Today I want to address the core wounds of feeling creepy and uncomfortable in my own skin.
I remember wanting to feel free
To say anything to anyone
To have the power to
Take my destiny in my own hands
And walking up in the library
Feeling so much fear
What if she gives me a weird look
Like the man in new york who beckoned to me
The girl who walked away
No I don’t
She said
We all exist
Here
Perhaps, they are only trying to do the same
To be themselves
To make the world
A safe place for themselves
I can live with them
Leaving
But I’m sad
That it makes me feel alone
I was pondering today on the subject of doing anything really really difficult and I came across a realization.
People often go after really difficult stuff in the wrong way. By difficult things I mean anything that has a high degree of complexity and a steep learning curve. This might be mastering a new skill like the piano, playing a difficult game, getting big on youtube, or starting a new business.
People often try to get results too quickly. They immediately try to focus on success instead of having fun and its not productive. They move into what I call the “WORK” phase too fast. The “WORK” phase is characterized by the following:
Instead of jumping into the “WORK” phase, with ANYTHING with a high degree of difficulty, you need to first go through a “LEARNING” phase.
This “LEARNING” phase is characterized by a couple of things:
This is because success requires two things:
The problem is, the “WORK” phase, when you have to perform and get results (make money off of your new business idea, perform on the piano, gain rank in the game) usually is not very fun. It is hard to build a good foundation or get motivation when you are so scared of failing.
The solution is clearly to not skip the “LEARNING” phase. Make sure you REALLY REALLY love the thing first, that you have tons and tons of fun, that you start to succeed without even trying before you start to TRY to perform when you switch over to the “WORK” phase. Maybe this means you start to make money off of the business you started, without even thinking about the business plan, or you start to rise in rank without even trying.
The key part of the “LEARNING” phase is fun. Finding what you like about something is probably one of the most critical ingredients to success because motivation can pretty much overcome ANY obstacle.
Finding fun is both simple and difficult. Simple because all you need to do, is think about what makes you happy. Difficult because it is sometimes hard to pin down what makes you happy. You have to try many things. For me, letting yourself fail, is critical to having fun. With too much pressure, there is absolutely no room for play. I start every endeavor with the mantra, “I accept failure, it is ok/good to let myself fail”.
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:
Ideas:
So as they say in the video to do, I am writing down the things I use for confidence in Valorant:
What I admire in other players:
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:
For the second list:
To think about it further my code might need to address:
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:
I’ve been killing it on the aim front. In deathmatch, I absolutely own.
I have been working on a new aiming mechanic, what I like to call the strafing clear. First, I went from silver all the way to gold simply off of working on my site clears. A few things I noted:
I’ve been trying to pair this with the counter strafing mechanic and I think I figured out something.
Simply by paying attention to which side of the head you expect your crosshair to be on, you can get a much better strafing shot when you peek/clear an angle.
When you clear, you shoot like normal, if your shot is off, you adjust in the direction you need to.
Let’s say you are clearing one angle, and an enemy pops up on your right. Your crosshair is far to the left of your target, so you quickly adjust, while strafing to the right to line up the perfect flick.
This is extremely useful because not only does this mean that your shots can be super accurate, it means you are moving a lot and making it extreemly hard to hit you (or atleast headshot you).
I think the coolest part, is when you strafe out in one direction, realize the enemy is to the other side of your crosshair so you strafe in the other direction to get the shot.
I also abuse the hit slow (how you freeze if you are hit) to get better accuracy and try to tap the enemy down if I am stopped midstrafe.
That being said, I think that there are a couple of different types of aiming mechanics in Valorant.
Spray control
Strafing
Distance Shooting
Holding
In my Valorant journey right now, I’m very interested in perfecting strafe shooting and proper clearing.
I heard that one of the elements of getting really good is about focusing on fewer things. What I’m really working on right now is getting something out of my warmups.
I usually play deathmatch until I feel like I’m hitting my shots and then jump into a match. But, now I’m thinking I need to let go of trying to push off from the confidence in a good deathmatch and instead working on making the mechanics more intuitive…meaning I need to deathmatch until I can hit shots even if I’m not match mvp, my clears, peeks and jiggles feel COMFORTABLE. Even if that means going into some deathmatches where it is really hard and everyone on taps me. The point of warmup should be when I feel like I’m not having trouble hitting shot anymore.