I had a dream she messaged me All caps and smiling letters Like old times When I was a boy My friend showed me a bush Full of moths He grabbed one and showed me the dust that came off its wings I wondered If the moth Like me Felt something missing
Besides the poem, I also came up with a HUGE epiphany that suddenly makes everything clear. I realized that the main reason I’m so upset is that something that I thought was a friendship was much closer to a relationship than I would admit. The cycle I’m dealing with is less of a troubled friendship but rather a single>relationship>breakup>single cycle instead.
In order to move on, I need to start thinking like someone who is single who is getting over a breakup. It’s a bit embarrassing we weren’t actually in a relationship, but who cares about stupid commitments and labels. The feelings I had were far beyond friendship and the fact that they were reciprocated made it something more.
This also gives me insight into how I behave in a relationship, I’ll break it up into two categories, single mindset and relationship mindset.
My Mindset When Single
Focus on being myself and doing things that make me happy
Want to meet new friends and lovers who can accept me for exactly who I am
Not afraid to open up to people because I welcome rejection (so the people who remain I feel 100% comfortable and supported around)
Freedom is what I’m searching for
My Mindset When in a “Relationship”
Focus on exploring and deepening the connection between us
Not interested in meeting anyone new, feels like too much work
Especially not interested in talking to romantic interests because I find it hard to imagine they will be able to accept how much I love someone else (feels like I can’t open up about a huge part of my life)
Love is what I’m searching for
Everything makes sense now – the feeling that I have to “find myself” and get time alone was basically my understanding (at the time) of reconnecting with my single person mindset, asking her to “pull me back” was my plea at asking her to go back to our pseudo-relationship. I had a strong feeling that I needed to just process my loss of what we had instead of trying to “fix” things and now I know why. We are basically not on the same page anymore and any semblance of a relationship is gone. In fact, it’s been slipping away for some time now.
Once I am able to fully process this “breakup” I can fully reconnect as a single person.
Side thought: I think I’m probably a monogamist from this experience. I can only hold strong feelings for one person at a time.
Yesterday I came up with a new mentality that really helped me with Valorant. I noticed that I wasn’t focused on taking fights and it was kind of hard to get kills.
So I decided to take a break, walk around and drink some water. And when I came back, I promised myself I would not peek until I felt that I was fully ready to take a fight.
Today I feel tired. My kidneys ache. They feel bloated and stagnated. My stomach feels slow. My head iches on the top. My eyes are dry. I feel burning inflammation up my back and spine. My skin is flaking on my face.
These past few days have felt exhausting, extremely stressful, and demoralizing. Last night, I asked myself the question, how do I get out of this.
I didn’t know the answer then, but my answer today during my walk was to take my stress seriously.
And just now, I had a realization that I have the systems developed to do extraordinary things. I just need to utilize them and follow their principals.
Systems in place:
Daily walk to ponder questions I am stressed about
Daily workpost to grow myself, plan for greatness
Clean space to deal with stress, clean place = clean mind
Meal prep strategy for healthy cheap meals with little stress – fridge containers, tacos, lettuce wraps
Whiteboards to write strategies
Off computer working systems (working while walking, running errands, working out, eating out)
Todo list strategy – focus on one thing at a time, prioritize
Clean after working hours to transition, decompress
Crawling to get cardio in small space
Walking backwards and tibialus for knee
Hanging for shoulders and posture
Working out after and before meals for better absorption, muscle growth, and recovery
Journaling to ask myself questions at night
Walking with no effort
I have absolutely everything I need to build a life where I can do almost anything I want, achieve anything I want.
Right now, I want to focus on two things: recovery and priming
Priming are stuff like cleaning, wiping off my whiteboards, clearing out tabs, filling markers, mealprep, todo list grooming
Recovery means lots of sleep, rest, hydration, and exercise. Specifically paying attention to anytime I want to game to see if I feel stressed or uncomfortable, taking a break when that happens.
To top off this post, I want to attach something that I want to erase from my whiteboard, but want to save forever:
Reasons Why I’m Ready
I’ve developed very deep and powerful life theories (flow, connection) → these theories can give anyone direction in darkness, I forget them but they come back when I need them
When faced with pain I’ve always come out stronger (ACL) → pain is the greatest teacher
I’ve proven that I can complete hard challenges (knee, sova) → I can achieve the challenges I set my mind to
I can solve problems few people can solve (triage, nikola) → normal rules don’t apply
I’m deeply attuned to emotions (coaching, art, philosophy) → makes it much easier to connect with people
I used to walk up to girls on the street → Nothing is something I can’t handle. There is nothing that I can’t ask for
No matter how badly I fail there are people who still love me
The point is not to get there, be productive or succeed, the point is to find a meaningful problem, problems we want to solve → we will never have no problems but we can choose which problems we want to contend with
Happiness doesn’t come from acing the past but seizing the now → its never too late to be happyIt’s near too late to fix it with a degree in engineering and parents who don’t mess with me
I have lots of assets and saving and a degree in engineering and parents and a sister all with money saved
I’ve been struggling with an idea recently, the question of how and when to charge for coaching services and when to propose coaching to someone.
The way most coaches approach this is by simply thinking about every hour they spend with someone as a billable hour. They do a “free” intro or demo sessions. I find this approach problematic for numerous reasons:
I love solving problems and delivering value. The reason why I think coaching is the right career is that I would do this stuff even if it was for free.
I hate thinking of every hour of my time as billable. Does every conversation that I don’t get paid for mean that I’m bleeding money everywhere?
I don’t know how to propose coaching, what will the difference be from talking to them? Won’t they feel like I’m charging money for something that should be free?
I don’t see why I shouldn’t prioritize my friends and help people for free? Why should I prioritize only people who pay me money?
I thought about it a lot and I realized that when I want to pay for a coach is because I want to be able to take it seriously. I don’t want a friend, I want someone who can help take me to the next level (emotionally, career and success-wise).
I realized that I can help as many people as I want to for free. I can prioritize friends and spend time with them without thinking of billable hours. But coaching is different. It isn’t just about brainstorming solutions to problems or being an empathetic ear. It’s about taking professional responsibility for someone’s success. The difference between a friend who hired you as a coach from an ordinary friend is that by hiring you they are asking you to meddle with their life!
There are three questions I can ask to see if they would be a good client:
Should they invest in themselves?
Are they doing something that requires coaching?
Do I feel confident that I will be the best coach for the job?
If the answer to all three is yes, I will push to sell them on coaching. If they are friends, I can tell them I will help them and give them advice for the rest of their life for free, but it wouldn’t be coaching until they invested in it.
The price of coaching is a mix of what would be an investment for the client, what would make ME invest, and what value I would be delivering.
In terms of differences in details:
Much more structure (cadence for meetings, methods, note-taking etc.)
Different mindset (clients’ goals are my goals, not my friend’s goals)
Also, I want to spend 20 minutes watching the next part of the coaching session.
Finally, I want to go after the brand and posts in a directed way. I’ll use the syllabus method.
A reminder for the syllabus method:
Create a clear, ambitious, and exciting goal (something to inspire the angels)
Use Alex Hormozi mindset (don’t think about how to achieve it, think about what would make it impossible for you to not achieve it)
Break down those things into 3 steps
If the steps are still too big and nebulous, break those steps into 3 more steps, repeating step 2 and 3
Goal: Create an Instagram page that is able to bring my energy of coaching to all artists, something so clear and powerful it is easy for me to create posts (3 hrs)
Step 1: Develop Brand (1 hr)
Tap into coaching energy, write down ideas
Try looka and other ai brand generators
Develop style guide
Step 2: Ask Questions and Get Answers
Put myself in the mindset of posting videos, posts, etc
I just came up with a sort of solution for the issue of continuing a healthy sleep cycle while ending the challenge.
It is sparked by something my dad said to me. He told me that life is a marathon not a short race. You have to think of things in the longterm in order to stay healthy.
I was thinking about this because I have a technique I use when I need to do something that takes time and patience. For example, if I feel antsy while working at the gym, I ask myself, “when will this be over?” and I start looking at the clock and feeling impatient.
I address with a technique that I call the Forever method. It’s called the forever method because I answer that question with “imagine it will go on forever”. And not in a bad way. In a way that is comforting. This is your new life…and I can let go of figuring out how to rush onto the next thing. I can just focus on the present moment, and focus on doing the movements in a way that I CAN do it forever. That means with good form, without pushing myself too hard.
I realized I can think about life the same way:
Bedtime that I can sustain forever
Working hours that I can sustain forever
Eating in a way that I can sustain forever
This makes a lot of sense for maintaining boundaries. Often we tell ourselves, oh, I will just bear this insult for today, I will just work a little harder today. But in those situations, we are violating our own boundaries. Which means we will build up resentment. It is NOT something you can sustain forever.
So as I close out this challenge, I plan to live in a way that will enable me to live forever.
