A dear friend of mine who I was deeply in love with just cut ties with me. And I’m surprisingly calm.
Part of it is because I don’t think there is much left unsaid or anything I really regret about the whole friendship/relationship we had. I loved so many things about her. The way she made jokes, the sound of her voice, the patience and love she showed me at my worst. I will never forget that and I think she’s changed my life in ways she probably doesn’t even know.
I only wish she felt safe enough, trusted me enough, to tell me about how she truly felt. The worries, the emotions, the anger she was going through, I wish she trusted me enough to be open about it – so I could be as loving as she was for me and be closer today for it. In the end, she gave up on me – just like I had almost given up on her earlier in the friendship.
There are two things that still make me feel like someone is ripping apart my heart with a fork:
The fear that I wasn’t ever really special to her. That maybe she will turn around and say and do all of the things she said and did for me to the next person down the line. Maybe she has already found that next person. Maybe that is why she left. This hurts me somewhere so deep it’s hard for me to face fully.
The hope that she will come back. Hope is pure torture. I’m afraid it will drive me mad if I dwell on it too long.
There are more steps of grief, more growing I will need to do. But this is how I feel right now.
Today I wanted to talk about a side of myself that I felt was missing. A part of myself that when I reclaim, I feel powerful and clear. Strong and true.
I’m talking about my darker side. The parts of myself, that until recently, I was afraid to face. The parts I locked away because I thought they were too ugly to look at. The anger, the hatred, the rage, the lust, the desire for control and domination.
I have a very hard edge that I hold back a lot of the time these days. I always try to approach everything from a positive light because I fear that if I let myself react in the way that I want to, bad things will happen. That I will be unlovable, hopeless, and lonely.
There is someone in my life, who I count very special who has been the only one to see clearly enough to embrace my darker side. Who understands how honest and real it is, despite the fact that it isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. Who will understand instead of judging and admonishing when my darker self makes an appearance.
When I embrace my full self, I wonder how important youtube is. I wonder how important it is to win the approval of others. It makes me want to be less kind, that kindness simply feels overused and boring if I do it too much. That it is a drug and a sweet poison if I turn to it as a way to ignore the darker thoughts.
It makes me want to bring my hard edge into my youtube more often. It makes me want to be harder with the people around me. It makes me want it to pervade through everything I do and attempt.
So the groundwork is essentially laid for a lot of things.
I plan on investing $600 into the AI coaching business.
60% of revenue will go to my living expenses
10% will go business expenses
30% will be held in a high yield savings account for taxes
I plan on investing $5000 for the creation of the funnel for my art coaching business. It is already set aside for that purpose.
When I get to the 3 month mark (and I run my businesses full time) I will dip into the savings I have set aside in my emergency fund.
To make things simple, I just decided to funnel all business expenses through my AI coaching account. I will keep my coaching income a separate account.
As Alex Hormozi said (or am I just saying this?) everyone needs to know sales. Because sales lead to money and everyone needs money. If you don’t know how to sell, then you end up working for someone who does.
Before I try out the leads techniques on my coaching business, I am using it for my AI company.
And for that company, I’ve been feeling extreme pressure and stress around talking to my warm and lukewarm or cold leads.
I’ve processed some of these emotions and came up with some of a process:
Accept that I cannot control how someone sees me and even if I could, I don’t want to. Everyone’s mind and thoughts are sacred and my freedom is sacred as well. Both would be violated if I were to control how people saw me because I have to put on a mask and deceive people.
If I’m not trying to control people then the point is just to engage with my network. Talk to people, have a good time, make some jokes.
Anyone who doesn’t respond is an opportunity to process my feelings around rejection because that is the most important thing to me – not trying to change their mind.
The other part of this equation that I still am scratching my head about is delivering fast and big value. Alex talks about that but I don’t know what that value means, and I don’t know if I am allowed to give away things. I need to think about it some more and come up with some ideas. Perhaps my time can be split between developing value and content and reaching out.
I’ve been thinking of way to provide people value and the only thing I can really think of is having some time with me.
Maybe one way to think about it is I need to establish myself as an AI expert or someone with a lot of prior success. Perhaps one helpful detail is that I’ve worked with companies where we saw a 10x increase in efficiency in specific areas.
Maybe it would be helpful to show them the website as well for use cases or a list of ideas for their specific area.
Today I feel tired. My kidneys ache. They feel bloated and stagnated. My stomach feels slow. My head iches on the top. My eyes are dry. I feel burning inflammation up my back and spine. My skin is flaking on my face.
These past few days have felt exhausting, extremely stressful, and demoralizing. Last night, I asked myself the question, how do I get out of this.
I didn’t know the answer then, but my answer today during my walk was to take my stress seriously.
And just now, I had a realization that I have the systems developed to do extraordinary things. I just need to utilize them and follow their principals.
Systems in place:
Daily walk to ponder questions I am stressed about
Daily workpost to grow myself, plan for greatness
Clean space to deal with stress, clean place = clean mind
Meal prep strategy for healthy cheap meals with little stress – fridge containers, tacos, lettuce wraps
Whiteboards to write strategies
Off computer working systems (working while walking, running errands, working out, eating out)
Todo list strategy – focus on one thing at a time, prioritize
Clean after working hours to transition, decompress
Crawling to get cardio in small space
Walking backwards and tibialus for knee
Hanging for shoulders and posture
Working out after and before meals for better absorption, muscle growth, and recovery
Journaling to ask myself questions at night
Walking with no effort
I have absolutely everything I need to build a life where I can do almost anything I want, achieve anything I want.
Right now, I want to focus on two things: recovery and priming
Priming are stuff like cleaning, wiping off my whiteboards, clearing out tabs, filling markers, mealprep, todo list grooming
Recovery means lots of sleep, rest, hydration, and exercise. Specifically paying attention to anytime I want to game to see if I feel stressed or uncomfortable, taking a break when that happens.
To top off this post, I want to attach something that I want to erase from my whiteboard, but want to save forever:
Reasons Why I’m Ready
I’ve developed very deep and powerful life theories (flow, connection) → these theories can give anyone direction in darkness, I forget them but they come back when I need them
When faced with pain I’ve always come out stronger (ACL) → pain is the greatest teacher
I’ve proven that I can complete hard challenges (knee, sova) → I can achieve the challenges I set my mind to
I can solve problems few people can solve (triage, nikola) → normal rules don’t apply
I’m deeply attuned to emotions (coaching, art, philosophy) → makes it much easier to connect with people
I used to walk up to girls on the street → Nothing is something I can’t handle. There is nothing that I can’t ask for
No matter how badly I fail there are people who still love me
The point is not to get there, be productive or succeed, the point is to find a meaningful problem, problems we want to solve → we will never have no problems but we can choose which problems we want to contend with
Happiness doesn’t come from acing the past but seizing the now → its never too late to be happyIt’s near too late to fix it with a degree in engineering and parents who don’t mess with me
I have lots of assets and saving and a degree in engineering and parents and a sister all with money saved
I know that there are certain problems that need to be solved
Problems don’t go away I told her
She avoids them anyway
Until they are about to ruin everything
I hate her for making me feel
There is no hope left
That she accuses me of just stressing her out
Lashes out at me angrily
I feel pain because I know
She loves me
And wants to make me happy
Maybe I was too hard on her
But can I take the pain
Of watching everything burn
Letting the problems stack up against us
She’s so sensitive
And beautiful
And soft and understanding
Perhaps, I can be strong enough
To feel the fear
That I will lose her
I often cope with feelings of fear by trying to solve problems and remove obstacles. It’s who I am. It is the hardest thing to just let something I want more than anything slip away. Maybe I’m too hard on people, on myself for trying to fix everything. Sometimes, you just have to enjoy where life is right now, and process your fear and just trust everything will work itself out.
