|

Workspace 21: Be the Underdog

Byjack

I’ve been thinking more about rejection and working through some of my thoughts with it.

I want people to validate me to feel confident being myself. But validation and confidence are completely different.

Confidence is all about being ok with not getting other’s approval and validation, being ok with not being the strongest, the smartest, the most attractive. I want to find a way to let go of seeking approval from everyone. That is seriously holding me back.

The first thing I realized is that I need to be clear about what I value outside of approval.

I love solving difficult problems. I love learning, growing, and improving myself. I love creating. I love meeting new people and connecting with those people on a deep level. I love consuming art and music, writing and dance.

Being rejected doesn’t stop me from pursuing those things. In fact, people who reject me might realize my path is one they admire and want to follow.

The second thing I realized is that I can use rejection as motivation. It’s just a challenge to my ego. It makes me stronger.

I don’t want anything handed to me. The hero has the slay the dragon. I want to be the underdog, and I strive for greatness.

| |

Workplace 20: Basics

Byjack

I’ve been feeling quite down and unhappy recently.

I’ve decided after some meditation, journaling, and deep breathing that I want to focus back on the basics.

Here are the basics I already covered:

  1. Morning blog post and walk
  2. Nighttime journaling (most nights)
  3. 11-12 PM bedtime

Basics I want to further incorporate:

  1. Music and dance in the morning
  2. Deep breathing when I feel drawn to distract myself (indicates pain)
  3. Focus on creating delicious meals, taking time to enjoy eating and cooking

I’ve been processing the rejections in my previous post and I wanted to write a poem:

She Stared at Me

I remember the times when they just stared at me

As if they were surprised that I would even dare to ask

The girl in art history class

In the library

On the bus

That stare

Then that feeling I was reaching

For empty air

Something that didn’t exist

The feeling of people watching

Seeing me fail

Yet now I think about it

I was quite brave

I am a brave person

Willing to take the risk

I often didn’t believe in what I was doing

When I was trying to pick up girls

But now

With my career dreams

I do

Isn’t that worth a few stares?

Don’t I get the opportunity to shock

People out of their square lives

Square thoughts

Into my world?

|

Workpost 19: Rejection

Byjack

I am slowly getting back into things. After completely messing up my bedtime, getting it back, getting sick, losing my bedtime again, I am finally getting back into the swing of things.

I want to refocus on the things that I set out to focus on: Health, AI Consulting, Art Coaching.

I want to have an 11-12 PM bedtime, journaling at night, morning walking meditation, and morning todo list and blog post.

Today on my morning walk I contemplated rejection.

You know I always felt that working on yourself made you more prepared for life in general and I always felt my fear of rejection was holding me back from a lot of things in life, initially from getting a girlfriend, but later from being a life coach.

Recently I had the experience of meeting with a client for a free session for which they were super impressed by but when I sent them my rates, they did not respond. This immediately triggered the rejection wounds within me. I also just had an artist interview who was late to our conversation, did not agree to the full hour, and did not want to schedule another time to complete our conversation which triggered rejection wounds within me.

I feel scared that if I ask for things, people will reject me. I’m afraid it will be awkward to talk to them afterwards, I’m afraid how others will view me after getting rejected.

This morning I came up with a couple of nuggets to handle and process rejection:

  1. Take up space: there is a part of me that wants to hide when people reject me. I want to take up as little space as possible. This concept is doing the opposite. I deserve to be here like everyone else. Take up space! Make the ask!
  2. Enthusiastic yes: I don’t want people to feel pressured. I am going to follow the philosophy on the Prosperous Coach. It’s either an enthusiastic yes, or its a no. Maybe is a no. And tell them that. If they are not sure, they know where to find you.
  3. Slow down: I realized this new revelation in Valorant has implications in life too. When I feel stressed about rejection and awkwardness, shame, and judgement, slow down. I usually try to speed up, to move past it. Slow way down, focus on what is going on before charging ahead.
  4. Stay busy, focus on the process not the outcome: one thing that I noticed, when I’m busy doing what matters, I won’t care as much about anything else. I want to focus on health, coaching and consulting. Don’t let anyone’s rejection take away from that. It’s like what they say about cold calling. Focus on the process, not the outcomes (focus on improving your process for cold calling, not for the outcome of every call).

| |

Workpost 18: Addicted

Byjack

I’ve been playing pokemon go so much recently. I’ve made a lot of progress in the game, but I really worry that I’m getting addicted because of how stressed out I am right now.

I stressed out about my relationship and about my career path moving forward. I want to make sure that work does not take over my life and that it stays aligned to what I want to do moving forward.

Every time I feel stressed, I reach for the pokemon go. Holy shit, I am addicted.

I feel very tired, but no longer sick. That is a good thing at least.

I’m going to walk around the airport. And this time, instead of catching pokemon, I am going to meditate and think.

On the plane I meditated on some of my issues and I came to a big realization. The first step to feeling or processing any pain is to notice and name the pain that exists. I spend so much time avoiding thinking about painful emotions or experiences, avoiding thinking about how things hurt me it makes it hard to face the pain at all since I’m not taking the first step,

I want to focus on doing that more now as the first step to processing more emotions.

Workpost 17: Sick

Byjack

I’ve been sick in the past two days. Not a terrible sickness thankfully. I credit that to the copious quantities of water I consumed as well as the zinc I took and the lymph node massage to clear my stuff nose. I can’t smell anything, I feel tired, and my mind feels fuzzy but other than that I’m actually doing ok.

Earlier my throat was hurting and I woke up many times in the night, but overall I slept pretty good. I’ve been self-medicating a lot by playing games, and I want to stop. I did go for a walk this morning and workout, and I feel that helps.

|

Workpost 16: Risk and Challenge

Byjack

So I’m pretty frustrated because this is the second time I am writing this blog post. The first time I wrote this blog post, the post was bugging out and didn’t save properly.

Not too happy about that.

In the spirit of growth, I am going to let go of that blog post and focus on creating an entirely new one without losing the essence of what I wanted to say in the first one I wrote.

This morning I was feeling really stressed out and I was really enjoying my walk. I feel like this whole questions meditations thing has really worked out. I really like journaling at night, and walking during the day. Before when I was forcing myself to go outside because I felt like I had to, I kinda hated it. It was nice once I got outside, but before then it was pretty awful.

Now, since I know I’m going use the time to meditate on some of the questions I have in my heart, I feel really excited and motivated to go outside in the morning.

Here are the main things I was stressed out about this morning:

  1. My career, didn’t know where I was going next
  2. My medical bills, spent 8k on a new medical device, hundreds more for my GI doctor
  3. My financial issues, I spent 700 more than I made yesterday
  4. My coaching career, still not anywhere close to making enough money to be self sufficient
  5. I could move back home, but then I’m worried about having a place for my girlfriend to visit me

And through my amazing short 20 minute walk, here are the answers I got:

  1. Acknowledge that you are taking a huge risk by paying 1,700 per month on rent with very little income and building coaching business from 0
  2. Risk is not a bad thing, it is an incredible catalyst for growth
  3. Risk means, now is the time to shine. Focus on the few things that matter most
    • Building an really strong foundation of health, a very strong structure for getting stuff done
    • Changing the lives of my current coaching clients
    • Work slowly towards my career in AI
  4. It’s ok to invest money in the medical bills because they directly help with my foundational health goal. Double down on the investment by focusing a lot on sleep and digestion.
  5. Let go of all other goals and distractions because now is go time. Just work on small projects or really gradual work.

Workpost 15: Meditation

Byjack

Last night I went to bed on time, got into my bedroom about 11PM and went to bed at midnight.

However, I woke up feeling abysmal, tired and my stomach was hurting. I feel that I ate a big dinner to close to bedtime. Also, maybe I’m just catching up on sleep.

This morning, as with many mornings, I did not want to go for a walk, but I did anyway. I realized that if I go for a walk because I “have to” then I feel undermotivated. But if I go for a walk to “meditate” and think, it actually is quite enjoyable and feels needed as I feel pretty shitty and need some time. I also makes it easy to not reach for my phone because I obviously don’t want a phone disturbing my quiet thoughtful meditation.

I also realized my morning singing and dance are part of my meditation and that I want to set an alarm so that I know when I need to look at my phone.

Today in terms of work, I don’t really know what to focus on. Perhaps I will finish up more things related to work so I can have fewer things on my plate and be able to focus on my two goals around AI and Art Coaching.

| |

Workpost 14: Tired

Byjack

I am worrying about a couple of things. First of all, I went to bed at 2AM again. This is becoming a pattern that I need to address ASAP.

Thinking about what I need via connection theory here is what I came up with:

  1. I need to be able to let go of not being productive during the day. It is hard, but I need to be able to say, I accept where I got to today.
  2. I need some way to process that pain and any anxiety from the day. Connection theory is telling me to yell and scream or hyperventilate.
  3. I need to get into bed at the proper time but again, like last time, I can intice myself with being able to use my phone while in bed.

Also, I feel linked to this is my anxiety around work.

My initial thought is to stop “trying” and pushing harder against a problem, rather everytime I hit an issue, write down all of the questions I have, then work out those problems outside my apartment, walking or going to the gym.

Connection theory is telling me drawing might help as well.

Overall, I feel like total shit and I feel the lack of sleep is taking a toll on my digestion. I hope to relax enough to take a nap and get back into working order.

|

Workpost 13: Inspired

Byjack

I feel tired. And yet I feel so inspired.

I ran with the ideas last night, of dance and music and I can say I feel extremely sad. Something about how much I miss this part of me. I feel sad about the weight I’ve been carrying around for so long. I feel sad because sadness acknowledges the pain in the world without shying away from it.

I watched this video last night:

I remember in art there is no right or wrong way to go about something. Just like in life. I feel we forget that a lot.

For some reason, I feel the desire to write stories. Here is a space for some freewriting:

A shark was washed onto the shore. That was the day when I asked my next door neighbor Amy to marry me. We were both 12 at the time. Amy was a quiet sort of girl, not shy, just took a while to think about things before she talked. When she did, she didn’t say much.

She looked at me up and down as if she was trying to size me up.

“So what do you say Amy?”

I wonder if this is how the shark felt. He was already dead when he was on shore, but his eyes seemed to look at you as if to say…well? What’s up?

“I don’t know,” Amy finally responded. Her fingers figeting.

“You don’t know?”

“Yea.”

“That’s ok!” I said. I was 12 and I felt invincible…

I feel sad because of how much of this I repressed within my self.

In terms of work, I feel I’ve done the experiment and I can officially say to myself, working on too many things at the same time does not work towards my strengths. I think I need to focus on one focus every day. If I get to a second one, then that’s good. Also, I can have many low effort progress toward every goal, but it can’t be the main focus.

In doing one main thing, I might be able to go to bed much sooner which is something of great concern to me.

|

Workpost 12: Deep Journaling

Byjack

I was doing some deep journaling in the form of questions and answers, where I would ask all the questions I have, feel deep in my heart what answer is coming to me, and then asking more questions about those answers.

For example, I will ask myself, what do I do about the anxiety with art? The answer that I feel come up intuitively is to create art which then poses the question, what do I do with art? Then I have the answer, use art to create richness in your life.

I was doing this exercise because I realized at this point in my life, I am so confused on what will happen next and what direction I want to go for my coaching, my career, and my relationship that the best way to serve myself is to get some clarity about what I am feeling and what I want. The faster you make decisions, the faster you progress. I felt that having clarity would make it much easier to make faster decisions.

I had quite a few revelations from this exercise I wanted to note down a few of the most important ones:

  1. I will achieve what I want in the field of AI not by working with others and creating a startup but rather by involving others into my creative process. Remember the energy of anything is possible. Solve difficult problems in practical ways and help people dream again. Change the world for the better.
  2. The long distance relationship does not meet the physical needs of closeness. I will need to dance more to keep in touch with the physical. I want to use emails and video chats to keep connected with my girlfriend on a spiritual level.
  3. I’ve lost a bit of my focus with coaching where it has become too much about the client. Coaching is not just about helping people create amazing beautiful art, but also to create a space of my design. Aka a space where connection theory and flow theory rule.
  4. Use your fear of not having enough money to fuel art that creates more wealth than money can buy (not about the value of the art, but the experience about having stories, music, and paintings so beautiful I may as well be rich).

One more note I wanted to make…I had a new idea with coaching a few days ago. I always wanted to create video clips of my coaching in order to show social media, but I was thinking recently, I can create clips that can be used to share something a package that can be used to motivate my clients (clips of songs created during the session, major breakthroughs etc.)