The fastest way to transform your entire life

So my last video was extremely depressing. I made a tutorial on how to ruin the rest of your life, and most of you thought it was an absolute banger, including myself. I thought it was really cool. I put a lot of effort into it, and I put a lot of effort into making it as depressing as possible, as desperate as possible. Because I believe in showing the negative, I believe in creating a negative vision to run from, not just a positive vision to run towards.

But a lot of you who watched this most recent video that I made said, "Hey Joey, I've been in a dark place for a very long time. I don't know what to do," and watching this video just sort of reminds me of how screwed I am. And I totally get that, and I know that a lot of people aren't in the best place in life, and watching something super depressing doesn't necessarily help them. Um, they need some hope and positivity in their life. So that's why I'm making this video. If that's you, then let's just go over the video point for point and try to talk about the reverse, shoot the, and brainstorm on what the reverse would look like and how you can take each of these negative tendencies or negative behaviors, flip them, and why that would be a good thing for your life.

So if you're interested in changing your life and feeling a lot better, especially going into this new year, and you want some new ideas on how you can feel like the best version of yourself, then this video is for you. Okay, so tip number one is to open your body language. So many people nowadays walk around life with a closed body language. Recently, I've been really obsessed with watching sort of old footage from the 1960s, 1970s, even the '50s on YouTube. There's a lot of archival footage where you can kind of do these street tours and these walk arounds.

And the first thing that pops out at me every single time is how open and how lively people are. People walked around with good posture; they made great eye contact with people. Obviously, they were hustling and bustling because it's a Metro City and everything in these walk arounds, but the vibe is totally different. People want to connect with people; it felt like a community back in the day, and I feel like technology has really robbed us of that.

The norm is to walk around life with a closed body language, with your eyes looking down at either the concrete or your device. People don't want to make eye contact with each other because it's uncomfortable. You know, people aren't good at that anymore. But just because it's normal doesn't mean it's good. If you want to change your life and feel good in a world where so many people are depressed, then maybe you need to not follow the norm. Maybe you need to be the person who tries to figure out what you want for your life, how you want to feel, how you want to behave, and behave that way regardless of what everyone else is doing.

One of the best ways to do that is to open up your posture and be receptive to the world around you. Try to make eye contact with people even if they don't want to make eye contact with you. Be the exception! Right? When you're at the grocery checkout or at some convenience store, just have, "Hey, how's your day going so far?" roll off the tip of your tongue. Just get good at saying that.

"I don't know, those microwave dinners any good?" I don't know, I'll give them a whirl. You're not obligated to really make a profound emotional connection or anything like that, but even just asking somebody how their day is, "Hey, how's it going?" that goes a long way for people. I feel like grocery checkout people can go weeks without hearing that genuinely. So open up your posture, open up your body language. Tell yourself that you are receptive to the world and you're here. You have arrived. You're present.

All right, so tip number two is to stop checking your phone. I almost don't even want to talk about this tip. We'll move on to the next tip because you've heard this a billion quadrillion times from every single self-help YouTuber in the history of the world, and I have nothing further to say other than what I already said in tip number one. So just don't check your phone all the time because it pulls you out of reality. Um, you're just doing what everyone else is doing, and yeah, keep it in your pocket.

Put it in your pocket, sir. All right, so the third easy thing that you can do to feel a lot better in life or to give yourself an advantage is to be early to things. Be early to things by default, right? Don't just roll in right on time or 5 minutes late. See what it would feel like to be 5 minutes early. And this is less about how you're perceived by the people that you're meeting. That can't be understated either.

Obviously, when you are the person who shows up 5 minutes early and prepared, people will perceive you as more mature, more prepared, more on the ball. But that's not necessarily what I'm talking about. Even from a selfish perspective, if you plan for being early by default, then the little things in life that are in your way, that are outside of your control, won't phase you as much. Say if you plan on being even 10 minutes early, you have an abundance of buffer time before arriving to things.

Then when the traffic is backed up bumper to bumper or there's construction or something goes wrong and you have to take an important phone call, you can just take a deep breath and not be as phased or as stressed out or as fight or flight about all these little things not going exactly as planned. And in the modern age, we are desperate for less cortisol in our lives. Cortisol is the stress hormone. We walk around life with so much pent up physiological and psychological stress.

We're like little balls of rocks, balls of balls. Yeah, or stress balls that need to be squeezed. I don't like where this is going. We just need to relax. Take a deep breath, show up to things early because it's good for you psychologically to do that, and I guarantee you the experience of living will improve for you, both practically because people will like it when you show up early, and psychologically because you will like the way you feel when you just plan to be places earlier.

I don't know what more there is to say, but that's the tip. But being late will be inevitable. You will always make mistakes in life. You need to accept that you are not perfect, and part of accepting that you're not perfect is to not make excuses when things go wrong. Because making excuses is a rejection of your human flaws. You're trying to pawn off your mistake to someone or something else.

We do this instinctively. We'll show up late to a meeting, we'll show up late to work, and we don't want to come across as irresponsible, so we try to generate some excuse as to why we're late. But the truth is this: sometimes it works. Like one time, if you roll in the door late chronically, then it doesn't really matter what you say. People will just see that you're the guy who shows up late, and you're the guy who always has an excuse. In my opinion, it's much better to say, "Sorry, I'm late."

"Oh, why are you late?" "There's no excuse. I'm just late." People might actually be impressed by your candor. Notice that when I say, "Sorry, I'm late; there's no excuse," people are like, "Oh, no, don't worry about it," right? Because "there's no excuse" makes you sound like you're beating yourself up. But really what you're doing is you're taking responsibility, and people go like, "Oh, don't worry about it."

But if you say, "Sorry, I'm late; the dog, he like, pooped on the carpet and I had to clean it up," and when you're be wilding on your excuses, I don't know if that's what the kids say anymore. "How do you do, fellow kids?" But it almost makes everything worse because people will start to listen to these excuses and be like, "Man, this guy does not have his together. This person's life is crazy; all these wild things happen to him."

So you're just like, "Yep, sorry I'm late, no excuse." Your life will be better if you do that. Okay, so tip number five is to develop an internal locus of control. Life is really crazy; so many things can happen that are utterly outside of our control. Life will throw crazy things at you all the time; it just will. Nobody lives a life where they don't have to deal with unexpected obstacles or tragedies or accidents.

But there are really two types of people: people with an external locus of control or an internal one. I find that the most successful people in the world are people with an internal locus of control. That doesn't mean that they believe that they influence everything that happens in their lives, but it's almost like their immediate question that they ask themselves when anything happens is, "Okay, this happened. What can I do about it to make it better?"

And it's so important to have that mindset in life because the alternative is what most people do: "I can't do what I want because this thing came and crapped all over it. I can't buy a house because the economy is so bad." The focus is on the chaos, and the problem with that is there will always be a thing. There will always be negativity; there will always be some crazy thing that disadvantages you in some way, always, some more than others. Life is unfair; sometimes the worst possible thing doesn't happen to a particular individual. Some people are just lucky or fortunate or blessed.

But the reality is whatever happens, happens. And if you happen to be super unlucky and you have a lot of misfortune happened to you, then it happened. It's like you get dealt a bad hand at the poker table. In poker, everybody deals with the exact same odds, but there's still such a thing as really good poker players because they've learned to play the odds. They've learned to take bad hands on the chin or take a bad hand and pump up its value by bluffing, etc., etc.

Like you can still learn to play the game even if you have a lot of bad luck. So in life, you need to really focus on being a better poker player. You need to realize that as soon as you pay attention to the thing itself, that's never going to be the reason why you aren't successful or why you aren't happy or why your life is ruined. The only way you can really ruin your life is if you choose not to play the game.

So this might be a bad analogy, and maybe I'm trying to sound a lot smarter than I actually am, but the only thing you ever can do is ask yourself, "Okay, this happened, what can I do about it?" It's the only thing anybody can ever do. Try to thrive with your particular odds. You can't wish for better odds. You have the hand that you were dealt—now make the most of it.

The next few tips are about interacting with other people because there are so many little things that we do in conversation that we don't realize make us horrible to be around. If people don't like being around you or don't like having conversations with you, you're basically playing life on hard mode. So tip number six is don't steal the spotlight.

I feel like we've all been in a conversation with somebody who always tends to somehow bring the conversation back to something to do with themselves, and it gets really exhausting because, after a while, it feels like no matter what you say, this person isn't really listening. They just want to talk about themselves, and the thing is, you're just never really that interested in them monologuing about themselves. You don't really care about their life. You don't know them very well, and even if you do know them very well, that can get exhausting as well.

It's like, "I already know you, bro; why are you talking about all this stuff? I know that didn't happen to you. Like, why are you lying?" If you want to be somebody that people just love having part of the group, then you really need to monitor how much you are stealing the microphone. One of the best ways to do that is to ask more questions.

When somebody says anything like, "Man, I really like that Rocky movie," rather than always being like, "Yeah, me too! I think it's great," you know what's better than that? It's, "Indiana Jones." See, that's just a dead conversation. So next time someone says, "Man, I really love that Rocky movie," try to get in the habit of saying, "Oh, what did you like about it?" Right? Even something as simple as that changes the entire conversation.

And then, you know, you can give your two cents, obviously, but then it becomes more of a back and forth. "Oh, what did you like about that movie, or what did you really like about that book? What was your favorite part? Would you recommend that I read it? Why would you recommend that I read it?" Kind of dumb questions, but sometimes dumb questions make for great conversation, just ask my brother Daniel. Daniel is the king of dumb questions.

Okay, number seven is don't detract. I'm becoming lazy with these because I'm just taking the last video's tips and just putting "don't" in front of it, 'cause what's the opposite of detraction? Praise! Praise, I guess it's praise. So one of the most toxic things you can possibly do is talk about other people behind their back constantly. Sometimes people genuinely do things that are disruptive to relationships; their behavior is not good, and you need to call it out.

But never have that be your default topic of conversation. It should really be an exception. Talking smack about other people should never be sort of like your favorite conversation topic; that's what small-minded people do. Yeah, don't do that. You can't control other people; you can't change other people. And this goes back to this internal versus external locus of control thing. If you're not going to do anything about it, don't talk about it. If you're not going to do anything or say something to the person that you're criticizing, don't waste your energy on it.

Then it just becomes this hypena pack crowling around sneering at the lions in the world or the bad hyenas. I don't know; I'm bad at analogies today. Just have a bigger mind. Talk about more positive things. Talk about cooler ideas. Talk about better ideas.

All right, before we get into our next tip, I just want to thank Audible for sponsoring this video. So the Audiobook I'm currently listening to is 100 Million Leads by Alex Horowitz. You guys probably know Alex Horowitz from his YouTube channel. He seems like a pretty cool guy; I don't know him personally, but I always enjoy listening to his audiobooks because they offer a lot of value.

And since I'm working on a new startup, which will be revealed at a later date, I'm finding 100 Million Leads to be just the perfect audiobook for me right now. Now, and if any of you are interested in marketing or making money online, I highly recommend the audiobook. And for those of you who don't know, Audible is the leading provider of audio entertainment and audiobooks all in one place. Every single month they send you one credit which you can spend on any audiobook of your choice regardless of cost, and you get to keep that audiobook forever.

Audible members also get instant access to a rapidly expanding catalog of Audible Originals, podcasts, and exclusive series. Also, if you use my link below, you can check out my personally curated listening list, and you can also check out Audible's best of 2023 list because there are a lot of cool titles on there as well. So if you're interested in joining me in becoming big brained and listening to some of the greatest insights ever recorded, then if you use my link in the description below or text "better ideas" to 500500, you'll get a 30-day free trial.

Once again, use my link in the description below or text "better ideas" to 500500 to get your 30-day free trial, and thanks again to Audible for sponsoring this video. Okay, so tip number eight is to be consistent. So what does that mean? I mean consistency of character. Try as hard as you can to be the same person behind closed doors as you are in front of people. Like, what the hell am I talking about? Right?

I don't know because I feel like we all play a role around different people, right? Like, you're not going to be the same person around your grandma as you are around your homies. But at the same time, you shouldn't be that different. I don't think the more you're playing a role, the more you're playing to a crowd; you're not actually, like, just being who you are and saying like, "Eff it, we ball!" You're seeking validation; you're hoping that whatever group you're in finds you appealing.

But why would you live your life like that? Why don't you find security in yourself? It's far more relaxing and peaceful and exciting to live your life in a way where you think what you think, you like what you like, and you say what you say and you do what you want no matter who is around, and you let the people who disapprove disapprove. Right? Rather than trying to shapeshift in every little group that you're in and saying the perfect thing that you think that that group will like so that they like you more, they don't like you; they like this persona, right?

Why would you live your life like that? You really start to lose track of who you are as a person when you live your life like that. So instead, sit there and be like, "Hell yeah, I like this band! I like this music group a lot! I like these movies! I have these values! I like this political candidate for these reasons!"

And you really think about what you like genuinely. Then you say those things and you express those things no matter the crowd, and then you can find your crowd when you do that. Unless you actually think about these things and ask yourself what you truly like, you almost won't know what you like, right? You won't have any opinions. Don't be that person; be consistent. You will find internal peace in consistency.

Be the same person behind closed doors in the comfort of your own home as you are when you're at Taco Bell ruining your gut microbiome with your homies. I've never done that in my life. Tip number nine: don't wish for success; plan for it. So many of us get in the habit of mentally escaping, thinking about, "Oh, it would be so nice if I lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I had this nice waterfront home. Wouldn't it be nice if I had huge muscles and hair?"

But little do we realize that if we actually plan for these things, it might happen. If we wish for them, it'll never happen. But as soon as you put, like, a number, like a dollar figure on how much money you want to make, do you want to put a timeline on what kind of house you want to have? Then you can actually see if it's feasible. Then you actually start to conceptualize or start to hammer into your little pea brain the idea that, "Oh, this is actually a thing that can happen, and it has steps."

There's step one and two and three and fourteen and thirty-eight, and I can actually get these things. I don't know really why I'm going with this, but little brain constantly wishing that things were different really makes your present reality seem so horrible because you're just constantly juxtaposing it to the ideal. So if you feel kind of aimless in life, you don't know what your future holds, then create a vision of a future.

Go somewhere where you can think with a pen and paper and really just outline all the different categories of your life and think about the specific people, the specific factors in your life. Write them down, write where you currently work, how much you currently make, the relationships you currently have, and the relationships that you want. Really infuse it with your own hopes and dreams and then create a game plan for every single one of those.

And that doesn't need to be the best game plan at all. In fact, it can be a kind of stupid game plan. But if you write down a game plan being like, "Okay, if I want to make a million dollars, then just ideally I would quit my job. I would go work at this job. Um, maybe I would make this and this much money. I would save this. I would cancel this subscription. Maybe I'll do this and this and this."

Pretend you have all the willpower in the world and write down the game plan if that were the case. Then you realize, "Oh man, things are actually possible. There is a way to get what I want." It's probably the most important, but I think I phrased it the absolute worst way out of all these tips. So my apologies.

Tip number ten is to grow. In the video, "How to Ruin the Rest of Your Life" or "How to Quickly," whatever I called it, I talked about this idea of only doing activities that make you feel small, that cause you to shrink, that make you feel pathetic. And the flip side is to pay attention to the activities that make you feel powerful, that make you feel strong. Going to the gym makes you feel strong. Overcoming an obstacle makes you feel strong.

Talking to somebody that you need to talk to that you've been avoiding, after the conversation, you will feel strong. You'll feel powerful and peaceful. Pay attention to the wide smorgasbord of activities that you can do in life and the way they make you feel after having done them. If you really have to write an essay, think about how you would feel and really feel how you would feel after having done the essay.

Really melt into that feeling; let it consume you. Well, that is the feeling of doing your essay; it's not this powerful scary monster that you have to confront and slay, right? It's actually giving you access to this profound feeling of serotonin, of power and peace. It's a good time. So focus on what's good about it and melt into that, and you'll feel this like king-like regal energy because what's good for you is good, and what's bad for you is bad.

So don't make what's good for you into this very bad scary "I don't want to do this thing" thing. The final tip is, don't despair! Okay, have hope. You don't have to feel good all the time. If you feel bad, if you feel hopeless right now, that's okay. You don't have to feel good; you don't have to buy a house; you don't have to get married. You just are where you are; you are who you are; you did what you did.

But if you're going in a particular direction, that's the thing that you have control over. You can go wherever you want to go despite who you are and where you've been. And if you really take that to heart, then I really am big on this idea of taking the time out of your day to try to conceptualize what a better future would look like for you.

'Cause I feel like so often the reason why we get hopeless or we feel despair is because we can't even conceptualize how life could be better, and that's where people get hopeless. We never take the time to conceptualize it, and that's not fair. I feel like we all need a vision of a better future, and I feel like peace is found in this quiet understanding that we're getting there. However slowly, we're heading in that direction.

So figure out what you want! Right? Generate hope for yourself, take the hopium, right? But take detailed hopium: write it down specifically! Put your self-doubt on mute for a short little while. Think about what it would feel like to live in that future. Feels pretty good. As you think about what it would be like for things to be better, you will probably feel a lot more relaxed as you think about it.

You'll feel this sense of relief. You would think to yourself, "Man, wouldn't that be nice? What would that feel like?" Well, congratulations! You just felt better by thinking positively, by allowing yourself to experience hope. You brought some of that hope into the present moment, and you felt better! Right now, I want you to feel that feeling as often as possible. Use that as motivation. That's the hopium tank that you need. Insert the straw into your mouth and head in that direction.

Okay, guys, hopefully some of this stuff helped. This is going to be a really long video. I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry to my editor who has to edit all this. If you have any questions, if you have anything that you want to share, please let me know in the comments section below. This is the last video that I'm doing this year. I would love to just hear from you guys. How have you been this year? What are some of the things that you want to do in 2024?

Kind of have a debrief in the comment section. Thanks for a great year, guys. I hope to see you again very, very soon on the channel. Great things are up ahead for me and for you as long as we keep the hopium strong, we conceptualize, and plan for a better future—a future that you want! As cheesy as that sounds, but I feel like the theme for this coming year for me is to do what I want to do, not what I feel like I should do, but what I actually want to do.

I'm going to do what I want this year, this coming year, starting now because I'm early, I'm prepared. Okay, guys, see you later!