Workspace 22: Relax
I had a slower start to the day. I started the day on my phone, waking up a bit early because my new retainer is bothering me when I sleep.
I watched some Valorant, talked to my girlfriend, and now I have a flight in about 3 hours. I want to leave in about 2 hours. I still have to take out the trash, eat up some more food and load the dishwasher.
I did a bit of a workout and I found out a couple of things that help with regaining energy, and gathering chi:
- Butt-clenched breathing: sounds a bit weird but it works. Lie down, clench the sphincter muscle (what you use to hold in poop) breath in. Then relax and breathe out. Repeat.
- Tummy circles: put the left hand over your stomach, then your right hand over that. Make circles over your stomach in the clockwise direction. Do it lightly. Then put your hands in the same area in your back and repeat.
- Extremity exercises: this can be any exercise that works your extremities. For example, doing a dead hang and focusing on clenching really hard with your hands but leaving everything else relaxed, or doing heel raises with the tips of your toes super engaged with everything else relaxed.
- Meditation: lie down close your eyes and walk down a staircase while counting to 10. Imagine the smell of wet stone, always puts me in a meditative state really quick for some reason.
Anyway goals for today. Just relax! I want to get all the chores sorted out and just spend the rest of my time relaxing.
Workspace 21: Be the Underdog
I’ve been thinking more about rejection and working through some of my thoughts with it.
I want people to validate me to feel confident being myself. But validation and confidence are completely different.
Confidence is all about being ok with not getting other’s approval and validation, being ok with not being the strongest, the smartest, the most attractive. I want to find a way to let go of seeking approval from everyone. That is seriously holding me back.
The first thing I realized is that I need to be clear about what I value outside of approval.
I love solving difficult problems. I love learning, growing, and improving myself. I love creating. I love meeting new people and connecting with those people on a deep level. I love consuming art and music, writing and dance.
Being rejected doesn’t stop me from pursuing those things. In fact, people who reject me might realize my path is one they admire and want to follow.
The second thing I realized is that I can use rejection as motivation. It’s just a challenge to my ego. It makes me stronger.
I don’t want anything handed to me. The hero has the slay the dragon. I want to be the underdog, and I strive for greatness.
Workplace 20: Basics
I’ve been feeling quite down and unhappy recently.
I’ve decided after some meditation, journaling, and deep breathing that I want to focus back on the basics.
Here are the basics I already covered:
- Morning blog post and walk
- Nighttime journaling (most nights)
- 11-12 PM bedtime
Basics I want to further incorporate:
- Music and dance in the morning
- Deep breathing when I feel drawn to distract myself (indicates pain)
- Focus on creating delicious meals, taking time to enjoy eating and cooking
I’ve been processing the rejections in my previous post and I wanted to write a poem:
She Stared at Me
I remember the times when they just stared at me
As if they were surprised that I would even dare to ask
The girl in art history class
In the library
On the bus
That stare
Then that feeling I was reaching
For empty air
Something that didn’t exist
The feeling of people watching
Seeing me fail
Yet now I think about it
I was quite brave
I am a brave person
Willing to take the risk
I often didn’t believe in what I was doing
When I was trying to pick up girls
But now
With my career dreams
I do
Isn’t that worth a few stares?
Don’t I get the opportunity to shock
People out of their square lives
Square thoughts
Into my world?
Workpost 19: Rejection
I am slowly getting back into things. After completely messing up my bedtime, getting it back, getting sick, losing my bedtime again, I am finally getting back into the swing of things.
I want to refocus on the things that I set out to focus on: Health, AI Consulting, Art Coaching.
I want to have an 11-12 PM bedtime, journaling at night, morning walking meditation, and morning todo list and blog post.
Today on my morning walk I contemplated rejection.
You know I always felt that working on yourself made you more prepared for life in general and I always felt my fear of rejection was holding me back from a lot of things in life, initially from getting a girlfriend, but later from being a life coach.
Recently I had the experience of meeting with a client for a free session for which they were super impressed by but when I sent them my rates, they did not respond. This immediately triggered the rejection wounds within me. I also just had an artist interview who was late to our conversation, did not agree to the full hour, and did not want to schedule another time to complete our conversation which triggered rejection wounds within me.
I feel scared that if I ask for things, people will reject me. I’m afraid it will be awkward to talk to them afterwards, I’m afraid how others will view me after getting rejected.
This morning I came up with a couple of nuggets to handle and process rejection:
- Take up space: there is a part of me that wants to hide when people reject me. I want to take up as little space as possible. This concept is doing the opposite. I deserve to be here like everyone else. Take up space! Make the ask!
- Enthusiastic yes: I don’t want people to feel pressured. I am going to follow the philosophy on the Prosperous Coach. It’s either an enthusiastic yes, or its a no. Maybe is a no. And tell them that. If they are not sure, they know where to find you.
- Slow down: I realized this new revelation in Valorant has implications in life too. When I feel stressed about rejection and awkwardness, shame, and judgement, slow down. I usually try to speed up, to move past it. Slow way down, focus on what is going on before charging ahead.
- Stay busy, focus on the process not the outcome: one thing that I noticed, when I’m busy doing what matters, I won’t care as much about anything else. I want to focus on health, coaching and consulting. Don’t let anyone’s rejection take away from that. It’s like what they say about cold calling. Focus on the process, not the outcomes (focus on improving your process for cold calling, not for the outcome of every call).
Valorant: Slow Down During Danger
Something that I noticed when playing Valorant today, is that I tend to speed up and rush when I feel under pressure or stressed, when in actuality, I need to slow down.
Last game I trusted my instincts, and really slowed down when I felt danger and I felt it was much better.
I realized that when I feel safe, I can move fast. When I feel in danger, it is time to exercise extreme caution like in real life.
Workpost 18: Addicted
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.
Workpost 17: Sick
I’ve been sick in the past two days. Not a terrible sickness thankfully. I credit that to the copious quantities of water I consumed as well as the zinc I took and the lymph node massage to clear my stuff nose. I can’t smell anything, I feel tired, and my mind feels fuzzy but other than that I’m actually doing ok.
Earlier my throat was hurting and I woke up many times in the night, but overall I slept pretty good. I’ve been self-medicating a lot by playing games, and I want to stop. I did go for a walk this morning and workout, and I feel that helps.
Workpost 16: Risk and Challenge
So I’m pretty frustrated because this is the second time I am writing this blog post. The first time I wrote this blog post, the post was bugging out and didn’t save properly.
Not too happy about that.
In the spirit of growth, I am going to let go of that blog post and focus on creating an entirely new one without losing the essence of what I wanted to say in the first one I wrote.
This morning I was feeling really stressed out and I was really enjoying my walk. I feel like this whole questions meditations thing has really worked out. I really like journaling at night, and walking during the day. Before when I was forcing myself to go outside because I felt like I had to, I kinda hated it. It was nice once I got outside, but before then it was pretty awful.
Now, since I know I’m going use the time to meditate on some of the questions I have in my heart, I feel really excited and motivated to go outside in the morning.
Here are the main things I was stressed out about this morning:
- My career, didn’t know where I was going next
- My medical bills, spent 8k on a new medical device, hundreds more for my GI doctor
- My financial issues, I spent 700 more than I made yesterday
- My coaching career, still not anywhere close to making enough money to be self sufficient
- I could move back home, but then I’m worried about having a place for my girlfriend to visit me
And through my amazing short 20 minute walk, here are the answers I got:
- Acknowledge that you are taking a huge risk by paying 1,700 per month on rent with very little income and building coaching business from 0
- Risk is not a bad thing, it is an incredible catalyst for growth
- Risk means, now is the time to shine. Focus on the few things that matter most
- Building an really strong foundation of health, a very strong structure for getting stuff done
- Changing the lives of my current coaching clients
- Work slowly towards my career in AI
- It’s ok to invest money in the medical bills because they directly help with my foundational health goal. Double down on the investment by focusing a lot on sleep and digestion.
- Let go of all other goals and distractions because now is go time. Just work on small projects or really gradual work.