Profit in Peace 4: The Method

Byjack

Main strategy: Always be present, what I feel is right

Work on using my blog to process feelings and embrace the Jack that gets rejected.

Then, for actions: use my coaching mindset

  • You’re in my house
  • Take risks
  • Don’t be afraid to be silent
  • Be patient

Mindsets that help with fear:

  • Let go of controlling things that I cannot (other people)
  • Control how I show up
  • Take up space
  • Hope that those who reject me leave so I can be free
  • Give myself permission to fail
  • I am capable of impossible
  • How do I want to do it MY way

So I ran through this exercise and here is what I worked through:

  1. What is next > Edit my video of the coaching session with my client
  2. How do I do it > Watch the video in 20-minute segments
  3. What do I do in the 20 minutes > Cut out parts my client doesn’t want to share, add my thoughts, publish to my blog
  4. What do I do after all of that > Edit the video through the syllabus method

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Profit in Peace 3: Asking Questions

Byjack

I just had a realization. I was thinking about what I “should” be doing in the mornings with this new blog commitment. But I think that EXACTLY what I “should” be doing.

I want to spend my time asking questions. And if an action speaks to me, I will do it.

In fact, this was a major technique in Connection Theory that I forgot about. Connection Theory is about understanding is the pathway to change.

One technique for understanding is to ask many many questions. Very good, specific questions. Questions that beget more questions.

Through questioning, we begin to understand.

Another technique I used to do was to ask myself questions. Imagine myself older and wiser, and come up with questions to ask my current day self, and then answer those questions.

Anyway, I have to transition to work, so this will have to wait for now.

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Giving Myself Room to Take A Breath

Byjack

Yesterday I came up with a new mentality that really helped me with Valorant. I noticed that I wasn’t focused on taking fights and it was kind of hard to get kills.

So I decided to take a break, walk around and drink some water. And when I came back, I promised myself I would not peek until I felt that I was fully ready to take a fight.

Before technique
After technique

The Key to Focus and Meditation: Forever Technique

Byjack

I’ve been thinking about focus for some time now. I think about focus when I procrastinate. I think about focus when I mindlessly watch youtube videos while feeling anxious about upcoming work or projects. I’ve come up with theories about focus being about limiting the number of input (sensory deprivation and tidiness being great focus techniques) and how focus is different from concentration (when you use willpower to keep your mind constrained to one goal).

My thoughts on focus have recently coalesced on a different approach to focus. I first experienced this feeling with working out in my knee challenge. I realized that when I was feeling uncomfortable with exercise or just simply bored, I would start feeling really antsy and found it difficult to focus on the workout.

The solution was to tell myself that I would be doing this workout not for 10, 20 minutes. Not for 60 minutes. I told myself, I would be working on this workout forever. This mindset shift changed my outlook completely. Instead of rushing or feeling anxious and annoyed, I felt suddenly calm, and totally focused on what I was doing and what I was feeling.

I tested this mindset out recently when I was meditating and it seemed to be a shortcut to the meditative mindset. Instead of trying to escape painful or uncomfortable feelings, I assumed that these feelings would last forever. I would find myself slipping into a deep meditative state much much faster.

Paired with the taoist emptiness technique or mindset, I think this could be very useful in addressing the challenges I face a lot of these days with being overwhelmed and stressed.

I wonder if this is a big difference between kids and adults and why when we get older, we also seem to be less in the moment. When we are counting the minutes and seconds, constantly looking over our shoulder for the next task, instead of focusing on the one in front of us, we can lose the focus we are looking for in our lives.

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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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The Invitation From Life

Byjack

A few days ago, my coach asked me a powerful question. I don’t remember what it is but I came up with this poem.

the summer sun on the blue pool
smell of chlorine, flip flops on the concrete
the late nights in your city, lights on long streets
big dreams in a small classroom on a paper on the board
paint covering the canvases, dripping off the walls
life has always been waiting
for you to be recklessly, wildly, lovingly creative

This led to me deciding the most powerful question in this whole poem is “why has life always been waiting for you”?

I felt in many ways this is true. I live in a wonderfully creative city. I have a youtube channel, a coaching practice, a well-paying job with lots of free time. Life is waiting on me to make a move.

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Valorant 28: How to Get the Feeling for Something

Byjack

This might fall into my Valorant challenge but it goes much deeper.

I started trying to find a way to multitask in Valorant, which led me to thinking about confidence. This led me down a whole path where I was trying to understand how to focus on the game and get into the game, and get into flow.

I finally arrived at a technique that looks something like this:

  1. See the enemy
  2. Imagine their head getting shot
  3. Aim
  4. Shoot

This works for drills, deathmatch anything. The point is that you visualize the outcome first, then take some action (aiming). You don’t immediately aim, you don’t shoot as soon as you visualize.

This does a couple of things:

  • Visualizing hitting the headshot removes anxiety because in my head I can hit the shot
  • Visualization makes me focus on one target and give it my full attention
  • Aiming makes sure I actually hit the shot

On top of this, I can do anything to aim, I can use my movement to aim, I can center my screen, I can do literally anything, the important part is to visualize the headshot before it happens.

In a very interesting turn of events, I’ve actually found this super helpful in music too.

Oftentimes my singing is muddy and unclear. I’ve done something similiar:

  1. Chop the notes into shorter more enunciated syllables
  2. Savor and taste each note
  3. Imagine how I want the note to taste

This does something similar where I am more aware of each note and can sing it with more intention and emotion. I don’t skip ahead too fast, I focus on each word as it comes.

It seems that a combination of a focus on a small step, and visualization helps bring me into the present moment.

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Additional Thoughts on Affirmative Action and Personal Decision Making

Byjack

The types of biases:

1. Cognitive Dissonance

2. Spotlight Effect

3. Anchoring Effect

4. The Halo Effect

5. Gambler’s Fallacy

6. Contrast Effect

7. Confirmation Bias

8. Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon

9. Zeigarnik Effect

10. Paradox of Choice

More biases:

11. Survivorship Bias

12. Self Serving Bias

13. Fundamental Attribution Error

14. Hindsight Bias

15. Availability Bias

16. Availability Cascade

17. Sunk Cost Fallacy

18. Framing Effect

19. Clustering Illusion

20. Exponential Growth

21. Barnum Effect

Ideas for these biases:

  • Create a selection process (for college, group or job)
  • Use for cold hard thinking areas (stocks)
  • Use in logic games (Valorant, Chess)
  • Take advantage of bias to do careful marketing

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)

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.