 If you're feeling lost in life, this is exactly what I would do to find yourself. Now, one of the initial reasons I started this channel in the first place was kind of documenting this process of my own personal evolution, right? Of trying to figure out those questions, those three that I talked about in my book, Milk the Pigeon. What the hell do I do with my life? How do I find work I love? And how do I create a conversation worthy life, an interesting, meaningful life? Now, in this video, I want to share some of my answers to all three of those things for you. What's up guys? Alex Hine over at Modern Health Monk and author of Mastels a Day. So let's get into the biggest point which is number one here. The first thing I want you to think about is that life at a high level, the meta level is all about resonance, which is that it is a spiral, right? It is not one destination. So you don't magically find like love or find your dream career and now you're not lost for the next 70 years. Like if you're 30 watching this, your life expectancy is around 80 in the US, which means if you got married and you like the person you're married to, your job's okay. You have literally 50 years where your life can go like this, right? What makes you think that if you just find one thing, you will suddenly be on loss forever. And that leads me to this first kind of observation, which is that finding purpose in life is about a progressive evolution. You think that on day one of being self-employed with my full-time job, I was like, I'm the right of book. No. You think on day one, I was like, I'm going to be a YouTuber and have multiple channels. Definitely not. It was a progressive evolution and sort of like a chance encounter that brought me to where I am today. And so in the same way that you suddenly become lost and you don't suddenly find yourself, think of it as a process of evolution. This sounds really cool. Okay, I'm tired of it now. This sounds cool. Nope, that was wrong. This sounds cool. This sounds cool. Nope, nope, nope. This is cool. Oh, this one's really cool. I'm here for seven years. This one's really cool. I'm here for 10 years. This one I thought was cool but kind of sucked. That's what the journey of life looks like, right? For some people, that's the evolution of love. But for a lot of people, it's the evolution of work. And that's really important to keep in mind. You know, when I talk to people who have had midlife crises, like in my coaching program, I find that the most common cause of having a midlife crisis at like 40 or 45-ish is just one thing. I didn't live the life that I wanted to live. I didn't do the things I wanted to do. I wanted to write a book. I wanted to start a business or be a YouTuber. I wanted to travel, walk the Camino de Santiago. I wanted to be an au pair. I just didn't do the things I wanted to do. And now what happens is, I'm scared shitless because every year I get older is a year farther away from my dreams where I have one less year to do all the things that I love. And I'm not taking any action or any deliberate steps towards those things. That is the only reason you'll ever have a midlife crisis, barring some grand accident or some injury or something you have or a divorce that you didn't see. That is the primary reason. It's you don't feel like you're on the right path. And so this is a very important focus to keep in life because if you always make sure you're trying to course correct towards the right path, you will never feel off track because it's the happiness of pursuit as they call it. You know, for me, this is why I bought a one-way ticket to China in my early 20s. I know I've told the story a lot, but the reason I tell it is because that became an intrinsic piece of following my Dharma. What I feel like is like my soul's work, which this is an inherent piece and also the evolution of me. Becoming Dr. Alex, having a doctorate in traditional Chinese medicine, opening a clinic in LA, writing two books, and now I'm working on my third, More Medicine and Healing. That evolution is what we'll talk about later in this video, but that one-way ticket to China was the next resident breadcrumb as I call it. The universe was like, shoot, like, check this thing out. You're probably going to like it. It's going to be one part exciting, one part terrifying, but you know it's going to be part of your path and your story if you have the courage to buy that ticket. And so I bought that ticket and did I find what I was looking for in China? Did I become a monk, a kung fu master, ass kicker? Did I become an enlightened holy person and stay there for 10 years as a guru come back? No, but I went to Monasteries. I studied with traditional martial artists in the park in freezing February, getting my ass beat, the one little white boy there. But then I came back and I had an amazing year full of experience and wow, how much life I lived in that one year and it led me to my next breadcrumb. And it wasn't the day that I landed back in New York City at JFK airport. It was several years later and I was really unhappy in those intervening years, but it led to that next breadcrumb. So my first thought is that life is about resonance, which means that you always need to be chasing what is your next resident step? What excites you? Where do you feel an elevated energy? Where do you feel a gut intuition about it? Where do you feel goosebumps? Where do you feel yourself chatty like I am now? Where do you find yourself drawn? Always be seeking that out because it's always going to be changing and it will always be related to your path if you trust that it is. Now, one of the cool things I've put together to go along with this video is I've pulled out the first chapter of my book, Milk the Pigeon, a field guide for anyone lost in their 20s. You guys can download it right below this video and it is going to go into that exact feeling. If this is where you are, you can read that first chapter in my book and I hope it'll give you some insights. So check it out down below. The second thing I want you to think about is to follow your breadcrumbs and not goals. So for example, I moved to Los Angeles. Here's a very recent one where I was like, all right, I'm ready for a long-term relationship. I'm ready to date again. And I do all the stupid apps because it was the pandemic for the first time. There's no way to meet people because the whole world's shut down and I live alone and I work alone. So after a year and a half of just being dissatisfied dating and not bumping into anyone, not meeting anyone that I like, eventually I said, forget it. Let's close all the apps, stop trying to meet people in person, stop trying to date. And let me just pick up some hobbies where I can feel happy in life. Like let me just focus on my own energy if you want to use that term. Let me just focus on feeling good, basically. Let me try to have friends and community. So I joined this hobby bachata, like salsa dancing bachata. It's like hypersexual salsa. And I started going to classes a few times a week. And I found that I fell in love with it. It was social, it was fun, it was a physical connection with people. I found it to be incredibly fulfilling. And eventually what happened was after like three or six months, I ended up making a lot of friends in that class. We would hang out and get dinners together and I felt like I had a community. And I had struggled so hard the last year to try to force that to happen in the way I specified to the universe to make it happen. And then a few months later, I met the girl I dated for a few years. So I met my long-term relationship, my friends, my passion, my community, without even searching for them directly, just by following resonance and my gut hunches. And what I find is that if you follow those breadcrumbs that life gives you, the things that excite you, I deeply believe in a superstitious way they're all connected to your purpose. So you don't have to be like, I'm going to do these five rituals today. I'm going to do these six things to be a YouTuber. I'm going to do these four things to have a friend group. You can. But a lot of the time you just find this hobby, like for me, bachata, and you get friends, you get a relationship, you get a community, you have things to do in the evening. It's solved all of your problems in one thing. And if you follow this principle of the breadcrumbs, what is it saying about your next step, right? You don't need to see and plan the next five steps ahead, just the next one. Because one breadcrumb will lead you to the next breadcrumb. I call that the drunken staircase analogy in Milk the Pigeon, my second book, because it's like, people expect to literally have the entire business plan done before they shoot one YouTube video. People try to plan like 18 steps ahead for, where am I going to move to New York? And what am I going to do for work? Rather than just like, figure out having a job and then you can figure out the rest. Everything is connected to your purpose. So you have to just follow the next most exciting breadcrumb, because it will eventually lead to your goals anyway. Now I'm a diehard believer in having a morning routine. And a piece of that involves reading a self growth book for about 10 or 20 minutes to have your mind focused on growth and what you can work on. You know, for example, a book I'm reading drive by Daniel Pink. I'm listening to it on audio book. And then I'm basically going back through all the little key points by using a service called short form, which really basically in one page shows what the key points are. You know, I can look at the one page summary to get really clear on what the essential ideas are that I can implement. And sometimes that's honestly more useful than reading an entire book, because over the course of a month, you forget what you've actually read. Now by joining through my link, short form.com forward slash modern health monk, they'll actually give you five days of unlimited access and an additional 20% discounted annual subscription. And that subscription basically gives you access to thousands of book guides for the price of one book a month. So you guys can check it out the link right there and the first link in the bio. The third and final thing is just focus on the process of evolution. Tell me what you see here when I describe my evolution in terms of my career starts off by having a website called milk the pigeon about what to do with your life involves to modern health month, a website more focused on I was a personal trainer at the time, kind of like holistic wellness. That got boring after a while writing articles, so I started doing YouTube videos. I found that I loved doing YouTube and it was way easier than writing YouTube morph to an online program and online program morph to man, I wish I had something to give my clients that would really help them master the day master the day morph to another book milk the pigeon man, I wish I had something to my clients who are trying to figure out what to do with their life. That morph to another course, a coaching program, doing a PhD, a doctorate in traditional Chinese medicine, because I wanted to help people on a deeper, deeper level to open a private medical practice to opening a second YouTube channel to now working on my third book, a traditionally published book that we're going for the New York Times bestseller list. But what do you see in that progression? It was a progressive evolution. Never at year one would I have ever thought that any of those other things I would have done. I didn't think five steps ahead. I just thought, what's the next thing? Okay, the next thing is YouTube. Let me learn this. Let me see if I can supplement my income. Let me just do it because it's easier and then people liked it. It's like stepping on a cliff and that's like, okay, now I can see the next step. All right, now we can see the next mountain top. It's over there. We climb that one, climb that one, climb that one. Okay, now I see the next mountain top. It's over there. Each step leads you to the next step of your purpose, your Dharma, your life path and you don't have to figure it all out. You just need to know the next one. So those are my thoughts on what to do if you feel lost in life because this stuff applies globally like it does in love as it does in work or in friendship. All things are connected but you have to make sure you're always course correcting to stay on your kind of sole path in life because that is what will light you up, give you purpose and regardless of how successful you are, success doesn't give you purpose. Being on the right path internally gives you purpose. That's why it is the most important thing to stay aligned with as you go through your life. That's my two cents for today guys. You can download that free first chapter of my book Milk the Pigeon if that resonates and I have another related video here on what to do when you feel lost in life. So I think it'll help.