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:
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.
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.
Take care of myself. Make tea, go for a walk.
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.
Today I got into an argument with someone who is very close to my heart. Thinking about the argument later makes me think about what is painful about the relationship in general and the core wounds that it brings up.
Core wounds are damaging beliefs that we have about ourselves that we repeatedly look for evidence for (and traumatize ourselves constantly with).
Cognitive-behavioral therapy teaches us that core wounds can be reprogrammed by finding evidence to the contrary. Thais Gibson recommends doing this for at least 21 days for the new beliefs to set in.
This is day one for me.
Core Wound 1: I’m not good enough (attractive physically and personality-wise)
Evidence to the contrary (I am good enough):
A girl in college who was very beautiful who I liked blushed every time I talked to her and liked me back. She was mean to other guys who showed interest.
When I was being myself and feeling confident recently, lots of women from girls on the plane, on the trail, at rental properties all seemed really eager to talk to me and help me. I’ve been told I have really good energy.
A girl that I love told me she likes the way I look, likes my thin frame and my hands.
A girl in high school once had a crush on me after flirting with her once. I might have made an impression on her.
A girl who I met playing a mobile game with, added me on her Snapchat and would talk to me for hours, there must have been a reason.
This is a really strong core wound for me. I often compare myself to others and feel like I’m less attractive. I feel that no one really likes me.
Core Wound 2: My emotions are not good and push people away
Evidence to the contrary (My emotions are good and bring people closer):
A lot of my art tends to come from my emotions and feelings and lots of people like them
Because of my emotions, I tend to be more honest, open and empathetic in support groups
I tend to connect with a lot of women by emotions. It’s why I like to have girls as friends and a lot of girls like me.
Emotions make me experience things more deeply, like when I cry watching Moana.
My emotions help me read other people much better because I can feel what they are feeling.
I always feel, especially with some people, that my emotions are too much and push people away. I worry people like hard and cold unemotional guys since they are stronger and don’t need anything. I also sometimes want to be strong and dominant and I don’t know how to reconcile that with emotions.
Look for ways to observe yourself by recording yourself somehow
Use the objective, nonjudemental self observation to get clarity on where to improve
Good for rapid learning
Process Emotions Mentality
The action you focus on is feeling
Use breathing and physical activity to feel as strongly as possible
Very good for emotional growth
However, I recently found a new mentality that actually helps with areas of life that I had trouble with recently. I noticed in rapid active situations like social situations (parties), or sports, or dance or singing overthinking can be a major issue. Using the meditative mentality and or the processing emotions mentality is helpful but ultimately keeps you in your head. Staying in your head isn’t always a good thing because it can actually make it very hard for you to focus on the present moment (even though those exercises usually help you reconnect with the moment).
I’m not entirely sure where this idea came from, but I think it came from daygaming (approaching girls irl). I started using it in gaming then dance and singing practice (all things where being in the present moment is part of the experience).
I call it the “Go For It” Mentality. Basically, you imagine what you want to do (the perfect action) and then just try going for it.
A couple of major points:
Everything is seen as practice (and is very useful when practicing in the moment type skills like language, singing, dance, sports etc where thinking is going to get in your way and you want to focus your instincts).
Repetition is the goal since it is practice, nothing is seen as the final end all be all.
As you keep repeating, you adjust every single time until it feels more and more right. This is one way that you can start bringing in the other tools and mindsets in order to have a really beautiful time.
Last night, I went to bed at 11, but fell asleep after 1AM.
I feel totally drained.
Maybe its time to go back to bed for a little.
So I wrote that at 8 in the morning. I just took a nap after cooking for the entire morning with delicious tea eggs and soup. Then I spent a few hours napping and now I feel much better.
I really think my productivity is so much worse when my health is worse.
More napping, meditation, and exercise in the future! Napping if I’m sleep deprived, meditation and exercise if I’m not.
Today, the aim I want to focus on is content creation. I want to finish my post, and workout and meditate for the rest of the day.
So I’ve been stuck in Silver 3 forever after the rank reset and it seems that I need to do a second climb to Plat again. Perhaps I just need to relearn the basics better.
So there is a peeking guide by Noted that I’ve been trying to apply for the longest time and I think I finally understand a good mentality and visualization that can make the peeks good. It is interesting because I’ve been feeling so down about Valorant recently but I always tell myself that the lower elo I go, the more freedom I have to innovate, and innovation is definitely the thing I like to do.
So here is Noted’s peeking guide:
He talks in the peeking guide that its just something you “get used to”. But I wanted to find a way to break it down do that anyone could learn it and that you would never overpeak and angle even if you are not far away enough. This idea of drawing a line to the contested “fighting area” allows for a simple visualisation that will ensure you don’t overpeak, and to do noted’s peek, you simply have to think about drawing a longer line.
I demonstrate it here:
Another note, the best way to peak safely with this method is to have the “line” end close to the edge of the wall, allowing you to peek back in if you miss your shot.
The next piece I might need to refine is just counter strafing because that still isn’t that solid for me, especially for moving targets that I need to constantly adjust for. The initial research into this yields that miyagi-do/looking at distance between crosshair and head is the best solution so far. Results have been good, but it hurts my wrist. I am experimenting with a looser grip and using more of the arm to aim.
UNIT TWO: Dynamic Figure Drawing | Day 1 – Explore figure sketching techniques/simplification
I’ve been actively avoiding working on this challenge all day. I feel like it is because it is so damn overwhelming. It took so much for me to even just sit down and start working on this.
But now that I have sat down and am working on this, I want to create a mini lesson plan for today.
Since today is about exploring figure sketching techniques and simplification, I shall design a lesson plan to make it impossible not to get good at those things. As I’ve said before, lesson plans let me connect to the present moment, on one task at a time. This in turn helps me work through the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Mini syllabus for: explore figure sketching techniques/simplification
Total time: 90 minutes (est 30 min per unit, 10 min per part)
Circle head, half for nose line, half of that for mouth line
line for neck
line for spine
line for hips perpendicular to spine
line for shoulders perpendicular to spine
Head shapes
circle with lopped side for skull
cut cube for face
Sketchy woodwork for finding pose
Keep scratching until a form emerges
Erase or lighten then refine
Advanced shapes
triangle tricep
triangle forearm
teardrop thighs
diamond calf
box pecs
triangle delts
pen tip torso
Mini unit 2: Experiment
Part 1: School of thought 1
I practiced basic armature and it looked pretty bad. I think I started to improve when I moved the hips a little higher.
Part 2: School of thought 2
Things started to improve a little here. I really like the method of simple shapes for the head. I felt like I understood the geometry much better.
Part 3: School of thought 3
This is when I used the sketchy woodwork carving out a pose and when I refined it, I used the advanced shaped coupled with everything else I learned. I really really like this method. Gives me dynamic poses without losing the anatomy.
I didn’t get to Unit 3 because I feel complete and it is 2AM and I want to go to bed.
Very happy with today’s progress. I feel like I killed it at the figure drawings and I feel much more confident drawing figures.
