Using “I am” to Refocus
There’s a huge gap between my younger sister and I, 11 years to be exact. I’ve shared with her plenty of things that I learned and she has picked up on some of my habits (good and bad). Recently she’s challenged me. . . honestly we challenged each other on who could stay up the longest. Childish for my age (25) but a fun way to connect with my younger sister. The bet was who could stay up the longest starting from 10pm.
During the challenge I was graced with a penalty free nap period of 1 hour and 30 minutes because I came down with a headache. After my penalty free nap I woke up around 2am, then didn’t go back to sleep until 5:30pm of that day. I won the challenge but my sleep cycle was ruined.
I also had a project that needed to be wrapped up prior to the next day. Here I was at 1am wired and awake. I don’t have the best emotional connection with doing work late. If I was going to be up, I told myself I might as well do the work. At 2:15am I booted my desktop and got going. The first hour felt like a drag then I check on YouTube for a video to listen to while I worked and there was something magical waiting for me.
I know the title is 1000% Clickbait and it seemed so absurd. But it’s 3am and I’m doing work on Illustrator, fxck it! After adjusting to the monotone voice, the message in the video started to resonate with me. This piece was all about using your thoughts to alter yourself and environment. A concept I’m familiar with and I definitely needed a refresher.
During the lecture the speaker talks about using “I am” statements every hour to remind yourself of what state you want to be in. I took this time as an opportunity to practice just that. I begin repeating several I am phrases as I progressed through my work. It turned from a drag into a fun experience. The inspiration lead me to taking a walk outside at 4am. I know I’m cracked-out for that 😂. But in that moment of inspiration and 4am silence, my “I am”s took me down a powerful worldwind of ideas. I developed a skeleton game plan for my financial achievements and for my ideal life. Whenever I got off track or felt an ounce of doubt pop up about my plan. I sprinkled in that powerful “I am”.
Once I returned inside I completed the work for my client and even added some extra ideas to the product. My mind was flowing. I do some more additional activities on my desktop then head to the bed at around 6:30am. I am victorious!
I’m getting ready to close my eyes to take things back down and I check my email. I see that a writer I follow on Medium just posted another article. I check their profile and realize they’ve been writing stories everyday. I stop for a moment and tell myself I am writer too. And this was how this piece was formed. I don’t know how many hours of sleep I got over the last few days but I don’t care 🤷🏾♂️. I’m whatever I choose to be in the moment!
Time to get some rest.
Check out my portfolio — ericwrightjr.com and my digital product site galacticla.com. I’m building out some fire tools. The site is not done but I love testing in public. I created both websites using Notion + Super.so (tutorial coming soon). Peace ✌🏾 and love 🤎🖤.