 The reality of improving your life is that it can be very hard. Chances are there's something you want to do in your life, whether it's just get fit or find love, save money, go back to school for something. But that feeling of the gap that is between where you are and where you want to be, sometimes it's just too big to actually take any action. So in this video, I thought I would share five personal lessons I've learned from 10 years of self growth. Hey guys, it's Alex Hein over at Modern Health Monk. Before we jump into this video, make sure to check out the link right below because I've put together a free journaling worksheet, something that will help you figure out what to do with your life, how to get it together, and how to make a ridiculously good future. My first and maybe biggest lesson is that change usually only comes when life is painful. I think a lot about Arnold Schwarzenegger and I was recently watching his little docu-series and he tells the story of his father who was a very strict man. And he said his father came back from World War II and I think he was a general or he was in the military and he was someone who came back altered. And he became the stereotypical alcoholic, miserable, would come home in the middle of the night and would fight with his mom and scream and hit her. You know, Arnold has this interesting anecdote where he says, what is interesting about his life is that his miserable home life is what pushed him to leave Austria and to go study bodybuilding and dedicate his life to this craft in America. But that's what gave him the fuel. Now, the sad part of the story is that at the same time, his older brother, who was probably, Arnold describes him as being more sensitive and more fragile. You know, one day his brother was drunk driving and he killed himself, right? He drove into something. And Arnold has this little bittersweet PS where he says, you know, my brother was very sensitive so he couldn't take the same kind of stress at home. And the same thing that gave me the drive to be successful is what killed my brother. I don't think what Arnold said was necessarily true. I think in reality, his older brother felt more of a need to protect his mother. And his older brother was the one who felt he couldn't leave home because who would be left with his mother? And so he internalized all of that negative energy in that home life by drinking. And in one night, he killed himself by driving. So one thing I see in people's lives is that usually most big life change comes from life not going the way you want. But the thing is, you have to actually decide to change in a positive way and not self-destruct. The second thing I've learned is that 1% better is usually the fastest path to a better life. You know, the other day I was in the gym and these three young high school boys were in there chatting and talking about their workouts together, et cetera. And I was fascinated to see how many pills, powders and protein shakes and pre-workouts these young kids were taking. And I was standing next to them looking a lot more fit and a lot more in shape after 18 years of going to the gym four days a week with very few breaks in that time. Someone who doesn't take anything related to fitness, supplements, right, just food and workouts. Isn't it funny that most of the time it's the beginners, the people who haven't spent the time doing the work, the people who are not dedicated of the long run to fail, who are the ones that buy into the gimmicks the most. And that gimmick may be a get rich quick scheme to build your YouTube channel or to build your business faster. That may be a book in a box sort of service to help you become like a published writer and outsource all the writing to the Philippines. That may be some cheesy pickup line to find love rather than the much harder reality of working on yourself to be someone that's rare in the marketplace. I think a lot of us want to look for these quantum leaps, but in reality, how do you build an incredible body or incredible health? It's making one good dietary decision every day. It's going to the gym today and not putting it off for three more days. If you want to write that book, it's writing today and not expecting that someday down the line to magically write this book, right? We often future pace and say, oh, when I'm 20 years older and I'm 40 and I'm getting married, by then I'll have done these things. But you know what happens to most people? They reach that age and they haven't done those things because it's a false promise. You think that when you get to a certain age, it's just going to be natural. But in reality, it's usually not any easier for anyone else, but they actually did the work. The third realization for me is that it often takes one to three years to completely reinvent yourself. You know, when I think back even to my own life about around 26 getting interested in personal development and in my late 20s really starting to build my first business, it takes one to three years to truly reinvent yourself. I remember talking to a guy who went through a really serious divorce and he had lost his son to sudden, I think it's called SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. And after that, he just collapsed, right? He and his wife, he gained over 100 pounds in body weight because he just laid on a couch all day and he couldn't work, he was so depressed. Obviously he started taking multiple antidepressants. Eventually he and his wife divorced because they both became so dysfunctional from that loss. So here he was a year ago and he had a job and he had a wife and he had a child. And now a year later, had no child, was divorced, was 100 pounds overweight and had no job, right? This guy was in the depths of hell. He had multiple quadrants of his life, not just one that was very dysfunctional. And so as a result, he was really in the trough of sorrow, right, deep into the negative, not just starting from zero, but deep into the negative. Debt, 100 pounds overweight, divorced on multiple antidepressants. When I talked to him about how long it took him to rebuild his life, he said, you know, well, even on a physical material level it took me about a year to lose a bulk of that 100 pounds I gained and another year to lose remaining 20 pounds and a third year to begin looking somewhat in shape again. It took about a year to heal to some degree, mentally and spiritually, psychically, right, of the psyche. It took a second year to get off one antidepressant and took a third year to get off the second and he was still on the third one. When I asked him about rebuilding his social circle, he moved cross-country, right, moved to Los Angeles. And he said, you know, for about a year he was just miserable, depressed and alone. After another year, he had started to make some friends and after a third year he felt like he finally had a community. So now he was healthy, he was happy, he was in shape again and he had a community. For a lot of us we think that if we're not making six figures right out of college something has gone wrong. Or if we're uploading YouTube videos if we don't have 100,000 followers in a year something's gone wrong. If that first book doesn't work out, if that first video isn't a banger, if the first thing I try doesn't work, it doesn't turn to gold, I just don't have what it takes. But that's not true because most of the time you've been doing it right but just not for enough time. The fourth thing I've realized is to do the opposite of what you see everyone else doing. You know, when I think of why people have mid-life crises the number one thing I think of is that, you know, they have this in their early 40s because they didn't do what they wanted to do before their early 40s. And so as a result, what does that mean? The early 40s hit and they think, oh shit, I'm at my halfway point in life. If I statistically lived to be 79 years old in America I'm now 42, I never traveled. I never did the work I wanted. I never had the kids I wanted or I had the kids and they're not as fulfilling when I'm stressed out of my mind or my job sucks or never wrote that book I wanted. I'm suddenly in the second half of life and I lived half a lifetime, not living deliberately at all. I never did anything I wanted to do in my life and now suddenly it's half over. And that is a terrifying thought for the right kind of person. Why did we do that, right? Usually we did that because we were listening to what other people said or the voices of society. We weren't doing what we determined we wanted to do in our gut. So my opinion, you should do the opposite of what you see everyone else doing. Do you see your friends dedicating their weekends to their goals and their dreams? No, do the opposite. You see that guy approaching the girl in the bar, hey baby, can I buy you a drink? Did that work? No, do the opposite. You see all of these people talking about all the things they're gonna do. So certain that they're gonna do that. But are they doing anything today or this week or this month or this year? No, so don't do that. You see all your friends living their lives on autopilot every day complaining about the same damn things, but taking no action, don't do that. The easiest way to change your life is to do the opposite of what the average person does. Think about that. My fifth piece of advice is that you can decide to change anytime. You know, the most powerful question is that a year from now, you will be a year older. Do you want to be living the same way this year has been? Do you want your life to look the same? Now if that question scares you, then you should do something about it now. Because most people live a lifetime that is the same year repeated over and over and over again, bitching about their job, complaining about their spouse, wanting to do all these things that they feel held back by. But the one thing they're not doing is taking any action on a day-to-day basis to ensure that a year from now their life is different. So many of us don't realize that life can change at any time. Most of the time we will wait until we are sick and tired of the way they're going, of being single or always dating messed up people or the same guy or girl, always struggling financially or never being able to travel or always hating your job. Most of us, you know, we're sick and tired, but honestly not sick and tired enough to really change. So you can change your life at any time, but will you? That'll make the difference. I'll leave you there, guys. Check out that journaling worksheet down below, and I'll see you soon.