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The Profit in Peace Challenge
So here is the long and short of it.
I saw an ad on Facebook. It was talking about making money as an introvert and making money without giving up your inner peace.
I immediately signed up. It was about 20 dollars.
Now I have done a bunch of the exercises for the prework of the challenge and here are my reflections.
Some major questions that I have right now:
- What am I willing to give up and how will I go about giving it up?
- How do I live my values every day in a way that is in flow and not forced or mechanical?
I have some initial ideas.
First, I was thinking originally about what I wanted to give up in terms of things like YouTube, or socializing. But recently it made a lot more sense for me to think about time. Specifically, I wanted to dedicate my entire morning to succeeding at these goals.
From the time I wake up, I usually am doing what JT Franco calls “buffalo brain” (the idea of being one of the herd that moves without thinking). I listen to audiobooks, and watch YouTube videos. I don’t eat breakfast or drink water. I keep the blinds closed. I feel awful and I don’t feel the feelings.
Someone once said (might be Melinda Gates) that the first few hours of the day are the most important because they set the stage for the entire day to come. If I want to give up anything, I want to give up my mornings to getting up, drinking water, feeling my body, and going downstairs into the lounge to write on my blog and work on achieving my dreams.
Middle of the day has to be reserved for work and for talking to my girlfriend. End of the day has to be reserved for me time. Being alone, taking time, creating art, and letting the magic of nighttime take over.
This is what I’m thinking roughly:
7/8 AM – 9/10 AM: Dedicated to living the magical life
9/10 AM – 12 PM: Dedicated to doing the impossible at work
12 PM – 1/2 PM: Lunch, meditation
1/2 PM – 5 PM: Work, performing at the highest levels
5 PM – 7 PM: Misc time
7 PM – 11 PM: Alone time, creativity, play
During the weekend, work will be removed, leaving more time for dedication to my magical life. I think it will look something like this:
7/8 AM – 12 PM: Dedicated to living the magical life
12pm – 7 PM: Misc time
7 PM – 11 PM: Alone time, creativity, play
With this balance, it seems that my breakdown is this:
Weekday
- 1-3 hours per day on living magical life
- 5-7 hours of work
- 4 hours of alone-time/play
- 2 hours of miscellaneous time
Weekend
- 4-5 hours per day on living magical life
- 4 hours of alone-time/play
- 7 hours of miscellaneous time
I suspect, I will have to do careful planning during the weekend, in order to perform at the absolute highest levels of work and potentially spend less time there.
In terms of living out my beliefs of empathy, intuition/following feelings, creativity/imagination, and honesty. I’m not entirely sure what actions I need to take to feel that I am in congruence with my values.
My main thought right now is about taking risks, breathing through difficult emotions and sensations, and following connection theory.
Jiujitsu Journey Month 1: Exploration
Ok, so I just had a revelation.
I’ve been putting off making this post for the longest time because I just didn’t know what I wanted my goal and focus for this challenge to be.
I knew generally a couple of things:
- I knew I wanted to be more dangerous
- I wanted to get stronger
- I wanted to learn technique that could be a basis for MMA and grappling
- I wanted to feel motivated to work out again
But I had no idea of specifically what I wanted and how I wanted to get there.
But then it hit me. I don’t need to know. This is an experiment. I’m not setting a goal and see how close I get to it. I’m trying jiujitsu for a month and seeing how it will affect me. Along the lines of my goals:
- I want to see how it affects my fighting ability and mindset
- I want to see how it affects my body
- I want to see what concepts and techniques I grasped
- I want to see how it affects my relationship to exercise
Let’s go on a journey! That is why I renamed it Jiujitsu journey instead of jiujitsu challenge.
Vision Challenge 3: Big Improvements
I just came back from standup paddleboarding and I feel really really good. Everything is clear and easy to see. I need to find a way to go and play on the water more.
I also was thinking about how if the eye is constantly in a state of contraction, we might need to do some sort of massage in order to help loosen and relax the ligaments and the muscles. I don’t know yet what kind of massage will work. All the current massages only target the areas around the eyes.
I wasn’t able to test my vision on my phone because it is out of battery but I tested on very small text on a book an the results are mindblowing.
12.5 cm to see clearly.
100/12.5 = -8 diopters
Fitness Challenge 2: Increasing Appetite
So I’m most of the way through my second part of my challenge – Week 2: Big appetite (increase hunger throughout day) and I’m having a huge amount of issues.
I try to eat a lot but I don’t seem to be able to find a way to digest the food.
Several things seem to be standing in my way:
- Extreme chronic stress
- Lack of exercises and energy
- Poor sleep
I’m going to do what I always did in these situations of great stress. I’m going to simplify and try to find something very small to focus on. And that thing will be breathing.
Whether or not I feel full, hungry stressed, tired or anxious, I am going to strive to do only one thing. To breathe. I find that breathing has tremendous effects for all the of things I listed above as obstacles standing in my way.
Valorant Challenge 40: The Trifecta
I’ve since taken a different approach to Valorant. I think I had a lot of good ideas in the past but I realized the value of simplicity.
Having too many things to worry about in Valorant makes it hard to focus on the game.
So I narrowed things down to just three:
- Piano hands: Keep your arm at a 90 degree angle, let gravity pull your arm down and use the force of gravity in all arm and wrist movements. This allows for the most relaxed posture.
- Imagine success: The most simple and straightforward way to have a good mental is just to visualize yourself killing everyone and winning the round.
- Stay clean: Instead of wildly aiming and shooting, stay calm, precise, and efficient. Peek cleanly using just the A and D keys.
An example of staying clean is Curry:
Watching his gameplay makes me realize how much I panic and do so much extraneous movement.
After applying these three tactics, I started doing very well in my games.
Valorant 10: Catching People On Your Crosshair
I just did it. I cracked the CODE on aim.
It’s not Miyagi do the method. It’s not movement-based aiming. Its not feeling out the timing. It’s not the last bullet method.
It’s a combination of EVERYTHING I’ve learned into a more simple mindset – catch them on your crosshair.
This method works if you are lagging, on low FPS, can’t hear anything and have a bad mental state.
Believe me, last night I was playing on my laptop with low FPS (sub 60) and terrible audio (laptop speakers) and not the best mental (unhappy, nervous and angry) and I still used it to drop tons of headshots.
I outlined the mentality in my earlier post about the “last bullet” exersise, but I’ll break it down again.
- Start out by holding a tight angle, and waiting for them to walk into your crosshair
- Get the feeling of “catching them” like you would catch a ball, adapt to their movement naturally, and try to click when you catch them on your crosshair
- After you feel comfortable with that, try to “catch” people while pushing them aggressively, this requires you to intuitively feel where they might be before swinging. Don’t swing until you are ready. This is an intuitive way to “pre-aim” as we like to say.
- When you are warmed up, go into a real match. Go on intuition on whether it is easier to catch them walking into your crosshair or if you need to catch them while peeking out at them. There is usually an option that helps you isolate more kills.