 Most of the time, when people are lost in life, they do everything external to search for the answers. But in reality, you should be doing only one thing and one practice that I promise you can really, really change the direction of your life. I'm gonna share that here today. What's up, guys? Alex Hine here, author of the book, Master the Day. Now, before we jump in, very important link I've put together right below this video for those of you who like self-reflection. Put together a free journaling worksheet that will help you figure out how to design your dream life going forward by figuring out exactly what you actually want. If you look around you at the people who feel lost in life, look at what they most often end up doing. Like, let's say they're lost for career advice and they don't know what to do in their life and in their work life. So what do they do? They Google articles about what should I do or what's my career type. They ask their friends and they ask their family. They ask their mentors and they ask their parents and their elders. But you know what the one thing is? People hate doing more than anything. People hate thinking. So most of the time when people feel lost in life rather than sitting down, closing their door, getting a cup of tea and thinking, what do I want for my life as best as I know now? Most of the time, people would much rather go out and have someone else tell them what to do. Mihai Csikszentmihi, the author of the book, Flow says that when people are lost, we tend to do one of two things. Most conform because there's the most social pressure to conform and a small percentage rebel. But very few people sit down and think and do what they actually want or try to figure out a path going forward. And to me, this is the value of going monk mode in your life. Now there has been a long tradition in various religions and various philosophical groups of going on retreat. I know people who are Buddhist and who are Taoist and who are really long-term meditators that often spend time going on retreat where they go away for anywhere from a few days to a few months with no interaction at all. They go to a retreat center or they go to a cabin or they go to a cave, the hardcore ones, just to go inward. And this mirrors some of my experience when I was young. When I was in my teens, I was always so basically upset over getting rejected by girls and never getting the girls I'd liked, right? I had one girl said to me at my house, she said to my mom actually, she said, you know, Mrs. Hyne, I'm gonna marry your son one day. But what was funny was she didn't date me. She didn't wanna date me, at least she didn't now. And a whole bunch of women would say, you know, you're the guy I'm gonna marry one day. But none of them dated me. So clearly as young little innocent Alex, I was trying to figure out why what these people said and what they did was so different. And that made me a sort of practical kind of psychologist to really reflect on why is that different? So I decided, you know what? The next 10 years from my early, let's say mid to late teens, 16 until 26, I'm going to just go inward. And so I took out a piece of paper and I wrote down the six major quadrants of my life. And in those six major quadrants, I just wrote down at the top, it said the ultimate Alex. What do I look like and how do I act? What's my character? You know, physically I'm at this weight and I look this way. In terms of my personality, I'm friendlier and I'm more interesting and I have great conversational skills and I'm not scared of social interactions and groups. I'm well traveled and I speak another language, French or Chinese. And I'm going after my passions. I'm going after my dreams. I'm taking action every day towards what I love. And my life is super interesting and super fun. So I wrote down the ultimate Alex. And I decided I was going to go monk mode, not date for the next 10 years, at least never chase a woman again, never date. And I'm just going to work on myself and see how far I can get. And the interesting thing that happened is ever since that phase of my life where I decided I was going to be my primary focus to work on myself, not about some unconscious, I'm going to make billions to prove them wrong. I don't care about that stuff. I mean, for me, I'm going to work on the things on becoming the kind of person I ultimately would respect and admire. The irony, the paradox is ever since that time, I've never really had to date, right? I've just become the person organically in my life. I'll meet a woman and I'm the kind of person that I respect and admire and so they can sense that too. I don't have to beg or cajole or coerce in some way. Like, please take me on a little date. No one wants that, it's not cute. And this made me really reflect that for so many people, just withdrawing and going inward and reflecting, going monk mode, going on retreat is often the solution to so many of life's most difficult problems because then you can come out and act. So for me, monk mode has two main things. The two criteria are one, you withdraw, meaning you withdraw from stimulation, from noise, from social media, from talking to people and two is you reflect. So you sit down and think about what you want and the kind of person you wanna become and where you wanna be in a year or five or 10 and letting that guide you more than anything and not letting what anyone else says guide you and throw off that inner compass. So monk mode is the best way to reconnect back to yourself if you feel like you've broken that connection. So sit and meditate and reflect on this video guys, use that journaling worksheet right below and I'll see you soon.