My honest advice to someone who feels behind in life

all right so a few days ago I was having a chat with one of my friends and she was feeling a little bit down in the dumps she was feeling as if she was falling behind in life and she wasn't living a life that she was loving particularly and so we kind of spent an hour talking about this and sort of going through a sort of step-by-step method on how to want to say un but that's not the right yeah we honestly yeah we we spent like an hour literally going through a stepbystep method on how to unscrew up your life and at the end of the ation she found it very valuable I got a message from her the following day saying that you know it was it was really valuable since that conversation she felt like she was like she had a life a little bit more together and so I want to talk through some of those strategies here because I get a lot of messages and emails from people who watch my stuff and who are struggling in a certain area of their life now I'm not a therapist I don't pretend to be a therapist my shtick is not to dive into people's childhood past and Trauma and all that kind of stuff great do do all that stuff with a therapist I think of myself more as you know a coach these days coach is a strong word but like a CO a therapist really focuses on the past and tries to figure out why you are the way that you are but what a coach does is that they're like all right you are the way that you are let's now look at what we can do right now to help set you up for a brighter future and so here's some of the stuff that we went through and so the first question that I asked this friend let's call her Jane the first question that I asked Jane is what would a life that you love actually look like and she was a bit like uh uh uh well I don't know like what does that mean I was like okay okay cool that's fine let's kind of go more specific what would an ideal day look like for you just one day let's say it's a weekday let's say you know you've got work uh what would an ideal day look like for you and so we basically just opened up a Google Calendar window and sketched out what her ideal day would look like and so it looked something like this she was like okay well you know um ideally I'd like to wake up at 5:00 a. m. because I've read Robin sharma's the 500 a.

m. club and I you know I've really I've really been trying to be a morning person for a very long time and I just can't seem to do it I can't seem to be a mning person and I was like okay well I've tried to be a morning person as well and I also realized I'm not a morning person so why don't we just let go of that like what if you simply decided that it's okay to not wake up at 5:00 a. m.

or 600 or 7: like if you weren't concerned about what other people thought of you or the advice that a life Guru was going to give you what time would you like to wake up and she was like oh I probably wake up around 8:00 I was like great let's start waking up at 8:00 a. m. great now what do you do for the first hour of your day and she was like okay well for the first hour of my day you know I want to do my morning routine brush my teeth and then I want to take my dog for walk I was like okay great so how long is that going to be she was like uh maybe an hour maybe 90 minutes I was like cool should we just say 2 hours 8: to 10: a.

m. you are taking your dog for a walk dog plus morning how would that feel and she was like yeah that would feel really good I was like okay cool what comes next you know she works from home so she was like okay cool then from like 10: till 1: I'd probably be doing some work I was like okay cool then there's a lunch block so you know one to I don't know 2:30 1 to 2:00 p. m.

1 to 2:30 which is another kind of walk that dog type situation and then it was more work until I don't know 6:00 p. m. and then it was another like you know have dinner and feed and walk the dog man man I I realized when talking to Jane that having a dog is a total A total nightmare I'm sure it's fun but like having to walk the dog three times in the day and then you know in the evening she wants to work on like personal projects because she wants to start a YouTube channel and stuff personal projects and so that is what an ideal day in Jane's life would look like I asked her how it felt to just have that written down and she said that she's never had so much Clarity on her life before because just seeing this written down made her realize that oh this was actually achievable and so then I asked Jane like what are you currently doing that's different from this like what is stopping you from living this as your ideal day pretty much every workday she said well the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I scroll and at night time you know I struggled to get to bed because I'm scrolling and I was like okay great you're scrolling what sort of apps are you scrolling on she was like oh YouTube and Instagram and I was like okay cool have you tried downloading an app called opal she was like oh I've heard you talk about it but like you know I was like okay let's let's download opal right now opal is an app that blocks distracting apps on your phone and so there and then she downloaded the app opal and she set it up so that from 9:00 p.

m. at night to 10:00 a. m.

the following morning all offending social media apps were blocked and she just did that in those 30 seconds literally while I was having the conversation with her I often have these sorts of conversations and one one thing I'm very bullish on is people just taking action there and then if Jane had said to me oh okay when I get home after this conversation I will download opal I guarantee it would not have happened I'm always like why don't we just do it right now if it takes less than 2 minutes you may as well do it right now this is you know another variant of the two-minute rule anything that takes less than 2 minutes just do it right now because otherwise you're going to forget and life's going to get in the way and all this sort of stuff so by virtue of just downloading a single tool which is in fact free we have already made Jane's life better by you know preventing the scroll happening in the morning and preventing the scroll happening in the evening and then she was like yeah but you know what if I decide to I don't know install the app and blah blah blah blah blah blah it's like yeah you can always get around any system that you create for your life but the whole point is the idea of nudges we are we are nudging our Behavior towards things that we actually want and importantly I wasn't the one telling Jane that she shouldn't be scrolling at night she was the one saying that like yeah I I I really wish I didn't just mindlessly scroll in the morning and in the evening we're just nudging ourselves if you've got a video game addiction just simply unplugging your PlayStation and putting it in a Cupboard is going to be a nudge that will encourage you to spend less time on the PlayStation of of course you could just take it back out of the cupboard again and you could just set it up but the fact that you have to do that the fact that it's an extra amount of faf to set up the PlayStation means that your brain is unlikely to go there in a moment where you feel like oh I haven't got any energy it's like in in those moments we tend to default to the easy thing rather than doing the hard thing of uninstalling opal and trying to get around its app blocking systems and stuff and you know a few days later she messed me being like yeah I haven't scrolled at all it's like great by just installing a single app which is free you've just eliminated this like scourged from your life and you freed up a lot of your own time now an important part of feeling as if you're thriving in life is feeling the sense that you're continuously learning and that you're constantly making progress which is where the sponsor of this video comes in and that is skillshare if you've been living under a rock and you haven't yet heard skillshare is the largest online learning community for creatives with thousands of classes led by industry Pros across film illustration design freelance productivity and so much more one of my favorites is actually by my friend Nathaniel Drw and he's got an awesome class called how to speak confidently on camera which is something I've personally struggled with in the past back when I first got started with YouTube videos it's super helpful to hear from a fellow Creator like Nathaniel who shares vulnerable and authentic lessons into how he built his own confidence while sharing some tangible steps that anyone can Implement now I've also personally been teaching on skillshare since 2019 and I've got over 10 classes on skillshare myself I've got three classes that are specifically about productivity and a few more about using notion learning Final Cut Pro starting a YouTube channel so if you haven't seen those you might like to check them out skill sh can also help you level up in your career with loads of classes around marketing social media UI and ux being a freelancer and some side hustle ideas as well so if you're interested in checking out any of these classes or anything that skillshare has to offer then check out the link in the video description and the first 500 people to use that link will get a free one- Monon trial to skillshare where you can try it out to your heart's content so thank you so much skillshare for sponsoring this video so this was the first thing that we did we sort of created this bit of a you know this sense of a routine and I asked her how would it feel if every day was sort of like this and she was like that would feel great and then I was like okay cool next stage let's define what does your ideal week look like I've talked about this in videos in the past it's unreasonably effective where you basically just decide Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday you kind of repeat this ideal day exercise but for your ideal week so in the case of Jane she's sort of like waking up and walking the dog sort of let's call this a dog from 8: to 10:00 a. m. pretty much every day um Monday to Friday was sort of 10: to 1 is sort of work there's another sort of dog thing in the evening every single day and doing the ideal week exercise helped Jane realize that actually you know what on Wednesdays in the evening I would like to do something with friends great on Saturday afternoon I'd like to do something with family on Sunday morning after I've walked the dog I'd like to do something for myself and you know I've been really wanting to try yoga classes okay cool you want to try yoga classes when do you want to go to your yoga classes she was like you know after work on Tuesday and Thursday yoga would be really cool it's like great fantastic yoga's going to be really cool and we just sort of sketched out what Jane's ideal week would look like and I sort of asked you know sort of giving her poters at each stage being like okay well what about the gym do you want to do any weight training she was like yeah you know I want to do some weight training it's like when when do you want to do that oh I guess I could do that Saturday morning any other times yeah maybe even Wednesday morning that could be like weight training after I've walked the dock and we just sort of sketched out what does Jane's ideal life actually look like because when we're feeling a bit like down in the dumps and feeling like like life isn't going anywhere and stuff um again I'm not a therapist so take this with a pinch of soul but one of the things that can really help is just having a compelling vision of the future having a compelling vision of the future to drive towards that helps us feel like life is actually worth living and there are actually useful things to be done now having a compelling vision of the future is really hard if you feel like you're stuck you're like well I've got my job and I've got my debts and I've got these bills and I've got to take care of this freaking dog you know all all of this stuff it can be very hard to think 10 years ahead 5 years 3 years it can it can be very hard to think even one year ahead but that's why I like the daily and the weekly exercise cuz we can always imagine next week what would my dream next week look like and we're not saying things like oh well in my dream world I'd quit my job and stuff cuz that's probably not possible right now we're just thinking you know within the bounds of what you can feasibly do in your life what would your ideal week look like and turns out you can Define that well I'd like to do this this this this and that and so when we crafted Jane's ideal week immediately while while she was doing the exercise Jane really poked up she was like yeah I could do this and I could do this and I could do this and oh I really want to do that and that but there's not enough time for that because you I've tried to put it put it in this Google Calendar and I've tried to Define define the bounds of my IDE week and afterwards we defined the ideal week and I said to Jane you know how would you feel if most weeks of your life you were able to actually follow this ideal week and she was like honestly if I could actually follow this ideal week I'd feel a lot happier than I currently am and that was like great fantastic what we've just done there is we have defined where we want to get to this is the ideal week this is our ideal week that's possible to get to within a couple of weeks not the ideal week where you quit your job and your life circumstances drastically change and looking at Jane's calendar and life sort of a is your current state and so at this point all we need to do is figure out okay well what's the path to get from A to B and we're going to talk about that but before we do I want to cite something from a really good book called designing your life by Bill Bernard and Dave Dave Evans in the first chapter I have a really good concept start where you are what the hell does that mean basically it would be very easy for Jane to think that unless I'm at my ideal week destination that is how I become happy but actually that is something called the arrival fallacy which which is a psychological thing that happens where there is this belief that we have that when we arrive at a particular destination that is magically going to be where we're happy or where good things suddenly start to happen and broadly it's a fallacy because it's not true um because if you are unhappy in your current circumstances chances are you're also going to be unhappy in your ideal circumstances obviously we can remove stresses and we can remove stuff that's causing pain and that obviously increases people's happiness but really what we want to do is we firstly want to accept you want to accept where you currently are and try and approach it in a very kind of non-judgmental kind of way not like oh I'm about to turn age X and I feel like I'm falling behind and all this sort of stuff it's like wherever you are is where you are what your life currently is is what your life currently is like that is just the state of the world those are just the facts and the extra story we add to those facts is what causes the misery this is not original this is from stoicism and pretty much every other school of philosophy that it's the Stories We Tell ourselves about the facts that lead to our misery not the facts themselves so maybe Jane's current calendar looks like you know a show and her ideal week is like way nicer but that's okay you know the fact of the fact what what Jane's calendar currently is and how Jane is spending her time is the state of the world is the State of Affairs and so accepting that and recognizing yeah this is where I am and that is okay that doesn't mean that she's not going to have the drive to improve or change the circumstances but it does mean that she can do that without feeling this kind of burden of guilt and shame at every step of the journey like guilt and shame these burdens it's it's sort of like you're starting at Point a you're trying to get to point B and you're wearing this very very very heavy backpack and you're lugging all this extra weight around every single step you take on this journey is being weighed down with the guilt and shame of being mean to yourself telling yourself that you suck telling yourself that you're a loser telling yourself that you're falling behind all your friends and that you're you know all of this stuff but a lot of people who are not even who are not clinically depressed a lot of us walk around with some some amount of rocks in this backpack rocks that weigh us down that we didn't do the thing well enough we didn't travel far enough we didn't we're not making enough money we're not doing enough whatever the thing is the point that bill burn and Dave Evans make in the book is firstly accept where your starting point is recognize that yes we're trying to get to a particular destination but also as we're getting there the goal is to enjoy the journey along the way oh by the way if you're enjoying this video so far you might like to check out my completely free 20 lessons I learned in my 20 email course this is 5 days worth of emails you can click the link in the video description you enter your email address and then it will and then I'll send you an email every day for 5 days and each email will have four different life lessons that have been taken from my experiences and my life over the last like 10 years um so if you're interested in that check it out 5 days of emails you can unsubscribe anytime it's completely free never going to sell your data all of that stuff but that's linked down below all right I'm going to pause on this one for a bit cuz I actually have to go somewhere but I will be right back all right so it's actually a few days later I've just come back from the gym so I'm a little bit grimy but I really wanted to finish off this video because I feel like we've got a bit of a journey here with Jane so where do we go from here how do we then change our life from a where we are right now to B where we would ideally like to be now whenever I have these sorts of conversations there is a little a little action step Mantra that I like to say which is one small one big one small one big and this is in terms of like action steps and so the question I I'll often ask to people and I stole this idea from Tony Robbins cuz I think it's a good idea is what is one small and one big action step that you could take right now or what is one small and one big action step that you could take this week to help you go one step along that path because we've got this path right this path from A to B and the goal is to Simply make changes to our life one step at a time even that can feel overwhelming and so we need a place to start which is why I generally say one small and one big now in the case of Jane as we've already talked about this one small step was simply downloading an app to block distractions and that was the one small step Jane took to essentially block the fact that she was scrolling in the morning and scrolling in the evening and now she no longer Scrolls in the morning and evening because she has added friction to the process and I think part of the reason to start out with a small thing is because small actions create momentum if you try and change your life with big steps at a time it can often espe for some people that works you know like I like changing my life with like big picture changes but let's say this is sort of your Baseline where you feel like yeah life's kind of reasonably good right let's call this the Baseline and then you've got above the Baseline which is amazing I freaking love my life life is fantastic but then you have below the Baseline which is overwhelmed miserable Etc I'm not saying Jane was down here but she was probably like she was probably sort of somewhere below Baseline now generally when it comes to life advice the things that take you from below Baseline to Baseline these are actually different from the things that take you from Baseline to thriving so this is X and this is y and this category of advice is often confused with this category of advice and we really need to understand what area we are with the advice so generally what I recommend is that if you're below Baseline it is often easier to take very small steps if you feel like you're below Baseline where your life is not even reasonably good we want to start with small steps we don't want to overwhelm you with trying to do too much stuff if you're looking at this sort of advice you know the stuff you get from Baseline to amazing if I know someone is at Baseline and they want to get to amazing I wouldn't be asking them hey what's your dream ideal week next week I'd be asking them way bigger picture questions like where do you want your life to go what would you like written on your gravestone what would you want your orbituary to say what would you like people to say at your funeral what are some big dreams that you might accomplish in the next 10 years and that really encourages people to think very big this is thinking huge at at any of these stages it's still fairly small steps that you have to take but generally when someone's below Baseline trying to get them to think big at least in my experience when I've tried to tried to run this procedure with people trying to get someone below Baseline to think really big about where the life is going and to take big action tends to just make them feel overwhelmed and even more stressed which is why I'm emphasizing this idea of figure out what is the smallest step that you could possibly take because small steps generate momentum and if someone feels like they're below Baseline chances are your confidence is quite low there's a concept that I talk about in my B feel good productivity there's a there was a psychologist called Albert bandora who coined this idea of self-efficacy self-efficacy is basically a fany way of saying confidence or self-confidence or self-esteem and if you feel like you're below Baseline where your life is not reasonably good you probably have fairly low levels of self-confidence fairly low levels of self-efficacy fairly low levels of this sense of autonomy a sense of agency a sense of I have control over my life because these are the sorts of things that take you to Baseline and and above if you're in that position the momentum you get from making tiny changes and experiencing these tiny wins generates a large amount of motivation so momentum leads to motivation not the other way around it's not that motivation leads to momentum it's like you do something small you feel a win and then that makes you more motivated to take another step and then you get this virtuous cycle of motivation that continues and over time you can start taking bigger and bigger and bigger steps and the reason I'm emphasizing this point is because I think if you're here it is the wrong idea to take advice from people who are saying hey suddenly start waking up at 4:00 a.

m. it's a pretty big change I really struggled with it or hey suddenly start doing this big thing we want to start small generate momentum that creates motivation that creates a virtuous cycle that allows us to make these changes in our life so that's why we're starting small simply by downloading the app when you download the app and set it up you feel a little bit of a boost of dop me and you're like oo I succeeded maybe I do have selfworth maybe I am worth something you know all that kind of stuff and that is very good so we got Jane to download this app now once we've done that and we've experienced a little bit of this sense of uh this sense of momentum I then like to sort of turn it around and ask okay what is one big action point that you could take and by big what I mean by that is essentially what is a keystone action that you could take or a keystone habit James Clay talks about these in atomic habits very good book a keystone habit is essentially the one habit that if you do that thing then a bunch of other things take care of themselves a bunch of it's like the first Domino if that Domino goes down this is a terrible diagram but then lots lots of other dominoes will fall so for example a keystone habit might be that as soon as you get home from work you change into your workout clothes that's a good Keystone habit because now that you've changed into your workout clothes you are more likely to then go to the gym if you've gone to the gym you're more likely to then eat healthier if you eat healthier you're more likely to have more energy you're more likely sleep on time and so a lot of good things happen by just identifying this Keystone habit of hey I'm just going to put on my workout clothing when I get home from work in Jane's case we talked about how one of the Keystone habits could potentially be forcing herself to wake up slightly earlier so instead of waking up at 8:30 or whenever she felt like it instead trying to wake up at let's say 7: a. m.

because if you can force yourself to wake up at 7:00 a. m. that becomes kind of a keystone habit because because if you try and wake up at 7:00 a.

m. but you slept at like 2: a. m.

because you've been scrolling or you've been watching YouTube videos or whatever you'll feel pretty grim and if you're force yourself to wake up at 7:00 a. m. every day you'll eventually realize that you don't like the feeling of grimness and so you'll automatically start sort of going to bed earlier and going to bed on time now you're going to bed on time cool if you force yourself to wake up at 7:00 a.

m.