Hey, what's up?
John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com.
Today I've got a question about being stuck in the loop of life.
I love this title, stuck in the loop of life.
This is from Vikki and Vikki says, "How does one transform radically in all aspects of
life for better?"
She gave some additional info.
She says, "To give some context, I went to an average school, barely made out of school,
barely had friends, mostly been unhappy, ended up at an average college, got into one average
job after another, problems and situations I'm facing reflect the same way I felt in
the past.
Although, I've come far in some aspects, when I think back, I feel exactly how I felt 10
years ago during my high school days.
When I look around people that I knew for a long time, those who have been generally
successful/happy/lucky in the past seem to have always ended up the same way.
Those who did not seem the same too.
Thanks John, Vikki."
Okay, so Vikki, you're right.
This is the reason why I hate social—like pop science stuff is because they take studies
of big groups of people and they say, "This is your fate.
You're a person.
You're subject to this."
That's not true.
But most people believe this.
They believe this lie and most people, if they're average in high school, they're average
after high school.
If they have a happy and lucky life as you described it in high school then their whole
life goes down that path and it is very hard to diverge from those paths.
It's very, very difficult.
It is, because—one thing that people resist more than anything in life is change.
You could be—you could be uncomfortable, you have your foot on the fire, but if you're
used to it, if that's what you're used to you're going to stay there.
people stay in pain.
They stay in bad situations.
They stay in circumstances that they don't like because they're more than anything of
change.
Change is scary.
Change makes you uncomfortable.
That's one of the worst things that people imagine in life.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, however you want to phrase it, the only way to really
grow in life is to make yourself uncomfortable, is to put yourself in uncomfortable situations
which involves what?
Change.
You want to change, at least you're feeling uncomfortable.
You feel like your life is average.
You feel like everything has always been average, one average job to another.
What is it going to take—I mean, you already know the answer to this.
This is the thing here.
You're asking me this question, but you know—so let me give you kind of some context.
Suppose that—I ran my first marathon this year.
You can check out my video on my marathon run.
Suppose that you were training and you wanted to be like really good, like a really good
marathon runner.
You wanted to be like one of the best in the world.
How would you train?
There's a difference, right?
Suppose you just want to complete a marathon.
That's what I wanted to do, so I trained for that, but suppose you want to be the best
in the world.
There's going to be a huge difference in the way that you train.
If you're living your life and your complaining about having an average life then how are
you living the life?
What are you doing—are you doing exceptional things?
Or are you training just to complete the marathon?
There's nothing wrong.
I mean completing a marathon is a very difficult thing.
It was definitely an experience for me, but I wasn't training like I wanted to be really
good, like I wanted to be the best.
I would be training a lot differently.
You see what I'm saying?
If you want exceptional results and this is pretty obvious common sense, but I'll say
it, if you want exceptional results you have to exceptional things.
So take every area of your life and figure out—you want to be exceptional—you're
not going to do it in every area of your life all at one time, but pick one area of your
life.
Start here.
Let's start here, Vikki.
Let's start with pick one area in your life where you want to be exceptional, where you
want people to say, "Damn!"
when they see you or they see what you're doing, or whatever it is.
Let's say you want an exceptional job in your field.
What is it going to take?
What kind of training do you need to do?
Again, just think in your head, the difference between completing a marathon and being—completing
in the top 10%, being a Boston marathon qualifier.
Do you see what I'm saying?
The difference between that and that's what you've got to do.
I mean you're not going to get out of the box.
Exceptional is not just going to randomly happen to you.
It's not just luck.
It's not—the people who achieve exceptional results in life they do exceptional things.
Again, I know this sounds like common sense and it sounds really basic, but sometimes
you have to hear the common sense.
Does it not make sense that if you do average things you will get average results and if
you do exceptional things you will get exceptional results?
I think one of the struggles that people have is that when they try to make a change like
this and they want those exceptional results, they're willing to exceptional things for
a very short period of time and then they get tired and they get burnt out and they
lose their motivation and they give up.
You have to be consistent.
You have to consistently—because remember, you sow and reap in a different season.
Most people don’t sow long enough to actually reap something.
If you really want to change your life, like I said, pick one area.
It could be your physique, it could be physical, it could be training, it could be spiritual,
it could be your job, it could be whatever it is that you want to excel in and you’ve
got to figure out how could you train so hard, how could you put in exceptional amount of
work in order to get those kinds of exceptional results.
Once you figure that out, and you see the results from that then you'll start doing
that in all areas of your life.
For me, again, I would say that a lot of my life was average.
You could check out my videos on my career story.
I mean some of that was not average, but in general, I mean lived a general regular 9
to 5 job type of guy.
At one point I had this awakening moment and a lot of it was around when I started doing
the Pluralsight courses.
You could check out the video of my Pluralsight story as well.
I said, "You know what?
I'm done.
I'm done being average.
I'm done living this way.
I'm going to figure out what is it going to take."
I did it.
I did 55 Pluralsight courses in 2-1/2 years and I busted ass and I'm doing 2 to 3 videos
a day now because I want—I found that with YouTube I want to be exceptional at it.
I want to be the best.
I want to—I don't want just an average.
Every area of my life now, I figure out, if I'm going to pursue it I'm going to do it
exceptionally otherwise I'm not doing it because I won't accept average.
I won't accept mediocre so I figured out the crazy kind shit that I do.
With my fitness, I mean I eat one meal a day.
I run 40 miles a week and lift 2 hours a day 3 times a week and do crazy workouts.
I do all that kind of stuff.
With everything that I'm doing it, I'm doing it—I'm pushing it to the limit, to the extreme
in order to get the exceptional results.
Like I said, it's addicting.
Once you start doing that then that's how you transform your life, but you do it one
corner at a time, one piece at a time and it starts with, again, that thinking.
You have to think, if you want the exceptional results what is the exceptional training that
it's going to take.
You know what it is.
You can figure this out for yourself.
Most people, like I said, they don't train that hard or they don't put in the effort,
the exceptional effort and if they do they don't do it for a long enough period of time.
They can't continue to sustain it.
That's one skill that you're going to have to learn in life, but you've got to figure
out how to press on even when you don't feel like doing it anymore.
That's what separates the people that are winners or have exceptional lives from the
people who have average lives, it's because they won't accept average.
They will keep on going even though there's nothing left in the tank they push beyond
their limits and that's how their limits expand.
All right, that's all I got for you today.
If you have question for me, you can always email me at john@simpleprogrammer.com and
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Take care.