I’ve been thinking more about confidence in Valorant and it actually made me think a lot more about what makes confidence. I originally was interested in how to multitask because I thought that was what would make me stronger in Valorant, but I wasn’t able to find any useful information on it.
I ended up searching multitasking in sports, and I was specifically in interested in the basketball videos when they talked about confidence.
The first video was this:
Ideas:
Confidence is not about positive or negative thinking
There are two ways of thinking
Logically and analytically
Intuitively
Confidence is about trusting the second type of thinking
Timing cannot be thought
Ideas:
People often rely on outside sources of confidence
Success
External Validation
Comparing ourselves with others
These outside sources of validation are not reliable
Confidence comes from being able to trust yourself
Trustworthiness is from people who follow a code
Ex: Warrior code “no man left behind” (inspires confidence in your unit because other people won’t leave you behind)
Ex: Courage over success, valuing courage over failure or success validation
Code must be specific and have specific actions you take to fulfill it
Mantras can be helpful
So as they say in the video to do, I am writing down the things I use for confidence in Valorant:
Success – high KDA, increasing elo
Comparison – high KDA compared to others, higher rank
Knowledge and practice – learning techniques and practicing them
Performance – being able to predict moves, hitting my shots
What I admire in other players:
Clarity in thinking
Creative plays
Fast reactions
Precise mechanics
Boldness/confidence
I’ll take each of these a step further to draft out my code. I’m going to see if I can break down what I make each of these things mean:
I make success mean that I’m smart that I’m special
I make comparison mean that I’m special, that I’m a valuable or worthy person
I make knowledge and practice mean I’m smart and that I deserve to be heard
I make performance mean that I’m special and I’m capable
For the second list:
I make clarity mean that someone is smart
I make creativity mean intelligence, specialness, worthy of love and admiration
I make fast reactions means someone is attractive
Precise mechanics I make it mean someone is capable, valuable and worth a lot
Boldness and confidence I make it mean someone is valuable and special
To think about it further my code might need to address:
Inner value – what is valuable about myself
Inner specialness – what do I think is special about myself
Inner love and admiration – what do I love and admire about myself
Inner capability – what makes myself capable
I don’t really know what my code can be but one aspect that keeps coming up for all of these things are valuing feelings and focusing on radical permission.
Those are two things that I feel make me unique, I value myself and are a way to find freedom and give myself love and admiration.
I suppose I can also focus on the challenge in life, the idea of courage or challenge over success is something else that I admire about value about myself. Deep thinking, letting the answer of hard questions come to me as well.
The ways that I could act out this code in Valorant:
I believe that racial discrimination exists primarily in today’s day and age in two forms:
Attractiveness. We know attractiveness is partly biological, but it is also in large part cultural. White people are considered more attractive than other races. We also know “pretty privilege” exists and has a profound effect on how trustworthy, successful and smart someone is. We are biologically and socially hardwired to like attractive people.
Social economics. We know that white people own most of the wealth. We also know wealth is generational and can give you a huge advantage in life.
Let’s just run through a few examples:
Who has a better chance of being an actor? What about a tik tok star? An attractive person or an unattractive person?
Who has a better chance of being a banker? Or a real estate agent? Someone who’s parents are investment bankers, or if their parents worked at Mcdonalds?
I believe that affirmative action and other tools to remove bias are not meant to “even the playing field” or create an “equality of outcome” (even distributions) but rather to counteract biases that may be counter to the correct action or truth. For example, hiring a more attractive person even though they are lazier, dumber and have less experience.
I do believe that race can be very complicated and there are many instances that are not being considered here. However, I feel that those cases are more niche and require more thinking as to the best solution, such as:
Perceptions of blacks as more capable of crime.
Women not succeeding as much because of childbearing.
Broadly it is clear to me that this has two main implications:
Mainstream ideas about race discount the disadvantages of “ugly” low-income white people.
Mainstream race theory overcompensates for perceived roadblocks of “attractive” wealthy minorities (as they are not only privileged but are often touted as the beacons of hope when they are benefitting from the same system that is currently creating bias).
The only two things I would support affirmative action for would be affirmation action for looks (I don’t know how this would be measured exactly) and for social economic status. I believe that affirmation action in these two areas would:
Disproportionally benefit minorities as they are considered uglier and are often poorer
It would call attention to bias that we have very often in our own lives, a bias that affects our ability to make clear and rational decisions
We would see many competent and talented people who were formerly ignored, be brought to the top
Finally, I would say that all races and all people struggle with issues. There is little to no point in trying to make everyone happy. The main point is to somehow come up with a system where our biases have checks and balances that will guide us to making the most rational and clear decisions.
Being someone who has grown up a minority in America, there is a big wound racism creates within you, a feeling that there is something wrong with you. However, those wounds are opportunities to heal and become wiser, they are not something that everyone else needs to carefully tiptoe around (and be politically correct about). Wounds and pain are not bad things. We can show compassion without enabling people to not grow emotionally and not face their own demons.
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.
I started to understand what it means to have “self-discipline” and using that to build self-confidence.
It isn’t about holding yourself to arbitrary rules and forcing yourself to do things that you don’t want to do (but think you “should do” or that other people think you should do).
It is about challenging yourself. If you have a challenge mindset, you don’t worry about failure, you are interested in the possibility. If you have self discipline in a challenge, it means to focus on that and as you follow through, you start to build confidence.
As Goggins says, you don’t get happiness or confidence from comfort, you get it from facing yourself and facing your fears.
The big issue between people who really understand and those who are fake motivation is that people who are fake push themselves for other people, they push themselves out of fear. The people who understand, have embraced fear, they push themselves WITH the fear. People who don’t understand, disconnect from themselves and ignore fear. The people who understand CONNECT with fear, feel it MORE not LESS.
I’m exhausted – fell asleep for a long time after watching and imitating for a short period of time
Knife to gun transition – keeping knife out until dangerous angles, then switch to gun or do a jump peak while switching if no room
Hold for peeks – clear where they might peek, not where they might be, continue to hold it or switch to another angle they can push you from
Set graphics to low
Don’t push smokes unless with flashes or off of someone else’s contact
Spray with good spray control – pulling down
Fall after spraying to reload
Jiggle if holding close to an angle
Warm up at the start of each round by flicking onto teammate heads
In game what I did very successfully:
Spamming through smokes – I got many headshots through the smoke
Holding peekable angles – I felt I got a lot more intentional to where I was staring
Holding off angles when watching for the flank (specifically I utilized the place Tenz hid on Pearl in the first round to get kills
Being more intentional of when the knife is out, I rarely got caught out with my knife. I figured out how much time it takes to pull out the gun, and I always timed it so that I pulled out my gun before peeking anything.
What I can improve on:
Pulling out the knife more often when I know no one is close
Spam more boxes
Utilizing jump peeking more
Making sure my peeks are still tight and clean and fast
Being much more focused on holding specific peeks when slowly scaling up
