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My Journal - Alex


AlexTheGrape

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Hey Alex. I haven't been following your journal much, but it is clear that you are super dedicated. Cam often mentions to me that you're a Legend. XD. Keep up the good work dude!

This is a true. Travis gets the live play-by-play in person when we meetup. :D

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3 Week Morning Success Challenge - Attempt 1 - Day 4

Today has started off well as I had a decent run, (albeit a short one), and the cold shower added to it nicely. @Cam Adair I might try your method contrasting cold and hot water as I'm getting used to cold showers already! The first time I went on a 'cold shower streak' it ended because I had declining shock factor from doing it, and therefore not getting energised as much in the morning. By contrasting temperatures it'd be sure to get me going.

During the day I pushed myself quite a bit to get help where needed, ask questions, do work during lunch time, and give fencing this afternoon my all. Unfortunately that back-fired as I was exhausted on the trip home both physically and mentally; I just ended up thinking a lot and listening to a Tim Ferris podcast which wan't that bad. I could have still pushed to get some homework done though.

Cold shower

Yup

Workout/run

Yep

Meditation

Yip

Visualisation

Yap

20 Minute reading + note taking

I again didn't make time for this last night, but I'm finishing much earlier tonight to get some reading in.

Gratitude journal

I am grateful for the sports bus that makes travel much easier for my parents and I.

I am grateful for my mini-clipboard I made to help me with reminders.

I am grateful for having dinner tonight.

I thank the universe for the wonderful opportunities provided to me.

One amazing thing that happened today:

Fencing this afternoon was a blast! I was constantly fencing, changing opponent, and then getting more fencing in. Since last session I've made noticeable improvement with my parries and second-intention attacks, and so I'm pleased I both enjoyed fencing today and have made a marked improvement.

What I will do differently tomorrow:

I will make sure to write in what homework I have as soon as possible and estimate how many hours worth of work it is; so that I have much less reason to procrastinate and get on with the work with gusto.

 

This photo is of my team and I (we represented Slovakia) Model United Nations Assembly a couple of weeks ago; where I gave a speech I'm proud of. l carried around a giant world map from my room to show people where Slovakia is since it's so small and little known to people here :P

Slovakia.JPG

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Hey Alex. I haven't been following your journal much, but it is clear that you are super dedicated. Cam often mentions to me that you're a Legend. XD. Keep up the good work dude!

Thanks man! Don't worry, I'm sure you're busy with more important things than reading my journal :D I'll keep it up for sure! :)

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Hey Alex. I haven't been following your journal much, but it is clear that you are super dedicated. Cam often mentions to me that you're a Legend. XD. Keep up the good work dude!

This is a true. Travis gets the live play-by-play in person when we meetup. :D

Thanks Cam, I'm humbled to be spoken of in another part of the world :D

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3 Week Morning Success Challenge - Attempt 1 - Day 4

Today was much like yesterday: I started off my morning well by doing my morning routine, worked hard at school, but got some homework done this afternoon. I also managed to get a decent amount done this morning too, as well as during lunch time.

Cold shower

Yes, I tried alternating to hot water part-way through but I didn't work up the courage to turn it back to cold :/

Workout/run

Yep

Meditation

Done.

Visualisation

Done.

20 Minute reading + note taking

I looked over some of my important notes from the book I'm reading, but I'd say it was only for 10 minutes.

Short post today as I'm getting to sleep early. If all goes well then I'll be able to boast a good post tomorrow!

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My post for yesterday:

3 Week Morning Success Challenge - Attempt 1 - Day 4 - Ended/aused

Today has been a more or less relaxed day. I have gotten sick recently and so decided it'd be best to not go running into the freezing air this morning to prevent my cold getting worse.  In doing so, I haven't successfully completed my morning success routine, so I question whether I should restart the timer. I managed to have a cold shower though; I alternated the temperature between hot and cold for maximum waking effect, but I also think that having cold showers might not be best for my sickness right now. I also didn't meditate or visualise on the bus, I simply forgot this time around. I'll decide what this'll mean for my success challenge tomorrow, but at the moment it looks like I'll have to try again.

I shall promise to myself I'll write a full post tonight, I need some deeper reflection done. 

Cold shower

Yes

Workout/run

Nope

Meditation

Forgot

Visualisation

Forgot

20 Minute reading + note taking

I did manage to do some decent reading last since I got to bed earlier, but I could do better tonight.

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The past couple of days have had their ups and downs, but I know for certain that I just need more sleep to make my day better overall. Today I woke up early to finish my Defensive Driving course (I passed, but it's pretty hard to fail it anyways :P) and had a long call with my accountability partner. I hardly got any homework done, and I've fallen a bit behind in my homework/studying.

I'll see how I do tomorrow, but I'm considering I should hold back on the cold shower and intense focus on personal development for a week or so. I've had a few talks with my parents about this sort of thing, and it's become very apparent to them that I'm pushing myself hard and burning myself out. I need to prioritise my sleep and homework, so that's what I'll do. Nuff said, I'm gonna go straight to reading now, I need to be more responsible with my sleeping time.

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I'll see how I do tomorrow, but I'm considering I should hold back on the cold shower and intense focus on personal development for a week or so. I've had a few talks with my parents about this sort of thing, and it's become very apparent to them that I'm pushing myself hard and burning myself out. I need to prioritise my sleep and homework, so that's what I'll do. Nuff said, I'm gonna go straight to reading now, I need to be more responsible with my sleeping time.

Always important to start with your priorities FIRST. When you get behind on your priorities you start to burn out. Also, you may want to add a bit more "just for fun, play" into your day. That helps avoid burnout too. :)

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3 Week Morning Success Challenge - Attempt 2 - Day 1

Today has been surprisingly good all round, which I credit to getting plenty of sleep last night. I hope to do the same tonight to keep focused and engaged tomorrow. I started the day slowly and did a tiny workout, but I had a run when I got back from school and did 15 chin ups on the playground I run to. I got an average amount of homework done today by my standards, but that's heaps better than the past few days. I think it's mainly because I've been distracted so easily. I'm thinking of getting back into doing cold showers again already, but I need to get a feel for what works best for me to make sure I get a lot more work done.

This time round for my morning success challenge, I'm going to leave it up to me to decide whether I am going to have a cold shower (for now) as I've always had varied results from it. I'm still leaving Sunday as a no-exercise day though.

Gratitude Journal:

I am grateful for the green grass despite winter.

I am grateful that I've never seen war first hand.

I am grateful for having all my material needs well and truly met.

I thank the universe for the intelligence of being human.

Meditation

Yup.

Visualisation

I didn't want the person sitting beside me to see my goals, but I think I can manage visualising tomorrow without the cards anyways.

Workout/run

Yup.

Reading

I got a decent amount of reading done last night, and I am confident it helped me to sleep sooner.

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I'll see how I do tomorrow, but I'm considering I should hold back on the cold shower and intense focus on personal development for a week or so. I've had a few talks with my parents about this sort of thing, and it's become very apparent to them that I'm pushing myself hard and burning myself out. I need to prioritise my sleep and homework, so that's what I'll do. Nuff said, I'm gonna go straight to reading now, I need to be more responsible with my sleeping time.

Always important to start with your priorities FIRST. When you get behind on your priorities you start to burn out. Also, you may want to add a bit more "just for fun, play" into your day. That helps avoid burnout too. :)

Wise words, Cam. Doing things just for fun is something I certainly am missing from my life, as a lot of the 'leisure' time I have is spend sending emails to penpals and such, which I don't particularly enjoy anymore. I'll look into some fun activities :)

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I'll see how I do tomorrow, but I'm considering I should hold back on the cold shower and intense focus on personal development for a week or so. I've had a few talks with my parents about this sort of thing, and it's become very apparent to them that I'm pushing myself hard and burning myself out. I need to prioritise my sleep and homework, so that's what I'll do. Nuff said, I'm gonna go straight to reading now, I need to be more responsible with my sleeping time.

Always important to start with your priorities FIRST. When you get behind on your priorities you start to burn out. Also, you may want to add a bit more "just for fun, play" into your day. That helps avoid burnout too. :)

I can't stress enough how important this is! You need to spend some time during the day doing something that you just genuinely enjoy and don't necessarily expect anything from. Otherwise everything you do will just feel like a complete grind and eventually you will burn out completely.

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Restarting my Morning Success Challenge was a rather bold move considering I wanted a break from personal development this week. I have meditated and visualised this morning, but that has been the extent of the fulfillment of my challenge.

Today has been rather average, but in a good way. The day went smoothly, but I again haven't made significant progress with homework or anything. Unfortunately I haven't dedicated time to doing something I find fun, but I spent plenty of rest time with my family this afternoon anyways.

I don't have much more to say, other than that I need to do better tomorrow... Despite having planned out what work I wanted to get done, and getting to completing the work as soon as I could, I still didn't make much progress. I don't want to withdraw contact with my family, but I may need to if I am to become more productive with my afternoon time.

Gratitude journal:

I am grateful for having grandparents who are willing to lend a hand when needed.

I am grateful for having all the resources I need to learn.

I am grateful for the time my teachers dedicate to helping students, in their own time.

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I'll see how I do tomorrow, but I'm considering I should hold back on the cold shower and intense focus on personal development for a week or so. I've had a few talks with my parents about this sort of thing, and it's become very apparent to them that I'm pushing myself hard and burning myself out. I need to prioritise my sleep and homework, so that's what I'll do. Nuff said, I'm gonna go straight to reading now, I need to be more responsible with my sleeping time.

Always important to start with your priorities FIRST. When you get behind on your priorities you start to burn out. Also, you may want to add a bit more "just for fun, play" into your day. That helps avoid burnout too. :)

I can't stress enough how important this is! You need to spend some time during the day doing something that you just genuinely enjoy and don't necessarily expect anything from. Otherwise everything you do will just feel like a complete grind and eventually you will burn out completely.

Yep!

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My post for yesterday:

Today was another average day, but my standard of average is very good. That means all my needs were met, I experienced no trauma or distress, and have had no serious problems affecting my life.

I didn't get any homework done, but that was largely due to the fact I had a long fencing competition in the afternoon that resulted in me getting home not long before 7pm, and I am staying at my grandparents' place. Anyhow I have the notion that this week off from morning exercise and such has influenced my alertness and lowered my drive to succeed, even if it's by a little.

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My post for yesterday:

Today was another good day at school, but nothing interesting of note. I'm not sure how my week off self-development is affecting my working habits, but I'll find out in time. When I tried doing homework with a disciplined attitude and got into a new change of clothes, I found I could focus a lot better,  so I hope to replicate that this weekend.

Great to see you're journaling even after detox!

Keep gratitude and habits list! It raises your consistency into a higher level!

Greetings, Mad Pharmacist

Thanks for checking up on my journal! I'll put the list back up again soon, this week I've just taken a break from self-development so that I don't burn out. I'll be ready to get back into it in a couple of days though, thanks for the encouragement!

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3 Week Morning Success Challenge - Attempt 3 - Day 1

Today has been wonderful! I started off my day with competing at the final day of the Secondary Schools Circuit, a fencing competition where I fenced Sabre and came 3rd equal! It is an applaudable result considering I only started fencing Sabre last year, but I enjoyed it, which was the most important. 

Today I got back into my success habits, but I started in the afternoon. I tried meditating and visualizing immediately before doing my school work, and focused on visualizing achieving an academic award; I was insistent on thinking that I'm simply working towards the emotional gratification of pleasing my extended family by doing incredibly well in my last year of schooling. As a result I developed a mentality that it was worthwhile to study and actually felt quite empowered about doing it.

Tomorrow I'll be starting up doing my morning habit streak again, and I hope to have the most productive weekend I've ever had!

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Three weeks ago, I've struggled  with forcing myself to study. I don't say that now I do it without an effort but sometimes I feel empowered by learning, like you wrote. I try to focus on this feeling, it really helps in hard times to get work done.

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3 Week Morning Success Challenge - Attempt 3 - Day 2

Today has been another good day, but I unfortunately could only keep up my legitimate desire to study for an hour or so. The rest of the day was back to work as usual, but I did try and use my new method for study breaks which has worked to an extent. I think I might need a short meditation session in my breaks as well, as this combination seems to work, which I did at the start of my studying.

I had a call with my accountability partner today which was helpful, and I was able to iron out what's been going on this week and how I'm going to approach my next week differently (since I didn't complete all the things I said I'd do). I'm keeping myself accountable for:

  • I'm going to continue meditation and visualize daily
  • I'll make one meal this week
  • Get some inspirational quotes up on my wall
  • Do all my work I've assigned to myself for the day before any relaxing activities/procrastination.
  • Use my Forcefit app every day
  • Post here daily.

I also had a long talk with my brother today. He wants to quit playing games so that he can move on in his life (its clearly having negative effects on his life) but isn't ready to sell his Xbox or get rid of his other games yet. I think I've done a really good job with talking with him about how he's easily deleted virtual progress before and many other related things, I hope he makes a long term-decision. One of the problems he's facing is that he would like to be a game developer, and conflicts with his need to quit gaming. Does anybody have some suggestions on this? Unless he shifts his focus away from becoming a game developer, it's going to be very difficult for him.

Gratitude journal

I'm grateful for the amazingly green grass despite it being winter in NZ.

I'm grateful for discovering how to motivate myself to work.

I'm grateful for being able to communicate with other people.

One amazing thing that happened today:

I felt empowered to get on with my studying when I first implemented my new study tactic today, and it really helped me to get on with my work quickly and effectively by having the drive to excel in mundane work. If I can keep this up by repeating the same process more frequently, who knows what success I'll achieve?

What I could have done to make my day better:

Rookie mistake: I didn't get enough sleep last night! I was invited to watch a movie that would end at 11pm, but I could have watched it recorded today. I better finish this quick to get to bed on time!

 

Workout/run

Yup! I ran to the playground for chin-ups and allowed myself to enjoy the things there.

Meditation

Yup x2

Visualisation

I've been focusing my visualisaiton on academic pursuits, but I think I could look at my other ones halfway through the day perhaps?

Sufficient sleep

Nope.

No procrastination

Nope.

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Congrats on the third place!

Cheers Cam!

Three weeks ago, I've struggled  with forcing myself to study. I don't say that now I do it without an effort but sometimes I feel empowered by learning, like you wrote. I try to focus on this feeling, it really helps in hard times to get work done.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree, focusing on positive emotions in the past has been a powerful source of productive energy for me, so doing it through visualisation should really help. Would you like some recommendations or any help with visualisation? It can be a difficult one to get into consistently.

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Hey Alex, that's great to hear that your brother has recognized playing video games might be a problem for him and that he's decided he'd like to change. I wanted to be a video game developer as well before I decided I need to quit playing and I gave up on that because I do not want to contribute to the industry that has caused me these problems. I don't know if it'll work with your brother but you could try that angle with him. Otherwise, I don't know.

I actually read in Changing For Good today that consciousness raising is an effective method for helping people get out of the precontemplation stage of change. The precontemplation stage is the stage where people don't necessarily see their issue as a problem and don't really want to change. It seems like your brother might be on the cusp of transitioning from precontemplation to contemplation. What I might do if I were you is give him some material to read or listen to talking about the pitfalls of both video game addiction as well as the video game industry. Getting more information on the subject might be enough to inspire him to take the next step.

Also realize that if he wants to be a game developer and doesn't really have plans to do anything else with his life, that will be a significant blow to him. He has likely spent a considerable amount of time working towards that goal and if it's all just taken away from him, that might not actually be a positive thing. He needs to come to that decision himself. So that's why I think just presenting some information to him and letting him absorb it at his own pace might be best. Additionally, you could spend some quality time with him away from the house just to change things up. That may help him see the value of things outside of video games as well.

Hope this helps!

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