The Go For It Mentality

Byjack

There are many different mentalities that can offer deeper insight, faster learning and a deeper connection to the present moment. 

My favorite mentalities are:

  • Meditative/Let It Come Mentality
    • Be patient
    • Don’t do anything
    • The right answer will be clear if you keep feeling and noticing what comes up
    • Good for staying in the moment and being yourself
  • Self Reflection/Feedback Loop (learning) Mentality
    • Look for ways to observe yourself by recording yourself somehow
    • Use the objective, nonjudemental self observation to get clarity on where to improve
    • Good for rapid learning
  • Process Emotions Mentality
    • The action you focus on is feeling
    • Use breathing and physical activity to feel as strongly as possible
    • Very good for emotional growth

However, I recently found a new mentality that actually helps with areas of life that I had trouble with recently. I noticed in rapid active situations like social situations (parties), or sports, or dance or singing overthinking can be a major issue. Using the meditative mentality and or the processing emotions mentality is helpful but ultimately keeps you in your head. Staying in your head isn’t always a good thing because it can actually make it very hard for you to focus on the present moment (even though those exercises usually help you reconnect with the moment). 

I’m not entirely sure where this idea came from, but I think it came from daygaming (approaching girls irl). I started using it in gaming then dance and singing practice (all things where being in the present moment is part of the experience).

I call it the “Go For It” Mentality. Basically, you imagine what you want to do (the perfect action) and then just try going for it.

A couple of major points:

  • Everything is seen as practice (and is very useful when practicing in the moment type skills like language, singing, dance, sports etc where thinking is going to get in your way and you want to focus your instincts).
  • Repetition is the goal since it is practice, nothing is seen as the final end all be all.
  • As you keep repeating, you adjust every single time until it feels more and more right. This is one way that you can start bringing in the other tools and mindsets in order to have a really beautiful time.

Similar Posts

All The Nice People You Meet While On The Road

Byjack

There are so many nice people I meet along the road if I’m just being myself and open to people.

When I was on the plane to Napa Valley I sat next to a couple. The girl got really excited when I wanted to draw with my fountain pen because her boyfriend said she loves that stuff and was an art major like me. I couldn’t get the ink of the pen and but got ink over my hands. She gave me her wet wipe in order to wipe ink off my hands. Her boyfriend lent me a pen when I asked for one to draw with. She braided her hair to show me how braids work because I wanted to draw a character with a huge braid. She offered me her chips when I said I was hungry. She was teasing me so much and was so friendly it actually got a bit awkward with her boyfriend who didn’t seem so pleased.

When I was hiking on Napa Valley, I told a couple that it was worth the view but I had to come back down because I didn’t bring any water. The girl asked me if I wanted any of her water, and asked me if I had to cup to pour it into. Then she and her boyfriend tried to help me find a water fountain.

Also when I was in Napa Valley, I forgot to bring a pen with me to draw with. I asked the girl at the front if I could borrow or buy one. She pulled out a packet of pens and just gave me one.

When I was in Austin looking at apartments, the girl who was showing me apartments told me about how Oracle was buying the apartment complex and that she wasn’t supposed to tell me. She told me I had a really nice vibe. I feel bad because I may have gotten her in trouble because when we got back to the office, I asked her about the Oracle acquisition REALLY loudly because I forgot and she put a finger to her lips and looked really nervous. I was mortified.

When I was in Houston taking photos on the rooftop, I was feeling awkward because everyone there was in their own groups talking and they are all from Citi bank but I was taking photos by myself with a tripod. When I got in the elevator, two girls were telling me how they saw me shooting photos. “You got some good shots right? We saw you,” they told me. One girl said she was calling me the other girl’s brother since she also takes pictures. She asked me whether I lived in the area, and I told her no that I was visiting from DC.

When I went to a Chinese restaurant in Houston and I was struggling to figure out what to order, the waiter came up and asked me what I wanted to order. He asked me if I was Chinese, and I responded in Chinese. He asked me if I was born in China or the US and I told him I was born in Denmark and he said it was a nice place. He said he was from Hong Kong. “I can make something Chinese style for you”, he said and made me a custom dish with eggplant, chicken and string beans. I asked him to take a picture with me, for the memories. He agreed and asked me mine name. He told me his name but I only remember his surname (Leung).

I think back to the guy who asked me yesterday whether or not I was a Youtuber and I think I was so busy being self-conscious and embarrassed, that I closed off the chance that he could have also been a nice person. Even after I told him I had 300 subs, he said to me to keep up the good work. I was just so embarrassed I got out of there as quickly as I could.

I Made Myself A Deal

Byjack

When I left, I made myself a deal. If it was meant to be, she would reach out and try to make it work. If it wasn’t, I would at least set both of us free to pursue our lives.

If it wasn’t meant to be I wonder why. I told her she could be forever for me. When I had her, I felt like I wasn’t alone anymore. But now I feel more alone than ever. I wonder if she can even love a man with her trauma. I wonder if she’s more immature than I thought. I wonder if I wasn’t able to give her what she needed. She wasn’t after all, able to give me what I needed.

All I can do is sit and try to feel the feelings of heartbreak, anger, shame, and fear. And enjoy creating art from it.

Today created a video to myself.

Sometimes we don’t always win. Sometimes we have to be ok with losing. Sometimes we have to be ok with not being good enough.

Workpost 73: Progress

Byjack

I am trying some new things out to update my routines and actions from the last post.

  1. My morning routine: short walk outside. No computer or phone until I walk outside and get some good sun exposure.
  2. My reset. If I feel overwhelmed, take a shower or go into my closet.
  3. Practicing the transition from my chair to my door: I’m going to mark a tally on my “Active Life” tracker calendar (shout out to my girlfriend <3).

In trying out this new “Active Life” tracker, I decided the following today after trying it out today:

  1. I will leave the apartment as many times as I can
  2. If I feel tired and want to sleep, I can just go to the gym and come back after
  3. If I want to play Valorant or doomscroll, I can go out, do some quick work, then come back and go on my phone

I’m also proud of myself for doing some sketching today in the “woodcut” style that I plan to use for my business card.

I like it a lot but I want to continue on working on making it more clean like this:

Some thoughts:

  1. It helps to look at a photo reference
  2. Might help to sketch out a design beforehand
  3. Need a harder brush (sharper edges) for the image

Now it’s time to plan my day and look at yesterday’s questions.

  1. What am I going to do about my art coaching and AI gaming companies?
    • Am I behind schedule and if so what do I do about it? Yes, I am behind schedule. I think what I need to do about it is that I want to focus more on the business side of things. For coaching that means finding clients and for AI gaming I’m not sure yet. Either way, I need to start figuring out what it looks like to run the business.
    • Should I extend the schedule? Maybe a little, but at the moment no.
    • Am I losing money? Yes, but this is something I want to do and get better at. The best thing to do for me is to not to have a gameplan, just run with what I have until the money runs out. Perhaps I could also try to find a business partner or something to level up to the next step or collaborate with my current business partner more.
  2. How do I get out of my procrastination phase and get working? Leaving the apartment more. Doing a deep clean of my apartment.
  3. What do I do about my art coaching website? Create a powerpoint for it, create a basic website.
  4. How do I get everything done in such a short period of time? I don’t need to. I failed at section one of the business, but that’s ok. Failure = growth. I learned that not taking faster action to get to sales doesn’t work as well. Maybe I need to get more people involved to help me or to just bounce ideas off of.
  5. Should I start registering for fairs? Yes most definitely, also think more about what I can give away.
  6. Should I pay someone to design the website for me? I absolutely could, it probably is a very good idea.
  7. How am I going to get the motivation to start drawing? How do I start drawing consistently? I need to find the joy in just creating this new art style.
  8. How do I start going to the gym and working outside the apartment consistently? Through my “Active Life” tracker! And from being the hero, and valuing my body as a temple. And by leaving the apartment every time I want to do something unhealthy (going outside, then coming back and gaming etc.)
  9. How will I start cooking again and cleaning up my apartment? Where will I find the time? We can do it piece by piece, we also don’t need to cook immediately, just work on it slowly.
  10. How will I prepare for the next week of work? How do I balance my other businesses? I should focus work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for a specific time period (8-5). Then trust in the process. If I leave the apartment a lot, things will get done on all fronts.
  11. When will I continue to work on my Javascript projects? What is the breakdown between AI work time and coaching work time. Not sure, we have a couple of options. We can focus on coaching, switch gears to AI therapist (as greater chances of monitization), or try to create a release schedule. Or forget about getting something out as being a full stack dev would be pretty valuable and worthy skill on its own right.

Now to write some of the questions I have for tomorrow:

  1. How am I going to balance contract work with my businesses tomorrow?
  2. What can I do to make sure I get enough sleep for jiujitsu?
  3. What is the plan for getting customers for my businesses?
  4. Should I sign up for a consultation with a Fiverr coach for javascript? Should I work first to get an understanding of full stack?
  5. Should I start looking for someone to build my coaching website?
  6. What can I give away at the fairs?
  7. What is the next step for my woodcut art style? What is the plan for the business cards?
  8. When am I going to create my powerpoint for my coaching website outline?

I’m happy, I think two mentalities that are helping me are:

  1. Whenever I want to do something unhealthy or distracting (youtube, Valorant, etc.) first leave the apartment then do it when I come back. I usually get more done, are more in touch with my body and don’t feel the need to self medicate after.
  2. At the end of the day, imagine what I wished I got done, what would make me happy if I got done and turn those things into a list of questions to tackle and solve tomorrow.

Creating Excitement in Productivity

Byjack

I’ve been seeking excitement in my life for some time now. The excitement of walking up to random people to ask for them to vote for my non-profit, jumping off something high for parkour, or talking to a pretty girl on the street.

All those things felt like they had an element of risk but felt extreemly freeing and rewarding.

I wanted to know how to get more of this in my life and I stumbled upon a way to bring it into the more mundane parts of life, and if I can bring it into the mundane, perhaps I can bring it everywhere.

I realized that this can be used in any area where I have the desire to act but feel too afraid and that this could be any type of fear, not just social fear. For example, I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety recently with feeling overwhelmed by things. For example, I feel overwhelmed at the thought of taking out the dishes, going to the gym, doing a duolingo test or playing an online chess match against a real person.

Using the formula that I developed with talking to women (but no longer use since I have a girlfriend), here are the steps:

  1. Imagine that I am going for it, and that I can imagine myself doing so within the next few seconds
  2. Imagine the fullest extent of “going for it”, how would truly committing look like, how would feeling effortless and free look like
  3. Let the fear/excitement build up in your chest as you start to breathe
  4. Let the energy carry the action – you don’t have to act if it feels wrong, but let the energy flow through your breathing and let it move you
  5. Continue to breathe through the experience to stay connected to yourself

These steps can bring a feeling of aliveness and control over life. I should know, I used it to write this very post and shoot the video below.

Profit in Peace 4: The Method

Byjack

Main strategy: Always be present, what I feel is right

Work on using my blog to process feelings and embrace the Jack that gets rejected.

Then, for actions: use my coaching mindset

  • You’re in my house
  • Take risks
  • Don’t be afraid to be silent
  • Be patient

Mindsets that help with fear:

  • Let go of controlling things that I cannot (other people)
  • Control how I show up
  • Take up space
  • Hope that those who reject me leave so I can be free
  • Give myself permission to fail
  • I am capable of impossible
  • How do I want to do it MY way

So I ran through this exercise and here is what I worked through:

  1. What is next > Edit my video of the coaching session with my client
  2. How do I do it > Watch the video in 20-minute segments
  3. What do I do in the 20 minutes > Cut out parts my client doesn’t want to share, add my thoughts, publish to my blog
  4. What do I do after all of that > Edit the video through the syllabus method

Sales Conference Health 2: Morning Warmup

Byjack

I’ve been doing pretty well on the social front of the Sales conference, keeping in touch with myself and keeping my boundaries. But the same problems that plague me at home, plague me here.

Specifically, sleep, or lack thereof. I’ve been exploring the feelings that keep me distracting myself with games, videos, and other things. I’m trying to understand this desire, this hunger for stimulation that I have within myself.

It feels like a hunger, and hunger comes from emptiness. I wonder what I am missing in my life. I feel that it might be blood flow. I want to feel like this amazing warmth and flow to my body where my mind and body is open and stimulated.

Meditation has been a great boon to me, I’ve used it to calm down, to get answers and to reduce the inflammation I feel from lack of sleep.

I’ve also explored other physical avenues such as stretching, warmups and self massage.

My feeling is that self-massage comes first, then, mobility exercises and finally stretching.

Here are some of the videos I did today that were pretty good:

But my journey in this has just begun.

I really feel the need to understand what is the appeal of gaming and watching interesting videos internally. Perhaps that isn’t even the key. Perhaps the key is to give myself more freedom and permission. Perhaps this is a trigger for caging myself in and shaming myself so I’m not fully in touch with myself.

I’ll at least give it a shot. I realize there is a big fear in me that if I let myself do what I want, my life will go off the rails. I am going to face that fear and feel it and see where it leads me.