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The Sales Conference Health Challenge

Byjack

I’m headed to Orlando, Florida today for a big sales event and I have created a challenge for myself.

I want to not only stay well (and avoid sickness) but also feel better after the conference.

Right now I’m suffering from the following symptoms:

  • Fatigue
  • Dry eyes
  • Low energy
  • Sore back
  • Tight and sore shoulders

In order to avoid sickness (which will be the hardest part of this challenge). I am planning on focusing on the following challenges:

  • Social
    • Keeping a distance from people
    • Avoiding contact
    • Using eye contact and projection to still connect with people
  • Physical
    • Mask up at close events
    • Distance when eating food
    • Hand sanitize at intervals
    • Reduce facial touching

The biggest part of this challenge is keeping in touch with my emotions and my body as well as being able to set boundaries. It’s a sales event so it is a very externally orientated event meaning that it is hard to maintain boundaries while connecting with people and easy to eat mindlessly, push past exhausting instead of sleeping, etc.

In order to boost my health, I am focusing on the following areas:

  • Emotional
    • Feel the feelings
    • Take risks
    • Slow down
  • Physical
    • Exercise
    • Sleep
    • Mindful eating

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Knee Strength 5: Awesome Progress

Byjack

So I developed a new exercise in the middle of this week, but didn’t have the time to post about it.

To summarize the exercise which I will call the weighted knee spacer:

  • Use ankle weights, weighted shoes, or in this case, bands to pull on foot down
  • Do heel raises with the other foot to elevate the weighted foot
  • Keep the weighted foot as level as possible

I’m thinking this exercise is really useful in any scenario where I feel the knee is getting caught or stuck, which seems to happen a lot when there is any sort of bending exercises.

What I want to work on next is getting a full bend in my right knee without pain.

So it has been a full month now and I have not stopped this challenge yet or restarted jujitsu, but I think that is ok. I want to keep this challenge going until I can actually achieve the goals set in my original goals.

As a reminder, the goals are:

  1. Lift up my knee and bend it feeling stable, comfortable and strong. Getting there for sure!
  2. Stand for 5 minutes while feeling comfortable. Pretty much achieved this one!
  3. Lay on either side feeling comfortable and relaxed. I don’t lay much on either side, just on my back these days, will have to revisit.
  4. Sit on my heels while feeling comfortable and relaxed. Not even close on this one, probably need a full range of motion bend in my knee to be comfortable first.
  5. Be able to jump feeling stable, comfortable, and strong. Part of the way there on this one! I feel pretty stable.
  6. Able to kick a roundhouse while feeling stable, comfortable and strong. Not there yet but an improvement from before.

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Editing Youtube Videos: Rediscovering the Inner Artist

Byjack

I have been struggling with making videos for some time. I feel that a video isn’t perfect, I immediately get very stressed out. I don’t know whether to refilm or not, I don’t know what to do with the existing footage.

Here is a process that I came up with when sitting with the feelings for a bit:

  1. Acknowledge that part of you that feels that things are missing or could have been said better by coming up with ideas for a new video to shoot (that might be almost the same or different)
  2. Feel the feelings of discomfort in feeling not perfect, slow down, nothing else is important
  3. Search for what the video wants to be, just like searching for beauty in the world to paint
  4. Focus on the areas that are most clear or exciting to you.
  5. Paint in broad brushstrokes, you don’t need the best takes at first, just focus on laying down the footage so you can see the context of how everything relates to each other
  6. Develop the video around the areas that are most clear and start to fill out the details
  7. Focus on the transitions

While we are at it, maybe I can think of ideas for how I can approach filming a video:

  1. Come up with a short writeup on what feels like the right flow
  2. Come up with some concepts of what the shoot will look like
  3. Set up the shoot and lighting
  4. Do three takes, first take is a direct recitation of the script, but as the takes go on, let the video become what it wants to become

Or just do step 4 and call it a day. You don’t need a script, you don’t need a plan.

I wonder a lot sometimes on when I should make a video and when I should just restart (like in art). I think there is no right answer, but making a “mediocre” video is not for the artform of Youtube, it is because I am learning Youtube. Anything you want to learn will have many imperfect tries to succeed.

Profit in Peace 4: The Method

Byjack

Main strategy: Always be present, what I feel is right

Work on using my blog to process feelings and embrace the Jack that gets rejected.

Then, for actions: use my coaching mindset

  • You’re in my house
  • Take risks
  • Don’t be afraid to be silent
  • Be patient

Mindsets that help with fear:

  • Let go of controlling things that I cannot (other people)
  • Control how I show up
  • Take up space
  • Hope that those who reject me leave so I can be free
  • Give myself permission to fail
  • I am capable of impossible
  • How do I want to do it MY way

So I ran through this exercise and here is what I worked through:

  1. What is next > Edit my video of the coaching session with my client
  2. How do I do it > Watch the video in 20-minute segments
  3. What do I do in the 20 minutes > Cut out parts my client doesn’t want to share, add my thoughts, publish to my blog
  4. What do I do after all of that > Edit the video through the syllabus method
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Jiujitsu Journey Month 1: Exploration

Byjack

Ok, so I just had a revelation.

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.

The Go For It Mentality

Byjack

There are many different mentalities that can offer deeper insight, faster learning and a deeper connection to the present moment. 

My favorite mentalities are:

  • Meditative/Let It Come Mentality
    • Be patient
    • Don’t do anything
    • The right answer will be clear if you keep feeling and noticing what comes up
    • Good for staying in the moment and being yourself
  • Self Reflection/Feedback Loop (learning) Mentality
    • 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.