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On Vlogging In Public
Yesterday I was vlogging a guy \asked me if I was a YouTuber, and he asked me all these questions like what my channel was about and how many subscribers I had.
I felt REALLY self-conscious because I AM a YouTuber, but not a famous or successful one and I feel like I’m disappointing people when I tell them that I have three hundred subs. I realized a few things when I felt the feelings of shame:
- People LOVE the idea of youtube, you don’t need to be big for people to be excited about it. Sure some people will judge you but I think most people like the idea that you are trying to succeed and are probably curious enough to look me up and subscribe. In fact, isn’t that what I want? People who are legitimately interested in my journey subscribing to me?
- I’m always REALLY self-conscious when people stare at me when I’m vlogging and I always try to solve the problem by either NOT vlogging or trying to ignore the embarrassment. I realized that there is a third better option. Any time I’m feeling embarrassed, I should just feel the feelings until the right path becomes clear to me. Usually, I feel so uncomfortable I will do ANYTHING to avoid the feeling, but I should just embrace it as I should do in any uncomfortable situation.
Valorant 23: Hitting Plat
It has finally happened. I’ve hit plat in Valorant. A journey that was supposed to take 2-3 months, but instead took a year and two months (14 months).
Blood sweat and tears went into this challenge, and I learned something interesting at each rank.
IRON
Iron was an interesting rank because it was the rank when I was first learning how to use my mouse and keyboard in a game. I had never played a shooter game on the pc, and haven’t played many serious games at all on the PC.
Getting out of iron was simply learning how not to make extremely basic mistakes such as reloading out in the open, not getting stuck on walls, planting and defusing the bomb.
BRONZE
Bronze was also an interesting rank. I started actually enjoying the game more here since I had a better idea of what was going on. Bronze rank was still stressful because I would get killed out of nowhere all the time.
I don’t really remember what I did to get out of bronze rank, but I think it had something to do with playing off of my util and learning how to check corners where people hide.
SILVER
I was stuck in silver for a long time. Silver was where I learned a lot about aiming and movement and got quite good at it.
What eventually got me out of silver was learning how to preaim angles.
GOLD
Gold is not a very interesting rank, everyone is pretty much like silver but with slightly better util and aim.
However, perhaps the most interesting thing in the whole challenge is how I got out of gold. I got out of gold primarily by getting more confident.
I did this in two ways:
- I focused on a few agents and learned how to get reliable value out of their util (Chamber tp locations, Brim lineups, Sova lineups).
- I dealt with some of my underlying negative self talk
I hear lots of things that people say about confidence:
“Stay positive”
“Imagine you are the best”
I always thought these ideas were bogus since I always thought confidence was about one thing: Feeling comfortable in your own skin.
But I started to doubt myself when I say professional Valorant coaching advocating (SEN Zellsis) for the “cocky confidence” mentality and I was stuck in silver.
But I think in the end, I was right. In order to be confident, you need to feel safe and at peace. The real question, is HOW?
Here are the main ideas:
- In order to be confident, you need to be ok with not being great (not being smart, successful, attractive, etc.)
- In order to be ok with those things, you need to process your traumas and limiting beliefs.
- In order to process, you must welcome in your limiting beliefs and incorporate it into yourself.
My limiting beliefs were:
- “If I don’t succeed, I don’t think I’m worth anything”
- “I need to beat myself up for every mistake and always think I’m worse in order to not mess up”
Simply by saying those things in my head, made me feel clarity every time I started to stress out and I suddenly felt calm. I gave myself permission to continue to berate myself (or not) but simply welcoming these parts in instead of avoiding them (and having them show up as unresolved stress), made me have a clear mentality that made my rise to plat.
I learned I have a huge amount of power, intelligence and creativity that are locked up by stress and fear. Slowing down, focusing on a few things at a time, and embracing my fears allows me to operate at my fullest potential.
What I thought confidence was:
- Fake it until you make it
- Cocky
- Don’t care
- Aggressive
What confidence actually is:
- Ok with failing
- Calm and clear-headed
- Balanced
- Trust yourself
The Valorant Challenge: From Silver 1 to Platinum 1
I’m gonna try to do something crazy, which is to try to rise from Silver 1 to Platinum in Valorant.
For all of you who don’t know, Valorant is a competitive FPS shooter. Like all popular computer games that are competitive, it is extremely difficult to progress in rank.
When I first started Valorant I was in Iron 1 and after months of playing, I rose to Silver 1. Now I want to make a similar rise from Silver 1 to Platinum 1. But I want to do it faster this time. I want to do it within the course of 2-3 months.
I want to use this experience as a test of my speed learning skills and also how I can make videos for challenges.
I also believe that mindfulness and self-awareness can bring greater success than any brute force tactic, and I want to prove that with my progress in this game (which will be easy to measure and indisputable).
My current philosophy for speed learning:
- Embracement of pain
- Lower expectations
- Process emotions
- Try new things
- Self-reflection is KEY
- Need to see yourself
- Focus on fun
- Play when you want with things you like
- Small steps
- Don’t need to do everything in one day
- Do tiny steps if possible
- Prepare yourself
- Create an environment for success
Specifics:
- Embracement of pain
- Don’t set goals
- Assume I’m gonna do bad
- Slow down and process when I’m doing bad
- Always try new strats
- Self-reflection
- LOTS of VOD reviews
- Focus on fun
- Only play comp when you want to
- Other days do light practice
- Focus on agents you have fun with (focus on agent abilities that are fun)
- Small steps
- Find ways to practice in aimlabs, spike rush and deathmatch
- Prepare yourself
- Work on environment
- Work on posture
NEXT: What my plan on filming will be.
Also, got recommend How to Fight Thich Nhat Hanh by a friend on how to work on mindfulness.
Workpost 26: My Way
My Way
Anger in my heart
Ripping tearing
Destroy all the people
Who don’t understand me
Who want to tell me what to do
What I’m worth
I hate them all
With every fiber of my being
If I could burn their existence and wipe them from the planet I would
I’m so tired of fighting
I’m so tired of having to rely on others to do what I want to do
I’m so tired
I feel hopeless sometimes
Like there is no way out of this horrid existence
Where I am trapped
I breathed and breathed
And in the breath
I remembered
That I don’t need to let anyone control me
Only one person can live my life
No one else can touch me
They can’t hurt me and they can’t control me
I can do things my way
I did a little IFS therapy on myself and here are the parts that came up:
- Black Hatred: This is a protector of some sort that prevents other people from taking me off course of what I want to do. It does this through extreme anger against people who don’t understand me and box me into what they feel my limitations are.
- Mind Reader: The mind reader is always calculating what other people want in order to prevent the painful feelings around rejection and failure.
I reminded Black Hatred that I am 31 years old and he no longer needs to protect me since no one has any hold over me anymore. I can do whatever I want to do. I promised him that I will remain true to myself.
I reminded Mind Reader that I am 31 and I am fully capable with dealing with failure, and that at my age, failure helps keep the boredom away. I promised him that I will take care of myself and give myself time, space, comfort, and support.
Tired
I haven’t been sleeping well. I’m feeling tired lonely and unmotivated.
Feeling into more my feelings, I feel exhausted. Probably need to just hang for a bit.
I went to go hang for a bit and I feel a little better. However, I still feel pretty tired.
One thing that I want to point out is that I at least slept much better last night than previous nights and was able to go to sleep around 1 am instead of 2 or 4.
One of the things that I’ve been struggling with is mewing. Just like last time, I think I don’t know what to do with my jaw. I’m thinking I will focus on keeping the tongue in the top of my mouth and a good posture and not worry about closing my jaw because that feels uncomfortable (and for some reason my mouth gets really dry).
I’m trying to get back into my coaching mindset:
- You are in my house – this is a big one because I feel out of control of my life at the moment
- Don’t be afraid to be silent
- Take risks
- Be patient
Well I got an artist interview in about 6 minutes, but after that, I want to go somewhere fun and write about the artist interviews as well as compile my notes.
Five Things I Love About Women (That Has NOTHING To Do With Appearance)
I’m thinking about how women (while often are beautiful and sexy) are not valued for anything beyond their looks or given any affirmation.
For my entire life, I liked having girls as friends, companions, and coworkers because I like being around them (and it has nothing to do with appearance). Here 5 things I like:
- I really respect the intelligence and work ethic some women have. They are not arrogant or assume they know everything, which I feel makes someone even smarter since they are faster and better at learning from their mistakes and recognizing that someone is more knowledgable than them (some men are terrible at this to their own downfall).
- Women can be easier to connect to on an emotional level. I don’t have to pretend to be strong around women. I can talk about my childhood, when people make me angry, or make me feel embarrassed or sad.
- Some women love talking about relationships in an emotionally well-rounded way. I like to talk more about physical attraction or meeting specific criteria. I want to gush about someone I really like.
- Some women are really into aesthetics and art. Fashion and beauty isn’t a clinical “I gotta hit the gym to get big” kind of thing. It’s your personal taste and expression of yourself and your feelings.
- Some women can be extremely supportive. I like it when you have someone to vent to or recognize when something is making you uncomfortable.
There are many other things as well, women can be down to earth, or wild and adventurous. They can be welcoming and extroverted, or quiet and introspective. But overall, it just feels more balanced being with women. They understand my logic mixed with emotion and feeling. They aren’t as competitive and are more caring.
Here is me rambling about it for 13 minutes straight. Ramble ramble.