How to stay on the highway without crashing

The Emperor's Lounge
#1

Sometimes I gave my cliënts the metaphor of the highway. When you’re driving on the highway, you have to switch gears a lot, speeding up fast, and getting into the lane. But after that, the only thing you have to do is keep your foot slightly on the gas pedal and you go 70 miles per hour easily.

That’s the same thing with life in general. I’ll remember the Chef of Dwyane Wade telling something about how he never indulged too much in sweets. He made the amazing quote “When you stay ready, you never have to get ready”.

Now here is the deal. Since I have a girlfriend and a 40+ hour job, the same scenario is happening:

  • Monday and Tuesday kind of suck, it’s difficult to get into the work modes. I want to go back to the rest that I’ve had on the weekends
  • Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I get into my work modus and love the grind. Want to innovate and work out new ideas. But then on Friday, my girlfriend is coming because she lives in another city. Now the same thing happens to what happened on Monday but in reverse. Because instead of resting, I want to work on my projects and build new things.
  • On Saturday and Sunday I’m getting into chill mode, letting go of things and just enjoying the moment. I don’t over-indulge in alcohol or bad foods. I don’t go out or do anything that extreme to be honest. But after Sunday, I don’t really feel like grinding and then Monday starts again.

Now here is the thing. I like to be in the same routines and keep working on my craft. But I also need to wind down a bit here and there. The problem is, for me to switch from one side to the other, takes a lot of energy and mental power. I think I have some form of autism here :joy:

It’s like going off the highway because I need to refill the gas, but going off the highway and going on the highway takes tremendous energy. Do you guys sometimes feel the same? What are your ways of grinding and winding down without having to switch that much?

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#2

Hey man
I know how that could feel, but honestly, it’s all about the mindset, you just have to be hungry for success, just as bad as you wanna breathe.

One of the ways you can do that is by setting goals and then dissecting them into smaller check points, as if you’re playing a video game and trying to do smaller levels to reach to the boss level, with each small level being a task you do, and the boss level being a check point, that way, it feels more joyful to just be alive.

Also, remove the idea of needing to grind, instead, change your POV and see it more as you doing something today that is better than yesterday, because each time you think that way, you’re gonna want to improve yourself more and more.

Life is only as fun as you want to see it, so enjoy playing the game, rather than seeing it as a chore.

Oh and try to workout every morning, it can massively improve your mood for the day ahead.

5 Likes
#3

FYI: Questions and Comments section are for SC subliminal related questions and comments. General questions like these should be in the Emperor’s Lounge.

Thank you.

#4

Yeah I’m doing that every morning, part of my ritual.

I like this idea. That way we have less of need to break free from the “grind” and we can keep going even while it’s weekend. That’s a great insight. Maybe keep our overall routines in check? Like keep gong to bed at the same time even in the weekends and do some things like reading and meditating. I don’t know, the switching still is diffcult to do.

Maybe we are not build to switch every time in the week like society has told us :thinking: Maybe it’s more like the seasons.

@Lion Understood, I switched it to the Emperor’s Lounge :+1:

3 Likes
#5

Well, if I’m being honest, that’s kinda what I do.
Regardless of the day of the week, I wake up daily at 4AM, guess you could say the army has been teaching me a lot of discipline, but it’s also due to the fact that I realize just how much more structured my day feels since starting this routine.

9pm to 4am is the perfect time for your body, mind, and emotions as well, so maybe start with that and see how it goes.

#6

I’ve struggled with the same thing. Do you do time blocking? It might help for you to plan out your week on your calendar, I’ve been finding it easier to switch between personal stuff (workout, reading, self-improvement, etc), work, school, family time (I create diff sub-calendars to label/color code them in my Google Calendar).

When I see it all scheduled out I realize I took the time to really decide what is best for me and the first challenge is to stick to the time block as a habit (tbh I’m still working on that! it’s hard, and very easy to say “i’m just going to keep doing this one thing a little more”).

I use my Friday evenings to do a weekly “retrospective”, or this could even be on Sunday. Take stock of the week – what went well, what didn’t, areas of improvement, etc. And I will do my best to plan out my whole next week. Maybe doing this will help you look at everything in a bigger picture and more connected, rather than disjointed and take away the “switching” feeling.

I vote yes as well on trying your best to keep the same sleep schedule on weekends, unless there’s some special reason. I do 10pm-5am. Perhaps in those early hours on Sat/Sun you could still schedule an hour in to continue something related to your work projects, even if it is just research related. It could help bridge the gap between Friday’s “wanting to keep going” and Monday’s “hard to get back into the swing of things”.

My favorite thing about waking up early is usually that 5-8am hours is all about me and I can divide that up however I like.

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#7

Many people dread this on the weekends, yet don’t realize how beautiful this time is when utilized properly, like you could literally workout early, plan and prepare work for the upcoming (making you stand out for the remainder of the week at work), do some meditation like @Malkuth does every morning, have a breakfast date with your partner, go explore a new place or make early morning plans with others.

For me personally, on Saturdays I like to go to the gym at 5-5:30 (depending on how fast I digest my breakfast haha) and then finish up second-degree priority chores (I have a criteria for how i prioritize tasks), and this has been going well for me so far, as not only does it keep me at top of my work, but also fitness and self development.

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#8

:100:

My usual goal for that morning time looks something like:

5-530 - morning walk around the neighborhood
530-6 - home workout
6-615 - cold shower
615-630 - meditate
630-730 - leisure reading (either philosophy or self improvement)
730-800 - look over my calendar to see if anything needs adjusting, glance at emails to see what needs addressing in the AM (weekdays only, obviously)
800-900 - Keep this open and flexible for whatever (I don’t do breakfast since i’m on 16:8 fasting)

#9

yup.

I’m challenged by this as well.

I’m working on it.

The biggest step to me, is also the most subtle:

Normalize your thinking style and then supplement it and strategize around it.

Don’t be satisfied with simplistic, crude generalized descriptions such as “I’m lazy” and so on.

Start with the assumption that you are fine and that you need to make better use of the qualities and resources you have.

Person A. Sees a bird flying. Goes outside and flaps his arms for a while. When he is still on the ground 2 minutes later, he says, “What’s wrong with my body!!! How f**ked up, I am! I have a Flight Disability! I’m so ashamed! I’d better not leave the house anymore.”

Person B. Sees a bird flying. Goes outside and flaps his arms for a while. When he is still on the ground 2 minutes later, he says, “Hmm…seems that my body works differently to how a bird’s body works. But I wonder what I could do that would let me learn from the bird and adapt my own situation so that I might fly also?”

Person B is on the pathway to discovering principles that will lead to inventing gliders and then airplanes and ultimately manned spaceflight.

He’s using his abilities (for example, intelligence, imagination, observation ability, complex tool use) to overcome his limitations (for example, denser skeletal structure, lack of feathers, and so on). Eventually, when we did figure out how to fly, we did not have to transform into birds to do it. We kept our original bodies and created tools that brought us closer to the birds.

Well, that was another LAM from me. (Long-ass metaphor). But it’s because I think this is a somewhat subtle and nuanced point that often gets overlooked in the scramble for self-improvement. We have a tendency to try to throw out the baby with the bathwater. And all too often, the baby is…us.

Accepting yourself does not mean never admitting your limitations. It means integrating your limitations, when necessary, into a winning strategy.

In case it’s not clear, I’m talking to myself here. (Hot Tip: that’s what most advice-givers are doing.)

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#10

More practically, want to page @smartwater42069 and link to his journal.

Reading about his successful use of checklists is a good suggestion and reminder of an effective tool.

Some of us naturally default to thinking about the big picture and planning in very long timeframes. When that’s your default planning and thinking style, you need more help getting connected to the moment-to-moment on-the-ground tactics.

For me, if I don’t consciously remind myself, my mind tends to automatically switch back to Cosmic lens. Nice for resolving my worldview and for addressing my foundational identity issues. Not as helpful for cleaning up my room.

Checklists can help me to attentionally “pivot” with a bit more agility. (Any pivoting at all for me is already an improvement.)

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#11

Perhaps by driving safely and sticking to speed limits.

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#12

@atreyu @Invictus @Malkuth

Thank you for the amazing insights about sleep schedules, time blocking and your way of looking at it as a whole.

This is by far the best community and forum I’ve ever been apart of. Trying to figure things out, sharing idea’s and learning from each others perspective. Especially since the idea of Forum Ambassadors has been introduced. I’ll hope we have many of these “discussions” in the future! :sunglasses:

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