3 rules to quickly improve your life

Okay, so here are three rules to live by that will quickly improve your life.

Rule number one: Follow the path of most resistance. Now, this obviously isn't an absolute rule. Like, you probably have a lot of resistance towards driving into oncoming traffic or throwing your laptop into a lake, and that's probably a good thing. But if you have two brain cells to rub together, then you probably know that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the internal resistance you feel when you think about doing something constructive, something that would move your life forward in some way or another, like writing a cover letter for a job posting you've been keeping an eye on or finally cleaning your hell hole of a garage where you've been stashing 8 months of cardboard.

This type of internal resistance that you feel when you think about taking care of these things is also the same type of resistance that feels empowering to overcome but paralyzing if we stay under its thumb. But if we can learn to not shy away from this feeling but instead lean into it, we will find that our life will rapidly improve, because the most rewarding things in life are hidden behind discomfort or resistance paywalls. We purchase long-lasting order and success in our lives through temporary discomfort. And if we become aware of this weird little transaction that seems to be deeply woven into the fabric of reality, we can use it to our advantage.

We can be comfortable with making this trade as often as possible, and one thing that I've noticed is that as we get better at willingly leaning into this discomfort of action, after a while, we'll actually start to enjoy the feeling of resistance. It's kind of a weird thing. The discomfort itself becomes exciting and empowering. I think this is because since resistance is a source of power, after we transcend it, then once we go through this process of transcending it frequently enough, our brain eventually starts to clue in. We'll just link this feeling of discomfort with empowerment, and we'll get excited to overcome obstacles and challenges. Remember this rule: when we overcome resistance, we absorb its power; the greater the resistance, the greater the power.

Rule number two: Don't stop doing the things that got you out of a bad situation. Kind of a mouthful, but what I mean is that human beings are pretty hilarious sometimes. It's because most of the time, we know exactly what we need to do to stop feeling like crap. Like, if we've worked ourselves into a hole, we know we're playing more video games, we're eating junk food, blah, blah, blah, and we're just not taking care of ourselves. We're in this negative mindset, this self-loathing spiral. Eventually, this goes on for a long enough period of time that we eventually snap. We say, "You know what? I'm tired of living my life like a piece of crap. I'm going to change things up." So we bounce back. We start eating better, we start going to the gym, we start getting our work done on time, and we start showering in the morning and dressing into something half-decent.

As we do this, we start to feel better and better. We start to feel more confident; we start to feel more energized and better about ourselves. But the weird thing is, something usually happens. Since we no longer have that negative incentive to work ourselves out of the hole, we kind of forget why we were taking care of ourselves to begin with. So, we start to slip; we cut corners; we skip the gym one day. That turns into two days, which turns into a week, into a month, and we eventually slip and slide down the slippery and slidey slope back into the hole from whence we came.

But have you ever considered what your life might look like if you didn't stop doing the things that got you out of a bad situation? Because in reality, there's no secret to success. Success isn't built by doing, you know, lavish extraordinary things like banging out an entire book overnight—200 brilliant pages of literature—and it's not by going to the gym harder than everyone else that one time you're motivated to go to the gym. You know, you work out so hard that one day you just explode into this meat mountain. No, it's ridiculous. Success is built by doing the same things that got us out of our rut, but just continuing to do those same things every single day over a long period of time.

The key is to just do these things long enough that they get locked in as habits. Habits meaning that they're easier to do than not to do, because that's what happens when you engage with these things for long enough. They'll eventually just become a part of who you are, and they'll be easier to do than not to do. If this sounds kind of miserable to you, just know that it doesn't have to be such a grind, because as I've mentioned previously, eventually doing these constructive things feels really good. On a long enough timeline, you'll begin to look forward to these things, not as a means to an end, but because of the way they make you feel.

So start small; try to implement one simple habit that you actually think you're going to stick to. Lock it in for 30 days, or however long it takes until you feel like it's really sticking, and then add a new habit. Keep on doing that until you're in a place where you feel satisfied with your daily life and the activities that you do on a daily basis. You know, that's different for everybody, but use your judgment.

Okay, rule number three: Record everything. Life can be pretty turbulent. Some days, life really just deals you a hand, and maybe something truly devastating happens to you, and it rocks your world, and you have no idea what to do. Other times, you have an amazing day; you know, you feel euphoric, on top of the world, and you think to yourself, "Holy smokes, why don't I feel like this more often?" Instead of remaining completely oblivious as to why you feel good or bad, why not start writing stuff down and recording thoughts and feelings on a day-to-day basis? Because when you do this, patterns start to emerge. You start to realize that there's an intimate relationship between your repeated behaviors and the way that they make you feel.

So, I truly believe one of the best bang for buck habits you can start implementing is just recording your thoughts, either as a voice memo or as a written document on a piece of paper or a notebook. Because once we start verbalizing or writing things down, taking our thoughts out of the weird cobweb-riddled nest in our head and manifesting them into the real world—woo woo as that sounds—it's easier to see our thoughts for what they are. And once our thoughts and behaviors are actually recorded in an objective way, then it becomes really difficult to keep making the same mistakes.

You'll start to eventually clue in that, "Oh, when I do this, I feel like that. When I think these types of thoughts, it makes me feel like this." Hypothetically, yeah, I think you can come to these conclusions without writing these things down, but why make this process of growing as a person any slower than it needs to be? And no matter whether you're recording your thoughts and feelings from a good day or a bad day, all information is good information. Use this information to your benefit, and your life will dramatically improve.

So that's pretty much it. These three rules have really helped me in my life, and I really hope they help you as well. I just want to give a big thank you to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. For those of you who don't know, Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes covering dozens of topics. I'm always blown away by just how many inspiring and insightful filmmaking classes there are on there that really help me bring my videos to the next level.

And maybe you're not into filmmaking; maybe you're into photography, or cooking, or coding, or learning to play the piano. You know, no matter what you're into or what you want to learn, there's probably a class for it on Skillshare. And I always find that classes on Skillshare are extremely practical, and that's because Skillshare classes are designed for real life. It's super easy to take whatever you're learning on Skillshare and apply it directly to your real-life pursuits.

And Skillshare is doing this awesome thing where the first thousand of you who click my link in the description below will get a one-month free trial of Skillshare premium. So make sure you take advantage of that link, learn something new, explore your creativity, and as usual, have a great time.

So if you like this video, make sure you actually hit the like button, because when you hit the like button, the algorithm says, "Wow, this video must be pretty good. Let's recommend it to more people." And that could potentially help somebody out if they're not having such a good time in life, and you know my video helps them get out of a bad situation. And let's not lie— it helps me out too. It helps me do what I do and continue to make YouTube videos, and I like making these; it's fun.

Other than that, thank you so much for watching. Make sure to check out the second channel. I've been a little bit inactive on there recently, but exciting things are coming in September, so make sure that you don't miss that. Other than that, thank you so much for watching, and we'll catch you in the next video.

Exactly. Do you understand me?

K: "I understand you."

[Laughter]