Transcription
If the "hustle and then will come" type of culture got to you, you know the kind of story where people talk about a hike in a million followers in two weeks or how I made seven figures in the year, makes you feel horrible and beating yourself up. You know, you want to make a change, but then it's really hard to do the things that you know you should, and then you're back to the vicious cycle of beating yourself up over and over again. Then this video is for you, because I was there. I spent years spinning the same circle, trying to make a change in my life and then watching others who are no smarter than me moving forward in life and achieving everything else that they want. I always wondered why that was until I realized something that helped to make everything click into place.
I went from twice unemployed to eventually working at Google and then eventually running my own business, which also now includes creating videos on this YouTube channel. And everything that I've done to this point feels almost unrecognizable to the person I was. And somehow, I turned my life around. Here were those shifts I made in my life. I'm going to walk you through each one of those so you can start accelerating your transformation and stop spinning in the same spot like I did. And this is not a video about achieving success overnight. It's about building a foundation for a new and better you that you think you deserve. So let's get to it.
When you were little kids, you probably got told by your parents and those around you that life is just the way it is. You learn to live within the constraints of it, isn't it? So then you artificially create a ceiling in your head, that this is as high as you can go. And I was exactly like that. I thought I would be only working my 9 to 5, even though many times I was working beyond my hours, 9 to 5 and often on the weekends. I thought that sleep deprivation, having Monday blues, was just part of being a drone—I mean, to just suck it up and get used to it. And I think when the biggest transformations came in my life, I realized that I was so much more than I could achieve. I was living within the very limits of a version of me. I could demand more and a better life because everything is possible. I think we can all design an ideal life that we're excited to wake up for, rather than every morning waking up and hitting the snooze button, finding more time.
It really all started with very insignificant changes and small things. I was tweaking on an everyday basis that eventually led to a massive change years later. And this really brought to mind this really interesting theory called the Butterfly Effect, which was coined by Professor Lorenz at MIT. He talks about this effect in nature, where very insignificant small changes, like a butterfly flapping its wings, can cause a tornado on the other side of the world. So in a very complex system like nature, very small changes can lead to massive effects in the future.
There were so many things along my journey that helped me to take those insignificant, tiny changes alongside everything that I was doing. So, for example, listening to inspiring audiobooks, listening to podcasts, attending events that inspired me. And I remember the first time I attended a Tony Robbins event all the way back in the early 2010s, and listening to all the different ways I could start taking action on the things I'd been planning on for years and months. And then also moving on to reading "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Tim Ferriss, who completely transformed the way I think about how we can spend time effectively working on things that help to move the needle in our career and our businesses. So think back to yourself, or some of the preexisting beliefs you were told when you were little, and that you should no longer believe in, and how you can challenge those beliefs to think differently going forward, because that's going to be the seed of everything—not every single change you have in your life going forward. And I guarantee you on that one.
The other shift that helped me to make a massive change in what I do is trying to learn to get a high-income job, learning a high-income skill instead. Growing up in a household where money wasn't exactly abundant, my parents taught me to think about how to get the highest income job. The money you can get paid in a high-income job is finite, whereas a high-income skill is infinitely more profitable in the long term. So learning digital marketing when I was laid off twice during the global financial crisis was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. The digital world was just starting to take shape. And I remember the day when the iPhone launched. When I realized that this was going to be such a huge opportunity by having these little devices in everyone's pockets, the world's attention was going to shift online, especially as we're carrying these every single day. A couple of years later, of literally daily taking my time to learn as much as I could in the space I found myself in—so calling recruiters, trying to get a job, interviewing—the doors opened. I was invited to go to Google and work there instead. And after Google, I spotted the opportunity that there were many businesses out there who needed advice on digital marketing. So I launched my business, and right now there are so many potential high-income skills that you can develop: digital marketing, coding, data analytics, A.I.—these are all areas that you can start honing your expertise on, and you'll be able to carve out a future for yourself as long as you stay interested, seeing the curve and start developing those new skills and get ready to pivot and change with the times. Because reinvention of yourself is part of the process. I never believed that you're going to be pigeonholing yourself into a specific area or industry because that's just not true, and never believe what others are saying because it's never too late. And we see this with people like Taylor Swift, who constantly reinvents herself in the process, and that makes her staying current with the times, and also becoming one of the most successful female artists of all time.
So think about yourself in the moment. What is one high-income skill that you're interested in developing? Write that down and start looking for resources online to help you build that new skill and learn a little bit every single day. Because you'll be surprised how much that adds up to over time. As we've all seen this with the way that James Clear talks about this and the way Tommy has. It's just 1% a day, every single day, means to become 37 times better in a year. So imagine where you'll be in ten years' time from here.
And this brings me to the third point, which is how we should all embrace deep work. I think the ability to stay focused in a very distracted world is definitely a superpower. We're going to remember that we're living in one of the biggest social experiments of all time with all these devices and distractions around us, constantly around the clock. I remember the time when I could barely get through a page of reading a physical book, but yet I can scroll through Instagram for an hour. But you've got to remember that the ability to deep work is probably one of the most important skills in the modern economy, because by using deep work, you can create the high-quality stuff, the outputs that puts you in the top 1%. That also allows for achieving the biggest goals in your life. And I realized that I'm able to create the best videos on this channel, write the best keynote talks, create the best training materials for my students when I'm able to stay focused and not be distracted by everything else around me. And I came across this in Cal Newport's book, "Deep Work," where he shares ideas on how you can train your focus like a muscle and expand your mental capacity over time. So I learned to build an environment that's distraction-free, that allows me to stay focused and start working on my most important task first thing in the morning. I'd rather block out 3 hours of deep work to get those things done than working 8 hours in the day, throughout the day, where I'm highly distracted and actually don't get anything done at all.
But that also brings me to this next point, which is every single thing that we say we need to do really comes down to self-control, discipline. But you really know this. You know that you need to do this. There's a reason why you clicked on this video because you know that there's something you need to change in your life. I think one of the best ways to do this is to build that discipline and self-control in our daily habits and routines. If you think about it right, your life is made up of micro-moments every single day. How you get up in the morning, how you show up at work, how you show up with your family. And every single moment helps you embrace those habits, enabling you to embrace your best self, your most authentic self, and your goals. And this was set to go all in. You ignore all distractions in order to get you there. And it's hard—almost seems easy because I find it really hard to fight against distractions and thoughts that are causing me to go in the opposite direction. And I find that the human mind doesn't always want to listen to what we want to do, and it's just part of how we are. And it's one of those things where I realize also we're living in a system, in hardware, that's been designed for the prehistoric ages, but yet we're expected to have the same results and cream the same outcome of, having much different stakes now in the modern economy.
So in order to help me stick to my own self-control and discipline, I think that an idea that I really embraced, which is the keystone habit, really helped me. And I learned this from several individuals who are well known in the positivity space, like Charles Duhigg, who wrote about "The Power of Habit," and also James Clear, who wrote about this in "Atomic Habits," and they all shared that there are certain habits that lead to a cascade of other actions because of them. So, for example, James mentioned this where a lot of people who work out can relate that when you work out, which is your keystone habit, you then start eating better because you don't want to ruin all the hard work you did in the gym, and then you end up sleeping better on the back of that. And from there you will end up waking up with a lot more energy, doing better work, and creating much better output on the back of that. So in his case, because he woke up with a lot more energy and concentration, he wrote a much better book because of it, and it contributed to better work over time. So I feel the same way because when I get into a keystone habit of, let's say in this case working out first in the morning, I do a much better two or three hours of high-quality work rather than, let's say I don't go work out and then I try to go through 8 hours in the day of constantly being distracted, multi-tasking with low energy, and feeling horrible by the end of it because I haven't got much done. And I really think that keystone habit was the key to how I was able to start producing much more higher-quality output and then be able to achieve my big goals because of it. So I think this keystone habit can really help you set your life and the rest of your day in a much better place because of that. I feel like a lot of times it sounds trivial, but it is actually the center of everything, the foundation of it all, to really make that initial change in your life. So think about what your keystone habit could be. Is there anything you feel like that one tiny habit can make this cascade of changes in the rest of your day and the rest of your life, and how you can start incorporating that more into what you do on a daily basis?
And the other part that I think really helped to help me stick to what I want to do over time is by making it fun and also accountable to other people who have similar goals to me, who help to lift me higher. I mean, it sounds so cliche by this point, but you are the five people that you surround yourself with on a regular basis, and who you hang out with really helps you to stick with that habit or changes that you want to make in your life because you're all accountable to each other and you're trying to achieve the same thing. Like this YouTube channel, which is a great example. When I started creating videos, which is those early days, when you start posting videos and you get zero views, no one cares about them. And you can then go into a group like this where you're getting their feedback on your videos. You come to conversations with others about how they're doing things, and when you have accountability like this, and also people who make it fun and engaging, making you feel like you're part of the community, it makes it a lot easier for you to stick to that habit. So it really got me through those days when I felt demotivated. I almost stopped posting videos because it just wasn't going anywhere. And these people lifted me higher. They gave me that motivation to keep going and to persist no matter what, because we're all going for the same thing. We're all working towards the same goals, and I think that's exactly the reason why, in everything you do, every little change, whether it's in your career, in your business, whether it's something you want to stick to as a healthy habit in your life, have someone around you or a group of people around you that also share that same vision. And I guarantee you it's going to be a lot more fun, but at the same time also allowing you to stick to that habit much more in the long term and then be able to see that result over time.
Thank you so much for sticking with me to the end. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you liked this video, I think you might also enjoy this one where it's all about my top seven life lessons I wish I knew earlier. Also, don't forget to subscribe and hit the notification button to get notified every time I release a new video. And lastly, I have this weekly newsletter that I think you might also enjoy, which I'll share some of my personal growth inspirations and tips with my audience on a weekly basis. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. There is no overnight success, only over time success.