I love gaming. The competition. The graphics. The speed, the maps, abilities. The headshots, the camaraderie.
Today I asked myself a question. How do I get to the level of gameplay that I want to get to? How do I play Valorant in the way I want to play it?
I listened to my body and I used connection theory. Your body is tired. It’s aching. Your mind is cloudy and distracted. Your eyes are dry and tired.
I need to feel the magic that Valorant can be.
I turn on the Dark and Dangerous playlist:
It is time to turn off all the lights. To go into my closet. To let everything go silent.
I feel scared and anxious and my head hurts, but my body knows it’s okay to relax now.
I lay on my bed to meditate. Long enough to wonder when I should stop. Long enough for my mind to wander to think of my colleague who left today and wrote a very nice email. Long enough for the magic of nighttime to sink in, for me to want a hot drink and settle down for a night of gaming.
Turned off the lights again. Fired up the playlist again. It feels like the mood.
Had a good few games where I team MVPed every single game until the last one with a smurfing reyna on both teams. The one on my team was classic only, the one on the enemy team was not. Didn’t really like my duo, he annoyed me. Also bottom fragged every game.
I’ve been at a loss as to how to get more stretch in my knees, but I got some inspiration recently from this video:
Lots of cool ideas in this video. Specifically with rolling the knees back and forth.
I feel that this might require something more in terms of exercise, some knee strength somehow to stabilize the knees more, but I feel this is a big part of the puzzle.
I’ve been thinking more about confidence in Valorant and it actually made me think a lot more about what makes confidence. I originally was interested in how to multitask because I thought that was what would make me stronger in Valorant, but I wasn’t able to find any useful information on it.
I ended up searching multitasking in sports, and I was specifically in interested in the basketball videos when they talked about confidence.
The first video was this:
Ideas:
Confidence is not about positive or negative thinking
There are two ways of thinking
Logically and analytically
Intuitively
Confidence is about trusting the second type of thinking
Timing cannot be thought
Ideas:
People often rely on outside sources of confidence
Success
External Validation
Comparing ourselves with others
These outside sources of validation are not reliable
Confidence comes from being able to trust yourself
Trustworthiness is from people who follow a code
Ex: Warrior code “no man left behind” (inspires confidence in your unit because other people won’t leave you behind)
Ex: Courage over success, valuing courage over failure or success validation
Code must be specific and have specific actions you take to fulfill it
Mantras can be helpful
So as they say in the video to do, I am writing down the things I use for confidence in Valorant:
Success – high KDA, increasing elo
Comparison – high KDA compared to others, higher rank
Knowledge and practice – learning techniques and practicing them
Performance – being able to predict moves, hitting my shots
What I admire in other players:
Clarity in thinking
Creative plays
Fast reactions
Precise mechanics
Boldness/confidence
I’ll take each of these a step further to draft out my code. I’m going to see if I can break down what I make each of these things mean:
I make success mean that I’m smart that I’m special
I make comparison mean that I’m special, that I’m a valuable or worthy person
I make knowledge and practice mean I’m smart and that I deserve to be heard
I make performance mean that I’m special and I’m capable
For the second list:
I make clarity mean that someone is smart
I make creativity mean intelligence, specialness, worthy of love and admiration
I make fast reactions means someone is attractive
Precise mechanics I make it mean someone is capable, valuable and worth a lot
Boldness and confidence I make it mean someone is valuable and special
To think about it further my code might need to address:
Inner value – what is valuable about myself
Inner specialness – what do I think is special about myself
Inner love and admiration – what do I love and admire about myself
Inner capability – what makes myself capable
I don’t really know what my code can be but one aspect that keeps coming up for all of these things are valuing feelings and focusing on radical permission.
Those are two things that I feel make me unique, I value myself and are a way to find freedom and give myself love and admiration.
I suppose I can also focus on the challenge in life, the idea of courage or challenge over success is something else that I admire about value about myself. Deep thinking, letting the answer of hard questions come to me as well.
The ways that I could act out this code in Valorant:
My peace is disrupted, again. Today I have to get up even earlier and start preparation for work even earlier because I have to travel, and get on the plane for an early morning flight.
I am frustrated because of the complete stinginess in the finances, I have a lot of stress in terms of asking for a better setup such as traveling the day beforehand.
As a result, I didn’t sleep very well (if at all), and now feel tired and stressed.
I have a couple of things working in favor today though:
Because I woke up at 4:30 for a flight that boards at 6:40, I do have some nice free time in the morning where I can spend on myself and reconnecting with myself
I get to do my favorite thing of sleeping on the plane
Howling Winds in My Heart
I feel the howling winds
In my heart
The internal blizzard
Unforgiving
Being buried my a mountain
Of worry
The pain of the winds
In my ears
Today I did this. I felt much better afterwards, especially after the breaths. Those are really important as I discovered with the Bea Mackay and Wim Hoff methods. Saying the “I Love You” felt strange, especially since I’ve been feeling that I don’t like my face recently, just thinking I gained too much weight, but saying them I think I did feel the anxiety go away and I feel much more at peace, less stressed about work and everything.
I realized something. It is the end of my bedtime challenge! I have only three days in which I actually violated the boundaries of the challenge:
First time was for work, when troubleshooting an issue took me until 11:30 PM, I went to bed at 12
Second time was for my girlfriend, helping her with a school project until 12
The third time was when the challenge officially ended already, on the 17th (challenge ended on the 12th) when I was feeling too overwhelmed to pack for my trip back to my parent’s house for the holidays.
Although the challenge is over, the work continues.
It is even more critical now because I have a lot of issues with keeping control of my life while at my parent’s house and the bedtime routine isn’t as nice as I would like to have it. I will keep this challenge going for a few more days to solidify some of the more important aspects of the challenge such as the morning routine, and nighttime routine, and fulfilling some of the things I need from the nighttime (alone time, creativity, productivity, fun, and space).
Instead, I am feeling pretty much that my space and time are particularly intruded on in recent times and I need to find ways to meet those needs.
Overall, I am extremely proud of myself and look forward to all the health benefits this will afford me.
