Amphibian220

Ok, can you invest all of your spare time in health related activity? I mean exercising every day (oiling the groove type) and working out on certain days? I find that absence of intermediate results causes me to drop exercise, but monitoring progress encourages me to review my system and implement changes.

Welcome to the forum, I always find that people who are undertaking the self accountability approach have more guts than people who rely on illusory hopes. Can you please share more about your work/field of research and interests?

In case you were tracking your progress, How much have you improved in your teaching, exercise and overall fitness level? Are you able to do at least 5 hours of exercise activity per week? Also, how much more productive have your plans become Ikar?

Is the stress coming from work? Often I wonder if a lot of the customary things in the workplace are down to people’s perceptions. Many things can be time wasters at work, but seldom is anything done to change that. One of the greatest ideas i’ve seen is to have a fitness gym at the workplace, so that the employees could work out straight after finishing work and come back recharged the next day. I can vouch that even if the last hour of the working day is dedicated to exercise, the output of the workforce will definitely grow.

Welcome to the community Emily. This journal is exactly for introducing yourself to us. Can you share more about yourself. What about your goals? Are you a university student?

why would you have a lot of spare time after graduating Brian? Typically, The higher the qualification the more responsibility you will get in your field of work.

Great stuff Brian, I’m surprised you are losing weight from eating bad food. Typically fast food (what I think you were referring to) has a lot of fat and oil and tends to increase weight. I suggest replacing with healthy fat like lamb meat. I noticed a recurring theme in multiple journals. There is this down time when some of the discipline goes down followed by a necessary increase in activity, as if you are trying to catch up on the things that you haven’t been keeping up like exercise and proper eating. I think in fact this can fuel the habit of alternating between two states. Books said how he would try to catch up on work during weekends and that would exhaust him, causing a fall in productivity. Better discipline means your output should become more consistent and productivity grow over time. What kind of things are most neglected? Where do you spend too much time and what activities do you give insufficient time/attention? Some of these questions can help in determining the necessary changes.

How is your exercise routine going?Are you doing stretching and running and how many times per week? I’m in quite a dilemma. My results for the year are unsatisfactory, I’ve now read some articles that talk about pitfalls in overtraining or the wrong techniques that cause you to waste effort. I just need to monitor my technique, but filming myself takes more time. so I want to start swimming and doing targeted back exercise with a coach, just need to allocate funds for that.

Do you mean to say that you have discovered a sustained method of performing your work without feeling tested or challenged? Or is it a different kind of boredom, where the work is hard and challenging, but you aren’t getting enough in the way of new experiences? I wish you to reformat your habit. What about your journey into health related activities? Have you read books on that? Do you want to be more fit than you are? Or are you already well developed physically?

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Agreed, this is in fact not settling for scraps. I always come back to the fact that gamers are “low maintenance” kind of guys. being out with a woman can be unnerving but at that exact moment be yourself. Even If you aren’t liked, you will be liked for accepting yourself as you are. Edit: I also mean to say think about the qualities that give you self esteem and confidence. Bad habits and traits should be tackled and not be accepted. @Books, but why are you meeting that woman in the first place? What is the intention?

Wishing you to get well. I think reviewing the progress on your goal makes you perceive that goal a lot more as something real and track where you are. I do this by adding reps to various workout routines, reading books and articles about fitness. if i’ve got doubts as to whether a workout will work and my plan is too ambiguous, I will not follow through on it. About motivation when living alone. In my teens my coach wanted me to become a professional boxer. The training discipline that he instilled stayed with me even after i stopped training as a boxer. For example, I’d go to the sea each morning and swim for half an hour. The thing that pushed me to do it was the expectation that all this training would come in handy at a time in future. So right now there is a lull in the action for you, but you should use it to get yourself ready for a major fight.

sometimes you get doubts of whether you should control yourself so stringently, but then did you ever notice how much discipline changes your environment? “When you’re at war, you know that everything is going to go against you. The terrain, weather, enemy, mistakes in communication etc. So you try to preplan and do everything right with as much pressure as possible to win. When you attack with that much force and intelligence, you’ve got the enemy on the run with his back turned towards you” paraphrasing Jocko Willink. i also thought on Erik’s post about craving comfort. He correctly remarked that this is what video games give us. The thing that I want to crave is conquest and it is a thing that is often confused with comfort. We are not on a conquest to achieve comfort. That would kill all purpose. We are on a conquest to find out what this life is. Can’t express it beyond that. If you want that long enough it starts to kill all fears one by one.

What is your main sporting activity? Do you work out on a daily basis?

Welcome Boho, im not a professional family counsellor, but I can suggest a few things on the addiction part. It sometimes helps a lot to discuss his favorite activity (gaming) because he may be ultimately unhappy with it. Why “may be”. Gamers can be in different stages of awareness. The worse stage is where the gamer thinks that he can combine gaming with a successful career and family life. The better stage is where he has dropped wishful thinking and knows that gaming will negatively effect many areas of his life. A good question ask in this regard: is gaming interfering with your duties and responsibilities as a worker/husband? When a gamer goes on the defensive it shows that he is in denial and his awareness is limited. I can also advise getting a book “power of habit” and having a read through with taking notes. That book lays down foundations for changing one’s outlook and way of life. Gaming can be an escape from underlying problems that the person does not like to admit or is afraid of confronting. In fact in many instances it is. Games allow you to win without pain, discipline or any difficulty but they also make you ineffective in solving real life issues on many levels.

ЕTabletop games are board games right? Are you aiming to quit board games or just video games? I don’t know what kinds of situations you are referring to, but my limited understanding is you don’t want to confront a situation and choose to be distracted by a game. Now why don’t you confront a particular situation? Maybe you need to monitor yourself more and do targeted reading to try and be different in uncertain situations.

@BooksandTreesI was thinking about breaking eating discipline when I had this idea. What about US army rationing SOP? That measurement is designed to keep soldiers fit, without excess fat or sugar in their diet and sufficient amounts of carbohydrates, protein etc. what about closely monitoring food intake in accordance with that? I have broken my food discipline recently. I’ll try to see if I can set these limits up to prevent overeating. The upside is that you know you have eaten the right amount and there is no way to get confused with this.

I will suggest you to test one day completely without screens (television or telephone). The more days you can do this the better. All your resting, distraction activities will have to involve talking to people in person or reading physical books. At the end of that day, write down your realizations not only with regards to med/long term goals, but ways to get to those goals. When your method doesn’t work, you have to look at it differently and Figure out a new approach. Worked example: Aim- Getting employed. Over 40 applications in the span of a year. From those 40, two employers called to an interview. No success. health isn’t good enough to stay focused 9am-5pm, lacking a sense of direction and motivation. This shows when the question is asked:”Why did you choose to work with us?” Left office with a sense of relief that possibly this job wasn’t the right one and many more opportunities will come. Create pressure- Need for marriage, proof of self-worth, achieving a great mission. A great mission requires at least about 5 years of a balanced day to day effort to achieve. Most great missions take more, 10 to 15 years. Always make adjustments and correct your plan along the way to suit the changing circumstances. New discovered goals: complete 2 -3internships this year to better get a feel for your calling in life. Start diagnosing your health and tackling the issues with correct exercise, diet, socializing. Create a book plan from the issues you have identified. A book plan isn’t just reading, but taking notes and applying advice in a trial and error fashion. Creating weekly and monthly reports on the results and writing short summaries of your key findings. There won’t be any time left for thra TV. You will be in the self development game.

Welcome back, hope you are doing well. Can you share on what you learnt over this past year about your goals? Have you become more self aware and focused as to what you want to achieve?

@BooksandTrees Don’t believe that stuff man. Your sleep will get better over time, you need time to adapt to your new sleeping hours. Great to see that you are aiming for a breakthrough. I can concur on having experienced the cycle of taking good decisions, improving discipline but then slipping back into complacency. It would be good to study why people want to slow the tempo and give themselves some slack the moment they experience success. Ever thought about raising the tempo and the stakes the moment it appears like you have done enough? I will call this the breakout from the cycle. This new kind of experience is supposed to teach you to keep the tempo up. I would want you to write on this in the coming weeks as you start building a new discipline.

I’ll give credit to @DaBest , “break out of the fantasy” is an excellent statement that describes the solution. I’ll only add to this that music and particular films lead to emotional volatility. One of my great decisions was never to listen to music or watch films for entertainment. This can appear hard, but it makes sense for somebody who is on the road to conquering his weaknesses. I found that I had to invest more time in the things that I did. I think @BooksandTrees was reflecting on the same thing when he had said he started taking care of his needs more . After a while I realized that there is way more room for improvement than I initially thought. The less you fantasize the more invested you become in your daily plans, until people start noticing your greater than usual strength, interest and activity.

@BooksandTrees, From what I can see, you are reigning in your actions because you don’t want to appear too nice. I think this is right and is coming from your habit of reviewing your actions and being self accountable. I think a big part of being a man is knowing that something (a promotion or a wedding) is coming your way and not worrying over a mishap. That allows not to concentrate on it too much and stress out but instead work on solving the issues and enjoy the rewards.

I was going to ask to what extent it was a conscious decision on your part to become the project manager in your organization. You seem to have gained a more sustained level of proficiency over the months. This means that you can do your current role with less stress and greater clarity. Is this last point true or false? The second question was going to be if this qualification that you are undertaking is affording you broader knowledge and transferable skills in your profession.

Heart warming to see your message. Stay on the track to recovery and do look for ways to work on important things. I am reading a physical book right now which affords more comfort in managing my time and not being distracted by ads.

Welcome back, I don’t think you’ve found a replacement activity yet from your mixed feelings towards video games. just to give you an example: I had a English flat mate during my undergraduate degree who was totally obsessed with getting ripped. To me he looked very fit. His shoulders, chest and biceps were well developed and in the right proportion. But on so many occasions he was discussing this subject with me. He thought there was a lot of improvement to be made on that! There was so much banter with other guys who were in the bodybuilding game. He was all over it and totally addicted to the fitness game (starting with food, sleep and rest, cardio and all the heavy lifting). As for me, i do get the occasional memory of games, but I suppress that and ever look at how I can get more fit. I just need that frame of reference that he had, because he was totally going after it. I’d say a gamer quits on real sports cause they require some discipline, sweat and tears whereas games have gotten him used to an easy win.