“When you look at things that are far away, muscles in your eye relax and your lens looks like a slim disc.
When you look at things that are close, muscles in your eye contract and make your lens thicker.”
So the key is to relax right? Well, yes and no. Muscles always work in groups. If certain muscles are constantly too tense, then there are certain muscles that must be weak (since if one set of muscles never relaxes, the other set must always be weak).
After researching further, I found the muscle responsible for focusing the lens of the eye. It’s called the ciliary muscle and it looks like it doesn’t actually work in pairs but is like smooth muscle tissue of the stomach.
An interesting article is here and I signed up for the guys course to see what was up.
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:
Because I was traveling and these exercises relaxed me immensely, I fell asleep very quickly after this. I ended up doing more of these exercises in the morning after. Myofascial release seems to target ligaments, muscles, and fascial which kinda makes sense, but today (13th). Today I will switch over to increasing mobility in the tendons and ligaments, so I wonder what will happen today that will be different.
I had a slower start to the day. I started the day on my phone, waking up a bit early because my new retainer is bothering me when I sleep.
I watched some Valorant, talked to my girlfriend, and now I have a flight in about 3 hours. I want to leave in about 2 hours. I still have to take out the trash, eat up some more food and load the dishwasher.
I did a bit of a workout and I found out a couple of things that help with regaining energy, and gathering chi:
Butt-clenched breathing: sounds a bit weird but it works. Lie down, clench the sphincter muscle (what you use to hold in poop) breath in. Then relax and breathe out. Repeat.
Tummy circles: put the left hand over your stomach, then your right hand over that. Make circles over your stomach in the clockwise direction. Do it lightly. Then put your hands in the same area in your back and repeat.
Extremity exercises: this can be any exercise that works your extremities. For example, doing a dead hang and focusing on clenching really hard with your hands but leaving everything else relaxed, or doing heel raises with the tips of your toes super engaged with everything else relaxed.
Meditation: lie down close your eyes and walk down a staircase while counting to 10. Imagine the smell of wet stone, always puts me in a meditative state really quick for some reason.
Anyway goals for today. Just relax! I want to get all the chores sorted out and just spend the rest of my time relaxing.
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.
Today we are going back to the Valorant Challenge but from a different perspective.
I strongly felt that the one time when I didn’t feel stressed at all, but instead felt the timings of the enemy and where they could be, and how I could systematically take them apart, I was playing Valorant at a significantly higher level.
Some thoughts for today:
Closing eyes to mental reset
Playing music to hype up
Breathing and letting the energy carry the action
Most of all, I will endeavor to feel out the enemy’s position and figure out how I can take the map piece by piece with util, teamwork and aim diff.
I will create another post after the game to review how that went.
