I feel like total shit. I didn’t sleep well and the back of my eyes hurt and I’m tired and bleary and a little cold. It is taking everything to not play games all day. I feel what gives me anxiety in this house isn’t just the expectations from my parents…but also the amount of stuff. There is too much stuff to feel comfortable around here. To feel calm.
I have been thinking about this idea a lot. The idea of “Whatever you feel the world is withholding from you is what you withhold from the world.”
I feel that this can help with a lot of the turmoil in my mind.
I’ve had knee problems for my half of my life. I wanted to get the motivation to heal the knee. It started with the Knee Mobility Challenge, which by the way wasn’t even my first knee challenge. Then I started to work on my overall fitness and knee motivation with the JiuJitsu challenge.
This is sort of a continuation of that.
My current goals:
Lift up my knee and bend it feeling stable, comfortable and strong
Stand for 5 minutes while feeling comfortable
Lay on either side feeling comfortable and relaxed
Sit on my heels while feeling comfortable and relaxed
Be able to jump feeling stable, comfortable, and strong
Able to kick a roundhouse while feel stable, comfortable and strong
* I wrote this on Jan 15th…gonna leave it as a journal entry for now.
I feel unhappy right now. I feel like I can’t work on the things I want to work on. I feel stressed out that my relationship won’t work out. I don’t know what I’m doing here in France. I actually very much dislike the country. I am worried that coaching is not the thing that I actually want to do. I find it hard to find myself and feel myself in this relationship. I wonder if that is because of me not knowing myself, coaching not being the thing I want to do, or if this is the wrong place for me.
Right now I don’t feel like working on coaching or thinking about coaching.
I want to work on something that is purely interesting to me and something that is actually fun.
I think that thing right now is making a story creation bot in python using large language models.
In order to write a halfway decent story, I believe you need a couple of things:
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 had a really rough day today. I woke up at 4:30 AM in order to get to the airport and fly to Houston. Coming back I hit so much traffic, my uber took almost 2 hours and I was late for my flight by 2 minutes. Luckily, there was no one in line for security, I blazed through, ran to the gate and somehow they hadn’t departed yet.
While I was in the car for 2 hours seeing the time tick down and knowing that I was probably going to miss my flight, probably get on the next one, be stuck in the airport for another two hours, and get home at around 10 PM, I tried to make the best of my bad situation. I thought about my Instagram page for coaching, specifically posts and videos.
I had some ideas for the posts, having a dark gray background with a simple serif font. Also, I was thinking about doing some digital painting for my posts.
The videos were a little bit harder.
I stopped making the reminder videos because I felt so stuck and frustrated with them and I wanted to use connection theory to come up with some solutions.
I think there are a bunch of steps in the video-making process: shooting, editing, and final polish. Each has its own challenges and solutions that came to me.
Shooting
This is hard because I felt a lot of anxiety and overthinking about saying the right thing, and coming off as clear and interesting. Using connection theory, I felt that what I needed is to focus less on the words that I am saying and focus more on evoking feelings through my delivery (my voice and my expressions). They say when someone is talking, verbal queues (literally what they are saying) is only 10% of communication and non-verbals (your tone of voice, inflection, facial expressions) account for 90%. I want to really focus next time not on what I say, but how I say it. Also, I want to try spending something feeling into the reminder and shooting broll that evokes it in a non-verbal way. In general, I want to focus on non-verbals more.
Editing
This is hard because there is a lot of overwhelming decisions that I face at this stage. I am conflicted with staying true to what I originally shot vs any new visions on how to convey my thoughts. I feel often that I avoid emotions or lose touch of emotions just looking at the transcript without hearing the delivery and when I hear the delivery I am conflicted on what to cut out or change. I often feel the original work is no longer recognizable afterwards. I feeling into connection theory, I felt that fear dominated my ability to think, feel, and be creative and I’m thinking about using the law of contradictory intentions by “trying” to be unclear, trying to make no sense.
Final Polish
I didn’t think about this too much because it isn’t really a challenge except for maybe logistically (takes a long time). i was thinking about using the syllabus method, or batch a bunch of videos for the weekend to finalize and publish.
A quick silly example of what this might look like:
Reminder: Today’s reminder is to eat chocolate
Shooting: Focus on how to deliver the words. “Chocolate…mmmm. We want to crunch it!” Shoot broll of breaking chocolate. Of inhaling the chocolate smell.
Editing: Try to make it a bad video.
Editing: Try to find a song that doesn’t fit.
Polish: Add it to a queue with instructions on what needs to be done to finish it off.
This might fall into my Valorant challenge but it goes much deeper.
I started trying to find a way to multitask in Valorant, which led me to thinking about confidence. This led me down a whole path where I was trying to understand how to focus on the game and get into the game, and get into flow.
I finally arrived at a technique that looks something like this:
See the enemy
Imagine their head getting shot
Aim
Shoot
This works for drills, deathmatch anything. The point is that you visualize the outcome first, then take some action (aiming). You don’t immediately aim, you don’t shoot as soon as you visualize.
This does a couple of things:
Visualizing hitting the headshot removes anxiety because in my head I can hit the shot
Visualization makes me focus on one target and give it my full attention
Aiming makes sure I actually hit the shot
On top of this, I can do anything to aim, I can use my movement to aim, I can center my screen, I can do literally anything, the important part is to visualize the headshot before it happens.
In a very interesting turn of events, I’ve actually found this super helpful in music too.
Oftentimes my singing is muddy and unclear. I’ve done something similiar:
Chop the notes into shorter more enunciated syllables
Savor and taste each note
Imagine how I want the note to taste
This does something similar where I am more aware of each note and can sing it with more intention and emotion. I don’t skip ahead too fast, I focus on each word as it comes.
It seems that a combination of a focus on a small step, and visualization helps bring me into the present moment.
As Alex Hormozi said (or am I just saying this?) everyone needs to know sales. Because sales lead to money and everyone needs money. If you don’t know how to sell, then you end up working for someone who does.
Before I try out the leads techniques on my coaching business, I am using it for my AI company.
And for that company, I’ve been feeling extreme pressure and stress around talking to my warm and lukewarm or cold leads.
I’ve processed some of these emotions and came up with some of a process:
Accept that I cannot control how someone sees me and even if I could, I don’t want to. Everyone’s mind and thoughts are sacred and my freedom is sacred as well. Both would be violated if I were to control how people saw me because I have to put on a mask and deceive people.
If I’m not trying to control people then the point is just to engage with my network. Talk to people, have a good time, make some jokes.
Anyone who doesn’t respond is an opportunity to process my feelings around rejection because that is the most important thing to me – not trying to change their mind.
The other part of this equation that I still am scratching my head about is delivering fast and big value. Alex talks about that but I don’t know what that value means, and I don’t know if I am allowed to give away things. I need to think about it some more and come up with some ideas. Perhaps my time can be split between developing value and content and reaching out.
I’ve been thinking of way to provide people value and the only thing I can really think of is having some time with me.
Maybe one way to think about it is I need to establish myself as an AI expert or someone with a lot of prior success. Perhaps one helpful detail is that I’ve worked with companies where we saw a 10x increase in efficiency in specific areas.
Maybe it would be helpful to show them the website as well for use cases or a list of ideas for their specific area.