 About 10 years ago, I was sitting at the desk of my very first desk job and I was having an existential crisis because I had gotten what was supposed to be a good job at the worst part of the recession in the economy and I was feeling miserable because I felt like my life was over and I was just 22. Well that day, I asked myself a fundamental question that changed the way that I live my life going forward and I want to share that here in this video today. What's up guys? Alex Hein over at Modern Health Monk. Before we jump in, I put together a free download right below this video which is for a free journaling worksheet. If you're trying to figure out how to improve your life, how to change your life going forward, how to make it more exciting, check out the free worksheet, it'll help you redesign everything you've done so far. So let's flash back. I'm sitting at my desk. I had what was supposed to be a good job and it was. I was a high school TA at a school in New York and even though teaching wasn't my dream, it was a great job at the peak of this 2008 recession when I graduated college. Now I had everything I was supposed to want. It was not an overly demanding job. It paid well. Overall, I really liked it and compared to my friends who were working in finance, working until six, seven, eight, I was done by 245 every day. I mean, I had a lot of time to live. Now that one day though, the thing in particular that struck me was primarily the fact that I felt that I was theoretically winning but I felt spiritually bankrupt. I didn't feel like this life that was supposed to be a grand adventure was a grand adventure at all. I felt like it was literally ending because this was what at 22 of the next 45 years of my life we're going to look like until the day I retired. I felt like a worker bee, like a drone in a factory or a cog in a wheel. That day when I drove home, I drove home the fastest my car could possibly go blasting music because I felt like that was the most exciting 15 goddamn minutes of my day. And when I got home, instead of going home, I went to a cafe and I wrote down, what would it take to have a conversation worthy life? Every now and then you go to a party or you go to Christmas or you're traveling and you talk to someone and you're like, man, I want that life. That sounds incredibly fun, incredibly interesting and what a life that would be. And I thought, well, that's stupid for me to envy other people like that or live vicariously through other people. Why don't I sit down and think what would be a conversation worthy life for me? And that question opened Pandora's box. So I came with four rituals. I came up with really four habits you could say after that day with myself and those four habits I want to walk you through right here. The very first being, I would ask myself the beginning of each quarter of the year, each season, I would say, how can I make this quarter bigger and better? In other words, what challenge can I issue to myself to make my life bigger and better? One, so that I'm more excited. Two, that my life is growing. And three, that I'm living a conversation worthy life. So I'll give you an example of a couple of these things because they are really cumulative. One of them was starting a website called Milk the Pigeon, which became a book, Milk the Pigeon. After I had written for a few years, I was getting a lot of people following my content there because it inspired them. And I thought, well, why don't I create a product? I create a product and wow, I learned how to be an entrepreneur. After being an entrepreneur, my next challenge was what if you could write a book? So for one quarter, I wrote the bare-bones skeleton of a book, which became multiple books. After that, it became my next mission, which was what if I could actually go back and get a doctorate in something I'm passionate about? So I went back and I got a doctorate and then it led to a YouTube channel and another book and a move. And as you can see, this becomes cumulative. Because if your identity is every 100 days, I'm issuing myself a new challenge for how to make my life bigger and better. And the fundamental point of it is that it requires you to grow. Then not only are you braver every 100 days because every new challenge is something you're ready for, but number two, you come back with a story. So for me, it ranges from career goals to personal goals to I went to do a shark dive in Fiji because I was really pretty scared of the ocean. Ultimately, on the other line of that, you're living a hell of a lot more interesting life and you've grown. The second ritual is this habit of adventure capital. I remember once talking to a friend, I met in an adventure, a travel somewhere. And he said, you know, I always call myself an adventure capitalist. He had a lot of friends in the start of business scene and a lot of them were, you know, basically venture capitalists. And he said, well, I like this idea of being an adventure capitalist. So I stole that idea from him. And the way it shows up in my life is that I have a bank account that just pulls basically $150 every month and it goes into a separate account. And it was just for a travel. But I orient that travel around some kind of distinct adventure that I want to go on, you know, it's going to the Amazon, but it's going to the Amazon to study with shamans. I'm going to India, but I'm going to India to observe the last living wild tigers in the world. I'm going to Philippines, but I'm going to the Philippines because I want to dive with whale sharks. You know, I'm going to a specific place for a mission or for an adventure. So saving a couple hundred bucks a month, that's increased a lot since. But having a fund that is for adventure capital literally is pre-framing in your mind like a placebo effect. I'm saving this money to go do cool shit. And I'm going to go do something cool and it's going to be memorable. The third ritual was jumping off of this idea of more travels was really basing more of my trips around adventures. So again, historically, I've always been someone who loved travel. I mean, the first reason I became self-employed was purely because I enjoy the freedom to travel as much as I want. And if you're an American, you get like 12 days off a year. That's not even enough time for the one solid trip. If you plan on going away for Christmas as well. So I decided I'm going to become self-employed. And what I want to work up to is two weeks off once per season. So that's fine. I started off by going to Paris and Spain and all the generic European spots. But after that I thought, well, if I go to a certain place, where could I go that would be an amazing story or an amazing adventure? So some of the trips coming up are I'm going to Japan to study with blind acupuncturists. And I'm going to certain parts of Europe to go look at the medieval medicinal herb gardens and study with traditional healers there and indigenous healers. So I'm still traveling, but now my travels are for a mission. And missions are basically, you want a mission, you come back with a story, right? So everything is oriented around what's my adventure. And the fourth ritual I started doing was asking myself, you know, who do I actually admire most? I think for a lot of young men, it's like there's a James Bond kind of archetype that men admire because he mixes the masculine with the desirability with the violence with the status stuff. But really, who do you admire the most? If you're a more artistic type, maybe you admire some great artists. If you're a writer type creative, maybe you admire some kind of writer. For me, my passions were always around adventures and medicine and traditional medicine and shamans. So a lot of the people that I wanted to emulate, basically, were a specific kind of person. But for you, think of who you admire the most. You know, I think I can think back to one of my extended family members, my aunt, who's always been a writer. She was always impacted by these stories of these old writers in the 18 and 1900s who'd go to Paris, Sydney's cafes and write books. So guess what? That's what she started doing half of the year. She would go to Paris and she'd work on her books. So who do you admire the most? That gives you clues for how to make your life more interesting. Because whether it's Hemingway or Thoreau, or whoever it was in Paris, you can figure out if I emulate their life to a certain degree. Whether it's medical, martial arts, creativity, business. If I take some of those adventures on, then I'm following in the footsteps of those giants that have come before me. And that is going to be a very interesting life. So those are my four thoughts on how I injected more creativity into my own life to make it more conversation worthy. Check out the journaling worksheet I've put together along with this video. It'll help you figure out what some ideas are going forward in your life. And ponder these four steps more guys, all right? I'll see you soon.