 If you're like me and you're always trying to figure out how to make your life better, then you're probably reading a lot of self-growth books or consuming a lot of self-growth content. In this video, I thought I would share what were my biggest lessons from the first 100 self-growth books that I read. Actually, every year I read about a hundred of them, but what were the biggest five things, the most common themes that I saw, and I think it'll really help you. What's up, you guys? Alex Hine here. So before we jump in, I've put together a free journaling worksheet right below this video that will help you figure out how to get your life together and design your dream life going forward. You'll also get an email journaling prompt every couple days that can help you figure out how to get started with journaling. Now, the first lesson I learned is that the quality of your life is determined by you. Now, I know this seems obvious, or maybe it isn't, because a lot of us think the quality of our life is determined by our job, or where we're born, or our parents, or who we marry, or our kids. But really, the quality of your life and where it goes is just determined by you. You can decide to change anything you want most of the time. You can decide to quit that job and do another one. If you don't do that, that's really on you. You can decide to marry the right person or the wrong person. You can decide to keep shitty friends or to keep growth-oriented friends that have your back. You can decide to change any time you want. The question is, will you? The main lesson I took away from all of these is that the quality of your life is determined by you. You are the vehicle of your life. You're the race car driver. You're in the driver's seat. If there's something you don't like, or you're waking up for too many days and you don't like your life, that's on you, and that's up to you to change, and you can change it. You're the vehicle. The second thing I took away is that the problems in your life are usually your responsibility. So I know this sounds hard if you have an awful boss who's just throwing all this work on your lap and is completely lacking empathy and is not that friendly, or you work with people that suck, or you're married to someone that sucks, or your friends suck, or whatever it is. I know it sounds hard to say that it's on you, but really, it is on you, because you take a relationship, for example, whether it's a friendship or a romantic relationship. If you have one deeply unconscious person who doesn't have their life together and is deeply flawed, and then you have another one who doesn't have their life together and is deeply flawed, that relationship is going to be problems all day long. That is going to be a hard relationship to be in, because you have two deeply unconscious people who are very unstable. But if you have even one person who's got it together and is growth-oriented and is doing their best, even a deeply unconscious person will bring that down, that average, but it's going to be much more stable and much less drama than two people here. Whether it's work or it's a friendship or romantic, the problems are up to you to solve. Of course, you can't control the economy collapsing. You can't control COVID. You can't always control illness, but you can control what you end up doing. If you view all your problems as caused by you, my health, yeah, my work is stressful, and yeah, I'm an entrepreneur and there's a lot of variability. It's still my fault. It's my responsibility. Or if my relationship is bad, it's my responsibility to fix it and apologize to my girlfriend or work on something about myself. Or if I don't like the people I work with, having candid chats, trying my best, and if that doesn't work, quitting that job, those are all up to me. The third lesson I learned is that character is the most important quadrant of your life. When everyone does these whole life pies, like relationships, finances, personal time, health, friendships, what they never say is that in the middle, the center that holds the spokes together is your character. Your character is being someone who has a good work ethic, who's disciplined, who does what they say, who is industrious and is creative. Your character goes back to being the engine. That is always going to be the most important quadrant of your life because an undisciplined person will never even do the things that will help them be healthier. An undisciplined person will never do the things that help them sleep better or have more energy. An undisciplined person is never going to do the things that help them improve their own life. And so character is the center that holds the spokes together, right? The character is that hold there, that holds everything together in the wheel. And so character is much harder to develop. It's easy to flake. It's easy to say something and not do it. It's easy to not follow through or to not be disciplined about your goals. All of that is easy. And so character is the most important center spoke that holds all the things together. But are you developing it? The fourth thing I learned is that anyone can change anytime, but will you? You know, all of these books, even if you're reading my own book, Master of the Day or Milk the Pigeon, all of these books and resources can help you change. But are you going to change? You know, one of the most enlightening things I observed as a kid was that most of the problems people have are the result of doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So if I have financial problems for a year, unless there was a catastrophe, I'm doing the same thing and expecting a very different result. You know what I mean? Like people have the same relationship fights over and over because he's always late or she never does what she says she's going to do or he said he's going to go to the gym and get healthier and he never does it or he's not that helpful around the house. People do the same things for years or decades or a lifetime and they call that a life. And then we end up whining about why my life isn't very good. Anyone can change anytime. You weren't born or reincarnated as a slug. You can change anytime, but will you? That's going to be the differentiating quality. You have all this information, all these resources. The defining characteristic is if you actually do something about it. And the final principle that helped me the most is that your greatest investment in life is you. It's into yourself, not the stock market, not your education, not your work, not even a relationship. The greatest investment is into yourself. And what that means is that can be as simple as putting time and energy into being the healthiest and most energized person that you've been so that you can push hard on other parts of life. It can be the investment into your character into learning how to be more disciplined or more agreeable, nicer, friendlier person or to be more driven or to be better in your career. The only thing guaranteed is as long as you're alive, you're going to have your physical body and you're going to have you unless you lose them to disease. The greatest investment you'll ever make is into making yourself better, more cultivated, more personally developed, more wise, more creative, more industrious, because that is always going to be the center spoke of your life. And if you're always working on yourself, then your life should get better and better and better over time. It shouldn't be getting worse or staying the same. The greatest investment is you because you can lose money, you can lose a person you're dating or married to, you can lose everything. At the end of the day, you're stuck with yourself. And as long as you're working on yourself, your life can always get better. So those are five things that I've learned the most from 100 self growth books. I hope that helps you guys. Check out the journaling worksheet below and then the related videos right there.