The mindset that will (quickly) improve your life

So let me know if this has ever happened to you. You get really excited about starting a new diet. You're starting to feel like crap about yourself, and you think a new diet will solve all your problems. So you start doing some research online. You read one article about the keto diet and how it's changing millions of lives, and then you read another article about how the Paleo diet is the way to go. And then you keep on going down the rabbit hole, and you get into veganism, and you get into the carnivore diet, which is completely a 180 from veganism. Something tells me people on the carnivore diet don't hate vegans, but vegans really hate people on the carnivore diet.

But anyways, this kind of situation often happened to me but more about starting a business. Back in university, I was pretty stressed about making my tuition payments, and I was really frustrated with my financial situation. So I would often look online for the best online businesses to start in 2019, and I'd read articles about how dropshipping will make you millions of dollars. Then I would watch another video talking about how dropshipping is dead and you missed the boat, so you should start your own digital marketing agency or something like that.

The point I'm trying to make is that we live in the information age, and this is supposed to mean that we have an abundance of knowledge. No matter what we want to do, we can learn how to do it. We can be whatever we want to be, and we can learn how to be that thing, usually for free online using the internet. Well, this is technically true. We do have this unique problem: there is so much information out there, so many people telling you what the right thing to do is, that it often contradicts other people, and it all just becomes a wash. We're kind of paralyzed by the amount of information, not really knowing what path to take.

Being someone who spends so much time on the internet, this was especially a problem for me. But luckily, I've adopted a mindset that really helps me cut through the crap and just get on with my life. I'm finding it’s my preferred philosophy for life in general, and this philosophy or mindset I call the shoot first mentality. Rather than obsessively deliberating over what path to take, just start walking. Making bold, uncalculated decisions, firing from the hip, is often the antidote to this endless deliberation.

If you make bold, courageous decisions at the drop of a hat and make this your default mode of solving problems—just trying something, noticing it doesn’t work, trying again, revising—having this action-first policy can offer a plethora of benefits. Firstly, with an action-first mindset, you can get better at things quicker than people who are sitting on the sidelines reading about it. A great example of this is when I started this channel. I had been really thinking about the proper way to make a self-improvement channel and theorizing about whether there was an opening in the market for me or if it was too saturated, or how I could make myself stand out.

By the time I made my first video, none of that really mattered. Making my first video presented challenges that I never knew I would have, and I was able to improve upon them with every single video. I think it’s 2 or 3 years later, here I am, things are going very well, and I've learned a lot along the way. Getting your hands dirty, making mistakes, trying new things is by far the fastest way to learn. It's way faster than reading about it or watching videos about it. Actually being in the act of doing the thing that you want to do and failing at it will make you get better faster than anything else.

The second benefit of adopting an action-first mindset is that it hardens you, or as David Goggins would say, it calluses your mind. This is all about getting used to discomfort. If you train yourself to battle past the discomfort of taking immediate, acute action, then you're able to embrace that feeling. You're able to push past the resistance holding you back from doing what's right rather than what's comfortable. This makes you a very strong and capable individual in times of crisis. Where people are losing their heads because something really tragic is happening, if something uncomfortable but necessary needs to be done, you'll be the kind of person who can stand there and do that type of thing because you're an action taker. You're not somebody who worries and stays in their head. You look for the opportunity to take the necessary action and you execute on it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson has this great quote: "Do the thing and you will have the power." It's a hilarious quote because it's so simple, but it's also a very popular quote because it's so simply true. It's really good at describing the one-to-one relationship between action and results. Nothing else will move anything other than action. Thinking about it, theorizing about it, worrying about it, fantasizing about it—nothing changes anything except taking action. Do the thing, and you'll have the power.

Another reason why having an action-first mindset is superior to a planning-first mindset is because with an action-first mindset, you're gonna get burned. But the lessons you learn by getting burned are the ones you remember. So I have a pretty funny story about this. We're told our whole life that gossiping is bad. Don’t talk about other people behind their backs, you know? Don’t talk, basically. I was also told this my whole life. The reason why it didn’t really register was that I just knew it was bad; don’t do it.

But fast forward to when I was about 16. There I was at a social outing, and I started going off about how stupid some lady’s outfit was that I saw. And I kept on going on about it just to get attention to myself. I was hoping to get a few laughs ridiculing this one lady’s outfit that we could all relate to. After going on about it for like 130 whole seconds, I realized that no one’s really laughing at all. In fact, they looked pretty uncomfortable, and that was because sure enough that lady’s daughter was one of the girls I was talking to. It was one of the most devastating moments of my life. My heart completely sank. I turned into a shell of a human being. Definitely, top three most embarrassing moments of my life, and I can guarantee you I never made that mistake again.

But do I regret it? I don't, because I was firing from the hip. I got burned, and I'm a better person because of it. Before my last thought, just a quick word from today’s video sponsor, Audible. So the audiobook I’m currently listening to is "Can’t Hurt Me" by David Goggins. I'm pretty late to the party with David Goggins; I actually just discovered him, but I'm blown away by the amount of action this guy takes. This guy is absolutely crazy—the amount of stuff he’s accomplished. I don’t want to spoil it.

There’s actually a really good reason to get the Audible version specifically because David Goggins interjects with his own wisdom and off-the-cuff thoughts after the narrator reads the chapter. It’s actually like a really cool almost podcast type of feel. I would highly recommend it. Audible has the largest library of audiobooks on the entire Internet. With an Audible subscription, you can download one book of your choice absolutely free every single month, along with two Audible originals. Since Audible is offering Better Ideas viewers a 30-day free trial, that means you can listen to "Can’t Hurt Me" by David Goggins right now absolutely free.

So to sign up for your free trial, click the link in the description or go to audible.com/betterideas or text betterideas to 500 500. The nice thing about Audible is that if you don’t like your audiobook, you can easily exchange it for something else. And if at any time you cancel your subscription, you still keep your entire library of audiobooks. So once again, to sign up for your free 30-day trial, either click the link in the description, go to audible.com/betterideas, or text betterideas to 500 500.

Ok guys, I’ll leave you with this. There’s a lot of people who fit into this category: somebody who chronically thinks of business ideas. You have a million-dollar business idea every second week. You’re always thinking of new things that could blossom into your financial freedom. Say you do this. Say you're thinking of business ideas for five years, and you still haven't started a business. Within those five years, you’ve probably thought of several multi-million dollar business ideas. You probably have, but nothing came of it because you never learned how to develop a business. Action taking wasn’t your first instinct; theorizing and planning and fantasizing was.

The kinds of people who develop multi-million dollar businesses don’t have any more special thoughts than you do; they just have special application. They’ve been digging in the trenches, trying and failing, learning how to start a business—juggling the logistics of running one successfully, failing a few more times, and eventually stumbling into improving their strategies and getting to the point where they’re comfortable managing a business. When they think of their million-dollar idea, they know how to apply it. They just go and do it. But if you never learned to take action, your ideas will always be just that—ideas.

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But other than that, yeah, that’s all for today. Thank you for watching, and we'll catch you in the next video.