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Workpost 37: Fundamental Systems

Byjack

Today I feel tired. My kidneys ache. They feel bloated and stagnated. My stomach feels slow. My head iches on the top. My eyes are dry. I feel burning inflammation up my back and spine. My skin is flaking on my face.

These past few days have felt exhausting, extremely stressful, and demoralizing. Last night, I asked myself the question, how do I get out of this.

I didn’t know the answer then, but my answer today during my walk was to take my stress seriously.

And just now, I had a realization that I have the systems developed to do extraordinary things. I just need to utilize them and follow their principals.

Systems in place:

  1. Daily walk to ponder questions I am stressed about
  2. Daily workpost to grow myself, plan for greatness
  3. Clean space to deal with stress, clean place = clean mind
  4. Meal prep strategy for healthy cheap meals with little stress – fridge containers, tacos, lettuce wraps
  5. Whiteboards to write strategies
  6. Off computer working systems (working while walking, running errands, working out, eating out)
  7. Todo list strategy – focus on one thing at a time, prioritize
  8. Clean after working hours to transition, decompress
  9. Crawling to get cardio in small space
  10. Walking backwards and tibialus for knee
  11. Hanging for shoulders and posture
  12. Working out after and before meals for better absorption, muscle growth, and recovery
  13. Journaling to ask myself questions at night
  14. Walking with no effort

I have absolutely everything I need to build a life where I can do almost anything I want, achieve anything I want.

Right now, I want to focus on two things: recovery and priming

Priming are stuff like cleaning, wiping off my whiteboards, clearing out tabs, filling markers, mealprep, todo list grooming

Recovery means lots of sleep, rest, hydration, and exercise. Specifically paying attention to anytime I want to game to see if I feel stressed or uncomfortable, taking a break when that happens.

To top off this post, I want to attach something that I want to erase from my whiteboard, but want to save forever:

Reasons Why I’m Ready

  • I’ve developed very deep and powerful life theories (flow, connection) → these theories can give anyone direction in darkness, I forget them but they come back when I need them
  • When faced with pain I’ve always come out stronger (ACL) → pain is the greatest teacher
  • I’ve proven that I can complete hard challenges (knee, sova) → I can achieve the challenges I set my mind to
  • I can solve problems few people can solve (triage, nikola) → normal rules don’t apply
  • I’m deeply attuned to emotions (coaching, art, philosophy) → makes it much easier to connect with people
  • I used to walk up to girls on the street → Nothing is something I can’t handle. There is nothing that I can’t ask for
  • No matter how badly I fail there are people who still love me
  • The point is not to get there, be productive or succeed, the point is to find a meaningful problem, problems we want to solve → we will never have no problems but we can choose which problems we want to contend with
  • Happiness doesn’t come from acing the past but seizing the now → its never too late to be happyIt’s near too late to fix it with a degree in engineering and parents who don’t mess with me
  • I have lots of assets and saving and a degree in engineering and parents and a sister all with money saved
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Workpost 33: At the End of My Rope

Byjack

I feel pretty awful. I’ve lost focus in work. I feel overwhelmed and unhappy. Every day I stay up late at night. The only solace I find is in games. Everything that I wanted to do now feels like things I have to do.

I struggle to regain the mentality that I use for these workposts.

I guess I feel extremely tired and depressed.

There are a couple of things that filter through the haze that I’m feeling:

  1. I want to find a way to post on LinkedIn again. That is the one thing I want to work on achieving.
  2. This new idea in taichi, and breathwork. To receive what is coming instead of taking. To allow things to come to me. To receive breath instead of taking it. To receive emotions, purpose, and understanding, instead of creating it. I feel this is the essence of patience.
  3. To be curious. I want to do more IFS therapy, but I feel overwhelmed by it. Too much thinking about thinking that is too cerebral, non-intuitive, and downright frustrating. However, we can take the core concept of IFS – the concept of creativity. Ask how do I feel? What do I need? Why do I feel that way.

It’s not been all lost I suppose. There was something I worked through recently – two people that I am jealous of. One who went to Harvard and ended up starting a successful youtube channel, and another who worked on my software company before leaving and getting big on youtube for his music, and is now a famous musician.

In speaking with my friend Edgar about this I came up with the following concepts to remind myself in times of jealousy:

  1. How do I want to succeed my way? The issue with a lot of these people is that they got successful in things that I want to succeed in, but not in the way that I want to succeed. There is great value in succeed in the way I want to succeed.
  2. Hardship creates growth. Success isn’t the end goal, success just leads to creating more challenges for yourself to work through. The ones who go down the harder path to begin with will still succeed but will be more complete when they do.
  3. Is my goal to succeed a little in the short term? Or is the goal much bigger? This is the concept that if I want to gain one rank in Valorant, the outcome of a match matters (because my elo will be impacted directly). If my goal is to get to radiant (the highest rank), one loss in the scale of a huge journey is not significant.

Finally, I’ve put off doing a LinkedIn post for far too long.

Let’s tackle the steps:

  1. Answer a list of questions in a letter to my girlfriend.
  2. Come up with a research plan and timebox it.
  3. Timebox getting everything “on the canvas”, move very fast, get messy, take big risks, keep going until it coalesces into what the art wants to be
  4. Break to do other things, view work from different angles
  5. Put on strategic hat to finish

Questions to ask myself (step 1):

  1. What my vision for the ideal post?
  2. What am I worried about and feel uncomfortable by?
  3. What do I want to learn when creating this post?

Strategic Hat

  • See the work as something in itself, not just as a manifestation of my ideas
  • Put on creative hat, check: is there some feeling here, is there some beauty, fun?
  • Put on producer hat, check: if this was a work created by one of my clients, how would I promote it? If it was done by my brother?

*One Big Thing I Noticed*

It’s a lot easier for me to be motivated to workout than to work. Plan workout sessions for the entire day and bring work to do during those times. If no work gets done, I am still being productive and will be healthier, guaranteeing better work in the future.

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Tai Chi Class

Byjack

Tai chi class was very interesting. I had a thought when the instructor was answering a question by one of the students. They were asking whether or not the movement called the “whip” was supposed to have a whipping motion. The instructor told him that as a beginner you always want to go slow. She also said that she teaches with words.

I was thinking that I can apply this Tai Chi mentality to some of the things that I work really hard to do such as work or Valorant or content creation.

Some thoughts I want to try out:

  1. Do things really slow and relaxed. Speed up if its easier, but as soon as it gets hard, go slower and more relaxed.
  2. Focus on the kinks, uncomfortable parts and keep working them out (my thoughts, not usually used in tai chi)
  3. Speed up when it feels really easy
  4. Speak aloud what you are doing, in order to be more intentional
  5. Follow a predetermined routine

What I want to try for my LinkedIn 50 days of posts:

  1. Write down what I know
  2. Write down what I don’t know
  3. Do necessary research
  4. Copy photoshop template
  5. Flesh out first iteration
  6. Flesh out images
  7. More research and reflection
  8. Refinement

Alex Hormozi On Rejection and Failure

Byjack

The first step is to say “it’s my fault”. Second step is to use what you have.

Make the pain in the future worse than what is in the present or you will feel the pain from yesterday because you pushed it today.

Patience is about figuring out what to do in the meantime.

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Workpost 27: Business Inspiration

Byjack
  1. Start with what you love
  2. Learn how to do what you love doing better
  3. Find a partner to fill gaps within your execution
  4. Come up with simple execution plan
  5. Figure out where the revenue comes from
  6. Start with purpose, later you manage purpose not employees
  7. Delay gratification
  8. Culture has to be client centric
  9. Hacking luck is about persistence
  10. Taking risk increases luck
  11. How to deal with failure
    • Don’t let things own you
    • Do not let short term ego go (enjoy looking like a loser)
    • Learn to embrace getting a D
  12. Take your time
  13. Don’t ask yourself what you will do when you grow up, ask yourself what problem you want to solve
  14. Write down in detail what person you are looking for in a cofounder
    • Opposite of what you love to do
    • Same moral code
    • Post it everywhere
  15. Sell the sizzle, not the steak
  16. Build sales relationship
    • Do they need you?
    • Do you like them?
  17. Marketing is about experimenting and connecting with people over time
  18. Marketing is all about the process and the system
  19. Marketing is about having fun
  20. Write press release like its the actual story, do all the work for the journalist (high res photos)
  21. Lean into marketing for other brands you like and they can lead to brand sponsorship

Something I was thinking about in this video is how I love challenges, but I don’t like failures. But maybe the most important thing to do, or a really good outcome for a challenge is failure, and I can focus on failure if I want to. I think maybe a big part of failure, is unexpected outcomes. It isn’t important that you didn’t succeed at what you originally went for, but how you grew in the process of trying and discovering what unexpected things were on the other side.

The cofounder part is also really interesting in writing down what I want so I can recognize someone when I see them.

Sales relationships makes me think about reaching out with all my goals and involving people on a journey because that is the thing that interests me the most, it is the thing that I can connect with people on very easily and naturally.

Marketing is making me think that failure might also be about the story you can tell afterwards. The story is not about success, it is about the exciting hook and premise. Failure is one of the most interesting ends to a story, although it can be depressing.

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Workpost 24: Feeling Good and Business Plans

Byjack

Last night I was feeling some doubts about my coaching practice and I did some IFS therapy on myself to work through some of the shame and anger I feel around people rejecting my coaching or not seeing its value.

Today, I woke up feeling really tired but now I’m feeling good.

I’m working on stuff of my choosing and I really like it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my business lately and what the starving crowd and what I want to happen.

I feel like I’ve finally cracked the code a little bit about selling high-ticket clients and expensive products.

So after listening and reading Alex Hormozi for two days here is what I learned:

  1. Charge an obscene amount
  2. Use that amount to create a crazy experience
  3. Solve a really big problem (to create really big value)

I think what really big value I want to create with my coaching is to help people create a masterpiece.

If I was to breakdown Alex Hormozi’s formula for value:

  1. The dream: create an artistic masterpiece – a breakout piece (this will make you a career in this space a breakout piece, you will feel proud of yourself, you will be able to call yourself an artist proudly, this will be the best work you’ve ever created)
  2. The certainty: I am an artist and engineer, I have a lot of experience coaching people through mental blocks, I will give you a guarantee.
  3. The time: 1 year
  4. The effort: without giving up your mental sanity, quitting your job, or disconnecting from family

Value of this offer: 250,000+

10-15%: 25,000 – 37,500

2,083 – 3,125 per month

Three stages:

  1. Explore art
  2. Establish your routine
  3. Create your masterwork

Objections/fears:

  1. I don’t have enough time
  2. I don’t know what I want to do
  3. I have kids
  4. I don’t want to quit my job
  5. I don’t know what other people will like, what if people don’t like it
  6. Too much work
  7. Keep switching what I want to do
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Workplace 20: Basics

Byjack

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:

  1. Morning blog post and walk
  2. Nighttime journaling (most nights)
  3. 11-12 PM bedtime

Basics I want to further incorporate:

  1. Music and dance in the morning
  2. Deep breathing when I feel drawn to distract myself (indicates pain)
  3. 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?

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Workpost 19: Rejection

Byjack

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:

  1. 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!
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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).

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Workpost 16: Risk and Challenge

Byjack

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:

  1. My career, didn’t know where I was going next
  2. My medical bills, spent 8k on a new medical device, hundreds more for my GI doctor
  3. My financial issues, I spent 700 more than I made yesterday
  4. My coaching career, still not anywhere close to making enough money to be self sufficient
  5. 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:

  1. 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
  2. Risk is not a bad thing, it is an incredible catalyst for growth
  3. 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
  4. 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.
  5. Let go of all other goals and distractions because now is go time. Just work on small projects or really gradual work.

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How to Become a Millionaire

Byjack

Questions Raised:

  1. Should I drop something to focus on my art coaching or AI consulting?
  2. What is the hungry crowd for my coaching, for my consulting?
  3. How do I build my businesses for the long game?
  4. Do I not pay myself the whole salary?