I recently had a situation at work where I felt like I needed to set some boundaries. In order to get more strategies on how to do it, I went with my trusty expert Thais Gibson, who I feel is the absolute best when it comes to coming up with scripts and strategies with processing feelings, dealing with attachment styles and setting and enforcing boundaries.
Taking what Thais says in this video and adding in my own knowledge, I have come up with the follow step process for setting boundaries.
Rage pad: write down or record yourself saying everything you want to say to the person. This gives permission to anger and allows you to process it.
Determine whether or not a boundary was crossed, and if so, what specific one?
Try to empathize as to why that boundary was crossed
Communicate in this format:
Communicate in the positive the boundary violation (what they did, not what they didn’t do). <Insert empathy> At the same time, this is not acceptable under any circumstances.
Explain what you want instead
If repeated violations, add in consequences
Make it really obvious to the person what is going on.
I’m working on discovering and developing my own attractiveness. Just to clarify:
Attractiveness is not about finding faults, it’s about understanding your most beautiful self and letting yourself grow into that version of yourself. It’s not about imagining other people and wishing you were like them.
Attractiveness is very personal. It should be how you want to look to feel like yourself and feel confident. It can match societal versions of beauty but does not have to.
I discovered an exercise that can help:
Stand in front of a full-length mirror
Remove as much clothing as possible, naked if possible
Stand straight and adjust your body to find the most attractive posture
Note any other areas that need adjusting, skin, hair etc. in order to reach peak attractiveness
Once you find your baseline (just standing straight), try different poses
This is PARTICULARLY good at detecting problems with posture
You can take this practice into ordinary life by imagining you are naked, it’s a more natural mentality for intuitively good posture and can make you feel more open and confident
This is an interesting idea, to be naked first because I think it follows the idea that I have with learning in general. You should always start with the basics and move upward. In attractiveness, you must first find your attractive yourself naked before finding your attractive self with clothes on. Just like with any other learning technique, clothes and other accessories (like makeup) actually distract from you seeing the lowest most basic level of yourself. You are the MOST natural and yourself when naked, so it makes sense to start there.
My initial thoughts:
The MAIN area that is keeping me from being my most attractive self is the posture of my neck and shoulders. My head is jutted forward making my chin weak and shoulders rounded forward, making my stomach stick out.
I may need to cut my hair since it is too much for the features of my face and makes my features look duller.
I have other minor areas of posture that need to be adjusted and other grooming things I may want to do.
This exercise is GREAT for feeling confident in your own skin, I noticed when I focus on improving my own posture, I open up my body instead of hunching and feel more confident.
I don’t actually need to get more fit and muscular like I always think I do. I just need to strengthen my back and core so I can naturally maintain a better posture.
This seems to work mostly for your body though, and not with your face. My intuition tells me that the biggest tool for facial symmetry is just finding ways to relax your face but I’m pretty lost in that area.
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)
I am trying some new things out to update my routines and actions from the last post.
My morning routine: short walk outside. No computer or phone until I walk outside and get some good sun exposure.
My reset. If I feel overwhelmed, take a shower or go into my closet.
Practicing the transition from my chair to my door: I’m going to mark a tally on my “Active Life” tracker calendar (shout out to my girlfriend <3).
In trying out this new “Active Life” tracker, I decided the following today after trying it out today:
I will leave the apartment as many times as I can
If I feel tired and want to sleep, I can just go to the gym and come back after
If I want to play Valorant or doomscroll, I can go out, do some quick work, then come back and go on my phone
I’m also proud of myself for doing some sketching today in the “woodcut” style that I plan to use for my business card.
I like it a lot but I want to continue on working on making it more clean like this:
Some thoughts:
It helps to look at a photo reference
Might help to sketch out a design beforehand
Need a harder brush (sharper edges) for the image
Now it’s time to plan my day and look at yesterday’s questions.
What am I going to do about my art coaching and AI gaming companies?
Am I behind schedule and if so what do I do about it? Yes, I am behind schedule. I think what I need to do about it is that I want to focus more on the business side of things. For coaching that means finding clients and for AI gaming I’m not sure yet. Either way, I need to start figuring out what it looks like to run the business.
Should I extend the schedule? Maybe a little, but at the moment no.
Am I losing money? Yes, but this is something I want to do and get better at. The best thing to do for me is to not to have a gameplan, just run with what I have until the money runs out. Perhaps I could also try to find a business partner or something to level up to the next step or collaborate with my current business partner more.
How do I get out of my procrastination phase and get working? Leaving the apartment more. Doing a deep clean of my apartment.
What do I do about my art coaching website? Create a powerpoint for it, create a basic website.
How do I get everything done in such a short period of time? I don’t need to. I failed at section one of the business, but that’s ok. Failure = growth. I learned that not taking faster action to get to sales doesn’t work as well. Maybe I need to get more people involved to help me or to just bounce ideas off of.
Should I start registering for fairs? Yes most definitely, also think more about what I can give away.
Should I pay someone to design the website for me? I absolutely could, it probably is a very good idea.
How am I going to get the motivation to start drawing? How do I start drawing consistently? I need to find the joy in just creating this new art style.
How do I start going to the gym and working outside the apartment consistently? Through my “Active Life” tracker! And from being the hero, and valuing my body as a temple. And by leaving the apartment every time I want to do something unhealthy (going outside, then coming back and gaming etc.)
How will I start cooking again and cleaning up my apartment? Where will I find the time? We can do it piece by piece, we also don’t need to cook immediately, just work on it slowly.
How will I prepare for the next week of work? How do I balance my other businesses? I should focus work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for a specific time period (8-5). Then trust in the process. If I leave the apartment a lot, things will get done on all fronts.
When will I continue to work on my Javascript projects? What is the breakdown between AI work time and coaching work time. Not sure, we have a couple of options. We can focus on coaching, switch gears to AI therapist (as greater chances of monitization), or try to create a release schedule. Or forget about getting something out as being a full stack dev would be pretty valuable and worthy skill on its own right.
Now to write some of the questions I have for tomorrow:
How am I going to balance contract work with my businesses tomorrow?
What can I do to make sure I get enough sleep for jiujitsu?
What is the plan for getting customers for my businesses?
Should I sign up for a consultation with a Fiverr coach for javascript? Should I work first to get an understanding of full stack?
Should I start looking for someone to build my coaching website?
What can I give away at the fairs?
What is the next step for my woodcut art style? What is the plan for the business cards?
When am I going to create my powerpoint for my coaching website outline?
I’m happy, I think two mentalities that are helping me are:
Whenever I want to do something unhealthy or distracting (youtube, Valorant, etc.) first leave the apartment then do it when I come back. I usually get more done, are more in touch with my body and don’t feel the need to self medicate after.
At the end of the day, imagine what I wished I got done, what would make me happy if I got done and turn those things into a list of questions to tackle and solve tomorrow.