I just came back from standup paddleboarding and I feel really really good. Everything is clear and easy to see. I need to find a way to go and play on the water more.
I also was thinking about how if the eye is constantly in a state of contraction, we might need to do some sort of massage in order to help loosen and relax the ligaments and the muscles. I don’t know yet what kind of massage will work. All the current massages only target the areas around the eyes.
I wasn’t able to test my vision on my phone because it is out of battery but I tested on very small text on a book an the results are mindblowing.
I’m doing REALLY badly with Valorant. Some observations:
Good Things
Movement is actually REALLY good
Aim is not bad
Gamesense OK
What I Need To Work On
Stop having the bad habit of moving TOWARDS the enemy. Try to keep strafing. More so in game, but also in deathmatch.
Movement is good, but move in the way to isolate angles, don’t try to peek too hard.
When aiming, need to have a smoother crosshair, don’t let the movement throw off crosshair
Need to work more on “catching the kills” and timing
Catching kills is mostly trying to hold angles, need to feel the swing (either wide or close)
Need to feel the timing of how soon and quickly to peek back out after missing
Use movement to adjust aim
Spray through and feel out the preaim (feel out where they are)
Can improve movement by using the crouch/crouch peek more often
Overall, I think I’m not doing as badly as I think I am. Just need to slow down the frantic movement to have steadier crosshair movement. I need to hold angles more, and only peak when I feel like I can snap onto a head (catching the aim).
Like in my aiming exercise, I should only hold angles, until the aim comes alive for me.
The biggest downfall I see multiple times is using movement to get closer when I can just hold the angle from far away. My aim is actually really good, just don’t give it any room to shine.
Today I woke up feeling pretty awful from going to bed at 4AM last night.
I was feeling super overwhelmed with many many things in my life.
Today, I chose to wake up slowly, get to work slowly, and here are some of the mentalities that helped me:
Cleaning is incredibly healing. Any time of cleaning, cleaning your workspace, your body, your clothes, it all is very therapeutic.
What can I do for future Jack. This is the Matthew McConnehey’s idea of leaving breadcrumbs. Instead of the common idea of letting your future self deal with a problem (let future Jack deal with the dishes, let future Jack deal with talking to this person) think about what you can do now to make your future self happier. This can look like everything from cleaning, to setting up a super nice workspace, cooking yourself a really good meal.
Focus on challenge and growth. I think oftentimes I get overwhelmed because I think about how hard things are. What helps me is thinking about everything in terms of challenge and growth. How can I challenge myself? What can I do to grow?
Live in the hierarchy of being true to oneself. I was talking to a friend the other day about hierarchies and choosing the right one (don’t compete in a hierarchy you don’t believe in such as money). I want to compete and live in a hierarchy of being honest and true to myself.
I still feel a quite a bit of stress of the difficult conversations I’m anticipating, and the difficult tasks I have in front of me.
Today is my first break from work in what seems like forever. I have a couple of things planned for the break, hanging out with family, spending some time gaming, and hopefully sneaking in a few calls with my girlfriend.
I also want to spend some significant time on my Instagram and business.
I’ve been thinking a lot about boundaries and how to let go of taking responsibility for other emotions, and I’ve been thinking again on this idea of believing in everyone’s power over themselves.
I feel that when you feel that people don’t have the resiliency to handle situations, or the ability to overcome situations, or at the very least, learn from them, that is when you start to take responsibility for their emotions. How could you not, if you have the ability to handle your emotions, but they are not able to handle theirs? Sometimes, you need to just trust in the process. If they need to complain, get hurt, work through their feelings, something you need to trust in their process.
I played with my brother and his friend who are in Gold 1 and Plat 1 respectively.
I feel that a huge part of the problems I run into in playing Valorant is self doubt.
When I get worried that I am playing with people better than me, instead of learning and adapting, I freeze up and cannot think properly and play worse than I would normally:
I make bad decisions
I don’t take time to aim and spray wildly
I push too fast
One way I’ve handled this is lowering my expectations for myself and my game but this is still an ongoing challenge for me.
I also played with a girl who wasn’t that good at the game on my slow laggy laptop. It was an interesting experience because at first, I did really bad, but I ended up getting so many kills. She wasn’t very good so I felt the people we were matched with were in iron (who I should easily beat) but I found it hard because it’s hard for me to flick onto their head with my laggy laptop. I always find it tough to play on the little f*cker.
Two ways that I adjusted:
Hold angles, stop pushing so fast
Make sure I isolate as much as possible. Even if I miss, I might not die if I don’t peek out to 3 or 4 enemies.
I feel like these lessons can pass over to my regular gaming PC.
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: