Sunday was a relaxing, didactic, edifying type of day. Saturday was all bout doing doing doing. Sunday was about thinking and primarily learning.
I didn't do any of my normal morning routine, but instead read The Leadership Dojo for a good while. I like where the book is headed. It's similar to the Diamond Cutter in that it takes this combination of Eastern and Western traditions when creating this unique take on leading your life. It also is similar to Mahavakya on Leadership as it posits that character (in Mahavakya) and the self are perhaps the most important in being an exemplary leader. That self-cultivating process as the book calls it. Shugyo in Chinese. There was an interesting example in the book about a situation for how exemplary leadership can be inculcated. There is a role play of someone being a manager and someone the employee. The 'manager' grabs the 'employee' and tells something like 'hey, we need that report in first thing tomorrow morning,' or 'this needs to get done before EOD tomorrow.' That situation and firm touch is supposed to simulate what it would be like in an actual pressure-packed scenario. The employee will have a certain reaction with both of those stimuli. That conditioned tendency is what you're trying to draw out in the role play. That way, everyone becomes more aware of what it is and how to react positively and how an exemplary leader would. The manager or any coworker won't actually touch you in the actual office setting but being prepared sensory wise multidimensionally will help you react with confidence, decisiveness, alertness and awareness. I think as I continue reading this book, there will be things I can bring to 2U gradually as well. Let's see.
After that, I went for a walk around the neighborhood a couple times, listening tot he Part 2 video of the Kathopanishad talk. He's going line by line, giving detailed descriptions of what each word means as well as the overall story line, so it's a helpful understanding that is being conveyed.
Then when I returned to the house I started to listen to some bhajans. So I walked through the driveway straight to the backyard. At the same time, lil Cole was also exiting the backyard door. He didn't see me initially. I definitely could have continued my streak of scaring the kid if I just remained silent and got close enough to him. But I'd already done that a few times in the past couple weeks so I didn't want to plant that imprint of me scaring him that could surface as something else for him in the future. So when I saw him, I just saw disarmingly 'Hey Cole, what's up!'
After that, showered, got lunch and ate while I saw Robin Sharma's 5 AM Club Method Elite course. It has the same 6 videos as the basic course plus 4 additional in-depth ones. So went through 2 of those 4 so far.
Mom video called towards the end of lunch and showed me a lot of the cards that I and my brother had written when we were in elementary school. Frickin' hilarious reading what I wrote as a kid. Hadn't had a belly laugh like that in a solid minute! One of them I wrote an acrostic poem or something and at the bottom, signed it 'Sai, Awesome Son' lmaoo!
Then finished up the website, officially launched it after updating to make it more mobile-reactive as well as transferring the subscriber list / automations.
Played FIFA for a couple games - got promoted from Div 10 to Div 9. Won all 4 games yesterday. Worked out, meditated, and finished the evening finding new sustainable design and architecture podcasts that I wanted to follow. So I listened to an episode and continued reading The Leadership Dojo.
I went to sleep at about 10:15 and I said "I will wake up around 4:20 after getting 4.5 - 6 hours of sleep and feel fresh, energized and ready to go." Woke up at exactly 4:25, so continuing to consciously manifest my reality.
This past week is probably the most consistent week of the year I've had with thinking, learning, and doing. I've raised my own bar and what my floor is. So let's continue that momentum in this week, which will be a big week professionally with Discovery Day this week.
Just every now and then continuing to remind myself how I want my content to be distinct from all the others out there. One thought yesterday regarding this is for my podcast, since I want people to actually think and not just talk, do I make it required (or at least exhort them) to take 5-10 seconds to gather their thoughts before they start talking? Could sound well in practice but awk in a podcast - who knows. Only way to find out is by trying it. But no rush to get guests on cuz once I do, I basically can't stop having them on. So it'll be something else that I must invest my time and energy into. Oh, maybe to help with that is I ask the guest a couple of names for me to reach out to (or for them to introduce me to) to have on in future podcast episode. I also like that I got the lav mics to test being outside and walking and talking so that could be another distinguishing factor along with the Ice Bath idea I had that I talked about on one of my previous podcast episodes. I relish that I'm able to experiment and discover myself and find various ways to differentiate what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. Putting out so much content with a limited audience - I'm proving to myself that I don't need a big audience to continue to share my story. Building that brand equity. There's no rush cuz it's all about the long game. I have an intuition that it'll continue to be like this for a bit until 'I'm ready' for the next step. Then someone of note will discover what I'm doing and want to help share that story. That's when shit will start to get real and take off. But until then, let's continue doing what I'm doing!
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