10 ways to stop ruining your life

In my last video, I went over 10 ways to quickly ruin your life, and it is by far the most depressing video I have ever made in my life. A lot of you who watched that video said, “Wow, I don’t actually need a tutorial for this. I see myself in every single one of those points, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve been depressed for a long time, or maybe I haven’t been feeling well for a long time, and this video just sort of reminds me of what a big piece of [__] I am.” I literally read that same comment verbatim 50 times.

So, I felt obligated to make this video because I want to take each point from the last video and flip it to give you guys some ideas to help you rise from the ashes, get out of whatever depressive rut that you're in, so that you can start feeling better very quickly.

Step number one is to have a goal. You need to figure out what you want from your life, and a lot of the time, we already kind of know what we want with our lives, but it is sort of just this vague sentiment. We know that we probably want to have more money or we want to have a girlfriend or we want to, you know, pass school or to feel better or to have big muscles or cool hair. Like, we have all these vague sentiments, but we haven’t really sat down and separated the wheat from the chaff.

We haven’t figured out what things are actually important to us. What things get us excited to wake up in the morning? We don’t really outline what kind of person we want to be specifically. How do we ideally want to spend our time? How much time should we spend playing RuneScape? How do we want to feel on a day-to-day basis? What kind of relationships do we want to have?

All of these things are so important to outline specifically. Otherwise, we don’t really have an aim. We have all of these vague sentiments of things that we kind of want and that would be nice, but we have absolutely no specific goals and absolutely no specific steps to get there. Without that aim, we are by definite mission aimless. So, no wonder we kind of descend into nihilism without a goal. We need goals to strive towards, and it’s in that striving that we find meaning.

We find that internal fulfillment that we’re usually looking for when we’re spending time on Instagram and whatnot. We're sort of looking for this feeling of resolution like you’re where you’re supposed to be. You find that feeling by being on your path, and you don’t know if you’re on your path if you don’t have a goal. So, it is so important to spend some time, sit down with a pen and paper, and figure out in detail what you want your life to look like one month from now, one year from now, and five years from now.

Step number two is step out of the cave. One of the easiest ways, by far, to descend into despair is to spend all of your time inside, in front of screens, getting sucked into endless algorithms, being force-fed topics that you are growing tired of, and it seems to be the same things every single day. You watch the same videos and you think the same thoughts, so it’s extremely important that if you don’t like that, you stop spending so much time inside your house.

You have to step outside of the cave. Let the sunlight and vitamin D hit your skin. Go be a person in the world. You know, stop spending so much time in isolation. That’s probably one of the biggest things that the past couple of years have taught us: spending all of our time in front of a screen isn’t exactly good for our mental health.

So, emerge from the cave as much as possible. Let people know your name. Get to know people. Have people know you by being a person in the world. We stop being so closed in on ourselves. Our soul becomes this black hole that just requires entertainment and people to validate you, and we almost draw the world in towards ourselves rather than being out there and radiating this sort of abundant giving nature.

As woo-woo as that sounds, when we spend so much time in isolation, we get so self-conscious that every other external input is sort of like trying to fill this hole that we create in ourselves. Let’s stop that. Get outside of the house. Go talk to somebody. Stop spending all of your time in your little cave. As much as you are capable, go be a person in the world.

Step number three to dramatically improve your life is to take risks. Life is inherently risky. By being alive, you risk dying. By crossing the street, you risk getting hit by a bus. There are so many things that could go wrong and probably will go wrong in your life, and a lot of these things are completely out of your control. You can’t escape bad things happening to you. You feel pain anyway, so why not feel the pain of trying and failing rather than the pain of apathy, despair, and neglect?

This doesn’t mean spend all of your money on the latest crypto thing and hope to get rich because that’s just dumb. Start off small. Try to strike up a conversation with the person in the elevator or the grocery checkout. You might risk being perceived as sort of a weird person that people don’t want to talk to, but that’s a great example of a risk that is kind of worth taking, because even if you are seen as a weirdo and they literally go, “Ugh, why are you talking to me?” that sort of rejection, when you voluntarily subject yourself and you are aware that that could happen, but you do it anyways, that is an empowering rejection.

That’s the thing about risk: when you are aware of the negative downsides, but you make a calculated decision to go for it anyways, when that downside happens, you at least respect yourself for trying. As you take more risks in life, as you step outside of your comfort zone, you start to get better at evaluating risk. You start to be a better judge of what could go wildly wrong with very little upside versus what has, like, pretty good upside and very little downside.

You start to develop resilience. You start to develop this bounce-back nature, this anti-fragility. So, it’s never too late to start taking more risks. Obviously, don’t be dumb. If you have a family, don’t bank everything on the stock market, especially right now. Don’t quote me on that; it’s just a hunch. But, like I said from the start, life is inherently risky.

You know, by not taking risks and not getting comfortable with risks, that’s risky in and of itself. In fact, it’s worse than risky, because not only do you risk not getting what you eventually want in life, you pretty much guarantee it. So, if you’re starting to feel sort of apathetic in life, stop sitting at the shore living in fear for the next big wave to get all of your clothes wet. Learn to surf and expect to be bad at the start, but you’ll get better.

The fourth thing that you can do to dramatically improve your life is to get out of your head. Assuming you followed step one and you developed a clear vision of what you want with your life and the things that you typically want to do each day, then you’ve already done plenty of thinking. So often in our lives, we think that we need to think things through in order to do something, but like for 99% of the things, we really do not.

Like, if you really feel like you should be getting back into the gym again and you start to feel inspired because you watched this, like, I don’t know, workout montage transformation video, we’re like, “Oh yeah man, I really should start going to the gym again.” So, you start looking up new workout clothes to buy; you start spending money on this like advanced YouTuber fitness influencer program; you spend all your money at GNC.

It’s like you don’t need to do this much thinking; just go to the [__] gym. Do the thing before you can even think about it, because as soon as you start thinking, you already know you’re an absolute master at finding a way to weasel out of it. Even if the rationale is fairly cohesive, the result is that you didn’t end up doing it.

So many things in life are like this. If you need to write your final essay, as soon as you think about it, and you already know it’s good for you, you need to become efficient at just putting one foot in front of the other and already start doing it. Like, literally shut your brain off and start thinking about the essay when you’ve already written, like, six words for it.

Ninety-nine percent of us have a problem of overthinking, not underthinking.

Step number five is produce. Always produce more than you consume. In this highly consumeristic culture, that is very challenging, especially if you are like most people nowadays, including myself, if I’m not careful. So many of us sort of sit there, living life passively. You know, we’re living life on our heels, willingly hypnotizing ourselves with whatever content is displayed for us when we enter YouTube. You know, maybe that’s this video—maybe you’ve been incessantly watching self-improvement content.

Click away from this video. You don’t need this video. Like, come back to it later. Go do the thing that you’re supposed to do. You know, go produce. Stop consuming content like this. You know, if it’s the end of the day and you know you’re kicking back and having a good time, then maybe keep on watching. But I’m literally gonna screw myself with this video algorithm-wise, because I genuinely mean it. Go do something more important. You know, life feels so much more exciting when you are creating more than you’re consuming.

If you like watching videos, learn to make them. If you like scrolling Instagram, looking at photos, learn to take them. The satisfaction that we’re longing for when we’re doom scrolling is the feeling of creation. It’s being in the flow state, feeling like you are where you’re supposed to be and you’re doing something significant. You’re putting something out into the world, so always try to produce at least as much as you consume, preferably more.

Step number six is to welcome feedback. Don’t just surround yourself with people who think exactly who you think, and you have like three or four people that you talk to, and you all have the same opinions about everything. You look with judgment on people who live life differently because your world is so small; that’s pretty much everybody. It’s important to have an inner circle, absolutely, and a lot of the time your inner circle will think a lot like you think, absolutely.

But surround yourself with people who challenge you, who want to hold you to a higher standard. If you start to stray off the path, they can bring you back onto it. And a lot of the time, that won’t be very comfortable. A lot of the time, that’ll be a hit to the ego. But you want to find people who want the best for the best version of you. You know, not just people who want you to be comfortable all the time.

Try to reflect on the fact that you probably don't know everything and that there’s a lot to learn from other people. This doesn’t mean be spineless and not stand up for what you think is right, but do it in a way that is solution-oriented, not ego-oriented. You do not know everything.

Number seven is be vulnerable. Now, a lot of you might say, “That one sounds pretty beta.” To be honest with you, that sounds super beta. “Joey’s a beta.” Sure, by being vulnerable, I don’t mean expose your vital organs to a dirty bandit with a sharp knife. I mean don’t be afraid to be emotionally vulnerable, emotionally honest to your inner circle, to the people who are holding you to a higher standard.

Now, what does this mean and what’s the utility of this? Well, let’s look at the alternative. The alternative is to be secretive, to have things that you’re ashamed of that you never tell anybody. You stuff it down, you pretend it doesn’t exist, and a lot of the time when you have bad habits or addictions or something like that and you keep them hidden, they tend to blossom in the shadows, right? They start to weigh on you far more than they probably should.

When you don’t expose your flaws and your darker side to anybody, when you’re not emotionally vulnerable and honest, you know, no one really knows who you are. You conceal a part of yourself from the world. Reflect on your life. Are there things that you do behind closed doors that you wouldn’t do if that door were to swing open and Grandma was home?

That was a very weird way to put it. If there are things that we do that we don’t want to admit to other people, it’s important to find the courage to let somebody know—somebody that you trust. It’s a very Christian idea, actually. Confession isn’t for God or for the priest or for a person that you’re confiding in; it’s for you. It’s to shed light on the darker aspects of yourself to sort of like heal it, to like purge it in a way, because these darker sides of ourselves thrive in secrecy.

Don’t be afraid to confide in somebody that you trust about things that you’re not so proud of, because a weight will come off your shoulders every single time. It’s cathartic, and you can live your life with more freedom to sort of pursue the higher version of yourself. Where do you find these types of people? Outside of your house?

Step number eight to dramatically improve the rest of your life—this one’s probably the hardest one to do. It’s the one that I struggle with the most, and that is to embrace conflict. Now, this one might sound interesting, but the alternative is to run from conflict. If you have a problem with something, let somebody know, right? Otherwise, you’re an absolute doormat. If someone wrongs you, you know, does something to hurt you, does something out of line that you don’t appreciate, don’t just be like, “Oh, that’s okay,” because if it’s not okay, it’s not okay! Don’t say that it’s okay, because by doing that, you look weaker.

So, that person is more likely to take advantage of you in the future. They say, “Wow, this guy’s an absolute doormat.” But far worse is that you don’t respect yourself as much. You say, “Wow, I just let people walk all over me because I don’t want to deal with slight discomfort in the short term.” Is that something I struggle with personally? You know, I’m a pretty agreeable person a lot of the time. I want to make sure everyone’s comfortable and having a good time, and you know, I have fairly thick skin.

I played hockey, and you know, dressing room culture in small-town Canada? You know, people throw jabs, and I don’t think that being overly sensitive is particularly beneficial in that circumstance. You do have to let stuff kind of bounce off a little bit. But when something crosses the line, you know it. A lot of the time, those aren’t like little jabs or humor; a lot of the time, that’s just like straight-up disrespect.

They say something about a family member of yours, or at work, something genuinely unfair, unprofessional, or unsafe happens. Don’t just be like, “That’s all right, yeah, like, don’t worry about it.” Yeah, you have to speak up, right? Otherwise, you don’t have a spine. If you’ve gotten in the habit of doing this over years and years and years, you almost have to re-earn your spine again. And that’s tough; that’s really tough.

It’s something that is extremely important because that goes along with honesty. Speak the truth. If you don’t like something, say that you don’t like it. Be willing to risk people perceiving you as mildly unpleasant in the moment in order to gain respect—not just from the people around you, but respect for yourself. When the elephant in the room comes barging in, talk about the elephant. Be like, “Hey, look at that elephant right there! What are we gonna do about it?” The thing’s huge. Don’t have elephants in your room. They don’t belong in your room; they belong in the zoo. Or in the wild, actually. If I say they belong in the zoo, I’ll get canceled. They belong somewhere else.

Step number nine: Don’t play RuneScape. I put that tip in the video, and it’s like the number one comment is like, “Lamou, I died at play RuneScape!” I played a lot of RuneScape—like, a lot. I think I should change it in the video to play RuneScape 3 because old school RuneScape still slaps.

Alright, tip number 10 is be optimistic. I think optimism gets a bad rap because people will look at optimism and they’ll say, “Man, this person is not based; he doesn’t realize that there’s a lot of suffering in the world, and it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.” But unless I have a different definition of what optimism is, optimism is the opposite of pessimism. Pessimism is where you look at any situation and you find the negative in it. You know, the glass is always half-empty if you are a pessimist.

You compulsively put a negative spin on things. You know, you have a habit of looking at anything good, neutral, or bad, and finding the fault in all of it. While that might be true because the fabric of our reality is inherently tainted in a lot of ways, suffering is a part of life; everyone’s aware of that. But why would you add to the suffering by being compulsively negative? By finding a way to complain or lament about all these things you have to do, you’re basically cutting yourself off at the knees before you can get going.

There’s no shortage of suffering in the world. You know, life is hard. People on motorbikes could ruin your shot as you’re trying to do a video at 11 PM when you have to wake up at 5 AM to catch a flight to London. “Oh, life is so hard! I’m going to London!” If you have a tendency to compulsively look for the negative in everything, you add to the net suffering of your life. It doesn’t improve your life to be overly negative, right? Seek to find the good in everything rather than the negative. That’s what being an optimist is all about.

It’s not being blind to the negative aspects of the reality around you; it’s choosing to focus on what’s good. There’s a reason why gratitude journals have been shown to cure, in a lot of people, clinical anxiety or insomnia. There are some really interesting studies on that, and it’s because people focus on the positive aspects of their lives and the things that they’re grateful for. It doesn’t mean that they created anything new; they’re just remembering things differently, and they feel better about their lives.

They have an internal peace that they’re fostering because they are able to habitually see the positive aspects of things. And there’s the motorcycle again! I love the motorcycle because it reminds me of what an amazing job I have. Do I actually think that? I don’t know, but I feel good rather than negative.

If you’re really good at being a pessimist, it’s really difficult to actually recognize when you’re doing it, because you do it so regularly, and it’s such an intellectual sleight of hand that it’s really hard to pick up a lot of the time. This is a very difficult thing to do—to remain optimistic in times of trial. It’s not easy, but it is deeply meaningful and is deeply satisfying to try to be that person.

So, try to recognize all the little ways that you are being negative about yourself, being negative about your capabilities, about your future, about your past, your present. Try to find all the little ways that you’re spinning little fun little spider webs into negativity. I don’t know how that makes sense. It doesn’t, but neither does being negative.

So, if you’ve made it to the end of this video, try that today, for the rest of the day, or make a note of it tomorrow: be extra mindful about the stories you tell yourself about the world around you and about your own life. Is this a hopeful story or is this an overly bleak and negative story with no aim and no encouragement? The world isn’t a very encouraging place, and the last person that should be robbing you of encouragement is yourself.

Your life gets better when you’re optimistic. I will die on that hill. If you have been not feeling so good, you watched my last video and it made things worse, then hopefully by listening to some of these tips, you are starting to get some ideas as to how you can start feeling better. And again, a lot of these things are just scratching the surface. Maybe these things weren’t very practical or hands-on, but hopefully they got your mind working as to how to get out of some of the negative thought patterns that we find ourselves in, so that you can dramatically improve the remainder of your life.

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So, once again, click my link below to take advantage of this offer, and thank you again to Athletic Greens for sponsoring this video. If you liked this video, make sure that you hit the like button, because when you actually move your mouse over and click the like button, the algorithm goes, “Okay, this video is good, and more people should see it.” That is a huge help if you hit the like button.

Let me know in the comments below which one of these tips you most struggle with and which ones you’re most excited to work on. I would love to hear your side of things. Other than that, thank you so much for watching, as always, and we'll catch you in the next video. [Music]