hello everyone do you ever feel like you're like not living? that sounds awfu!l i don't
mean not living but i feel like the current situation i'm living in isn't rea.l it's just
it's march, it's 6 p.m and it's like randomly super dark outside and it's raining heavily which it
doesn't do very often in spain and i'm drinking a matcha... i bought matcha. i hadn't even tried matcha
before until like a week ago but i just felt like ... there's this book i read about a month or two ago
has just stuck with me and i really can't go another week without telling you guys about
it in the hopes that just one person will buy this book and tell me that it changed their life too
because since i finished that book i feel like as the title says it's made me rethink my whole life
so the book is called a million miles and a thousand years and book is by donald miller
this book was surprising for me it was both heartwarming and tragic he started off with
a simple man talking about how he was living a boring life and it ended with a philosophy for
hope and adventure when i was i was reading this book i felt like i was in a cafe talking to a
friend and he was telling me about some revelation that happened in his life and it felt so intimate
that i felt as i was there with him the whole time it's a true story and it's basically the inner
thoughts of a writer as he's going through a movie deal and the filmmakers are kind of dramatizing
his life and he's realizing i don't have enough of a story personally to ever have a movie written
about me and it makes him realize that he needs to do more there's there's so many things in
life that he's just simply taking the easy route out and he hasn't pushed himself and so the book
takes her for the journey of him i guess finding his meaning in life one of the main takeaways
from this book is that we need to be telling a better story and i'll probably mention this a
lot throughout this video about how we need to be creating better memories we need to be pushing our
characters as he tends to refer to himself during this book another big part of this book was about
how we can't find perfection in our life if we're constantly trying to be the most impressive person
in our circle and we're trying to be the greatest person on earth we're just going to find ourselves
even further from who we really are the last thing that comes up in the book a lot which i normally
shy away from is religion i'm personally not religious and therefore when i tend to read books
about religion i kind of skip those parts because to me they don't relate but for some reason
with this book his mentioning of god didn't phase me and it actually really intrigued me
now the way i want to discuss this book is just by a few quotes that i've selected that really
struck me um and i hope that you guys can like pause the video when the quotes come up and just
think about them the way that i've been doing and come up with your own ideas and then we can kind
of discuss it together as i talk but before we get into the video i want to inspire some people who
maybe aren't reading as much as they would like to reading's always been something that i think
most people wish they did more no one ever says i read too much i have a little hack for you guys
i have been using short form for i think the past five or six months now it's basically a cheat way
of oh my gosh i have five minutes during my break at work let me go find a book i want to read i use
this platform to find the books i want to read next and they have these one-page summaries
so you can quickly figure out whether the book that people recommended to you is for you or not
short form is really great for on-the-go reading for example recently emilio had recommended me
man search for meaning i just wasn't inspired by the cover of the book and so i went on short form
to read the one page somewhere and immediately was like i'm gonna love this book and here we go
i love the book so thank you short form for giving me the push i needed to read the book
now i managed to actually get a quick sneaky deal with short form and if you guys click on my link
below or go to shortfilm.com you can actually get part 2 of your annual subscription which is
a crazy amount which is actually over half off so you can get access to thousands of books to
put in buying a big month so go and check out that amazing deal sorry in advance if i get really deep
i think life is staggering and we're just too used to it we're all like spoiled children no longer
impressed with the gifts we're given this one really hit me because i feel like i've personally
lived a super blessed life and when i find myself in positions where i'm meeting new people
i talk a lot and a lot of the stories i tell are almost unbelievable and even when i tell
them i don't believe that they happen to me because i've just experienced so many great
things and when i look back during most of those moments i was never fully in the moment and i was
never fully impressed with how amazing it was an example of this was i i was um living with an au
pair family in italy um we went on this boat trip for in three weeks through the cinque terre in
corsica and sardinia and i saw the most incredible things i will probably ever see in my life and i
just got too used to it by day five i was like oh yeah just another beautiful day on the boat
when in reality i was seeing the most marvelous things the world has to offer the clearest oceans
fish right at my toes and these insane cliffs and i was just used to it maybe this can
give you the push you need to start to do more exercises and try and be more present at the
moment and realize how lucky you are it can even be as simple as you're at the cafe with your
friends and you're having a great conversation you can just sort of click out for a moment and think
i'm so lucky i have these people in my life i'm so lucky i'm drinking this really good matcha right
now i think spoiled bats can be a rough term that he used but i do think that we are never
truly as grateful as we should be for the moments we have in life and you know the best moments are
actually the most simple ones like seeing a sunset which we all have access to and even
in the worst moments of our lives we can look up and see the sun setting or the stars and realize
how lucky we are to be here people love to have lived a great story but few people like the work
it takes to make it happen but joy costs pain you know i think this quote resonated with me because
i actually do think i go through the pain to push myself into certain moments um that end up being
obviously worth it but i know a lot of people that you know they just sit down and they wish about a
better life but they don't go through the hell it takes to get there and it's very easy to get stuck
in life and i've had those phases where i've been in bed for months doing nothing with my life and
just wishing it away and believing that watching youtube videos about people traveling or making
great friends it's actually me i've been living for other people's joy but sometimes we have to go
the extra mile to enjoy the best moments there's been a few times lately where i've been in bed
and i've been drew to go out later that night and i've said to myself oh i don't want to
but when i push myself and i've went out i've been so glad and i've created great memories
and i wouldn't be here today without all the times i did go out i hate these quotes to tell you that
if you just whisper things you can get it because realistically it takes time and it takes effort to
live a good life and to have a good story and we need to do something that might seem unpleasant
but as he says joy costs pain the character is what he does humans love to give themselves labels
i am a teacher i am a student i am a traveler i'm a reader i'm a chess player but we don't always
show that for our actions we aren't always acting like the character that we portray ourselves are
is there a dream of yours that you constantly are telling people oh i'm gonna do this i'm gonna
start a new business or i'm gonna finally change the job that i hate or i'm gonna finally go and
get that degree but we sit there in our rooms and we never do a thing about it i will do it it's not
as powerful as i am doing it right now we could only live in the fantasy of the descriptions we
gave ourselves for so long before we realized that we are in fact not that person we actually hope to
be donald miller in the book as i mentioned before just believes he lives a really boring life and he
doesn't want to and so he actually takes a trip to peru to do the inca trail and he goes on this huge
hiking trip for america and it's just so crazy reading this book seeing a man who in his inner
thoughts are written on the page believes he's so boring but by the end of it has created all these
wonderful memories and the person that he wants to be he finally is even reading his experience made
me want to get up into everything that i've said i wanted to do for a long time i guess another quote
on this topic that i've been kind of discussing that i want to mention from the book is we have
to force ourselves to create these scenes we have to get up off the couch and turn the television
off we have to blow up the inner tubes and head to the river we have to write the poem and deliver it
in person we have to pull the car off the road and hike to the top of the hill we have to put
our suits on we have to dance at weddings we have to make altars i don't think there's anything i
could add to that i think he said it all and it's beautiful we watch a commercial advertising a new
volvo and suddenly we feel like our life is not as content as it once was our life doesn't have the
new volvo in it and the commercial convinces us we will only be content if we have a car with 47
airbags god how i hate the amount of adverts there's so many times where i've said oh maybe
if i just have that dress people will think that i'm stylish or maybe if i just buy these new shoes
people will like me more or maybe i'm a bit of a loser because i just walk everywhere maybe i
should get a car or maybe my flat isn't big enough and people think that i'm the worst person because
my fly isn't that big you know we can't help it we're constantly seeing bigger and better things
around us but the truth is we'll never get to that point of content of true tranquility and
happiness if we're constantly aiming for the next best thing we have to be content with everything
that we do have in life and we have to accept that maybe we we don't actually need that volvo maybe
if that advert had never come up we never would have wanted it in the first place i found it since
deleting social media i've really lacking this department which has been great i've stopped
craving things just because other people have them i'm not seeing lots of people on instagram
on these marvelous five-star vacations and that i'm stopping taking photos to post for others to
show that my life is better than everyone else and they should want to live my life okay the
final quote is maybe a little bit cheesy but i just had to include it sorry last year i read
a book about a man named wilson bentley who coined the phrase no two snowflakes are alike
he's the one who discovered the actual reality that of two flakes are geomatically the same
he was quite passionate about snowflakes in one paper a scientific paper mind you he used the word
beauty or beautiful more than 40 times what amazed bentley was the realization that each snowflake
bore the scar of its journey he discovered that each crystal is affected by the temperature of the
sky the altitude of the cloud from which it fell the trajectory of the wind it took as it fell to
earth and a thousand other factors obviously in this case snowflake is a kind of metaphor
for us i guess donald miller is trying to phrase it is we are exactly who we are because of the
journey we've been on and we may not look super we may not be the most beautiful person and we
may not have the kindest heart or the biggest brain but we are exactly who we're meant to be
and we're just physical evidence of the journey we've been on i guess in another way it's a quote
to remind you about comparison and how we can't be comparing yourself because no two people are
the same you know i might not be the smartest one in the room at all times and i may not be
i mean always be the person in the group that they that those look up to the most but i am exactly
who i'm meant to be and i'm just living proof of what i've been through and i don't know the quote
just stuck with me i find it really beautiful and i guess if anyone needed to hear that okay
my match is ending and my camera is running out of charge so i feel like this is the point to end the
video i know this was really weird and maybe a bit rambly and maybe a bit out of place but gosh guys
just go buy the book i'll link it down below i really recommend that you read this book the inner
thoughts of this simple man just made me realize how beautiful life is and and how beautiful we are
as people and okay i hope you all have a beautiful day or night wherever you are in the world i hope
you look at the stars tonight and realize how lucky we all are to be on this beautiful planet
if you enjoyed this video here two videos i think you would like and thank you for watching bye you