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Bedtime Challenge 2: Wavering and Innovation

I’ve done it, started to waver on my sleep challenge. The main issue is that I no longer take a hard stance on when I go to sleep, but the one thing that is holding over, is that I get to my bedroom by 11.

I want to recommit to getting into my bed by 11, even if I continue to stay up after.

However, despite wavering, and getting into bed at 11:30, I have started to innovate and think more carefully on how I spend the rest of the hours of my day:

  • I stop playing Valorant at 9 (or in the case of yesterday, don’t even play Valorant)
  • I started writing in my journal every night before bedtime to process any feelings that need to be processed
  • I started doing cupping before sleep to improve circulation
  • I also usually work on posture and my knee exercises

Now that I think about it, I actually succeeded pretty good at this challenge because I’m starting to feel like doing all sorts of things before bedtime such as drawing and reading books.

Another thing I like to do at night is listen to videos that are about AI and are interesting to me to keep up with the latest AI news.

I really like where all of this is going, and writing this at 5 AM in the morning makes me feel like it is nighttime and I’m feeling the vibes. I want to spend more time at night creating worlds. Either drawing, writing a novel or learning.

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Bedtime Challenge 1: 44 Days In

I started this challenge on October 8th. Now it is November 21st. And I can say with honesty that I really followed the challenge very very well.

A couple of notes:

  • I was forced to go to bed later on two separate occasions, once for work, when I finished a production deployment at 11:30 and went to bed at maybe 12:30
  • Another time when I was helping my girlfriend with her project and I was up until 12, I cheated by “sleeping” on the coach by the computer at 11 but since I didn’t actually go to bed until much later, it wasn’t that good

After these cheat days it got really hard to stick to my schedule for a few days, but now it is easy again. There were a few times that I went to bed at 1 or 3 am because I didn’t go to sleep and I often go to sleep at 12 or 1, but I get to my bedroom by 11:30 usually and almost always start washing up by 11:10.

Overall this is a smashing success. I have genuinely changed for the better and I think this time the change might actually last.

I do want to still apply some of my earlier ideas and focus on different needs and try to meet them better every day.

I can also work on turning off screens earlier and stopping eating so close to bedtime. But the eating has definitely gotten better and the screens are just hard since I like to play Valorant with my friends at night.

Overall I am very happy with the progress.

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The Health Challenge

I’ve been feeling pretty lost as of late. I am thinking about my youtube channel, about my job, about coaching, about my health and about my challenges with youtube and fitness. I’ve been stressed out about all these different things and I don’t really know how to tackle all of them at the same time. I don’t know what to focus on, which ones makes sense to put energy into, and how I will go about focusing on any of these things.

I’ve been feeling depressed, overwhelmed and depleted, constantly self medicating with youtube videos and games.

Recently, I’ve been inspired by this video:

Health is everything. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you don’t have to choose between that and health. You will be a better entrepreneur with better health.

I want to drop all of my other challenges and focus on this for a while.

I want to focus on my health.

I thought about what this meant for quite a while because health is such a nebulous topic. I feel that Brian Johnson in project Blueprint is taking a very scientific approach to health, but I want to take a more personal approach.

Here are the areas that I care about:

  1. Mood: How positive and happy I feel overall
  2. Passion for life: How motivated I feel about life, relationships and projects
  3. Energy: How energetic and strong I feel
  4. Flow: how in the moment and attuned to my body’s sensations I feel
  5. Attractiveness: how healthy I look

Some ideas of times that I can measure these things:

  1. When I wake up: great for seeing how well I slept
  2. Around 10 AM: good for checking up on my morning routine
  3. Around 3 PM: good for checking on my afternoon routine
  4. Before I go to bed: good to seeing the cumulative effect of the day and how fulfilled I feel

I’ve tried these type of challenges before, but I feel that I sort of neglected the mental part of health, feeling healthier physically but mentally trapped and unhappy. I want to really commit to doing video journaling this entire time in order to make sure that I can express myself and work through mental challenges.

What would mean success to me is not just feeling much more happy, passionate, energetic, in flow and attractive, but also to create a lifestyle, mindset and routine that will maintain and grow that over time.

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The Sleep Deprivation Challenge

Life is pretty challenging:

  • I am severely sleep deprived to feeling pins and needles, dry eyes and nausea
  • I have a big work project due by next week that I pulled all niters for but still am not close to being finished
  • I have taxes looming over me
  • I still have a messy apartment and other goals like exercise of my knee to work on

The challenge is simple: survive, adapt and thrive

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Two Important Questions

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