Can’t write. Have to structure my learnings from the book Deep Learning. The feeling of taking in the knowledge you absolutley know is going to be a game changer in your life is… Tickling. To say the least. And it trumps all other ambitions do do anything else but to trying to figure out how to adapt it to my life. Even trying to write something good here. Just read it yourself, that’ll be my blog’s purpose today.

Just realized I haven’t faced any real fears today. Damn. Making up for it tomorrow! Sleep tight, Fear facer

/Alex

Yeah, I know I haven’t really been delivering any long, in depth, blog post latley. I’ve simply been focusing on trying to figure out how to move forward with my Youtube channel. It’s hard, yet fun and exciting. I’ve come to love the process of “solving” life puzzles so much, that It almost fulfils me on its own. A mindset that has been strengthened the last couple of days after watching Ray Dalios 30 minute video summary of his book “PRINCIPLES”, like 5 times. So, today, I’m simply going to strongly recommend you to watch this, take notes and reflect upon how you could implement this wisdom in your life.

See you Tomorrrow, Fear Facer

P.S – Fears ‘ve met today.

Warm up – On my way to work this morning I told a beautiful woman that she made me genuinely happy for smiling and laughing so infectious.

The Real deal – told my boss I wanted to start working partime so I can focus on developing my content making skills – making amazing videos!

Can you get that emotionally impacted so you actually shed a tear over your own creation? Don’t call me a narcissist just yet. But honestly, when I looked through my latest ‘stranger’s smile video’ I couldn’t help myself. In the end where I summarized and compiled some of the best smiles I experienced, having all that emotions replied that intensely, it was just too overwhelming not to.

I’ve met so many incredible people who, within seconds of meeting me, have been willing to share a smile, laugh and connect with me.

To me, you are a stranger, but I bet you are totally awesome. And I’d love to get to know you, just like any other person I walk by every day to work. But, at least here in Stockholm where I live, you just don’t talk to strangers like that. Or, at least you didn’t use to. From now on, I do. Do you?

My little social experiment wasn’t only for my own egoistic sake of personal growth and joy, but also to show others that it doesn’t require much to have a special moment with a stranger.  And I hoped I managed to do just that.

No, I’m not religious. i’ve just experienced a relgiously intense DEEP WORK DAY.

This January month I’ve decided to dedicate one week at the time to a productivity book, and first out is DEEP WORK, by Cal Newport. I can’t go into the details now since I have to go to bed in… Well, I should already be in bed! But the basic idea is simple, you should remove all distractions and only focus on one task at the time. Nothing new really, but the book sold me on the concept with a great WHY, and explained the scientific angle of it. Which often gets me sold when it comes to doing something new. I’ll put a link to the audiobook and a summary down below.

Anyways, I tried it out today, and I’ve been at it since 6,30 this morning, minus 1,5 hour workout and 1-hour cooking food and eating. But, that still leaves me with a ton of devoted DEEP WORK time, as the clock just turned 21,22 No multitasking, just pure focus. Now it for sure has helped that I’ve been doing editing and not math for instance, but I got to another level of connection to it as I wasn’t doing anything else like I usually do. Check out the result on My youtube channel.

Looking forward to implementing these principles at work this week!

See you tomorrow, Fear Facer ( yeah I did put in some fear facing at the gym, don’t think I forgot about it;)! )

/Alex

Happy Saturday morning!

Working my way back to my early morning routines after the hooliday, got up at 6-ish today. It felt great because I overcome that URGE to snooze which has plagued me during this 2-week holiday. Sure I can do that once and a while, but then I want to have decided to do so before, it shouldn’t be emotions running my decisions. The same goes for working on my projects, productive following a defined structure. This requires Discipline. But, as Will puts it, it’s essentially self-love. Doing what’s tough, but you do it because you love yourself. And boy do you love yourself after you’ve done what you’ve sat out to do.

Self-love is ‘Look, I know you got a test on Monday, and I know you really want to go out with your friends a Saturday night. But if you fail that test you’re not gonna feel good about yourself. I just I love you too much to let you go out tonight.’ self-discipline is self-love. If you wanna be happy you have to love yourself which means you have to discipline your behavior. The road sustained happiness is through disciplining your behavior.

This January month I’m going to take on a productivity-boosting challenge. Each week focusing in on implementing productivity learnings from a book. My source will be the awesome youtube channel “Productivity Games”, and first out is DEEP WORK.

I’m soo excited about 2019. Just need to take some time outling my focus areas, one thing I’ve leartn from 2018 is that I can’t do it all at the same time!

Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram where things happen too!

CIAO,

/Alex

Forgot to post yesterday. Things got hectic as it was my last day of my 2 week stay back home with my family at Öland. Landed early this morning in Stockholm, and it feels great to be back. 2019 is going to kick the shit out of all the other years combined!

Anyways, early morning tomorrow to make all that come true! Check out my live stream I did a few hours ago if you want more of me… Things got real personal at the end there, after failing to do a structured thoughtful year evaluation.

ALSO, some of my daily fear facing action spontaneously happened after having watched this video I link below. I reached out to two of my old friends to air some emotions I had buried. Have a look, well worth your time. At least it was worth mine.

See you tomorrow, Fear Facer

/Alex

/Alex

Tomorrow I’ve spend two weeks living with my family on the Island I grew up – ÖLAND. It’s been great. But it for sure have tried me at times, family life for sure can be demanding. And my very special relationship to food also has been put to the test. Multiple times. BUT, tomorrow will be my last day, then it’s back to reality.

Although, I almost travelled back to Stockholm a week ago. I missed my Stockholm life, plus I’m way more productive back home. But I forced myself to stay because I know how good it is to get variation in your life. All kinds of variation. Especially environmental changes seem to make most of your regular everyday life get replaced. It relieves you, or forces you, to do things in a different way. A way that makes you experience life in a new way. Objectively good or bad – it doesn’t matter, because on a higher level it’s always good with variation since it leads to new perspectives. At least in my book.

So what’s my point? Well, if this was the case for you as well, act on these new perspectives and insights you’ve got over the Holidays. Decide to make a change if your not satisfied with the way you’re currently living. Put up some 2019 goals, and be serious about pursuing them. Life doesn’t happen to you, you make life happen.

If you have no idea how to go about doing that, here’s a goal setting check list I found that seem’s legit enough to do the trick! Or just write it down on a peace of paper, look at it every day and be sure to constantly check in to see if what you’re doing actually moving you closer to that goal.

https://info.impacttheory.com/resolutions/

Good Luck:)

/Alex

The insight video of the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9XGUpQZY38

This mornings motivational video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRygtVJrelM

2019 is going to be the year I’ve decided to experience so many NEW things. All categories. I firmly believe that breaking your old way of living, variation, change, call it whatever is SO IMPORTANT.
Pushing yourself to try new things will result in new perspectives, experiences and memories. No matter if the new thing you try will result in a good or bad experience. If it’s good then you’ve expanded your way of what brings you joy and happiness in life. And if it’s bad you’ll come to appreciate the things you enjoy even more. And there are many more layers to it.
AND remember, the small things are just as important, if not greater, than the big things. Because if you’ll start adopting the trying-new-small-things-daily-behaviour. You’ll start to embrace a new mindset. And with that comes the potential for real sustainable change.
I’m starting this day out with listening to Chinese Men after a tip from a guy I met at the New Years party yesterday. Totally New sound for me. AND I LOVE IT. What New things are you doing today, tomorrow, this year?

Starting a 30-day-daily-blog-challenge too. Have I ever told you how much I LOVE CHALLENGES? Number one thing that drives my growth.

Friday – And it’s time to look back at the week to reflect, evaluate and grow some!

There’s been a lot of different challenges this week – but the 4 major ones:

• A daily RAOFF challenge ( Random Act Of Fear Facing ) on my 10-minute walk to or from work.

Basically, take a small and quick fear facing action like striking up a conversation with a random person. Proving to myself that all these excuses we have to not practice fear facing are just lack of prioritizing and bad excuses. And FEAR, of course.

How did it go? Well, I did interact with one random person each day. And each time it brought me joy, laughter and proudness. How did that happen? Stockholm people aren’t directly very social and open to socializing with strangers.

Looking back at the interactions, I can see that this outcome is due to me going into them with easiness and good intentions. But perhaps more important – how I chose to react to the whole thing. I didn’t really care about the outcome. It was about daring to do it – a fun little practice and an opportunity to connect with people. Igniting conversations. If it turned out well, well that was a bonus. Actually, two of my interactions got me quite rejected when I think about it. But I still walked away with a great feeling within. A feeling of success!

This has turned out to be such an important mindset I’ve deeply adopted. I still feel fear and anxiety about doing things like these, but since there’s always a good outcome – there’s always a reward for pushing through! I not once bashed down on myself after the interactions. At least nothing that haunted me for more than a brief moment. I laughed and had fun with what just had happened, something that back in the days would have triggered overanalyzing, self-doubt and anxiety.

I recorded my small interactions, so if you’re curious – check out the video on Sunday.

Besides this little week challenge, I’ve continued last week’s challenge of going up 04.30 the latest, spending my two first hours before hitting the gym with planning and strategizing my life. This is like the best thing I’ve ever started doing. It reminds and prepares me to focus on what’s really the most important for me. I don’t start the day off in a reactive way. I take time to ask myself the REALLY important questions, and the follow-up question on how to take me there. Then it’s just a matter of executing that strategy.

“What do you want, and how will you get there?”

Yes, there’s a cost – you need to go to bed early. That has meant less eating and youtube time in the evening. For sure a nice time, but also filled with anxiety. Each evening coming home with an ambition to get some sh*t done, but the lack of willpower after a long workday always leaves me out-of-control eating in front of the computer. So I’m alright with losing out on that time, especially when the upside is a crazy productive time – which is just so much fun!

… And then there are two more challenges this week. But I’ll expand more on these in the Friday Live Stream over at my YouTube Channel later today at 16,30 ( before running off to the yearly Christmas company party ).

• Daring to challenge my relationship to eating is really interesting. Like, challenge myself to only eat at work like I did last week or this week when I wasn’t allowed to eat in front of the computer at home. This fundamentally changed my driving forces for what I wanted to do. Let’s just say that overtime has skyrocketed! Thinking and experimenting with your addictions – like food is to me – can give so much insight.
• Dealing with money loss – my system for translating loss to a debt you have to pay back to yourself. Assigning actions a value. Like a Random Act of Fear Facing could be worth 50 :- for instance. A tough workout push could be worth 15:-. Give you an extra push to do hard things, and it makes your loss worth it!

Have a great day, Fear Facer,

/Alex

What’s up Fear Facer? Bringing some blogging back online. Realised how much easier it is to forget doing my three routines and reflecting about them when I don’t share it publically. But not only forgetting to do them – taking them more seriously and actually prioritizing doing them when I have this social commitment/sharing embedded!

This week I’ve outlined a week challenge, which entails a lot of different details. But the big ones are to do a daily RAoFF  – what’s that you might ask? Well, it’s just me making a thing out of my thing. Random Act of Fear Facing. Check out the end of my last video where I introduced it.  But it’s simple, just coming up with something small that I can do and be done with rather quickly. For me on my walk to work. I just want to prove that time shouldn’t be an excuse for pushing yourself!

Routine #1 – Daily Fear Facing

• workout push – didn’t start out well, so I attributed a value of 10 – if I took it up a notch(!) and made it an intense awesome workout. And here I am, proud as heck for doing just that:)
• Randomly walked up to a woman on my way home and started talking to her. She had a shitty day.  I had a good day. IIt’s so important to not let a rejection get you down – I make sure to gain energy no matter the reaction. At least I try!
• standing my ground and letting my bosses know that I’ve got too much to do and can’t do as much overtime anymore.

Routine #2 – New thing

• pushed me to socialize with two new people at work, started building on new relationships!

Routine #3 – The Daily Fail

• Haha.. misinterpret situation with my boss, I thought he wanted to give me a hug but he just turned around to go to the bathroom.

No time to go into the details of this week’s challenge and my mindset – need to get to work! BUT you can always check out my live stream if you want more details:).

I’ll fill in the routines at the end of the day! [Now updated]

/Alex