Backwards Walking
This feels really good. I want to try to incorporate this while I’m walking to anything.
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Workpost 11: Mentalities for Happiness
Byjack
Today I woke up feeling pretty awful from going to bed at 4AM last night.
I was feeling super overwhelmed with many many things in my life.
Today, I chose to wake up slowly, get to work slowly, and here are some of the mentalities that helped me:
- Cleaning is incredibly healing. Any time of cleaning, cleaning your workspace, your body, your clothes, it all is very therapeutic.
- What can I do for future Jack. This is the Matthew McConnehey’s idea of leaving breadcrumbs. Instead of the common idea of letting your future self deal with a problem (let future Jack deal with the dishes, let future Jack deal with talking to this person) think about what you can do now to make your future self happier. This can look like everything from cleaning, to setting up a super nice workspace, cooking yourself a really good meal.
- Focus on challenge and growth. I think oftentimes I get overwhelmed because I think about how hard things are. What helps me is thinking about everything in terms of challenge and growth. How can I challenge myself? What can I do to grow?
- Live in the hierarchy of being true to oneself. I was talking to a friend the other day about hierarchies and choosing the right one (don’t compete in a hierarchy you don’t believe in such as money). I want to compete and live in a hierarchy of being honest and true to myself.
I still feel a quite a bit of stress of the difficult conversations I’m anticipating, and the difficult tasks I have in front of me.
Unwelcome World
I feel sometimes
I am living in a world
Where every step is heavy
But the gravity only pulls on my heart
And the future feels unknown
Scary and not comfy
Bedtime Challenge 1: 44 Days In
Byjack
I started this challenge on October 8th. Now it is November 21st. And I can say with honesty that I really followed the challenge very very well.
A couple of notes:
- I was forced to go to bed later on two separate occasions, once for work, when I finished a production deployment at 11:30 and went to bed at maybe 12:30
- Another time when I was helping my girlfriend with her project and I was up until 12, I cheated by “sleeping” on the coach by the computer at 11 but since I didn’t actually go to bed until much later, it wasn’t that good
After these cheat days it got really hard to stick to my schedule for a few days, but now it is easy again. There were a few times that I went to bed at 1 or 3 am because I didn’t go to sleep and I often go to sleep at 12 or 1, but I get to my bedroom by 11:30 usually and almost always start washing up by 11:10.
Overall this is a smashing success. I have genuinely changed for the better and I think this time the change might actually last.
I do want to still apply some of my earlier ideas and focus on different needs and try to meet them better every day.
I can also work on turning off screens earlier and stopping eating so close to bedtime. But the eating has definitely gotten better and the screens are just hard since I like to play Valorant with my friends at night.
Overall I am very happy with the progress.
Knee Strength 7: Walking
Byjack
Yesterday I was walking around a lot when I felt a lot of pain on the interior side of the meniscus of my right knee.
I was really concerned, but this experience helped me get back into the knee challenge to focus on my knee and how it is moving.
When I used connection theory, I noticed that I was using my legs too much (specifically calves) when walking.
The steps for proper walking:
- Use hips to step out
- Flex and stretch out leg fully
- Only use calf muscles at the end of a stride
Also, stretching the calves helps.
It is actually incredible, I went from pain in every step to no pain at all even though I walked for a long time.
Also, I tried connection theory on walking on uneven ground and some tips for that:
- Keep the ankles active
- Relax the hips
- Bend the knees slightly
When this is done properly it should feel like walking talks no effort.
I also did a big on climbing stairs:
- Center the weight on the leg stepping up
- Keep everything controlled and centered while stepping up
Finally, in terms of relief, the only exercise that really helped when my menicus was hurting was the Gentle Knee Spacer exercise in this post.
Nothing else really helps, what surprised me is that the foot scrape actually caused pain.
I still haven’t figured out how to sleep on my side safely, but my intuition tells me that I need to build up more muscles in the legs.
Mewing and Tongue Position
Byjack
I’ve always had trouble finding a relaxed position for my tongue at the roof of the mouth. I always felt that I was forcing it and in the past when I tried to “mew” I got terrible headaches.
However, I noticed I spend a lot of time breathing from my mouth and I wanted to fix things so I used a bit of connection theory to come up with an idea on how to hold my tongue and I came up with this simple technique:
- Imagine your spine ending at your tailbone and reaching up all the way and ending at your tongue
- Imagine keeping your spine open at extended
This imagery has a couple of benefits:
- Most importantly for me, this allows me to move my body and my tongue without feeling like I cannot maintain tongue posture (mewing always felt static and forced to me)
- Simple and seems quite relaxing to me
Workpost 54: Fears
Byjack
I’m starting work on the new branding project but I’m feeling some fears:
- Fear of failure
- Fear of being misunderstood and not heard
- Fear of being seen as bad, lazy, unproductive, dumb
I feel trapped. Shoulders, fear in center of chest. I don’t know what to do to be seen as productive.
I feel overwhelmed. I feel out of control. Nerves vibing in my chest. Clenched stomach. I don’t know what will work.
I feel like a failure. Pain in my chest. I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’m imagining failing. I feel worthless. Head, chest, cold, numb tingling.
Grounding
I may not satisfy other people’s ideas of productivity, but I can satisfy what I see as productive. I can focus on my personal growth and the growth of my companies.
I don’t know what will work but I know what I can try.
I’m adventuring into new territory – that’s why I don’t know what I’m doing.
This gives me the opportunity to process the I’m unworthy wound.
Reframe
This is my opportunity to help other people grow in what they understand as productivity.
Embrace people knowing what you are working on, practice being proud of your process (like emotional processing). -> Big trigger from dad being skeptical of my process and feeling like I need to justify
Big failure literally always leads to big growth and learning. Let’s chase failure. I shouldn’t feel guilty as failure is all on me.
Ok, that makes me realize a lot of this comes from my dad constantly being skeptical, not trusting me, and dismissing my process. I feel always I need to justify myself.
It leads to a very strong I am trapped wound. Shoulders compressed and pain in chest.
Also some I am misunderstood, I am a failure, I am not trusted.
I wonder if that’s how he was treated? I wonder if he has those wounds too.
To grow from it, it occurs to me that he needed an explanation, a justification, and was skeptical because of his own internalized judgement – not because there was something wrong with me.
His comparison of me with other people was all due to his own shame.
Demanding an explanation is from own lack of trust in himself, he can’t understand my trust in myself.
Additional processing:
I did some more processing later in the day. I felt super tired but I kept feeling pressure to work. I feel fear that if I don’t get a certain amount of work done, that I will be rejected.
My dad would say that I didn’t plan the day out well enough, I was not efficient enough, or that I need to work harder.
I felt that fear in my chest as a I am not good enough wound.
In reframing I came to the conclusion that even though my dad had no boundaries around the amount of energy he could put into work, doesn’t mean I cannot.
I choose to put boundaries around my work, and to stop working or move on when I feel I’ve given as much as I can give within the course of the day.
Workpost 29: Health
Byjack
Today I woke up feeling really tired. I felt undermotivated to do the things that I want to do: take walks, write in my journal. I think I’ve also been finding it hard to retain purpose for some reason, or motivation or energy to power that purpose.
I realized this morning that a big reason as to why is simply health. I felt too much discomfort in my stomach in my head, too tired.
Today’s goals are simple:
- Clean up my apartment to a level that I could invite people over and feel good about it
- Focus on my health and wellness, drink lots of water and take naps, eat good food
- Move around a lot, I have a lot of todo list items, and I can take them different places
I’m really excited for the last one, to get outside my apartment a little more. I have more money now to do these sorts of things, so I would like to explore austin a little more, go to the library, parks, coffee shops and just have a good time while I’m working through all the different to-do list items. I have some truly excellent protocols for figuring out how to work on the move and I want to use them.