The worst self improvement mistake

I feel like all of us
at some point in our life
have gotten into a bit of a rut,
a period of our life where
motivation is hard to come by.
We're not feeling as
energetic and motivated
as we usually are about life in general.
And the goals that we've set for ourselves
either have faded away from
the forefront of our mind
or we've been so discouraged by them
that they seem completely unattainable.
I think periods like this in our life
are pretty much unavoidable.
I don't think it's possible
to feel 100% energetic
and enthusiastic about life all the time.
You're always gonna come down
from whatever high energy state that you've been in.
It's just a fact of human life.
But I feel like a lot of people
are prone to staying in these
lows longer than is necessary,
and a lot of people find it really hard
to climb out of these lower periods.
And I feel like I definitely
fall into this category.
If I'm not careful,
it's really easy for me to
slip into reclusiveness.
I'll just do my own thing on my computer
and days and weeks and months will pass by
and I will slowly become less
and less inspired about life.
And you might totally relate to this.
Maybe it's really difficult
for you to muster up the energy
to get out of these pseudo
depressive, low periods of life.
Maybe you're in one of those periods of life right now
and you're not sure how to get out of it
and you want to get out of it.
I mean, I feel like pretty
much everybody who feels bad
wants to not feel bad anymore.
And I think the natural
thing that a lot of people do
when they feel like crap
is they tend to wait around
for some kind of aha moment,
some sort of quote or something
that really just shifts our perspective
and launches us out of our depression
and into a life that
we've always dreamed of.
But even though this is
sort of the most common way
of dealing with these lows,
I feel like it's also
the most inefficient way
of dealing with it by far.
And I would even go so far as saying
that it's the biggest
mistake that people make
when trying to improve themselves
or try to get out of a bad
situation and into a new one.
And it all stems from this idea
that if we want to change our
behavior and change our life
then we must first change our thoughts.
And while I think that's true to an extent,
I also think it's super inefficient to do that.
How often do you come across
a really, really good idea
that changes your mindset
and launches you into a new way of living.
Those types of nuggets of
wisdom are extremely rare.
You might only get a handful of those
in your entire lifetime.
Seriously, ask yourself the last time
you read a quote on Instagram
that launched you out of depression,
that completely changed the
way you run your business,
or made you go after the girl, or...
I feel like after a certain amount of time
you read so many quotes,
or you read so many
self-improvement books,
or you watch so many self-improvement
videos like this one,
and it all just becomes the same blah,
it doesn't really matter.
Words are just words,
they can only do so much.
That being said though, I
read a quote the other day
that changed my perspective.
And now you can disregard everything I said
at the first part of this video.
But this quote was interesting
because it's kind of an anti-quote quote.
The quote said,
"We don't think ourselves
into new ways of living,
we live ourselves into
new ways of thinking."
And that's a quote by Richard Rohr.
And I don't know anything
about Richard Rohr.
I did a quick Google search of him
and I think he's some Christian writer of sorts.
I think this quote really spoke to me
because it's different than most quotes.
This quote reminded me of the fact
that every time that my
life has changed radically,
it's always because I've forced myself
to live a different way first.
And by living that way, I
changed the way I thought.
The action proceeds the thoughts.
A really good example of this
is when I was going absolutely stir crazy
a couple months ago.
I just wasn't getting outside very often
even though I was totally allowed to.
I was just used to being
in front of my computer
all the time.
Days and weeks were going by like this
where I was just literally
addicted to the Internet
that I pretty much snapped.
I just said to myself,
"I need to go jump in a lake or something."
So that's what I did.
I grabbed a towel.
I drove to my nearest body of water and I jumped in a lake.
And even though it was
the beginning of April
and the water was freezing cold,
just that jolt of doing
something I hadn't done before,
breaking out of the pattern,
doing something different,
I was suddenly more optimistic
and full of energy and vitality.
Maybe it's just the
effect of the cold water
and that created some
kind of endorphin rush
or something like that.
But the important takeaway
is that by doing something
that I hadn't done before,
I started thinking things
I hadn't thought before.
And I can't drill this point home hard enough,
stop waiting around for
some quotes or some video.
Ironically, this might be the video
that springs you into action,
so I don't know how that
works out philosophically.
Maybe this whole video is bullshit.
But either way, action is
a far more reliable source
of inspiration than inspiration itself.
We don't think ourselves
into new ways of living,
we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
So I was watching "Groundhog
Day" with Bill Murray
the other day, and that
might seem kind of random.
It's a great movie,
you should check it out if
you haven't seen it already.
But I'm about to spoil the whole thing.
So if you haven't watched that movie,
watch that movie and don't watch this part.
"Groundhog Day" is the perfect
example of this whole concept
that I've been talking about in this video.
Since the only people watching
this part of the video right now
have already seen "Groundhog Day",
then you'll know that "Groundhog Day"
is about a guy who's trapped
living the same day over
and over and over again.
And no matter what, he can't
stop living the same day.
He tries to kill himself three times
or even more than that
because he's going crazy.
He keeps on living the
same day in the same place.
No matter what he does, he
can't escape this same day.
But the guy's a jerk.
The guy is super-selfish,
he's pessimistic,
he's a glass-half-empty kind of guy.
He only lives for himself
and he's bitter and resentful
towards everyone around him.
He thinks people who are
happy and enjoying life
and are full of love and excitement
are ignorant and stupid and naive.
And on the surface,
this movie might seem like
it's just a sci-fi movie.
It's about a guy who
can't escape the same day.
But if you look below the surface,
"Groundhog Day" is a metaphor
for the monotony and dread
that he invited into his own life
through his pessimistic way of thinking.
And he was only able to
escape "Groundhog Day"
by stepping outside of himself,
by living differently
and by helping others.
His world opened up and so did his heart.
His whole outlook on life changed
because he started living differently.
And it was only then
that he was able to
escape "Groundhog Day".
So if you feel like you're
stuck in "Groundhog Day",
start living differently,
you don't need some sort
of emotional epiphany
to start changing things up,
start doing things that
you're not used to doing.
And by living differently,
you'll start to think differently.