 One thing that is very funny about human beings is that we love blaming God, Donald Trump, our parents, the stupid professor we had in college for all of our problems. But guess what? You are where you are right now because of you and only you. Now in this video I want to share why I think if you do not like your life, you chose your crappy life. And let me break it down for you and how you can help yourself get out of this vicious cycle. Hey guys, Alex Hein, author of the book Master of the Day. Now one of the best ways to get out of the vicious cycle of a crappy life is through setting goals. The first link in the description is for a free worksheet to plan out an awesome year this year, your best year ever. So if you click that first link in the description, you download that, you are going to get the free worksheet and a weekly email on how to use goal setting to change your life. All right, you pissed off yet? Are you really pissed? Alex, how did I, my parents did this to me? All this bad stuff happens. My president, my economy, student debt. You should be pissed. But I'm not here to lecture you and tell you there's something wrong with you. I want to share the three ways that we create victims of ourselves through the ways we live. And even if we don't think we can control things in our life, I want to share some of the things that we can. The first way we choose our crappy lives is through avoidance. You know, in my twenties, especially, I told myself that I don't need that much money to live. Like, if I have $3,000 a month, I can do what I want. I'm not going to live in a nice apartment or a nice house, but I'll be good. And so what did I do? I never checked my bank. I never checked my spending. I got credit cards. I would just be like, hell yeah, I want to go to Africa on a trip. So I just booked this $3,000 trip. And as a result, I had financial problems. And it took me a few years to get my finances in order and to get them organized. So I was there complaining, oh, college is so expensive. Why won't they pay me more at my job? This economy, I can't find a good job. All these stories, on and on and on. But I chose my crappy life. I chose avoidance. Avoidance means not stepping on the scale because you're scared of your weight. Not stepping on the bank scale and looking at your account or your student debt because you know it's only going to be bad. Avoidance has never made someone into a person that's fulfilled with a great life. So avoidance is the number one way. Avoidance could easily be you're in a third world country. Your parents want you to be successful and get out, get to America. Let's make it cliche, right? And you don't want to have that uncomfortable story with your parents because they support you and they're like, I'm going to disown you if you don't do what we want. I know a lot of friends like this. You're still choosing that story. You're choosing that because you're avoiding having the tough conversation with your mom or your dad. And maybe they will disown you, but you're doing it for a better future for yourself. And I'm not saying you should do one or the other, but you could have that direct conversation with your parents. And instead of crying, screaming, fighting, you go direct and you have that heart to heart and it's not going to be fun, but it's better than avoiding the problems in your life. The second way we choose our crappy lives is through coasting. So when I was in my 20s again, I was in a lot of these jobs and I wasn't goal directed. I wasn't choosing a conscious direction for my life. And so I would just show up, drive to work, nine to five, and I'm just like, alright, I'm like sitting at my desk, picking my nose out of boredom, drinking a coffee. Like, alright, I just can't wait for this to be done. I can't wait for my work day to be over. But I did that for like a year, a year of my life wasted because of the fact that I just was not taking the time to be deliberate about my life, what I wanted to create and where I wanted to go. And so I coasted my coasting in my relationships, I coasted in my health, I coasted in my diet, I coasted in my career. And so we choose our crappy lives equally by indecision, by lack of taking a decision. Because remember, not making a decision is a goddamn decision. It's the decision that I'm going to leave it up to God or the economy or Donald Trump or my mommy or my girlfriend to see what happens. But that is a losing game. That is a loser's game because now you're saying I'm at the mercy of the seas, God, take me, God's going to bring you into the frigging Bermuda Triangle, man. The Bermuda Triangle is going to take you and sink you and get abducted by a UFO. You're going to end up in Area 51. That's what life is planned for you if you don't decide where you want to go. The third way we choose our crappy lives is that we rely on our mind and not our intuition and our hunches. I was once dating this girl that I was so smitten by. It's the classic cliche story of you're so grateful, excited, anxious for how good this person could be. And what she really was was just good externally. Was very hot, was very sweet, but was not the right person and had a lot of personal issues. And I went on this first date with her and I was like, holy crap, this girl's incredible. I'm so grateful. Don't mess it up. Don't be a weirdo. Don't make Area 51 jokes and Bermuda Triangle jokes. And what happened was my intuition was saying, slow down. There's some weird vibe between you. I didn't know what it was though, so I ignored it, of course. But my head was like, dude, this girl, she's a babe. Just don't be weird. Just don't mess it up. But ironically, I should have listened to my intuition in that scenario. Because ultimately, we ended up dating and it was a nightmare, honestly. It was not a healthy relationship. The only time I've ever been in a non-emotionally healthy relationship. And so I chose the drama and the crying on my end and the anxiety and the sadness for months after, because I didn't listen to my gut, right? Our gut is often saying different things than our mind. The mind says, oh my god, look at this person in front of me. My gut is like, ooh, weird vibe. My mind is like, this girl is so hot, you'd have to be an idiot to not want to date her. My gut's like, she kind of gives off a sad vibe. I should have listened to that. But in so many scenarios in life, we trust the mind over the gut. And so the gut, what is predicting, it's telling you, this is where it's gonna go, dude. Listen to me, but we listen to the mind. And as a result, we get what the intuition was telling us. And so we choose our crappy lives often because we choose the money job, knowing we're not gonna like the work ahead of time. And so every day at work, we feel sick, we don't like it, we feel ill. But we knew all along that was gonna happen, really, if we listened to our gut. So in your life, all these things are gonna happen to you. But many of us choose our crappy lives through indecision, through avoidance, or through not listening to our intuition. And no matter where you are, look, some really bad things might have happened to you. You didn't choose those things. You didn't choose really, really bad stuff to happen to you. Starving kids in Africa did not choose for that to happen to them. They were born to that. They didn't have a choice. What I'm saying for many of us is we choose mediocrity, sometimes by the lack of choice that we make, or by avoidance. And we can change that by confronting and facing the truth, dealing with the darkness, and doing the shit we have to do to become better people, even if it's not that fun and it's not easy. So choose the darkness. Choose to do the difficult stuff in your life and confront your problems head on. And you will build an awesome life that is very inspiring to you and to other people. Now, of course, if you want to get started, click the first link in the description because I've put together that free goal-setting worksheet to help you plan out how to have an epic and an awesome year. And once you download that, you're going to get a weekly email on how to use goal-setting to change your life. Besides that, you can check out my last related videos there and right there.