- So my 20s were by far
the most transformative years of my life.
It's definitely the time period where I saw
the greatest personal growth, as well as
some of my greatest mistakes.
When I was 20 years old, I was an aspiring filmmaker,
hopelessly trying to make a fedora work.
I was a wannabe player, but largely insecure
and uncertain about my future.
Honestly, if you don't look back at photos from 10 years ago
and cringe, then, well you're lying.
Even though it didn't really feel like it at the time
through all my missteps, I was somehow stumbling
in the right direction.
I learned so many valuable lessons about how to cultivate
really healthy relationships, how to find true happiness,
and also how to progress through my career,
and all the ups and downs that often comes from that.
I learned so many valuable lessons from my 20s.
And in this video, I wanna share
the five most important takeaways.
This video is brought to you by my friends at Squarespace
and I'll talk a little bit about them later.
Effective communication will solve most of your problems.
When I think back to all the major problems and conflicts
that I had in my 20s,
almost every single one of them could have been solved
with better communication.
I remember one specific shoot that I had,
a freelance film project early on
that really taught me that lesson, the hard way.
I just filmed the basketball competition.
I nailed this shoot getting solid interviews
with the players and some great action footage of the game.
And when I touched base with my client after the shoot,
I asked him if he'd also like me
to edit the footage for him.
Thankfully he agreed giving me a little bit of
a bigger paycheck and so for the next couple of days,
I escaped to a cabin in the middle of the woods
without internet connection to edit the footage.
But then when I came back from my three day trip,
I was surprised by what I found,
about a dozen voicemails, a few text messages and emails.
And now I don't remember the exact language
that my client used, but it was something like this.
"Matt, why the fuck aren't you picking up your phone.
"I need this video edited in one day
"or this entire shoot was a complete waste of time.
"Seriously what the fuck.
"I'm so pissed right now.
"I can never hire you for a shoot again.
"Fuck you seriously."
(whoosh)
Even though my client was no doubt being an asshole
and he was absolutely crossing the line
with how he was talking to me,
I knew that I could have avoided all of this.
I thought I was going above and beyond,
but I hadn't actually communicated the deadline.
I hadn't communicated the budget or any of those details.
And so this was a really valuable lesson.
It taught me that I needed to be a proactive communicator.
And I was also able to apply that to personal relationships.
I needed to stop having so many assumptions
about what other people needed or wanted.
And I needed to stop avoiding difficult conversations
because they made me feel uncomfortable.
Not only will effective communication solve
most of your problems,
it will prevent them from becoming problems to begin with.
Happiness comes from within.
At 20 years old, I had a very clear picture
of what success looked like.
It was a big house, fancy cars, vacation homes,
a six-figure salary, all the physical possessions
that I wanted, but currently didn't have the money for,
that was my goal.
And as social media platforms began to dominate
our attention I also felt myself craving likes,
followers and subscribers.
I wanted the admiration of my peers
and pretty much everybody I graduated high school with.
I remember foolishly telling myself things like
if I get this lens, then my videos will finally be perfect.
If I make this amount of money,
that all my problems and stress will go away.
But these, if-then statements are completely conditional.
And I found that whenever I got that thing,
it really didn't deliver on the promise
that I thought it would.
Just a few years into my 20s
this became glaringly obvious when I stumbled across
a few bloggers online talking
about something called minimalism.
- Minimalism and blogging, and habit change
all of these have been tools for me for learning
about myself and how I work, and how my mind works,
and how change works.
- This idea of minimalism completely flipped my perspective
of what success and happiness look like.
And it made me realize that I was aiming
at the wrong goalpost all along.
I was spending so much time on the pursuit of happiness
that I was completely neglecting all the things
that I already had that could have been making me happy.
I had a supportive family.
I had a passion for filmmaking.
I had a roof over my head, even though I was in debt,
I still had food on the table every single day.
And those are the things
that I should have been focusing on.
I should have been grateful for the things I had
instead of longing for the things that I didn't have.
Happiness as I learned comes from within.
You can keep chasing after more stuff, more admiration,
more money, but that will not continue
to pay off past your basic needs.
The true path to happiness is determining how much is enough
and reminding yourself every day,
how grateful you are to have it.
There is no substitute for hard work.
As much as I talk about the benefits of having
a healthy relationship with your work and about
the negative effects of overworking and hustle culture,
I truly believe that there is no replacement for hard work.
No matter how smart you are, mastery takes time
and dedication, and consistency,
and whether you're an athlete, an accountant
or a photographer that doesn't matter,
you still need to show up every day
and do the work if you wanna get better.
I remember filming 50 weddings late into the night
and taking the subway home at 1:00 a.m.
I remember dozens of overnight edits
and dealing with shitty clients over the years.
I was 26 years old when I started the biggest project
of my life and my first feature documentary, Minimalism.
You might've heard me talk about it on this channel before.
When I started that project, I was overwhelmed.
It was largely a one person crew.
I was responsible for filming and editing everything.
And so I had to put in a lot of work to make it come true.
At the time we had no deal with Netflix
and no expectation of it trending around the world,
and nor did I care to think about those things.
I cared about doing the best I possibly could.
And the only way to get this thing across the finish line
was for me to show up 12 hours a day, drinking coffee
and eating nothing but peanut butter and sandwiches,
no, I do not recommend that, and doing the work.
There are no shortcuts if you wanna progress in your career,
it's gonna take rolling up your sleeves and doing the work.
And if you're lucky enough to find something
that you truly love,
that you can make a full-time living from,
you'll find the reward in the work itself.
Don't let your ego sabotage your relationships.
Self-awareness is one of the most important skills
you need to develop if you wanna be a better co-worker,
friend or partner.
Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses,
owning up to it when you're wrong, or you've made a mistake.
No matter how great of a match you have with your partner,
you will inevitably have difficult times.
When it comes to building healthy relationships
it's not about avoiding conflict,
it's about learning how to deal with your own emotions
so you can navigate through the issues together.
Whenever I feel my patience decrease
and my temperature rise, I know absolutely
nothing good will come of it.
I'll just continue to dig a hole deeper and deeper saying
something mean or hurtful or untrue simply
because I got caught up
and I let my ego do the talking for me.
And so once I realized that I'm starting to approach this,
I decide to take a step away, to remove myself
from the conversation for a moment to cool down.
I'm not running away from my partner,
I'm not running away from my problem,
I'm simply giving myself some space to cool down.
And within five or 10 minutes, I already start
to feel better, I can come back
to that conversation level headed.
I can apologize if I have to, if I absolutely have to.
I can also communicate more effectively.
I can let somebody know maybe why I'm hurt,
why I feel that way.
If I'm just letting my ego do the talking,
I'm not able to think clearly.
True growth takes time.
There's no such thing as overnight success.
We love hearing these stories of people
who've made seemingly huge leaps in short periods of time,
for the same reason that millions
of people play the lottery each year,
because we somehow think that there might be a shortcut
to finding success, happiness and financial wealth.
But that's simply not true.
If you go throughout your life, thinking
that everything will come naturally to you, you're going
to give up the minute you hit any form of resistance.
Take starting a YouTube channel, for instance,
for most people, it takes years of making videos,
week after week before they're able
to turn it into a full-time income.
There's no guarantee that you'll make it happen at all,
but if you expect to get there in a couple of months,
you will absolutely fail.
Now that I'm 32 years old, I don't worry about failure
as much as I used to.
Of course, I'm not trying to fail and I don't want to fail,
but I understand that that is literally
the price you pay for trying anything.
Use the time in your twenties to invest in your skills
and to let them build upon themselves.
Learn as much as you possibly can.
Make as many mistakes as you can, because you have
so much time to pick yourself up and to move forward.
True growth takes time.
So pace yourself and show up each day and do
the small things that will a lasting impact on your life.
Make the investment in yourself now,
and you'll reap the benefits in just a few years time.
Your future self will thank you.
So my sponsor for this week's video is Squarespace.
I remember when I first signed up
for a Squarespace account back in 2015,
I was in my mid 20s and I wanted to be a blogger.
It turns out I'm a much better filmmaker
than I am a blogger, but still at that time I continued
to realize throughout the years how important it is
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What I love about Squarespace is that you don't have
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Go to squarespace.com for a free trial.
When you're ready to launch,
go to squarespace.com/mattdavella
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So much of life is perspective.
Our perspective changes, the more information that we get,
a new idea that might come to us,
a significant time in our life.
It also comes from looking back at photos
from a long time ago, and also an understanding that we're
probably gonna have these same feelings in 10 years time.
I know I'll certainly look back at the time of my 30s
and maybe cringe at some of the photos that I took
and some of the videos that I made,
but that's just part of growing.
It never stops, we always continue to change
and hopefully we can learn from our mistakes
to continue to do better.
Thank you guys so much for watching
and I'll see you next time.