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Profit in Peace 20: Boundaries

Byjack

I was thinking today about boundaries and needs, and how I’m starting to work on recognizing them. I’ll add a new one to the list:

  1. Honesty – truth is important
  2. Empathy – emotions are important
  3. Respect – it is important to be valued and value others
  4. Time – control over your time and space
  5. Possibility – belief anything is possible
  6. Health – lifestyle is important

Needs are interesting, because I think boundaries are used to protect needs. I’m not entirely sure whether or not these are needs or boundaries. I also don’t know if they are values. In doing a little more research it seems that some people would consider these values, not needs. Maybe I should switch up my terminology.

In any case, health is a value that I recently added to incorporate my dedication to sleep, digestion, and exercise all in the service of feeling happy, strong, and energetic (for the long run).

I also recently thought about possibility. The most often neglected of all my values/needs but I feel equally important. I realized recently that possibility is what drives solutions. Boundaries are important, but communicating them, enforcing them, often requires compromise and communication. And what helps with that is the feeling of possibility.

Recently, I was feeling resentful of my parents not wanting me to go to a social gathering with friends. I felt it was violating my boundary around health (mental health), empathy (where they would value my emotions) and honesty (I did not feel like I could be honest about any of this).

However, I didn’t know what to do because I respect their boundaries around health might be a bit different from mine. Being older and frailer, they were more worried about my health and their own. I know that I cannot protect them from getting sick, but I felt increasingly stressed.

The possibility value came into play when I thought about how anything is possible. I started to think about how I could meet my need for emotional health in different ways, for example, talking more to my friends and meeting more of them (in a more one on one setting) that would potentially reduce and control the risk to my parents. At the same time I still see possibilities in meeting up with my friends working out as possibility is always there.

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Bedtime Challenge 4: The Marathon

Byjack

I just came up with a sort of solution for the issue of continuing a healthy sleep cycle while ending the challenge.

It is sparked by something my dad said to me. He told me that life is a marathon not a short race. You have to think of things in the longterm in order to stay healthy.

I was thinking about this because I have a technique I use when I need to do something that takes time and patience. For example, if I feel antsy while working at the gym, I ask myself, “when will this be over?” and I start looking at the clock and feeling impatient.

I address with a technique that I call the Forever method. It’s called the forever method because I answer that question with “imagine it will go on forever”. And not in a bad way. In a way that is comforting. This is your new life…and I can let go of figuring out how to rush onto the next thing. I can just focus on the present moment, and focus on doing the movements in a way that I CAN do it forever. That means with good form, without pushing myself too hard.

I realized I can think about life the same way:

  • Bedtime that I can sustain forever
  • Working hours that I can sustain forever
  • Eating in a way that I can sustain forever

This makes a lot of sense for maintaining boundaries. Often we tell ourselves, oh, I will just bear this insult for today, I will just work a little harder today. But in those situations, we are violating our own boundaries. Which means we will build up resentment. It is NOT something you can sustain forever.

So as I close out this challenge, I plan to live in a way that will enable me to live forever.

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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:

  1. First time was for work, when troubleshooting an issue took me until 11:30 PM, I went to bed at 12
  2. Second time was for my girlfriend, helping her with a school project until 12
  3. 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.

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Profit In Peace 19: Taking Charge

Byjack

I’m angry. I feel trapped at home, at work, and in my relationship. I am tired and uncomfortable like I have no personal space. I am taking charge today.

I don’t know what that means, but right now it means, that for the first time since I came back to my parent’s house, I am doing my daily routine.

Nowhere To Go

My parents

Hovering

Watching

Judging

Like glue stuck to my arms

My girlfriend

A ball of frustration and negativity

That I feel anxiety in my core

Every time she pulls at me

My work a clash between

Two fighting parents

With me stuck in the middle

Where is the space for me?

I feel several realizations come to me when I write about these emotions. First, the technique of taking space. I feel all my oxygen, happiness, room, and sanity is taken away by others. I feel like I’m making myself smaller to give room to others. The first thing I want to do is to start taking up space, making demands, and making myself big.

The second thing that I feel is important (and might give me a clue as to how I can make myself big, and not huddle real small), is remembering my boundaries and needs:

  1. Time – I want to be in control of my time
  2. Honesty – I want to be honest with myself and others
  3. Empathy – I want to empathize and others to empathize with me
  4. Possibility – I want to believe anything is possible
  5. Respect – I want others to show respect for me and my abilities

This already gives me a clearer idea of what is happening here.

I definitely feel a lack of honesty, time, and sometimes respect and empathy at home. In fact, maybe possibility sometimes too. In my relationship I feel lack of honesty, empathy, possibility, and time (and sometimes respect). And at work, I feel a lack of respect, honesty, empathy, and time as well.

I also feel that in every scenario, the key is wanting everyone to like me to not feel uncomfortable.

I caused most of these boundary violations to happen, and that is empowering because I have the ability to change them,

One of the things I want to do instead of wanting everyone to be happy and wanting everyone to like me, is approach people with my same values.

For example, if I want to be honest with someone, empathize with them, show respect, but let go of trying to control how they feel. If I want to be respected more, I can do that with empathy and honesty and respect as well.

This is far more empowering and less stressful because I am in control of myself. I can change how I approach situations, but I cannot control others.

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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.

French Challenge 1: A Head Scratcher

Byjack

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:

  1. Performance vs. growth
    1. Train in the gym to fail – growth
    2. Compete to win – performance
  2. Form to leave form
    1. Repetition until it is second nature
    2. Turn something thought into something intuitive
  3. Smaller circles
    1. Reduce something from intuition to a conscious idea
    2. Look for different ways to apply it

He mentions some really interesting sounding books:

  1. The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Josh Waitzkin
  2. The Will to Keep Winning by Daigo Umehara
  3. 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.

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Profit In Peace 17: Preparation

Byjack

This morning I feel damn tired. And I feel stressed.

I know I have to pack my bags for home, check into my flight, and cook all the raw food in the fridge.

I also want to play more Valorant since I never have time for more than 2 or 3 games without interrupting my bedtime. I finally placed an alt account in Silver 1 and I’m loving it, not having to think very hard, just play for the fun of it.

I would also love to work on my French challenge and spend some time with the mimic technique. I was thinking last night about using connection theory to understand what it would take to think in French, instead of just being really good at translating in my head from English to French and the answer that came to me is that I just need to mimic a lot of French speakers, and not just mimic what they say, but how they say it.

Also, for today, right after my morning run, I would like to continue and finish my next section of my VOD review and perhaps plan out some posts for my art coach Instagram.

Just came back from my run and I have to say, I want to be out there more. A walk out in the world is a wonderful way to think through stuff.

A Sacred Thing

The biggest disservice that they did me

Was getting me onto the ideal of controlling

How others feel about me

Because controlling how others feel

Puts ME into a cage as well

The mask of their surface wants

Is forced upon my face

And I would trade my freedom

For their approval any day

I think, as I walk past people

That how someone feels about you

Is a sacred thing

There is no need to change how they feel about us

Just as much as we can seek to understand not control our own feelings

To look upon the world

Without fear

Means to own the world again

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Knee Strength 5: Awesome Progress

Byjack

So I developed a new exercise in the middle of this week, but didn’t have the time to post about it.

To summarize the exercise which I will call the weighted knee spacer:

  • Use ankle weights, weighted shoes, or in this case, bands to pull on foot down
  • Do heel raises with the other foot to elevate the weighted foot
  • Keep the weighted foot as level as possible

I’m thinking this exercise is really useful in any scenario where I feel the knee is getting caught or stuck, which seems to happen a lot when there is any sort of bending exercises.

What I want to work on next is getting a full bend in my right knee without pain.

So it has been a full month now and I have not stopped this challenge yet or restarted jujitsu, but I think that is ok. I want to keep this challenge going until I can actually achieve the goals set in my original goals.

As a reminder, the goals are:

  1. Lift up my knee and bend it feeling stable, comfortable and strong. Getting there for sure!
  2. Stand for 5 minutes while feeling comfortable. Pretty much achieved this one!
  3. Lay on either side feeling comfortable and relaxed. I don’t lay much on either side, just on my back these days, will have to revisit.
  4. Sit on my heels while feeling comfortable and relaxed. Not even close on this one, probably need a full range of motion bend in my knee to be comfortable first.
  5. Be able to jump feeling stable, comfortable, and strong. Part of the way there on this one! I feel pretty stable.
  6. Able to kick a roundhouse while feeling stable, comfortable and strong. Not there yet but an improvement from before.

The French Challenge: The Plan

Byjack

So I have a new challenge I’m working on.

To summarize my goals in order of how much they resonate with me:

  1. Be able to communicate and connect on a deeper level with my girlfriend, her friends and family
  2. Discover a whole new undiscovered world, the French world
  3. Understand and empathize with others better, understand and empathize with myself better
  4. Challenge myself to do the impossible
  5. Maybe win some cool points in learning French written language
  6. Learn more about French food

Timeline: 31 days (not counting today) from December 15th to January 15th

I’ve always wanted to learn French in a way that isn’t conventional. Not the Duolingo or the Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur way. None of those programs really worked for me. Maybe on the surface level they work…like if I spent enough time learning and studying those programs it would work but the way they were structured was all wrong for me. It just felt so dry and boring and something alive about the language was lost. I love how personal language can be. I want it to be personal for me.

But in order to do so, I’m going to have to rely a huge amount on connection theory because learning a language is incredibly difficult and I will need to really come up with something next level to learn a language without following one of these programs.

So let’s think about it. While I would love to plan out all 31 days of this, I simply cannot. That is too damn hard. Because I don’t have enough experience in learning languages, I need to try to learn it in different ways and understand and feel the feelings.

Some things I want to try:

  1. Write a story in French. Get help from a large language model in doing it.
  2. Write a comic in French, and also get help from AI.
  3. Learn through mimicry. Watch a YouTube video or movie in pure French. No subtitles, no explanation. Just imitate and copy the entire language. Don’t even try to understand what is being said.
    1. This is how babies learn and how large language models learn
    2. This might be my entire strategy in the challenge
    3. What I train on might be important, for example, if I watch a lot of comedy, I might end up being a very jokey person in French
    4. This is probably by far the hardest but most profound way to learn a language, need to be extremely comfortable with feeling the feeling of confusion (one of the most painful feelings for humans)
  4. Leave a message to my girlfriend in French every day. Let go of pronunciation or grammar. Focus only on trying to communicate as much as possible without looking any French up. When I need to look something up, don’t try to memorize it. The point is to communicate a lot, not memorize or get things perfectly right.
    1. This makes a lot of sense because my primary goal is to connect with my girlfriend.
    2. It makes sense to let go of anything that would prevent me from wanting to leave a message, namely
      1. Being afraid to pronounce something wrong
      2. Annoyed at having to look something up
      3. Annoyed at having to memorize words I look up
    3. By talking a lot, expressing a lot every day, and potentially looking up the same words over and over, I will start to absorb them
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Profit in Peace 16: Saying No

Byjack

It is funny because I said no today to the real Profit in Peace challenge today to say yes to my own personal challenge that I created for myself. Today he had a bunch of giveaways and gave away a product for $1 but I realized that it is going to take too much of my attention away. I don’t even want it for $1, maybe not even for free.

I’m very stressed today for all the stuff I have to do for work, I’m very proud of myself for finding a really awesome amazing transition from work to gaming last night and always having a good peaceful nighttime, it is what I always wanted and I finally got it.

Today I need to post my update for the knee challenge, already have it recorded, but need to post it.

I also need to kick off things for the French challenge. No idea how that is going to go.

Finally, the Profit in Peace challenge sparked something in me. I realized that I bought Alex Hormozi’s book $100 Million Leads which will be SUPER helpful in building my coaching practice…actually will help me in my overall career as well. I think there is some super valuable information in there.

On top of that, now that I’m thinking of it, I have some other really good books for business and sales and coaching, Sell Like Crazy by Sabri Subi and The Prosperous Coach by Steve Chandler.

Lots of interesting things going on. I feel like really much more in balance than I have been in a long time.

Routine-wise, I’m better than I’ve ever been. I have a routine working hours, good bedtime, great winddown time, and a great morning routine. I’m keeping up with the breathing and I love yous and it is going great.

I suppose that only thing that I want more of is more friends and interactions outside myself.

Perhaps it will help when I get more time in the morning. Today I will really try to do some work outside of my apartment even if it isn’t in the morning.