 When it comes to the topic of how to improve your life and how to really get into personal development, if you Google how to change your life in YouTube or search it on YouTube, you're going to get results that range from the crunchiest, new agey manifesting advice all the way down to the grind in the hustle of Gary V. But I think in this video, I thought I would share three very basic personal development principles that have made the biggest difference in my life. What's up you guys? Alex Hein here. So before we jump in, I've put together a free journaling worksheet right below this video, the first link there, that'll help you figure out how to get your life together and how to design your dream life going forward. So you can check it out right below this video. So the first insight that I think can help you is that personal development is always about the direction you're traveling in. Earl Nightingale, one of my favorite self-growth authors, says that success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. So I like to think of this as the bedrock because progressive realization meaning you never reach personal development. You're never just fully complete and your health is never a problem or your finances are never a problem or your relationship is never a problem, right? It's cyclical. And so because almost every up and every down in life is cyclical, your self-growth has to be continual. And then of a worthy ideal, meaning personal development is about getting better in the ways that matter to you. It may mean as material as getting fit or earning more money, or it may mean spiritual development where there is nothing externally changing on the outside. And that's purely about character and about the inner development. And again, because things are always in flux, your health could be great now, but in five years you're having a health crisis due to letting things go by. And your finances could be great now, but you made a few decisions or lack of decisions and now your finances are crap, or your relationship could be great now. And in five years from now, you could be divorced or broken up or single. So problems are always cyclical and the successes in life are also cyclical. So that's why daily rituals are so important for personal development. The second thing that I think can help you is that as terrible as it sounds, the day-to-day is often very unsexy. Whether it is that you want to be good at salsa dancing or you want to be great at soccer or a sport or great at piano or become a doctor, the day-to-day usually is not that special. You know, everyone has this fantasy of becoming this rock star, but the day-to-day life of that is playing music for hours and writing music for hours and then performing and the logistics of putting together events and concerts. And so we have this idea of what a rock star is and it's a very narrow snapshot of what it really is, right? We think that it's being on stage, playing guitar, thousands of adoring fans, tons of money, tons of fame. But that's probably literally 30%, 20%, 10%, 1% of a real rock star's life because the rest of it, especially what comes before the notoriety, is the day. And the day if you want to be a rock star is playing music and composing music, right? The day-to-day if you want to be an athlete is the boring training drills. If you want to be a football player, you're doing skill training. You're doing athletic training. You're doing all kinds of different training. I remember reading the book Peek by Anders Ericsson, the founder of the 10,000 hour rule. He said that the number one factor correlated with high performance for violinists and many kinds of highly trained professionals was solo practice. And it was always the thing they rated the least in terms of their personal happiness and personal enjoyment. So the day-to-day of getting better is often incredibly boring, but it is those rituals that you do day in and day out that make you exceptional at what you do. And the difference, perhaps most importantly, is that despite a day in the life of a fitness person eating the same damn meals, doing the same damn workouts, going to bed and getting up at the same time, boring as hell, you can watch a bunch of them on YouTube. The difference is that successful people and growth oriented people do it. And for me, the third most useful thing is to just pick one part of your life you're struggling with the most and hone in on that for your personal development. You know, for me, one of the areas was finances, because I've never taken a job for money. I always took them for passion or personal interest. And as a result, I never made much money. So for me, as I began to work on the habit of personal finance, one of the goals was to save enough money every year for a trip anywhere in the world. And one year, I think I was 25 or 26, I began doing an automated transfer of $100 from my checking account to a savings account. And I just created the savings account name, adventure capital. And this was a separate bank. So I couldn't see the transfers at all. One day I woke up and I think it was maybe two years later, two and a half years later, and I found out I had $2,600 in that account. And that summer, I wanted to take three weeks off after I quit my job and go with my girlfriend to Thailand and go, you know, island hopping on these catamarans. And I was shocked to see that the whole balance of the trip was basically already there in my savings. I like to think of where to get started as start with the area you're struggling and hurting the most and pick one habit that can probably improve your life and just make sure to do that daily. All right. So those are three things I think have helped me a lot with personal development, the free goal setting worksheet or the journaling worksheet rather in the description will also help you figure out how to get clarity on your life and what you want and how to make that happen. With them before you guys go, I have two other related videos on self growth right over here.