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Bedtime Challenge 3: The End
Byjack
I realized something. It is the end of my bedtime challenge! I have only three days in which I actually violated the boundaries of the challenge:
- First time was for work, when troubleshooting an issue took me until 11:30 PM, I went to bed at 12
- Second time was for my girlfriend, helping her with a school project until 12
- The third time was when the challenge officially ended already, on the 17th (challenge ended on the 12th) when I was feeling too overwhelmed to pack for my trip back to my parent’s house for the holidays.
Although the challenge is over, the work continues.
It is even more critical now because I have a lot of issues with keeping control of my life while at my parent’s house and the bedtime routine isn’t as nice as I would like to have it. I will keep this challenge going for a few more days to solidify some of the more important aspects of the challenge such as the morning routine, and nighttime routine, and fulfilling some of the things I need from the nighttime (alone time, creativity, productivity, fun, and space).
Instead, I am feeling pretty much that my space and time are particularly intruded on in recent times and I need to find ways to meet those needs.
Overall, I am extremely proud of myself and look forward to all the health benefits this will afford me.
Mewing and Tongue Position
Byjack
I’ve always had trouble finding a relaxed position for my tongue at the roof of the mouth. I always felt that I was forcing it and in the past when I tried to “mew” I got terrible headaches.
However, I noticed I spend a lot of time breathing from my mouth and I wanted to fix things so I used a bit of connection theory to come up with an idea on how to hold my tongue and I came up with this simple technique:
- Imagine your spine ending at your tailbone and reaching up all the way and ending at your tongue
- Imagine keeping your spine open at extended
This imagery has a couple of benefits:
- Most importantly for me, this allows me to move my body and my tongue without feeling like I cannot maintain tongue posture (mewing always felt static and forced to me)
- Simple and seems quite relaxing to me
The Sales Conference Health Challenge
Byjack
I’m headed to Orlando, Florida today for a big sales event and I have created a challenge for myself.
I want to not only stay well (and avoid sickness) but also feel better after the conference.
Right now I’m suffering from the following symptoms:
- Fatigue
- Dry eyes
- Low energy
- Sore back
- Tight and sore shoulders
In order to avoid sickness (which will be the hardest part of this challenge). I am planning on focusing on the following challenges:
- Social
- Keeping a distance from people
- Avoiding contact
- Using eye contact and projection to still connect with people
- Physical
- Mask up at close events
- Distance when eating food
- Hand sanitize at intervals
- Reduce facial touching
The biggest part of this challenge is keeping in touch with my emotions and my body as well as being able to set boundaries. It’s a sales event so it is a very externally orientated event meaning that it is hard to maintain boundaries while connecting with people and easy to eat mindlessly, push past exhausting instead of sleeping, etc.
In order to boost my health, I am focusing on the following areas:
- Emotional
- Feel the feelings
- Take risks
- Slow down
- Physical
- Exercise
- Sleep
- Mindful eating
Workpost 11: Mentalities for Happiness
Byjack
Today I woke up feeling pretty awful from going to bed at 4AM last night.
I was feeling super overwhelmed with many many things in my life.
Today, I chose to wake up slowly, get to work slowly, and here are some of the mentalities that helped me:
- Cleaning is incredibly healing. Any time of cleaning, cleaning your workspace, your body, your clothes, it all is very therapeutic.
- What can I do for future Jack. This is the Matthew McConnehey’s idea of leaving breadcrumbs. Instead of the common idea of letting your future self deal with a problem (let future Jack deal with the dishes, let future Jack deal with talking to this person) think about what you can do now to make your future self happier. This can look like everything from cleaning, to setting up a super nice workspace, cooking yourself a really good meal.
- Focus on challenge and growth. I think oftentimes I get overwhelmed because I think about how hard things are. What helps me is thinking about everything in terms of challenge and growth. How can I challenge myself? What can I do to grow?
- Live in the hierarchy of being true to oneself. I was talking to a friend the other day about hierarchies and choosing the right one (don’t compete in a hierarchy you don’t believe in such as money). I want to compete and live in a hierarchy of being honest and true to myself.
I still feel a quite a bit of stress of the difficult conversations I’m anticipating, and the difficult tasks I have in front of me.
Unwelcome World
I feel sometimes
I am living in a world
Where every step is heavy
But the gravity only pulls on my heart
And the future feels unknown
Scary and not comfy
Knee Strength 6: Getting Inspiration
Byjack
I’ve been at a loss as to how to get more stretch in my knees, but I got some inspiration recently from this video:
Lots of cool ideas in this video. Specifically with rolling the knees back and forth.
I feel that this might require something more in terms of exercise, some knee strength somehow to stabilize the knees more, but I feel this is a big part of the puzzle.
Workpost 42: Loneliness
Byjack
I felt very lonely today, so I watched two videos. I figured that whenever my knee feels bad I do research, but I don’t do a lot of research when I feel lonely.
Major ideas that might help me from this post:
- Think about how to help others to feel less lonely. It’s weird that I always think about who can make me feel less lonely, but I actually don’t need other people for that. Helping others will help me feel less lonely.
- Emotional perfectionism definately sounds like me. Thinking about how it might be possible for me to connect with people even if they aren’t perfect friends and fill all my needs makes it a lot easier to connect with people.
This one really really really helped me because it answered one of my questions, why am I distracting myself all the time and going on YouTube videos and playing games. The simple thing is, I’m not a good friend to myself.
Main takeaways:
- A good friend is honest in a loving gentle way. Be honest with yourself in a compassionate way.
- A good friend is encouraging and pushes you to be a better version of yourself. Remind yourself what you are capable of, believe in yourself. Encourage yourself to be a good man, a strong man, despite what others want you to do.
For some reason, the idea of being a good man makes me feel really really calm for some reason. I know I have been fighting myself and that’s why I’m on my phone all the time.
I wanted to spend some time thinking more about my ideal friend:
- Someone who is accepting of me, a good listener, empathetic
- Someone who wants to go on adventures with me
- Someone who encourages me to dream big, believe in myself