriously.
- A combination of daily movement and sunshine (vitamin D) does wonders.
- Relax your jaw, drop your shoulders, close your eyes, and take a few long, deep breaths.
- Feel like everyone hates you? You’re probably tired. Feel like you hate everyone? You’re probably hungry.
Boundaries & Lifestyle Choices
For those of us burdened by burnout and all too committed to some of our worst habits, these tips serve as a reminder that we don’t have to accept things the way they are:
- Turn off work email notifications on your phone when you’re not at work.
- Leaving a toxic job for one with healthy work-life boundaries can be life-changing.
- When work is over, leave it behind—mentally and physically.
- Be the kind of supportive, loving parent to yourself that you may not have had growing up.
- Deleting social media apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok can be liberating.
Relationships & Integrity
These pieces of wisdom will help you show up as your best self in all your relationships and also help other people’s behavior roll off more easily.
- Keeping gossip and lying to a minimum—white lies too.
- Be honest about your inner world. Saying something like, “I’m not upset with you, my brain is just being difficult right now,” can prevent conflict and clear the air.
- You can’t control other people, only how you respond to them.
- Don’t take criticism from people whose advice you wouldn’t seek out.
Daily Habits & Rituals
The little behaviors you do daily often add up significantly, as these tips stress.
- Wake up early while the world is still quiet—the peaceful reflection time is invaluable.
- Take time to notice and appreciate small, everyday moments.
- Self-care isn’t always cozy comfort; sometimes it’s giving yourself a pep talk and doing the hard things you’ve been avoiding.
The Value of Online Peer Support
Establishing community and connection in real life is the number one way to feel stable and supported; the internet can never substitute that. That being said, the people you hold dear won’t always be able to relate to your personal challenges, and that’s where specific online communities can make a big difference.
“Peer support can be invaluable when you’re going through a tough time or dealing with something new,” explains Hannah Owens, LMSW. “Listening to advice or other perspectives when things are tough can help you gain some insight you wouldn’t otherwise have.
“However,” she advises, “suggestions like these, from sources like Reddit, are never a substitute for therapy or clinical treatment, and not all of them might be applicable to you or possible for you. Keep that in mind as you peruse this list!”
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