prior to these pms he was talking about how he didn't have any willpower and motivation. I tried saying simply that it's all in his head, then we had this

conversation.

lightning_po - Today at 1:06 PM
I have been homeless, I have been a drug addict of MANY different drugs
I've been in mental hospitals, military schools, every psych med you can imagine
I've grown up with a distant, alcoholic father and a mother with her own issues. most of my family on my dad's side are drunks
most of the family on my mother's side are super controlling religious people
I can go into detail on any of that, that's just a brief overview
but the willpower thing is a big part of it
I used to have too much of it to the point where i thought i was always right no matter what
then eventually it was broken down to nothing
and i rebuilt it to the point of reason
this is a safe place, no matter what you tell me, I'll keep it between us. I'm also studying to be a therapist and I have several hundred hours of field experience
but i can't help you if you don't tell me anything

Targz - Today at 1:17 PM
That's the thing though. People like you have been through all that stuff and it builds you to learn to deal with things. I was spoiled as a kid and doped up on

every kind of stimulant you could imagine for misdiagnosed adhd therefore leaving me with no understanding of work and reward and a seriously malformed way

of thinking about everything. Adderall at 5 and switched to Ritalin a year later. I was left with no understanding of social skills which I'm only starting to learn

now. I was a fat kid who played minecraft all day every day and have a better coordination in that game than I do in real life. (I can spot ores the second I walk into

a cave in the game but in real life I walk into stuff like crazy). I'm just starting to recover from all of this in the past year when I've been trying to get out but I can't

get my homework done and I just have no motivation to do anything. I have antidepressants but they just make me happier to accept my fate and more energetic

and awake but still not able to carry through with the stuff in my head that wasn't autopilot for me


I started adderall at like age 11, and didn't get off of it till age 15 when i was having pretty major heart issues and behavioral problems that ultimately led to

military school. I also have played minecraft for an insane amount of hours, somewhere between 8,000-11,000 hours (build pics circa 1.3.2 :

http://imgur.com/a/ZKDvE ). I am also socially awkward in real life where I only have a second to think about what to say. On the internet, I have a backspace key

and literally as much time as I want to think about what I'm saying, and that's not always acceptable IRL and I get that. I will absolute say that ages 18-23 are

harder or at least as hard as 14-18. You're still trying to figure out your life, where your place in it is, what you want to do with the remainder of your time on this

planet, who you are really, and why things haven't exactly worked out any better than you think they should have by now.
Imgur
My Builds

I do have a few little nuggets of truth I can share, some pertaining to your ability to control your willpower, some just for life in general.
I stand behind what I said before about your willpower being whatever you make it. I'll even break this down into minecraft metaphors. Willpower is a lot like an

infinite water generator. You can go your whole life just running to the ocean (others and medication) to try and get just a tiny shred of motivation that will help

you through your most recent need. You probably did this at least for a while in the beginning of playing minecraft. Someone taught you how to make a water

generator and you were like "omg that's so easy!" and continued to use them for the remainder of your minecraft career. That's what I hope to achieve by speaking

with you today.
Motivation is a hard thing to aquire and use properly. It might take you a few days (or longer) to want to even read this wall of text I'm typing. That is totally

acceptable. I still have issues with motivation because sometimes it seems that the goal that I am striving for is either too difficult or just straight up impossible.

Sometimes it seems that the goal is fucking stupid to begin with, because someone else set it for me, and it's not really what I want or even care about. Motivation

is important, however. All it really breaks down to is just doing something. You can train your motivation, which is directly linked to your willpower, but easier to

do by accomplishing smaller goals. An example of a smaller goal is just realizing that you did the dishes and that it took motivation to do so. It's not going to be

an overnight process by any means.

Willpower fuels motivation, and motivation fuels action, and action fuels progress. If you want a minecraft metaphor for this, think about a furnace. Willpower is

your coal, the motivation is the reward [XP] you gain from using it. The action actually being accomplished is the furnace that smelts valuable ore that you can use

to create almost anything you need. You still have to feed the furnace with ore so that it actually does something. An empty furnace sitting there not processing

anything is just wasted time. Eventually you no longer care about the XP reward and build an automatic furnace that runs as long as you keep it stocked with fuel

and ores/cobble.

The same is true with life in general. Eventually you get to the point where you no longer need a smaller, short term reward on top of the more important reward.

An example is a small raise in a job when you're aiming for a promotion, and the efficiency of how much is actually being accomplished (progress) is more than

enough reward.

MineCraft mimics life in so many ways. One example I can say in certainty is this:

MineCraft has a really shitty storyline. Aquire gear, use that to aquire better gear, then beat the dragon. If you feel like it, go further than that and fly around like a

god.

Life has a really shitty storyline. Aquire job, use that job to aquire an education to aquire a better job, then get a wife and have some kids, argue for 15 years, get

divorced or fix the marriage and live decently ever after.

But you don't play MineCraft for the story. You play it because you quickly find that it's when you make your own story, and
make your own fun that it is the most rewarding. Look at all the different mods, game modes, and minigames you can play in minecraft.

You can play on a high-end pc with insane graphics mods that make it look photorealistic, or you can play on a 10 year old laptop with the most basic of settings. It

doesn't matter, it's the same game. People are happy to play it and never even give a single fuck about the story at all. They might never even see The End. They

don't care, they have fun with it because they make their own fun. They find people like them to interact and grow with. It's not about "beating the dragon" or

"getting to the end".

 Some people will make a hole in the ground with a chest in it and call it a house and have the time of their life. Other people will have a giant castle made of gold

and diamond blocks and quartz and it'll never be done. It'll never be good enough. They'll always work on it and it will always be a constantly evolving, expanding

project with no end in sight (even though they've beaten the story and killed the dragon like 100 times). Some people will never quite feel like they accomplished

anything untill someone else sees what they've done and says "damn this is awesome! I wish I had this place". That is fine.

Life is not easy. With everything that you can learn to play MineCraft (redstone stuff, every ingredient to every potion and exactly where to get it, crafting recipes,

in depth game mechanics like "water flows exactly 8 in the overworld"). You are never quite done playing MineCraft because it's always throwing new stuff at you.

Whenever you think you finally have everything figured out, and
everything seems to be going perfectly; SUPRISE! New stuff happens that you have to deal with. The same is true about life. You will never learn every single bit of

everying or even yourself, but you can learn a lot about most things.
It is not going to be easy to learn to grow an adapt to having a willpower and motivation, but once you figure it out a little bit, it'll feed into itself like an infinite

loop, or like a water generator, constantly feeding
on itself.

The most successful people are usually the ones that work the hardest OR inheret what they have and only learn of failure when it is too late. That being said,

success is only measured by what importance you give it.
This is true because life is only 10% of what happens and 90% how you react to it. Almost everything that happens in your life is at least partly influenced
by your own descision making. That means you can choose to make
your own luck and learn to appreciate it more greatly when luck does
shine its favor on you.

If you're content to live in a hole with an unguarded chest to store your inexpensive garbage, but you still have fun playing the game
even though you're constantly dealing with rebuilding your base and
regaining the equipment, what is anyone else to say?
As long as you still enjoy playing the game, progress (life) will always be in motion, presenting new challenges to overcome and learn from. When you overcome a

new challenge, you become stronger in some way, whether that be knowledge, mental fortitude (willpower/motivation), or physical stamina.

I apologize for the text wall, but I really do hope that this might give you some insight on your life so that you may learn from it. Whatever you want to be is

already inside you, you just have to be able to identify and embrace the right changes so that you can continue learning valuable lessons and growing as a person.
Please read all this at your own discretion and dm me back whenever you have time. I am always free to talk if I am online, and I love listening to other people's

stories and issues.


Targz - Today at 2:52 PM
Why is everybody so fucked up
Everyone seems to be so fucked up in some way

lightning_po - Today at 2:52 PM
because they choose to be, or don't know any better.
did you read my text wall by chance?

Targz - Today at 2:52 PM
Yeah. Oh shit sorry

lightning_po - Today at 2:53 PM
I apologize for the length, but I feel it was nessescary to say all that.

Targz - Today at 2:53 PM
[I didn't mean to say that you w]ere fucked up

lightning_po - Today at 2:53 PM
I didn't take it that way at all.

Targz - Today at 2:53 PM

K good
Ok*

lightning_po - Today at 2:53 PM
I know you meant just people in general
The best thing you can do is be empathetic and try and treat everyone kindly.
But some people are just dicks.
you gotta accept that part too

Targz - Today at 2:55 PM
Sometimes I feel so little empathy

lightning_po - Today at 2:55 PM
again, sorry if i overwhelmed you with that text wall, I spent a good hour putting my thoughts together for that

Targz - Today at 2:55 PM
I look at someone and see how fucked up they are and I can't look at them the same again

lightning_po - Today at 2:55 PM
define "fucked up"

Targz - Today at 2:56 PM
Like there was this person I was becoming friends with
And I realized how fucked up they must be to have THAT MANY scars on their arms and that they could be unstable and could endanger me
Or fuck with my head
Now I can't look at that person the same and It's destroying out friendship because I've been avoiding them
And I can't turn it off
My thoughts think themselves sometimes

lightning_po - Today at 2:58 PM
Have you ever heard of the stray kitten analogy
Basically its this.
Say you are walking home from work. You are tired and stressed
You find a crying kitten. You walk up to it and pet it. Its friendly and well mannered.
Cutest cat ever.
You go to take it home  but your landlord  is an asshole and wont let you keep it.
You can try to find it a home but nobody wants a cat. [ edit, car to cat ](edited)
You can't have it but Neither can anyone you try to give it to.
you can take it to a shelter, but that won't really do much more than make sure it gets fed for a few months, which you could probably do, but if you leave food

out, the landlord will think you are trying to have a pet and will kick you out. This situation sucks ass and you really want this cat to be safe, happy and healthy.

You can't really do much, but you did try what you could. You have to let the cat go back into the wild. It's painful, but you have to learn to accept that some things

are just out of your control.
while 90% of life is how you react to it, 10% of it is just out of your control.
for the things you cannot control, you've just got to accept that it is what it is and move on.
maybe in 6 months you'll still see a healthy cat running around, having a good time. maybe you won't. It's not up to you, nor is it your responsibility to make sure

that the kitten grew up in a healthy way.
Sometimes things just are what they are.
but you can still give it a good effort and open a single can of tuna to give this cat some kind of help, even if you can't help it forever.

p.s. Some people just want to rush through life as if they were caught in an avalanche and they expect the torrent of life to forcefully push them up the hill as if

they were just along for the ride. In a more realistic sense, life is more like trekking up the snow-covered mountain that could cause an avalanche. It is very tough

to go up and make progress, and sometimes just 1 wrong move can have the torrent of chain reactions that could wipe you off the mountain altogether. If it

doesn't wipe you out completely, it'll still make you lose progress. The moral of the story here is that as long as you're making progress, even slowly, you'll

eventually make it to the top of the mountain, or at least to where you want to be to see that beautiful view of success. Just keep walking forward slowly and

eventually you'll get there.