 This idea of failure games is pretty much the singular way that I improved my life over the last six or seven years. I guess that early on I realized if I just did what was comfortable, pretty much jack shit changed about my life, right? Just like everyone else I wanted to get fit, didn't want to go to the gym. I wanted to have a relationship, never wanted to work up the guts to talk to that pretty girl in the smoothie shop. And so I realized if I just do what's comfortable, nothing will change. And that became this challenge that I want to share with you today. What's up you guys, Alex Hine. Now before we jump into this video, I actually have a link down below for a program of mine called Reinvent Your Life. Basically what we do is over the course of a year, every month we have a 30 day challenge where we work on one quadrant of your life that you want to improve. And so we go through health, finances, fitness, relationships, meaning everything. And each month you get a weekly video and a weekly affirmation. It's gonna be opening up soon. So if you want to join the wait list, the wait list link is right below this video. So this idea that if you just do one small thing that makes you a little sweaty every day, your life will get better, is really not that appealing to most people. I get it, right? Why would you want to do that? It's hard, it's a lot easier to sit and watch Netflix and watch Lost reruns or The Office. But that's kind of the whole point here. Point of these failure rejection games is that you're doing something that you ordinarily would use to keep yourself small, right? Now, two examples of my life of how I use this. One of them was that I've always been someone, even though I grew up on the ocean in New England, I never really liked the water, especially the open ocean. I mean, I've been swimming many times in the ocean and lakes and ponds, et cetera. And there wasn't like a particularly traumatic experience, but it's a big, huge dark abyss and you can't see anything beneath you. And I would rather be someone who's in the jungle with tigers and hang out there than be in the ocean, even with fish. So playing this rejection and failure game, I had to do an internship during my undergrad, studying biology and environmental science. And so I chose to go to Fiji to do a marine biology internship where I was in the water 10 hours a day. And this is, Fiji has man-eating sharks, you know? We're talking tiger sharks, bull sharks. Reef sharks are like, that's like old news. You see them all day long while you're diving around the reefs. So I decided that I was gonna get this internship in Fiji for six weeks where literally all damn day, I had to sit with an underwater clipboard and snorkel to count certain kinds of fish and sharks that I saw and clams and coral. So for me, understanding that I could have this kind of irrational fear forever or I could do something that was gonna really be exposure therapy and get in it. And as part of that, the crescendo was that I got scuba certified and I went on an open, i.e. no cage shark dive where they literally just brought a garbage can, filled it with dead fish and we brought it to the bottom of that area of the ocean and then let these massive man-eating bull sharks and tiger sharks just come swim around us at 80 feet. My point is not that, you know, I don't think everyone's gonna do that or be gutsy enough to do that, right? But the point of this failure game is pick one of those little baby fears that you have and find a little bit of a way to expose yourself to it daily. Now another example for me was when it came to weddings, I was always so embarrassed that I was the introverted dude that would need like five glasses of wine before he even did a single move on the dance floor. So realizing I didn't wanna be that dude who was 45 and still doing that and there are a lot of those people, those guys at every wedding, I decided that, well, how do I, you know, apply exposure therapy to this? What do I do? So I started just going to one salsa class, right? It was a small class. It was a beginner class, you're allowed to fail, you're allowed to make mistakes, you're allowed to mess up, like that's literally what it's there for. But just by going to this class, I realized that at the very least, you learn two basic moves and then the next time you're at a wedding, you have two basic moves you can use and it's not gonna be a big deal if you do it on the dance floor and no one knows what it is. So I wanna pose a little bit of a challenge here that I can guarantee will make your life better as fast as possible. Your challenge is to try and get rejected once a day. Now, that could be, you're gonna go to the smoothie shop you normally do and you're gonna ask out the cute girl or cute guy behind the counter there, right? And if they say no or it's weird, no big deal. I mean, if it's your favorite spot, that kind of sucks because you're probably gonna go again tomorrow, that's on you. But try to pick one thing that you can get actually rejected at. One thing where you're actually a little nervous or a little sweaty. So two things you could do. One, if you're single, you have to talk to a random, attractive stranger and literally try to get their number every single day. That's your failure game, that's your rejection game, that's your exposure therapy. So anytime you meet a stranger that it's in line for the burrito shop, you're waiting in Whole Foods to get whatever. Talk to the person next to you even though you'd probably normally just be on Instagram and talk to them and if the conversation's going well, you'd be like, hey, I'd love to continue this conversation. What's your number? They don't have to respond. They can say no, they can deny you, they can give you the number and never answer it. But the point is to make yourself sweaty and to ask. All right, second thing, challenge. Force yourself to take a class in something that you don't wanna do, but not because you're not interested, but because it makes you nervous. So if you are not that physically coordinated, do a physical class. Take a dance class. If you are not that intellectual, go do something intellectual where you feel like you're out of your element. If it's something outdoorsy, go do like a wilderness survival class. Do wilderness first aid, do survival skills. Something where you feel completely out of your element and you feel like an idiot because the more you do that, the biggest thing is not that you become less nervous. It's that your entire self identity changes from someone who cannot do that thing to someone who can learn anything if they put an effort in time. And that when you unlock that, that's like the ultimate cheat code because then almost any goal you realize is just something you can learn and it's something that you can probably reach with time. So in my opinion, the fastest way to upgrade your life is through fear. The fastest path to the mediocre life or to an incredible life is directly reflected in your relationship with your own fear. And it's easy to see what most humans choose. Most people definitely build their lives based on what is safe, which is a synonym for fear. This is doing not what you really want, but doing what is something that is secure and you know you can get. That's playing it safe, which is all fear. And like Carl Jung said, where your fear is, there is your task. So I'm gonna leave you there with that little quip. And again, before you guys go, don't forget, if you want more of these 30 day challenges below this video, my course, Reinvent Your Life is a whole year of 30 day challenges. Where each week we get a new video and a new affirmation and some live hangouts. And we go through every quadrant of life to make at least a 50 to 200% improvement and change. And it's the awesome Ultimate Reinvent Your Life program. So you can check it out. The wait list, it's not open, but it's opening soon. The wait list is right below this video. And I'll see you guys in these two other related videos.