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 was thinking about the concept of how Alex Hormzi approaches learning. The idea that you purpose things in a way expecting to fail at first, but you pursue them in such a way that you make it hard for you to fail. That the chances that you will fail is lower than the chances of success.
I was thinking about what made emotional or spiritual success. And that brought me to a few different ideas. They all centered around one thing, the relationship with oneself. I believe that the relationship that you have with yourself dictates the freedom and happiness you have in life. Some ways in which I am not a kind or loving friend or parent to myself are:
Thinking my needs are not important, especially if they make it less convenient for other people
Shaming myself and comparing myself to other people
Lashing out at myself when I’m not the best or successful
Yelling at myself for making mistakes
Putting on the pressure that if I’m not stressed I will not perform
Being disgusted by my weakness
What if I took this idea from Alex Hormzi? What if I accepted I am going to be a shit friend and parent to myself but I am going to ask myself what I need to do to make it harder to be unkind and unloving toward myself than it is to be kind and loving?
Well, what would the most loving parent do for me?
Value my emotions and encourage me to explore them
Hold me close when I’m upset or feeling weak and vulnerable
I am the most important person in their life, they will drop everything if I need them
Be interested in hearing about new adventures and failures and lessons
Does not see me as a static person but as a sum of everything I’ve been, where I’m now, and where I’m headed
Guide me when I’m feeling lost or need to defend myself
I want to know how I can make it impossible for me to not do that for myself.
Some ideas come to mind:
Create a meditative time to watch my own content (read my journals, watch my videos, listen to my recordings). It feels like 1,4 and especially 5. As a side effect, this can create GREAT opportunities for understanding what kinds of videos I can make.
Write down and read my thoughts when I feel lost, scared, angry, ashamed or frustrated. Create a place to feel hurt. This can hit at 1,3, and 4, and maybe 6 if I write responses to things I write.
Work on dance therapy especially the following elements: allowing the world to hold you, inward closing comfort, sensual movement and touch, outward releasing movement
I don’t know how to come up with a strategy on how to mix this in with my life yet but some of my ideas includes:
Using therapists as a safe space to practice
Using people who are close as a way to practice
Using camera off meetings as a way to practice
Using youtube videos and coaching as a way to practice
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’m thinking about how women (while often are beautiful and sexy) are not valued for anything beyond their looks or given any affirmation.
For my entire life, I liked having girls as friends, companions, and coworkers because I like being around them (and it has nothing to do with appearance). Here 5 things I like:
I really respect the intelligence and work ethic some women have. They are not arrogant or assume they know everything, which I feel makes someone even smarter since they are faster and better at learning from their mistakes and recognizing that someone is more knowledgable than them (some men are terrible at this to their own downfall).
Women can be easier to connect to on an emotional level. I don’t have to pretend to be strong around women. I can talk about my childhood, when people make me angry, or make me feel embarrassed or sad.
Some women love talking about relationships in an emotionally well-rounded way. I like to talk more about physical attraction or meeting specific criteria. I want to gush about someone I really like.
Some women are really into aesthetics and art. Fashion and beauty isn’t a clinical “I gotta hit the gym to get big” kind of thing. It’s your personal taste and expression of yourself and your feelings.
Some women can be extremely supportive. I like it when you have someone to vent to or recognize when something is making you uncomfortable.
There are many other things as well, women can be down to earth, or wild and adventurous. They can be welcoming and extroverted, or quiet and introspective. But overall, it just feels more balanced being with women. They understand my logic mixed with emotion and feeling. They aren’t as competitive and are more caring.
Here is me rambling about it for 13 minutes straight. Ramble ramble.
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: