 So if you don't know a little bit about my personal story, when I was about 12, that was the start of spirituality and like a religious focus for me. I had basically like this vision in theology class, which is ironic because it was a very pagan vision. But in any case, this started me down the path to studying spirituality, to starting to meditate daily, to read hundreds of books. I mean my library back home, way back in my parents' house, is still books on mysticism and shamanism and meditation and natural medicine. And eventually this culminated when I was 21 on a vision quest that I went to in the Sahara Desert, where I did a solo in a little cave surrounded by sand dunes with no food for five days. And otherwise, that three-week trip made me realize so many huge things about spirituality, but also some negative things. And in this video, I want to share what some of those are the big negative was. Hey guys, I'm Alex Hine, author of the book Master of the Day. Now the big revelation for me was that unfortunately, of all the other vision questers there that were with me, too many people in my observation blamed their lack of whatever success, relationships, health finances, on God or unknown forces or the universe rather than on the flaws in themselves, in their own characters. And to me, this was pretty obvious, you know, people would come and one person came because their marriage was failing or they were always horrible in relationships. And another came because she was always overweight and struggled with food and was wondering what the divine purpose of it all was. And one guy had a lack of success in business and he was about to go under. And all of these people had issues going on, including myself of course, mine was more existential. After I got to know them over the three weeks that we were in the desert together, it was obvious that they had just like myself deeply ingrained personality flaws. They were traits that were way more likely to be the true cause of their failure in whatever aspect of life. The one person that was always talking about food being a problem and massively overweight, well, she was blaming everyone. She blamed her mom, she blamed her genetics, she blamed her ex husband, just so much blame was dripping out of her mouth. And then the guy that was unsuccessful in business was, oh, I hate, I'm a massage therapist, I hate having to lose business and learn all this money stuff and learn marketing and learn sales and sell people into getting massages. And it was this victim mentality, like life is so unfair. Like, why do I have to do this? This is not what I want to learn. Just the constant victimization of himself. And the sad thing to me was that these people were thinking it was destiny, or it was fate, two very dangerous words, that this is the reason why they were unsuccessful. When to me, maybe those things were, but what's more likely, let's start with what's more likely. There's a lot of complaining coming out of your mouth. There is not a very strong work ethic in your past. There is a no desire to learn business and actually try and be successful in your past. And so it's like, do you want to blame it on God or these unknown forces and just say it was destined to be, when in reality, it's easier to blame God or the divine or the unknown as humans always have through our history. It is easier to blame the unknown than to look oneself in the face in the mirror and realize there are things I have to improve about myself in order to reach the goals and build the kind of life that I want. And the big revelation for me at this point was the realization that you know what, maybe I should just focus on improving my character, especially my character flaws, rather than trying to access some divine wisdom to improve my life when it seemed like so many of the people that I idolized that were spiritual and had long cultivation practices were still the same flawed people just in a different way. The people that I idolized that were still meditators, but were still very unfit and didn't take good care of their health. Well, I didn't admire them for that. Apparently, there was a lack of consciousness surrounding that and the same people that were meditated so long, but had all these beliefs about money, that money's dirty, that money's the root of evil, that having any money is classified as greed. And this is just silly to me. Something that was so obviously a belief and not a fact, when meditation I believe is a quest for truth. The very first step in almost all spiritual practices is clear. Because when one is clear, the stories, the narratives don't interfere with reality and cloud reality. It's that murky water, letting it settle, analogy. And yet all the people that I had been around were so clearly murky, usually in one aspect of their life, usually finances or health, their physical body or relationships. And so it made me wonder, is spiritual practice the most important part of my life or should self-cultivation, improving my flaws, be the core focus. And I chose the latter. And the other thing for me was that I realized when I understood that it was about me and maybe destiny and fate is real, maybe it's fate that I entered Chinese medicine, maybe it's a greater purpose beyond this is just something I love or YouTube or writing my books, I don't know. But what I do know for a fact is I cannot control those things. And what I can control is my natural inclinations, my effort, my work ethic, the desire to work on my flaws and the personality traits that are good. And that puts me in a state of control. Because it is of course easier to blame the unknown, the invisible than to take action, look oneself in the mirror, realize I have issues and these things I have to improve and then do what it takes to live a better life. So for me, you know, there's no way this video could come out and not somewhat sound judgmental. This has only been my own personal experience. And this is also why I transitioned heavily in my mid 20s to personal development, focusing on improving myself, the kind of person I need to be to reach all my goals holistically, whether they are spiritual or material or anything in between. And so that's just been a bit about my own challenge, my own story. And maybe I realized like I did the only thing that holds us back from the next level, whatever the next level may be in any aspect of life is not the unknown forces. It's the known forces first. Start with what you know to be true. Do you have the kind of discipline where you can work every day towards your goals? Are you aware of what your flaws are? And are you working on them? If there's a repeated part of your life where you're not getting results, relationships, health, finances, look at your habits first. Start with the habits of thinking and the habits of doing before you blame God or you blame the Dow or some non material presence for your lack of success in life. Me blaming Mercury and Retrograde is silly compared to focusing on being more disciplined to be the kind of person that is required to build and create the kind of things I want my life. So my question here for you today, your tiny daily habit is instead whatever goal you're going after, if you looked at yourself like your character, your fundamental character, what habits about your character yourself would need to be improved in order to become the kind of person that can have the success that you want. However you define that word success. And I will catch you in the next video.