From My live stream today

Hey guys, hope all is well! It’s Friday morning (not really anymore). And I’m sitting here at my desk listening to the beautiful sound of some lovely piano music accompanied by my little brother laughing to some You-Tube music. I’m sorting my thoughts through as I’m about do to my Live Weekly YouTube-stream – evaluating my little challenge of the week; finding my ‘Why’.

Currently my mind is a bit cluttered from yesterday’s sharing of my inner most ‘issues’. It’s kind of like the social hang-over (link) I get at times after a social event – revaluating everything I said, every action I took. But it still feels good and I don’t regret a word.

My last 3 months I’ve worked intensely with not caring what people think of me, mentally and through focused actions. This climaxed into the December Christmas calendar I did (https://youtu.be/QjWEsrXAXLo) – one video every day for 23 days, each one containing a little challenge where I had to expose myself to uncomfortableness. It was awful, yet amazing, and I can truly feel the deep impact it has had on me. In short it has made me able to apply what I’ve always known to be the truth, but just haven’t had the guts to live by.

That’s all I’m going to say today… Or well it’s really not because I’m going to ramble on in my live stream in a bit. The idea is to evaluate my challenge I put up every week, sharing insights and reflections. Once and a while some people join in as well, and we have some discussions around a specific topic or a question. It usually tends to be kind of a mess and last for about 15 minutes up to my longest stream of 5 hours. These days around 30-60 min mark. I Know the quality is lacking, I lose grip on structure, and my english sometimes miserably falls apart. It’s uncomfortable and I kind of always think that I shouldn’t do it because no one cares anyway and often I have no viewers. ‘What’s the point of a live stream Alex if no one is watching?’ But then I always remind myself that it’s exactly this feeling that is my que for doing it, being uncomfortable and feeling like not doing it are always going to be tied to those growth moments. And I sure as heck grow from doing this.

We can’t improve on ourselves unless there’s some emotional pained attached to it. That goes for creating deep relationships as well. It’s perhaps my biggest lesson from all my uncomfortable challenge videos I’ve done. Lessons are perhaps an understatement for what it has resutled in, because it has become a deeply rooted habit within me.

source: https://layiadeyemi.wordpress.com/2013/11/28/how-your-brain-works-in-breaking-habits/

You see a habit contains of three parts, the que, the routine and the reward (the habit loop). These days every time I feel that anxious feeling keep crawling, my mind makes the connection to all the amazing moments I’ve had during my challenges. Which goes like this; I’ve put out an action I’m supposed to do. Perhaps approach a girl I think is cute and tell her that. I experience deep anxiousness and nervousness coming up with all kinds of stories and arguments to not go through with it. Feelings I’ve now learned to call excitement instead, which makes it easier to coop with and it literally is the same physical reaction that happens in our body.

Anyways, most of the times I eventually go through with it. Sometimes the action I do results in a painful rejection and sometimes I have a great moment and connection with the person(s) I’m interacting with (great majority). But that usually isn’t the main thing, the true reward – and boy is that a great feeling – is the proudness for doing what I’ve sat out to do. I took action in the direction that aligned with my values, believes and goals. It made me grow as person and it strengthened my self-esteem. This feeling is a dopamine kick my brain has learnt to love so much it now knows that when the feeling of anxiousness comes when I’m about to face a challenge of mine, it means that a dopamine kick awaits on the other side. And boy is that a good one. Actually one of the few things better than food.

The beauty of this is that the exact same que is triggered in all my uncomfortable situations in life, whether I need to talk to a boss or have an uncomfortable conversation with a random person. Or as in this very moment when I’m about to do a live stream, put myself on the stand and be vulnerable. Exposing myself to other people’s opinions. Throwing a tomato at me are you? It’s alright, i love fresh fruit and vegtables. So let’s get to it.

– Is this the best habit ever to have implemened or what?

See you later, ciao

/Alexander

P.S If you want to see the live stream in reply you can find it here:

Topics discussed in this week’s live stream (and yeah, I’m extra ‘all-over the place’ right now, so it’s going to get messy):

• I met a girl
• Finding your why
• New Year’s goals and implementing habits
• Channels future.