Vali2003

I transported my moving boxes and other stuff with a public cargo-bike that you can rent for little money. It’s only about a five minute bike-ride, so I just went back & forth until all my stuff was over there. At one point the police stopped me. I drove up a small hill with cobbled streets. It was like my fourth way over there. I had already figured out that it’s less noisy if I drive on the left side of the street since it was more even there. But in Germany there’s something called “Rechtsfahrgebot.” It just means you must drive on the right side of the road. Anyways… the cops slowly pulled up next to me with the window rolled down. Apparently I didn’t hear them calling, because I listened to music . I was in a really cheesy mood and chatted with them for a bit. I felt weirdly confident. I told them I’m only driving on this side, because I’m trying not to be noisy. They then said that I could get a ticket for listening to music, because I couldn’t hear them. But I knew I wouldn’t get a ticket. My state was amazing. I was so confident, I felt like the cops were in my frame as opposed to me being in theirs. Sometimes, in situations like this I can be quite charming. This is one of my strengths, even though I’m actually pretty introverted.

It’s the last night in my current shared flat. All my stuff is already in the other apartment, except for my blanket, pillow and phone charger. I’m really happy to be moving. In a new place, it will be easier to change my identity. Become a person that’s laser-focused on realizing their LP and escaping Wage Slavery. And we’ll have a dishwasher…lol Doing CS50 was really tough today. Especially since I had so much to do with the move. My mind tries to convince me that I don’t have to do continue doing it anymore. And that it would be smarter to go back to working on my business only. And I think it likely is smarter… But I would have this lingering regret if I stopped now. I’d feel like I failed.

One advantage of winter: I can make my room really cold at night to improve my sleep quality..

Ahh here’s the insight I actually wanted to post previously but that didn’t come to mind. It kinda came through Leo’s Truth is the highest priority video. But… two weeks delayed. I’ve realized what living by your values means. It sometimes means to sacrifice what feels good in the moment for living more in accord with your values. For example, it may feel bad to tell my roommate that I won’t watch Netflix with him because I’m working on my craft, but Excellence is a higher priority of mine than Connection and therefore I do that. Basically, I just realized the foolishness of doing what feels hedonistically good (comfortable), in the moment, rather than living principled. Feels good.

Ah… I’m likely not going to do Computer Science. One large reason for doing it would be the job security, and I’ve realized, that’s not even given in the current job market. And, it’s impossible to know anyways which sectors will do good in three years and which will do bad. Therefore choosing solely based on this, is a foolish idea. I will complete CS50 until I’ve finished Problem Set 5 regardless. I made a clear decision and need to honor that now. Maybe I’ll fall in love with CS. Then I’ll do it regardless of the job-market, not because of it.

I had a couple of insights recently. That any problem I encounter can be solved if I only have enough requisite variety. That, even if you don’t know what to do exactly, as long as you build the habit of working as hard (and smart) as you can, you will reap life’s benefits. https://www.actualized.org/insights/requisite-variety-and-creative-laziness This is a blog-video by Leo about requisite variety. It’s quite amazing, and I think one of his hidden gems.

Also it breaks routine. I go out, I eat later than I usually do, sleep later, sleep worse than I usually do, wake up later, fry my brain more with YT-shorts and don’t read/journal before sleeping. This is all bearable, but still they are slight annoyances that inhibit momentum-building and make me appreciate solitude.

The last two days have been super busy with my brother visiting and me moving. I broke my streak yesterday. Not having programmed and contemplated. I’m happy my brother came to visit me but there’s always an annoying element in having to spent entire days with someone. And I’d feel like an ass saying: “Hey, thanks you came to visit me, taking the train for four hours only staying for one day basically, but I don’t want to miss a day of my programming, so could you just leave me alone for two hours?” But that’s only a problem for me because I identify with not being my ass and being liked by everybody. I’ll have to sacrifice control. I’ll have to accept that people will see me as an ass now and then.

Totally agree on letting the body do what it wants to do on its own in things like sprinting, basketball, powerlifting. Bodybuilding is a bit of an exception there, I think. Assuming you want to maximize hypertrophy it can be beneficial to control it more. But we went over that -- it depends on your goals with it. I agree also on athletes at the highest level being able to access flow-state better than the rest. However, if I understand flow state correctly, it happens when skill level meets the challenge. The highest level of athletes primarily access this more often, as a result of their higher skill level, compared to the rest. Not because they are mysteriously better at tapping into flow-state. The higher level of skill is a direct function of greater fascial stiffness throughout their entire body. Higher fascial stiffness changes the way energy is distributed throughout the body fundamentally. While a person with lower fascial stiffness will be quad/lower back dominant, a person with high fascial stiffness is glutes/abs dominant. This is just the way the fascial tensegrity network distributes energy at a higher level of stiffness. The difference of athletic potential between these two is enormous. I know this from direct experience.

Talking openly with friends about what troubles you right now is counterintuitive but invaluable.

I’m working through the Ultimate Guide for Dealing with Fear two-part series by Leo right now, hoping to resolve some of my career-related fears. Maybe it will help me see more clearly. Here they are: Fear of ending up like my mom (explanation: my mom is a very intelligent person, who was ambitious as a kid coming from an immigrant family. However, she got her first kid — my oldest brother — when she was just 24. She dropped out of her degree and became full-time mom. My parents divorced like a decade ago and now she’s alone after all of us moved out. Obviously job-market was a bitch for her, and she works as a secretary now, her self-esteem is seriously damaged through this, and she regrets never having had a "proper" career of her own.) Fear of failing at career and getting a shit job, like working at Starbucks, Burger King, Aldi cashier... Fear of falling short of all my life-goals Fear of my father seeing me as a failure or as stupid Fear of my siblings seeing me as a failure Fear of being broke compared to my siblings Fear of being seen as a failure in general Fear of being inadequate (big one) Fear of being seen as a loser Fear of being seen as stupid Fear of failing and standing there with nothing Fear of being a person who always has big ambitions, but never puts them to work/realizes them The common theme among them is shame. I'd feel ashamed for doing something my father sees as stupid, I'd feel ashamed for being poorer than my siblings, I'd be ashamed at standing there with nothing, I'd be ashamed at being stupid.

@Carl-Richard To let the momentum drive you forward, so to say?

The way to be successful is to put myself in a situation where I have to succeed. Where there are real stakes. The question is: do I have the balls to do that?

I feel, I’ve made some progress in my decision-making today. I’ll continue to work my list on ways that will help me find my path forward. But the next couple of days will be pretty busy… I’m moving places so I’ll have to prepare quite a bit, and simultaneously my brother will come to visit me this weekend. Once these two events are done with I’ll have a bit more time and headspace.

Learning coding is almost as difficult as when I learned how to floss my teeth. But it’s a lot of fun. I did 3 hours of the course today, and time literally went by so quickly that I had to double-check if I set the timer correctly.

Some people are go-getters. They just go out there, and do it. Do something. I’m not that, if you haven’t noticed. I’m in my head, a lot. One instance where that’s not true, is when playing basketball. In the flow state of driving to the basket, and coming up with some random athletic finish. The split-decision of driving left or right, taking a jump shot or going to the lane. These are the moments where I’m not in my head. It‘s refreshing… haha

Maybe it feels freeing, because I’m actually in contact with the reality of what it takes to accomplish what I want, not some fantasy. It also feels daunting.

I’ve just realized that whatever path I choose to go down, there’s one thing that’s absolutely certain: I will need to work immensely hard. Much harder than I’ve ever worked before. I’ll need to sacrifice hanging out with friends, and any other time use that’s not working. That may sound shit, but somehow it felt freeing to realize.

I’ll write a list tomorrow of things I could do to help me with deciding which path to go down, or with achieving financial freedom in general.

I just watched a part of How to fall in love with life and I realized that I’ve fallen out of love with life for a bit recently. It’s weird, because I also feel confident on the other hand, with my self-esteem being higher than ever. I’m so preoccupied with ensuring survival that I’ve lost touch with intrinsic goals that genuinely ignite excitement within me. But it’s necessary, no? Doing CS50 makes me happier and actually is quite exciting for me as it’s part of the larger quest for finding my LP. I guess, the things I’m doing aren’t so much the problem, as is the pressure I’m putting on myself. Within all this pressure and neurosis, gets lost the genuine excitement I have about the mission of gaining financial freedom. It’s also just the uncertainty I have at the moment. I don’t know which path I’m gonna go down and that just feels… unnverving.

@Rigel We were referring to running past one’s limits, like in a race where you go all out. There will definitely be some pain or maybe call it exhaustion if you will. Like when doing squats. But apart from that I don’t have pain while running. It actually feels rather effortless for me.

I‘ve realized more and more now that the highest Level of athleticism there is has little to do with hard work, and much more with talent (how strong your fascia tensegrity network is). This is like people saying all that matters in dating is looks, just that it‘s actually true for athleticism. And what is looks in dating, is the state of your fascia in athleticism. Check out my first post about this if you have no idea what I’m yapping about. I suggest reading my latest comment. The OP was bad. I noticed the black pill in myself recently as strong as ever. I play basketball and I’ve been working on my jump shot for a while, making small steady improvements over time. Now, my fascia tensegrity strength has taken a big leap, and all of a sudden I can easily hit 7/10 threes, several steps behind the three point line without any additional training. It takes very little effort because the movement relies much more on elastic energy than it does for most people. I would try to explain the feeling more but it makes little sense as pretty much no one here will have reference experiences for this. Aside from my personal experience, it makes sense that the mainstream muscle-based view of athletic performance is missing something. Look at this nine-year old girl for example: https://www.instagram.com/lucy.milgrim/?hl=en She regularly beats BOYS in wrestling who are her age, and much bigger than her. Her muscles have reached nowhere near maturity obviously. So where is the power coming from to overpower a boy of her age who, judging by muscle-based theory, should be much stronger than her. And don’t say technique. Why would a girl of her age have such a big technical advantage over other kids the same age as her. Another example: Lebron James. Why was he SO SO much better than everybody else at his age? Like he literally was in another dimension compared to his peers. He wasn’t the only kid in the USA who’s 2,09m with a 2,13cm wingspan. And don’t say it’s because he may have marginally more fast twitch muscle fibers than others. There are many more examples like this, where the difference in skill/competency in an athletic endeavor is not explainable through the current paradigm. This new paradigm will completely shift the landscape of athletic performance, injury prevention and injury treatment. The mechanism I propose in my other post is likely highly flawed, but, really, it doesn’t matter. As soon as more people start to experience this paradigm of how the body functions, it will rush through the world like an earthquake. I’m looking forward to it, because it will level the playing field, but hopefully it won’t take too long. We all know how resistant humanity is to paradigm shifts — probably for good reason.

I don’t know about all of the west, but I can speak a bit for Germany. Everything here has been getting more expensive — in terms of purchasing power. Inflation always happens and the goal is to keep it at around 2% per year. But usually the GDP of the country also grows each year, which is why the purchasing power doesn’t change or even increases potentially — ergo: enough money to have food in the fridge. In Germany the GDP hasn’t really grown that much since 2019. Even before Covid if I recall correctly. Then Covid and Ukraine war happened, which again fucked the growth rate of Germanys economy, as well as rising costs of electricity and some other stuff, which again reduces purchasing power. Then tariffs coming in now from the US also help tank the GDP. Lack of GDP growth leads to the wages not being adjusted to the inflation, which is why you have less money in the wallet or, struggle to put food in the fridge. I could imagine that things are similar in Romania or in other countries. I’m not very confident that all this is correct to be honest hehe, but this is the best I could do.

And now the last two months I feel that I’ve changed so drastically. I visited my mom in my hometown now, during my semester break for the last 1 1/2 months. And for the last 63 days I’ve contemplated everyday for thirty minutes. It’s not that much but still I feel that the quality of my life has increased a lot. I’ve changed so much over this timeframe —not only due to the contemplation —, that now being back in the city I study at, everything feels different. It’s really weird.

I’m so thankful to be on this journey. I just continued listening to Leo‘s motivational speech from 2021. He said there, that the first couple years of doing this work will be slow. And that it will take time until you start to notice changes, but then the momentum will pick up, and the payoff will start coming in. I noticed it’s very true for me. I read my first Personal Development book at 15. At that point I was completely wasting my life, watching YT videos all day, not doing any sports, not being passionate about anything, horrible self-worth, doing okay but not good at school. Then I saw a YT Video from a German YouTuber called “Trymacs,” who usually does Clash Royal (a supercell game) gameplays and stuff like that. He talked about the favorite books that he read, and that every successful person reads 70+ books per year or some bullshit statistic like that . I literally caught on fire because of that video and asked my mom to buy me a book called “Miracle Morning” that he recommended. Through reading this book, I, for the first time in my life, realized that the quality (success) of my life is a function of how/if I develop my personality. And that my personality is the only thing I can influence and so I should put all my energy into doing that. Then I slowly started to develop passion for life. I started going to the gym, I started playing basketball, I started talking to girls more and getting better there. My confidence slowly rose. Then I got into Lucid Dreaming which was really my first project where I developed intense passion and persistence. I started doing better at school, I picked up some more books, started working on my sleep, realized how fucked my social media consumption was, I grew shrooms in my room while living at my mom’s still, lol, I got into meditation, I got into New Age spirituality… which is why I met with some new age spiritual people on Koh Pangan (Thailand), one of which recommended to me Leo Gura. My whole personal development journey started there, because of this YT video. This one, strong ass intention that I had — and it really was strong — shifted the entire trajectory of my life. The power of intention.