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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:

  1. Cleaning is incredibly healing. Any time of cleaning, cleaning your workspace, your body, your clothes, it all is very therapeutic.
  2. 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.
  3. 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?
  4. 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

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Two Important Questions

Byjack

I was thinking about the concept of how Alex Hormzi approaches learning. The idea that you purpose things in a way expecting to fail at first, but you pursue them in such a way that you make it hard for you to fail. That the chances that you will fail is lower than the chances of success.

I was thinking about what made emotional or spiritual success. And that brought me to a few different ideas. They all centered around one thing, the relationship with oneself. I believe that the relationship that you have with yourself dictates the freedom and happiness you have in life. Some ways in which I am not a kind or loving friend or parent to myself are:

  • Thinking my needs are not important, especially if they make it less convenient for other people
  • Shaming myself and comparing myself to other people
  • Lashing out at myself when I’m not the best or successful
  • Yelling at myself for making mistakes
  • Putting on the pressure that if I’m not stressed I will not perform
  • Being disgusted by my weakness

What if I took this idea from Alex Hormzi? What if I accepted I am going to be a shit friend and parent to myself but I am going to ask myself what I need to do to make it harder to be unkind and unloving toward myself than it is to be kind and loving?

Well, what would the most loving parent do for me?

  1. Value my emotions and encourage me to explore them
  2. Hold me close when I’m upset or feeling weak and vulnerable
  3. I am the most important person in their life, they will drop everything if I need them
  4. Be interested in hearing about new adventures and failures and lessons
  5. Does not see me as a static person but as a sum of everything I’ve been, where I’m now, and where I’m headed
  6. Guide me when I’m feeling lost or need to defend myself

I want to know how I can make it impossible for me to not do that for myself.

Some ideas come to mind:

  1. Create a meditative time to watch my own content (read my journals, watch my videos, listen to my recordings). It feels like 1,4 and especially 5. As a side effect, this can create GREAT opportunities for understanding what kinds of videos I can make.
  2. Write down and read my thoughts when I feel lost, scared, angry, ashamed or frustrated. Create a place to feel hurt. This can hit at 1,3, and 4, and maybe 6 if I write responses to things I write.
  3. Work on dance therapy especially the following elements: allowing the world to hold you, inward closing comfort, sensual movement and touch, outward releasing movement

I don’t know how to come up with a strategy on how to mix this in with my life yet but some of my ideas includes:

  • Using therapists as a safe space to practice
  • Using people who are close as a way to practice
  • Using camera off meetings as a way to practice
  • Using youtube videos and coaching as a way to practice
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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:

  1. Clean up my apartment to a level that I could invite people over and feel good about it
  2. Focus on my health and wellness, drink lots of water and take naps, eat good food
  3. 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.

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Workpost 18: Addicted

Byjack

I’ve been playing pokemon go so much recently. I’ve made a lot of progress in the game, but I really worry that I’m getting addicted because of how stressed out I am right now.

I stressed out about my relationship and about my career path moving forward. I want to make sure that work does not take over my life and that it stays aligned to what I want to do moving forward.

Every time I feel stressed, I reach for the pokemon go. Holy shit, I am addicted.

I feel very tired, but no longer sick. That is a good thing at least.

I’m going to walk around the airport. And this time, instead of catching pokemon, I am going to meditate and think.

On the plane I meditated on some of my issues and I came to a big realization. The first step to feeling or processing any pain is to notice and name the pain that exists. I spend so much time avoiding thinking about painful emotions or experiences, avoiding thinking about how things hurt me it makes it hard to face the pain at all since I’m not taking the first step,

I want to focus on doing that more now as the first step to processing more emotions.

The Attractiveness Challenge

Byjack

I’m working on discovering and developing my own attractiveness. Just to clarify:

  • Attractiveness is not about finding faults, it’s about understanding your most beautiful self and letting yourself grow into that version of yourself. It’s not about imagining other people and wishing you were like them.
  • Attractiveness is very personal. It should be how you want to look to feel like yourself and feel confident. It can match societal versions of beauty but does not have to.

I discovered an exercise that can help:

  1. Stand in front of a full-length mirror
  2. Remove as much clothing as possible, naked if possible
  3. Stand straight and adjust your body to find the most attractive posture
  4. Note any other areas that need adjusting, skin, hair etc. in order to reach peak attractiveness
  5. Once you find your baseline (just standing straight), try different poses
  6. This is PARTICULARLY good at detecting problems with posture
  7. You can take this practice into ordinary life by imagining you are naked, it’s a more natural mentality for intuitively good posture and can make you feel more open and confident

This is an interesting idea, to be naked first because I think it follows the idea that I have with learning in general. You should always start with the basics and move upward. In attractiveness, you must first find your attractive yourself naked before finding your attractive self with clothes on. Just like with any other learning technique, clothes and other accessories (like makeup) actually distract from you seeing the lowest most basic level of yourself. You are the MOST natural and yourself when naked, so it makes sense to start there.

My initial thoughts:

  • The MAIN area that is keeping me from being my most attractive self is the posture of my neck and shoulders. My head is jutted forward making my chin weak and shoulders rounded forward, making my stomach stick out.
  • I may need to cut my hair since it is too much for the features of my face and makes my features look duller.
  • I have other minor areas of posture that need to be adjusted and other grooming things I may want to do.
  • This exercise is GREAT for feeling confident in your own skin, I noticed when I focus on improving my own posture, I open up my body instead of hunching and feel more confident.
  • I don’t actually need to get more fit and muscular like I always think I do. I just need to strengthen my back and core so I can naturally maintain a better posture.

This seems to work mostly for your body though, and not with your face. My intuition tells me that the biggest tool for facial symmetry is just finding ways to relax your face but I’m pretty lost in that area.

Onwards to a better-looking future!

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Fitness Challenge

Byjack

In this challenge, I want fill out my body and get a lot more energy and health before my girlfriend visits me on July 15th.

This means that I have approximately 2 months in the challenge.

UNIT ONE: Baseline health: strong enough to exercise bulk and be normal health (21 days)

  • Week 1: Regen from tiring out (no matter how tired, wired or drained)
  • Week 2: Big appetite (increase hunger throughout day)
  • Week 3: Enjoyable rhythms (finding pleasing routines that further my goals in health, wealth and relationships)

UNIT TWO: Bulking and buildup: Gain 3 pounds of muscle (21 days)

  • Week 1: Try everything (bulking trial and errors)
  • Week 2: TBD
  • Week 3: TBD

UNIT THREE: Pushing myself, weight, strength, energy (21 days)

  • Week 1: Decrease resting heart rate
  • Week 2: Double strength
  • Week 3: TBD