How to Be Good At Anything

Byjack

There is a realization I have recently been coming to slowly and it’s transforming my life.

It is weird because I’ve known this for a long time – I used to say that in order to master something, you need to focus on what feels uncomfortable (not on what is easy).

I don’t know what the new part of the realization is, but something has changed.

My new mentality is to always focus on what is unknown. For things that are logical (like the selling process) logically figure it out. For things that are artistic, form a vision and idea and feel it out.

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Valorant 23: Hitting Plat

Byjack

It has finally happened. I’ve hit plat in Valorant. A journey that was supposed to take 2-3 months, but instead took a year and two months (14 months).

Blood sweat and tears went into this challenge, and I learned something interesting at each rank.

IRON

Iron was an interesting rank because it was the rank when I was first learning how to use my mouse and keyboard in a game. I had never played a shooter game on the pc, and haven’t played many serious games at all on the PC. 

Getting out of iron was simply learning how not to make extremely basic mistakes such as reloading out in the open, not getting stuck on walls, planting and defusing the bomb.

BRONZE

Bronze was also an interesting rank. I started actually enjoying the game more here since I had a better idea of what was going on. Bronze rank was still stressful because I would get killed out of nowhere all the time.

I don’t really remember what I did to get out of bronze rank, but I think it had something to do with playing off of my util and learning how to check corners where people hide.

SILVER

I was stuck in silver for a long time. Silver was where I learned a lot about aiming and movement and got quite good at it.

What eventually got me out of silver was learning how to preaim angles.

GOLD

Gold is not a very interesting rank, everyone is pretty much like silver but with slightly better util and aim.

However, perhaps the most interesting thing in the whole challenge is how I got out of gold. I got out of gold primarily by getting more confident.

I did this in two ways:

  1. I focused on a few agents and learned how to get reliable value out of their util (Chamber tp locations, Brim lineups, Sova lineups).
  2. I dealt with some of my underlying negative self talk

I hear lots of things that people say about confidence:

“Stay positive”

“Imagine you are the best”

I always thought these ideas were bogus since I always thought confidence was about one thing: Feeling comfortable in your own skin.

But I started to doubt myself when I say professional Valorant coaching advocating (SEN Zellsis) for the “cocky confidence” mentality and I was stuck in silver.

But I think in the end, I was right. In order to be confident, you need to feel safe and at peace. The real question, is HOW?

Here are the main ideas:

  1. In order to be confident, you need to be ok with not being great (not being smart, successful, attractive, etc.)
  2. In order to be ok with those things, you need to process your traumas and limiting beliefs.
  3. In order to process, you must welcome in your limiting beliefs and incorporate it into yourself.

My limiting beliefs were:

  • “If I don’t succeed, I don’t think I’m worth anything”
  • “I need to beat myself up for every mistake and always think I’m worse in order to not mess up”

Simply by saying those things in my head, made me feel clarity every time I started to stress out and I suddenly felt calm. I gave myself permission to continue to berate myself (or not) but simply welcoming these parts in instead of avoiding them (and having them show up as unresolved stress), made me have a clear mentality that made my rise to plat.

I learned I have a huge amount of power, intelligence and creativity that are locked up by stress and fear. Slowing down, focusing on a few things at a time, and embracing my fears allows me to operate at my fullest potential.

What I thought confidence was:

  • Fake it until you make it
  • Cocky
  • Don’t care
  • Aggressive

What confidence actually is:

  • Ok with failing
  • Calm and clear-headed
  • Balanced
  • Trust yourself
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Dancing With Posture and Other Things to Try

Byjack

I just checked out this video from a channel my dance teacher recommended and it’s literally soo good.

Here are some of the concepts I’m taking from this:

  • I need to stand up much straighter and play with the levels more, instead of being hunched and looking at the floor.
  • I need to work on seeing where the movement goes, let the movement keep going, follow where it goes.
  • Start with the most comfortable posture, then develop from there.
  • I always am told to imagine the story but its hard for me, because I’m imagining MYSELF
  • I think what will work for me is imagining the world or space I’m IN (instead of visualizing myself, I visualize an imaginary box I’m in, imaginary walls).
  • I can also try visualizing the “gesture” of the move (kind of like a drawing gesture).

Nothing to add here. Exercises are AMAZING for musicality:

  1. Dance to music with your fingers
  2. Dance to music with very small movements
  3. Dance with full movements

A Taoist Approach to Productivity

Byjack

I’ve been meditating on productivity and I was curious as to a more taoist approach. I’ve come up with a couple of ideas:

  • Make things more empty
    • Pursue each task with the goal of emptiness
      • Focus on one thing at a time and do work to make everything feel empty
    • Look to make your to do list more empty
      • Delete things off the to do list
      • Schedule time sensitive things
      • Clear off small tasks immediately
      • Moving it to tomorrow
  • Reduce the size of mountains
    • Create simple steps to kick off each task
  • Seek balance
    • Seek out more risk when things are stale
    • Seek out more structure when things are too risky

All That Matters Is Now

Byjack

I just made a little discovery about the nature of “should” and regret. What should I do, what should I have done, what is the perfect next move. They are interesting ideas but they can sometimes limit our understanding of the truth.

It doesn’t matter what happened in the past, or what will happen in the future, only how we feel about them now.

That is why everything is about processing feelings and even the permission exercise processes feelings about the future. Nothing matters but now.

It doesn’t even make sense to think about the future and the past because all we can control is the now.

Because nothing matters but the moment, we can process the past, we can process the future, and make our decision from where we are on how to feel the present. We can make decisions from the vantage point of now. We can do things now. We can feel now.

All that Matters is Now

I was scared of the past

Scared of what I might find

I was scared of the future

Scared of what I might do

But the place where I stand right now

With all the things that brought me to this moment

And all the paths that move on from here

Is all that matters

There is nothing I should do

There is only feeling what is

Only discovering

Acting

Understanding

Waiting

Fitness Challenge 4: The Evolution of the Challenge

Byjack

It’s been officially four months since I posted about this challenge, so I think it is safe to say that this challenge is over…well not over per se, but evolved.

So what happened? First, I got very sick on the tail end of the fitness challenge. It was the sickest I’ve been in years and I lost a lot of weight.

Second, I have split this challenge into about 3 other challenges, two that I am tracking and one that I didn’t track but sort of is successfully completed.

Those challenges are:

  1. The posture challenge. I literally came up with my own posture exercises inspired by some of the most common and popular posture exercises and I’ve literally done it. My posture is much much better than it was before and I continue to improve it every day. What is the best part? I now can tell and feel uncomfortable when in a bad posture. I didn’t document anything and may never do so.
  2. The bedtime challenge. This is a version of a sleep challenge. My latest attempt involves ignoring the whole sleep side of it. Ignoring falling asleep, ignoring getting enough hours, or even habits of turning off electronics. I’m going to make it simple for myself. In the next 66 days (Dec 12, 2023) I will go to bed by 11 pm every night.
  3. The jiujitsu challenge. This challenge was a couple of things but I haven’t completely formed my goals around it so clearly yet. The main ideas I have right now are: getting comfortable and confident in moving and utilizing my body to defend myself, getting stronger and more fit, and mastering a lot of jiujitsu techniques.

So, it is a bye for now on this challenge, but there might be some future retrospective posts analyzing some of the biometric data I gleaned from this challenge.

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The Trifecta of Growth and Progression Down the Path of Truth

Byjack

There was a big journey I went down in terms of working on myself, becoming more mature and being able to live a free and meaningful life.

  • I started by thinking that you needed to meet your own needs
  • Then I thought you needed to be good at asking for your needs
  • And finally, I thought you needed to process traumas and emotions

But I realized that they are all part of the same things and have different parts to play.

In a way, everything is about not abandoning yourself and taking care of yourself. You surround yourself with people who you can talk about what is on your mind truthfully and emotionally. They help you understand what you need. You are able to then give yourself what you need and walk down further along the path of understanding different parts of yourself that are in pain.

From processing emotions, we can truly love ourselves, and the people around us, and be present in the moment.

There is a sense that being with people who don’t accept us, don’t allow us to feel safe speaking our truth is self abandoment. In a way, even if someone meets some of our needs (for example is attractive enough to make us feel special), if we settle for someone who doesn’t love us or allow us to be ourselves, we are putting ourselves down.

Not allowing ourselves to meet our own needs (for example, asking for validation from others because we refuse to give it to ourselves) is self abandonment.

Refusing to look deeper, and shielding parts of ourselves from the world (for example, keeping a confident outward appearance when we feel anxious) is abandoning parts of ourselves and placing the outside world’s comfort above our own.