This is definitely one of the most difficult challenges I’ve undergone in a while.
I’ve tried a couple of things and I feel frustrated.
The Reaching for the Untouchable
The frustration
The reaching in my heart
Is getting to me
Reaching for the untouchable
I wonder if I will ever know
The doubt creeps
I seek to know
And when I rush there
There is still nothing
Frustration in my chest
Like a roar that wants to escape
But is trapped behind bars
I have created multiple messages to my girlfriend in French, multiple times I’ve tried to imitate. I feel like imitation is the key, but I grow tired of seeing no results. I feel tired and frustrated.
I feel angry and unhappy.
I suspect failure is such a hard thing for me to grasp. It is such a tough pill to swallow.
I saw a video with a lot of potential:
It is about learning jiujitsu really fast. But really it is about learning. He talks about many ideas in the video, ideas that I’ve myself considered. Ideas that I think are pretty profound and helpful:
Performance vs. growth
Train in the gym to fail – growth
Compete to win – performance
Form to leave form
Repetition until it is second nature
Turn something thought into something intuitive
Smaller circles
Reduce something from intuition to a conscious idea
Look for different ways to apply it
He mentions some really interesting sounding books:
The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Josh Waitzkin
The Will to Keep Winning by Daigo Umehara
Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Leonard
Anyway, I feel if I were to embrace my fear of failure, I need to meditate on it, but also come up with a plan.
I first want to come up with the plan to train From to Leave Form…and be repetitive about the most common words in French, say them until they are second nature.
So what are the top most common 10 words in French:
Oui: Yes
Non: No
Merci: Thank you
Je: I
Tu/vous: You
Le/la/les: The
Un, une des: A, an, and some
Le/la/les: It, them
Et: And
Mais: But
Bonjour: A general greeting meaning “hello” or “good morning”
Au revoir: Goodbye
Salut: Hello
Amour: Love
Bonheur: Happiness
Chat: Cat
Chien: Dog
But these words are too basic. What about the top 10 most common phrases?
Bonjour: Means “hello” or “good morning”.
Merci: Means “thank you”.
S’il vous plaît: Means “please”.
Ça va?: Means “how are you?” .
Je ne sais pas: Means “I don’t know”.
Parlez-vous anglais?: Means “Do you speak English?” .
Bienvenue: Means “welcome”.
Madame/Monsieur/Mademoiselle: Means “Mrs.”, “Mr.”, or “Miss”.
Anchante enchante: Means “nice to meet you”.
Sava: Means “how are you”.
C’est simple comme bonjour: Means “it’s simple as hello”.
Et patati et patata: Means “and so on”.
En avoir ras-le-bol: Means “to have had enough”.
Tu m’étonnes: Means “tell me something I don’t know”.
Ok that is a little better, but what about the most common French verbs?
Aller Means “to go” and is also used to describe the near future tense. Avoir Means “to have” and is used to express possession, relationships, physical and mental states, and many other contexts. Être Means “to be” and indicates the action or state of being. Pouvoir Means “can” or “to be able to”. It’s an irregular verb like prendre or faire, belonging to the third group. Savoir Used to indicate knowledge or understanding. It can also be used in many idiomatic expressions, such as “savoir-faire” (know-how). Mettre Means “to put” but can also be used for dropping someone off somewhere, laying the table, taking time to do something, laying a carpet. Prendre Means “to take”, including “to travel” on particular forms of transport. It is also used for having meals. Venir Means “to come”, and it can be easily used to conjugate the recent past or convey the idea that you have just done something recently. Vouloir Often translated as to want and to wish in English, as its main usage is to express desires and wishes.
I want to read more about verbs in French but it is too late and I need to go to bed.
I’ve since taken a different approach to Valorant. I think I had a lot of good ideas in the past but I realized the value of simplicity.
Having too many things to worry about in Valorant makes it hard to focus on the game.
So I narrowed things down to just three:
Piano hands: Keep your arm at a 90 degree angle, let gravity pull your arm down and use the force of gravity in all arm and wrist movements. This allows for the most relaxed posture.
Imagine success: The most simple and straightforward way to have a good mental is just to visualize yourself killing everyone and winning the round.
Stay clean: Instead of wildly aiming and shooting, stay calm, precise, and efficient. Peek cleanly using just the A and D keys.
An example of staying clean is Curry:
Watching his gameplay makes me realize how much I panic and do so much extraneous movement.
After applying these three tactics, I started doing very well in my games.
I played with my brother and his friend who are in Gold 1 and Plat 1 respectively.
I feel that a huge part of the problems I run into in playing Valorant is self doubt.
When I get worried that I am playing with people better than me, instead of learning and adapting, I freeze up and cannot think properly and play worse than I would normally:
I make bad decisions
I don’t take time to aim and spray wildly
I push too fast
One way I’ve handled this is lowering my expectations for myself and my game but this is still an ongoing challenge for me.
I also played with a girl who wasn’t that good at the game on my slow laggy laptop. It was an interesting experience because at first, I did really bad, but I ended up getting so many kills. She wasn’t very good so I felt the people we were matched with were in iron (who I should easily beat) but I found it hard because it’s hard for me to flick onto their head with my laggy laptop. I always find it tough to play on the little f*cker.
Two ways that I adjusted:
Hold angles, stop pushing so fast
Make sure I isolate as much as possible. Even if I miss, I might not die if I don’t peek out to 3 or 4 enemies.
I feel like these lessons can pass over to my regular gaming PC.
I just had a realization. I was thinking about what I “should” be doing in the mornings with this new blog commitment. But I think that EXACTLY what I “should” be doing.
I want to spend my time asking questions. And if an action speaks to me, I will do it.
In fact, this was a major technique in Connection Theory that I forgot about. Connection Theory is about understanding is the pathway to change.
One technique for understanding is to ask many many questions. Very good, specific questions. Questions that beget more questions.
Through questioning, we begin to understand.
Another technique I used to do was to ask myself questions. Imagine myself older and wiser, and come up with questions to ask my current day self, and then answer those questions.
Anyway, I have to transition to work, so this will have to wait for now.
A new mentality that I’ve been working with is the idea of chaining kills.
Come up with a play that I want to go for (util, direction, etc.)
Go for not a single kill, but a multikill
Expect more than one
Have a gameplan for getting not one, but 5 kills
It is interesting that taking the offensive makes you much better at being confident. Also, expecting multiple attackers and working on killing as many as possible makes it a lot harder for people to catch you with a trade.
