This is a recap of an exercise I did a few weeks ago. I was watching a ThinkMedia youtube video about how to succeed at youtube. He went through and exercise looking at 3 things in this order: passion, proficiency, and profit.
Basically, he said to make a list of all the things that you are passionate about, either things you like or things you hate, and things you do even if you weren’t getting paid to do it.
My list was:
Making money
Finding leverage
Valorant
Corporate life (hate)
Coaching
Challenges
Superhuman abilities
Graphic novels
Children’s books, fantasy
Health
AI
Surface level thinking (hate)
Then, he said to take that list of things and think about what we have at least 1 year of proficiency in, where we have been doing that thing semi-successfully. So I narrowed down my list to:
Making money
Valorant
Feeling stuck in life
Deeper thinking
Coaching
Health
AI
Then, he said to narrow down that further into things that we could build an audience around, something people need or would want to buy. Here was my list:
How to get started with a business
How to aim
How to get unstuck in life
How to unlock your potential
How to repair your body
How to use AI to improve your life
I don’t know if I have any interest pursuing youtube in this way, but it was an interesting exercise to reflect on.
I honestly don’t really know what I want to say about this challenge.
I know I wanted to learn jiu jitsu but it was for a number of reasons.
Firstly, I could feel myself falling apart and I couldn’t bring myself to work out. I’ve always loved martial arts and jiu jitsu was always something that I wanted to learn as a martial artist because of its practicality and strengthening an area of fighting that I am particularly weak in – which is grappling.
Secondly, I wanted to see more people in real life and make more friends. My girlfriend joined a running class and it helped her get into exercising more and also just interact with more people. I wanted to do the same with something that I love, which is fighting.
So I signed up to a jiu jitsu gym, one that I was really excited about because it specializes in no gi grappling (10th planet), but now that I’m rolling a few times a week, I kind of don’t know where to go.
I worry about my knee a lot, and that actually has given me more motivation to continue working out.
I feel much happier and have more energy after going to class. I feel myself getting stronger and having better posture.
But I still don’t know what to challenge myself with.
I did not wake up feeling good. I went to bed at 11:40 (much earlier to my credit! I ended up not working on one of my projects and didn’t play Valorant). However, I couldn’t fall asleep because I just showered and my body was too hot.
This morning, I went for a walk and I crawled for about 30 minutes. Crawling feels EXTREMELY good. I found a way to do it very naturally. I think it is funny how great hardship yet again provides so much value. I know how to crawl because I had to learn how to walk properly after messing up my knee so much that it hurt to walk. In learning how to walk I have a clear idea of how to shift my weight and do the same thing when I crawl. I’m going to try to crawl more throughout the day.
Other than crawling, I did feel extremely happy last night driving around but again in the morning I feel kind of lonely and depressed and I wonder again what I can do to soothe that.
Perhaps, I will play some Valorant today, do some art and music, and more crawling because those things all make me happy. I also reached out to a lot of friends yesterday and a lot of people wanted to talk today so maybe I will talk to them too. I am excited to go on the trip to California with my brother and sister!
As for the different projects, here are my thoughts:
AI Consulting: I’m happy with the new direction, but nervous about shooting the videos
Art Coaching: Really excited about my new ideas, interested in creating the materials that I’ve been planning for
Art Coaching Product Research: Feeling pretty anxious about this since this is what I dropped yesterday due to time constraints
Demo work: feel bored by it
I also want to revist my knee challenge for my spar with my friend coming up and my knee challenge for the same reason
“Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
The last few weeks have been exhausting and emotionally draining. I came to Austin to find myself and focus on building myself up and I need to focus my energy on myself.
I need to focus on my physical and mental health and I intend to use my blog as a way to track my thoughts, struggles and progress.
Things I want to focus on:
Thais Gibson’s personal development school – to focus on healing childhood trauma
Self massage, gua sha and posture – to align body and remove tension
Dance – to regain body awareness
Food and nutrition – to feed the healing of my body
Sleep – to regain energy and heal myself
Now the next piece is to break down every bit of resistance or difficulty in every aspect.
Personal development school courses
Lots of long videos
Worksheets
Poorly organized
Love and connection: work with Jenny or someone else
Certainty: Timebox, skim through entire course to get understanding
Growth: Capture video blogs throughout to see progress
Massage and Posture
Certainty: Every morning and night, indulge in the sensations
Growth: Capture pictures to see progress
Dance
Certainty: Watch old lessons every morning, feel body
Uncertainty: Try to create something new
Love and connection: Share on social media or with friends
Growth: Create videos of progress
Food and nutrition
Certainty: Cook enough food in the morning to sustain throughout the day, cook food prep that will make it easy and fast, have ritual around eating food (no electronics)
Love and connection: Invite someone over for lunch, share on social media or friends
Sleep
Certainty: Start brushing teeth around 10 PM
Love and connection: write a core wound post before bed or a poem or do some art
I also want to focus on weekly health audits and setting up a really nice space to shoot videos and work and play games.
I’ve been feeling really unhappy that I haven’t been traveling or going on adventures lately. I meditated on it a long time today to try to figure it out. The more that I thought about it, the more I realized that I feel stuck in almost every area of my life. Specifically, I don’t feel like I’m making much progress in my Valorant Challenge, and a video that I am working on I feel like I’ve hit a dead end. Today I had a dance lesson and I felt like I couldn’t grasp the techniques quick enough, and I feel so distant from the girl I love sometimes.
However, anything that came to me didn’t feel right. I thought about how I could take risks, drive somewhere, fix the feeling that I had somehow. I came to an important realization. I’m not unhappy with anything in my life. I’m at a stage where there is a degree of uncertainty I’m worried that something will go wrong, that my hopes and dreams will fall away. However, that’s not the case at all. Sometimes, all you need to do is keep going, accept and feel the feelings of uncertainty and have the courage to be curious as to see what the future will hold.
In almost every area of my life that I feel stuck, there is a promise of something really truly special. An amazing challenge on a computer game. A wonderful artistic fun video for an event I’m holding. Being able to truly express me and feel confident in my body with dance. and last but not least, a love story that will change my life. All I need to do is be brave enough to wait to see what will happen next.
Perhaps it’s not the risk or adventure that I miss when traveling. It is the feeling of taking each day, one step at a time. Always being in the moment. Allowing life to happen and unfold in front of you. Trusting my gut and intuition.
