I’ve been putting off making this post for the longest time because I just didn’t know what I wanted my goal and focus for this challenge to be.
I knew generally a couple of things:
I knew I wanted to be more dangerous
I wanted to get stronger
I wanted to learn technique that could be a basis for MMA and grappling
I wanted to feel motivated to work out again
But I had no idea of specifically what I wanted and how I wanted to get there.
But then it hit me. I don’t need to know. This is an experiment. I’m not setting a goal and see how close I get to it. I’m trying jiujitsu for a month and seeing how it will affect me. Along the lines of my goals:
I want to see how it affects my fighting ability and mindset
I want to see how it affects my body
I want to see what concepts and techniques I grasped
I want to see how it affects my relationship to exercise
Let’s go on a journey! That is why I renamed it Jiujitsu journey instead of jiujitsu challenge.
I’ve always wanted to take as many sales and marketing offers as possible. I don’t know whether or not they are scams or not. I don’t know which ones are useful or not. So I wanted to take all of them, and treat them all like challenges.
Today, I started one of the Challenges. I signed up for a book called “Sell Like Crazy” from King Kong marketing agency with founder Sabri Suby. The book is about building clients from facebook ads (something I can already see they are good at and I have an interest in). I want to try this out with my coaching business.
The reason why I started with this sales funnel is that they have a hilarious Facebook commercial and they also had a unique offer – a free (or almost free) book.
My thoughts so far:
Really well-shot and entertaining commercial, they are a good marketing agency.
Glassdoor makes me think they are legit
I’m excited about the free book
They are too salesy, they kept me on the funnel for like an HOUR and predictably tried to sell me something immediately afterwards
My idea of them definitely soured in the sales funnel because of the endless funnel and greedy money grabs
So I’ve fallen off the weight challenge a little bit due to losing my phone and having some serious trouble with routines.
But here are some updates.
In terms of appetite, I realized that stuffing yourself with food simply doesn’t work with me. I tend to feel stressed and bloated, and end up somehow losing weight as my digestion falls apart. A major tip for me that seems to work is eating enzymes. They always seems to help me a lot when breaking down food and I definitely seem to gain weight after that.
In terms of routine, I started implementing daily walks morning walks with a cup of tea and that has been working great. What hasn’t been working great is getting enough sleep and going to bed on time.
The main blocked appears to be Valorant. Today I thought about how I always focus on the problem itself as the issue but I was wondering whether or not the issue actually manifests earlier.
For example, I know in Valorant, I always blame my aim for losing gun fights, but I never think about what led up to the gunfight and how that might have put me in a unwinnable situation, or at least, a very difficult to win situation.
In terms of going to bed on time, I always blame gaming late at night. But thinking about it more deeply, I theorized that the issue actually occurs much earlier in the day, specifically during noon and afternoon. This is when I start to feel discomfort and turn to Valorant to start numbing out the pain.
Fix noon and I fix bedtime.
Today I tried taking a nap at noon and it seems to work. It’s 11 PM and while I feel pretty shitty from playing Valorant, I actually feel like it was easier for me to stop, and I may go to bed around midnight instead of 2 or 3 AM.
Today is actually the end of unit one (Baseline health: strong enough to exercise bulk and be normal health). The next unit starts tomorrow (Bulking and buildup: Gain 3 pounds of muscle).
I’m excited to see how I can start to use the rhythms I’m starting to build up, with the energy exercises and increasing diet to greater effects.
I just warmed up with a pistol spike rush then tried to do a little exercise I call – the last bullet.
Immediate benefits:
Warms up hand with all the spraying, next time should use to control spray pattern
Spray warns enemies for harder fights
Need to focus on switching weapons
Need to often wait for them to enter your crosshair
Started to feel the movement-based aiming a little more for some reason
I tried it again today with AMAZING results (no recording though). This really helps you take your time in a nice way. The easiest way to start is to try to “catch” them on your crosshair when you enter. Then you progress to “catching” people on my crosshair.
I saw an ad on Facebook. It was talking about making money as an introvert and making money without giving up your inner peace.
I immediately signed up. It was about 20 dollars.
Now I have done a bunch of the exercises for the prework of the challenge and here are my reflections.
Some major questions that I have right now:
What am I willing to give up and how will I go about giving it up?
How do I live my values every day in a way that is in flow and not forced or mechanical?
I have some initial ideas.
First, I was thinking originally about what I wanted to give up in terms of things like YouTube, or socializing. But recently it made a lot more sense for me to think about time. Specifically, I wanted to dedicate my entire morning to succeeding at these goals.
From the time I wake up, I usually am doing what JT Franco calls “buffalo brain” (the idea of being one of the herd that moves without thinking). I listen to audiobooks, and watch YouTube videos. I don’t eat breakfast or drink water. I keep the blinds closed. I feel awful and I don’t feel the feelings.
Someone once said (might be Melinda Gates) that the first few hours of the day are the most important because they set the stage for the entire day to come. If I want to give up anything, I want to give up my mornings to getting up, drinking water, feeling my body, and going downstairs into the lounge to write on my blog and work on achieving my dreams.
Middle of the day has to be reserved for work and for talking to my girlfriend. End of the day has to be reserved for me time. Being alone, taking time, creating art, and letting the magic of nighttime take over.
This is what I’m thinking roughly:
7/8 AM – 9/10 AM: Dedicated to living the magical life
9/10 AM – 12 PM: Dedicated to doing the impossible at work
12 PM – 1/2 PM: Lunch, meditation
1/2 PM – 5 PM: Work, performing at the highest levels
5 PM – 7 PM: Misc time
7 PM – 11 PM: Alone time, creativity, play
During the weekend, work will be removed, leaving more time for dedication to my magical life. I think it will look something like this:
7/8 AM – 12 PM: Dedicated to living the magical life
12pm – 7 PM: Misc time
7 PM – 11 PM: Alone time, creativity, play
With this balance, it seems that my breakdown is this:
Weekday
1-3 hours per day on living magical life
5-7 hours of work
4 hours of alone-time/play
2 hours of miscellaneous time
Weekend
4-5 hours per day on living magical life
4 hours of alone-time/play
7 hours of miscellaneous time
I suspect, I will have to do careful planning during the weekend, in order to perform at the absolute highest levels of work and potentially spend less time there.
In terms of living out my beliefs of empathy, intuition/following feelings, creativity/imagination, and honesty. I’m not entirely sure what actions I need to take to feel that I am in congruence with my values.
My main thought right now is about taking risks, breathing through difficult emotions and sensations, and following connection theory.
Today in looking into how to increase strength and mobility into the tendons and ligaments, I made an exciting discovery and change in direction.
I’ve heard of the Knees Over Toes Guy ever since I went to Thai Massage and the massage therapist told me that he helped a lot with his knee injuries from doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
I know this challenge was to make my knee stronger just for going to Zion National Park, but this changes things completely.
The Knees Over Toes Guy has a program that costs about $50 per month. I decided to try it out as part of this challenge…but also as part of a bigger effort to regain my life. For the longest time, I have been searching for something that would let me be active again in life. Specifically, I want to get back into martial arts and work on Jiu Jitsu, wrestling and striking. I know that is completely impossible right now since I can’t even sleep on my side without pain in my knee.
This guy has renewed hope in me because apparently he was struggling with knee pain for 10 years and has had 6 surgeries and now is able to play basketball with zero pain even though he is pushing his body farther than ever (now dunks the ball).
This of course, changes my approach to the challenge and I need to rewrite my syllabus. I didn’t want to get rid of the syllabus because that is what has created such happiness and progress in all my challenges, but this is an excellent opportunity to improve the process. I have always felt that rigidly following something even when it isn’t the best path anymore is inefficient and wastes time. Being able to adapt the syllabus when you feel a major shift (not just all the time for no reason) makes a lot of sense.
There is a major shift that needs to happen because I realized that the current syllabus is not perfect due to the fact that even day 1 I realized that all exercises involve muscles, fascia and ligaments and tendons, yet they are all spread out over days in the syllabus and that makes no sense.
So here is my revised syllabus:
Days until Zion: 8
UNIT 2: Testing Knees Over Toes
Day 1 – Surface Tissues
UNIT 2: Testing Knees Over Toes
Day 1 – Day 5 – ATG workouts (Zero Program)
UNIT 3: Recovery
Day 1 – Cooling and antioxidation Day 2 – Cleansing and Fasting Day 3 – Fortifying and Nutrition
This might fall into my Valorant challenge but it goes much deeper.
I started trying to find a way to multitask in Valorant, which led me to thinking about confidence. This led me down a whole path where I was trying to understand how to focus on the game and get into the game, and get into flow.
I finally arrived at a technique that looks something like this:
See the enemy
Imagine their head getting shot
Aim
Shoot
This works for drills, deathmatch anything. The point is that you visualize the outcome first, then take some action (aiming). You don’t immediately aim, you don’t shoot as soon as you visualize.
This does a couple of things:
Visualizing hitting the headshot removes anxiety because in my head I can hit the shot
Visualization makes me focus on one target and give it my full attention
Aiming makes sure I actually hit the shot
On top of this, I can do anything to aim, I can use my movement to aim, I can center my screen, I can do literally anything, the important part is to visualize the headshot before it happens.
In a very interesting turn of events, I’ve actually found this super helpful in music too.
Oftentimes my singing is muddy and unclear. I’ve done something similiar:
Chop the notes into shorter more enunciated syllables
Savor and taste each note
Imagine how I want the note to taste
This does something similar where I am more aware of each note and can sing it with more intention and emotion. I don’t skip ahead too fast, I focus on each word as it comes.
It seems that a combination of a focus on a small step, and visualization helps bring me into the present moment.