I just came up with a sort of solution for the issue of continuing a healthy sleep cycle while ending the challenge.
It is sparked by something my dad said to me. He told me that life is a marathon not a short race. You have to think of things in the longterm in order to stay healthy.
I was thinking about this because I have a technique I use when I need to do something that takes time and patience. For example, if I feel antsy while working at the gym, I ask myself, “when will this be over?” and I start looking at the clock and feeling impatient.
I address with a technique that I call the Forever method. It’s called the forever method because I answer that question with “imagine it will go on forever”. And not in a bad way. In a way that is comforting. This is your new life…and I can let go of figuring out how to rush onto the next thing. I can just focus on the present moment, and focus on doing the movements in a way that I CAN do it forever. That means with good form, without pushing myself too hard.
I realized I can think about life the same way:
Bedtime that I can sustain forever
Working hours that I can sustain forever
Eating in a way that I can sustain forever
This makes a lot of sense for maintaining boundaries. Often we tell ourselves, oh, I will just bear this insult for today, I will just work a little harder today. But in those situations, we are violating our own boundaries. Which means we will build up resentment. It is NOT something you can sustain forever.
So as I close out this challenge, I plan to live in a way that will enable me to live forever.
I kind of dropped the ball on these because I don’t know if I feel like challenging my core wounds, but I think I need to keep going for the 21 days at least. It is interesting because you are supposed to focus on one core wound. I don’t know which one I would focus on, but maybe if I just keep going there is one that I will want to focus on.
I was talking to a friend about how it is hard to work on yourself sometimes. What I told her is that it is sometimes scary to think about who you might change into, but I think there is another reason. Sometimes it is hard to work on yourself because in order to work on yourself you first need to look at yourself in the mirror and face who you are, and that isn’t easy to do.
I think a big core wound or belief is that there is something wrong with me, that no one will actually like me if they know who I really am, that I’m weak and creepy and unattractive.
This idea of finding the same type of gameplay in a pro or radiant player was really interesting, and so I decided to take it into my next vod review.
My vod:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T05HsudTzvQ
Main takeaways:
I’m mad about getting one tapped, but that actually happens at all ranks, Valorant is a quick time to kill game
Controllers don’t smoke as quickly as I do, and they often use them selfishly (smoking mid if they play mid to establish control over the parts they want to take control over)
The smoke on B site creates a wall from pushing onto site, I guess I didn’t know what kinds of smokes would be useful
In terms of playing around smokes, they move quite slowly in and out of smokes
Generally play wide and out in the open for better angle advantage, I play scared and close to the wall
After trying out the first two AGT (ATHLETIC TRUTH GROUP) Zero workouts from the Knees Over Toes guy, I’m feeling very hopeful. The kinds of exercises we are doing legitimately make the knee feel stronger and more flexible and like it was worked out in the right ways.
The main issue is inflammation. After a few days of non-stop traveling, weeks of stress and sleep deprivation, and a workout that left my knees shaking, it’s no wonder I felt extremely inflamed and depleted afterward, the thing I always worry about when I work out.
Luckily, I talked to my coach today about feeling like I shouldn’t work during depletion even though work sometimes makes me feel stronger and more energetic. I finally have a sort of solution to depletion and inflammation. It’s a version of self-soothing that I like to call self-cuddling. I thought of it because sometimes I just wish my girlfriend was here so I could cuddle with her, but I can actually hold myself and freeze in soft comfy positions that I can then move and change. There are elements of stillness and comfort and delicious movement.
There is a sort of feeling that work is similar. That interesting and powerful work can be delicious movement and calmness can be holding myself and cuddling with myself.
All this is very similar to the dance practice I used to do all the time. Some self-massage, holding myself in comforting poses, and fast spinning clearing movements.
A short test of this yields amazing results. I felt the inflammation moving and melting. My system fluid and de-stagnated.
I’ve been thinking more about confidence in Valorant and it actually made me think a lot more about what makes confidence. I originally was interested in how to multitask because I thought that was what would make me stronger in Valorant, but I wasn’t able to find any useful information on it.
I ended up searching multitasking in sports, and I was specifically in interested in the basketball videos when they talked about confidence.
The first video was this:
Ideas:
Confidence is not about positive or negative thinking
There are two ways of thinking
Logically and analytically
Intuitively
Confidence is about trusting the second type of thinking
Timing cannot be thought
Ideas:
People often rely on outside sources of confidence
Success
External Validation
Comparing ourselves with others
These outside sources of validation are not reliable
Confidence comes from being able to trust yourself
Trustworthiness is from people who follow a code
Ex: Warrior code “no man left behind” (inspires confidence in your unit because other people won’t leave you behind)
Ex: Courage over success, valuing courage over failure or success validation
Code must be specific and have specific actions you take to fulfill it
Mantras can be helpful
So as they say in the video to do, I am writing down the things I use for confidence in Valorant:
Success – high KDA, increasing elo
Comparison – high KDA compared to others, higher rank
Knowledge and practice – learning techniques and practicing them
Performance – being able to predict moves, hitting my shots
What I admire in other players:
Clarity in thinking
Creative plays
Fast reactions
Precise mechanics
Boldness/confidence
I’ll take each of these a step further to draft out my code. I’m going to see if I can break down what I make each of these things mean:
I make success mean that I’m smart that I’m special
I make comparison mean that I’m special, that I’m a valuable or worthy person
I make knowledge and practice mean I’m smart and that I deserve to be heard
I make performance mean that I’m special and I’m capable
For the second list:
I make clarity mean that someone is smart
I make creativity mean intelligence, specialness, worthy of love and admiration
I make fast reactions means someone is attractive
Precise mechanics I make it mean someone is capable, valuable and worth a lot
Boldness and confidence I make it mean someone is valuable and special
To think about it further my code might need to address:
Inner value – what is valuable about myself
Inner specialness – what do I think is special about myself
Inner love and admiration – what do I love and admire about myself
Inner capability – what makes myself capable
I don’t really know what my code can be but one aspect that keeps coming up for all of these things are valuing feelings and focusing on radical permission.
Those are two things that I feel make me unique, I value myself and are a way to find freedom and give myself love and admiration.
I suppose I can also focus on the challenge in life, the idea of courage or challenge over success is something else that I admire about value about myself. Deep thinking, letting the answer of hard questions come to me as well.
The ways that I could act out this code in Valorant:
I feel like total shit. I didn’t sleep well and the back of my eyes hurt and I’m tired and bleary and a little cold. It is taking everything to not play games all day. I feel what gives me anxiety in this house isn’t just the expectations from my parents…but also the amount of stuff. There is too much stuff to feel comfortable around here. To feel calm.
I have been thinking about this idea a lot. The idea of “Whatever you feel the world is withholding from you is what you withhold from the world.”
I feel that this can help with a lot of the turmoil in my mind.
Because I was traveling and these exercises relaxed me immensely, I fell asleep very quickly after this. I ended up doing more of these exercises in the morning after. Myofascial release seems to target ligaments, muscles, and fascial which kinda makes sense, but today (13th). Today I will switch over to increasing mobility in the tendons and ligaments, so I wonder what will happen today that will be different.