Today I came up with a new emotional processing tool, finding a way to personify the feelings within me and making friends with them.
The goal is to accept and validate feelings within instead of trying to push them down or quickly process them.
Here are some examples:
Valorant stress and anxiety (fear of being bad/defective, fear of failure) – a little black dragon called Neelu. The tension in my stomach and heart are the dragon’s body my frustration its fire.
The feeling of being overwhelmed by the thought of work – Pedro the Triangle, a pyramid floating in my chest with sharp edges
The desire/pull for attention or to be liked – Lethe the a sort of fast moving air or energy in my chest
These personification, I make friends with them, allow them to be with me while I go about my business.
I also wanted to talk about a really good video I watched.
Some lessons I learned:
Stay consistent
Figure out what you want to be the best at (good enough for others to want to pay you money)
Figure out what comes before the money in terms that is more grounded and more closer to your purpose
Taking the final advice, I wanted to think about it a little more.
I want to make $200,000.
My two goals are:
To help people turn their artistic gifts into masterpieces
Works of art that are honest, emotional, grounded, playful, imaginative, personal, and beautiful
To make companies 10x more valuable
More purposeful, unique, efficient, intentional, innovative processes, brands, culture, products and leaders (consistent and aligned)
The question I want to ask myself is: how would I need to go about my goals in such a way that it would be strange if I didn’t make $200,000?
I’m now on the road and I feel absolutely exhausted. Tired from the travel to Austin, tired from not sleeping well, tired from getting up early today, and not sleeping well again.
I really want to just sleep and sleep for a long time.
Other than sleeping, I want to focus on taking care of myself, this means sparing no expense, and getting myself what I need when I need it.
This means fulfilling my needs through my values of Health, Freedom, Honesty, Respect, Empathy, and Ambition. This means using connection theory on myself.
A couple of weeks ago, I rented a car at National car rental. My sister returned it for me, and I got a shock in my email a few weeks later.
I immediate assumed this had to be a scam, or some sort of mistake. But the more I read, the more that I could tell this was actually legit. They had the right time, the right place and right company. They were charging me for $1295.81 for damages to the vehicle.
Looking at this deeper I noticed that the line items were VERY extensive, replaces door parts and handles. According to them, the car was HEAVILY damaged.
Looking at the pictures, I could barely see any of the damages they were indicating. It almost felt like they were offloading the cost of wear and tear on me.
Obviously I was LIVID.
I knew that there were some small marks on the car when I picked it up, but I never took any pictures.
I knew that no damage whatsoever happened when I had the car. I didn’t think any of this damage was on the car when I picked it up, but the damage in the photos are so subtle its hard for me to be sure.
I had rental insurance specifically for this car, but didn’t want to file a claim for something I didn’t do.
My sister had someone walk around the car and CONFIRM it was ok before she returned it. They parked it, and who knows what happened after that.
National has a service for their “Emerald Isle” premium members where you can pick up and drop off a car without ever seeing someone.
This now seemed like a LIABILITY not a PERK since now I can’t get them to acknowledge damage on the car.
I’m a new member and if they were going to be f*cking sticklers about this whole thing, they should have EXPLAINED it to me. I would have got them to sign off on EVERY F*CKING SCRATCH BEFORE AND AFTER returning the car.
So I went to chase down this problem:
I called National Support, and they told me that I needed to call their damage unit. I asked them to make a note on my case so I wouldn’t have to repeat myself.
After I called their damage unit, they redirected me to someone else.
After getting to another person, they redirected me to someone else.
The last person seemed to know what they were talking about, but I had repeat myself because she could not access any of the notes that National Support wrote down.
The last woman who oversaw the appeals to the damages told me the following information:
Generally its better if you take photos beforehand, however, in situations where the “damage” is so small it is easy to miss, you can appeal and they will dismiss it. They consider it human error.
She told me that my “damages” were definitely small enough that someone might have missed it before (so it may not be caused by me).
She agreed to waive all of the fees.
So my lessons learned from this whole experience:
Always get rental car insurance just in case.
Take a video when you pick up the car to prove the condition of the car beforehand. (It’s gonna be me in the parking lot being like “hey this is me in the parking lot picking up this car at X time” so they have proof I didn’t take the video at some other place or time)
Take a video of the car when you return it.
If they try to charge you for something really small and not visible in your videos, appeal, and they will probably dismiss it.
It’s good to be a mix of legitimately angry (I was furious) but polite at the same time (I apologized in advance telling them I was very upset but I knew it wasn’t their fault personally). As a result, they were helpful and resolved my issue quickly.
After almost 3 months away from home, I’m finally back and I’m reminded of the life I built here. Peaceful, open, free, and lonely. There are so many possibilities and spaciousness to fill my life with wonderful things.
Today I want to focus my time in building the life that I want to live in the next few months when I will be transitioning to a part time role in my day job in order to spend more time on coaching and building my life up.
Here are some things I want to do:
Unpack
Clean & Tidy
Cut my nails
Look into Gi Doctors
Look into a sleep study
Spend some time with the gf
Cook food
Plan my trip with my brother and sister
Cross off any remaining things on my todo list
Basically, I want to have a clean slate for the next stage of things such as:
Finding a part time gig where I can exercise without hurting myself
Signing back up for jiujitsu
Editing youtube shorts of coaching sessions
Setting up more coaching sessions
Working on sales plays for AI consulting
Researching into buying a house
I went for a morning walk and I wanted to express some appreciation that I gained from my journeys.
Parents House, appreciations for:
Health
Cooking
Playing games with my brother
France, appreciation for:
Walking
Beauty of old buildings
Cuddling
My happiest times in my parent’s house were eating food, and spending time with my brother and parents.
My happiest times in France were spending time with my girlfriend and coming up with crazy schemes.
I was also stressed in both places. In my parent’s house, it was being watched by my parents. In France, I felt very unsafe. Unsafe in stores, on the streets, unsafe in the Airbnb (afraid to break or spill things), unsafe while working (afraid not to be productive).
I think safety is something I want to work on as France is somewhere I would like to feel more at home at.
I felt very lonely today, so I watched two videos. I figured that whenever my knee feels bad I do research, but I don’t do a lot of research when I feel lonely.
Major ideas that might help me from this post:
Think about how to help others to feel less lonely. It’s weird that I always think about who can make me feel less lonely, but I actually don’t need other people for that. Helping others will help me feel less lonely.
Emotional perfectionism definately sounds like me. Thinking about how it might be possible for me to connect with people even if they aren’t perfect friends and fill all my needs makes it a lot easier to connect with people.
This one really really really helped me because it answered one of my questions, why am I distracting myself all the time and going on YouTube videos and playing games. The simple thing is, I’m not a good friend to myself.
Main takeaways:
A good friend is honest in a loving gentle way. Be honest with yourself in a compassionate way.
A good friend is encouraging and pushes you to be a better version of yourself. Remind yourself what you are capable of, believe in yourself. Encourage yourself to be a good man, a strong man, despite what others want you to do.
For some reason, the idea of being a good man makes me feel really really calm for some reason. I know I have been fighting myself and that’s why I’m on my phone all the time.
I wanted to spend some time thinking more about my ideal friend:
Someone who is accepting of me, a good listener, empathetic
Someone who wants to go on adventures with me
Someone who encourages me to dream big, believe in myself
Goals: I really want to feel less shitty and tired and I want to come up with a direction for my podcast edit and how I can edit it in 40 minutes or less.
Here are the metrics for scoring:
Energy rejuvenation (1-5)
Confidence in solution (1-5)
Creativity (percentile)
Raw efficiency, work over energy (percentile)
My plan for my warmup is just for go for a long 15 minute walk.
Plan for work session:
UNIT ONE: Analyze video (10 min)
Might want to create a good intro
who are you and what have you done
What would help her as a writer?
Creative process from start to end
Talking about book in a way people want to read it or get greater insight
Greatest struggles as a writer
What like to write about
What do other people probably want to know about a writer?
Where come up with ideas
Interesting passages from book
UNIT TWO: Process/look at other ideas (10 min)
Going all in on Judy Blume masterclass video:
As soon as you tell me I can’t do something, I’m going to do it.
I hope that in sharing with you what I’ve learned over 50 years of writing that it will help you find your way as a writer.
As a 12-year-old, I was obsessed by the idea of growing breasts and getting my period. But there was no place that I could read about it. When I started to write, I was determined to be honest. So I’m going to share with you the practical side of writing.
There’s nothing more important than character. You’re living with these people for years. You had better feel for them. Do some exercises. Have your character write a letter to you. The first draft is pure torture for me. I hate every second of it. I have a messy mind, and my writing is a process of cleaning up the mess, then slowly making a story. I will be able to show that to you.
I got a particularly nasty review once. It got to me, and I took my typewriter, and I held it over this arroyo. And I was going to throw it in. I thought I cannot do this anymore. And then this little voice went off in my head. Wait, you’re going to let this one review stop you from writing? That’s crazy! That’s one opinion. I enjoy finding and supporting new writers, and this is a chance for me to reach more of you.
I always ask myself, why would anyone write if they didn’t have to? I mean it’s so hard. So this is for all of you who feel that you have to.
I’m Judy Blume, and this is my Master Class.
Something really special about Danuta and unique about her personality, show don’t tell.
*Beeroll on books and images from life, maybe emotional points of interview
Some sort of intro to talk about what this is about (maybe introduction)
Something about how she gets started with creative process, or something about art or creativity.
Walk through the step by step creative process
*Images or animation if possible
Talk about a challenging emotional experience
Resolution if possible
Deeper philosophical point
End
UNIT THREE: Create plan for actual editing (currently thinking one short, one long) (10 min)
UNIT ONE: Gathering clips
UNIT TWO: Gathering broll
UNIT THREE: Compositing
Bonus time: shot list
Something really special about Danuta and unique about her personality, show don’t tell. Should be humorous and controversial.
Beeroll on books and images from life, maybe emotional points of interview
To kill the other
Some sort of intro to talk about what this is about (maybe introduction)
Something about how she gets started with creative process, or something about art or creativity.
Walk through the step by step creative process
Images of process
Talk about a challenging emotional experience with resolution if possible
Deeper philosophical point
Some sort of ending
Bonus time: animation thoughts
Trying out pencil 2d!
Postmatch Review:
Overall, this was very fun and rejuvenated my love for editing and video.
Energy rejuvenation – 4 I don’t feel 100% but my energy went up TONS since I started working
Confidence in solution – 2 I feel the plan is really solid but the timing seems a little tight to get all of this done
Creativity – 70th percentile, pretty good, not revolutionary. But I don’t think most people could do this.
Raw efficiency, work over energy – 80th percentile, I think most sessions and people can’t be this productive in 40 minutes that was actually insane.
Match 2: Video Editing
Goals: I want to be excited about this video edit, feel satisfied, while boosting my confidence in pushing out videos faster with less effort
Here are the metrics for scoring:
Excitement in the edit (1-5)
Satisfaction in the edit (1-5)
Efficiency (percentile)
Fun (1-5)
How ME it is (percentile)
My plan for my warmup is to hype myself up – play music, tell friends etc. + motivation.
Clean, write on my board.
UNIT ONE: Gathering clips (10 minutes)
Something really special about Danuta and unique about her personality, show don’t tell. Should be humorous and controversial.
Beeroll on books and images from life, maybe emotional points of interview
To kill the other
Some sort of intro to talk about what this is about (maybe introduction)
Something about how she gets started with creative process, or something about art or creativity.
Walk through the step by step creative process
Images of process
Talk about a challenging emotional experience with resolution if possible
Deeper philosophical point
Some sort of ending
UNIT TWO: Gathering broll
UNIT THREE: Compositing
Postmatch Review:
Excitement in the edit – 2 I’m not that thrilled about the cut so far
Satisfaction in the edit -1 I’m not all that satisfied in the edit
Efficiency (percentile) – 60% I’m better than average but a bit slow compared to experienced video editors
Fun (1-5) – 3 I had quite a lot of fun
How ME it is (percentile) – 15% not a lot of me in it so far
Match 3: Video Editing + MEified
Goals: I was right that the last match did not finish the process of editing. It was just too much. But I did make REALLY good progress. The only problem is, it’s not ME enough. This last challenge, I want to get the edit done, and I want to inject some Jack magic into it.
Metrics for scoring:
How ME is it (percentile)
Completeness & polish (percentile)
For my warmup, I’m going to watch a bunch of my videos.
Ok the warmup didn’t work, I’m gonna play some nice music and meditate. Me is goofy, profound, soft, and emotional.
UNIT ONE: Compostiting
UNIT TWO: MEify
UNIT THREE: Finalize
Postmatch Review: It ended up taking two hours. I’m tired now!
How ME is it – 65% it does feel real, and grounded but not as me as I could make it
Completeness & polish – 65% its actually not bad at all, could use some broll and animation
