 Everybody wants to improve something about their life, but when it comes to improving your life, it all begins with changing your identity, which is the way you see yourself. Now, in this video, I want to share the four daily rituals you can use to change your identity and therefore change your life. What's up guys? Alex Hine here, founder of Modern Health Monk. Now, before we jump in, I've put together a free seven-day self-growth challenge. If you're looking to get your life together, improve yourself and figure out how to build your ultimate dream life, check out the free download right below this video. You'll also get a daily email on little rituals you can use to improve your life. Now, the first part of changing your self-identity is understanding that we act congruently with how we view ourselves. So, there was a surgeon named Dr. Maxwell Maltz, who wrote a book called Psycho-Cybernetics. Now, Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon and he found that he would have people come to him that wanted to change something physically about themselves because they would say, it doesn't make me feel good about myself. My forehead, my nose. Some people had car accidents, for example, and he wanted to do plastic reconstruction. Now, Dr. Maltz observed a very interesting thing, which was that for a certain percentage of people, they would come in and say, look, it's my nose. And this woman would say, I feel insecure because of my nose. So, he would do plastic surgery, give her a beautiful nose. Everyone would comment, wow, you look so beautiful. And yet, the woman or the person's self-esteem would never change. So, he was struck with this kind of paradox where people would come in and say, my self-esteem is low because of some physical defect. But then he would change that physical defect and there would be no change in the self-esteem. So, this put him, he embarked on this sort of quest to understand self-image and why people view themselves the way that we do. And he observed that for many people, the outside does not mirror the inside and that if you give the person the perfect, the beautiful outside, they will not change the way they view themselves and they will continue living the same way, which was in an unconfident way. Now, part of Dr. Maxwell Maltz's work is in changing the self-identity, irregardless of changing your external physical body, for example. So, for example, in his book, he talks about these exercises on visualization to change the way that you see yourself before you actually become a different person. So, let's say, for example, you've been a single person for a long time and you don't want to be single anymore. And that your identity has been, I'm the afraid person that never asks out the girl or guy that I'm into, right? Well, technically, what you can do is just do the opposite of what you'd normally do, which is if I'm normally the person who never takes the shot asking out someone I'm into, then for the next month, all I'm going to do is take the shot and therefore change my identity. The second way you can change your identity is really by visualizing your aspirational self. So, I was once having this conversation with a friend and he said, you know what most impresses me about New York and Manhattan? It's that 150 or 200 years ago, none of that was really there and that somebody thought that we're going to put a skyscraper in this area and this is going to become a hub for people all over the world. The fact that there was nothing there at one point, flat grassland, and then now it's Manhattan and New York City, an icon for human history. The fact that somebody thought about that before it was ever done, the fact that somebody visualized that before it was ever done is absolutely miraculous. And in the same way, you as a human, you start off kind of a tabla rasa, right? Sort of a blank slate, but ultimately the kind of person you want to become, nothing guarantees that that will happen besides your thoughts, your words and your actions being aligned to become a new kind of person. So for some people actually visualizing yourself as you'd like to be can be the biggest difference in changing your identity. For example, if you're someone who has a hard time with eating the right foods to stay fit or be healthy and you know that part of your daily ritual is I go to the coffee shop in the morning, I get this latte or a frappuccino with sugar and I get a donut or I get a chocolate croissant. Well, going through your morning routine in the morning as the kind of person you want to be, maybe this is a fitter or healthier person. And I see myself in my head going to the same coffee shop, but this time I'm getting the overnight oats or I'm getting the fruit cup and I'm not getting a chocolate croissant or a muffin that has 500 calories. And this kind of mental rehearsal as some people have called it is very useful for changing the way that you act because you are already scripting and directing your life as you'd like it to be. And the next time you go into that coffee shop, what happens is you are less likely to get the donut or the pastry instead of the fruit cup. So using mental rehearsal in the morning for whatever domain of your life you'd like to change can be very useful to change your identity. The third way to change your identity and your life is by following your primal inclinations. Robert Green is one of my favorite authors and he wrote a book called Mastery. And the book is all about masters throughout history in various domains of life, ranging from Zen monks like Hakuin to Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, all the way to people that are in the medical field. Now, one thing that unites all of their experience is that they had a sort of rebellious streak in the sense that, number one, they followed their primal inclinations, aka their gut, even if it meant going counter to their society or their parents or the established norms, right? Like Carl Jung with Sigmund Freud. They started off as having a deep connection for five or so years. And then there was a schism because Carl Jung didn't agree with Freud that everything was about sex, essentially. Now, you see that even among architects who follow the norm and then become innovators, medical practitioners who follow the norm then become innovators. The thing that makes them evolve and transcend the past is the fact that they yes, had learned the rules of how to do it historically, but then followed their own star, which sometimes meant this rift from the established norms, even if the established norms were formerly the best in the world, right? A lot of these people had followed the best psychologists in the world, had been trained with the best athletic trainers in the world, had learned from the wisest, most brilliant people in the world, and finally reached a point where they had to go on their own path. So for so many of us, changing identity means you have to trust your gut in terms of what you think you need to do differently than your society or what your parents say or what the people around you are doing, even if it means being uncomfortable, even if it means being the one in a million that lives life differently. And that's going to be uncomfortable. But what it means is you have to trust your gut if it's taking you down a different path because that will lead you to change yourself in a way that no one else has ever done. The fourth way you can change your identity is just by doing the opposite of what you'd normally do. You know, for me, I was such an introverted kid that when I went into high school, a girl nicknamed me invisible boy, all right? Because I just never spoke. Now, now, no one in my life really knows me as an introvert, even though I still am, just because when they see me in social interactions, I don't seem like that. So the way I got there was by for a year, I read the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and I started doing the exact opposite of what I would ordinarily do. Most of the day in the evening, I would rather be at home alone in the quiet doing something. So I started going out four or five days a week, I would play tennis, I would go to a salsa class, I would go to networking events, everything that made me feel uncomfortable. And I promised myself I would just do it for a season or for a year and then never do it again in my life. And as a result, what happened? I acquired the skills that I thought of as extrovert skills, right? Learning to be good in conversation, remembering people's names, going out of my way to talk to people when ordinarily I would avoid people, even acquaintances I would see across the street, super extroverted people are like waving and like trying to make contact. Me as an introvert, I just hope they don't talk to me or hope they don't look at me or recognize me. So when you do the opposite of what you normally do, by definition, you change your identity because you're not the same person anymore. And sometimes that's what it takes to break through your shell and to break through a phase of your life where everything has been the same for a long period of time. So just do the opposite of what you normally do. Could just be a day, could be a month, could be a year like I did, but you will definitely become a different person and you'll take your life to the next level by doing that. These four rituals can help you change your inner identity, which will then change outwardly how you live. And if you do that every day, you're going to be living your dream life at a much more rapid rate than the average person. Alright guys, that's what I have for you today. Again, check out the free seven day self growth challenge below, and I'll see you in these related videos.