How to have the best summer of your life

We all want to have a good time this summer. I personally look forward to the summertime every single year because I live in British Columbia and 90% of the year is overcast, rainy, gloomy, cloudy. It's not a fun time. When the weather starts to get good, I really start to think every single year: How am I going to make this summer count? How am I going to feel good, take advantage of the nice weather? What things can I do to sort of make some memories?

If you're anything like me, you don't want to have a summertime where you're just inside all the time, rotting away, feeling depressed because everybody that you know on Instagram, or people that you don't know on Instagram, are traveling to Greece; they're in the Bahamas having a great time, and you just feel like crap about yourself. How do we avoid that situation? How do you have an adventurous, fulfilling, exciting summer?

Well, as a summer enthusiast myself, over the past 27 years of my existence, I've been asking myself that same question, and I've developed some answers. So I want to share those answers with you. Here are five things that I randomly just thought of. I made them up, but it's taken me 27 years to realize that they will hopefully help you have the best summer that you've had in years—potentially the best summer that you've ever had in your entire life.

Tip number one, and this is very simple but extremely important: wake up earlier. Unless you're working a shift job where you have to wake up super early anyway, the summertime is the best time to wake up about an hour earlier than you usually do. That involves also going to bed an hour earlier as well—go figure. When you lay in bed and you don't do anything with your life and you rot away inside, it feels extra bad because you just have this idea that the whole world is going on without you. That's why I think it's so important to wake up early during the summertime. Don't let the sun catch you sleeping.

I personally find that the summertime mornings have a magical aura about them. There's something very special about, you know, the bugs flying around and the birds chirping and the sunrise coming up. You know, the world is waking up, and if you wake up with that, there's something so ancient and special about that. You're part of the rhythm of the universe, as woo-woo as that sounds. So give it a try—wake up earlier this summer; you can't go wrong.

And right along the same lines, tip number two is to go outside as much as humanly possible. Unless you have a very good reason to be inside, go outside! It's summer! What are you doing inside? If you're just doom scrolling on your phone, just go to a coffee shop, sip a nice iced coffee and people watch instead! I guarantee you, being a person in the world doing nothing will feel infinitely better than being a recluse doing nothing.

Because just being around people, being outside of your house, subjecting yourself to social judgment, it'll make you second guess your choices in life. Isolation is degenerative in large quantities. I had this thought recently: so many people are so addicted to their phones and their computers, their laptops, Netflix—just basically screens—and they hide away inside regardless of the weather. Which means that if you are of the awoken variety and you understand the healing nature of the sun, and you decide to go against the tyrannical screen culture, the likelihood that you meet people on the exact same wavelength as you is so much higher.

Because the people who are doom scrolling are doom scrolling inside. Which means, yeah, there are just such high-quality optimistic people when you leave your house nowadays. You'd be shocked as to how many like random beautiful people you come across when you're just on a walk and you choose to make eye contact and you say, "Hey, what's up?" Personal challenge: go try to chat up a stranger! You'd be shocked as to how receptive people are and how friendly people are.

Okay, tip number three is to optimize your environment. Are you going to design your environment in a way that keeps you stuck inside and not want to leave, or are you going to design your environment—you know, your home, your bedroom, your kitchen—wherever you reside in a way that refreshes you and recharges you to go back out into the world and continue the momentum, continue the adventure of your life? Recently, I've been very cognizant of this. You know, I don't want to make my house too comfortable. I don't want to rig out my gaming PC. I don't want to get a comfier and comfier couch with a bigger and bigger screen.

I want to make sure that my clothes are clean, my laundry is done—quality of life things that help you feel good so that you can go back out there. It's like the ultimate pit stop in NASCAR. I don’t watch NASCAR, like is it called a pit stop? I don’t know who watches NASCAR. There are cars that go fast, and I know they pull away, and there are like the guys that have the drills or something, and they put the wheels on really fast. The tires on really fast. I don’t know. Make your house like that or something.

I don't give a—tip number four is: don't try to recreate the Golden Years; be present instead. What I mean by this is that if you're a summer enthusiast like me, you probably have memories of days gone by—those perfect summers that you had, that perfect moment when you were camping with your friends when you were 17 years old. You were lying on the beach, and everything just felt right. Those were the good times. Those were the days, man. I wish I could go back in time. I take state—you know what? Maybe you're really inspired to make this summer like the good old days, right? You know, you try to reflect on what made those days so good, and you try to just like do that again—try to do it again.

Trying to recreate the golden years doesn't work. You can't compare the present moment with this propagandized version of your past. Memories are a completely different ball game; doing with my life, the present life will just never feel like your memories. But one thing that you can do to ensure that you create new good, favorable memories is to just focus on being present. Do the exact opposite of reminiscing about the good old days.

Try to be present with your own reality. Don't distract yourself with dopaminergic rabbit holes—you know, that's the opposite of being present. Instead, think about the people in your life who you want to spend time with, the things that you want to do, and set up a schedule to spend time with these people. You know, phone them up. What do you personally want to accomplish with your summer? And then focus on that. Be present with that.

When you fully engage in your activities, when you're really intentional about how you spend your time, you'll find that memories are created automatically. One of my favorite memories of all time is when myself and my siblings were back in our hometown and we made an effort to jump in the lake every single day, no matter what. No matter how we're feeling, no matter whether it's raining, whether it's like blistering heat—whether it's midnight or midday—let's just jump in the lake every single day this summer. It's almost like baptizing yourself in the waters of summertime. It's a very optimistic thing to do.

Make adventure a mechanism; take emotion out of it. Do things that are good for you automatically without considering how you feel. Shoot a cow with a bazooka. I'm not proud of that last one, but I did it, man. So often, we'll talk ourselves out of going to the gym when we don't feel like it. But sometimes, you know, we don't feel like going to the gym, but we go to the gym anyway, and then afterward we feel so good and so empowered that we went anyway despite the fact that we didn't feel like it.

So clearly, how we feel after having done the thing is a better indicator of the value that thing has in our lives than before having done the thing. Man, I'm bad at grammar today. Did that make any sense? Hey, no—it’s okay. The bottom line is you already know what's good for you. Usually, these things are moderately to majorly uncomfortable, but you have to do these things anyway as a mechanism—like clockwork. And also, if you live near a body of water, I highly recommend that specific challenge. I guarantee you—I'm letting you in on a little secret here—the mental benefits of that specific challenge are insane! By the way, I think we only did it like 36 days in a row. Like, we didn't last the whole summer, but those 36 days are so immortalized in our summer archives, our summer memories, that my brother gifted me this "Go Jump in the Lake" plaque as a reminder just to do things like this automatically, whether or not you feel like it, because they'll turn into some of the best memories of your life.

Okay, my final tip is to be okay. Don't succumb to FOMO. Nobody's having nearly as good of a time as you think they are. Mental health is at a critical moment right now. Don't add to that by looking on Instagram and thinking that everybody has it all figured out and you don't. No one has it figured out. 99% of people don't have it figured out. Realize that! Get off Instagram. Don't just—don't be on it in general, especially during the summertime. Don't be doom scrolling. Take a deep breath and realize that you're okay.

You don't have to do any crazy Outer Banks in order to have a good summer! In the morning when you're waking up nice and early, do what's good for you. Do what advances your life and your goals. Work hard in the morning so that you can have nice patio conversations during the evening. But ultimately, just be present with all these things. Don't distract yourself with the bulk of screens and Netflix or Apple TV synods. Not that good. The first three episodes were quite good and it's starting to drag. Good luck guys, you're gonna need it!

So, I injured my shoulder playing hockey recently, and it's been keeping me out of the gym. Luckily, today's video sponsor, CoPilot, has helped me out a ton. Not only are all of the workouts on CoPilot extremely easy to follow, they're tailored specifically to you—not by some auto-generated algorithm, but by an actual personal trainer. Because when you join CoPilot, you start with an onboarding call with your coach. And after talking for a while, they will create a custom workout plan tailored to your specific needs.

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Thanks again to CoPilot for sponsoring this video. I was feeling super good today; I did a lot of work outside on a Starbucks patio, sipping a chai tea latte. I don't know why I chose a hot chai tea latte, and it was just killer heat today—not a wise decision. Thank you so much, and we'll catch you in the next video.

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