Funny quotes about physical therapy

I (f 30) am the youngest of two. My older sister (f 36) lives in the same state but a few hours away. She never came home after college because she was in a relationship. When we were younger she was a total mother's girlie girl and I was a daddy's girl. With that dynamic you can conclude that me and mom (f 55) weren't very close back then. When my sister went to college and it was just me and mom, we clashed all the time. I couldn't wait to go to college and be free. Unlike my sister, when i graduated from college I went back home and lived with my mom. While in school she found out she had cancer and I realized how important she was to me, during the summer I would take care of her. I became super protective because my dad (m 60) had died the second part of my freshman year. I guess realizing you only get one dad and mom did something to me and our relationship changed. Strangely, while in college I transformed into a girlie girl with all female roommates that treated me like a toy by dressing me up and taking me to parties. So, when I came home I started working right away. Had some messy relationships and crappy jobs, but my mom always supported me. From what I seen my mom and sister were still close, even with the distance. When Shawn would come home her and mom hung out, sometimes she would stay with us, sometimes not but they talked often. Note, I don't know if it was the age difference or what but me and my sister never got along. Somewhere in my 20's I realized that we were never going to be "those sisters" and called it for what it was. We are blood, but not friends, and I know if we weren't related we would never befriends on purpose. Don't get me wrong, I love her and if Shawn was hurt or in trouble I would help her but for now, for my mom's sake I talk to her on major holiday's and important family matters, but not to just catch up or anything. I honestly don't care. Sadly, if other family member didn't ask "how is your sister", I could probably go years without thinking about her. Anyways, it started off slow, like Shawn would come to town not stay with us, then she would come to town and not reach out until she was leaving, and then we wouldn't know she was in town at all unless she called my grandmother or posted something on social media in a familiar place. It was weird because they would always link up. Shawn loves mom's cooking and would come home just for that. Mom would go visit her and go to work events with Shawn, at the last one mom said they got into an argument because she was tired from driving 5 hours, going to the event without a nap and being on her feet all night. After the event mom just wanted to go back to Shawn's apartment and rest, but there was an after party she wanted to go to. Not wanted to go to the after party mom just wanted her to walk her back to the apartment and then Shawn could go. Shawn wanted mom to go with her and said they wouldn't be there long, but mom was tired. She was trying to convince her that she would only stay for 30 minutes, but we both know when Shawn is in a room she will talk to everyone and 30 minutes could turn into 3 hours real quick. When mom put her foot down and asked her to take her home Shawn got upset and started yelling "this is mom's side of the story", you never want to do anything, ugh, why can't you just have fun, ugh..... She said Shawn was just yelling her on the corner of the street while people were walking. Shawn stays in town where a lot of people walk and everything is close by. Then she agreed to walk mom back but walked super fast and mom couldn't keep up. She is shorter than me and my sister. When they got back, she let mom in, changed her shoes and went back out. When mom came home and told me what happened I was so confused. It isn't like them to argue. I guess you can say this was the beginning of the end. Shawn stopped calling her as often, went out of the country and said nothing about it until the day of. There were just a lot of things she was doing without communicating with mom, it came to a head when our phone plan bill went up 100's of dollars. See, the bill is in Shawn's name but mom pays the bill, well she use to until Shawn got an iPhone and added the cost of the phone to the bill. Mom and I have Samsung's. She did this without telling mom and because the bill was automated it took mom while to notice. When she did, she told Shawn to start paying the bill for the portion of the phone itself. She agreed but wouldn't pay it on times, there were times that my phone was off but didn't notice because I was always near wifi. Somewhere in the middle of this she got another iPhone and the bill went again. Shawn didn't know that just because she got another phone didn't mean she wouldn't have to pay off the other one. They went back and forth on the phone one day arguing, Shawn claiming she paid and mom asking her to go through the payment history and tell her where...... the arguing ended when she started yelling at mom, saying "you're triggering me, you're triggering me" my mom just stared into the phone in disbelief... We're black and raised in a very much black household so for those who know, know those are words that we just don't say..... Well that was last week and this past weekend was mothers day and Shawn didn't call mom.... We have a family group chat of about 23 people and she said it there but not directly to mom or sent a card or anything.... I asked her the Thursday before if she would be sending mom something on mother's because we usually work together to get her something or she send me money and I get her something and Shawn will send a card. But nothing. She didn't even call our grandmother.... I went to my boyfriends house after then mother's day dinner at my grandmother's house, where I stay most weekends and while there she called me. Mom calls when she says things are too much to text. bet she went home and found a package with a 15 pound weight in it and a note saying "I hope your mother's day brought you some joy",.... Um what??? I want someone to tell me why she picked this as a mother's day gift.... and just one ... one 15 pound weight, not a set. Mom works out but already has a set for 5,10,15, and 20 pounds weight that I know Shawn knows she has. Mom was really sad and she isn't the super emotional one of us 3, the emotional one is me. If there is one thing I hate is my mom feeling bad, but then for it to be caused by her own child was different. Shawn NEVER answers the phone like NEVER, I had to tell her our dad passed away via text after calling almost 100 times. Mom sounded like she wanted to cry and just kept asking me " Brit, what did I do wrong, I don't know what I did wrong". Dang, that broke me. Now I'm the bigger of the two of us, and my sister knows me well enough that she don't want these problems so instead for even calling I sent a long text, basically saying I was disappointed to call her my sister and she should be ashamed of how she is treating our mother because when she got fired and unemployment wasn't paying enough to cover her bill's mom paid. Shawn never paid her back. Over all she is one of the most selfish people I know. I just asked her how hard is it to say happy mother's day or send a card. I didn't expect a response, but she did, in only 15 minutes. She said " I appreciate your concern and believe me, this runs much deeper than a phone bill. I don't have the same relationship with mom as you. You only know what you experienced and what happened to you. So, I'm not going to try and explain the various dynamics between mom and I that led to where we are now. It maybe hard for you to understand today. Pls don't blame it all on me. I love you. " I don't even know what that means. I responded something like other than physical, emotional, or mental harm i don't know what could have happened so bad that she couldn't call and say happy mothers day though. I can't imagine my mom doing any of those things. but again she gave some therapy like response and asked me to give her time to heal.... Mom has no clue what various dynamics she is talking about. I'm asking for advice because I feel like she is going down the same path she did with our dad. After our parents marriage ended and we were living with dad, mom still came over 3 times a week and cooked, had us on weekends. It was like she never left the only difference was she didn't sleep at home. When the arrangement changed, dad came 2 weekends in a row. then every other weekend, then once a month, then we were lucky if we saw him at all. It broke my heart in high school when a boy in my class told me to tell my dad that he would be late for practice. I was confused and bugged him all day to explain what he meant. I found out that my dad was coaching baseball across the street from our subdivision about 3 times a week with games on the weekend. So, he could see random boys at my school almost everyday for at least 3 hours and couldn't come over before or after to see his own kids? I actual walked over to the park one day because I refused to believe it, but there he was. We never talked about it. I just started walking there and sitting in the dugout to be near him and he would drive me the 2 minutes back home. All of the players lived in our neighborhood and dad had a flat bed so he would drop them off too. When Shawn graduated high school she never talked to our dad again after that day. She never told me why. He also developed cancer while I was in college and was very sick, when he got better he tried to get back in our lives and I let him in mine, called him on holidays but he did some messed up stuff to me my first year of college so I pushed back a little between that dad would call me and tell me to call my sister on 3 way, if she answered she was forced to talk to him. She wouldn't say much and would always say she was busy or had to do something to do and promise she would call him back and never would. So, now .... as part of my trying to figure out what my mom did, I reminded her how she cried when she found out our dad passed and she just kept saying she thought she had more time and who would walk her down the ail when she gets married and never got a chance to fix things. I would hate for that to happen with our mom too. I know because of our relationship once mom passes away we will most likely not talk or see each other ever again. So, I asking what did my mom do to her? What can I do to help fix this or should I even try? Anyone have any suggestions or ideas, also sorry for the typos or misspelled words or if its hard to follow, but I ask for anyone's input if they have experience this type of situation? Side note, idk if this helps but when Shawn came to town the last few times she stayed with our Aunt Carla. She has baby of the family syndrome, where she thinks she had hard but was actually spoiled rotten and believes all her sisters and brother and their wives are jealous of her. It's total BS but once when mom and I weren't getting along and I stayed with her, she told me some crazy stories about mom sleeping around, getting drunk, trying to fight her and someone else and some other stuff. This was when I was in college and I believed what she said mom and I continued to be on the outs for awhile before I found out about her cancer and became her protector and caregiver for a while. I don't believe those stories so much now be her and mom had issues before, Carla has actually had issues with all her siblings at one point and finds the need to the the main character of her own story and everyone else's. Simply she's a "One Upper". Aunt Carla getting in Shawn's ear is one idea I believe, also Shawn's friend have ummmmm "other people problems" like mellow dramatic soap opera drama and she maybe internalizing their issues. But yeah help, where do I go from here?

Is my 17 yo son a lost cause? My husband and I have 3 kids, 17M/17F, and 9F. My son has always been the type that has lied and steals. Even when he was little. We tried bribing, timeouts, quality time, you name it. He has a really bad tendency of gaslighting people, while looking at them in their eyes, stealing his sisters money. 4 years ago, he stole the keys to my husband's gun safe and my husband had to get physical with him in order for the keys to magically reappear.
He is very respectful when home but acts a complete fool when out and about. He gets into trouble and blames other people. I have suggested therapy but my husband believes that there's no use and he'll just lie to the therapist, Ido agree with him but I feel like this is our last resort. He goes off on girls and won't say anything to boys because he's afraid that they will beat him up. My husband had told him that he's a coward and is very disappointed in him.
He recently broke into a school and recorded himself with 2 other kids and they got caught. He has been trying to meet people off of snapchat to have sex withamd has been speaking to this "lady in her 40s" and was going to have this lady get him from the police.... she's a completely different race!!! When asked about him making the video in the school, he vehemently denied it until it showed his face. He said the other kids talking him into breaking into the school but the burner phone he had showed messages of him asking when they were going to do it and prompting them to do so.
He is my stepson and I have been raising him since he was 1.5 years old. His maternal biological side is into drugs and do the same thing that he does. Is this a situation of nature vs nurture?
My husband has full custody and he doesn't know his maternal side but idk. My husband is asking what went wrong. My husband tried to play video games, movies, anime, quality time, you name it and he never seemed to care. He's on the wrestling team and he would never want us to come to his meets but then he spins it and says that we don't come, even though he doesn't want us to. He has been trespassed from his previous job for an altercation with a girl and being disrespectful and he still went back like nothing could happen to him we are always coming to smooth things out for him.
We have always done family night and have open communication to where they express their feelings but he says everything is fine. They have all been given the same opportunities and experiences and love. For example, I told both him and his sister that if they saved their money and said that they wanted to purchase a car, they could. My daughter is has her permit asks to drive everyday with their dad, and has the money for a car. My son no longer has a job but still has money. Instead of trying to purchase a car, he has spent $1000s on TV, video game consoles, and food. He has his permit but doesn't ask to drive. When I brought up purchasing a car again, he said if his sister get a car before him, it would show favoritism and it wouldn't be fair. They have both been told this since they were around 10.
This is all over the place and I apoligize but hes done so many things that its hard to put them all in here. He get cuddles, hugs, and kisses just like the girls but goes againist everything we say. What should we do?
He's super smart and could have been in advanced classes but decided not to. I'm just sadded to see him choose this path. Suggestions?

We were friends since the age of 15, I still remember how we met and we ended up becoming best friends. We used to hangout all the time growing up, we would party, get high, get drunk, we were roommates too. Around 2013 when I moved, got a good job, we made plans to move to a different state, save up a good amount of money. A year later you ended up finding love and tossed all the plans aside which I of course was bitter about. I got over it though and ended up meeting the love of my life the beginning 2015. Funny thing was it was your woman's best friend.
From all the things that have happened, 2020 started and you changed, it wasn't too bad but what got me is that you would tell your Coworkers about all my faults, about how I was dark and depressing. Which okay, I had my issues I was going through a tough time battling alcoholism, substance abuse yet my love still stuck around to help me through all that. You continued to remain embarrassed of me and refused to introduce me to your "friends" you know, the coworkers who put you down for the things you enjoy, the ones who will not give you the time of day outside of work yet you still praised them more than me and would put me down.
You would always place the blame on me for when we would drink together, finishing two bottles and you'd still get more and say it was my fault when bad shit would go down. Too much of a coward to admit we enabled each other. I honestly feel like you enabled me to continue drinking to hold myself back and you knew how bad I was getting. I knew I wanted out but i still stuck around and you'd feel good about me being the lower friend. Come the end of 2023 I ended up moving to start a life 3 cities away with my wife, I went sober and started hitting the gym, my health was improving, both mental and physical. 2024 starts and I was out of a job for about a month.
THIS IS WHERE IT ALL HAPPENS
My wife started a job at a great place, making good money, good benefits and started making friends back in August 2023, I still continued talking to you but you started becoming indifferent to the changes in my life. You didn't get how I stayed consistent with the gym, you didn't get how I watched my diet, you would pick all that up and get discouraged a week later because changes wouldn't happen or you're just too stubborn to understand discipline and you remain a fat shit always wondering why you're the way you are. I never brought any of that up though, I did my best to support you making better changes for your health.
Seeing how my wife life has improved from where she works I wanted in too. So I kept going to her workplace, talking to them, I even started making friends with her friends and guess what? They like me for me, they respect me and support my way of life. Around 4 days before we decided to hangout with those friends you decided to end the friendship with me, you broke my fucking heart man. So I said fuck you, and ghosted your dumbass completely. I even blocked your number, I don't want anything to do with your fucked up self anymore. I was sad for a week but the healing began and we hung out with these new friends and I love them. They love us.
Next thing you know I got an interview at my wife's workplace and got hired on the spot, we work in different departments so it isn't weird. We hung out with our new found friends again last night and we had some good laughs, no alcohol involved, just talking and shooting the shit. It was a good time, something we never experienced hanging around you because you always wanted to watch dumb shit on YouTube, talk shit about depressed people, have awful opinions on people who didn't want kids, and just drink the night away.
NSFW I hated the way you were transphobic, homophobic racist, classist, an animal abuser and to this day I still question if you SAd that drunk girl 13 years ago. Sadly, I have no definite proof so I can't turn you in for it. But I know that if you did? you have to live with that shit and I hope one day it catches up with you. I would question you about that occasionally and you would get really defensive and angry about it saying you didn't do anything. Being drunk isn't an excuse either if you did commit that crime. It still bothers me to this day but going no contact with you was necessary.
I resent you, I really really do. You held me back, you kept me around so you can feel better about yourself. You have a lot of ugly secrets hidden that not even I know of,, and honestly? Your wife deserves a lot better. She's a good person and it's a shame she's blinded by your lies. You even lied to her saying I stole your GFS in the past! You lied to my wife about things that never happened, just to make me look like a jerk and cover up your guilt.
I hate you for what you've become.
I am so happy I have met these new friends, they are good people and encourage me and my wife to move up in our lives. We only known them for a short time and we all have a much deeper connection than me and you had the last 15 years.
I send my good graces to your wife and pray one day she opens her eyes and puts you in the trash where you belong.

Gender
If not relevant to this subreddit, please remove :)
I am a cis woman. I can confidently say that, but I do take it with a grain of salt. Because I have not always been so sure about my gender identity as I am now. I used to question my gender. Hard.
There was a period while I was questioning where, within all my questions about gender and identity and self, the worst possible outcome seemed to be cis. Back then, transness was even less accepted in society, and many online trans communities turned to exclusion of non-binary and/or genderfluid people, or generally anyone that wasn’t as clearly transgender as they felt themselves, in an effort to validate their own identity before themselves and society.
(“That isn’t real transness, we don’t claim them, they are crazy, we are the actual sane trans people. Ignore them, accept us.” Gay cis men did the same to trans people - especially trans women of color - following the stone wall riots. It’s a common reaction of any marginalised group that tries to be accepted in general society.)
Naturally, the last thing I wanted to do is invade safe spaces for trans people, take up space and resources that weren’t meant for me. I soothed myself, telling myself that my presence was valid in my pursuit of an answer. Now that I have my answer, I wonder if my experience with gender still has a space within the discussion around it.
I don’t know what it’s like to be trans.
I will never claim that.
I do know what its like not to identify with ones assigned gender at birth, and to wish the world saw you differently. As the other binary gender. Or maybe genderless.
Back then, I read an article where the trans author described a conversation they had with one of their friends, a transitioned trans man. They were asking their friend of their experience with gender dysphoria, to which the friend answered: They never had had any.
That was surprising, to both me and the author, because so far, transness had been defined by that very thing: gender dysphoria. The friend explained that they were fine with a female body, in and of itself. But they hated being viewed as a woman. They did not identify with what they had learned a woman to be. They identified as a man. So much so, that they were willing to change their physical appearance. Because you are what people view you as. How they treat you. And they did not want to be seen as a woman.
That resonated with me. My personal issues with my gender, as I realised, were deeply rooted in misogyny, both external and internalised.
Growing up, I was a headstrong little girl. I was loud, I fought with literal tooth and nail for what I wanted, I was the only girl in an anger management group for kids. In media, I associated myself with the archetype of the straight men. The ones with control over the situation, powerful, funny, strong, that saw things for what they are. In no way did I see myself in the oversexualized love interests, the ones who’s only value was connected to what they could be to their assigned man. Furthermore, I remember looking forward to growing up and having a hot woman by my side, like all of these main male characters did. Actually growing up and realising that I was meant to be - at best - that object of desire was sobering to say the least.
I wasn’t that.
I wasn’t helpless, stupid, weak. Actually. I was all of those things sometimes, as is human, but I was never, ever, ever, someone else’s. Someones girl. Adding onto that come all the expectations we have of womanhood and girlhood. Be it interests, characteristics, ways to behave and carry oneself. I wasn’t that. I was myself. Sometimes aligning with my assigned gender, sometimes not. But no matter what I did, how I carried myself and what I spent my time doing, I was always treated as a woman. And that, to me, was the worst thing of all. Still is. That people lay their eyes on me, understand me to be a woman, and then treat me like they believe a woman is to be treated, be that good or bad, regardless of how I actually am.
Altering one’s body does not feel like a dramatic price to pay in order to escape that.
To me, it was my lack of gender dysphoria that led me to accept myself as cis. I carefully tried to explore myself regardless of the gender that I am being perceived as. I know the world still views and treats me as female. I can handle it better now.
I talked to two non-binary friends of mine. I told them that if I woke up tomorrow and the whole world had forgotten what gender is, id be more than happy. Ecstatic. Relieved. I don’t feel defined by my womanhood.
They suggested that the way I feel on gender might mean that I am outside the gender binary as well. I told them no, that I am fine with who I am. I am at home in my body. Breasts, vulva, feminine facial features and all. My struggle with gender is purely external. It lies within the societal expectations, not within me. You see, I enjoy the performance of it. I am envious of femboys and drag queens who can wipe away womanhood with a cotton pad and take it off with their wigs and clothing. I am cis. But I don’t need gender. I wish gender was mine to dress up as, and not for other people to lay on me like a chain around my neck.
And I am certain that I am not the only one who feels that way. I came here wondering if anyone here can relate. Wondering what your gender means to you.
I am aware that the debate about what gender even is (a social construct, an identity, a performance) runs deep, though it’s never meant to discredit the experience of an individual.
I suppose I also ask if my experience and feelings are valid within this discussion, or if I am appropriating something that isn’t about me.

Hi everyone!
I’m hoping some of you will be able to give me some advice or share your experiences with me.
I’ll be 29 in a couple of weeks and I’m in some sort of pain all the time. I’m 5’ 1” and about 185lbs. I’m not the healthiest eater but not terrible either. I’m not super active with exercise but I do walk around at work even though I have a desk job. I have had a history of issues that I see a chiropractor for some of which are a tilted pelvis and ribs that like to pop out of where they’re supposed to be.
I’m on vacation and yesterday I was walking around with my husband and my feet, my ankles, my hips, my lower back, and my upper back all hurt so bad. I didn’t even do 10,000 steps. The other day my wrist hurt to put weight on for no apparent reason but is better now. Sometimes I walk down the stairs at work and get shooting pain in my ankles for a couple minutes. Sometimes my back will start to hurt just from taking my dog out to pee. When in doubt, something hurts.
My chiropractor does want me to get into some rehab and physical therapy but I’d have to go three times a week and it’s only available during my work hours so I can’t. I’m sure it would be helpful though.
I also get migraines and have stomach problems.
Does anyone have any other ideas or anything I should talk to my doctor about specifically? I’m way too young to be in this much pain all the time.
Thanks! 🙏🏻

Hello!
I've just turned 29 this month, am an Indian woman with a british accent, a full-time freelance artist with a Neuroscience degree, and an extreme optimist with a touch of the ol' anxiety
I enjoy reading lists on here, so here's some fun ones!
I...
° Love house plants and growing herbs and leafy greens ° Have a dog and will show you everything he does ° Am left-leaning, pansexual and pro-choice. Incredibly feminist and open-minded/accepting. It is not my (or anyone's) place to judge people for how they live! ° Look forward to being a spouse and a mother one day ° Crochet and bake - you will always be warm and fed ° Workout five days a week and actually enjoy it Have a super quick wit and a great sense of humour ° Am not into videogames (except for my VERY modded game of The Sims... You know exactly which mods.) but will gladly sit back and watch you play if you like ° Can never get into anime, I'm so sorry! But I'll watch the gnarliest crime shows and the most dramatic period dramas with you. ° Will probably make you a birth chart and give you tarot readings if you ask
As for what I'm looking for: ° Someone aged 29 - 39, doesn't matter where you're from ° Physical attraction is of course important, so please be willing to send a selfie with your chat request. I'm sharing mine on here, it's only fair! ° Someone who is eager to some day be hitched and have children, and stay monogamous, family-oriented etc. ° Someone smart, funny and kind, emotionally available, sexually experienced and just high energy in general ° Someone who likes to keep fit and enjoy taking care of their mind and body, and actively works on evolving as a person ° I get on best with open-minded folks who are curious about the world and come from a different culture than myself. I'm a huge culture nerd and want to know about every tradition you have!
I will make you laugh, hear you out when you need it, be a friend first and foremost, and will also roast you if we ever get that close. I hope you'd do me the same courtesy.
Please note, due to my past and current situation, this will likely be long distance for a bit, but I do hope we can get to a stage where we meet irl. But please only message me if that works for you, I've been burned by impatient folks before 😅
I hope we can have voice and video calls eventually, maybe watch stuff together and get to know each other really well! Obviously relationships take time and effort, so no initial expectations, but this post pretty much sums up my goals for us!
Finally, it me (plus puppy tax!): https://imgur.com/a/EQPDMxs
Chats only, please open with a selfie and something about you, and just so i know you read this far, tell me, do you like chewy cookies or crunchy ones?

Hi, I just wanted to ask for some advice. I have a neighbour opposite us who basically started a little feud with us because they didn't like me asking them to stop blocking off my driveway, which they did numerous times for no reason other than to antagonise us.
We haven't continued anything as we just want peace, and they've stopped parking across our dropped kerb after they were spoken to by our local PCSO, yet I still find them staring at me randomly which im assuming is for some silly intimidation tactic, and my anxiety has become quite bad for it as I hate conflict, especially when it's prolonged and for no good reason. They don't know about my anxiety, so all they are seeing is me not giving a single shit about what they're doing, and I'm glad that they assume it doesn't affect me.
I wanted to ask what methods you have used/continue to use to avoid these people (in your mind, of course. I can't physically avoid them unless i lock myself away), or to calm your mind when you see them or think about them? I'm doing pretty well with controlling my mind recently, but I'd love to know of any other things I could try, or maybe ways to think differently when I see them so I can view the situation in a more funny light.
Hope this makes sense. Anything is appreciated - thank you 😊

This is my ranking of every Impractical Jokers episode starting when Joe left. I was going to wait until season 10 was over to post this, but I’m just gonna post it now, as I have no idea if season 10 is done or still going.
I’ll be referring to the episodes by their celebrity guests, but that’s only because that’s how IJ names their episodes. I’ll be judging the episodes as a whole, not just the guest.
I’m only doing mainline episodes, meaning no “sideline smacktalk” or shark week special.
25. Bobby Moinahan
In general, I like challenges where the Jokers have to convince a mark to go along with what they’re doing, but making it so both challenges had that goal made this episode monotonous. The telethon challenge was particularly disappointing, as I think there was a ton of potential to make the marks do a bunch of wacky things, but it wound up being “insult the customer” over and over.
The punishment also felt disjointed. Murr having to annoy and creep out wedding dress buyers was pretty standard, but making him eat his wedding band and then wear a wedding dress to the airport seemed really tacked on.
24. Jillian Bell
The “you’re fired” challenge was a swing and a miss. Not only is it not fun to watch the Jokers just act like jerks of their own volition, but the ruleset is backwards because it requires you to be a jerk and then you’ll lose if you do too good a job. I think this game could be easily fixed if they made the first half be a standard “refuse you lose” and then fire the mark and beg for your job.
The “one more minute” skit was pretty cringey (this is coming from someone who likes the skits more than the average IJ fan) and I much preferred the deleted skit shown on “Filming with the stars”
The punishment was really underwhelming.
The one saving grace was the “Boot and Rally” challenge, which isn’t one I’d want to see again, but was still entertaining because of how over the top it was, and because of how self aware they were that it’s not a good challenge.
23. David Cross
They basically copied and pasted one of the Rob Riggle skits for this episode. Even though the skits are the least important part of the show, it’s still kind of upsetting to see them get recycled.
The challenges were fairly average, with the exception of Max Zoda dragging down Sal’s turn.
I did like the punishment. The post-Joe episodes have been pretty dependent on physically painful punishments, but this one was pretty creative both in using various methods to torture Murr, and in doing it in a context where it seems acceptable.
22. Adam Pally and Jon Gabrus
The babysitting challenge was solid, and I like the choice to play beer pong with the guests instead of doing a skit. In fact, I think it would’ve been better to consistently show authentic interactions with the guests instead of skits. They could even make it a callback to the walking bits from season 1.
Sal’s shock punishment was also pretty entertaining. Although it is watered down by the abundance of physical punishments in this era of the show.
21. Paul Scheer
The two challenges were solid, but the punishment was pretty underwhelming. The overall idea is pretty funny after it’s explained, but the entertainment value dissipates after the first couple rounds.
20. Colin Jost
The ice cream challenge was an improvement over the “you’re fired” challenge from last episode. While it still involved the vague command of “act like a jerk”, they now made the mark a witness instead of a victim, and the Jokers were actually rewarded instead of punished for fulfilling that command.
This episode also opted to show a real interaction with its guest instead of a skit, which again, is a decision I like.
The love guru’s challenge was solid, with the best part being when the guy claimed to know about the relationship expert Murr and Sal made up.
The punishment was entertaining, but again, kind of diluted by how many physical punishments there have been recently.
19. Eric André Returns
Fairly underwhelming as an episode, but never to the point that I wasn’t enjoying it. The best part was Sal talking about his exploding wife.
18. Harvey Guillen
The lawyer challenge was alright. The best part was Q’s “potato chip or two” line, which highlighted the absurdity of how convoluted the contracts were
Having a challenge where each turn was at a different location was an interesting idea, but ultimately didn’t have much impact.
Q’s punishment was kind of underwhelming. When it started with him getting prosthetics, I was expecting him to look radically different and for it to be crucial to the punishment, so I was disappointed when Q was fairly recognizable and it wasn’t necessary for what he had to do. Though the punishment itself was still fun due to the energy Harvey gave it. Plus it had a surprisingly light hearted ending.
17. Paula Abdul
Most of the episode was middling. I was disappointed because I was expecting Paula to have a great dynamic with the Jokers due to them making a movie together, yet she wound up blending in as a guest.
The high point of the episode was the “get my wallet challenge”. I loved the twist of having Cha throw Q out instead of Dan, and I especially loved Q sabotaging Sal by giving him his wallet before the mark could get it. It was oddly nostalgic, as it was the kind of thing Joe would do.
16. Kesha
I really don’t like that they repeated Sal’s shock punishment, the seance setting made it just barely different enough to justify doing again.
However, the “fall in love” challenge was pretty fun, and the debate challenge with MJF was great. I’d love for him to work with the Jokers again.
15. Michael Ian Black
I liked the return of the texting challenge, and Murr chasing the greased up boy was ridiculous (in a good way).
The punishment was fairly standard, but Michael did a great job acting as the straight-man and adding to Sal’s embarrassment.
14. Kim Fields
Murr’s “fuck marry kill” conversation, Q’s mistletoe, and Q eating the dog treats were all fun moments. The punishment felt pretty old school (in a good way) and while Q calling a woman’s bitch briefly dampened the fun, the mood was saved by Murr’s impression afterwards.
13. Post Malone
I liked seeing the etiquette challenge brought back and I especially loved seeing the guy do a 180 after recognizing Murr.
The punishment was clever and Post did a great job fanning the flames between the customers and Q. Though I think it was an odd choice to end it as a man was calling 911 without showing how the situation resolves.
12. Eric Andre
The challenges don’t have any moments that particularly stand out to me, but they were consistently entertaining in a way where it always feels worth my time to watch.
This is a rare time where I’d say the best moment from an episode came from a skit, as I love the idea of Murr being a fictional character.
The one change I’d make is that I wish they cut the opening skit and instead spoke to the audience directly, explicitly acknowledging that Joe left and they would be changing things up. I feel like that would’ve made for a better transition.
11. John Mayer
I don’t like that this episode only had one challenge before the punishment, but I do like that the celebrity guest was involved in both the challenge and the punishment, which I wish was the case more often.
The challenge itself was also fun enough to make up for being the only one. I loved Sal randomly arm wrestling the investors, the constant utterance of “Bro” and Murr’s mark insinuating he hired prostitutes.
10. ALF
The ticket challenge was solid and the phone call challenge was great, especially Sal’s McRib story.
Making a fictional character the celebrity guest was a somewhat risky choice, but I think it worked out. They did a good job integrating ALF into the punishment, and I loved the detail of him thinking Q enjoyed the food.
9. Anthony Davis
I like challenges where the Jokers have to convince the mark to lie, so I really enjoyed the “playing hookie” challenge.
I did not like the second challenge though. I found Steve Byrne’s antics more annoying than funny.
This is made up for by the punishment, which I consider one of the best punishments in recent history. Allowing Sal to opt out of tasks at a price was a clever way of adding stakes and making the punishment standout. The final task in particular was genius, and while it could have been over the line, Anthony avoided that by giving the kid his own shoes.
8. Method Man
The punishment was just uncomfortable and not very fun to watch, but the episode makes up for it with the challenges.
The scientists challenge was great, and the “don’t smirk” challenge was possibly the funniest segment in the whole post-Joe era. I personally think the “no smirking” rule was a bit excessive, and a rule against laughing would’ve been plenty, but the content of the challenge was hilarious, and that’s what matters.
7. Bruce Campbell
The Rosanna Scotto challenge was alright, with the most interesting part being when customers defended dumpster diving.
The waiter challenge was great. I loved Murr’s “who’s paying?” bit and Q constantly trying to improve the women’s ribs.
The punishment was great and felt like something we’d get in the older seasons. For the Bobby Moynihan episode, I mentioned that parts of Murr’s punishment seemed tacked on, and that’s not the case here. Each step of Q’s punishment felt like a natural extension, and Campbell did a great job as the overly demanding director.
6. Bret Michaels
The Grocery Roll was a great challenge to kick off the COVID restrictions being lifted. Murr and Sal each had spectacular Pratt falls.
The hide and seek challenge was a welcomed return. While I wouldn’t want it to become a staple of the show, I think it’s a great game to throw in once every couple of seasons to shake things up. Sal genuinely wondering if he can breathe in the fridge, repeatedly trying to close the door on himself, and hurting his arm on the third attempt was very stupid in the best way possible.
Murr’s punishment was a mixed bag. The armwrestling, bowls of soup, and Paul Rudd showing up out of nowhere were all hilarious, but whenever a mark is furious and has their face blurred, I go from enjoying the discomfort to just feeling bad for everyone involved.
5. Rob Riggle
The taste test challenge was great, with Q’s mark being one of the funniest of season in recent history.
The workout challenge was even better and really recaptured the magic they had in earlier seasons. Murr’s “wrong/good” workout and Sal’s refusal to accept help were particularly great.
The punishment was also solid. Murr having to stay still while mostly naked was simple and effective, and they were able to create a wacky enough environment around him that there’s more to keep things entertaining.
4. Chris Jericho
This is the first episode that made me realize IJ can make great episodes.
The Joint Gravy challenge was absolutely hilarious. Especially Sal’s turn.
The focus group challenge was also great. I’d be happy if they made Jiggy… not the fourth Joker… but the official stand-in whenever they have a challenge where they need to pair up.
The two skits were both really good. The opener was grounded and reserved, while the mid-show skit was ridiculous in the best way.
While I’ve said that IJ has gone a bit overboard with the physical torture punishments, I think this one was well done. It was creative to let Q alternate between various painful tasks as he wanted, and I loved how he was dependent on Sal’s mom to end the punishment. I really wish she started getting involved in the show earlier, because she’s hilarious.
3. Kal Penn
Having to sell a product after coming in through the window was hysterical, both in concept and execution. All three turns had a completely different feel to them. Murr was slimy and confident, Q was overly enthusiastic, and Sal was completely desperate.
The eating challenge was similar to the “Boot and Rally” challenge to me, in the sense that it’s not something I’d want to see again, but it was made funny due to the Jokers being self aware about it not being a good challenge. Murr’s frustration at Q and Sal saying they’d just take the thumbs down was 10X funnier than if they actually attempted the challenge.
The punishment itself was solid. It’s a simple but effective idea, and revealing that it was Sal’s breath that stunk was a great ending.
2. Blake Anderson
They brought back two challenges that had each only been done once before, which could be risky, but worked out great.
The “phony fees” challenge was a welcomed return. Johnna did a great job making the charges seem legitimate, and the woman constantly praising Q was amazing.
The Yearbook challenge was also really good. The gag about them all being married to Melissa reminded me of the organic humor we got back when Joe was on the show.
The punishment was my favorite of season 10. It has a juvenile charm where I know what Sal’s doing is really dumb, yet am root for him to get away with it.
1. Brooke Shields
Brooke gave the same energy as a guest that I was hoping to get from Paula Abdul.
The opening skit was great, largely because of how well Brooke sold the role of a fangirl.
This was the first time we saw the celebrity guest participate in a challenge, and it was very fun to watch. The girl trying to dab while in a suitcase was hilarious.
The “Brooke of Love” punishment was genius. We’ve seen challenges that convert to punishments before, but it was always done on the fly and/or kept secret from the joker being punished. Having everyone know that whoever loses will be punished immediately was a really unique approach and I hope they do something similar in the future.
I also love the idea of a dating show where the guys are all trying to be as unappealing as possible. Sal’s rap, the return of Stanley Merkle, and the hushed trash talking (trash whispering?) were all fantastic. I know the show (usually) doesn’t repeat punishments, but I’d love to see the challenge be done again, even if it’s without the instant punishment at the end. It could be in the context of a dating show again, or it could be something like a job interview.

I am not the OOP. The OOP is u/Hopeful_Picture586 posting in AmItheAsshole and her user account
Concluded as per OOP
2 updates - Long
Original - 1st June 2022
Update1 - 2nd June 2022
Update2 - 16th October 2022
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AITA for refusing to go to my daughter graduation ceremony
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I (40sF) have a daughter (18F) who I’ll call Belle. When she was younger, her father (broke up before she was born) was very involved in her life and she was admittedly a “dad’s girl” but this all changed when she turned 8 and he got married. He barely called and just abandoned her for his new family. This was obviously hard on her and she rebelled a lot. But she went to therapy and seemed good. Belle has not seen him since she was 12 and he speaks to her maybe 3 times a year maximum. When he calls, she believes he is now back in her life for good then he ghosts her for the remainder of the year. This being said ,Belle and I have a great relationship, we do everything together. She even refers to me as her best friend so I’d say we have a good relationship.
Recently was her graduation and I was excited. But then she came to me a week before and told me she is going to invite her dad and his son. And cos her dad doesn’t want to see me, I can’t come. Belle told me that was the only way he was gonna go. I angrily told her, I felt betrayed and wont forgive her for this. She just told me I have been there for many of her milestones and she wants her father to experience some too. Things got heated and we argued.
The night before her graduation, I pleaded with her but she ignored me when I spoke. And only said “I’m sorry but I’m not changing my mind. I left and cried until my sister offered to take me out during the graduation to take my mind of it and I agreed.
I woke up the next morning to my daughter bawling her eyes out. I looked at the time and realised the ceremony starts in 5 minutes. I asked Belle why she hasn’t left yet. Belle then tells me her father ditched her and isn’t answering anymore. I hug her and tell her to make the most of her graduation. She looked shocked and asks if I’m not going to the ceremony now her father isn’t anymore .
And how it’ll be embarrassing to be the only one there without parents. I told I’m sorry that I already had plans. She then screamed and called me a bad mom. I apologise once again and got ready to meet my sister. I chose not to go because I felt betrayed and wanted to teach her actions have consequences, even if it broke me that i didn’t go. Since Belle returned she hasn’t spoken a word to me. And she looks depressed and like she’s been crying for ages. I’m starting to regret not going.
My sister says I did the right thing, but one of the moms at my daughter school said she was depressed at graduation and now I feel bad that I ruined what was suppose to be a day to remember because I wanted to teach my daughter a lesson. So aita?
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Comments
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Mad_Cowboy_64
NTA. You gave her an important lesson about maintaining relationships with the people who are there for you and not blowing them off for the next new thing that comes along.
Agitated_Cheek4890
I fully agree. Daughter treated her horrendously. Daughter might now go NC but she would be an AH to do so given how she's treated her mother. ETA: thank you for the award
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Awkward-Wasabi-9262
And OP stop apologizing. You didn't do anything wrong. The more you apologize, the more your daughter believes that her was right in her actions. At best you can say "look, I understand you're hurt and I'm sorry you're upset but this is a consequence of your actions."
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Update - 1 day later
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I don’t think I’m a bad mom for this one thing. And I accept the judgements and read everything. To answer your question: Belle does go therapy. This isn’t the first time Belle has ditched me for her dad, she been doing it for 10 years. This is the first time I have said no to her after he father abandoned her. I have asked her therapist, if Belle is being manipulated. and she said no based on Belle and her father’s messages, and my daughter is just grasping onto a reality that isn’t there
Update: I went to my daughter and apologised for not going to her graduation. I also explained that it is not a nice feeling to be left out and I feel under appreciated. Also, that is fine to want her father there for her, but I should too. Belle told me that she’s sorry things ended this way and that she loves me(hugged me)and wants things to go back to normal. And that she acted like a bitch. I told her nevertheless I should have been there and if I could do this all over again, I would’ve gone. ( honestly I said this as I thought she now knew her dad can’t be trusted- and I felt for her).
Then I asked her if she regret uninviting me in the first place and unsurprisingly she said no. This hurt me but I figured it was because I didn’t go so it was understandable. But no, she continued saying that it was probably best I didn’t go because she would’ve been more miserable as she would have preferred her dad to be there anyway. Then I got pissed( I didn’t show it). I told her my feeling were hurt, especially since I’ve been there for her.
And she said that she’s always going to want her dad there for her big moments. I asked, even at the expense of me and knowing he most likely won’t show. And she replied “ I mean if I have to make sacrifices, I’m going to, to have my dad there. I repeated the question as she seemed to be swerving it but she just shrugged and went on her phone. I told her not to expect everyone to apologise and turn a blind eye when she doesn’t value them in the real world. And i also said, knowing how she feels, don’t expect another apology from me and this is the last time I’m doing this. She looked tear eyes but I left.
I don’t know how other parents do this. I know her father is going to keep abandoning her and honestly I’m at my limit. And If I didn’t know whether I was wrong or not before, I definitely know I was right in not going. I know I’m going to get a lot of backlash saying this but I’m bitter and angry. I understand wanting her dad there but I should be on the same level of importance as him. I’m still going to be there for her when he inevitable ditches her again but if this behaviour carries on to her next graduation or wedding day. I can’t say I’ll be that apologetic to her. I should’ve just listened to NTA.
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Comments
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Alibeee64
Can I ask why her dad didn’t want you at the ceremony? It sounds like you don’t have an issue with him, but he obviously has one with you. Perhaps your daughter needs to work to understand this, as he seems very vindictive. If she doesn’t learn to set boundaries with him, what is going to happen when he makes similar demands at other important life events like college graduation, or her wedding? Is she going to expect you to keep letting her run over you emotionally in order to accommodate her dad’s crazy demands, especially when he keeps letting her down. And is she going to spend her life chasing after men who emotionally distance themselves from her because her relationship with her father has taught her to do this?

OOP: Honestly we broke up on good terms. I haven’t spoken to him in years though. And when I have seen their messages, it’s always small talk and nothing about me. So I don’t where this came from.

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Update - 4 months later
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I’m sure no one asked for this update but here goes.
I’m going to refer to Belle's father as Frank.
For the past few months I’ve done a lot of reflection. Although, I can’t say I regret not going to B’s graduation ceremony, I do wish I handled the situation more like an adult. Growing up, I was taught never to ask questions I don’t want the answer to and that is exactly what I did with my daughter. I shouldn’t have asked if she regretted uninviting me because truthfully I didn’t want to hear the answer. And for that, i think I acted childish.
To clear up some misconception: I don’t speak to Belle’s father simply because he refuses to be cooperative. Also, when I said Belle referred to me as her “best friend”. This doesn’t mean I treat her like my equal. I do parent her, she did get grounded and got her phone taken away when she misbehaved at school etc( which is rarely). I think she calls me that because she feels comfortable to talk to me about everything.
Now to the update: There was an incident after, where Belle wanted her dad’s help her move into her college apartment before term started but he refused because he “had work”. She begged for weeks. The whole 3 hour ride to her college was her crying hysterically. My sister consoled her but if I’m being honest I was pissed. Pissed at my daughter as she refuses to go therapy anymore, but seriously pissed at my ex.
It took me ages after graduation but I finally got in contact with F’s aunt. I explained the situation and that I need to get into contact with him as he’s either ignoring or not getting my messages. He ended up sending me a very long letter. In a small nutshell, it said that my daughter has been stalking and threatening him and his family and he’s been trying to have a healthy relationship with her but she keeps being aggressive so he had to distance himself.
He acknowledges he hasn’t been the best father but he tried for the past few years and Belle is too aggressive so he had to put the safety of his family first. As for the graduation, he wrote that he definitely refused to go. And only said it was probably for the best as I probably wouldn’t feel too comfortable with him there. He said not to contact him again and that we’ve done enough damage.
He added photocopies of messages between him and Belle, where she “says” deeply troubling things, like physical threats. Personally, I thought everything he said was BS and misconstrued. I spoke to Belle and told her of her father’s accusations. She broke down in tears hysterically and admitted that she hasn’t been the nicest to Frank’s wife and child (understandably) but she never threatened and stalked them. I was trying to calm her down. I told her I believe her and suggested therapy. Then she turned on me, blaming me for the breakdown between her and her father relationship.
She swore at me and broke stuff. She told me to stop trying to villainize her father, when I’m the problem. She called me a burden and cancer and said I should’ve stayed out of her business. I was called a bad mother and told I should burn in hell. To be clear, she was never violent towards me. She packed her stuff and left, presumably back to college. Me or my family haven’t heard from her since. I called and called but only got one message from a random number telling me to leave her alone. I told her I’m always here when’s she’s ready to talk.
It’s been 2+ months since I spoke to her. I’ll never admit this to anyone but honestly I feel relieved. My self esteem plummeted and I felt dead for the longest time because of this situation. I’m going therapy and feel the tiniest bit better. I finally went on a date yesterday for the first time in a decade, without getting guilted. In hindsight, mine and B’s relationship were no where near perfect. I don’t know what more I could’ve done but I wished I did more. She’s my child and she was a victim of an overall shit situation.
Sorry for the long update.
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Comments
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maybemaybo
I'm guessing with the graduation he likely said something like "and your mom probably wouldn't be comfortable seeing me.." in an attempt to let her down politely.
And that probably led her to go "well if I uninvite my mum, problem solved!" refusing to actually see the truth, that he won't come because it doesn't fit in with their fantasy.
I would honestly reach out to F's family member and say "pass on that he should use these threats to try and get a restraining order" because now she's cut you off, who knows how much more desperate she is to get to him.
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I am not the OOP. Please do not harass the OOP. Please remember the No Brigading Rule and to be civil in the comments

Hi everyone.
Quick background to provide context:
I am a mature age mid 50's. I was medically retired 13 years ago and finding it getting tough financially. Living in Australia is getting tougher and tougher and I reside with my elderly mother for months at a time, otherwise I would be homeless as rent is too much. I spend a good time overseas and prefer a lifestyle as an expat where my money goes much further. I will end up permanently abroad at some stage. I therefore want a purely digital nomad style lifestyle with online work providing me income.
Masters of Counselling:
I have an undergraduate degree that is not relevant to entering directly into a Masters of Counselling degree, which is an area of study I feel that I would be interested in. My past career was in law enforcement, mainly in the field of detectives. Course advisors have assured me that I could enter a Masters by first completing a post grad certificate of counselling and some do not require this.
I have considered this course as I have always had quite a lot of empathy towards people, like listening to them, and also have an interest in psychology. I have dealt with many situations in my past career whereby I have dealt with victims of crime as well as offenders, where, despite having to be the one to prosecute them, I was able to listen to them, elicit information from them, and sometimes be the one to talk to them about the direction in their lives. I have also become a consumer of the mental health system for several years as I suffered due to my psychological injuries that led to my retirement. So, in a strange way, perhaps I have a potential to be a counsellor.
I spend majority of time overseas and only a few months back in Australia (where I am quite dedicated in a carer role for my mother), so dedicated face-to-face, on campus study is out of the question.
I have looked at the following institutions:
AIPC - offer a Masters of Counselling over two years full time and the physical attendance components of the course can be done at the end and back to back, allowing me to do the vast portion online without the need to keep flying back and forth at great expense. You will receive qualification for registration with ACA
APAC - they offer a Masters of Counselling over two years as well. Physical attendance is in 2nd year over two course apparently requiring 2 days a week for 16 x weeks as well as a 3 day workshop. You will receive qualification for registration with ACA
APAC also offer a Masters of Counselling and Psychotherapy over 2 years as well. This is a preferred degree as it qualifies you for registration with PACFA. The confusing part of this is that on their website, the course appears to be only on campus and requires fulltime attendance.
I was referred by APAC via an email to watch a YouTube video of their counselling courses. In that video, they do not mention the Masters of Counselling, rather they only mention the Counselling and Psychotherapy Masters. The video appears to allude it to being possibly an online course with a practical component that is not per subject. I could not keep returning per subject. I am confused as it seems a bend of both masters courses and I will need to clarify the differences between the website course structure compared to the video I was referred to.
Edith Cowan University - offers a Masters of Counselling and a Masters of Counselling and Psychotherapy too. The Masters of Counselling is available online. The other degree seems to be campus only. The qualifications for both seem to be either ACA or PACFA.
I am not sure which institution to choose, if I embark on this journey of completing a Masters Degree. I am not young and I will be close to 60 years of age if I finished it.
I need to know: what institution would those that have studies, graduated, enquired at those institutions, would you choose in my shoes?
Also, is it a realistic and viable career choice to offer counselling services online via either a private practice online setup or via employers providing work to counsellors? I have read jobs offered online and it seem that experience is a must. Employers also want those who have spent time doing face-to-face counselling work.
I have read forums of graduates (mainly of Diploma graduates) who have struggled to find work. It also seems not easy to start off with a private online practice. I do not have copywriting, webpage, business or marketing experience. And these skills seem to be important for those wanting to kick off a private practice. The main hurdle I envisage is finding, acquiring clients and keeping them.
The fact that counselling services cannot be claimed with Medicare is also a big drawback. I recall in my times when I needed help, I sought psychiatrists (for meds mainly) and psychologists for counselling and therapy. I only once used a counsellor who was also a registered psychologist. The main reason was Medicare rebate as I was struggling financially.
I see that online counselling would suit clients in remote areas and for those who do not want to be face-to-face with others.
Is the market saturated with counsellors? Am I doing the right thing gong ahead with this? I need a way to make money online. I can see it is possible with counselling. I know there are people who have strong opinions against online counselling. I also know that there are counsellors doing online work (as per their forum comments).
I would appreciate comments of any kind. Constructive, critical, whatever. Thank you for your time.
Regards.

sorry this is really long id appreciate any support from anyone willing to spend the time reading though, also feel free to skim.
my ex(21f) left me(20m) a week or two ago, it was really toxic. she's diagnosed w bpd but clearly has much worse issues.
ive been feeling really empty without her. the things we'd watch together and do together all feel lonely now without her around and im having trouble finding myself engaging in my interests without being distracted thinking of her.
she emotionally cheated on her ex with me before breaking up w him and dating me which I didn't process that way at the time because she would make justifications that its ok because he has a cuck fetish etc but it made him uncomfortable so it was definitely not in the bounds of that.
around a month into dating me she started getting drunk once a week or so and would yell at me. during the first time she said i was gonna blame my experience with my physically abusive ex, who also had bpd and npd symptoms, on her. i had never blamed her for any of these things though and at the time i remember thinking it felt like a red flag that she was openly accusing me of something that never happened saying it will in the future since it felt more likely that she may end up becoming in some ways abusive in the future if thats how she's acting, sadly that worry came true.
the getting drunk and yelling at me continued a lot. i dont even remember a lot of the times because they just started melding together because of my ptsd.
she hid her friend getting cheated on in order to protect the friend who fucked her bf, and herself for keeping it to herself while it happened for months. she said i just took it personally when i explained how her mocking me had hurt my feelings and was being extreme gaslighty about it saying how i was telling her what she meant by it and that if i feel something then it must be true. what she was referring to was me explaining that she called the thing she mocked icky and was mocking it because of feelings of it being icky to her and that mocking me for that reason inherently is still mocking me for judgemental reasons even if it was meant to not be mean or tease me and that most people would be hurt in a situation where they get mocked for 20 minutes about something that she also already knew i was embarrassed about. my explanation was pretty valid and not claiming anything about how she felt and i even went back in my texts to prove to myself that im not crazy but she treated me like i was an insane gaslighter over getting hurt by it and then started essentially saying she cant say anything and started just apologizing just to end the conversation etc which is an unhealthy behavior she did a lot during times were i finally criticized behaviors.
she has issues around getting really mad if people disagrees with her and yelling etc and after the relationship i had two old friends of hers both confirm their experiences of experiencing the exact same behaviors. she treats it as if everyone who said anything about her behaviors are just "fucked people" and she "doesn't care what they think" despite the fact that one of the friends is someone she had only ever spoke well about. the other person has lying issues so i didn't take everything at face value but they literally also showed me screenshots of her behaviours which made it pretty clear about some things being very clearly true.
like for example my ex would lie about how that friend must secretly be talking shit about her and making her online friend group hate my ex because she no longer got invited to play games with them like among us, but it turned out that when my ex played games with them she would act extremely toxic and like gaslight people to way too much of extremes that it didn't make the game fun by saying shit like she doesn't wanna play with them anymore because theyre just targeting her because she doesn't play games etc. or her talking about how badly she wanted to die and such and thinking that nobody there cares about her and asking for validation extremely often. i was also shown her directly lying that i was gonna be homeless to her friend when i wasn't gonna be and hadn't said anything like that. that friend also knew about her going to bars to make out with guys while in her last relationship and my ex had also told me how she was breaking cheating boundaries a ton around a guy she fell in love with during her relationship with her last ex. when i told her it kinda sounded like cheating she got upset and said her ex didn't give a fuck about her anyway.
its just sad that she had so many disordered behaviors and she essentially just cuts off anyone who may criticize her in any way shape or form. like at the end of the relationship the reason we broke up was because i was criticizing her behaviours and trying to explain she shows disordered symptoms that are affecting me and she said i dont actually know who she is and she can't stay in a relationship with someone who sees her as someone she isn't. some of the behaviors i criticized was that earlier gaslighting thing that she still believed she was right for and i was just being crazy, also her yelling at me and crying saying i would wanna date my friend if we were in an open relationship and calling me a liar etc as i told her no i wouldn't and that it was hurting my feelings, and also criticizing that she had made a hypothetical where she asked me if i would worship her if she was god and got upset that i said no.
when she asked me the god thing at first i said yes because i knew how she may react to me saying honestly that its a hard thing to answer and then she asked me if im being honest and asked me to reassure that i would worship her and i felt uncomfortable and explained that i dont really know what id do in that situation because its not real and worshipping someone else is already something i dont really personally do as I'm not religious.
when i criticized her asking that question and how it was weirdly narcissistic and unhealthy, especially since she got upset and disappointed that i said no, she got mad at me saying i need to not bring it up. she didn't explain why it was bad to bring up or anything she just got pissed at me for bringing up her saying it at all.
this is a common behavior she has, she gets mad when people criticize her or when people disagree and will usually argue and/or yell. this was something both of the friends i talked to had experiences with her doing and one of them even stopped talking to her for awhile because of it at a point. both these friends instantly believed me about her being abusive because of her own behaviors and its so frustrating that shes essentially made it out that everyone except her must be crazy or getting some sort of manipulated idea from me when she is literally actively minimizing her behaviours that multiple other people have already recognized without me saying anything. its such a frustrating situation i had really thought she was the love of my life.
she would do these lovebombing tactics where she told me how she wouldn't be able to live without me and would rather die than break up, would tell me im the best guy she's ever met and shit like that and i have a friend who has bpd and has been in therapy for 8 years and she said those things are all red flags that wouldve made her leave a relationship asap and that its just not healthy and i felt weird about it all at the time but i still ended up convincing myself that it will be ok and she'll seek help.
she would often try to say stuff like she has super good control of her bpd and doesn't split anyone etc because she's been through 6 months of therapy but ive seen her split friends and talk about how little they care etc. i also know that most of the time in therapy she would skip or show up drunk a lot and ive had lots of times where i end up explaining therapeutic techniques to her when shes feeling bad when ive not even gotten to do therapy yet i just spent a lot of time researching on bettering myself for a year after my physically abusive relationship while i was seeking help for my disabilities and ptsd. ive tried to explain to her that ive seen her split people a lot and she said i dont get to decide what is or isnt splitting and got mad at me when i was saying it based on observed behaviors and i just dont know how someone is supposed to tell if shes splitting then is it only splitting if she says so that feels inaccurate because she isnt the type of person to acknowledge something like that.
i guess thats all i have to really write rn thank you for reading i just feel really alone right now im bad at handling situations like this its hard to cope with losing someone i loved so much in such a painful and difficult way.

Backstory so my baby is 2 months old now, she was born at 36 weeks with a level 4 Intraventricular hemorrhage and a slight scalp bleed. She stayes at the nicu for 2 weeks and healed herself with no surgery needed or nothing!
On to the issue im facing. Due to her brain bleed she was suspected to have delays and need tons of physical therapy, so we prepared in advance and called Early childhood intervention, a developmental specialist and a physical therapist. We went to see the specialists on may 6th, and they spent almost 2 hours playing with my baby, they said she was actually advanced! Shes doing really well and shows no signs of needing therapy or having a delay. They said she had a slight flat spot but if i kept her off that side the flat spot would fix itself. woohoo! Then i take my baby to her pedi on may 13th, (mind you ive already had issues with her pedi) and the pedi starts going on about how awful my daughter is doing developmentally and how she needs a physical therapist IMMEDIATELY, and how she needed a helmet already, mind you the pedi didnt even touch my daughter, she came to the conclusion based entirely off how my baby was acting after getting her shots.
So ultimately i guess what im getting at is, do i believe the people who specialize in developmental delays and physical therapy or her pediatrician?
bonus info as to why i have prior issues with her pediatrician: my daughters pediatrician at the 1st post nicu visit tried to tell me my daughters brain bleed never went away and we needed to schedule a surgery ASAP and when i told the pediatrician “uhm no? the nicu said she had healed 100% and didn’t need surgery, but she would need a MRI once a month just to make sure it doesnt return?” then the pedi almost called me a liar until she read my daughters file. We drive 2 hours to see my daughters pedi so we cut it close almost everytime, well at her last appointment we arrived at 9:30 when my daughters appointment was at 10:00, we waited until almost 11:20 to get called back yet we’d seen no one go back, and no one come out. The only reason we got called back was because i knocked on their door and asked what was taking so long and they go “oh! we didnt know you were here!” yet i’d given them paperwork and checked in. That was all already there, then on my babys may 13 visit, when her pediatrician said she needed all of those things i told her we’d already had her checked and she was clear. Well the pediatrician started saying “ive been doing this 10 years! i know what im doing! those doctors lied to you!” and basically started berating the specialist saying how she knows better than them? which i found comical because those are the doctors my daughter would have to go see if she needed it lol.
sorry for the long post

I am F16, my ex is M18. loved my ex. I want to get that out of the way. He wasn't conventionally attractive, but I thought he looked nice and was a wonderful person. He was autistic and had adhd, which made some stuff challenging, but I loved him and was willing to deal with it, since I myself had BPD and he was willing to deal with it (or so he said). Do note this relationship was long distance.
I knew him for four years before we dated. We didn't talk much for a year or so, before dating. I had gotten out of a relationship, a little after we had reconnected. I didn't want to date again for at least a year, but he was kind to me and we talked quite often. I started to fall for him, but he told me he was aromantic so I never pursued.
We jokingly would flirt though, and spend a lot of time talking together. One day he told me he might be demiromantic, not aromantic, because he felt something for me. I talked more with him after that, about relationship type things. Eventually I confessed, and then a while later, he confessed back to me. When we started dating, we agreed on certain things. He didn't know if he loved me romantically, but he was happy to engage in romantic behaviors and he felt some type of love for me. I was okay with this. I made him aware of what my BPD looked like, he said he was okay with that too.
For the beginning of the relationship, the first few months, it was lovely and we enjoyed each other's company (at least I thought we did). Rough patches were smoothed over pretty easily. Eventually, behaviors I have from BPD, specifically being easily triggered to react emotionally, became more prevalent. There was a point where he wanted to break up with me, then after a conversation, decided to let me try and resolve the behavior. I did try, I tried very hard.
I think I probably should have let it go, though. After this event, he began to tell his friends and family about all our dramas. Probably a red flag, since I only spoke to one person (my best friend) and never painted him negatively, though his family hates me now so he must have. We met a month after this, and it was the best five days I ever had. I felt loved, we got along well (I thought, Ill touch on this later). A month later, he begins online college. Okay, cool. Great. I was happy for him.
He told me it wouldn't affect our relationship, and at first it didn't, but eventually he stopped doing it in a timely manner and would fail to achieve commitments he had said he would do. Every day I would ask if we planned to call, I would've been fine with a yes or no. He always said yes, but often wouldn't keep the commitment. At first I handled it just fine, but eventually it became upsetting.
I'm a busy person, and I'm not free during my day until evening. He's free most of his days, almost constantly. I would do my best to be available at our designated time, and would feel hurt (and eventually react as such) when he wouldn't. Especially when he started to put off his schoolwork to hang out with his friends, often after having said we would talk later that day too. I brought this up to him, I want to say. I told him if he wanted time to himself, he could tell me how long he wanted and I would give it to him. He never did tell me, but he often would tell me that when I was awake he never felt free. He would stay up very late because that was the only time he felt free. He said he was always worried I would need him, so I guess there was a red flag in that too.
Touching back on the meeting him in person thing. He has a large family, and his family has a small farm with livestock dogs on it. His younger siblings were very interested in me, since I was a new person, and they wanted to hang out with me. I also love dogs, and have always wanted one, so I spent some time with the dogs out on the farm. I would invite him to play with his siblings with me, or go see the dog. I slept six hours a night for those five days, and would be with him for 16-17 hours a day. We would go out places and talk, and I would spend maybe two or three of those hours at the most around his siblings/the dog.
Later on, after we went on our break (I'll talk about this too, later) he said to me that he felt I wanted to make an impression on his siblings more than I did with him, and that we were at different points in our lives because I still wanted to have fun and play around (I want to reiterate that his siblings would seek me out). He told me he wanted us to have spent more time just laying around and cuddling, rather than going out to so many places, but never said this to me while we were together in person. I invited his oldest sister to come with us to a place (before asking him), though I told her I would need him to agree before we finalized anything, and then asked him after. He didn't like that.
Now, before I get into the last section of this, I want to establish that he was very kind to me (usually). We bought each other gifts, spent time together, made plans, and all of that stuff. He made me happy, I thought I made him happy too.
In our relationship, we both failed to communicate, and I would fail to discuss things calmly, letting my emotions get the best of me. I wouldn't leave him alone very often, wouldn't let him do stuff away from me very often. I loved being around him, but he wanted time apart and I tended not to give that to him. I should have. This was his first relationship that he wanted to last, but his second relationship in total. I've had many more before this, but this was the only one I really felt commitment to. We talked about marrying, about buying a house, about pets and family. I feel as if we did everything right, or at least he did. I was the emotional one, who wanted too much. I know it was mainly my fault.
When we went on break, it was because I couldn't take it anymore and lost my cool. He'd promised we could talk that night, I was extremely vulnerable emotionally because of something with my family. He failed to finish his work on time, told me he needed another two hours. I snapped. I went down the list of "everything I hate about you (him)". I told him most of the stuff I'm saying here, and some others.

• I hate how you never take my advice
• I hate how you ask me to help you stay on track but never listen to me
• I hate how you get upset with me easily, but never do with any of your friends Etc.

We talked after that, he acted pretty normal. The next day he dropped that on me, despite saying the night before that he wanted to be there for us to both improve.
I started therapy after that, I started trying to find ways to work around all my issues while he continued his typical daily routine. I didn't mind. He initiated flirting with me, and other stuff, that I reciprocated and went along with because I loved him and I still love him even now, and it was all my fault even if I know it wasn't all my fault it feels like it was all my fault. He said he never wants to speak to me again, blocked me, all of it.
During our break, I tried confronting our problems and finding solutions. He dropped several bombs on me, that make me feel rather insecure even now about whether he ever liked me for me or just because of other physical (you know what I mean) attributes, bring that that was all he would really comment on positively.
He told me he never loved me, and never likes me.
Now, what led to the final actual break up, was that I have been planning with another friend to move to Salt Lake City for actual years. He wanted to be part of it, and so did another friend. My household situation isn't great, won't go into too many details but I have been having stress reactions since many years ago, that have been getting steadily worse. I wanted to move out at 18, I'm almost 17. I've been kind of panicking about all of this, and yesterday I snapped (sort of). The conversation with him went sort of like this:

• I tell him he and the other two won't enjoy the talk we'll have Monday
• He asks why
• I said "you guys probably just wont"
• He tells me I'm being defeatist
• I tell him I'm not, then give more details on the conversation. He and the other two are 18, 18, and 20. Two of them come from well-off families. I felt frustrated that neither of them, especially him, work yet or have been trying to even get their driver's license. I intend to skip two years of high-school to take my GED and start working because I don't have another choice. They have choices, and I don't. I wanted to get this point across.

I go on further to say he and the other person's view of maturity is narrow-minded and flawed. A while later he tells me he no longer wants to be involved with me or anything to do with me, after talking to other people and getting their opinions.
Tl;Dr, had a relationship with someone I really liked, I feel like I'm to blame for the collapse of it. He had autism/adhd, I had BPD, we went on break so I could try to fix my problems (he said he would too but it didn't really feel much like he was), and then broke up because I confronted him (albeit poorly) about how I felt he and another person treated the future they wanted to be involved in. There were a lot of things that hurt me really badly in the relationship, but I think I hurt him worse. AITAH?

This might be a slightly philosophical post. But the aim is to get to the bottom of what you should be truly doing. To truly get the most results.
There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of conflicting information online about how to do this.
“Do stuff that moves the needle forward”
“Do stuff that brings in revenue”
What does this truly mean though. And is it even the right thing. That’s the purpose of this post, to uncover.
When I’ve spent my time on actual needle-moving forward things, like taking business from 0 to revenue, doing all offer development, operations, sales process, marketing myself, it generally has taken me about 6 months to fully ‘try out’ a business idea I’ve had.
Most times it hasn’t worked.
Either it wasn’t profitable. Or there was a big problem somewhere.
I believe fundamentally it’s because I’m moving too slow.
Because it usually takes me around 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential.
When you haven’t sold it or developed expertise in it yourself yet.
And I would say about 5% of the time it does work.
So if it takes 6 months and only 5% of the time it works (where you bring in revenue, no major issues), and each time it doesn’t work you try a new variation of it or something new based on what you learned, then it might take 10 years of trying different things to get the business to work.
Which sounds like it takes way too long.
So I thought about how the top companies move much quicker.
What separates them and my strategy.
And realized they simply had much more people on their team.
If you think about any successful organization who has achieved great things, and is world-leading, usually there is not 1 person on the team.
There seems to be a correlation between number of people on the team and speed of progress they can make in business.
Which goes against what most conventional startup wisdom tells you, most small business content creators etc all tell you to do it all yourself.
Which I’ve done for quite a few years and it’s gone so slowly in terms of overall progress.
If you should ‘do everything yourself’ then most Fortune 500 companies would’ve had single founders, and 1 person on their team. But the vast majority of successful Fortune 500 companies had co-founders.
And most successful businesses I know of, had co-founders.
And as they succeeded, they got more people on the team, and these people helped bring more success, then they brought more people.
Obviously there can be bad staff and not everyone contributes to the success of the company.
But I do believe, based on this, and observing top companies, that generally the more successful they are, the more people were involved with bringing about the success.
Which completely contradicts most information given to startups about ‘lone wolf’, ‘go it alone’. If that were true, Google would have 1 employee. Apple would have 1 employee.
And they would have never gotten off the ground.
Anyway, I may not have explained this perfectly but I do strongly believe the more & higher quality people are working together on something, the stats show these companies tend to do better, and successful companies you see often have more people than less working on them.
From the very beginning and now.
Regardless of the stage they were at.
So going based off this information, that the more people, the better, I have hired 30+ different people for different roles. Over the past few years. Across different businesses. To help speed up the progress in different areas.
From marketing roles, sales process roles, web development, app development, customer service, delivery of services.
And I would say there have been maybe 1 or 2 of them where I was actually happy with the result.
Most times, I would hire someone to do a job, and they didn’t do the job well, despite saying they were experienced.
And showing past examples of their work. And telling me everything I wanted to hear about how good they were.
It would often be that they would end up performing badly in the KPIs I set for them, giving many excuses, asking for help/questions/not solving anything on their own.
And just so many other problems. Like when there were multiple people at the same time on a team, working on the same project, they would blame each other and no one took responsibility despite clear responsibilities.
All telling me how other staff were bad and they were good, but getting conflicting info from all staff where they blame each other for everything so it’s difficult to know who to trust and who is being truthful.
Oftentimes not being reliable or doing what they were clearly asked to do.
Oftentimes trying to outsource the work I game them, to other people and not caring about the quality.
At my expense.
So I lost lots of clients, had low performing areas in the areas I hired for a lot of the time.
To be fair, things happened faster the more people there were.
But they often needed much more from me than they were contributing.
Like they always wanted to get paid more, for doing less work, weren’t reliable, did low quality work, didn’t hit KPIs, missed clear deadlines, always gave excuses, blamed others/external things, always asking how “I” wanted their job to be done, to the point where I was having to literally tell them every single thing to do and become an expert at their job myself, and show them how to do what they were put there to do, or do it myself, and still get a low quality result from them.
Anyway, the list goes on in all the problems I have experienced hiring people.
It really seems like a minefield.
But there were 1-2 people who did actually do well, who were responsive, who did what they committed to do, who hit deadlines, who did what they were asked, who didn’t give excuses. Who were actually honest hard workers who figured out how to solve problems and actually do the job that was asked from them.
Because of the amount of people I hired and the very low % of people who seemed to do their job well, it made me think that I am probably the problem here. If so many people are doing a bad job and not doing what they were actually hired to do. When most other companies seem to succeed at hiring people.
Then it must be a problem with myself and how I am hiring and managing them.
So it makes me think I need to level up in how I hire and manage people.
I’ve tried lots of different businesses and variations of them and some have done okay, some have not.
Mainly the most success I’ve had is in my own freelancing, where I don’t have other people on my team.
Because it’s kind of turned into a headache working with others. Who just seem to have mostly never been able to deliver what they promised without it becoming pointless to hire them in the first place with all the work I’m doing on their behalf and trying to pick up after all the problems and failures they’ve done.
So I’m not sure exactly what to spend my time and resources on.
I have money saved up from freelancing.
Where I can continue to hire people.
But I do feel I’ve had many many bad experiences.
And I believe it’s mostly my fault. Maybe my training, my hiring, my management, at places along the line I’ve not done it well enough.
I’ve tried to make improvements each time but it has kind of seemed like luck to get people who do actually do their job well.
I genuinely want to hire people and succeed in this.
Because if I can successfully work with people to achieve outcomes, rather than relying only on myself, I can build a real business and not just do freelancing.
In freelancing, I was able to make $3k-5k/month but it was very stressful and I hated speaking with clients, and was constantly stressed.
I generally really don’t like socialising with people. Including clients and staff.
And staff often try to get me to socialise unnecessarily so they can avoid doing their job, and pull me away from mine.
So trying to make it work.
I want to make it work with hiring people because if I can do this, I can make 10x-100x-1000x faster progress with other people on the same team.
But I do have a very bad track record so far. So it’s kind of painful returning to it and continuing to have bad experiences.
But at the same time I know it’s me who’s probably at fault because there can’t be this many bad people I’ve hired and it surely can’t be this bad for everyone.
I think the reason is that I’ve been better at managing myself and doing things successfully solo throughout my life.
Like I’ve achieved very good things in solo sports, in academia, and in many areas that don’t require a team, but often become frustrated working in a team.
But I don’t want my business success to be limited to 1 person.
So I truly want to make it work in improving my ability to manage (ideally a large amount of) people in a way where they can actually deliver and it work well.
Because I was capped in freelancing to making $3k-5k/month because I couldn’t take on more clients because I was undercharging and overdelivering and couldn’t handle more due to being massively stressed out and hating it. I was able to work with less clients at times and charge higher, but they never wanted me to ‘outsource’ my work to others or bring on a team, and I felt bad about it because had bad experiences where I had felt like I let clients down, and oftentimes they told me they had hired me because of me, and not wanted me to ‘outsource’ the work.
But I want to make it work.
Building a real business with a team. Not just doing freelancing and relying just on myself.
So I have time and money and resources to put into this.
I have 1 staff member currently who is unproductive. But we have an equity deal so it doesn’t cost me money for them to perform. But costs me lots of time and their performance is extremely weak. Don’t even want to go into detail, but it’s a nightmare. Their performance is about 1/10 but I believe I can raise their performance if I improve my ability to raise their performance.
Anyway. I want to build a team, but not sure exactly what activities are best ways to spend my time.
If I am physically making improvements, I feel I am slowing down the business progress.
Whereas I want to hire and manage people.
I’ve built training so that this co-founder is able to hire people. And these people can use the same training to hire people.
But I don’t currently have training to enable them to manage people.
My fear is that without training, people just ask unlimited questions on how to do something in their role and it becomes pointless to have hired them because I have to do everything they should have done to do it, so they basically just become a robot following very specific instructions. Rather than a human being who can achieve things independently.
So for example, if I made this training, it would take up all my time, whereas I have savings I’ve accumulated from freelancing which I can put into either having the co-founder manage staff, or have the co-founder make management training at the same time to enable more and more staff to hire and manage new staff. To achieve overall objectives and KPIs.
Or I could have the co-founder hire someone to make the training.
Then that frees up my time, my co-founders, time and only takes financial resources to accomplish.
What I want to achieve, is a scenario where I can give staff KPIs and objectives, and they are enabled to hire and manage people who can meet these objectives. Independently without my help required.
They give feedback, and I have a system for feedback to internal improvements can be made based on staff feedback.
Without it being unfiltered, it’s structured and organised so people can’t just get unlimited help/training/whatever from me.
Where they should be able to take actions, iterate, learn, improve, and act as independent thinking people who can achieve objectives themselves. Or within a system where it’s not all tied directly to me.
E.g. I have direct reports going to me.
But they have direct reports who go to them.
Previously I had a system where I did this, but then staff at the bottom of the hierarchy would ask their managers questions, and the managers wouldn’t know the answer so would then ask me the questions, and so jumping over the managers and making me deal with everything.
Whereas I want to build a system where people can make business progress in their specific area, independently without everything going to the CEO. Only important/urgent things are feedbacked to the CEO.
This way I believe much faster progress can happen.
Because I won’t be bogged down by exponentially growing problems.
Like with how it works in any successful organisation.
Tim Cook has only a handful of direct reports. Who each only have a handful of direct reports. And so on.
He’s making the most important decisions, dealing with what’s most important and strategic, with top authority, dealing with everything as a birds eye view, but not doing every employee’s job for them, teaching every employee how to do their job. Picking up the pieces after every employee misses their deadlines, doesn’t do their work, gives excuses, does poor work that doesn’t help the company.
Even in any successful organisation. Each unit/person is making their own decisions, taking their own action, learning from it, practicing themself at improving, gaining their own experience, not all relying on 1 person, every single person in the organisation, just for them to do their job.
In successful organisations, people at every level experience new problems all the time, and don’t need to contact the #1 person at the top just to deal with it.
They come up with a solution and go for it. And iterate. Learn, try to do something better next time. And there’s a constant learning/feedback process going on across the organisation which everyone takes part in, not just 1 person doing every part for everyone.
I believe this structure of modelling what actually successful organisations do is the correct way. Because they’re successful for a reason.
Not this ‘hustle grindset’ BS in the startup/business world where lots of information seems to be saying the wrong thing. It just makes no sense to make every single person 100% reliant on you for them to do their job.
Anyway so I’m thinking about what I should do with my time.
What I want to do, is tell my co-founder what to do, which involves hiring and managing people who do things that move the needle forward in the business, as defined by me, and some of those people also hire and manage people. To have an exponentially growing system of people growing the organisation. And a communication and feedback and learning system and autonomy within the system itself so it can take action, learn, grow, thrive. As a system within itself.
I believe if hypothetically, I did everything myself, then it takes about 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential, and 5% of the time it does. So if I do everything myself, I believe it will take me 10 years to get a business off the ground.
But if I utilise my money and time more efficiently, I can have as many people working on each part involved in validating these businesses as possible.
I don’t know if that is lazy or smart.
I believe it’s both. But mostly smart. Because I believe I can convince, hire, organise, manage people to either work on equity deals or pay in a way where businesses can realistically bring in profit.
My co-founder does very little of what I ask him to do.
And he wants me to be doing individual things.
He objectively is financially and intelligently very poor and has very minimal skills or experience.
Not to be offensive. Just to paint a picture. So since there is conflicting information everywhere in the business world and you need to choose who to trust, I don’t trust what he believes.
Objectively I am much richer in all these areas than him.
So I used to operate on a democratic system with them. But it’s kind of like, in a vote for president, if you have 80% of the population being easily controlled by the media and being very dumb and easy to sway and manipulate into believing anything, and they vote for things which are objectively dumb and go against what the smartest and objectively most valuable people vote for, I don’t want to be held back by a dumb population having authority or being listened to, if they have a clear, long track record of making very bad decisions.
If you were to take business advice from a homeless person with no experience, money or intellect, or a Fortune 500 CEO, who let’s say objectively has massive experience, money, intellect and success. Then I would probably take what the CEO has to say.
If you had to listen to what a scientist vs 12 year old had to say about a scientific topic, you’d probably want to listen to the scientist who studied the topic and is well respected in their field.
So I believe it would be dumb for both of us, if he made decisions, objectively.
But at the same time it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
The Fortune 500 CEO could be telling you what you want to hear, and could have an incentive to lie to you to send you in the wrong direction with bad business advice so you don’t become competition to them, and the homeless person could be honest.
The scientist could be trying to gain fame and get attention to themself to build their career on a lie and fake experiments whereas the 12 year old could be a science savant.
So it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
If I should listen to him or myself.
Objectively.

1. I believe if I spend time building the business via this logic I’ve described above, it can grow much faster, with unlimited people working on it and performing well, if the necessary improvements are made.
   
2. And I believe if I were to do the individual things necessary to do it, it would take 6 months to ‘validate’ each’s potential. I.e. try everything in that timeframe to make it work, build a good service/product, build good sales process, build good marketing, deal with customers, etc, all on your own.
   

Whereas in the first option, other people could do all these things.
Human development over history has happened due to the input of millions, if not billions of people.
There wasn’t 1 person who did all the work to get Carnegie or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to gain the success they’ve achieved.
They all build an empire off the backs of others.
Did the slave owners do the slave work themselves when they brought slaves to America? No.
Does Elon do all the individual parts necessary to grow the company? No. He leads and controls the people in order to do that.
Does Mark Zuckerberg single handedly get Facebook off the ground? No. There were 10+ people involved. He stole code from others. Who sued him.
All of these people had exponentially growing staff as the company grew, as fuel to grow the company.
So if you have the money and strategy to lead them to success, I believe it surely is possible.
So long story short this is a long rambling piece of writing but I believe there’s very little impact 1 individual person has on the success of a company. Controlling and amassing an army of people who build the company up and contribute to the company sounds more true.
Does 1 person do everything involved in every sports team? No. Each player plays their respective part. Directed by the coach/manager.
Does 1 person do everything involved in musical orchestras? No each musician plays their part. Directed by the conductor.
And so on.
If you can build an exponentially growing team of staff who effectively work together, bring others on, take action to grow the business, learn from mistakes, make improvements, are highly motivated, are led successfully, it can achieve great things. I feel like it’s a delusion that individual people single-handedly grow companies without others.
So what should that person spend their time doing?
Doing all the millions of things necessary to grow the company? Or bring and manage others who some make progress themselves, some bring and manage others, to gain more and more resources to make progress at faster and faster rate.
Do successful people really have only 1 person responsible? No. They have teams of people behind them.
So trying to do the work of 1,000 people as 1 person sounds 1,000x as hard as getting 1,000 people to each do the work of 1 person.
So if you can finance the growth of the company via hiring others.
Let’s assume I can finance this exponential staff growth. Then surely I should do it right?
Like if I were to compete with 1 person trying to grow their business, and I had 1,000+ people, all doing their jobs effectively, being organised, working as a system not all relying on me, the competition where it’s 1 staff member on average would get beaten.
And surely any excuse you could give, I could just hire someone to solve that excuse.
Like “oh but what roles do you hire these people to do?” well I could hire someone whose role is to figure out what roles they should do. “But what if x?” well I could hire someone whose role is to solve that too. And so on. “Oh but do you have enough money to pay these staff?” Yes. And I can hire people whose job is to bring in money. Whether it’s fundraising, raising from
Did Hitler fight WW2 with 1 person? No. He fought it with millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.
Did Amazon/[insert any Fortune 500 company] get to their size today from having 1 staff member who did everything? No. They had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of staff.
Did any successful mom and pop shop/small business get to their size today from 1 staff member? No. They are one of the largest employers in the USA. Which means they hire a lot of people. Successful mom & pop shops generally have more staff the more successful they are.
Armies generally have more success the bigger and more effective they are.
Companies generally have more success the more staff and more effective the staff are.
So surely we shouldn’t hold ourselves back, to use the example of war, it’s like trying to go to war with others who have hundreds of thousands of people in their army, with just 1 person, yourself. Who is going to win? Them.
How are you going to compete with companies with way more staff, and way more effective staff than you? You would have to become exponentially more effective as 1 person which I just don’t know if it’s realistic.
I think it’s more delusional to believe that 1 person can do as well as 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or more people who are each as effective as that 1 person.
So if you were to win, you would probably want to expand your army/staff and make them more effective, rather than try to make yourself somehow perform on the same level as armies/companies with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just delusional to believe you can beat them in my opinion.
In business, you’d have to be extremely skilled at hundreds of different skills, spend 10+ hours on 100+ individual areas of the business each week to compete with 1,000+ staff who, if performing effectively, would crush you.
This is just my thoughts.
Am I being delusional? Come on…
I just feel like this is the way. Just look at the most successful organisations in history. Was it 1 person?
No, 1 person cannot realistically win a war against 100,000+ people. No matter how good they are. They would need to be top 0.00000000001% in skill in the world at what they’re beating the other side at.
Could 1 footballer beat a football team of 100 people of equal ability than them? No.
Could a company of 1 person outperform a company of 1,000 people? No.
So I believe if I can solve the ability to do this, I can grow a team of unlimited size to conquer and beat any problem thrown at us.
It’s just down to control of people.
Money doesn’t exist.
Even biggest most successful companies in the world mostly didn’t get there on their own.
I believe less than 1% of Fortune 500 Companies were bootstrapped. Or something similar.
And this is what I’m saying.
People in the small business/entrepreneur world tell you you need to have everything yourself.
How are you going to outfinance, outcompete companies on complete other levels without acquiring these resources from others? Just relying on yourself.
How could 1 person get more financing/investment in a company from investors compared to 1,000 of equal ability.
It’s never 1 person ‘beating the world’. Or beating the industry on their own.
Maybe if your aspiration is to be an average business.
“Oh but you should do what is best at each level, and it’s different for each level. Start just by yourself until you get X revenue. THEN hire people”
…..Well if you struggle to get X revenue on your own, how are you ever going to hire others?
The others help you grow the revenue in the first place.
I feel like the small business world is too overreliant on the founder and delusional about the capabilities of 1 person when competing against units 100-1,000x + bigger than them.
Come on.
Anything you want to compete in. In business.
Generally you already have competition.
And if you manage to somehow “spot” something they’ve “missed”, they could just copy you and wipe you out with their massive resources anyway.
In my opinion you need to expand your resources as FAST as possible.
Not this BS “oh wait until you get X profit on your own to hire other people”
Well if you’ve only made good profit on your own as a freelancer, and you’ve spent a lot of years trying to get a business off the ground solo, what are you meant to do?
“Oh just make it work” Great advice.
I just feel like there’s too much delusion into what it actually takes.
In a job or as a freelancer. It’s easier to make $3k-5k/month revenue because you’re only competing against individuals.
But when you try to compete against other businesses to make $3k-5k/month profit, you’re competing against businesses with 10x-100x the people, the money, the resources, the everything, to beat you.
So how are you meant to realistically beat them on your own? Without expanding your resources as quick as possible.
So because of this I believe if 1 person on their own is somehow meant to take a business from $0 to $10k/mo profit, then surely it will happen quicker if more people, of equal ability, are trying to make the business $0 to 10k/mo profit.
To be honest I don’t know what the truth is. This is just what I believe the truth is.
Because I’ve consumed so much wrong information from people acting like they have the correct advice in business.
All Youtube videos, articles, courses, claiming to make you successful in business, when in reality it’s just advice that sounds either easy to say or easy to hear.
Like it’s easy to say as a comment to this post, a response that takes 5 seconds to write, like the first thing that comes to your mind, like “just figure it out on your own”. But that’s not necessarily the truth, it’s just easy for you to say as a commenter. Comments aren’t necessarily the truth.
And on the other side business advice is easy to hear. Like “work on your own, make $1m/month, move to X country, live the life, working 2hours/day” which is just pure delusion. And most of the time the content/advice’s purpose is to benefit the business who made it, not the receiver of the advice. Because it’s selling a course or they have ad sense so they just want maximum engagement and views.
And anyone who is successful in business doesn’t need to give any advice. Because they’re applying the advice. Not giving it. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos etc have no strong incentive trying to help others get to their level because they could just make an extra $10M-100M from spending the same time/energy/resources giving advice into growing their business.
They’re never gonna have advice that would help you beat them because otherwise they would’ve applied it themself.
And they are actually incentivized to not want others to truly succeed. Because it means more competition for them and less success for them.
So 99%+ of info online just seems like it’s not true.
I’m trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.
Honestly though it’s difficult to even trust what anyone says in business. Any advice or feedback. For the reasons given.
Because 99% of feedback is either from people who haven’t truly grown a successful business, or it’s not related to you, or it involved luck, or it’s just like a motivational quote they tell you, or it’s a snarky comment they tell you.
It’s only helpful to them. And you are actually their customer or viewer or their entertainment. Not a successful business yourself. Because it’s just all misinformation that all contradicts with the truth.
So not even sure if it’s worth trying to get advice or if it’s all just pointless, just to figure it out myself from experience, trial and error and learning from my own thinking than relying on any other thinking.
Anyway do you think this is just crazy and I’m going crazy or is there any truth to what I’m saying?
Let me know your brutal honest feedback

This might be a slightly philosophical post. But the aim is to get to the bottom of what you should be truly doing. To truly get the most results.
There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of conflicting information online about how to do this.
“Do stuff that moves the needle forward”
“Do stuff that brings in revenue”
What does this truly mean though. And is it even the right thing. That’s the purpose of this post, to uncover.
When I’ve spent my time on actual needle-moving forward things, like taking business from 0 to revenue, doing all offer development, operations, sales process, marketing myself, it generally has taken me about 6 months to fully ‘try out’ a business idea I’ve had.
Most times it hasn’t worked.
Either it wasn’t profitable. Or there was a big problem somewhere.
I believe fundamentally it’s because I’m moving too slow.
Because it usually takes me around 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential.
When you haven’t sold it or developed expertise in it yourself yet.
And I would say about 5% of the time it does work.
So if it takes 6 months and only 5% of the time it works (where you bring in revenue, no major issues), and each time it doesn’t work you try a new variation of it or something new based on what you learned, then it might take 10 years of trying different things to get the business to work.
Which sounds like it takes way too long.
So I thought about how the top companies move much quicker.
What separates them and my strategy.
And realized they simply had much more people on their team.
If you think about any successful organization who has achieved great things, and is world-leading, usually there is not 1 person on the team.
There seems to be a correlation between number of people on the team and speed of progress they can make in business.
Which goes against what most conventional startup wisdom tells you, most small business content creators etc all tell you to do it all yourself.
Which I’ve done for quite a few years and it’s gone so slowly in terms of overall progress.
If you should ‘do everything yourself’ then most Fortune 500 companies would’ve had single founders, and 1 person on their team. But the vast majority of successful Fortune 500 companies had co-founders.
And most successful businesses I know of, had co-founders.
And as they succeeded, they got more people on the team, and these people helped bring more success, then they brought more people.
Obviously there can be bad staff and not everyone contributes to the success of the company.
But I do believe, based on this, and observing top companies, that generally the more successful they are, the more people were involved with bringing about the success.
Which completely contradicts most information given to startups about ‘lone wolf’, ‘go it alone’. If that were true, Google would have 1 employee. Apple would have 1 employee.
And they would have never gotten off the ground.
Anyway, I may not have explained this perfectly but I do strongly believe the more & higher quality people are working together on something, the stats show these companies tend to do better, and successful companies you see often have more people than less working on them.
From the very beginning and now.
Regardless of the stage they were at.
So going based off this information, that the more people, the better, I have hired 30+ different people for different roles. Over the past few years. Across different businesses. To help speed up the progress in different areas.
From marketing roles, sales process roles, web development, app development, customer service, delivery of services.
And I would say there have been maybe 1 or 2 of them where I was actually happy with the result.
Most times, I would hire someone to do a job, and they didn’t do the job well, despite saying they were experienced.
And showing past examples of their work. And telling me everything I wanted to hear about how good they were.
It would often be that they would end up performing badly in the KPIs I set for them, giving many excuses, asking for help/questions/not solving anything on their own.
And just so many other problems. Like when there were multiple people at the same time on a team, working on the same project, they would blame each other and no one took responsibility despite clear responsibilities.
All telling me how other staff were bad and they were good, but getting conflicting info from all staff where they blame each other for everything so it’s difficult to know who to trust and who is being truthful.
Oftentimes not being reliable or doing what they were clearly asked to do.
Oftentimes trying to outsource the work I game them, to other people and not caring about the quality.
At my expense.
So I lost lots of clients, had low performing areas in the areas I hired for a lot of the time.
To be fair, things happened faster the more people there were.
But they often needed much more from me than they were contributing.
Like they always wanted to get paid more, for doing less work, weren’t reliable, did low quality work, didn’t hit KPIs, missed clear deadlines, always gave excuses, blamed others/external things, always asking how “I” wanted their job to be done, to the point where I was having to literally tell them every single thing to do and become an expert at their job myself, and show them how to do what they were put there to do, or do it myself, and still get a low quality result from them.
Anyway, the list goes on in all the problems I have experienced hiring people.
It really seems like a minefield.
But there were 1-2 people who did actually do well, who were responsive, who did what they committed to do, who hit deadlines, who did what they were asked, who didn’t give excuses. Who were actually honest hard workers who figured out how to solve problems and actually do the job that was asked from them.
Because of the amount of people I hired and the very low % of people who seemed to do their job well, it made me think that I am probably the problem here. If so many people are doing a bad job and not doing what they were actually hired to do. When most other companies seem to succeed at hiring people.
Then it must be a problem with myself and how I am hiring and managing them.
So it makes me think I need to level up in how I hire and manage people.
I’ve tried lots of different businesses and variations of them and some have done okay, some have not.
Mainly the most success I’ve had is in my own freelancing, where I don’t have other people on my team.
Because it’s kind of turned into a headache working with others. Who just seem to have mostly never been able to deliver what they promised without it becoming pointless to hire them in the first place with all the work I’m doing on their behalf and trying to pick up after all the problems and failures they’ve done.
So I’m not sure exactly what to spend my time and resources on.
I have money saved up from freelancing.
Where I can continue to hire people.
But I do feel I’ve had many many bad experiences.
And I believe it’s mostly my fault. Maybe my training, my hiring, my management, at places along the line I’ve not done it well enough.
I’ve tried to make improvements each time but it has kind of seemed like luck to get people who do actually do their job well.
I genuinely want to hire people and succeed in this.
Because if I can successfully work with people to achieve outcomes, rather than relying only on myself, I can build a real business and not just do freelancing.
In freelancing, I was able to make $3k-5k/month but it was very stressful and I hated speaking with clients, and was constantly stressed.
I generally really don’t like socialising with people. Including clients and staff.
And staff often try to get me to socialise unnecessarily so they can avoid doing their job, and pull me away from mine.
So trying to make it work.
I want to make it work with hiring people because if I can do this, I can make 10x-100x-1000x faster progress with other people on the same team.
But I do have a very bad track record so far. So it’s kind of painful returning to it and continuing to have bad experiences.
But at the same time I know it’s me who’s probably at fault because there can’t be this many bad people I’ve hired and it surely can’t be this bad for everyone.
I think the reason is that I’ve been better at managing myself and doing things successfully solo throughout my life.
Like I’ve achieved very good things in solo sports, in academia, and in many areas that don’t require a team, but often become frustrated working in a team.
But I don’t want my business success to be limited to 1 person.
So I truly want to make it work in improving my ability to manage (ideally a large amount of) people in a way where they can actually deliver and it work well.
Because I was capped in freelancing to making $3k-5k/month because I couldn’t take on more clients because I was undercharging and overdelivering and couldn’t handle more due to being massively stressed out and hating it. I was able to work with less clients at times and charge higher, but they never wanted me to ‘outsource’ my work to others or bring on a team, and I felt bad about it because had bad experiences where I had felt like I let clients down, and oftentimes they told me they had hired me because of me, and not wanted me to ‘outsource’ the work.
But I want to make it work.
Building a real business with a team. Not just doing freelancing and relying just on myself.
So I have time and money and resources to put into this.
I have 1 staff member currently who is unproductive. But we have an equity deal so it doesn’t cost me money for them to perform. But costs me lots of time and their performance is extremely weak. Don’t even want to go into detail, but it’s a nightmare. Their performance is about 1/10 but I believe I can raise their performance if I improve my ability to raise their performance.
Anyway. I want to build a team, but not sure exactly what activities are best ways to spend my time.
If I am physically making improvements, I feel I am slowing down the business progress.
Whereas I want to hire and manage people.
I’ve built training so that this co-founder is able to hire people. And these people can use the same training to hire people.
But I don’t currently have training to enable them to manage people.
My fear is that without training, people just ask unlimited questions on how to do something in their role and it becomes pointless to have hired them because I have to do everything they should have done to do it, so they basically just become a robot following very specific instructions. Rather than a human being who can achieve things independently.
So for example, if I made this training, it would take up all my time, whereas I have savings I’ve accumulated from freelancing which I can put into either having the co-founder manage staff, or have the co-founder make management training at the same time to enable more and more staff to hire and manage new staff. To achieve overall objectives and KPIs.
Or I could have the co-founder hire someone to make the training.
Then that frees up my time, my co-founders, time and only takes financial resources to accomplish.
What I want to achieve, is a scenario where I can give staff KPIs and objectives, and they are enabled to hire and manage people who can meet these objectives. Independently without my help required.
They give feedback, and I have a system for feedback to internal improvements can be made based on staff feedback.
Without it being unfiltered, it’s structured and organised so people can’t just get unlimited help/training/whatever from me.
Where they should be able to take actions, iterate, learn, improve, and act as independent thinking people who can achieve objectives themselves. Or within a system where it’s not all tied directly to me.
E.g. I have direct reports going to me.
But they have direct reports who go to them.
Previously I had a system where I did this, but then staff at the bottom of the hierarchy would ask their managers questions, and the managers wouldn’t know the answer so would then ask me the questions, and so jumping over the managers and making me deal with everything.
Whereas I want to build a system where people can make business progress in their specific area, independently without everything going to the CEO. Only important/urgent things are feedbacked to the CEO.
This way I believe much faster progress can happen.
Because I won’t be bogged down by exponentially growing problems.
Like with how it works in any successful organisation.
Tim Cook has only a handful of direct reports. Who each only have a handful of direct reports. And so on.
He’s making the most important decisions, dealing with what’s most important and strategic, with top authority, dealing with everything as a birds eye view, but not doing every employee’s job for them, teaching every employee how to do their job. Picking up the pieces after every employee misses their deadlines, doesn’t do their work, gives excuses, does poor work that doesn’t help the company.
Even in any successful organisation. Each unit/person is making their own decisions, taking their own action, learning from it, practicing themself at improving, gaining their own experience, not all relying on 1 person, every single person in the organisation, just for them to do their job.
In successful organisations, people at every level experience new problems all the time, and don’t need to contact the #1 person at the top just to deal with it.
They come up with a solution and go for it. And iterate. Learn, try to do something better next time. And there’s a constant learning/feedback process going on across the organisation which everyone takes part in, not just 1 person doing every part for everyone.
I believe this structure of modelling what actually successful organisations do is the correct way. Because they’re successful for a reason.
Not this ‘hustle grindset’ BS in the startup/business world where lots of information seems to be saying the wrong thing. It just makes no sense to make every single person 100% reliant on you for them to do their job.
Anyway so I’m thinking about what I should do with my time.
What I want to do, is tell my co-founder what to do, which involves hiring and managing people who do things that move the needle forward in the business, as defined by me, and some of those people also hire and manage people. To have an exponentially growing system of people growing the organisation. And a communication and feedback and learning system and autonomy within the system itself so it can take action, learn, grow, thrive. As a system within itself.
I believe if hypothetically, I did everything myself, then it takes about 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential, and 5% of the time it does. So if I do everything myself, I believe it will take me 10 years to get a business off the ground.
But if I utilise my money and time more efficiently, I can have as many people working on each part involved in validating these businesses as possible.
I don’t know if that is lazy or smart.
I believe it’s both. But mostly smart. Because I believe I can convince, hire, organise, manage people to either work on equity deals or pay in a way where businesses can realistically bring in profit.
My co-founder does very little of what I ask him to do.
And he wants me to be doing individual things.
He objectively is financially and intelligently very poor and has very minimal skills or experience.
Not to be offensive. Just to paint a picture. So since there is conflicting information everywhere in the business world and you need to choose who to trust, I don’t trust what he believes.
Objectively I am much richer in all these areas than him.
So I used to operate on a democratic system with them. But it’s kind of like, in a vote for president, if you have 80% of the population being easily controlled by the media and being very dumb and easy to sway and manipulate into believing anything, and they vote for things which are objectively dumb and go against what the smartest and objectively most valuable people vote for, I don’t want to be held back by a dumb population having authority or being listened to, if they have a clear, long track record of making very bad decisions.
If you were to take business advice from a homeless person with no experience, money or intellect, or a Fortune 500 CEO, who let’s say objectively has massive experience, money, intellect and success. Then I would probably take what the CEO has to say.
If you had to listen to what a scientist vs 12 year old had to say about a scientific topic, you’d probably want to listen to the scientist who studied the topic and is well respected in their field.
So I believe it would be dumb for both of us, if he made decisions, objectively.
But at the same time it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
The Fortune 500 CEO could be telling you what you want to hear, and could have an incentive to lie to you to send you in the wrong direction with bad business advice so you don’t become competition to them, and the homeless person could be honest.
The scientist could be trying to gain fame and get attention to themself to build their career on a lie and fake experiments whereas the 12 year old could be a science savant.
So it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
If I should listen to him or myself.
Objectively.

1. I believe if I spend time building the business via this logic I’ve described above, it can grow much faster, with unlimited people working on it and performing well, if the necessary improvements are made.
   
2. And I believe if I were to do the individual things necessary to do it, it would take 6 months to ‘validate’ each’s potential. I.e. try everything in that timeframe to make it work, build a good service/product, build good sales process, build good marketing, deal with customers, etc, all on your own.
   

Whereas in the first option, other people could do all these things.
Human development over history has happened due to the input of millions, if not billions of people.
There wasn’t 1 person who did all the work to get Carnegie or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to gain the success they’ve achieved.
They all build an empire off the backs of others.
Did the slave owners do the slave work themselves when they brought slaves to America? No.
Does Elon do all the individual parts necessary to grow the company? No. He leads and controls the people in order to do that.
Does Mark Zuckerberg single handedly get Facebook off the ground? No. There were 10+ people involved. He stole code from others. Who sued him.
All of these people had exponentially growing staff as the company grew, as fuel to grow the company.
So if you have the money and strategy to lead them to success, I believe it surely is possible.
So long story short this is a long rambling piece of writing but I believe there’s very little impact 1 individual person has on the success of a company. Controlling and amassing an army of people who build the company up and contribute to the company sounds more true.
Does 1 person do everything involved in every sports team? No. Each player plays their respective part. Directed by the coach/manager.
Does 1 person do everything involved in musical orchestras? No each musician plays their part. Directed by the conductor.
And so on.
If you can build an exponentially growing team of staff who effectively work together, bring others on, take action to grow the business, learn from mistakes, make improvements, are highly motivated, are led successfully, it can achieve great things. I feel like it’s a delusion that individual people single-handedly grow companies without others.
So what should that person spend their time doing?
Doing all the millions of things necessary to grow the company? Or bring and manage others who some make progress themselves, some bring and manage others, to gain more and more resources to make progress at faster and faster rate.
Do successful people really have only 1 person responsible? No. They have teams of people behind them.
So trying to do the work of 1,000 people as 1 person sounds 1,000x as hard as getting 1,000 people to each do the work of 1 person.
So if you can finance the growth of the company via hiring others.
Let’s assume I can finance this exponential staff growth. Then surely I should do it right?
Like if I were to compete with 1 person trying to grow their business, and I had 1,000+ people, all doing their jobs effectively, being organised, working as a system not all relying on me, the competition where it’s 1 staff member on average would get beaten.
And surely any excuse you could give, I could just hire someone to solve that excuse.
Like “oh but what roles do you hire these people to do?” well I could hire someone whose role is to figure out what roles they should do. “But what if x?” well I could hire someone whose role is to solve that too. And so on. “Oh but do you have enough money to pay these staff?” Yes. And I can hire people whose job is to bring in money. Whether it’s fundraising, raising from
Did Hitler fight WW2 with 1 person? No. He fought it with millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.
Did Amazon/[insert any Fortune 500 company] get to their size today from having 1 staff member who did everything? No. They had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of staff.
Did any successful mom and pop shop/small business get to their size today from 1 staff member? No. They are one of the largest employers in the USA. Which means they hire a lot of people. Successful mom & pop shops generally have more staff the more successful they are.
Armies generally have more success the bigger and more effective they are.
Companies generally have more success the more staff and more effective the staff are.
So surely we shouldn’t hold ourselves back, to use the example of war, it’s like trying to go to war with others who have hundreds of thousands of people in their army, with just 1 person, yourself. Who is going to win? Them.
How are you going to compete with companies with way more staff, and way more effective staff than you? You would have to become exponentially more effective as 1 person which I just don’t know if it’s realistic.
I think it’s more delusional to believe that 1 person can do as well as 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or more people who are each as effective as that 1 person.
So if you were to win, you would probably want to expand your army/staff and make them more effective, rather than try to make yourself somehow perform on the same level as armies/companies with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just delusional to believe you can beat them in my opinion.
In business, you’d have to be extremely skilled at hundreds of different skills, spend 10+ hours on 100+ individual areas of the business each week to compete with 1,000+ staff who, if performing effectively, would crush you.
This is just my thoughts.
Am I being delusional? Come on…
I just feel like this is the way. Just look at the most successful organisations in history. Was it 1 person?
No, 1 person cannot realistically win a war against 100,000+ people. No matter how good they are. They would need to be top 0.00000000001% in skill in the world at what they’re beating the other side at.
Could 1 footballer beat a football team of 100 people of equal ability than them? No.
Could a company of 1 person outperform a company of 1,000 people? No.
So I believe if I can solve the ability to do this, I can grow a team of unlimited size to conquer and beat any problem thrown at us.
It’s just down to control of people.
Money doesn’t exist.
Even biggest most successful companies in the world mostly didn’t get there on their own.
I believe less than 1% of Fortune 500 Companies were bootstrapped. Or something similar.
And this is what I’m saying.
People in the small business/entrepreneur world tell you you need to have everything yourself.
How are you going to outfinance, outcompete companies on complete other levels without acquiring these resources from others? Just relying on yourself.
How could 1 person get more financing/investment in a company from investors compared to 1,000 of equal ability.
It’s never 1 person ‘beating the world’. Or beating the industry on their own.
Maybe if your aspiration is to be an average business.
“Oh but you should do what is best at each level, and it’s different for each level. Start just by yourself until you get X revenue. THEN hire people”
…..Well if you struggle to get X revenue on your own, how are you ever going to hire others?
The others help you grow the revenue in the first place.
I feel like the small business world is too overreliant on the founder and delusional about the capabilities of 1 person when competing against units 100-1,000x + bigger than them.
Come on.
Anything you want to compete in. In business.
Generally you already have competition.
And if you manage to somehow “spot” something they’ve “missed”, they could just copy you and wipe you out with their massive resources anyway.
In my opinion you need to expand your resources as FAST as possible.
Not this BS “oh wait until you get X profit on your own to hire other people”
Well if you’ve only made good profit on your own as a freelancer, and you’ve spent a lot of years trying to get a business off the ground solo, what are you meant to do?
“Oh just make it work” Great advice.
I just feel like there’s too much delusion into what it actually takes.
In a job or as a freelancer. It’s easier to make $3k-5k/month revenue because you’re only competing against individuals.
But when you try to compete against other businesses to make $3k-5k/month profit, you’re competing against businesses with 10x-100x the people, the money, the resources, the everything, to beat you.
So how are you meant to realistically beat them on your own? Without expanding your resources as quick as possible.
So because of this I believe if 1 person on their own is somehow meant to take a business from $0 to $10k/mo profit, then surely it will happen quicker if more people, of equal ability, are trying to make the business $0 to 10k/mo profit.
To be honest I don’t know what the truth is. This is just what I believe the truth is.
Because I’ve consumed so much wrong information from people acting like they have the correct advice in business.
All Youtube videos, articles, courses, claiming to make you successful in business, when in reality it’s just advice that sounds either easy to say or easy to hear.
Like it’s easy to say as a comment to this post, a response that takes 5 seconds to write, like the first thing that comes to your mind, like “just figure it out on your own”. But that’s not necessarily the truth, it’s just easy for you to say as a commenter. Comments aren’t necessarily the truth.
And on the other side business advice is easy to hear. Like “work on your own, make $1m/month, move to X country, live the life, working 2hours/day” which is just pure delusion. And most of the time the content/advice’s purpose is to benefit the business who made it, not the receiver of the advice. Because it’s selling a course or they have ad sense so they just want maximum engagement and views.
And anyone who is successful in business doesn’t need to give any advice. Because they’re applying the advice. Not giving it. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos etc have no strong incentive trying to help others get to their level because they could just make an extra $10M-100M from spending the same time/energy/resources giving advice into growing their business.
They’re never gonna have advice that would help you beat them because otherwise they would’ve applied it themself.
And they are actually incentivized to not want others to truly succeed. Because it means more competition for them and less success for them.
So 99%+ of info online just seems like it’s not true.
I’m trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.
Honestly though it’s difficult to even trust what anyone says in business. Any advice or feedback. For the reasons given.
Because 99% of feedback is either from people who haven’t truly grown a successful business, or it’s not related to you, or it involved luck, or it’s just like a motivational quote they tell you, or it’s a snarky comment they tell you.
It’s only helpful to them. And you are actually their customer or viewer or their entertainment. Not a successful business yourself. Because it’s just all misinformation that all contradicts with the truth.
So not even sure if it’s worth trying to get advice or if it’s all just pointless, just to figure it out myself from experience, trial and error and learning from my own thinking than relying on any other thinking.
Anyway do you think this is just crazy and I’m going crazy or is there any truth to what I’m saying?
Let me know your brutal honest feedback

TLDR; Did / Do any of you feel guilty for talking to / seeing other people after the seperation? Like your a bad parent?

Thanks.

Backstory

So been together for 15 years. Five years ago we had our first child. He's 5. Two and a half years later we had twins.
I have ADHD but I think the majority of our disagreements are normal marital problems. On top of that though, I suspect she has PMDD and / or even anxiety, depression, or some other thing on top of that.
For the entire time we've been together, it's been like mood roller coasters. She'll alternate between anxious / nesting to "depressed" to "normal" with the cycles lasting from a few days to a week at a time. I tried to get her to go to counseling and 5 years ago right before our son was born, I got her to go to 3 marriage counseling sessions, to which she decided after the third they were not needed bc "we can just talk".
Anytime there is a fight, I try to talk to her, even if i dont feel I was wrong, I apologize at least for hurting her feelings, I genuinely listen and try to make improvments. She almost never apologizes, especially for larger blow ups or mean things. To those she just says, we'll that's how I was feeling at the time.
Over the last 5 years, she's told me she doesnt love me anymore, doesnt respect me anymore, doesnt trust me, is only with me for the kids, when the kids are bigger she's gone, she doesnt care how my needs are met as long as it's not her meeting them. She'll "always love me as our children's father".
I've asked her multiple times to go to counseling or to get her hormones checked, which only infuriates her, no matter how delicately, empathetically, ect. I try to be when broaching the subject.
I've been going to counseling myself and even started taking Vyvanse to help with ADHD-ness ( which I really dont think is a major part of the issues ). Basically everything I can do.
Her reply is no need for her to get her hormones checked bc it wont fix the fundamental problems of she doesnt love or respect me. Also she says "it cant be fixed" which she's been saying for ~5years too.
Close friends and neighbords have talked to her suggesting therapy or hormone checks / lexapro ect to which she says she just needs a glass of wine and shes better.
She's Eastern European so I think there's some therapy stigma there.
She's a great mom to the boys but I dont feel like she saves any energy, affection or anything for me other than irratation at this point.
She's suggested we stay as domestic partners and that she wants to seperate but doesnt want to see anyone else herself.
We've talked about what to do with the house and assets and now it's just a matter of when we sort out the paperwork.
At this point, it's been so lonley so long, I just want to meet someone to laugh with, have fun with, is happy to hear from me and vice versa, and yes some physical affection.
I feel guilty for wanting this stuff for myself, like it means if I trade anytime for myself im not a good dad. Im with the boys everyday all week since we still live together. I just live in another part of the house. I moved into my boys room and sleep with my oldest soon for the short term. I told him mommy kicks in bed haha.
We have a fully seperate aparment I plan on taking so I can be there with the kids, present, a good dad, put them to bed at night, and we can individually have our own lives.
It's been about 10 days now. My HRV has jumped 20 points. I guess it's because im not living under that stress as much ( different stress I guess ), focusing on myself, my boys, working out, reading.

Taijai here, im a 25 year old transman and i have been in therapy for a while. A topic that she has me thinking about is where are the ah ha moments that i missed or didn’t quite get.
Growing up me and my cousin nick were inseparable. We did everything together and its funny because he allowed me the space to be me without even noticing it. He knew i wasnt a girly girl at all so when family would try to stuff me into dresses hed have a backpack ready. Or when we would go out it just felt right to be with the boys yanno. Natural, we talked about games, women, skateboarding etc. I dressed like this so much to where my family was like your not a guy. I just would ignore and say I’m me. From experimenting with my cousins wardrobe, i was able to find out more about myself. I figured out my likes and dislikes etc.
Another moment that has me questioning if this was my moment or do others do this to. So i knew as a girl that i had to use the bathroom sitting down and i hated it. I wanted to be like the guys stand up and hold them jewels to shoot 😂 but i didnt have the parts so i adjusted. I practiced and practiced and like a true man, i to sometimes get a dribble on the leg bladder be tryna release😂 My question is has anyone else taught themselves to stp with there original parts? I have been doing it so long its a habit. Was this my trans delusion?

Hi all, i don’t post very much but I have been a sole lurker of Reddit and this group for years. The reason I’m posting now is because yesterday I did a physical with my doctor and something she said to me has been sticking with me in a bad sense since then.
A bit of background, I’m 24, 5’3, and currently 353(my starting weight was 361). I grew up pretty athletic my entire life, but when I was 19 I had experienced something very traumatic and that put me into a depressive state for literal years, and I just let what happened to me consume my life and just let things get very bad. However, I have been in therapy for the past year, and it has been a lot of working but very worth it and I had started the journey of turning my life around a few months ago, but last month on the 23rd, I decided it was time to tackle my weight. So, I got referred to a dietitian who I will be seeing regularly, I’ve started walking 10,000 steps a day along with going to the gym to strength train, and of course eating in a caloric deficit, while tracking everything. It’s only been about a month now but I am currently down about 7 pounds. I thought that I was doing okay. Until I had my physical done yesterday.
At the appointment my doctor told me that I needed to lose weight, when I showed her my tracking note book, that has my starting weight, current weight, the amount of water I’m drinking, amount of calories consumed each day(and from what foods), and my Apple fitness app that tracks my steps(I walk 10,000+ steps a day). She looked at me and stated, “well even with all of this, you’re still not doing enough because with how obese you are if you were truly doing all of this, the pounds should be shedding off.” In the moment I didn’t know what to say, I just felt tears fill my eyes because I’m trying all that I can and I thought I was doing well but I just at this point feel discouraged about it now and I don’t want to give up, so is there more I should be doing?

Back in January of this year I was wrestling and knee got bent in all sorts of weird way and let it be for a while while continuing to wrestle on it with moderate pain. about 4 months later was my surgery date( April 16). Surgeon went in to do what he thought would be a small meniscectomy but as he started realized that it had completely torn and he ended up repairing it. As of now i am About 5 Weeks post op and have regained almost all of my range of motion but still have not walked at all. I’ve been in physical therapy for about 2 weeks now and i start walking next week. Left leg is still super weak though. Any tips? Thank you

As a collection of like minded individuals we must start completely ignoring the existence of the masses (I.E women, inbreds). And not in a superficial way, we shouldn’t disagree with them, we shouldn’t look at them and we certainly shouldn’t talk to them. They simply shouldn’t have any existence within our minds and then, I am convinced of this, “they” will simply cease to exist.
I am not perfect, perfection is something we must move toward. But because I am not perfect I feel myself ponder the idiocy of others. Or trying to explain my position to women. I am going to stop this. I don’t need to explain myself any more.
For a long time I DIDN’T believe truth and objectivity was possible. Clarity was an impossibility.
You don’t believe in truth? you don’t know what truth is? You cannot define truth? questions like this plagued my mind for hours, teachers in school affirmed these thoughts. I was young and Impressionable. I’m not perfect.
You can define truth. Ignore the intellectualism, ignore the thoughts of others, ignore your environment. You are truth, everything you believe is the truth. The world and people around you demand you to view things through endless layers of nuance, you don’t need it. People believe that a greater depth of understanding is equal to intelligence. That being an “expert” is a good thing. It is not, you will only yearn for more. I have yet to meet a professional or expert I respect, they are shackled to their field of knowledge. Unable or unwilling to view things from a broader more truthful perspective.
Looking at things through the lens of collective groups or definitions is also reductive. The “haves” and “have nots” are arbitrary distinction. I can harp on for hours about how the modern age strips meaning from us, refusing to allow us to view things from our own perspective. Being the critic is easy, finding an alternative is hard. That is what my father says.
So here is alternative, lift weights and dominate others. Physically and mentally. Your will is the most important thing, disregard morals, they box you in. Others will try and box you in, why? You ask, I say, disregard their motives. It is not important to know others unless you, personally, deem them of value.
These concepts; equality, post modernity, ideas, consciousness. Waste of time. Strive for excellence, strive for intelligence. They hate that I disagree, they say I am morally bankrupt, they say I live a deeply sad life. Either are true, I feel stronger, I’m happier than ever. What you feel is important, your emotions are important. Base your morals off your emotions.
They created industrial war, it is no longer an art. The 20th century told us one thing, humans want to kill each and strip each other from history. Everything is driven by profit, stand against profit for it is how they control you, shackle you to community. To the collective. Money and success is not valued by the number you have in your bank account. Actually the number in your bank account is directly correlated to have much of yourself you’ve given away. How you have betrayed yourself. Given in.
Success is happiness, and I am happy.
David foster Wallace once said that
“If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on”
once I heard this quote I’d decided to value nothing. But I think I misunderstood the idea behind Wallace’s words. I am not perfect. Maybe you shouldn’t worship anything. Or maybe you should worship yourself, in totality. For you, the individual, is already perfect. I don’t agree with Wallace on everything, but unlike the people today he thought about things. Had original ideas, not the endless pseudo-intellectual rehashing and slight modification of ideas that have floated through the collective ethos for years. You already know everything you need to know to live this very moment, and that is all that matters.
But the truth is I want it all, yet I am told that I shouldn’t do that. Accept my weakness, let go of my childlike desires. They say; “truth is unobtainable and perfection is unobtainable”. And do you know who says that, ugly people. They shouldn’t have an opinion anyway.