I saw this anime recapped last night and I felt it was really inspiring. It was about a guy who needs to create an unprofitable company in order to win money in a game. But in not fearing failure and instead trying to embrace it, he found it hard to not succeed. Obviously this is fiction, and people would find it easy to fail in real life, but there is a part of this that rings true for me.
When you aren’t afraid of failure, it is hard to stave off success. Everything is about having a strong mindset.
Today I want to just focus on the main ideas I said in my previous post:
When I think about drawing on my drawing tablet I feel overwhelmed high in my chest.
I feel really really scared that everything I do will be frustrating and not good or artistic.
Let me start with some inktober sketches.
What strikes me when I draw is that art for me, even just plain linework, is all about discovery, all about uncovering the truth or the world underneath the scribbles. It doesn’t matter if I don’t see the world at first, it emerges from within the shapes.
I mean this style is definitely me, I guess I worry that if I try to refine it, it will lose the liveliness in here. At the same time, I’m not sure I want the business card to be this messy and a part of my wants it to look more like a tarrot card. I imagined a swashbuckling kid with big aviator goggles and a bunch of dripping paint brushes.
I’m feeling a lot of pressure for not making a huge amount of progress in finishing my funnels and progress in my businesses as a whole. I feel that I need to get much more productive in general and I’m not getting there currently in the working environments I’m in. I perhaps need to spend more time out of the apartment working out and in working spaces that help me focus.
I made a change today by going to one of those working spaces.
Let me process the emotions, then look at the dates strategically.
My tailbone and my neck are in tension and sore, probably from running a 5k yesterday.
I feel my heart is gripped in a vice when I think of the time running out.
I feel scared. I feel a bit of the trapped feeling as well.
I almost feel this hollowness in my heart. Almost the same feeling as feeling unloved and misunderstood.
I’m remembering what I felt last night:
I need to focus on the end goal (for my art coaching its helping people who want to pursue this beautiful masterpiece and feel so alone on this journey)
Those people need me, there is some urgency to get it done immediately
I want to inspire my own artistic journey
I just need to create and let the art be what it wants to be
I also saw this amazing video:
It makes me want to do YouTube again, but I feel overwhelmed.
Now that I think of it, it may be a better fit for my AI consulting business. That is a space that is likely very hot, gets a lot of clicks and views and I don’t have a clear idea or mission on what I want to do.
Now let’s look at timelines:
Art Coaching
Start: 7/12 | End: 9/12 | 63 days total
What needs to be done for the funnel:
Payment/banking systems How much to pay myself vs save for taxes vs reinvest into business Website Business cards Calendly Client contracts Mailing lists/CRM
AI Consulting
Start: 7/12 | End: 9/12 | 63 days total
What needs to be done for the funnel:
Payment/banking systems
How much to pay myself vs save for taxes vs reinvest into business
Website
Business cards
Calendly
Client contracts
Mailing lists/CRM
Branding
New contract for funnel
So we are day 26/63 meaning we are 41% through the period, we have 37 days left
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.
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.
I had quite a stressful workday as I expected but I wanted to jot down a couple of reflections today:
Reminding myself of my boundaries (time, respect, honesty, empathy, and possibility) really helped
It also helped to note down what I cannot control before every major meeting (usually something related to how someone felt about me)
I noticed that keeping pace with my todo list was helpful:
Keep all tasks that come to mind in my todo list (use it as a mental trashcan to throw all my worries)
Reorder todo list to whatever I am working on right now (move something to the top if I am currently working on it)
Do tasks immediately if they are low-effort
Do sweeps (try to do everything on the todo list)
Focus also helped
Close as many tabs as possible
Focus on one thing at a time
I was thinking about how to transition from work to Valorant more effectively since I usually start to feel dead and I end up watching youtube and ordering food and that kind of makes it hard for me to stay sharp when gaming and I end up feeling even more stressed and awful.
I think cleaning is a really good transition point. Cleaning reduces stress and is a great way to transition slowly…if I’m worried that there will still be a call coming in and I might have to go back to work, cleaning makes it easy to go back to work without feeling like I am not ready to transition to the next thing. In fact, if I clean, even if I go back to work, I will still be more ready to game after the work is done because my space is now clean.
I also like the idea of a mental dump to write down everything you are thinking about at the end of the day so that you can pick it up at any point today or tomorrow or the day after.
Finally, I like to look at the schedule for the next day and mentally prepare for it to know what you can do today to give you a lot of spaciousness tomorrow.
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)
