4 Mindset Changes That Massively Improved My Life

- Hey, what's going on, guys?

So this week's video is going to be a little bit different

than most the other videos that I've done on this channel,

because for the most part, the videos that I do

have a pretty set-in-stone topic.

I try to keep a pretty narrow focus

on whatever I'm talking about.

But for the last four months,

I've been keeping a note in Evernote

just called five self-improvement tips.

And I put that number there arbitrarily.

But I came up with something

that I thought was interesting to me.

There was just something that I felt

was, like, a mindset change I made a long time ago,

and it's really improved my life.

And it gave me an idea for a video

where I would just sort of list out

some of the subtle or maybe not-so-subtle mindset changes

that I've made over the last decade or so

since I graduated high school

that have really improved things for me on a daily basis.

And I was gonna wait until I had a longer list

to do a video on these sort of mindset hacks,

but I think the four that I have now,

which I just sort of added over time

as I thought about them, make up a pretty good list.

So today we're gonna go over four mindset hacks

or mindset changes that I've made slowly

over the past 10 or so years

that have really improved my life.

And if you can adopt even just one of these

into your own life, I think you're gonna notice

a marked improvement as well, so let's get into it.

Mindset hack number one is to become okay

with being the worst person in the room,

and by that I mean, like, the worst person

at whatever skill you're trying out.

This fear of being labeled as the worst person in the room

or of looking bad in comparison to everyone else

keeps people from pursuing the things they want to do,

or it keeps them from increasing the difficulty

or moving to the next level

in something they're already pursuing.

And if you can become okay with being

bad at something or comparatively bad,

or if you become okay with being worse

than everyone else in your peer group,

then you start to compete in a higher league.

And when you are the worst person in the room,

that means that there's nowhere for you to go but up.

And everyone else around you

is somebody who you can learn from.

So the example of putting this mindset into action

that immediately comes to mind for me

is from last summer when I started

doing downhill mountain biking,

Now downhill mountain biking,

especially the lift access version

where you literally put your bike

and yourself on a ski lift,

and you go up to the top of a mountain

and then ride down is a pretty difficult

and risky discipline in mountain biking.

In fact, my friend Martin actually broke his finger

doing it back in the fall.

I started this in the summer,

and I started off being pretty bad.

I noticed that all these people

kept passing me up on the trails.

And I kind of felt self-conscious

about my abilities at first.

Then I realized that if I just challenged myself

to follow these people who were better than me,

I actually would get better more quickly.

And I found that this actually did happen.

I was more afraid to do things like go off jumps

or take trails at higher speed when I was alone,

but when I was following somebody,

there was, like, this competitive instinct that kicked in.

I found myself pushing myself a little bit further

and really challenging myself to keep pace

with this other person who was better than me.

And this mindset actually paid off

on the very first day that I went mountain biking,

'cause I went with my cousin

to a bike park in Boulder, Colorado,

and there was a jump that I just could not get myself to do.

Every single time I would go up to the jump,

I would hit the brakes; I would stop.

Then I'd have to take my bike, lift it up,

and walk down past the jump.

I was just too scared to do it.

And my cousin, who was a little bit better

at mountain biking than I was,

not a ton, but a little bit,

said, "all right, this time we're gonna go.

"You're gonna follow me.

"I'm going to hit this jump,

"and you are going to hit it with me."

And watching him do it,

and knowing there was this expectation

that I was going to have to rise to the challenge

because he was doing it as well forced me to do it.

And I actually hit that jump,

and afterwards it became easy.

So again, if you can become comfortable

with being the worst person in the room,

even if it's a self-perception kind of thing,

then you are going to allow yourself

to compete in a higher league.

You're gonna expose yourself to people

who are more skilled

and who can bring you up to speed more quickly.

And one last thing that I do want to note

when it comes to this mindset

is that for the most part

people are kind of self-absorbed.

So say if you go to the gym and you are out of shape,

or you are lifting

the least amount of weight out of the gym,

people aren't going to make fun of you,

because they're there to do their own thing.

They aren't there to judge you.

So just keep that in mind when you start a new hobby

or you start trying to improve yourself in any way.

If you're around other people who are doing the same thing,

they're probably focused on their own goals

and their own efforts.

All right, mindset hack number two

is to treat real-life goals kind of like video game levels.

And the reason that I have this on the list

is that when we play video games,

at least when I play video games,

I am 100% okay with dying or failing,

because I know that in just a few seconds after dying,

I am going to restart the level.

I'm going to try again.

And the process of dying over and over and over again

in some cases is part of the experience.

It's part of the fun.

One of my absolute favorite video games

in the world is called Celeste, which is,

in my opinion, one of the best platformers ever made.

And if you go look at my death stats

for every level in the game, they are ridiculous.

In fact, I think in one of the levels

I have over 1,000 deaths.

But because I've gone through that level

and died 1,000 times,

I can now basically speed-run it,

and the process of doing so looks really cool,

and it's really fun to do.

And I know that all those deaths

are part of the learning process.

Every single time I made a mistake,

I got a little bit better,

I got a little bit more knowledgeable

about what to do in that situation.

I made an adjustment.

Now in real life, a lot of times

we feel like we have to get things right the first time,

whether it be out of embarrassment,

or whether it be out of the fear of wasting too much time.

But that's not how things are.

It's just like a video game.

If we can treat things as a learning process,

even if they're failures,

then we become more open

to going through that learning process,

and we become more able to gain those skills.

The fear of failure is something

that really holds people back.

So if you can start viewing yourself

as a video game character,

at least insofar as you're allowed to fail certain things,

maybe not allowed to fall into pits of spikes,

but if you can fail certain things,

then you're going to sort of move past

that mental roadblock.

Mindset hack number three is to become okay

with confronting harsh realities or bad news.

And this is a mindset hack that I got from the book

Good to Great by Jim Collins.

This is a fantastic business book.

I think anybody who is in the professional world

or an entrepreneur should read this book.

And there is a quote from an executive

of the company Pitney Bowes, his name is Fred Purdue,

that really stuck with me after I read this book.

In fact, I think this might be the concept

that stuck with me more than any other from this book.

And I want to read the quote to you here.

The quote goes, "When you turn over rocks

"and look at all the squiggly things underneath,

"you can either put the rock down

"or you can say, "my job is to turn over rocks

""and look at the squiggly things,"

"even if what you see can scare the hell out of you."

The sad thing is, a lot of people

would rather avoid looking at bad news,

avoid looking at harsh realities than confront them.

And this causes a lot of problems.

Some people know they probably didn't do well on the test,

so they avoid looking at the test results

until they realize they've been kicked out of school.

Or some people know their bank account balance

is probably a little bit lower than they'd like it to be,

so they just don't look at it until there's an overdraft

or until there's a bill that isn't paid.

In our quest to avoid pain, we often avoid looking

at things that cause us mental pain,

just because they are, like, the bearer of bad news,

the harbinger of bad news to come.

But the people who are truly successful

are the ones who can confront these harsh realities,

because when you do, when you don't shy away from them

or pretend they don't exist, then you can,

after you get over the emotional pain,

the shock of seeing them,

formulate a plan for dealing with them.

So become okay with confronting these harsh realities.

Yes, it's tough.

Yes, you kind of never really get totally used to it,

'cause you always have that little part of your brain

that just sort of wants to go do something else,

but you have to become able to push through

that mental resistance.

Finally, I want to talk about the one mindset hack

that I think has improved my life more than any other.

And it's simply building

a sort of background loop in my head

that constantly asks where am I wrong

or how am I wrong?

I'm always looking for my own blind spots.

This mindset hack was kind of forced upon me

when I was a teenager

when a girlfriend of mine actually broke up with me,

and she told me the reason that she left me

was that I always had to be right.

Every time we'd get into an argument

or even just a conversation,

I always had to be the person with the last word.

I didn't really realize this at the time,

but when that happened, the pain of being dumped

was so great that I was forced to look at my actions,

to look at the way that I thought.

And I realized that, yes, I did have

this implicit assumption that I was right in all things,

even if I would have never admitted it even to myself.

And I think a lot of people are like this,

especially people who are generally successful

at a lot of the things they do.

There's this sort of hubris or pride

that develops in the back of our minds

and sort of squashes any humility we have.

And it causes us to miss a lot of our blind spots

or to assume things that aren't true.

So even though that experience was very painful,

I count it as a blessing,

because it sort of forced me to develop this assumption

that I'm probably wrong in a lot of areas.

Even when I think that I'm right about something,

there might be a blind spot.

There might be something that I'm missing.

So I ask myself, what could I possibly be missing?

And a lot of times I try to put myself in the shoes of the person that I'm talking to

and ask, what is their perspective on this?

What could they see that I might not be seeing?

Now I don't think you have to go through

a super painful experience to develop this ability.

And I would say that a lot of its refinement

came from reading books

like Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

or Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

or even some of the individual blog posts

over on LessWrong.com,

which was one of the original resources

where I started learning about human rationality,

and learning to notice my own confusion

and notice my blind spots.

Regardless of how you go about developing this ability,

once you do get better at using it

and making it more habitual,

you're gonna become a much more likable person,

because people will see you as not arrogant,

as open to noticing your own flaws and your own blind spots.

And aside from that, it's also gonna make you

a better problem solver.

As Barbara Oakley talks about

in her book A Mind for Numbers,

there's this concept called einstellung,

where the work that you've done

to learn something earlier

can sort of block the ability for you

to consider new information,

because you have these very well-worn neural patterns

that are pretty difficult to break out of.

But if you can build this metacognitive skill

of constantly challenging your beliefs

and looking for your blind spots,

you're gonna be far less susceptible to this einstellung.

So going forward, start tying

to consciously challenge your beliefs.

Start asking yourself, how could I be wrong?

And in doing so you're gonna become

a much better problem solver.

Of course, if you want to boost

those problem-solving skills even further,

then the best way to do it

is to practice problem solving on a daily basis.

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