How did you change your life? It’s a question that I get asked all the time since I’ve been into self-development or whatever you want to call it. That whole movement is suddenly getting a huge hype while it actually shouldn’t. But at least I can say that I did it before it was cool. The rise of social media and self- development gurus have made sure that we needed to relearn a lot of obvious lessons and it’s kind of sad. I mean who doesn’t know that you shouldn’t give a fuck about things you can’t control or people’s opinion in general. That isn’t groundbreaking yet it became a bestseller. I loved the book since I liked the writing style but it seemed like people were blown away by this book.
Aside from that, you can read a lot of self-development quotes on Instagram model pages but I guess all these thirsty white knights just see everything except the lesson that’s been shared. Although I highly suspect that most of those quotes are just copy-paste from Google to get attention (aka look at me I’m smart #allegedly). I also highly doubt they understand what they copy-pasted. In the end, it’s about the attention and validation, not the message.
The age of attention, validation, and nothing else.
So it’s safe to say that social media certainly got us connected but it also got us disconnected from a lot of valuable stuff. That made sure that people are unhappier than ever (there’s more to it but I won’t dive into it in this post). Plus it doesn’t end there. There are a ton of Dream, Believe, Achieve books that are just ‘I make you feel good until this book is finished’ books. People who read these books feel so motivated when they finish these books and then… nothing happens. Nothing changes and after the inevitable stagnation, the decline starts.
So that begs the question: how does one change his life without paying tons of money to stuff that mostly doesn’t work (stuff like the dream, believe, achieve hype).
Let’s dive into it.
The only self- development guide that you’ll ever need.
People who know my story and see me now have no clue what happened. They try to figure it out like it’s rocket science but it’s not. It’s this: all the “uncool shit” that I did has made sure that I changed my life. What I mean by this is that I just took small actions and people mocked me for making those changes. Stuff like skipping partying on Saturday to just have a recovery day on Sunday, cut back on the endless meaningless dates to focus more on training or studying tape, spend less time on social media, getting up early,… I’m so uncool but the results speak for themselves. I turned from a nobody to mister hot shots in town in about 3 years. But here’s the crazy thing about this story.
I’m not gifted or an exception. There is nothing special about me. I’m human just like you. At one point I just realized that the small changes that I made turned out too big results later on. Sure I had upsets and obstacles that I had to face but I just worked my way around it. That’s also why I say later on. It takes time to get the wanted results, we’re talking about months or even years. It all depends on your goals and how well you can flow with the go.
The main idea here is simple, changing your habits will make sure you will be able to change your life.
You’ll be on the right track if you replace every bad habit by a good habit.
no rocket science required.
Shit doesn’t work, I’m out.
People’s belief system is mostly what holds them back. They start to make those small changes and don’t see results the next day and just quit. Your habits got you where you’re at right now and see where it got you. You didn’t get out of shape from one day on the other, did you? It didn’t happen between Christmas and New Year either. It happened while you were eating crap while someone else ate something healthy. Or when you were binge-watching Netflix while someone else went to the gym. Are you starting to get it?
An action repeated enough time will turn into a habit. Soon you’ll run on autopilot and skip the gym every day to watch some brainless show that is just good enough to keep you entertained. You didn’t become lazy from the day on the other just like I didn’t become dedicated from one day on the other. You just want to believe that because you’re on the losing end of the spectrum, so you start calling people gifted or claim they’ve got good genetics. All of that effort to make you feel better about yourself. But it has the opposite effect since you become bitter while the people who take action just get better.
Remember, 10 miles in the woods is 10 miles out of the woods.
The overnight success and self- development.
I’ve said this over 1000 times and I’ll say it again. I’m not lucky, gifted, talented… I don’t have good genetics. There is nothing that I possess that makes sure that I’m ahead of the curve. Yet somehow people started to notice me. Do you know what happened? It’s so easy, I just changed my actions and at one point after a lot of trial and error, everything just connected.
I mean how would you otherwise explain that people started to ask me fitness and nutrition advice? I got bullied for being skinny my entire life. It doesn’t make sense that my good genetics suddenly kicked in! I was just consistent and grew into my body while it matured.
There is no such thing as an overnight success. You’re just prone to believe that because you don’t want to put in the work. I’ve never met a successful person who believed in something like an overnight success. It’s fine by me if you want to believe in fairy tales but they’ll be holding you back in the long run. You won’t make progress this way. It’s a needed reality check that most people need. You look away when people work and struggle but you use terms like ‘overnight success’ when they succeed at something!
Learn to love the process. Goals are irrelevant.
What do winners and losers have in common? They both have the same goal, both of the parties want to win. Most people set a certain goal, for example, to get to a certain weight. They then give up because they hate what they’re doing or they reach the goal and then lose it. Most people never keep going after that unless they set new goals and keep chasing that and their long-awaited happiness. Only a small percentage keeps going once they got what they wanted. The reason behind it is pretty simple. They love what they do, they love the process so they just keep evolving to a better version of themselves.
It’s never about the goal, it’s more about the process. The whole journey should be something you enjoy. There’s just no point in doing something that you don’t like. You should alter your perspective if you assume that you will become a happier person once you’ve achieved a certain goal. Because what will you do once you’ve achieved it? Where will your happiness come from? The goal is gone and so is the feeling of happiness. Love what you do or your life will be highlighted by an endless pursuit of happiness.
Self- development takes time… so don’t waste time.
Time is your ally when it comes to this. 1% better every day is still better than taking no action at all. It’ll only become harder and harder if you decide to remain in your comfort zone. So many people claim they want to get started but their actions say the opposite. Some people claim they’ll do X and then spend hours and hours researching the matter. Overcomplicating things will never turn out in your favor. In most cases, you just have to the opposite of what you did to get results. I mean your habits got you where you are right now. Change those and you get where you want to be.
Get it?
good!
Now stop reading this post and get after it!
Till next time
Alex
