I’ve been doing my Valorant challenge for about four months now and I haven’t seen much progress.
I think there are a couple of changes that needs to happen.
I need to be kinder to myself. I don’t have much time for gaming and this is my very first FPS game. I have already improved by quite a lot in the time given.
I need to be a lot more focused on learning and make the learning less effort. I will try to play only one ranked game every day on my main and VOD review that.
I need to focus the rest of my time with having fun with Valorant. Creating more motivation is important.
I am going to get more outside help, will get more people to review my gameplay with me.
I am going to make a list of things I actually like doing on Valorant:
I’m working on discovering and developing my own attractiveness. Just to clarify:
Attractiveness is not about finding faults, it’s about understanding your most beautiful self and letting yourself grow into that version of yourself. It’s not about imagining other people and wishing you were like them.
Attractiveness is very personal. It should be how you want to look to feel like yourself and feel confident. It can match societal versions of beauty but does not have to.
I discovered an exercise that can help:
Stand in front of a full-length mirror
Remove as much clothing as possible, naked if possible
Stand straight and adjust your body to find the most attractive posture
Note any other areas that need adjusting, skin, hair etc. in order to reach peak attractiveness
Once you find your baseline (just standing straight), try different poses
This is PARTICULARLY good at detecting problems with posture
You can take this practice into ordinary life by imagining you are naked, it’s a more natural mentality for intuitively good posture and can make you feel more open and confident
This is an interesting idea, to be naked first because I think it follows the idea that I have with learning in general. You should always start with the basics and move upward. In attractiveness, you must first find your attractive yourself naked before finding your attractive self with clothes on. Just like with any other learning technique, clothes and other accessories (like makeup) actually distract from you seeing the lowest most basic level of yourself. You are the MOST natural and yourself when naked, so it makes sense to start there.
My initial thoughts:
The MAIN area that is keeping me from being my most attractive self is the posture of my neck and shoulders. My head is jutted forward making my chin weak and shoulders rounded forward, making my stomach stick out.
I may need to cut my hair since it is too much for the features of my face and makes my features look duller.
I have other minor areas of posture that need to be adjusted and other grooming things I may want to do.
This exercise is GREAT for feeling confident in your own skin, I noticed when I focus on improving my own posture, I open up my body instead of hunching and feel more confident.
I don’t actually need to get more fit and muscular like I always think I do. I just need to strengthen my back and core so I can naturally maintain a better posture.
This seems to work mostly for your body though, and not with your face. My intuition tells me that the biggest tool for facial symmetry is just finding ways to relax your face but I’m pretty lost in that area.
I had quite a stressful workday as I expected but I wanted to jot down a couple of reflections today:
Reminding myself of my boundaries (time, respect, honesty, empathy, and possibility) really helped
It also helped to note down what I cannot control before every major meeting (usually something related to how someone felt about me)
I noticed that keeping pace with my todo list was helpful:
Keep all tasks that come to mind in my todo list (use it as a mental trashcan to throw all my worries)
Reorder todo list to whatever I am working on right now (move something to the top if I am currently working on it)
Do tasks immediately if they are low-effort
Do sweeps (try to do everything on the todo list)
Focus also helped
Close as many tabs as possible
Focus on one thing at a time
I was thinking about how to transition from work to Valorant more effectively since I usually start to feel dead and I end up watching youtube and ordering food and that kind of makes it hard for me to stay sharp when gaming and I end up feeling even more stressed and awful.
I think cleaning is a really good transition point. Cleaning reduces stress and is a great way to transition slowly…if I’m worried that there will still be a call coming in and I might have to go back to work, cleaning makes it easy to go back to work without feeling like I am not ready to transition to the next thing. In fact, if I clean, even if I go back to work, I will still be more ready to game after the work is done because my space is now clean.
I also like the idea of a mental dump to write down everything you are thinking about at the end of the day so that you can pick it up at any point today or tomorrow or the day after.
Finally, I like to look at the schedule for the next day and mentally prepare for it to know what you can do today to give you a lot of spaciousness tomorrow.
I’ve been traveling for the past two weeks and haven’t been able to play any Valorant, but today I was thinking about some of the things I wanna try.
I saw this amazing video by scream (a professional EU valorant player known for his aim).
Some major takeaways:
Warm up wrists
Practice jett knives in practice range
Practice not only one tapping but also burst spraying
Should take longer with Vandal, spray burst with phantom
Crosshair placement is key for getting kills, be ready for a wide swing or a small jiggle depending on the situation
Always look to play off of your team, solo carrying is VERY hard even for pros, Valorant is a combo game
Other things I’ve been thinking to try:
I need to get used to all sorts of movement, play around with it like I do with dance
I should aim with movement a lot more
In general, I feel like I need to apply what I learned from dance – keep feeling out the things that feel uncomfortable. Try different ways to do the same thing. Look for something that feels good. Understand my body as well as just the ingame mechanics.
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:
I’m gonna try to do something crazy, which is to try to rise from Silver 1 to Platinum in Valorant.
For all of you who don’t know, Valorant is a competitive FPS shooter. Like all popular computer games that are competitive, it is extremely difficult to progress in rank.
When I first started Valorant I was in Iron 1 and after months of playing, I rose to Silver 1. Now I want to make a similar rise from Silver 1 to Platinum 1. But I want to do it faster this time. I want to do it within the course of 2-3 months.
I want to use this experience as a test of my speed learning skills and also how I can make videos for challenges.
I also believe that mindfulness and self-awareness can bring greater success than any brute force tactic, and I want to prove that with my progress in this game (which will be easy to measure and indisputable).
My current philosophy for speed learning:
Embracement of pain
Lower expectations
Process emotions
Try new things
Self-reflection is KEY
Need to see yourself
Focus on fun
Play when you want with things you like
Small steps
Don’t need to do everything in one day
Do tiny steps if possible
Prepare yourself
Create an environment for success
Specifics:
Embracement of pain
Don’t set goals
Assume I’m gonna do bad
Slow down and process when I’m doing bad
Always try new strats
Self-reflection
LOTS of VOD reviews
Focus on fun
Only play comp when you want to
Other days do light practice
Focus on agents you have fun with (focus on agent abilities that are fun)
Small steps
Find ways to practice in aimlabs, spike rush and deathmatch
Prepare yourself
Work on environment
Work on posture
NEXT: What my plan on filming will be.
Also, got recommend How to Fight Thich Nhat Hanh by a friend on how to work on mindfulness.
