* I wrote this on Jan 15th…gonna leave it as a journal entry for now.
I feel unhappy right now. I feel like I can’t work on the things I want to work on. I feel stressed out that my relationship won’t work out. I don’t know what I’m doing here in France. I actually very much dislike the country. I am worried that coaching is not the thing that I actually want to do. I find it hard to find myself and feel myself in this relationship. I wonder if that is because of me not knowing myself, coaching not being the thing I want to do, or if this is the wrong place for me.
Right now I don’t feel like working on coaching or thinking about coaching.
I want to work on something that is purely interesting to me and something that is actually fun.
I think that thing right now is making a story creation bot in python using large language models.
In order to write a halfway decent story, I believe you need a couple of things:
I started to understand what it means to have “self-discipline” and using that to build self-confidence.
It isn’t about holding yourself to arbitrary rules and forcing yourself to do things that you don’t want to do (but think you “should do” or that other people think you should do).
It is about challenging yourself. If you have a challenge mindset, you don’t worry about failure, you are interested in the possibility. If you have self discipline in a challenge, it means to focus on that and as you follow through, you start to build confidence.
As Goggins says, you don’t get happiness or confidence from comfort, you get it from facing yourself and facing your fears.
The big issue between people who really understand and those who are fake motivation is that people who are fake push themselves for other people, they push themselves out of fear. The people who understand, have embraced fear, they push themselves WITH the fear. People who don’t understand, disconnect from themselves and ignore fear. The people who understand CONNECT with fear, feel it MORE not LESS.
Today is kinda busy and I want to focus on fundamentals – clearing out my todo list, getting all the UNIT ONE things crossed off my list, editing my interview with Danuta Hinc etc.
I also want to focus on the thing that I’ve put off for months, setting up my black out curtains. If I can get that set up today, then I will have accomplished something big.
If I’m able to sort out all the fundamentals. Then the next things to focus on for my business are the following:
I feel pretty awful. I’ve lost focus in work. I feel overwhelmed and unhappy. Every day I stay up late at night. The only solace I find is in games. Everything that I wanted to do now feels like things I have to do.
I struggle to regain the mentality that I use for these workposts.
I guess I feel extremely tired and depressed.
There are a couple of things that filter through the haze that I’m feeling:
I want to find a way to post on LinkedIn again. That is the one thing I want to work on achieving.
This new idea in taichi, and breathwork. To receive what is coming instead of taking. To allow things to come to me. To receive breath instead of taking it. To receive emotions, purpose, and understanding, instead of creating it. I feel this is the essence of patience.
To be curious. I want to do more IFS therapy, but I feel overwhelmed by it. Too much thinking about thinking that is too cerebral, non-intuitive, and downright frustrating. However, we can take the core concept of IFS – the concept of creativity. Ask how do I feel? What do I need? Why do I feel that way.
It’s not been all lost I suppose. There was something I worked through recently – two people that I am jealous of. One who went to Harvard and ended up starting a successful youtube channel, and another who worked on my software company before leaving and getting big on youtube for his music, and is now a famous musician.
In speaking with my friend Edgar about this I came up with the following concepts to remind myself in times of jealousy:
How do I want to succeed my way? The issue with a lot of these people is that they got successful in things that I want to succeed in, but not in the way that I want to succeed. There is great value in succeed in the way I want to succeed.
Hardship creates growth. Success isn’t the end goal, success just leads to creating more challenges for yourself to work through. The ones who go down the harder path to begin with will still succeed but will be more complete when they do.
Is my goal to succeed a little in the short term? Or is the goal much bigger? This is the concept that if I want to gain one rank in Valorant, the outcome of a match matters (because my elo will be impacted directly). If my goal is to get to radiant (the highest rank), one loss in the scale of a huge journey is not significant.
Finally, I’ve put off doing a LinkedIn post for far too long.
Let’s tackle the steps:
Answer a list of questions in a letter to my girlfriend.
Come up with a research plan and timebox it.
Timebox getting everything “on the canvas”, move very fast, get messy, take big risks, keep going until it coalesces into what the art wants to be
Break to do other things, view work from different angles
Put on strategic hat to finish
Questions to ask myself (step 1):
What my vision for the ideal post?
What am I worried about and feel uncomfortable by?
What do I want to learn when creating this post?
Strategic Hat
See the work as something in itself, not just as a manifestation of my ideas
Put on creative hat, check: is there some feeling here, is there some beauty, fun?
Put on producer hat, check: if this was a work created by one of my clients, how would I promote it? If it was done by my brother?
*One Big Thing I Noticed*
It’s a lot easier for me to be motivated to workout than to work. Plan workout sessions for the entire day and bring work to do during those times. If no work gets done, I am still being productive and will be healthier, guaranteeing better work in the future.
Today I will be playing a lot of Valorant and hopefully processing a lot of the stress and feelings I have around Valorant through the use of poetry.
Pregame Stress
I’ve got knots in my stomach
What if it is another day
Of humiliation
That drop in my stomach
Feeling helpless
Like I’m worth nothing
I go down in rank
The more I play
What is wrong me
That I cannot get better
I hate this
Myself
Me
Hands Sweaty
On my keyboard
Heat on my face
Clenched stomach
It is no wonder
Valorant has such a big impact on me
I wish to let go of my fears
And remember the satisfaction of shooting
I starting to find it a challenge to write poetry because my mind always turns to thinking strategically and thinking in terms of sentanaces and bullet points. I’m going to roll with that. If that is how I feel, we are just going to write in sentences and bullet points.
I feel a bit tired like I’m walking through a haze. I’m scared to start a ranked game, and yet there is an eagerness to gain rr. Gold 1, what could go wrong? Yet I’m scared. HOW DID I GET TO GOLD 1? That’s unhead of. It gives me so much anxiety that I don’t know what is going on.
I want to remind myself of my main valorant tenants:
Think of it as a 1v5
Follow your feelings, peek when you are ready
Keep wrist relaxed, use movement keys to aim
Some additional tenants:
Find a space angle to hold, something that feels safe
Peek expecting them there
Notice things about aim, don’t try to change them, noticing is the pathway to the unconscious mind
Goddamn, this fucking omen can’t hit him while he’s moving . Why is Silver Movement so good?????
WHY IS THE RAZE HIDING IN THAT AREA? NO FUCKING COMMS? I hate this team. Why can I not hit shots.
I think I wasn’t aware of the danger I was in when clearing heaven. Maybe need more of that 1v5 mindset. Also, maybe need to notice where my shots are going. Scared but playing again. It is silvers I am with WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY KILLING ME. Counterstrafing, one tapping me??? WHAT DO I NEED TO DO?
THIS IS LIKE GOING BACK 2 FUCKING YEARS. I guess what I thought before is that I would never drop this low because I can beat them on gamesense alone.
I feel tired. Why are the braindead idiots getting more kills? I feel a bit better now. I adjusted and I was able to get a bunch of kills in the end. I guess its just about holding better angles.
I don’t like this bullshit bottom fragging. I feel so tired and awful and I feel hungry.
It is interesting that with these reflections I was able to drop 39 kills in one of my games.
Today I did a long breathwork meditation session after feeling extremely stressed out about three questions:
Should I sign up for jiujitsu again?
Should I do coaching again?
Should I continue therapy?
And all the worrying stressful sub questions:
What about the money for jiujitsu
Jiujitsu is so hard to get good at
People might not buy my coaching if I didn’t do something really big
Therapy costs so much money is it worth it?
And after the meditation, one thing was clear to me. The answer to everything: take everything so much less serious. Have fun!!!
If you have fun doing jiujitsu, sign up for it, go to classes when you feel like it. Have an amazing time doing work. If you love coaching, do it whether or not people believe that you are a good coach or not.
Enjoy yourself. Indulge yourself in boba while working. Take breaks to play on the piano, to draw.
P.S. I did sign up for jiujitsu, and I intend to have fun learning tons of new martial arts.
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.
