Part of the difference between your religious and nonreligious friends may be their own attitudes towards self-improvement. To a religious person, a mistake you make is something God wants you to improve, and all of your religious friends will help you make that improvement. To the baseline atheist, it's just a problem, and there is no structure or real "cause" that will make you actually consider changing your behavior. Genuine rationalists, however, should notice that a problem exists, and figure out a way to change it, but it doesn't sound like your friends have this instinct. If, say a group of transhumanists were meeting regularly, and talking about what habits they needed to change and what improvements they needed to make in order to help make the world a better place, that could resolve the problem. However, transhumanists are somewhat few and far between, so finding that group might be difficult. A Less Wrong meetup might be a good place to start, though.