 What if I told you that there were five traits that you see far more often in people living average and mediocre lives Versus people living and building these exceptional lives that they've always dreamed of Well in this video, I want to share some of the biggest lessons I've learned transforming myself from being a pretty average mediocre dude in every quality and in every sense Into someone that is gradually creeping his way up into Greater and greater states of high performance in all aspects of my life, not just my career What's up guys Alex Hine author of the book master the day now the first link in the description I've included a series of journaling exercises that you can do to go from being mediocre to being a high performer in life So if you click the first link in the description and download that worksheet, you'll also get a free email every couple days That's going to teach you how to use journaling to go from average to exceptional So you can check it out down there below now the first trait is that average people live a life based on the imitation of other average people Now I know that might seem really obvious But we take it for granted that the people we most often emulate in our lives are other average people We're literally following and taking advice from people that have gotten average lives Which they've gotten because they think average thoughts So we're creating carbon copies of people that are mediocre Now there's nothing wrong with being mediocre But the point is if you want an exceptional quality of life You have to emulate people that are doing and living what you want and you may not know any of those people personally You may have to go and seek them out Like if I listened to everyone in my world when I was in my early 20s I never would have booked a one-way ticket to China to go become a monk and study with kung fu masters Because I didn't know a single person that had ever done that who the hell books a one-way ticket to another country I didn't know anyone who did it, but I had to do it because I had to become my own role model and think What would the exceptional person that's built an amazing life do? So either think like that or emulate those people that are only doing it The second trait of very mediocre people is that when they're told no or it isn't possible They listen to that advice Dude listen, it's ridiculous the number of people Taking advice from people that have never done what they want to do So of course your friend or your mom or your dad is going to tell you no, it's not possible to be an astronaut No, it's not possible to be a youtuber. No, it's not possible to lose all that weight or to Attract that dream person that you want so deeply in a loving relationship Of course they're going to say that because they probably haven't even so to them They're arguing more in favor of their own limitations than they are in favor of your limitations They don't even know where their ceiling is because they're so in the box that they've usually done nothing with their lives and Yet we take their advice as if it's the word of God be very careful with this The third trait of very mediocre people with mediocre lives is that they trust other people's advice Even that of experts over their own intuition When it came time to write my first book master of the day I had a strong feeling that I wanted to create a book That was something that could really help my clients at the time by embodying all my weight loss and my goal-setting Personal growth philosophy in one, but it was specifically weight-loss metaphors for how to live a better life Now, you know how many people told me do you know the success of books? You don't know how to write a book. You don't know how to market a book You know how little money authors make all of these BS stories that the average person was telling me of course Told to me by people who were not authors And guess what this book master of the day not only has performed so well in terms of impact But financially this is definitely in the top 5% of books even compared to traditional authors I have a lot of friends traditionally published that this makes way more money then it's not all about money That's the struggle part of being an author Now if I listen to my friends and my family about the struggles of being an author rather than me listening to my intuition and figuring it out This book wouldn't exist nothing in my life would exist So consider that the fourth trait of very mediocre people is that they do as little as they need to Versus getting the job done You know when I became an entrepreneur I was kind of weirded out by the fact that we work 9 to 5 as just a general cultural thing in america or a long Or probably and we don't even take for granted the fact that or we take it for granted that This is just 9 to 5 we get paid for how many hours we're at work But not even based on our performance But when you become an entrepreneur you only get paid based on performance If you need to make three thousand dollars that month to survive It doesn't matter if it takes you zero hours per day or 100 hours in a week It doesn't matter. You have to do it So if you can write a book in one hour a day That's called being a smart entrepreneur That's called being an effective efficient entrepreneur But if it takes you 10 hours a day to write a book Then that's what it takes you And so many of us we choose to do the little but just the easiest thing the smallest thing Towards building our dream life and our goals. We don't want to work too hard. We don't want to sacrifice too many things Screw that Do what it takes including if it means working evenings working the weekends Sacrificing friends in the short run and just seeing each other on the weekends Do what it takes not what is cushy and easy and comfortable be uncomfortable Now built off of that the fifth trait of mediocre people Is that they think and they brag about how much they put in in terms of time Rather than focusing on the performance what they're getting done You know, I don't start watching netflix at 8 p.m. Because it's like 8 p.m. And it's time to watch netflix I start watching netflix when my crap is done for the day I'm doing a doctoral program and running a business and building out new things like if I had to write a new book I write until my quota is done for the day a lot of days. That's 11 p.m. Or later Don't stop. It's like oh, it's 8 p.m. It's time for my quality of life Let me pour my glass of wine and take it easy and then just Watch game of thrones hell no when you Look, we're all entrepreneurs if you consider yourself the entrepreneur the business owner of your own life who's architecting it And at the same time by that same token You have to be performance oriented If you want to lose weight your goal has to be of course to feel good But also to lose the damn weight if your goal is to get into a healthy relationship Your goal in the short run of course has to be happy But also get a friggin person to date if your goal is I need to get better sleep because it's affecting my health Your goal of course is to still enjoy your life, but get the friggin eight hours of sleep. You need to be healthy We beat around the bush by by not pushing ourselves by being so concerned with oh, I've done my 40 hours It's time for my work life balance Screw that do what it takes to build an exceptional life Focus on performance not the hours invested Now the cool part is that really productive people can do in a fraction of the time What the average person does in terms of productivity I've built my whole business in less than three hours per day and now while i'm doing my doctorate I work less than three hours per day every single book. I've written in one hour per day One hour per day consider that So these things should not discourage you, but they should inspire you So I hope these are some traits for you to reflect on in your own life And of course check out the first link in the description Which is for a journaling worksheet You can use to go from mediocre to beginning to become more exceptional in your own life And of course after you check that out and download it come check out this next related video right there and there