Today I got into an argument with someone who is very close to my heart. Thinking about the argument later makes me think about what is painful about the relationship in general and the core wounds that it brings up.
Core wounds are damaging beliefs that we have about ourselves that we repeatedly look for evidence for (and traumatize ourselves constantly with).
Cognitive-behavioral therapy teaches us that core wounds can be reprogrammed by finding evidence to the contrary. Thais Gibson recommends doing this for at least 21 days for the new beliefs to set in.
This is day one for me.
Core Wound 1: I’m not good enough (attractive physically and personality-wise)
Evidence to the contrary (I am good enough):
A girl in college who was very beautiful who I liked blushed every time I talked to her and liked me back. She was mean to other guys who showed interest.
When I was being myself and feeling confident recently, lots of women from girls on the plane, on the trail, at rental properties all seemed really eager to talk to me and help me. I’ve been told I have really good energy.
A girl that I love told me she likes the way I look, likes my thin frame and my hands.
A girl in high school once had a crush on me after flirting with her once. I might have made an impression on her.
A girl who I met playing a mobile game with, added me on her Snapchat and would talk to me for hours, there must have been a reason.
This is a really strong core wound for me. I often compare myself to others and feel like I’m less attractive. I feel that no one really likes me.
Core Wound 2: My emotions are not good and push people away
Evidence to the contrary (My emotions are good and bring people closer):
A lot of my art tends to come from my emotions and feelings and lots of people like them
Because of my emotions, I tend to be more honest, open and empathetic in support groups
I tend to connect with a lot of women by emotions. It’s why I like to have girls as friends and a lot of girls like me.
Emotions make me experience things more deeply, like when I cry watching Moana.
My emotions help me read other people much better because I can feel what they are feeling.
I always feel, especially with some people, that my emotions are too much and push people away. I worry people like hard and cold unemotional guys since they are stronger and don’t need anything. I also sometimes want to be strong and dominant and I don’t know how to reconcile that with emotions.
It is time for a crash course in project management!
Objectives:
Understand and be able to apply major project management methodologies (PMP school, waterfall, agile project management)
Review other methodologies that I already know (design thinking, OKRs, SRE, DevOps, UI/UX)
Formulate resources and learning into distinct repositories of knowledge and simple shortcuts and worksheets that I can use as shorthand reminders and ways to kick off processes
Total time: 4 hours
PART ONE: Master project management (2 hrs)
Section one: Learn, research, and gather (1 hr)
Subsection one: Warm up via listening to videos and gathering resource lists (20 minutes)
Subsection two: Create own practice scenarios and find questions in them (20 minutes)
Subsection three: Consume and build resource repos off of resource lists and answer my own questions (20 minutes)
Section two: Create practice scenarios (30 min)
Section three: Question and answer (30 min)
PART TWO: Review other methodologies (1 hr)
Section one: write down everything from memory basic searching (20 minutes)
Section two: watch videos (20 minutes)
Section three: search for resources and worksheets (20 minutes)
PART THREE: Create and organize resources (1 hr)
Section one: create a structure for folders and docs (20 minutes)
Section two: create resources for project management (20 minutes)
Section three: create resources for other methodologies (20 minutes)
In my Valorant journey right now, I’m very interested in perfecting strafe shooting and proper clearing.
I heard that one of the elements of getting really good is about focusing on fewer things. What I’m really working on right now is getting something out of my warmups.
I usually play deathmatch until I feel like I’m hitting my shots and then jump into a match. But, now I’m thinking I need to let go of trying to push off from the confidence in a good deathmatch and instead working on making the mechanics more intuitive…meaning I need to deathmatch until I can hit shots even if I’m not match mvp, my clears, peeks and jiggles feel COMFORTABLE. Even if that means going into some deathmatches where it is really hard and everyone on taps me. The point of warmup should be when I feel like I’m not having trouble hitting shot anymore.
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:
