For those who can't stop watching self-improvement videos

in December 2022 I started my self-improvement journey by putting my head down and going into something called monk mode it's a season of intensity where you pretty much cut off all distractions you stop hanging out with people you stop going outside and you just work and I did that for nearly a year straight it wasn't like completely a year straight of me being in this period there were I you know I fell off some days and things like that but for most of 2023 I was pretty much alone and just grinding after came out of

that I was a completely different person during this time I completely removed all of my social media from my life and I replaced it with a YouTube addiction now although I stopped using other social media in video games and I was now spending time on YouTube a lot of it I didn't really see it as a bad thing and I still don't see it as a bad thing instead of obsessing over the latest Tik Tok Trend or the fortnite streamer drama I was obsessing over my goals I had new interests in skill sets that I

wanted to develop and drown myself in content to learn imagine that right you're you're this person who is like chronically online you're just a a doom scroller and you're you're always you're always Wasting Time online the first thing you do when you wake up you grab your phone you start scrolling Instagram then you go to like Snapchat then you go to Tik talk you just go through all the apps and then you know your brain is just fried right that was me and I went from like a chronically online guy to being very purposeful and

just obsessed with like business and self-improvement and YouTube and and money and and all these all these things that that was a complete night and day switch for me looking back even though there was a period where I didn't necessarily take action and I didn't really see much progress on the things that I was I was consuming I saw it as a necessary step that I think most people have to go through in order to get to the point of taking action there seems to be this common idea that resurfaces every few months on this

you know self-improvement space on YouTube pretty much is the idea that you should stop watching self-improvement videos because it's a waste of your time and there are a lot of YouTubers self-improvement YouTubers who also make these videos saying self-improvement is ruining your life and then they keep making videos after that about self-improvement but I I digress I see what they're trying to do but like I haven't seen one person go at it in a really good and and realistic way binging self-improvement videos absolutely can be a waste of time and even worse they can make

you feel like you're making progress when you aren't like you're a hamster on a wheel this is what I like to call mental masturbation right so while this is true I'd still argue that self-improvement isn't the problem just like your phone isn't the problem and social media isn't the problem the problem is the way that you interact with those things so in this video I want to talk about a different approach to learning and consumption this is what I do when I'm making my videos this is what I do whenever I want to learn a

new topic that I think will improve my life this is just I think a better more holistic and realistic approach to make it so that you aren't a Mindless consumer let's talk about the levels of awareness there's this quote by Dale Carnegie that I really like and he says when dealing with people remember that you are not dealing with creatures of logic but with creatures of emotion since we are such emotional little kids at the end of the day that means that we're always trying to alleviate the pains that we have if you have studied

business at all you likely know about the concept of the whole product awareness uh Continuum it follows a pattern unaware when you are unaware of the problem problem aware aware that they have a problem but not sure what is causing it or how to solve it solution aware aware that a solution exists but unaware of how to get it product aware aware of a specific or paid solution but either haven't implemented it or are hesitant to purchase most aware aware of the product solution and ready to act on it so whether you realize it or

not you were actually somewhere on this awareness Continuum by watching this video and you're probably closer to number four the farther you are Along on this the more likely you are to take action and try to alleviate your pain by buying a product or a service or just doing the damn thing that you're supposed to do you likees you know not procrastinating how many of you guys are procrastinating by watching this right now so like I said most people who are on self-improvement are likely in the second or third stage maybe the fourth where they

know what the problem is and they're searching the internet for a solution and then you wind up on this video but the moment you become aware of the solution to your problem it's on you to go out there and make it happen but that is much easier said than done it's much easier to say you're still learning than face the vulnerability of taking action and failing so you opt for overc consumption and this is the difference between consuming content for knowledge and consuming content for stimulation why would you go and make a change in your

life when your future self can do it surely the future you will have the willpower to start the essay to read the book to go to the gym even though you don't want to right now you're probably procrastinating right now by watching this video saying that it's productive cuz you're learning something and while that may not be true for this video how much other useless content do you consume on a daily basis do you even remember any of the content that you're consuming on a daily basis well do you remember the last Tik Tok you

watched and the last Instagram really you watched probably not now this mean that you should stop watching self-improving content and stop using social media or anything like that not necessarily like I said I don't think the content is a problem it's just the way that you use it you need to be able to differentiate when you're whether you're consuming for knowledge versus simulation and to do that we need to reinvent your process for learning things learning how to consume properly will help you save hours of your time help you create healthier digital habits and help

you cultivate a more positive self-image through tangible progress the biggest motivator for change is actually progress when you see that you're making progress in something it encourages you to keep going for a roller coaster it's this is a slow climb to the top but once you get to the top then the smooth sailing but most people quit in that early stage where they're not seeing the progress if you've read Atomic habits you don't what I'm talking about he calls this the value of disappointment but before we figure out how to learn we need to talk

about goals because shallow goals will get you shallow results self-improvement has become this thing that people just identify with which is why I'm like hesitant to even call myself a self foran YouTuber anymore it's like a club or like a shared identity that you can just pick up or let go at will but that's not how it works that's just self-improvement for the sake of improvement when there's no purpose behind the things that you're doing you will make no progress everybody wants to have a good routine be more productive and improve their overall quality of

right life right that's kind of what the whole point of all this is but what exactly are you trying to be more productive in what are you improving if you can't answer that question then you probably have shallow goals and that's why you're getting shallow results do you really want to improve in the areas that your favorite self-help Creator tells you to or are you just saying you're on self-improvement so you can set goals that are non-trackable to protect yourself from the pain of failure and this is why you need a clear goal to strive

towards it brings meaning to the things that you do it makes clear the things that aren't meaningful it creates life in every breath with no goal or a shallow goal you will get shallow results with a clear meaningful goal you will give yourself the opportunity to achieve great results a goal will serve as your deadline your standard and a general direction to head towards and the farther you are on the levels of awareness we discussed earlier the more the pain of not living up to your potential will eat away at you this is good eventually

you will get so fed up with the lack of progress you're making that you'll finally take action once I made the decision to finally act towards my goals instead of fantasizing I realized how little of the information I consumed I actually retained most of it had slipped my mind because I had nothing to apply to it at the time and this was a catalyst for changing my approach to learning so I'm going to run through my whole process for learning this is how I learn and this how I think that you should view learning and

content consumption as a whole from this point on learning is done best through doing if you don't have something to apply your knowledge toward your mind will not register as important and then it'll just throw it away any good student knows that practice problems are better in the long run than flash cards you're applying the knowledge rather than just memorizing it without context I wish I had realized this when I was in school but realizing this is what led me to change my process for Learning and creating content but this framework can apply to anything

this can this works if for you whether whether you're a content creator whether you're a student whether you're just a person who's just doing you know doing your thing and you're just like you know on self-improvement right this can help you the problem with most people's approach to learning is that there's no definitive point to stop learning so it usually looks something like this research research research research a little more just to be sure notice how there's no action in there it's like a hamster on a wheel and that's what mindless consumers do my process

completely eliminates the chance of overc consumption by saving the research for when it's needed my Approach is start fail research apply let me break it all down so when you start before you even know what you're doing you will encounter problems very quickly this is good because it allows us to research only what we need to get past the barrier when I'm writing a newsletter I brain D everything that comes to mind about that thing first then I will outline the points that I want to make and then as I start to flesh out my

ideas I will identify gaps in my own knowledge as I'm writing perhaps I can't articulate something as well as I'd like to or I simply write myself into a corner where I don't even know the answer to the problem so I attribute much of my self-development to this approach and I think that having a self-improvement YouTube channel or just a YouTube channel where you just talk about your life you document things in general is a really really good way to level just level yourself up cuz you're sharing what you know and when you teach teach

you learn he who teaches learns I think that's a quote by senica instead of making instead of trying to make the perfect newsletter by just researching what everyone else is writing I'll just write what I already know do my best then when I realize what I don't know the path to find it becomes much more clear I'm not just scouring the internet for random stuff I will know exactly what I need to learn so then comes the research step so after identifying those gaps in my knowledge I will seek to fill those gaps through content

that I've already read and watched and new content that I come cross when I'm outlining a newsletter I will dedicate a section for research where I jot down quotes books articles and videos that come to mind relating to the topic that can help me back up my argument this way when I start writing and I need to research something I don't need to scour the internet for the answer I can just ask my past self what I've already consumed related to that topic if I were to keep on going back and forth from the internet

to my document I would get sidetracked and just go down a YouTube rabbit hole and that would get completely distracted this is what I like to call conscious consumption you need a balance of consumption and action every day if you want to learn and improve so once you have your clear goal and then you take an action and you've identified gaps in your knowledge you should be consuming information related to that goal but if you consume too much you'll encounter the same problem as before you need at least one source of knowledge in a dedicated

time of day to consume it this could be from books lectures courses or even YouTube videos I have a dedicated time of the day for reading I spend about 20 to 40 minutes sometimes an hour a day reading sometimes one book sometimes just many different books I've been recently I've been consuming a lot more from like courses and things but it all just depends on what I'm what I'm looking for at that time if I want to listen to a podcast a lecture or an audiobook I will limit that to only when I'm driving or

maybe on a walk later in the day so limiting my consumption to these times allows me to not overc consume and helps me to be way more conscious and purposeful of what I'm consuming because I have such limited time to do so so the last step in this whole learning framework I'm not guess conscious consumption framework I guess we can call it is to actually apply what you've learned after you've researched so knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing knowledge turns into wisdom through application through self-experimentation through trying it out for yourself just cuz

you know something doesn't mean you truly understand it once you get the information that you need all that is left to do is use it so you need to write the newsletter you need to make the video you need to start the business need to work on the project all you have to do is just do the thing that's all there is at this point just you just do it at this point there's really nothing else for you to do but just to confront the work don't get caught up in all in the whole idea

that you know you're not ready yet and you don't know enough because you never will you will never feel like you know enough you'll always have self-doubts I am a guess you can say I'm a big I don't know what classifies as a big YouTuber I'm supposedly I'm like a decent sized YouTuber Creator and I still have doubts where I'm just like yeah maybe I should just like go over Instagram where it's like maybe I should go be a real estate agent like I just have these like thoughts I just have these like thoughts on

my head where it's like these like limiting beliefs that like don't like serve me like had this idea before that like someone had to shut me down the other day where it's like I want to do like I want to start do doing some like high ticket services and was like I still have like my low ticket stuff but I wanted to do like high ticket services but I had this limiting belief that I like wasn't valuable enough to do like like like very high ticket and he just shut me down he was just like

he was just like no like this is a like this is a limiting belief like you have $100,000 followers like you like you know how to grow on audience so people like you're a leader you people trust you like it's like your own brain isn't even on your side so if you're if you're like sitting here and you're like disagreeing with me cuz and your own brain isn't on your side it's like why why aren't you on your side like I'm on your side you know what I mean and like that guy was on my

side and I wasn't even on my own side right so again you you're never going to feel like you're ready you're never going to feel like you can like you can do the work you never feel like you can start but you just have to you have to accept that you're going to feel that way and then do it any anyways everyone has like stage fright no one like every great writer like they have you know the writer's block but they sit down and write anyways even if it if they think it's bad I record

a video anyways even if I don't feel like it I have a lot of resistance to sitting down and recording these videos I have a lot I it's weird because it's like once I sit down and start doing it then I really enjoy it and then I enter a flow State uh it's just the act of getting started it's like it's it's scary it's nervous like I don't I get all like nervous like I have like I have Goosebumps on my arm literally right now like I'm just I don't know why and I've been doing

this for a year if you're you know be okay with sucking at first and if you can be okay with sucking at first you will allow yourself to perform as good as you are not as good as you let yourself be there's a big difference there again like I understand how hard it can be you're frustrated and you're trying to learn things and your you're like you are trying to make progress like you you aren't doing anything necessarily really wrong you are trying to better yourself you are making progress so give yourself the credit for

that it's just that your approach might might not be working so don't say like oh quit self-improvement even though like just you know self-improvement is like it's just like a word that people throw around don't overthink the word self-improvement it's like don't like quit self-improvement don't say like oh like this is all a scam and this doesn't work and you know I should just stop doing this I should just whatever like don't overthink it you need you need to change your approach for learning things if you're overwhelmed with like being over stimulated take a break

things will become a lot more clear to you so in Islam there's a thing this thing called Ramadan where they fast they fast for um about 30 days and it's not like a complete 30-day but it's like from like Sunrise to Sunset no food or water or or a bunch of other things too when they're in that state things start to become a lot clearer to you because you're I think it's because your body gets weaker and your mind gets weaker and then your ego goes down and then your subconscious mind will start to solve

all those problems in your life so you could think about content the same exact way where if you're overstimulated in just life and in in your work and and everything take some time away you need to take some time away and you need to let things become more clear to you you can you can't you're not going to solve the problem by trying to solve the problem you have to get away from the problem and then not let the S problem solve itself but let your subconscious mind solve the problem if you're too focused on

it like it's like it's like being in a jungle and and you're trying to find your way out you have to climb a tree and then get to the top of the tree and then view it from the outside and then you can see where you need to go you can get back to civilization that is really all for today if you like this video um like it really appreciate it um and also you know a bunch of stuff in the description I'm just going to do all my plugs um check it all just check

check the description you might find something you like but with that being said I think that's all I really had to say for today I actually really enjoyed making this video um especially doing like the rant at the end the last like 5 minutes which just like me just talking out of my head so yeah hopefully you like it it's going to be back yeah I will see you guys next week peace and