This is a pretty fascinating thread on /SecondLife where community members answer the question, "How has Second Life helped you sharpen for any real life experiences?"
The examples given range from the funny:
Fashion. I used to dress well, then during lockdown started dressing like a trash pile, but dressing up my avi made me want to get my nice things back out in RL too. – greeneyedwench
To the poignant:
I started playing SL in 2004. 6 years later I was in Afghanistan and another year and a half after that. SL put me in contact with fellow Vets and helped me relearn how to adjust to Civilian life and how to cull my social anxiety. – HellHoundActual
Several more of my favorites after the break:
I got a job ten years ago which require me working with oversea offices all the time. SL definitely helped me in remote communication and how to develop working relationships and friendship virtually. – nd1online
Accepting my real life body after realizing how much more amazing my avatar looks with the skin imperfections from Izzies. People would comment on the stretch marks, guys made comments about how soft it looked. It definitely made me realize that those things that make us look human, the things that Instagram filters try to remove for us, are actually attractive to real people. – Learach
I started playing SL in my early 20s. Many of my friends are older women who give advice on my RL issues. Two of which I invited to my RL wedding 15 years later. – Extension_Prune3707
Learning to surf in SL gave me the confidence to take surfing lessons in RL. – After-Try-1443
Still more here. While many of them also happen in other virtual worlds, others are notably pretty unique to Second Life in particular: For instance, it's rare for a virtual world to have such a large active user base of older users (40s and above).
Image via "West Shaka Photographs Second Life's Surfer Community"
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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