"I just need to lock in."

hi getting back on track is very simple we're going to do it quickly it doesn't actually take a lot you've got a massive self-improvement industry that wants to tell you you need to revamp everything about your life and you're this massive problem to be solved you have to get a perfect body you have to get your finances in order you have to get a better job break into the Creator economy and make millions of dollars online um you don't actually have to do any of that or all of that right now if you're feeling a

little overwhelmed maybe over stimulated with content other forms of cheap dopamine you feel like you're in this really negative spiral the first thing we have to do is we have to take you out of this state of Shame and guilt go figure because I hate to break it to you but there's no amount of Shame and guilt that's going to make you make a positive change let alone a sustainable one so can we just take a second and realize you're probably doing your best and you're living in a very overwhelming time and you were surrounded

by distractions all the time and there are scary things happening and you are dealing with stress and I'm not trying to let you off the hook and you know obviously you have to take responsibility for your situation here but let's acknowledge what you're up against and let's also acknowledge that the the sheer fact of the matter there's no amount of shame or guilt that's going to change that state so you have to be okay with who you are right now and you have to say you know what I'm actually trying my best and I deserve

to feel good if you can do that we're going to be successful let's knock it out at the end of this video hopefully you feel a little bit better hopefully you feel like this is doable because we don't want to give you a list of a hundred things and it feels impossible and now you have this giant laundry list that makes you feel more stressed about all of the progress you're not making let's avoid that let's make things very very simple so that you know exactly what to do right now so that you can go

into the next little chunk of time whether it's literally the next 20 minutes after this or the next day or the next week feeling good about yourself because you deserve to feel good and it's actually pretty simple let's Jump Right In you're going to be okay we got this we're in this together you're a human being and I believe in you here we go Step Zero hard reset we got to take things all the way back to the drawing board right now I'm going to assume that you're a little bit overwhelmed you're a little over

stimulated right maybe you watched a lot of content maybe there's a little too much vaping smoking weed eating junk food overs stimulating yourself a cheap dopamine okay great no shame no guilt we can dive into some of that later if we're looking for Solutions right now let's just go back to the drawing board now there's a part of your brain uh maybe it's a more of a character trait where you're you're really attracted to to sort of black and white Solutions or black and white thinking you know I'm all the way good I'm all the

way on the right track I'm dialed I'm focused I'm locked in and then or I'm all the way bad right and that's the other side of it and I'm really I'm lost I am I am a moral failure for not being able to regulate myself in the most overwhelming period of human consumption ever ever ever before um you oscillate between those two states of thinking which as you can imagine is not a very sustainable way of going about it um so what we have to do now is we're going to kind of lean into into

that black and white thinking and we're going to get you back to a state of like cleanliness like a state of oh I can build back from zero now we're not we're not going to keep you in that state of black and white thinking but let's lean into it for a second and give you a hard factory reset to get you back to factory settings now this is very simple there's three parts to it number one you got to get all of the negativity out of you then you have to meet your body's physical needs

to feel better again and then you got to get some sleep okay so let's go through each of those this is exactly what it's going to look like to reset yourself get back factory settings you don't need to do a 30-day dopamine detox you can but you hear how like the appeal to do that is appealing to your black and white thinking oh I need to change my life radically for the next month and make a hundred intense changes at once and then maybe at the other end of that I'll be absolved of my consumption

sins we're familiar with this line of thinking um you might be looking for that sense of release that comes from going to confessional but again you're not a moral failure for being in this state you just need some more Sustainable Solutions and this this is going to make you feel a little bit better okay so number one let's get the negativity out of you the simplest fastest way to do this is a brain dump okay so to get that feeling of having absolved your sins I want you to open up a journal after this video

you can do it in the comments if you want no worries whatever is going to be easiest for you and I want you to just write out all of the overwhelm because you have these these uh voices in your head right now some negative voices saying oh you shouldn't be doing that thing um you know you're you're you're a weak person you know better than this right um You should be doing this you should be doing this we don't need to necessarily shut those voices down let's just let's Channel them out let's give them release

let's get them out because that's a part of you you know um and just like we don't want to you know feel guilty or feel ashamed of our consumption habits because it's not helpful let's not feel ashamed of our inner critic either let's just hear it out let's enter an open and honest conversation with ourselves what would that look like okay so that's the brain dump let's just get it out on a piece of paper and really let loose with this there should be some real catharsis that comes from it catharsis meaning you know emotional

satisfaction from getting that out play some dramatic music right you know I like to call this um a dark mode playlist like curate a a Spotify or apple music playlist um of songs that make you feel that put you in your feels that put you in kind of a dark mental place that's fine you can totally romantic the moment you can lean into whatever dark Moody edgy characters from fiction you kind of resonate with lean into that and just get the negativity out this is a really great practice for channeling that part of yourself rather

than subduing it rather than subduing it with all the sources of distraction let's give it voice let's give it agency let's give it a way out dark mode playlist brain dump the thoughts out great we've just cleaned the Slate awesome you must feel lighter at this point you likely will now now we got to meet your physical needs okay you have physical needs you you are a human being and you have to eat and you have to sleep and you have to drink water and you have to be around other humans and we'll get to

some of that later in this moment after you've done the brain DB now I want you to audit yourself and find out what needs are not actually being met it's likely that if you're in a dopamine hole if you have over stimulated yourself with cheap dopamine you your lifestyle was not meeting all your needs so right now we have to do the work of getting back inside of our physical bodies right less of the chatter of our brains and back in our physical bodies and you know ask ourselves what do I actually need right now

am I dehydrated do I need to drink a glass of water do I need to take a shower so that I can feel presentable to myself in the world again right do I need a meal um should I make myself some scrambled eggs what foods do I want to eat okay um ask yourself those questions do not over complicate this we're not putting together uh a holistic lifestyle Sy we are not putting together a holistic Lifestyle System right now we are just getting back into the conversation with our bodies that's it okay great so you

go and meet one or two of your physical needs awesome what you've just done there besides the obvious fact of meeting a need you've also demonstrated to yourself through decisive action that you care about your own well-being and that you are invested in helping yourself out right you've done a good deed for yourself and there is such a real feeling of positivity that comes from that and it's going to motivate you to keep that going that's that snowball of positive momentum right when you go into the dopamine hole when you you know numb yourself with

cheap dopamine you fall into a negative spiral the actions the habits the inputs they feed the next one and so when you start moving in the right direction again it only gets easier to move in the right direction even further okay but we don't want to overwhelm ourselves so you've done the brain dump you've met at least one physical need now let's get some sleep now if you're seeing this at a time of day where it's not really you're not able to go to sleep because you know it's the morning or it's the middle of

the day that's fine take a moment to just reset yourself go somewhere where you can have a moment of isolation just for a second and just close your eyes and just breathe for 30 seconds and simulate the feeling of sleep pretend that you're going to sleep create this uh this this uh you know sort of make believe that you're taking a full night of rest so that then when you open your eyes you can feel like oh simp symbolically it's a new day there is a real genuine feeling of there is something really powerful about

starting fresh we know this so let's create that feeling for ourselves okay that's how you hard reset that's how you go back to factory settings that's how you go back to zero so that we can start building in the right direction from there brain dump meet physical needs in the immediate moment and then hard reset yourself with sleep or rest could be 30 seconds could be 3 minutes ideally it's the whole night of sleep now just quick story about this there have been many times where I have been in a long dopamine hole i' spent

a week or where I had spent days in a row in a state of instant gratification like just constantly numbing the discomfort the the emotional confrontation um that I had to go through like there was work that I was avoiding or um I just was I I was so insecure about what I wasn't doing that I just Dove deeper and deeper and deeper into instant gratification to make myself feel appeased in the moment now I've been there but the really cool thing about a hard reset is that it takes 5 to 30 minutes to completely

revamp that because you as a human being want to be on the right track like you want what's best for yourself and that's a really beautiful thing about you it's a really beautiful thing to want what's best for you can we just accept that it's pretty cool it's pretty cool to have your best interests at heart right so when you make that that shift that emotional narrative shift and you're actively choosing to be on the right track when you do that you feel like the main character of your life again you feel like the protagonist

of your of your conscious experience and that positive feeling knowing that you're moving in the right direction will gratify you on a deeper and more sustainable level than all of the consumption what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't take a very long time to reset yourself it can happen very quickly because it's it's more about the feeling than the hard tangible result of that reset okay moving on number one you wake up in the morning or you open your eyes from this little reset right uh now we're going to recharge now we're going

to set up some systems that actually allow us to take care of our bodies in a more long-term sense now there's two parts of this there is physical practice and there's intuitive nutrition okay Fitness okay let's talk about it the right way you have grown up more than like in a cosmetic Fitness culture right you've been told or you've been sold on this idea of Fitness from a purely cosmetic lens what would it be like to have six-pack abs how to look a certain way how to look like bodybuilders how to adhere to this religion

of self-improvement um and before any of that existed we were just human beings who moved our bodies because we had to but also because it's pleasureful and there is a real joy that comes from expressive movement being able to feel your body's full capacity for movement being able to train uh quality physical qualities right there is I mean that's a joy that is a real pleasure it takes effort for sure but it's pleasureful and you deserve to feel good so how do we find a movement practice that you can do right now that you would

enjoy and that you can scale up over time now in the beginning I want you to find the easiest most accessible thing and for most people this is going to be a 10-minute walk 5 minute walk just stepping outside for a single second now you may have already done this during the hard reset process where you were meeting a physical need where you just wanted to feel in touch with your body again but now we get to dig a little bit deeper and we get to ask ourselves okay um what do I actually want to

be able to do with my body I don't know like am I compelled by figure skating do I think yoga is cool have I always wanted to get into taiichi or Pilates or swimming or martial arts or calisthenics body weight training like whatever floats your boat uh traditional like Fitness in the gym lifting weights like it's all good it's all good and this is the part where you get to listen to yourself where you get to ask yourself intuitively what do I actually want to explore what would be fun now that is a very very

different reality then I'm going to do this specific set of exercises to look a certain way okay the way that you look the way that your body your physique looks is a reflection of what you're capable of physically so let's just throw that out the window for a second we can come back to it I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to look good but let's it's reverse engineering it like can we focus on what would be fun to do first remember we're coming out of a dopamine hole our Baseline is down here we

have to meet ourselves where we're at or we'll overstretch ourselves snap and go right back into the self soothing to soothe ourselves from the pain of the effort of trying to change so let's meet ourselves where we're at let's acknowledge our limitations here and just operate just just right at the very edge of our capacity which is sort of like a flow state right Flow State conditions where you're operating where you're doing a task that is just outside the realm of like what's easy for you so you're very very much engaged in it um but

it's not so difficult that you can't do it now we can get into that later i' highly recommend just doing a deep dive on Flow State Mi Holly cheek set me high nailed it look it up it's great um okay so that's sort of light movement walking I can give you a bunch of ideas here but this is also a good opportunity to just kind of explore what you like great um from here over time we're going to implement Progressive overload which is making the task incrementally harder over time okay okay I would call this

Progressive Movement now the easiest example of this is strength training right in the gym if you're lifting weights you know that over time you want to increase the weight or you want to do more reps or you want to make it a little bit harder for yourself right now you do this for a couple reasons one that's how your body adapts and becomes stronger and more resilient and you see the tangible result of your training um it also keeps it engaging for you right like you want this to be fun and frankly you want to

be challenged like as a human being want to be challenged you don't actually want life to be easy if you wanted life to be easy like fully easy like no stress no challenge at all you would stay in the dopamine hole forever but clearly that wasn't working here we are so Progressive overload allows it to stay challenging for you the trick here is you have to ride the wave you can't make it too hard I mean with strength training you literally can't because you won't be able to lift the weight but if you're walking if

you're running if you're doing taichi if you're doing swimming if you're doing karate whatever it is you just just want to make it harder over time by making progress like just continuing to do it I think consistency will take care of it in the beginning um so you know what would this next week look like if you showed up for 20 minutes of an expressive fun natural intuitive movement practice for 20 minutes a day like what would that look like would that be worth it maybe so you got to move your body because you're a

human being and it's fun and it feels good and it's just a great thing to do um but also you got to eat you have to like have nutrients in your body we're not going to count any calories we're not going to count any macros I don't want to do it I'm not interested in doing it I don't recommend you do it either before anyone even knew about that stuff you had humans who were in great shape who could move their bodies who lived vital very full lives okay so let's go back to that remember

we're not attached to any of the Cosmetic parts of this right now again we did this a little bit last night or during that hard reset process where you were looking within yourself what do I actually need right now to meet my needs um we're going to do that again so couple things you need protein you need carbohydrates you need fats those are the macros we're not going to worry about it too much all we're going to think about is what foods can I eat right now that are pretty much one ingredient what are one

ingredient foods that I can eat bananas eggs fish um chicken this is the most random list oats like it it does not need to be 100% perfect but in general we want to eat Whole Foods I'm sure you've heard that before but like what would taste good do you know how to make anything that would taste good right now scrambled eggs little bit of ketchup I know that's not a whole food but remember we're intentionally not going 100% perfect because there's that black and white thinking that's going to lead us inevitably to a snap we're

going to get addicted to the black and white Perfection inevitably there's going to be some type of lapse in that and then we're going to self Soo again so let's let go of the 100% Perfection and just do our very best right now just do our best just do our best to be 80% there you with me it's a feeling it's a feeling thing okay um you're doing great I know this is a lot but you're doing great what would feel good what would be tasty imagine eating something and enjoying it imagine eating in a

way that supports your body's highest uh capacity for movement and actually liking it that's that's what how it's supposed to go and it just takes a little bit of experimentation little bit of patience and a little bit of uh Grace I think and and acceptance that you're not going to get it perfect right away to do this all right that's the rechar ing process now what I talked about there was there was a lot of ideas there that's something that we build over time so these are ideas that you can take with you into this

next week only to point out that it's not as complicated as all the fitness influencers are telling you it is it's not you do not need to optimize this if you were to get 60% of the way there if you were to get 70% of the way there which is what you'll do with this um you'll be in really good shape not even just physical shape you'll be in good shape as a living breathing human being and that would be pretty nice especially since we're coming from the negative we're coming from a dopamine hole number

two we're going to rebuild our systems essentially um you might be feeling to yourself right now oh I'm not making any progress in life you know I should be doing better in school I should be working harder in my job I should be making better career moves I should be starting my own business and that's because on social media you're seeing all of these people who are crushing it um and you compare yourself to a much bigger data pool of humans than most of humanity ever had right you see everyone and you see so many

options and you see this person and this influencer and this person I do this I compare myself constantly it's just one of the features of living in the digital age so we have to be aware of this and we just you know we have to start with what's in front of us what is one system or one one sensible action that you could take right now that would feel like progress now notice that feel like progress okay I'm not going to walk you through how to systematically rebuild your life and and build a 10K month

business the feeling of progress is the thing that we're going after because that's how you get addicted to it addicted in a good way you feel like you're moving on the right track your life is a narrative your life is a story and what we're trying to do here is we're trying to catch the feeling of that story when your life is a horror movie because you're in this constant state of addictive pleasure seeking um that's your Vibe and that's really why you're here the fact that you're still here on this video implies to me

that you have hope in yourself and that you're on the right track right now and that's great you don't need to get everything right but what's one tiny step that we could take right now is it making your bed is it sending one email is it um outlining a project for work I think in general when you have a big creative project outlining can be a form of procrastination but right now coming from zero that's a great step because it's a form of Confrontation you confront the task at the level that you're capable of doing

that right now without overstretching yourself now this is very important you're going to have to regulate yourself and take a break right after that there might be a part of you that's tempted to keep going well I started so I better do the whole thing right now nope you're going to pause you can do another one of those three minute Factory resets go outside for a walk talk to someone make those scrambled eggs seriously I mean that's a great call maybe you want to do that movement practice maybe you want to feel what it's like

to do 10 push-ups on the wood floor really feel your fingers pressing into it and then come back to the practice or back to the work right that's totally an option for you this is not the time for maximal intensity this is not the time for optimization this is the time for one simple action now the cool thing is remember Progressive overload that we just talked about you can apply that to this rebuilding process of the systems in your life you can make the task incrementally harder the next time you can send two emails tomorrow

right you can finish the paper that you have to do you can apply to one more job you can just finish building your resume it doesn't matter where you're at and you're the one that has to really audit where you are in this process and what's going to be too much and what's going to be the appropriate task that's your job if you can do that effectively then you can then you can effectively apply Progressive overload you can make it incrementally harder over time and you can make actual progress without snapping the rubber band that

is your own willpower right okay so that's rebuilding systems next and again I just have to keep coming back to this this is not something to do all at once we're talking about after the factory reset we're talking about systems over time right we're talking about philosophies that you can take with you into your week your month your year so just be patient with yourself if you're making incremental progress in all of these areas then you're doing it you're playing the game and you're winning you winning the game is not based around a result it's

based around engagement in the game so you know just play just play the game um what you're doing right now by being here so great job you're winning um step three reflect I would also call this some form of creative practice um there is more to life than progress there is more to life than getting back on track your life is more than a series of of coming out of a dopamine all your life is more than self-improvement and if that's the only thing if that's the only story you're telling yourself if that's the only

hero's journey you've you've been embarking on you're missing out and so what I would what I would say about a reflective practice is this is where you get to train your introspection and go within yourself within your unique experience that no other human being has and take something back out to share with the world or to just share with yourself I'm talking about a journaling practice but this can be any other form of artistic medium I would argue that this is essential for humans okay your life is more than Fitness your life is more than

eating well your life is more than sending emails your life is yours and so what I would say is like spend some time in some form of reflective practice where you're writing out your thoughts now remember you did this in Step Zero with the brain dump you weren't worried about making any kind a perfect creative project that was not your your objective you were just getting the negativity out of your body as a form of mental digestion right making sure you weren't mentally or emotionally constipated now we're going to practice that in a similar sense

you can do that again but we want to make it a little bit more directed um I would like to write a personal essay about this or I want to write fiction or I want maybe it's not writing maybe it's visual art or it's music or it is photography or something that you can do to express yourself kind of like how you express yourself with your body in the movement practice right um same thing with the with whatever creative Medium you're going to pour yourself into all right um You can practice this right now with

a comment right so if you're feeling like you want to take action right now I would highly recommend you do um I would write out a little comment responding to this prompt um let me think about this off the Dome um what genre is my story right now what motifs what symbols in my day-to-day life inform that genre like how do I know that I'm living in it coming of age Teen romcom Movie why does it feel like that what music would make it feel more like that how can I lean into this genre to

make the most of my day-to-day experience answer those questions um or here's some more who is my adversary right now um like in on this hero's journey what am I up against is it an external adversary or is it my own um uh fear of change is it my own fear of discomfort is it my own fear of Confrontation is it me afraid of what other people will say about me is it me um is it is it literally my environment because I've you know I'm surrounded by Cheap dopamine sources how can I characterize these

challenges as an adversarial Force so that me confronting them is a significant moment as the protagonist of my life okay respond to those questions that's a lot run with the ball go where your brain takes you I trust you this is what your reflective process proc looks like this is what it means to be engaged in a creative medium um and it's what will give your life meaning okay um step four and the last thing we'll talk about today is going to be reconnect with humans um obviously you're not alone in this and I think

it's very easy in today's day and age of self-improvement and all of this stuff to isolate in our growth processes um I grapple with this a lot okay um it's very easy to just say okay I'm going to work out really hard and I'm going to write and I'm going to build a business and I'm going to get my life back on track and I'm going to lock in and I'm going to do it all from the privacy of my own home and I'm going to disappear for six months and no one's going to see

me until I have my life together and then I'm going to have it all perfect and they're going to be so amazed and I'm going to blow them away um and that's obviously coming from a place of insecurity right um which we don't need to have any shame or guilt around we can just have a conversation with it we can be like what's up insecurity um I'm actually I'm a human being and this is a great place for humility right um I might not be where I want to be right now I can very clearly

point out what needs a little bit of attention but I don't have to do it alone and I can accept that probably there's a lot of other people that are going through this I would argue you'd find some of them here in the comment section also right here behind the screen I'm going through this as well right like I'm not some Guru um I'm another human being in the digital age and we're faced with some really unique uh once like first time Humanity's ever seen this type challenges um so let's be let's have some humility

here and just take others with us you know lift other people up I know it sounds a little bit bumper sticker cliche Kumbaya but like come on we're figuring this out together how hard would it be to respond to someone else here and say hey you're doing great or I think that's a really interesting way of looking at this hey I'm dealing with a similar adversary um and we're in this together and we're going to be okay I mean I think that would be a really good call right now um and then when it comes

to your in-person relationships which are obviously important you got to have people around you and this is a great opportunity to practice relationship leadership relationship leadership um there is a real there is something to be said for taking the initiative in relationships a lot of people don't know what it's like to start conversations any anymore or they're afraid to or they're just they're blocked up and this happens to a lot of people I don't think this was happening 20 30 40 years ago I don't know I would think that right now it's harder to do

that so the only way to change that is to kind of take it upon yourself and practice approaching people and you can do this from a place of humility this isn't about Charming this isn't about secrets to influence this isn't about winning friends and blah blah blah this is about being a human being this is about saying hey how's it going um that's all I got okay um how's that for a script um relationship leadership [Music] um I think there's and I'm I'm still working on this as well but so many of us are going

through this so many of us are trying to figure out the things that we've talked about today um You are not alone and you have a real opportunity to be a leader here simply by supporting other people simply by telling your friends and family about what you're doing and talk and seeing what's going on in their lives and seeing how they feel about all this stuff and sharing the process you can be a leader by doing that you can be a hero by doing that so I would not Overlook it you are in control um

let's wrap this up getting your life back on track locking in dialing in does not need to be complicated ites doesn't need to be hard and you're probably a lot closer than you think you don't need to get it all perfect just the tiniest steps forward will cue you into a state of positive momentum that you will want to maintain and the last Point here is that if and when you stumble and fall again and you fall back into habits that you know don't serve you or that turn you put you into a cycle of

chronic consumption um you just repeat the process that's it and you get better at getting back on track it is within itself a skill set and you will get better over time this still happens to me I have to hard reset I have to recharge my body I have to re rebuild the systems in my life um and then I have to reflect and then I have to reconnect and I go through all of those steps sometimes not in that order sometimes in the order that I need right but the cool thing is you get

better and the momentum works in your favor and you're doing great and we're in this together and thank you for being here and I'll see you next time