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Workpost 62: Processing Frustration
“This is gonna be harsh, but you aren’t a model”
“If you’re deadset on using yourself”
“I think you’re not adding very much by being in there”
“You seem robotic”
Anger, frustration, feeling misunderstood, feeling hurt.
I feel pain and cracks in my heart like cracked glass.
I don’t think my looks matter on an ad. I don’t even think being robotic matters. I think the message is what matters the most. Also, I feel I’m plenty relaxed and attractive for the ad to work.
Processing the emotions I feel that maybe different people value looks and appearance on different levels. I value the message because I know that definitely works. Others might value looks and performance more. Some people also might be turned off by my demeanor or my appearance, but that has more to do with them than me.
I also feel the difficulty processing how I feel about myself on camera.
I don’t feel the camera captures me in the best light. I see a lot of flaws.
I feel a clenching in my heart, neck, and stomach.
I feel too skinny and small, my face too pudgy and soft looking, my nose not enough definition.
Processing it further, I understand that I’m not done growing, everyday I can work to become healthier, stronger, and more attractive. Also, I accept the way I look in the camera like I accept my art. Instead of thinking of how other people look, I want to let myself look the way I want to look. Like letting the art be what it wants to be. There is something charming and right about how I look exactly as I am, imperfect me.
I want to live a full life, and worrying about how I look on camera is not what I want. I want to spend my time and energy building my business and I KNOW I can do that with videos of myself.
The next thing I want to process is how unproductive and lethargic I feel in my apartment. I don’t even want to get out of the apartment to work.
The first thing I noticed is that the apartment is a bit hot and the oxygen feels much thinner in here. I turned up the AC, put my standing desk up to standing and drank some cold water.
There is also an emotional part of this. I feel safe here. The outside world feels unsafe with unsafe people and lots of unsafe places.
It feels like a light buzzing numbing fear in my chest and stomach.
I feel like a good cleaning of the apartment can help.
Tidying and clearing out the mental baggage.
A great thing that standing desks allow for is pacing and I’m going to take advantage of that.
It’s interesting. Being at the standing desk feels the same way as leaving the apartment feels. Less cozy and comfy. More open, free, unknown, and some low level buzz of anxiety.
It almost feels like morning vs night where night is full of comfort and imagination and mornings feel more energetic and open but devoid of magic.
It almost feels like emptiness. When emotionally processing that, I feel from space comes peace, comes inspiration.
After spending more time emotionally processing this, I have a couple idea of what I can use to reframe going outside, leaving, standing at my desk and going to the gym from empty to more meaningful:
- My coaching mindset:
- You’re in my house
- Take risks
- Be comfortable in silence
- Take your time
- Make the impossible possible
- Taoist productivity
- Focus on one thing only
- Do it until you feel empty
One more thing today, I was confused on how to work with my blog and my to do list together as they sort of fill in the same needs. They both help me get structure and work through issues.
What I decided is that I’m going to use my to do list as a mental dump and use it to organize my thoughts. If any part of those parts, I want to work through in a workspace, I will combine the necessary elements together, cross them all out and transfer to my blog to work out.
I now have 3 forms of organization:
- To do list – braindump and prioritization tool
- Blog – workspace
- Calendar – time planning tool, reminder for future tasks
Overlapping areas:
- Takeaways from prioritization or working out prioritization can be a overlap of blog and to do list
- Long terms tasks can be overlap from calendar and to do list
- Calendar event and work can be overlap between blog and calendar
- Large tasks can be overlap from to do list and blog
Current thoughts about order of operations:
- Journaling in blog
- To do list forming and prioritizaiton
- Long tasks added to calendar
- Add more to journal if needed
- Follow to do list, clumping and converting to blog as needed
Workpost 5: Panic Attack
I was just on the border of a panic attack when I went to go exercise.
My Head Hurts
Eyes are swimming in a pain in the back of my head
Heart beating like its a race
And no matter how fast it beats
It isn’t fast enough
To catch up
With the work I want to do
After hanging for a little bit, I decided something. I need to go back to basics. As the level of work, my ambition, my organization go up…so have my stress levels. It is beginning hard to relax, hard to feel in the moment. It feels like I’m in an endless race with no chance to catch my breath.
So here are the basics:
- The planning I’m doing in these blog posts give me a huge edge in terms of direction and thought process in a huge number of goals at the same time. However, I now need to do the opposite. The basic I have in mind is this – focus on one thing at a time. Make a todo list. Create prioritization. Make it emotionally make sense (choose what emotionally feels important to focus on first, not logically). Clear all distractions and focus on one thing.
- Use the taoist approach to achieve fulfillment. Work until you feel empty.
- Use the coaching mindset…let the world come to you, have patience.
I also realized I did not work on the product research goal.
So here it is:
Goal: Create free products in 1 month | UNIT ONE: Complete research | Part 1 Transcribe and think, what is the million dollar problem or breakthrough?
- One interview per day
Workpost 12: Deep Journaling
I was doing some deep journaling in the form of questions and answers, where I would ask all the questions I have, feel deep in my heart what answer is coming to me, and then asking more questions about those answers.
For example, I will ask myself, what do I do about the anxiety with art? The answer that I feel come up intuitively is to create art which then poses the question, what do I do with art? Then I have the answer, use art to create richness in your life.
I was doing this exercise because I realized at this point in my life, I am so confused on what will happen next and what direction I want to go for my coaching, my career, and my relationship that the best way to serve myself is to get some clarity about what I am feeling and what I want. The faster you make decisions, the faster you progress. I felt that having clarity would make it much easier to make faster decisions.
I had quite a few revelations from this exercise I wanted to note down a few of the most important ones:
- I will achieve what I want in the field of AI not by working with others and creating a startup but rather by involving others into my creative process. Remember the energy of anything is possible. Solve difficult problems in practical ways and help people dream again. Change the world for the better.
- The long distance relationship does not meet the physical needs of closeness. I will need to dance more to keep in touch with the physical. I want to use emails and video chats to keep connected with my girlfriend on a spiritual level.
- I’ve lost a bit of my focus with coaching where it has become too much about the client. Coaching is not just about helping people create amazing beautiful art, but also to create a space of my design. Aka a space where connection theory and flow theory rule.
- Use your fear of not having enough money to fuel art that creates more wealth than money can buy (not about the value of the art, but the experience about having stories, music, and paintings so beautiful I may as well be rich).
One more note I wanted to make…I had a new idea with coaching a few days ago. I always wanted to create video clips of my coaching in order to show social media, but I was thinking recently, I can create clips that can be used to share something a package that can be used to motivate my clients (clips of songs created during the session, major breakthroughs etc.)
Workpost 54: Processing More Emotions
I feel strongly that my client will not value the work that I did.
I feel that he will say, “yea is this what you’ve been spending all your time on??? This is not what we need”. Then I will feel frustrated because it IS what we need.
I feel unseen, underappreciated, and misunderstood.
I feel uncomfortable in this room with someone else on the phone. I feel watched, judged, and disliked.
I am now realizing this is a time that I can let go of taking responsibility for others emotions. I can have faith in their abilities to process feelings themselves.
I’m feel numb buzzing fear in my heart and stomach. I feel a little trapped in my shoulders from feeling watched.
Maybe this guy is friendly, both of us clearly like to work. We are both trying to get something done. Maybe this is a warm environment after all.
Reframe: I get to work with people near me, I can get a little sense of community without having to talk
I worry about him being uncomfortable walking behind him or listening to his calls.
I feel fear in my stomach and trapped in my shoulders. I feel I am not safe.
Maybe his calls can motivate me to work on my stuff. I feel rejected, pain in my heart, fear of rejection.
Chase rejection, it will set you free.
With the feeling for my client, I feel deep painful fear in my heart and stomach. I feel a fear of rejection again.
Reframe: if I have a fear of being misunderstood, I can take this time to understand myself.
What I do is important because clarity will give a lot of direction and power to everything you do. Noone like to buy a confused product from a confused company with confused founders. Noone is passionate about a product that isn’t clear in its purpose with a company that isn’t clear on it’s purpose.
I want to be excited about this product and company. Excitement and passionate is the lever arm for work.
Inspiration is the lever arm for creativity. Purpose is the lever arm for fulfillment. Branding is the lever arm for product value. Vision is the lever arm for decision making.
Workpost 44: Overwhelmed
I feel like it was an absolute slog getting back on my blog. I felt like I had to force myself. I’m afraid what happens if I don’t force myself. I just want to ignore everything. I’m not happy right now.
I feel so overwhelmed with work and stocks.
I really wish I could go back to those days when I wrote in my blog and I felt like I was on track and going places. I feel so frustrated. I feel a strong desire to take action, but its as if I don’t have the leverage.
I feel so angry
I want to break to tear be violent
I feel trapped like an animal
I don’t want to write blog posts
I don’t want to process my feelings
To do taichi
Fuck all this shit
I just want to be left alone
I feel lost and alone
Very lost
I don’t know what to do
It’s as if I lost the motivation somewhere
Workpost 85: Health Challenge
I’ve decided to start on my health challenge today. What does that mean?
- An emphasis on taking care of my mental and physical health above all
- Creating boundaries and emotionally processing any pushback around not making my health a priority
- Certain goals:
- Jiujitsu for 2+ hours every day
- Boxing on the days I can go
- Cooking all of my meals
- Bedtime at midnight
- Reduced or elimination of all processed sugars
- Work comes after health, and is designed to be rejuvenating instead of draining
This health challenge will run from today until the 15th – the day when I travel home. Then I will work on adjusting and finding a new routine.
Today, I want to ponder two things:
- What do I want to post as a video explaining what I’m doing with my youtube challenge?
- How will I support myself healthwise while working to make it rejuvenating?
Youtube Video
- “It’s over. I failed”
- “Welcome back to the 21 day youtuber challenge, my name is Jack you are watching episode 17.”
- “In this challenge, I was supposed to post a video every day for 21 days, and it’s safe to say I failed.”
- “I haven’t posted for multiple days in a row, the last episode actually shot multiple days before I released it because it took so long to edit”
- “The reason is simple, it took 6 to 8 hours to create every video from the ideation, to the shooting, to the editing and that just isn’t sustainable”
- “If I think of the ideal pyramid of life, it looks something like this” (Health, work, youtube)
- “But recently it’s felt upside down”
- “So what’s next? I still want to do the challenge – posting the rest of the 21 videos exploring what I like to make videos about. After all, I have so many more ideas to try out”
- “But I’m not going to release them every day anymore”
- “Here are 10 things I can focus on now that I’m not releasing videos at such a frantic pace”
- “But in those little moments when I have time, I will keep making videos for this series, and hopefully it’ll be magical”
Working Plan
- Focus on only one thing at a time
- Process emotions around rushing or being in a hurry
- Create an appropriately prioritized to do list
- Take a lot of notes when taking a break so I can pick off where I left off
- Timed meditation and off screen time for stronger focus