we usually think about it in a form of a story.

(slow music)

First we were born and then we did some things

and made some memories and now we're here

and we work at our job or whatever.

But in the future we plan on doing more things,

seeing the world maybe and saving up enough money

for a enjoyable retirement.

We all tend to view our lives

in a sort of narrative structure like this,

with the beginning, a middle and an eventual end.

Which kinda makes sense because by reflecting on the past,

it helps us make sense of where we are now

and by having hopes and dreams for the future,

it gives us something to look forward to,

something to plan towards

and if we currently don't like our present situation,

we can place our pains and frustrations on the hope

of a better tomorrow.

But if you think about what it feels like

to actually live life, like what it feels like

on a day to day basis, it feels completely different.

We kinda just wake up, we feel kinda groggy,

we stumble downstairs, get the coffee,

hop in the shower, you get dressed before getting

in the car to get that bread.

And after you get that bread,

you get more bread at McDonald's

because you have an addiction

and then you come home, usually pretty tired

and you veg out and watch Netflix or whatever you do

until you go to bed.

This is what living life usually feels like

to most people most of the time.

Life in general is usually pretty normal.

You do the things that you do everyday,

you kinda have a routine or a pattern you stick to

and life usually isn't super inspiring or mind-blowing,

it's just sort of the day to day experience.

But is there anything wrong with that?

I mean, social media has us thinking

that everyone's hanging out on yachts all the time,

going on crazy adventures,

trying out the 2,000 different bananas in southeast Asia

and everyone's getting married

to the person of their dreams,

popping out the most beautiful babies.

But that's not life, that's a highlight reel.

And these highlights that we constantly absorb

by the people we follow on Instagram or the movies we watch

on Netflix, these highlights start

to really influence the story we tell ourselves

about our own lives.

We start viewing our lives, at least our lives

lived to it's fullest potential

as a life with as many of these highlights

in it as possible, so the days when these awesome,

crazy things aren't happening,

we view that as somehow suboptimal.

Our amazing days become the expectation

and our normal days become boring, like we're wasting

our potential, we're wasting our lives away.

But this story we tell ourselves, this adventure life,

no one's life is like this,

not Dwayne Johnson, not Elon Musk.

Sure, these guys are doing some really cool,

important things more often than we are

but still the majority of their lives,

they just sort of wake up, they do a bunch of things

they don't wanna do, they're grinding it out,

they're working hard, they're often really frustrated

or stressed out.

They still poop, they still have to eat.

Most of their lives exist

in this sort of day to day monotony.

They're experiencing life

in the exact same way that you are,

except when Elon Musk is fantasizing

about escaping the day to day grind and taking a vacation,

instead of the Bahamas, he's thinking Mars.

Assuming you get eight hours of sleep every night,

which I'm sure you do, you only have about 16 hours to live

because you only experience life one day at a time.

That little section of time between lifting your head

off the pillow and putting it back down again

and all that stuff in between that seems kind of normal

and kinda inconsequential, that's all life is,

it's just that thing over and over and over again.

And this can sound super depressing or super inspiring,

depending on how you look at it.

It can be depressing, obviously if you don't like

those 16 hours, usually, a lot of us are slaves

to our bad habits.

We do things we don't want to do.

We work jobs we don't really like

and we're put in certain financial or social situations

that we really don't like being in.

So every single day, day after day

is something we generally don't like doing.

Which is why we fantasize about the future so much.

We're still waiting to live our real lives

and if this is all there is,

then that's obviously super depressing.

But there's a silver lining

because changing your entire life

isn't as big of a feat as you might think it is.

Since life is lived in these little 16 hour

little mini episodes, that's a very manageable amount

of time to perfect.

We can start to build habits that we actually enjoy doing

and that are good for us

and we can train ourselves to make choices

that are actually aligned with our values

and will help us be the person

we want to be every single day.

Because a good life is just a serious of good days,

not necessarily days where everything went our way

and nothing was difficult or stressful

but days where our system was running.

We gave life a good shot, we made choices that are aligned

with our values and we did the little things

that make us happy.

Maybe that's having a good conversation with a friend

or putting a little extra effort into cooking,

so you eat something kinda memorable

and that you're proud of,

maybe that's developing one positive habit at a time

so that the things that keep you grounded and happy

and your mood elevated,

start to become things that you do automatically.

Viewing life on a micro scale like this

also adds clarity to the little choices

we make throughout the day.

If you've always wanted to be a more social person,

then that means saying yes to beers with the boys today,

when you get the invitation.

And if you're constantly fantasizing

about being a more fit person,

that means going to the gym today.

Because your life is today, that's all it is.

It's just today repeated.

A big thank you to Skillshare for sponsoring this video.

One problem you might encounter

when trying to start a new habit

is that when you try to go from something

like watching YouTube videos obsessively every single day

to trying to replace that habit with reading a book,

you're going from something that's super stimulating

to something that's a lot slower paced and harder to do.

So the transition can be pretty jarring

and you might quit right away, unfortunately.

A great way to counteract this problem

is to take smaller steps,

so go from something super stimulating, like watching videos

to watching just better videos.

A great example of this is to utilize today's video sponsor,

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If you like this video, make sure to hit like,

'cause when you hit like, the algorithm

does fancy things and my bald head appears

in people's homepages and if they're struggling through life

or there's something they wanna work on,

sometimes my videos motivate them to make a positive change.

So it's kinda win-win for everybody.

If you're lurking here and this is the millionth time

you've seen my face or seen one of my videos,

what are you doing, just hit that subscribe button

and hit the bell icon so that you don't miss future videos.

You'll actually get notified

and be part of the notification army.

Also I just relaunched my Instagram.

The minute we hit 10,000 followers

is the minute I give away a whole bunch of Kindles

so that you guys have absolutely no excuse

not to read the books I recommend.

So hit the link in the description,

follow me on Instagram.

I know this is kinda ironic

because I just said, oh we're influenced by Instagram

and all these people on yachts and stuff,

but I can assure you, I'm almost,

actually I've never been on a yacht

and I live a really normally life.

So delete all those travel pages,

unfollow them, follow me instead

because I'll probably make you feel

really good about your life.

Yeah, other than that, thank you for watching

and we'll catch you in the next video.