You can change your life in 6 months, here is how to do it

If the hustle and will come type of culture got to you, you know the kind of story where people talk about how I gained a million followers in two weeks or how I made seven figures in a year? Makes you feel horrible and beating yourself up and you know that you want to make a change but then it's really hard to do the things that you know you should and then you're back to the vicious cycle of beating yourself up all over again then this video is for you because I was I spent years spinning the same circle trying to make a change in my life and then watching others who are no smarter than me moving forward in life and everything else that they want to achieve. I always wonder why that was until I realized something that helped to make everything click into place. I went from twice unemployed to eventually working at Google and eventually running my own business which also now includes creating videos on this YouTube channel and everything I've done to this point feels almost unrecognizable to the person I was and somehow I turned my life around. So what were those shifts I made in my life? I'm going to walk you through each one of those so you can start accelerating your transformation and stop spinning the same spot like I did and this is not a video about achieving success overnight. It's about building a foundation for a new and better you that you thank yourself for. So let's get to it. When you were little kids you probably got told by your parents and those around you that life is just the way it is. You learn to live within the constraints of it, isn't it? So then you artificially create the ceiling in your head that this is high as it can go and I was exactly like that. I thought I'd be only working my nine to five even though many times I was working beyond my hours nine to five and often into the weekends. I thought that sleep deprivation, having Monday blues, it's just part of being adulting and I need to just suck up and get used to it and I think the biggest transformations came in my life when I realized that I have so much more than I can achieve. I was living in a very limited version of me. I can demand more and a better life because everything is possible. I think we can all design an ideal life that we're excited to wake up from rather than every morning waking up hitting the snooze button five more times. It really all started with very insignificant changes and small things I was tweaking on an everyday basis that eventually led to a massive change years later and this really brought to mind this really interesting theory called the butterfly effect which is coined by Professor Lawrence at MIT who talks about this effect of in nature where very insignificant small changes like how a butterfly flapping his wings can cause a tornado on the other side of the world. So in a very complex system like nature, very small changes can lead to massive effects into the future. There are so many things along my journey that helped me take those insignificant tiny changes alongside everything that I was doing. So for example listening to inspiring audiobooks, listening to podcasts, attending events that inspired me and I remember the first time I attended a Tony Robbins event all the way back in the early 2010s and listening to all the different ways I can start taking action on the things I've been planning on for years and months and then also then moving on to reading the four-hour work week by Tim Ferriss who completely transformed the way I think about how we can spend time effectively working on things that helps to move the needle in our career and our businesses. So think back to yourself what were some of the pre-existing beliefs that you were told when we're little and that you should no longer believe in and how you can challenge those beliefs to think differently going forward because that's going to be the seed of everything, every single change you're going to have in your life going forward and I guarantee on that one. The other shift that helped me to make a massive change in what I do is instead of trying to learn to get a high-income job, learning a high-income skill instead. So growing up in a household where money wasn't exactly abundant, my parents taught me to think how to get the highest income job. The amount you get paid in a high-income job is finite whereas a high-income skill is infinitely more profitable in the long term. So learning digital marketing when I was laid off twice during the global financial crisis was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. The digital world was just starting to take shape and I remember the day when the iPhone launched when I realized that this is going to be such a huge opportunity by having these little devices in everyone's pockets. The world's attention is going to shift to online especially as we're carrying these every single day. A couple years later of literally daily taking my time to learn as much as I could in this space, I found myself instead of calling recruiters, trying to get a job interview into the door, I was invited to go to Google and work there instead. And after Google, I spotted the opportunity that there were many businesses out there who need advice on digital marketing. So I launched my business and right now there's so many potential high-income skills that you can digital marketing, coding, data analytics, AI. These are all areas that you can start honing your expertise on and you'll be able to carve out a future for yourself as long as you stay interested, staying ahead of the curve and start developing those new skills and get ready to pivot and change with the times because reinvention of yourself is part of the process. Never believe that you're going to be pigeonholing yourself into a specific area or an industry because that's just not true and never believe what others are saying because it's never too late. And we see this, right? With people like Taylor Swift, who constantly reinvent herself in the process and that makes her staying current with the times and also becoming one of the most successful female artists of all time. So think about to yourself at the moment, what is one high-income skill that you're interested in developing in? Write that down and start looking for resources around online that you have to find to help you build that new skill and learn a little bit every single day because you'd be surprised how much that add up to in a year's time as we all seen this with the way that James Clear talked about this in Atomic Habits. Just one percent a day, every single day makes you become 37 times better in a year. So imagine what you'll be in a year's time from here. And this brings me to the third point, which is how we should all embrace deep work. I think the ability to stay focused in a very distracted world is definitely a superpower. We've got to remember that we're living in one of the biggest social experiments of all time with all these devices and distractions around us constantly around the clock. I remember the time when I could barely get through a page of reading a physical book, but yet I can scroll through Instagram for an hour. But you got to remember that the ability to do deep work is probably one of the most important skill in the modern economy because by you doing deep work, you can create the high quality stuff, the outputs that puts you in the top one percent that also allow you to achieve the biggest goals in your life. And I realized this is that I'm able to create the best videos on this channel, write the best keynote talks, create the best training materials for my students when I was to stay focused and not being distracted by everything else around me. And I came across this in Cal Newport's book, Deep Work, where he shares a lot of ideas on how you can train your focus like a muscle and expand your mental capacity over time. So I learned to allow me to stay focused and start working on my most important task first in the morning. I'd rather block out three hours of deep work to get those things done than working eight hours in the day throughout the day where I'm highly distracted and actually doesn't get anything done at all. But that also brings me to this next point, which is every single thing that we say we need to do really comes on the back of self-control and discipline. But you really know that you need to do this. There's a reason why you clicked on this video, because you know that there's something you need to change in your life. And I think when the best way to do this is build that discipline and self-control in our daily habits and routines. If you think about it right, your life is made up by micro moments every single day, how you get up in the morning, how you show up at work, how you show up with your family. And every single moment helps you embrace those habits, enabling you to embrace your best self, your most authentic self and your goals. And this is where I decided to go all in. You ignore all distractions in order to get you there. And it's hard. I'm not saying it's easy, because I find it really hard to fight against distractions or thoughts that are constantly going in the opposite direction. And I find that the human mind doesn't always want to listen to what we want it to do. And it's just part of how we are. And it's one of those things where I realized also we're living in a system and hardware that's been designed for the prehistoric ages. But yet we expect it to have the same result and create the same outcome of having much different stakes now in the modern economy. So in order to help me stick to my own self-control and discipline, I think that an idea that I really embrace, which is the keystone habit really helped me. And I learned this from several individuals who are well known in the productivity space, like Charles Doug, who wrote about the power habit, and also James Clear, who wrote about this in Atomic Habits. And they all shared that there are certain habits that leads to a cascade of other actions because of them. So for example, James mentioned this, where a lot of people who work out can relate is that when you work out, which is your keystone habit, you then start eating better, because you wouldn't want to ruin all the hard work you did in the gym. And then you end up sleeping better on the back of that. And from there, you probably end up waking up with a lot more energy, doing better work, and end up creating a much better output on the back of that. So in his case, because he woke up a lot more energy and concentration, he wrote a much better book because of it, and it contributed to better work over time. So I feel the same way. Because when I get into a keystone habit of let's say, in this case, working out first in the morning, I do a much better two, three hours of high quality work, rather than let's say, I don't go work out. And then I try to get through eight hours in the day of constantly being distracted, multitasking with low energy, and feeling horrible by the end of it because I haven't got much done. And I really think that keystone habit was the key to how I'm able to start producing much more higher quality output, and then be able to achieve my big goals because of it. So I think this keystone habit can really help you set your life and the rest of your day in a much better place because of that. I feel like a lot of times it sounds trivial, but it is actually the center of everything, the foundation of it all to really make that initial change in your life. So think about what your keystone habit could be. Is there anything that you feel like that one tiny habit can make this cascade of changes in the rest of your day or the rest of your life, and how you can start incorporating that more into what you do on a daily basis. And the other part that I think really helped to help me stick to what I want to do over time is by making it fun and also accountable to other people who have similar goals to me who have to lift me higher. I mean it sounds a bit cliche at this point, but you are the five people that you surround yourself with on a regular basis. And who you hang out with really helps you to stick with that habit or changes that you want to make in your life because you're all accountable to each other and you're all trying to achieve the same thing. Like this YouTube channel, which is a great example. When I started creating videos, which is those early days when you start posting videos and you get zero views, no one cares about them. And you can then go into a group like this where you're getting that feedback on your videos. You're getting into conversations with others about how they're doing things. And when you have accountability like this and also people who make it fun and engaging, making you feel like you're part of the community, it makes a lot easier for you to stick to that habit. So it really got me through those days when I felt demotivated. I don't want to post any more videos because it's just not going to go anywhere. And these people helped to lift me higher. They gave me that motivation to keep going and to persist no matter what because we're all going for the same thing. We're all working after the same goals. And I think that's exactly the reason why in everything that you do, every little change, whether it's in your career, in your business, whether it's something you want to stick to as a healthy habit in your life, have someone around you or a group of people around you that also share that same vision. And I guarantee you it's going to be a hell of more fun, but at the same time also allowing you to stick to that habit much more in the long term and then able to see that result over time. Thank you so much for sticking with me to the end. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you like this video, I think you might also enjoy this one where it's all about my top seven life lessons I wish I knew earlier. Also, don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification button to get notified every time I release a new video. And lastly, I have this newsletter that I think you might also enjoy, which I'll share some of my personal growth, inspirations and tips with my audiences on a weekly basis. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.