HOW YOUTUBE CHANGED MY LIFE *in 4 months*｜my youtube story and advice for getting started

I started this YouTube channel a little over 4 months ago and 4 months later I can honestly say that it has changed my life here's how what is up YouTube Welcome to another video if you are new here hi my name is reys it is so nice to have you here and if you are not new here and have seen some of my other videos thank you so much for coming back to my channel and clicking on this one today's video is going to be a little bit different than what I usually talk about which

is Fitness and Nutrition because today I'm going to be talking to you about my journey so far here on YouTube the reason that I decided to film this video now is because the day that this video comes out is actually the day after my college graduation ceremony basically my life is about to start changing really rapidly and it pretty much marks the end of a 4-month period where I've had a lot more time on my hands to be able to devote to YouTube and devote to content creation this has been a project that I've really

worked hard and dedicated myself to for these past 4 months and now that that time is coming to an end it feels right to kind of have some sort of Milestone marker if you will I didn't really think I would be doing a video like this this early on but looking back to January when I posted my first video I had no idea the impact that it would have on my life in such a short amount of time I kind of broke this video up into three different sections section one is going to be about

why I chose to do YouTube in the first place and my journey to starting this channel section two is going to be about the four ways that YouTube has changed my life in just a little over 4 months and section three is going to be about the future and where I'm going from here so without further Ado let's get into it so why YouTube and why did I start this channel I feel like a lot of creators say this but I have actually been wanting to start a YouTube channel for a very long time the

first time that I actually considered doing YouTube was when I was years old and I actually did start filming a first video I had the idea to start a channel then because at this point in my life I had just recovered from an eating disorder that I had been struggling with during 8th grade and during my freshman year of high school I had this feeling that I went through what I did for a reason and that reason was to help other people not have to go through what I did I learned so much from that

really hard time in my life and I felt like I had something to say I think it's good that I didn't start a channel then because because I had no idea how far I still had to go and over the years as I've continued to heue my relationship with my body and with food and exercise I think I've learned so much more and that mission has evolved and strengthened into what it is today and what I preach on my channel now another goal with starting this channel was that I wanted to challenge myself to get

outside my comfort zone and do something that I never thought I could do and this channel has definitely been out of my comfort Zone I honestly still get nervous every single time that I turn the camera on even though there's no one else in the room and I'm literally just talking to a camera I was so scared of starting for so long because I just thought I would fail I thought I would maybe upload one video and then get scared and back out or make excuses and decide that I'm too busy I would announce that

I was starting it and then it just wouldn't go anywhere and everyone would judge me for it then at the beginning of this year I decided that I was tired of waiting around until I felt comfortable enough or confident enough to start making videos so I just decided to take the leap of faith and just do it one thing that helped me a lot in the beginning was Ali abdallah's advice that was in one of his videos I can't remember which one but he has a ton of videos that are great resources for new creators

if you are looking to start or grow your YouTube channel I will link his channel down in the description below but I remember him saying in one of his videos something that really stuck with me which is that your first 50 videos are going to suck and that that's okay because your first 50 videos don't matter almost no one is seeing those videos those first 50 videos aren't about trying to get views or get subscribers they are just for you for learning how to do YouTube how to film how to talk to a camera how

to edit this piece of advice has honestly helped me so much because there are so many times where I'm sitting there editing a video or I'm even sitting there talking to the camera trying to film film a video and I just get super down on myself because I feel like this just completely sucks no one's going to want to watch this no one wants to see this I don't even want to keep watching this and so in those moments I just remind myself that it doesn't matter if it sucks because it's not about trying to

make this video Perfect it's about me learning and me learning how to make videos like I said he has a lot of other great advice so go and check out his channel if you do want to see it I highly highly recommend so that is one piece of advice advice I have for people who are looking to start a Channel or who are just starting their channel do not worry if you feel like your first videos suck because they probably will and at the end of the day it doesn't matter those first 50 are just

for you to get your feet wet and to just start so now let's get into part two of this video which is the four ways that YouTube has changed my life in the 4 months since I have started this channel the first major thing that this channel has given me is com confidence I will say nothing gives you confidence than doing something that you truly did not think you were going to be able to do when I started this Channel at the beginning of January I made a commitment to myself that I was going to

upload one video every single week and honestly when I set that goal I was not totally sure if I was going to be able to do that I didn't know if I was going to have enough ideas if I was going to have enough time if I was going to be able to figure out how to edit my videos I was truly starting from square one I didn't know know how to do anything in an effort to commit myself even more to this I bribed Myself by telling myself that I made it to 20 videos

of consecutively uploading every week then I would buy myself camera and since I posted that first video on January 9th I haven't missed a single week it definitely hasn't been easy there have been weeks where I've had to make sacrifices in order to make sure that the video gets finished and is uploaded before the next Tuesday I've also traveled a good amount in the past couple of months so I had to make sure that I was planning ahead of time and scheduling when to film videos and when I was going to be able to edit

them in order to make sure that I was still uploading on my weekly basis and somehow I've found a way to fit it in despite the traveling despite my other part-time job social things with my friends and studying to be a personal trainer and what this whole experience has taught me is that if I set my mind to something I can do hard things even things that previously seemed impossible to me I never thought I would be sitting here today able to say that I have uploaded a YouTube video every single week for 4 months

but here I am it's not only given me confidence in myself and my abilities but it's also given me confidence in who I am as a person and the value that I can bring to others yes I only have 160 subscribers which does not seem like a lot and in the grand scheme of things probably isn't but I still see that as 160 people who see value in who I am and what I'm doing enough to hit that subscribe button and that alone just means the absolute the world to me I would also like to

point out that this is video number 20 and I did order that camera last night the second way that this channel has changed my life is that it has re-sparked my creativity as a kid I loved creating things the first two things that I always said I wanted to be when I grew up were an author and an interior designer but then as I got older and moved up in grades in school and high school in college I began to focus so much more on my academics that it kind of overshadow shadowed any sort of

creative Hobbies or passions that I may have had before a couple years ago I even started saying that I wasn't a creative person and I wasn't creative that was actually one of the fears I had and one of the things stopping me from starting this channel was I was afraid that I just wasn't creative enough and I wasn't going to be able to come up with enough ideas to make videos about or have enough things to talk about but just doing it and starting has really begun to bring back that creative side of myself that

I feel like has kind of just been lying dormant for a long time I feel like I've had this creative hole in me for a while and YouTube has really started filling it again and all of it has also led to a Resurgence in my creativity creativity is exactly that it is a muscle so the more you work it the stronger that it's going to get so if what is stopping you from starting a YouTube channel is the fear that I had that you're not creative enough then listen to this the more time you allow

yourself to have with creating things the more creative you are going to get and the more creative you're going to be able to be the third way that YouTube has been changing my life is by challenging my perfectionism I've been a perfectionist my entire life and it's been a major block to my creativity it's my natural tendency to be afraid to put anything out there that isn't perfect or isn't exactly the way that I want it or I had imagined it to be in my head when I started my YouTube I quickly had to accept

that if I only was going to to put out videos that I felt like were good enough or perfect enough for me I was never going to post anything so instead of fighting the imperfection of my videos I'm trying to just embrace it if you've seen my other videos you can probably tell it's already part of my personality to not take myself too seriously so I try to just Infuse that into my videos it's why I'll often put bloopers at the end or I'll put just short little funny clips in there of me messing up

maybe switch them or showing you guys my greasy hair my hair needs to be washed literally so bad it's not just me being my authentic self but it's also me trying to be okay with the fact that I'm going to be imperfect and these videos are going to be imperfect sometimes the camera angle is going to be a little bit wonky sometimes I'm going to spill things on myself I'm often going to trip over my words but that is okay because it is just all a part of who I am and it's all a part

of the process of doing YouTube that I'm learning to fall in love with the final way that this channel has changed my life is that it has taught me to own my dreams I'm finally starting to accept what my dream is and what I actually want which is this I want to create content that is going to change people's lives for the better I want to get my mission and my why to as many people as possible it's so scary saying that and speaking that into existence because I'm so scared of it not coming true

but here's the thing if we keep our dreams to ourselves and we don't tell anyone or even allow ourselves to think seriously about them then how can we ever expect them to happen I realized that the more that I talk about this account and the more that I talk about what I want out of content creation and social media the more that I start to believe that I can actually make it happen and the more and more those dreams start to become a reality in my life even if I continue putting effort into this Channel

and putting videos out there my dream of focusing only on making content may still never happen but it is definitely not going to happen if I just give up and stop doing it because it seems too hard or I'm embarrassed about what other people think of me so where do we go from here like I said this video is coming out at a time when my life is about to start changing really rapidly in the next month and a half I am graduating college I'm going to Europe for a couple weeks I'm going back home

to visit my family and in Nashville and then I am moving to a completely new city and starting a completely new 9 to5 job all of that said I'm going to have a lot less time on my hands than I've had the past couple of months to be able to put effort into making YouTube videos I truly did not even know how much I was going to like doing YouTube when I first started so I didn't even think about what was going to happen after I did graduate and after my job did start I wasn't

sure if I was going to continue but I've honestly fallen so much in love with making videos that I know that I want to keep doing it like I said my dream is to do this it is to make content so I'm going to keep pursuing it even if I do have other obligations in my life I know that if I put in the work I can find the time to do it at the end of the day it's all about prioritization and making sure that I'm making time in my life for the things that

are most important to me and I'm not under any kind of delusion that it's going to be easy I know it's going to be really difficult but it is something that I want to continue to do because this channel has brought me so much joy and I truly find passion in it and when I'm doing it so with all that said my answer to the question of what's next is I don't totally know where it's going to go from here but I know that I am still committed to making a video every week and so

when things get hard I'm just going to focus on next week's video and there's so many videos that I do want to make I'm even thinking of expanding this channel outside of just nutrition and fitness I would love to talk about reading I would love to talk about productivity an organization so if any of those sound interesting to you please let me know down in the comments or you can also shoot me a DM over on my Instagram I would love to get your input on what you would want to see from me while I

did say that these first 50 videos are for me at the same time I want to be making content that is Meaningful and matters to my audience so yeah just let me know so that brings me to the end of this video if you did like it hit that like button down below and go ahead and subscribe to my channel so you can see all those incredible future videos that I have coming for you guys thank you so much for watching and if you do choose to subscribe thank you it means so much to me

the fact that you are taking the time to show me that you value what I'm saying and what I'm doing means the absolute most to me and if you are thinking of starting a YouTube channel but are scared of failing take it from me just take the leap of faith do it I promise you won't regret it you will learn so much about yourself I already have and I'm only 4 and 1/2 months in so I will go ahead and leave you with that and I will see you in the next video [Music]