6 Steps to Unlock Your Full Potential

hey friends welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is Ali I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur and the author of Feelgood productivity which is about how to do more of what matters to you in a way that's enjoyable meaningful and sustainable but in this video I want to share some insights from another book that I have read this year and that is this incredible book by Lewis house called the greatness mindset unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today bit of a clickbaity title but Lewis House's podcast is called the school of greatness I been on that podcast twice and he has now become a friend of mine which is pretty cool and I read his book slowly over the last 4 months and the reason I wanted to make this video is because there's a bunch of really good in this book but there are six things in particular that I really took away from them and if you apply any one of them to your life you don't have to apply all six but even if you apply any one of them to your life and actually take action on the thing I can basically guarantee that it will change your life change your life is a bit much but like it will it will at least improve the trajectory or the quality of your life and therefore has the potential to maybe change your life so what is this book actually about well it's all about how to be successful and one of the reasons why I love this book is because we all in our own ways want success it's just that we all define success in different ways and what I don't like about some books in the personal development genre is that they tell you a formula for what success means in terms of like you should have lots of money and therefore success means growing a business or you should have this kind of body and therefore success means progress in that direction what I really like about this book is that it doesn't presuppose someone else's definition of success in fact the way he defines greatness is greatness is discovering your unique gifts and talents to pursue your meaningful Mission and make the maximum positive impact on the people around you if you can do that that's probably a life that's pretty successful pretty well lived and pretty great in this context and yeah that's one of the things I like about this book it really encourages you to look within and recognize that within you is the definition of what success means to you rather than someone else's definition but at the same time he does have a really solid framework for how to approach success and greatness given your own definition of it honestly it's a pretty dense read when I first read this I thought I would just Blitz through it cuz you know I I read personal development books for a living and I've read all the books that are on in this genre basically I was like ah it's another self-help book great I'll just Blitz through it but I was not able to Blitz through it because it just has it's got too much stuff in it in a good way it's got too many practical exercises that I felt compelled to actually do it's easy to just sort of not do the thing and just like read through the book and just like oh I'm I'm just reading but you don't really get any value from a book if you read it and you don't actually do the things it's asking you to do cuz leou you know this guy he's interviewed over 1,500 successful people on his podcast and me he's been doing this for 10 years he used to be like a professional athlete he knows people who are rich people who are famous people who are successful in all walks of life and what he's tried to do is distill all of the things that make people great or successful in these areas into a book anyway the first one doesn't take that long to do and that is figure out your GPA and GPA stands for greatness performance assessment yep very clever I know now I've got a link in the video description where you can actually do this quiz if you want to but I'm also going to put it up on screen so as you're watching this video you can mentally do this for yourself and I would encourage you to actually do this because this will literally as you're watching this video just like pause it at the different points actually do this exercise cuz I guarantee it will at least help something in your life now basically the idea here is that he split up life into three different categories which I like um business and career relationships and wellness and the idea is that for each of these statements that I'm about to say you're going to give yourself a score from 1 to 10 one means I completely disagree with the statement and 10 means I completely agree with the statement and I'm going to give you five statements for each of these three categories and I want you to genuinely think about what your score would be and then add your score up and do the thing for each one and I'll I'll give you some time in the edit and then you'll get your GPA score for each of these three categories and I promise it will make a difference to your life like it did for mine so let's start with business and career statement number one I am doing what I love and want to do professionally give it a rating one completely disagree or 10 completely agree number two I am earning the revenue or income I want based on my ability number three my business or professional efforts make an impact on others in a positive way number four I make steady measurable progress towards achieving my business goals and number five I have an intentional plan to grow professionally and financially for the next 3 years and this is what my score looked like when I did this exercise then you add up your score you'll get a score out of 50 so mine would be 39 and then you divide by five to get your GPA so for me that is a 7. 8 on the business and career front but depending on what your answer is and I would encourage you to please just think about an answer to this pause the video and find a number for yourself this is the scale so if you're 2 to 4. 4 you are rebuilding if you are 4.

5 to 5. 9 you're accelerating if you're 6. 0 to 7.

4 you are winning if you are 7. 5 to 8. 9 you are playoff bound and if you're 9 to 10 you are Championship level and you can decide for this area business and career where are you at my score is 7.

8 and so I am playoff bound yes all right next we come to the relationship GPA greatness performance assessment statement number one my family and or partner relationships are healthy fulfilling and where I want them to be number two I regularly engage in Social connection meetups happy hour events ETC number three I invest time and energy in relationships with my family partner friends and colleagues number four I practice honest communication even when the topic is uncomfortable or difficult and number five I have an intentional plan to grow in my relationships for the next 3 years again for each statement you rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 one being completely disagree and 10 being completely agree and these are my results for this then you take your score out of 10 add it up I've got 34 and then you divide by five so you multiply by two and add a decimal points so for me that's 34 * 2 is 68 6. 8 I have a 6. 8 relationship GPA which puts me in the winning category yay and then finally we come to the wellness area and so number one I am physically healthy and exercise regularly two I make mindful nutrition choices regularly three I am a great sleeper and make it a priority four I frequently practice self-care and strategies to optimize my mental health and five I have an intentional plan to better my health for the next 3 years and these are my scores when I did this and so again you add these up up and I add mine to 20 20 divid 5 I just know that that is four and it's not very good 4.

0 4. 0 GPA but that is in the worst column that is in the rebuilding column which was very interesting so what this was for me essentially was a big realization that ooh this bottom question in each of these things I have a plan to grow my business career relationships for the next 3 years I realized I don't really have clear goals around this sort of stuff it's something that since then since reading this book I've read this bit of the book a few months ago I've now developed clearer goals in these are because I now appreciate the value of goal setting in each of these different domains of life but the other big realization for me is that wow my Wellness column I. E Health really sucks and I really need to work on it which is why one of my absolute key goals for 2024 personally is to get into the best shape of my life so after realizing this like oh crap I need to work on my health I read the book outlive by Peter AER I spoke to some friends who I really respect who are into like the health and wellness e type stuff and they gave me some advice I'm continuing my sessions with my fitness coach Dan go you should check out his YouTube channel it's absolutely sick and actually one of been traveling on this digital Nomad Adventure I've actually been making the time to work out a lot more than I used to and trying my best to get in my 10,000 steps a day and all of this was a direct results of just doing this little GPA assessment on my life and realizing oh crap the health category really needs some work and so this is a pretty quick thing and I would love to know in the comments what is your GPA from each of these three areas of life and what is one action point that you are going to take as a result please I beg of you if you're at this point in the video If You Vibe with any of my stuff like we all like reading this these books and stuff but like there is no value in reading the thing if you're not going to take action on the thing and so this is a chance fee to take action please put in the comments down below what is your GPA in each of these three areas of life and if you like I've got a link to the proper quiz down below if you want to check it out for whatever reason now if you happen to be looking for another source to add greatness to your life then you might like to check out the sponsor of this video which is brilliant brilliant is the absolute best way to learn maths or data science or computer science in an engaging and interactive fashion I've been using brilliant for the last 4 years now and they've been a suppor of the channel for that long so thank you brilliant and it's a really fun learning platform they've got thousands of lessons all the way away from basic to Advanced topics and they add new lessons in every single month recently they've added a really good course about how large language models work so you can understand the science and the tech behind things like chat jpt for example now my personal favorite courses on brilliant as you might know if you've been following the channel for any length of time are the computer science ones because as you might know when I was initially applying to medical school I was kind of torn between medical school and computer science and I decided to go for medicine in the end and I don't regret that but there was always a part of me that was like uh you know I really want to understand the computer stuff so brilliant courses on you know the fundamentals of data and algorithms and python have been super helpful in helping me understand a little bit more of the nuts and bols of computer science but in a way that's really engaging and not at all boring and even if you're not like specifically interested in programming they've got a really good course called thinking in code which is great for helping you learn the principles of coding but it sort of helps you apply them in a real world way and actually helps level up your thinking just generally whatever your skill level brilliant customizes the content that you get based on your skill level and so you take a quick quiz when you sign up and it sort of figures out what courses and lessons it would recommend for you based on your previous experience and so if any of this sounds up your street then you can head over to brilliant.

org Al abdal or you can hit the link in the video description and that link will give you a totally free 30-day trial so you can check out brilliant and see if it Vibes with you and if you happen to be one of the first 200 people to hit the link in this video then you will also get 20% off the annual premium subscription to brilliant so thank you so much brilliant for sponsoring this video and let's move on okay next big key idea is a meaningful Mission his whole thesis in the book based on having interviewed 1500 really successful people and me from all walks of life is that the biggest barrier to Greatness to success is not having a meaningful mission that you are working towards and this was a really big takeaway from me from this book because it's recently in the last few months that I really started to appreciate the value of having a meaningful Mission the value of having goals the value of having a sort of north star or destination that you're keeping in mind because to again to quote Earl Nightingale for example success is where simply you figure out what you want and you are taking steps to move in that direction and what of the big lessons I've taken away for myself over the last several years is there have been so few instances where I've really known what I wanted but in the areas of life where I have known what I wanted like when I have had clear goals for my business amazing things have happened but I haven't really had a clear sense of what what are my goals for health I've had a little bit of a sense of what are my goals for relationships but you know not in my relationships with friends and this broader thing of a meaningful mission to work towards I think is a ridiculously powerful Insight that if you figure this out for yourself then again it it it can genuinely change the course of your life and one of the quotes from the book here is that most people struggle to have a big vision for the future because they focus on how it can be done instead of why they want to do it once you're clear on your why the how takes care of itself here's another quote Katie Milkman award-winning behavioral scientist and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania describes the essence of greatness as being clear on your purpose or Mission so that it serves as your North Star she told me that when someone has that clear North Star and has built their life to support and quote lean towards it in all aspects she feels like she is in the presence of greatness that's why when you get clear on your mission you can start structuring everything else around it and live a more intentional life no matter the mechanism you choose and so I would ask you right now like to what extent do you feel you have a meaningful mission to what extent do you know roughly the direction that you're heading in life to what extent do you have a destination on the horizon that you are actively taking steps to work towards to what extent is that destination written down somewhere and if you're like most people and including me if you're like me a few months ago you probably don't may not have a sense of what is your meaningful Mission like why are you here what's the point of all this work and stuff that you're doing and so in the book he's got a bunch of different exercises and kind of journaling prompts that you can do to try and help figure this out for yourself and one thing I would say is that it's not about once I have decided it's like that's the thing and it's never going to change I think a lot of people set to put too much weight on something like a meaningful Mission and it sounds a little bit like grandio terminology but the thing with setting goals and setting directions and setting a North star is you can always change it but it's much easier to steer a moving ship than a stationary ship and if you feel as if you're making progress towards something that really matters to you which is something I talk about in my book if you really feel like you're making progress on that thing that matters to you you will feel really successful you'll feel really happy this idea of it's not about the pursuit of happiness it's the happiness of pursuit there is so much happiness in pursuing a thing that is Meaningful to you but that doesn't mean you have to be stuck with that forever you can absolutely change your mind and so here are some things you can think about about to try and figure out what is your meaningful Mission ask yourself if money were no longer an issue what would I do what would light me up every day be careful that the choices that drive your mission aren't fueled solely by wanting more money because it won't last and there's this other framework that he talks about the 3ps which is kind of fun it's passion power and problem if you can think about these three PS they'll give you some kind of sense of what is your meaningful Mission so passion your meaningful Mission starts where your heart is and so here are some questions you might like to ask yourself what lights you up what makes you want to jump out of bed if money want No Object what would you love to do what would you do all day every day even if you didn't get paid to do it what causes and experiences excite you next we have power which is in fact the second chapter of my book as well it's called Power which is basically about playing to your strengths generally your meaningful Mission will be something you're excited about but also something that you feel you are good at and so with a power category ask yourself what are my strengths what am I actually good at what would other people say that I'm good at that I might not admit to myself what are some things that I found effortless to do in the past that seem that seem to have been really hard for other people what's something I've spent a lot of time building the skill towards generally if your meaningful Mission involves using some sort of power that you have that's going to feel good which is when I talk about as well I'm going to stop plugging my own book it's going to feel good and it's also going to make it feel way more meaningful and way more intrinsically motivating for you to do the thing and then we have problem which is usually someone's meaningful mission is involves identifying some sort of problem that they can help solve so for me my meaningful mission is to help people build a life they love and the problem I'm trying to solve is a lot of people are living lives they don't don't love and I want to be someone who can contribute towards that in some small Way by helping surface insights from really cool books and academics and research and my own experience and stuff and I want to be able to surface the insights and actionable takeaways that people can use to genuinely build a life they love that to me hits passion because I love this it power because I think I'm good at reading this sort of stuff and making videos about it and it's a problem because I think it's gen it's genuinely a problem that there are so many people on this Earth that are living lives lives they don't love and I think actually if people knew more about the field of personal development and self-help and stuff there's so much in here that can really help change people's lives so what is that meaningful mission for you you're probably not going to get it in one go probably going to need to think about it a little bit but I would encourage you to at least have a rough first draft and so if you really want to do the homework from this video underneath your GPA maybe you can edit your comment down below I'd love to hear what is your meaningful mission that you're working towards what is that thing that you can have as a North star to kind of guide the direction that you're going and there's another really nice quote from this chapter which is grasp your mission securely but hold the mechanism loosely don't let the how stop you from focusing on and pursuing your why your mission should be something that you're working towards but like you don't want to be too attached to how you're getting there and you also don't want to be too attached to when you're getting there my meaningful mission is to help people build a life they love I am not attached to making YouTube videos I'm not attached to writing books and another plug I'm not attached to doing podcasts I'm not attached to the mechanism I am somewhat trying to hold securely the fact that my goal here is to help people build a life they love and the mechanism will take care of itself over time okay key Point number three that I took away from this book was that this was a great reminder for me to write my own obituary this is one of the exercises and this thing around how to figure out your meaningful Mission and so here are some questions you might want to use to craft your own obituary and I'm going to share what mine is with you is going to be a bit much but like I'm going to share it in this video anyway cuz why not my job here is to share stuff that helps people build a life de love and if someone can read mine and be inspired by it or can like decide to write your own obit it's super helpful it's a helpful way of trying to figure out like what is this North Star of mine like what is this thing I'm actually working towards so the prompts that he has in the book is number one how long do you want to live number two what meaningful Mission did you accomplish before you died number three when asked what do people say is your legacy or your most outstanding achievement number four what do your loved ones say at your funeral so we're going to write our own obituary and I'm going to bring up mine and I will tell you what I wrote after reading this in the book and deciding you know what I'm actually just going to do this Ali abdal was one of the world's greatest teachers he inspired and educated Millions all around the world to build a life they truly love he holistically combined disciplines from science to philosophy to create an integrated system system of living themed around mind body heart and soul which resonated with his loyal following of tens of millions of people all around the world in his personal life Ali exemplified and lived his philosophy he was disarmingly intelligent yet always humble LOL and never made you feel less than when you talked to him you really felt like you were the most important person in the world and that he was relating to you in mind Heart and Soul at the same time he didn't take himself too seriously he knew his work could be Heavy but he approached it with a lightness and ease that made it accessible and that inspired people to believe they could change their lives too but throughout all the success he had flying around the world sharing his message Ali's priority was always his family he remained closely connected to his wife his children and his grandchildren up until the moment of his death he died peacefully in their adelic family home surrounded by loved ones we all mourned him but his message lives on inside of us and inspires us to live an integrated connected and productive life yeah there we go that's the obituary that I wrote out for myself again not wed to it but it as a pretty reasonable North Star for at this point in my life where do I feel I want to go and when I read that out I cringe a little bit inside but actually not too much and so I would encourage you if you Vibe with this consider writing your own obituary doesn't take very long it's just a rough first draft you can always redo it later but it's quite helpful to see at this stage in your life where do you think you might like to be when you're dead and what might you like people to write about you once once you have passed from this from this plane of existence okay key idea number four is something called the PDI or the Perfect Day inventory now I do variations of this exercise I do it as like an ideal week but basically what Louis is advising us to do in the book which is a good idea is to craft your perfect day in this exercise your job is to map out what your perfect day looks like along the path to achieving your vision I. E your meaningful Mission we'll start at the macro level by asking ourselves a series of questions how do you want every day to look how do you want to feel every single day what are you creating daily who are you with what places are you exposing yourself to in a non-weird way what passions are you fulfilling and the ideas that you want to take out a blank piece of paper and you want to sort of write down you know answers to these questions and figure out like okay what would my actual perfect day look like and then you want to write out a very detailed itinerary of what that day looks like like what time do you wake up what time do you go to sleep what time are you working what sort of work are you do doing when are you working out when are you meditating what time are you hanging out with loved ones what is all of that kind of stuff going on now I do this exercise quite a lot anyway so I vibed with this thing because it's confirmation bias to what I already do I like to do this but like extended for a week to figure out like what is my ideal week because like I don't really know what my ideal day looks like but I know that every week I want to have like two date nights and I want to see friends like twice a week but it might not all be on the same day so you know you can take it as a day you can take it as a week you can take it as whatever you want and one of the things as you'll probably gather from this video is such a huge part of success or greatness or whatever you want to call it is in figuring out what the hell do you actually want because all of us want different things and if you don't consciously decide what you want then Society will decide what you want and other people will decide what you want and you'll just end up living life just sort of drifting along and like not actually vibing with what you authentically want for yourself which is why all of these exercises and all these prompts and all these things are designed to help us figure out the answer to that really hard question which is what the hell do you actually want okay skipping ahead we now come to key idea number five that I very much vibed with and that is fear of judgment all right so there's a few key ideas from this judgment section one is a quote from Robin Sharma which is a bad day for the ego is a good day for the soul I Vibe with this this is good stuff another thing he talks about in this chapter which I Vibe with is that we can move past you know we all have this fear of judgment right we all have this fear that other people will laugh at us or other people will like ridicule us or think less of us but one of the ways that you can move past the worry about what other people will think of you is by not focusing on the self and instead focusing on how you can serve other people and this is an attitude that I've really taken with this YouTube channel which is that initially when I was first first making videos I was kind of like uh scared scared to write blog posts scared to like I don't know put myself out there on YouTube and stuff but reading Austin cleon's book show your work in 2016 really helped me realize that actually the reason I'm writing blog posts and making videos and writing my weekly email newsletter which you which you can check out at ear.