 So I know that I create a lot of similar content, right? How to do XYZ to improve your life or do this to improve your life. But in reality, there are a lot of things that I should have stopped doing sooner because they also would have changed the way that I reached my goals much, much faster. So in this video, I thought I would do kind of a fun, seven things I wish I stopped doing sooner. What's up guys? Alex Hine, author of the book, Milk the Pigeon, a field guide for anyone lost in their 20s. You can check it out on Amazon or Audible right now. Now I've included a free link below this video, which is for a free journaling worksheet and a free journaling series. So if you're trying to figure out how to get your life together and how to plan it going forward the way that you want, check out the link right below this video. So the first thing I wish I stopped doing sooner was I wish I cared much less about fitting in. Because for me, especially in my 20s, where a lot of people are playing it safe and a lot of people are not taking risks, there were countries I didn't go to because I was worried about what my parents or my friends would say, you're going to Colombia, isn't that where Pablo Escobar was and where he got killed and everybody's selling trafficking coke? Or there were books I wanted to write back then. There was that one-way ticket I wanted to book to China that eventually ended up booking. But those things took years to develop the confidence to actually do what I wanted to do. Because I was so concerned with, what would my friends say? Would they try to discourage me? What would my parents say? I had a big fear that I think you probably have too, which is if you have a dream that's different from the norm, what are they going to say? So the second thing I wish I stopped doing sooner was I wish I stopped trying to kind of architect the way success was gonna happen for me. In my mind, there were all these linear logical paths you had to take. If you believe in the conventional life, you go to school, maybe even go to graduate school or some area of specialty, you go into your career, you work long hard hours, and then hopefully maybe you're successful that way. But a lot of the best things financially in my life were, for lack of a better word, kind of accidents. Like a lot of the best things that happened to me, for example, were creating this YouTube channel, which I started doing as a break from my regular business or even writing the books that I wrote, which at the time I wasn't planning on them being actual income streams or pieces of my business, but ended up becoming huge parts of my business. So what I wish I did differently was that I wish I trusted a more creative or non-linear approach to reaching those same goals. So the next thing is I wish I stopped expecting life to be so linear. When I was initially a patient of one of my mentors, he said to me, "'I want you to think about the worst thing "'that ever happened to you, "'whether it was illness or divorce "'or breakup, something financial. "'Could you have ever predicted "'that that would happen? "'Could you have planned that the year 2011 "'was gonna be the year where that happened?' And I said, no. And then he said, now on the other side, could you have ever predicted some of the best things that have happened to you? Could you have predicted the day when you met someone you ended up dating long term or the day when a great business or career thing happened? And again, I said, no. And he said, a lot of us try to linearly, logically control our lives, and yet some of the best things that happen happen without our choosing them, and some of the worst things that happen happen without our planning them. So this idea that you can try to script and plan where you're gonna be in three years and five years, at 30 I'll be married, by 33 I'll have two kids, my career will be here and there, it just doesn't work out like that. You only hear the stories where someone did that and it worked out. You never hear all the other people that did the same thing, it didn't work out. So the fourth thing I wish I stopped doing was I wish I had realized that I can be a lot lazier in business or in my career and get a much higher level of performance. You know, I was going for a walk one day with one of my friends and he said, we had this conversation where we both realized you can work 60 or 80 hours a week and some people become literally billionaires and you can work 60 or 80 hours a week and make $40,000 a year as an entrepreneur. So what's the difference? It's clearly not the amount you're working or how hard you're working, it's also about what you're working on and the exact timing right now in the marketplace. So especially for those of you that are entrepreneurs, you can find someone who's worked a lot their whole life and never had unusual success. And you can find people who've worked a lot less and they had much higher degrees of success and the difference is being perceptive, reflective and trying to be really, really strategic about your career. So the fifth thing I would have reframed is reflecting that not all the bad experiences in your life are just bad. You know, I'll leave this at a full stop, but think about if you've ever been in a breakup, through a breakup and it was that specific thing that ended up making you become a much, much better version of yourself where you had to look at the shitty parts of yourself. You had to look at the parts of your life where you weren't doing such a good job or you weren't even a good significant other, right? And in the same way, sometimes it's the financial failures or the career letdowns that lets you reflect on how you can become better and more strategic the next time around. Now the sixth thing is I wish I didn't emphasize the quantity of my experiences in life and focus more on the quality. You know, I remember the first time I did this international trip and I went all around Europe. My first and primary goal was to see as many European countries as possible in Western Europe. So I was living in Switzerland and I was like, I'm gonna go to every neighboring country, I'm gonna go north, I'm gonna go south, I'm gonna go to Eastern Europe, I'm gonna try to tackle them all. But now, you know, almost 10 years later, I often take trips back to the same countries. I've been to France and I've been to Spain, I've been to Southern Spain, Central Spain, Northern Spain, dozens of times because I really love those countries. And I go back to China for medical research and to meet other great doctors and I'm less concerned with the actual quantity of countries and the quantity of experience and more so the quality. And I think at the beginning of any career, we often are focused on the quantity of whatever. The quantity could be your salary, the quantity could be your travels, the quantity could be the number of gigs you have. But I've significantly changed to focusing on the quality of the experience that I feel. Now, the seventh thing I wish I had stopped doing was that I wish I didn't hold on to pretty much everything so tightly. You know, one of my mentors said to me that this burnout syndrome comes when you're basically the CEO and either consciously or subconsciously you believe that if I don't hold on with this death grip, white knuckle grip, that everything's gonna come crashing down. I'm the CEO, I'm the captain of the ship. If I don't hold it all together, everything's gonna come crumbling down. That's the direct road to burnout. That's the direct road to frying your nervous system. And the reality is if you don't believe that, realistically, things do not come crumbling down. And things that you hold on with like a white knuckle grip can just as easily fail as the things that you're kinda holding on very lightly. So part of this is just trusting that nonlinear aspect of life. That sometimes you chase one thing and you get another. Or you get the goal you want, but not when you want it or in the way you thought it was gonna happen. And just being okay with sometimes that's just how it goes. All right you guys, that's what I have for today. So don't forget to check out the free journaling worksheet below this video to get started. And I have two related videos right here.