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Two Important Questions

Byjack

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?

  1. Value my emotions and encourage me to explore them
  2. Hold me close when I’m upset or feeling weak and vulnerable
  3. I am the most important person in their life, they will drop everything if I need them
  4. Be interested in hearing about new adventures and failures and lessons
  5. 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
  6. 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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
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Valorant 27: Confidence

Byjack

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:

  • Check in to how I’m feeling
  • Vocalize my feelings
  • Check in to how others are feeling
  • Let the energy carry action
  • Let the plan form in my mind
  • Create a challenge at the start of every round

Preparation is 90% Doing is 10%

Byjack

So I’ve started to believe this theory after my Sales Health Challenge and worked on warming up so much. I’ve also been thinking about Matthew McConaughey’s thoughts on leaving breadcrumbs for yourself. It recently solidified for when I was trying to make it easier for me to go to bed ontime by making my sleeping and brushing my teeth area really nice and comfy. I realized that I didn’t want to cook because my kitchen was a mess.

Some ideas from this theory:

  • If you don’t want to sleep, make your bedroom the most amazing place
  • If you don’t want to brush your teeth, make your bathroom the most amazing place
  • If you don’t want to cook, make your kitchen clean, beautiful and with lots of room to work
  • Warmup, meditate 90% of time, work 10% of time
  • If working on the computer is hard, clean out all the tabs, make room and make your workspace beautiful
  • Spend 90% of the time learning how to make money, make money 10% of the time (Alex Hormzi)

All That Matters Is Now

Byjack

I just made a little discovery about the nature of “should” and regret. What should I do, what should I have done, what is the perfect next move. They are interesting ideas but they can sometimes limit our understanding of the truth.

It doesn’t matter what happened in the past, or what will happen in the future, only how we feel about them now.

That is why everything is about processing feelings and even the permission exercise processes feelings about the future. Nothing matters but now.

It doesn’t even make sense to think about the future and the past because all we can control is the now.

Because nothing matters but the moment, we can process the past, we can process the future, and make our decision from where we are on how to feel the present. We can make decisions from the vantage point of now. We can do things now. We can feel now.

All that Matters is Now

I was scared of the past

Scared of what I might find

I was scared of the future

Scared of what I might do

But the place where I stand right now

With all the things that brought me to this moment

And all the paths that move on from here

Is all that matters

There is nothing I should do

There is only feeling what is

Only discovering

Acting

Understanding

Waiting

Living at Low Elo With Alex Hormzi

Byjack

 

Takeaways:

  • Whole new approach to living at low elo
  • When you live with nothing, you aren’t afraid to take risks because you aren’t afraid to lose all your money
  • Living off of no money can help free up assets to move faster

Lessons overall:

  • Live like you are starting all over
  • Learn to accept and process the pain of failure because fear holds you back

Some ideas:

  • Post on social media given the idea that I’ve lost all my followers
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Focus & Slowing Down

Byjack

Most people think that focus is a heavy thing, it is an effort of concentration. But really focus is a light thing. It is something subtractive. The more things you remove, the more focused you are.

Removing distractions, removing goals, removing worries, removing clutter. All those things contribute to the feeling of focus.

The first step of any focus exercises is simply focusing on yourself. Forget your goals and tasks. Let go of everything. Forget figuring out what to let go of and what to focus on. Simply direct your attention to your feelings. Breathe. Nothing else matters. Slow down.

Slowing down is one of the quickest ways to access focus because speeding up is the mindset of the unfocused. It is the mindset of trying to juggle many things, to switch between many things at the same time.

Self Discipline and Self Confidence

Byjack

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.

Failure & David Goggins

Byjack

I’ve been thinking so long about the fear of failure and embracing pain since the fear of failure holds me back in almost every area of life.

David Goggins is famous for being someone who has made his thing embracing pain.

It’s interesting because I always wrote people like Goggins off, and I still feel like he is missing the subtle touch, the emotional and artistic, but I actually think he is onto something,

Some of the main takeaways:

  • Embracing showing how messed up you are don’t care what anyone thinks
  • Everyone is messed up, if they are judging you, they are just better at hiding it than you
  • Use every naysayer as motivation
  • When you embrace your faults, you will find the who you really are and pursue that
  • Self discipline is creating self respect

This self discipline thing has always been interesting to me because I’ve heard this before. But I don’t really understand it. Isn’t discipline yelling at yourself?

The embracing failures and not hiding your failures to see what you really want to be is really telling to me as well. I always wonder what I should do, but I can wonder what I could do. And being willing to show everything wrong with me just will get me closer to clarity on who I am.

Privilege: The Tale of Two Airbnbs

Byjack

So I just changed Airbnbs in France and it made a massive mental difference.

The first Airbnb was fine. It looked nice and modern and was in the heart of the city. But the bed was uncomfortable and it was small and everything felt dark and closed.

The outside felt dirty and dark and the “main attraction” was the Carrefour (a french grocery that was extremely close by).

Rarely got a full nights sleep
View overlooking the street
Mirror in the back, not as big as it looks
Little bathroom
Door for apartment right window construction frame
The local attraction

The second Airbnb was very different. It was over twice as large (55 m2 vs 20 m2), filled with natural light and greenery and was near a park (Jardin des Arenes de Cimiez) and a museum (Musee Matisse). 

Living room is filled with natural light and interesting interior design and decor
Lots of space to work
Garden outside
More comfortable, though small bed
Outside the airbnb
Local attraction, Jardin des Arenes

The difference in mentality was so massive I was floored. In the first Airbnb I felt:

  • Depressed
  • Unmotivated to work
  • Tired
  • Not feeling like I’m on vacation

While in the new Airbnb I felt:

  • Like I was on vacation
  • Full of energy and enthusiasm
  • Ready to get work done
  • Feeling creative and relaxed

The interesting thing was, that my girlfriend told me that the new Airbnb was in a much much nicer and richer neighborhood and this got me thinking. This is the definition of privilege – the ability to grow up in an environment that nurtures you and gives you energy instead of sucking it away.

I’ve never believed in leveling the playing field for the sake of fairness because fairness is both a subjective and impossible standard to meet. Instead, I’ve been interested in creating a more productive society as a whole and I think that by creating better spaces for all of society people would feel more energetic and productive. I only experienced the change in physical space, in greenery and natural light and calm and quiet. What would happen if you were able to get a better mental environment, with more supportive loving people? This is why children in single-family homes and substance abuse have it so hard in getting ahead. They don’t have the mental environment to live up to their full potential.

This has a couple of implications for me:

  • Money is not everything, but it is important in getting you into a good environment
  • Don’t skimp out on rent or places to stay on vacation, the environment is everything
  • Surround yourself with nurturing people who help you feel peaceful and energetic
  • Take care of yourself and the space around you
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The Trifecta of Growth and Progression Down the Path of Truth

Byjack

There was a big journey I went down in terms of working on myself, becoming more mature and being able to live a free and meaningful life.

  • I started by thinking that you needed to meet your own needs
  • Then I thought you needed to be good at asking for your needs
  • And finally, I thought you needed to process traumas and emotions

But I realized that they are all part of the same things and have different parts to play.

In a way, everything is about not abandoning yourself and taking care of yourself. You surround yourself with people who you can talk about what is on your mind truthfully and emotionally. They help you understand what you need. You are able to then give yourself what you need and walk down further along the path of understanding different parts of yourself that are in pain.

From processing emotions, we can truly love ourselves, and the people around us, and be present in the moment.

There is a sense that being with people who don’t accept us, don’t allow us to feel safe speaking our truth is self abandoment. In a way, even if someone meets some of our needs (for example is attractive enough to make us feel special), if we settle for someone who doesn’t love us or allow us to be ourselves, we are putting ourselves down.

Not allowing ourselves to meet our own needs (for example, asking for validation from others because we refuse to give it to ourselves) is self abandonment.

Refusing to look deeper, and shielding parts of ourselves from the world (for example, keeping a confident outward appearance when we feel anxious) is abandoning parts of ourselves and placing the outside world’s comfort above our own.