disillusioned
disappointed in someone or something that one discovers to be less good than one had believed.
"the emperor became completely disillusioned with the primal female coworker"
Expect many moments of this fine adjective when you run Emperor.
Cycle 2 - Day 8
Rest day
I passed the exam and now have my first certificate. 🫡
Now we look for assignments while doing some interval training and perhaps start working on my next certificate.
Cycle 2 - Day 9
03:00 | Emperor
03:00 | IG: UPX
Dude I want a consulting assignment so bad…
But… it’s been overall a great week. Some recon… and anxiety. But I do feel pretty focused overall. My boss says I seem to know what I’m doing and we probably don’t need to have these catch ups as often.
I wonder what plan I should have career wise. I’m thinking of first mastering and proving my specific tech stack. Just owning it for a year. And then I don’t know, get into AI, Cybersecurity or cloud.
I’m a generalist, I like being a generalist.
I’m also thinking of leadership roles. Perhaps a tech lead or scrum master. We shall see what the future holds!
All this drive and action gotta be channeled dude!
I gamed today and I didn’t feel no guilt or shame, just like… “meh”. Just something to kill time. I should have coded instead. Disillusioned…
Next week I’m going to code on something, for sure. Some internal projects.
Also, I haven’t fixed my sleep or fitness yet, but that doesn’t stop me. Drive, motivation and energy is all time high. But I should definitely fix those. Imagine the power with those fixed on top of this power and resilience?
I do feel a lack of interest in mindless social activities, unless it’s with people who I can partner with and level up. Today I had lunch with a bunch of higher ups and that was interesting.
The rest? “Meh”
Higher standards and disillusionment. We just do our thing and be proactive and then those better people and opportunities that tickle my fancy will emerge. 🫡
Oh there’s the guilt… long time no see, oh, you brought a friend? Well hello recon, nice to meet you.
It’s going to be a long weekend, and when I make it out, massive growth. 
FFFFF
The recon is tough, and I got lost and in a weird headspace this weekend. But tomorrow is a new week. I don’t know… only way out is in I guess.
“Why do we fall sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.”
I think people at work are viewing me like some expert. Which is a good thing generally, but when that’s their expectation, and my imposter syndrome flares up, it makes things even worse. If you know what I mean…
Suffering from success.
I’ve been grinding dude, I don’t even take time to journal and reflect. But I should do that so things don’t get out of hand. So things don’t pile up in my psyche.
I really didn’t think I’d be able to work hard with lack of sleep. But it says I was just using that “problem” to escape and postpone the real work.
It’s part of self-help junky habits.
“Oh let me just be more mindful and meditate a little so I can perform better at my work and improve concentration.”
proceeds to try to master meditation and become Osho, consuming meditation books/videos/podcasts/audiobooks 8 hours a day, instead of focusing on actually working and taking massive focused action.
It’s just mental rubbish, a coping/escaping pattern.
It’s all good, but remember it was just a tool to help you in the journey, not your whole new life.
Wake up!
Damn man, maybe I’m fine with the imposter syndrome. I just worked 8 hours at my job and then I went home and wrote unit tests for like 4 hours. It’s the imposter syndrome that was the fire in the engine.
Also I’m now taking a leading role in a project.
I’m also being approached by people about how fast I took a certificate. I also work in two projects while the others only work on one project.
And perhaps this pain is a blessing.
I got teamed up with a dude who has 20 years experience working with the tech stacking I’m specialising in. Which has been insane. Explains my imposter syndrome flare up last week. This dude is so effortless. Comparing myself to someone who’s got 4x my experience is unfair.
But at the same time I’ve learned so much the past week, which is one of my goals to level up and I’m blessed to have this guy on my team to learn from and study. 
Past week:
Anyway, I need to journal more in my offline journal. I need to plan my week and also note “manifestations”. It’s good to remember the good stuff, because otherwise I’m just leveling up without knowing I’m leveling up, because I’ll just be going to the next great thing.
This woman is looking lewd at me in the subway, I have to look down in my phone and pretend I’m doing something important to ignore her. So I decided to write this.
Blabla, something important.
Important point 1
Important point 2
Important point 3
Lol
Can’t believe this isht. Want to be a G but can’t deal with lewd looks. The look was too powerful, I felt like Frodo.
This weekend I had the most intense recon and it started as a good Saturday, felt like the last weekends recon just got processed. But then…
Then I did a new Qi Gong session and all hell broke loose. I think a a big blockage got removed and hell broke loose. I felt super weird going to sleep. Dread. Panic. But I survived and today I felt awesome at work.
It’s interesting Qi Gong. I’ve never read about things getting worse for a while v before they get better with Qi Gong. But it makes sense. It’s like cleaning the pipes, at first all the stuck yuck need to come out after you’ve removed the blockage.
Also, if you’ve ever gone to a naprapath and they really did gods work on you, then you know how you feel the next day. Even worse!!! But then things start to baseline at a much better and more optimal state.
That’s one of the biggest secrets of the spiritual path that no one really seems to talk about it. I only started finding information on it years after I had started my journey.
I think in the west, many of the original teachings are left out because egg-head’s just look at it and think “Oh, that’s not scientific,” however, the ancient masters warned their students for a reason. Also, it’s harder to sell meditation apps if you tell your users that they might experience acute psychosis and psychological distress along the path…
Yeah, it’s a thing though, it’s normal, it’s common, and it exists in numerous spiritual disciplines and has for millenia.
That’s awesome (bad, but awesome knowledge, thanks for sharing). I read about qigong psychosis yesterday after the fact and thank God it wasn’t exactly that. But who knows, perhaps I was close.
I just thought I had just worked through intense recon, and then it came back harder and I’m thinking I actually haven’t worked through it, just stuffed it down, being so good at stuffing things down and suppressing (yay me, good at suppression!) and the qi brought it out for real.
Be careful out there folks. I’m sure people reading this will be like “I can trigger recon and therefore speed up my growth!?!? I’m going to run all Khan stages at the same time and do 6 hours of Qi Going a day and get this self-development journey over with!! Yup!! Hehe”
How do I know? Because I’m thinking the exact same thing. Lol
But I did literally just 10 minutes of Lee Holden Qi Going and got blasted the whole Sunday.
Don’t.
This is also why the ancient masters didn’t just teach anybody. Lol. In the information age though, it’s kinda hard to control who gains access to what knowledge.
Truth is bro, spirituality is kinda a self-protecting field of study, because most people are too lazy, closed minded, or ignorant to put in the work needed to get the results anyway, so the risk to laypeople is pretty low, tbh. lol.
Convincing someone to go on a 30 min walk a few times a week is hard enough. Convincing someone to meditate or do energetic work for potentially years on end before they see a result is near impossible.
In India some teachers used to talk about the “luck of enlightenment” because they realized that so few people would even be crazy enough to do the work in the first place, and even fewer would even be exposed to the ideas needed to start the work.
Nothing to fear. Stay grounded. I mean literally, do things in the material world that make you feel grounded. Eat food, talk to strangers, touch trees, do crosswords, just do physical, manual stuff that helps remind you that you live here in this world. Helps keep you from floating off into lala land, lol.
Great ideas.
This one is super interesting when I read about it. But I never understood the concept, but now I do with your explanation. First you have to be open to it, but then also stick with it. Not only patience required, which was rare 100 years ago, even more rare now, but also, the annihilation of the self dude? Good luck! Lol
Anyway, I’m on empERROR and I’ve moved away from my obsession in eastern philosophy. I realised I wanted it for the benefits it offers a person into performance and personal development, but I lost track of the goal to crush it. It’s a tool, not my life.
Another thing I found that was recommended for grounding is Zhang Zhuang! Which is my absolute favourite exercises! So I’m going to probably incorporate that if I decide to do qi go g again.
I won’t bore you with more crap, but even that is not what it appears. Annihilation of the self is more of a joke than a literal statement, it’s a red herring, and it’s a statement that makes little sense when divorced from it’s spiritual context. Spiritual texts are abound with these “inside jokes” and red herrings.
You and me both.
Might look into that.
Lol, of course it is. I’m not surprised. Why are spiritual gurus heckling us mortals!? Are they elitist jerks? Making fun of me!?
No I appreciate you sharing your knowledge about the subject. You have experience, I can tell by the way you make certain questions in my head throughout the journey make sense.
Amen 
can’t wait for my return to the Khan.
Until then reading your journal and hoping for more emperor and khan journals for Christmas this year.
Seductive tech overlords for the win!
People think air guitar is cool. Meh, it’s so cringe. I prefer “air-hugging-a-tree”. Now that’s sexy.
Sometimes it’s hard to see when one is self-sabotaging and delusional. It’s hard to see one’s own blind spots.
Luckily it’s easy to spot in others. And even more awesome is they act sometimes as mirrors or light that illuminates your own delusions.
Thank heavens!
I need to reread my journal to see my own flaws and stupid illusions and distractions.
I refuse to be a broken record.