Practicing Courage

Byjack

Today I felt overwhelmed. Work felt like a huge heavy complicated mess.

Making a smoothie felt like it would be hard and painful (to walk around).

I played games to avoid the feelings…for hours.

I was so desperate for a solution I spend time with AI to work through the emotions.

First, the therapy led me to the wisdom that I needed to spend some time to feel the fears I was feeling:

  1. The fear of death – the great unknown of my injuries and with work
  2. The fear of inadequacy – letting my carefully maintained image of myself as successful and smart and talented crumble before me
  3. The fear of abandonment – feeling that if I let others know how bad of a place I am in, that they would know how defective I am

The fear of abandonment and being defective was so strong I felt I needed to remember a time when I felt safe and whole. And that led me back to New York, many years ago, approaching women on the street with a dating coach.

I felt free. It wasn’t until I thought about it more that I realized why. daygaming gave me a glimpse of ultimate self love. A time when you bare your soul on the street and allow people to reject you is the most freeing emotions of all time.

I will say though that daygaming also traumatized me. Majorly. After mulling it over some more I concluded the main difference was that when I was alone, I was scared. And instead of seeking support, I beat myself up and criticized myself.

I’ve been seeking the daygaming formula for freedom for so long I feel excited I figured out a part of it:

  1. Courage is the currency of self love. Ask yourself what the courageous thing to do is and make a decision to do it. If possible involve someone in on this decision (can be yourself).
  2. Let the energy carry the action. Instead of being spurred forward by pressure, feel the moment, let the tension of the moment stand your hair on your arm. Let the noisy energy of fear and anxiety make you feel alive, spur your action.
  3. If the fear becomes too great, seek comfort, reassurance from someone else, someone you trust (this can be yourself)

Follow what you feel.

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Recap Video Ideas

Byjack

This is a recap of an exercise I did a few weeks ago. I was watching a ThinkMedia youtube video about how to succeed at youtube. He went through and exercise looking at 3 things in this order: passion, proficiency, and profit.

Basically, he said to make a list of all the things that you are passionate about, either things you like or things you hate, and things you do even if you weren’t getting paid to do it.

My list was:

  1. Making money
  2. Finding leverage
  3. Valorant
  4. Corporate life (hate)
  5. Coaching
  6. Challenges
  7. Superhuman abilities
  8. Graphic novels
  9. Children’s books, fantasy
  10. Health
  11. AI
  12. Surface level thinking (hate)

Then, he said to take that list of things and think about what we have at least 1 year of proficiency in, where we have been doing that thing semi-successfully. So I narrowed down my list to:

  1. Making money
  2. Valorant
  3. Feeling stuck in life
  4. Deeper thinking
  5. Coaching
  6. Health
  7. AI

Then, he said to narrow down that further into things that we could build an audience around, something people need or would want to buy. Here was my list:

  1. How to get started with a business
  2. How to aim
  3. How to get unstuck in life
  4. How to unlock your potential
  5. How to repair your body
  6. How to use AI to improve your life

I don’t know if I have any interest pursuing youtube in this way, but it was an interesting exercise to reflect on.

Feeling Awful Waking Up

Byjack

Yesterday, I went to bed late. I didn’t want to wake up the next day.

Today was the next day. And it sucked. Just like I had feared. I was tired. I was stressed. I was an hour late to a meeting that was at 8AM.

Today I wanted to find a new solution. I want to find a different way to look at things. And I think I found it.

Here are the key parts of my new mindset:

  1. Think about how much money I want to make today from 0 to about $500. Think about what projects I want to work on that will be worth that much.
  2. Think about how I want to increase the value of the company I am contracted to – so I can have a success story and be paid more.
  3. Take care of myself. Make tea, go for a walk.
  4. Go to a nice place to work, go through my to do list. Create my workpost for the day.

If work is demanded early without having time to prepare, compensate myself an hour. Then bring blankets and other comfy things to my chair to make myself comfy and allow myself to wake up slowly.

What We Owe Ourselves

Byjack

I’ve been making everything a workpost these days. Because I like it. I like feeling the pride that I’m getting work done. But today, I’m going to try something a little different.

I want to write a little different. Not as a workpost, but a journal entry or maybe an essay.

I want to try writing with more of my emotions, seeking to express and be understood rather just recording my thoughts.

Today I felt very angry with myself. I felt like a failure. It’s been days and every day feels like a repeat of the same nightmare. Wake up, work, play Valorant, go to bed.

The deadline for my entrepreneurship endeavor feels like it is creeping closer and closer, and nothing feels like it is getting done. I feel like I’m drowning under the waves of my anxiety and stress. What if three months pass, and I get nothing done, just like I’ve gotten nothing done in the last 3 months?

In times like this, I feel desperate for answers. I search and I search for some answer to hold onto, some insight that will unlock my mind and set me free from this torment.

The answers didn’t come cleanly. But they did come.

First, I thought about my worries and wins. I wrote them down.

I thought about how really big goals aren’t completed by thinking about the goals, but about who you want to become, and being that person every day.

I thought about how focus was about letting things go, being ok with certain things slipping away.

I remembered my theories: connection theory, and flow theory. I used flow theory to feel my discomfort and soothe myself. Flow theory told me to hold my arms up in the wide circle, almost as if I was giving a hug to an imaginary friend. I needed to do this when I felt the feeling of letting myself down. Like I needed to hold myself and remind myself that I really cared.

I asked myself what I was willing to give myself, what I was willing to do today in order to prove to myself that I cared. And I wrote this:

Website Copy Draft

The path to greatness doesn’t have to be a lonely one
Have you always wanted to write a book, create a comic book, or start a youtube channel?
I specialize in helping people who are retired start one their second career…a career in creative expression.
I believe that there are 3 pillars to success in creating any artistic masterpiece – structure, creativity, and emotional honesty.
Master all three and you will have a work that will feel honest, raw, playful, and beautiful.
But it’s a lonely path to seek this on your own.
That’s where I come in.

With a unique background of both art and engineering, I uniquely understand the feeling and structure, and psychology required to complete the masterpiece of a lifetime. I won multiple awards for art as a child, and got a full scholarship to college for fine art. I am versed in multiple forms of art be it painting, videography, writing, music, and dance. I also studied mechanical engineering and have won awards in the corporate setting for my dedication to the details, practicality, and results orientation.

Together, I can help you express what it is that you want to express in a beautiful, deep, and artistic way.

Tomorrow, I will ask myself the same question. What am I willing to do for myself, my future me.

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Singing Relaxed Solved

Byjack

I’ve always wanted to find a way to sing relaxed no matter what position I’m in, standing, sitting, playing the piano.

I figured it out finally.

It’s actually quite simple.

Relax everything, specifically the jaw, shoulders, and stomach.

Put all the tension right above the stomach (at the diaphragm).

Workpost 74: Mondays

Byjack

Today is a Monday, the start of the week. I feel tired but pretty good overall. I did not sleep much last night, but constantly going outside has done wonders for my energy levels.

Ok time to go through the questions from yesterday:

  1. How am I going to balance contract work with my businesses tomorrow? Well I just need to solve the first part of the harder coding problem, then I should be good for tomorrow to finish up.
  2. What can I do to make sure I get enough sleep for jiujitsu? I don’t need to go to jiujitsu today, but going outside helped with the exhaustion as well as taking a nap.
  3. What is the plan for getting customers for my businesses? I have some lead magnets planned out for art coaching, just need to find events in which to meet people.
  4. Should I sign up for a consultation with a Fiverr coach for javascript? Should I work first to get an understanding of full stack? I think first I get a primer on the full stack.
  5. Should I start looking for someone to build my coaching website? Nah, but soon.
  6. What can I give away at the fairs? The main this is free planning sessions to plan out dream creative project and business cards.
  7. What is the next step for my woodcut art style? What is the plan for the business cards? The plan is just to work on them as I can while I sign up for speaking engagements and fairs for networking.
  8. When am I going to create my powerpoint for my coaching website outline? ASAP, this is probably more time-sensitive than the business cards.

Giving Too Much

Byjack

I was in Taichi class the other day and my instructor said something very interesting.

She told us that if you are leaning forward, then you are “giving too much”. And if you lean back too much, you are “accepting too much” and when someone gives you a compliment, all you need to do is say a simple thank you.

It is an very interesting concept in taichi, this idea of always being in balance, always sitting on your heels even when pushing forwards.

I really want to experiment and see how much I can apply this to things like Valorant or productivity.

Matches: First impressions of this technique

Byjack

Match 1

Reflections:

  1. Need to operate on a meditative state and trust strong intuition in order to reduce brain effort
  2. Warmup felt a bit unfocused, maybe want to try specific thinking strategies, especially involving exercise
  3. I have a bit of a headache now, but I don’t think it is because of the way I worked, I think it’s because of how tired I am, maybe need more rest + exercise, would like to try with a more exercise heavy strategy.
  4. Felt like MUCH longer than an hour, felt like I have been working for 3 hours.

Result Calculation:

  1. How much do I think this work is worth? I feel this work was worth maybe $200-$300. Rather tedious coding type work.
  2. How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10? Maybe a 7.
  3. What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation? 30% percentile
  4. Gains in communication and charisma? A little since I am making the code more readable and clear.

Match 2

Reflections:

  1. A lot less tension, with additional movement and breathing
  2. Still trying to get my mind to cut through problems like a knife through butter, not sure how
  3. Also felt like I was working for hours

Result Calculation:

  1. How much do I think this work is worth? I feel this work was worth maybe $150-$200. Lots of grooming, project management, some architecture, some coding.
  2. How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10? About a 7. Maybe 8. Grueling but not that difficult.
  3. What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation? 40% percentile. Not that innovative but definitely clever and requires some knowledge and experience.
  4. Gains in communication and charisma? Definitely helped make my flow much more clear. Will help with communication in the future.