Letting The Empress Take The Wheel

Byjack

My sister and I have this joke about the empress. According to a tarrot reading, my sister needs to rely more on her “inner empress”. What does this mean? Well apparently the emperor card stands for searching out and controlling the world, while the empress waits for the world to come to her.

This actually is in line with a thought process I had myself about being yourself.

Feeling free to be yourself = happiness. Feeling like you cannot be yourself is the root of ALL unhappiness. But how to be yourself is another very difficult story.

One way is a method I like to call, “Letting the empress take the wheel”.

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An Absolute Puzzle

Byjack

I am completely confused and upset by how this girl that I play Valorant went from having so much fun to always getting annoyed and mad.

Facts that I know:

  1. Used to beg me to play constantly, only stopped because I was too busy with work so I said no all the time
  2. Used to laugh and think I was very funny in games
  3. At first, was resistant to smurfing, but after she was convinced, had a ton of fun trolling on smurfs including doing frenzy only challenge
  4. Used to be afraid to talk in voice chat, only talked to me
  5. Spent all her time talking to me on Valorant and ignored her relationship because of how much she liked playing with me

She used to be my favorite person to play with for several months:

  1. Was always fun and chill
  2. Could make jokes or talk about deep stuff
  3. Made me feel special because she only wanted to play with me
  4. Would actually listen to strats unlike some girls who would get defensive when given any feedback
  5. Was very smart and improved a great deal in the time we played

However, somehow, after months of having lots and lots of fun, everything has taken a dramatic turn:

  1. Gets annoyed when she isn’t doing well and takes the game very seriously
  2. Gets annoyed when I’m taking the game too seriously but also gets mad when I goof off
  3. Wants everyone to be mean and toxic yet gets upset when people are toxic back
  4. Is mad when I’m goofing off and think I’m somehow trying very hard to be funny
  5. Claims that unrated it doesn’t matter if she wins or loses but gets mad when she loses
  6. Claims smurfs don’t matter but somehow gets mad when she loses on a smurf
  7. Somehow is able to have fun with other people and refuses to play with me now
  8. Cannot seem to remember any of our happy times and insists that she never had fun

Some factors that I think may contribute:

  1. May have been taught by someone that being slow and boring is a very bad thing, seems to be overly concerned with it and projects onto other people
  2. May feel a really strong pressure to do well, seemed to take the game extremely seriously after her friend started playing on it
  3. May also feel a great deal of pressure to play well and be less toxic around me because she wants it to work out, the pressure may cause her to do worse, and be even more toxic
  4. May feel a sense of superiority or arrogance? When we first started playing, she kept telling me she was afraid I would stop playing with her because she was lower elo than me. I never did, but always wondered if she would stop playing with me if she got better than me.

Altogether I can’t really make sense of this phenomenon and it does bother me a great deal. I suppose on some level I must accept that something about Valorant and playing with me triggers her in some deep way and that I shouldn’t let that stop me from having fun. It does make me sad that things have changed so dramatically and I lost my favorite Valorant buddy.

Valorant has become significantly less fun for me now. It almost feels like work, instead of a game that I loved. There was a period of time when I was playing with her that I truly let go of the need to win and actually just had fun. I don’t know what I need to do to get that feeling back. I hope she finds a way to have fun as well, but it breaks my heart that it isn’t with me.

Privilege: The Tale of Two Airbnbs

Byjack

So I just changed Airbnbs in France and it made a massive mental difference.

The first Airbnb was fine. It looked nice and modern and was in the heart of the city. But the bed was uncomfortable and it was small and everything felt dark and closed.

The outside felt dirty and dark and the “main attraction” was the Carrefour (a french grocery that was extremely close by).

Rarely got a full nights sleep
View overlooking the street
Mirror in the back, not as big as it looks
Little bathroom
Door for apartment right window construction frame
The local attraction

The second Airbnb was very different. It was over twice as large (55 m2 vs 20 m2), filled with natural light and greenery and was near a park (Jardin des Arenes de Cimiez) and a museum (Musee Matisse). 

Living room is filled with natural light and interesting interior design and decor
Lots of space to work
Garden outside
More comfortable, though small bed
Outside the airbnb
Local attraction, Jardin des Arenes

The difference in mentality was so massive I was floored. In the first Airbnb I felt:

  • Depressed
  • Unmotivated to work
  • Tired
  • Not feeling like I’m on vacation

While in the new Airbnb I felt:

  • Like I was on vacation
  • Full of energy and enthusiasm
  • Ready to get work done
  • Feeling creative and relaxed

The interesting thing was, that my girlfriend told me that the new Airbnb was in a much much nicer and richer neighborhood and this got me thinking. This is the definition of privilege – the ability to grow up in an environment that nurtures you and gives you energy instead of sucking it away.

I’ve never believed in leveling the playing field for the sake of fairness because fairness is both a subjective and impossible standard to meet. Instead, I’ve been interested in creating a more productive society as a whole and I think that by creating better spaces for all of society people would feel more energetic and productive. I only experienced the change in physical space, in greenery and natural light and calm and quiet. What would happen if you were able to get a better mental environment, with more supportive loving people? This is why children in single-family homes and substance abuse have it so hard in getting ahead. They don’t have the mental environment to live up to their full potential.

This has a couple of implications for me:

  • Money is not everything, but it is important in getting you into a good environment
  • Don’t skimp out on rent or places to stay on vacation, the environment is everything
  • Surround yourself with nurturing people who help you feel peaceful and energetic
  • Take care of yourself and the space around you
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Workpost 32: The Power of Belief

Byjack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPZj6Jp2ehE&ab_channel=Recap-kun

I saw this anime recapped last night and I felt it was really inspiring. It was about a guy who needs to create an unprofitable company in order to win money in a game. But in not fearing failure and instead trying to embrace it, he found it hard to not succeed. Obviously this is fiction, and people would find it easy to fail in real life, but there is a part of this that rings true for me.

When you aren’t afraid of failure, it is hard to stave off success. Everything is about having a strong mindset.

Today I want to just focus on the main ideas I said in my previous post:

  1. You’re in my house
  2. Take time, be patient
  3. Be ok with silence
  4. Take risks
  5. Anything is possible

Goal Setting

Byjack

Today in the King’s council, part men’s group, part coaching session, we talked about setting goals.

I didn’t have an idea of what my goals are but a couple of visions came to mind:

  1. Coaching is a large part of my life. I saw about 3 coaching conversations with clients or potential clients every week.
  2. Youtube challenges being a large source of energy in life. I saw myself dedicating a little time every day to focus on an active challenge. This could be writing about the challenge, doing the challenge or shooting videos and thinking about the final video.
  3. I imagined feeling a lot more confident and in control of my challenges. I saw this as having successfully editing and posted a single challenge to youtube.
  4. I saw myself being outside and having a lot more energy. I would spend different parts of my day in different places.
  5. I saw my work-life come alive again. This meant posting posts on Linkedin every week, and engaging with people at work about my life outside of work.

I need to choose three main ones for the intention of the Kings Council.

I will choose the following goals:

  1. To have a powerful coaching conversation with three more people.
  2. To have one paying client.
  3. To have produced three challenge videos and posted them to youtube.

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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
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Coaching Session 11/18 VOD Review Part 1

Byjack

This is my reflections of the first part of the coaching session, the first 20 minutes.

  • Everything up to the 10 minute mark seems really slow, should I keep that or not?
  • Would my client feel comfortable posting things about him and a love interest?
  • There is a sort of peace in how slow it goes but also can be antsy for the wrong person.
  • Maybe I should think in the frame of “what if people understood”? Seems like a really cool mentality given that I have a great deal of material.
  • I wonder if I come off try hard.
  • Is it bad to edit a lot and cut a lot? What if I mess up the progression? Or be less honest?
  • I love produced cuts, but are they artificial?
  • Born to be this high (instrumental) sounds really nice in the background. I dunno if I am changing the experience. But I suppose that is a good thing.
  • Really starts to pick up energy at the 20 minute mark

Resetting in the coaching mindset, here is my reflection on the reflections:

  • We ain’t cutting shit, use the slowness as a texture
  • Yea we talking about love if he’s down
  • Let’s use the energy in the antsyness and also find ways to energetically cut
  • If people understood, we can speak to them more clearly though clips (thinking about cutting clips into episodes and using snippets to be the intro of every episode)
  • Use the tension of trying hard cut it out when it is distracting
  • I want to preserve the order, but cut as much as I want to, especially cut more creatively
  • There is nothing wrong with produced cuts but they take away from this coaching call in this scenario because there is so much there. Use the produced cuts to make shorts.
  • Can use sound in the beginning and the end, keep the audio clean
  • Nicee