Yesterday I came home, and I felt that I met my goal. I literally felt better than when I first left home.
Now, this fact was immediately undercut by the fact that I went to bed at 3:40 AM in the morning. I was dealing with a great deal of discomfort, perhaps from being home and the taxi ride where I felt like I couldn’t leave. The taxi driver was trying very hard to preach Christianity to me. I feel perhaps the permission exercise may be helpful here in order to give myself permission to leave, but also to stay and feel trapped.
Today when I woke up I felt completely horrible with lower back soreness, stomach issues, dry eyes and tense shoulders and back. My throat and nose felt acidic and burning and I felt sick.
I did the warmups in order of massage first, then stretching, then range of motion. I feel that I can take the warmup much further, so today, I did mental warmups and vocal warmups.
I wanted to do this mental warmup but it felt exhausting. I feel that I needed more of a meditation but maybe my mind just needs to be warmed up more.
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:
So something that I’ve been sort of obsessed with recently is how to face your problems head-on. In so many areas of my life, I struggle to do that. In my professional career, tasks that stress me out send me to my couch with my phone. When I don’t know what to say to my mom and my dad, I immediately turn on my audiobook, eager to dull the pain in my chest. When I am feeling stressed about a fight in Valorant, I rush and try to ignore the mounting feelings of anxiety.
I would really like to find a way to flip the script because it is so rewarding. When I do a task that I worry about, I feel energized, and not tired from work. When I focus on my feelings of anxiety in Valorant, I become much more aware of what my intuition is telling me, that I need to slow down and play the situation very carefully.
I think this is a really interesting concept. I want to make a bit of an amendment. In the video they talk about trying to get better problems, that being able to have money problems when you are rich vs money problems when you are poor is much better (where you invest, vs how to survive). But I kind of disagree. The problem of survival is ultimately a much more rewarding problem for me than where to invest.
I do think that this is a powerful idea, and a way to reframe problems. My thoughts are as follows:
Avoiding problems comes from the fear of failure
We can address this by embracing failure
But we don’t want to just fail at anything…this is where choosing your problems come in
Instead of failing at a random problem, embrace failing and learning from a meaningful problem
Ex: I am afraid I don’t know how to respond to my parents
The meaningful problem here is to learn to create a bond with my parents while standing strong in my own life and boundaries
Accept failure and believe in my ability to learn from a failure at this problem
Essentially, turn every problem into a challenge
Another example: I don’t know what to do next in my demo build and it’s overwhelming and a lot of work
The meaningful problem here is finding how to be efficient at my job, and to work as a team without people pleasing to my own detriment (creating boundaries)
Accept failure at this and my ability to learn from that failure
Last night, I went to bed at 11, but fell asleep after 1AM.
I feel totally drained.
Maybe its time to go back to bed for a little.
So I wrote that at 8 in the morning. I just took a nap after cooking for the entire morning with delicious tea eggs and soup. Then I spent a few hours napping and now I feel much better.
I really think my productivity is so much worse when my health is worse.
More napping, meditation, and exercise in the future! Napping if I’m sleep deprived, meditation and exercise if I’m not.
Today, the aim I want to focus on is content creation. I want to finish my post, and workout and meditate for the rest of the day.