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DeVliegendeHollander comments on Low Hanging fruit for buying a better life - Less Wrong Discussion
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Take a month of martial arts training (aikido, jujitsu, and judo are popular soft styles, Tae Kwon Do and Krav Maga are two very different hard styles (TKD is fun and mostly useless for defense, Krav is super effective for dangerous situations but pretty grueling)).
Join the local swing dancing scene. If you don't have one, try salsa or Argentine Tango.
Take an art course. Start with a beginner class that does a little with lots of different of media types, then take a class focusing on the medium you prefer. Do this even if you feel you are bad at art. I am terrible but I still enjoy working with clay.
Buy an Audible subscription and fill useless hours with audiobooks. This can improve commutes and other boring tasks.
Buy either a stereo Bluetooth headset with playback controls on it, or a small mp3 player such as the Sansa Clip Zip that has easily accessible controls outside your pocket. This advice is mostly relevant if you listen to media a lot. Having playback controls very accessible lowers the activation energy of starting your music/podcast/audiobook.
I recommend boxing. Every martial art tries to simulate a different aspect of real fights, and boxing simulates the speed, intensity and scariness of them by banning kicks and grappling which generally slow down a sparring, at least between beginners. Grappling is a lot like "now stop and think what's next" and kicking is a lot like "wow beware that leg, keep my distance", but if people are only allowed to punch, it is highly intense storm-of-fists experience.
This is also fun, and scary, and also great at building courage and a fighting spirit.
I would say that RPG's of the D&D type are correct about the idea of "level", namely that NOT only different skills exist, but "level" as well, in the sense of a guy who spent a year fighting on a battlefield with a rifle will be also better at an unarmed fist fight as well in a bar. Why? Because of the skills like courage, thinking clear under pressure, this sort of mental hardness. This is what makes a 10th level fighter, not simply weapon or style skil. However, what the RPGs get wrong is that you get XP for fights won. No, in reality, you get XP for every dangerous or dangerous feeling situation you get in. One may say IRL you get Skill Points for hitting a target, but you get real XP only by others attempting to hit you, regardless of whether they succeed of fail. Because only this, the felt danger, trains that warrior's mind stuff. And this why I recommend boxing sparring, this has the most "holy-shit-OMG-MAMAAAA help!" scary moments per minute.
It seems like boxing with gloves (vs bare knuckles) is very bad for your brain.
If you are a professional doing it for 20 years against insanely powerful opponent without head protection, yes. If you spar a not quite full force with people who are not very strong wearing head protection and engage in the occasional amateur match, not. I cannot promise it is completely safe, but the whole number of times force applied * strength of force - Armor Class of the head protection seems to put it into an entirely different ballpark.
I think the dangerous reputation of boxing should be tackled by making head protection mandatory for professionals, just as it is mandatory on amateur matches. Otherwise people think of Ali and get scared away from it even though the difference is as much as driving Nascar / F1 vs. commuting to work.