i want to share an instagram post with
you this comes from an artist who lives
just about an hour for me up in fort
collins 32 broke living with my parents
and washing dishes for money 42 own a
business selling millions of dollars in
my own art this is a video for anybody
who feels like they are behind in life
and it's also a video for anyone who
feels like they are too late that the
window of opportunity has closed for
them in this video i want to give you
two crucial reasons why it is almost
certain that you are not too late to
achieve your goals and where this whole
feeling of being behind is in many cases
complete bs reason number one is that
the early birds don't always win i
remember being 15 years old and trying
to learn to skateboard for the first
time specifically i was trying to learn
the kick flip and i just couldn't get it
i practiced for hours on end but it just
would not come to me and meanwhile all
these kids who were 12 13 14 were easily
getting it which led me to have a
thought that i'm sure you have had in
the past as well i wish i had started
skateboarding when i was six years old
if i'd done that now i would have ten
years of experience under my belt or
nine i'm not so good at math when i'm
recording videos and i would be
basically a pro by now i'm sure you've
had that thought in the past and i'm
sure you've had it for other disciplines
i've had it for guitar as well i
remember when i was learning to play bar
chords my fingers hurt so badly and i
wish that i had just started playing
guitar a few years earlier so i'd be
awesome now right and this was
especially present in my mind when i
started blogging and trying to build an
audience i remember being 20 years old
i've been blogging for about a year and
i was really struggling to bring people
to my blog and then i found another blog
being run by a kid who was just 16 years
old and not only did he have a huge
audience but he was also making over a
thousand dollars a month in passive
income meanwhile i'm making no money on
my blog and i'm getting eight bucks an
hour to work in the it department on
campus so i remember finding his blog
and kind of kicking myself thinking like
why did i wait until i was 19 years old
to start my website i'm too late this
guy started when he was 14 years old
that's when i should have started but
now that i'm 30 years old now that i've
gone through a lot more life experience
i don't catch myself thinking this way
anymore one of the reasons for that is
it kind of if you think about it is like
a reverse wishful thinking style of
procrastination like when we
procrastinate we put things off so our
future selves have to deal with them and
this way of thinking is just like
putting it off onto our past selves
except for it doesn't actually happen in
either case we don't want our present
selves to deal with the hard work
required to get the results we just want
the results themselves but the other
reason i don't think this way anymore is
i've realized over the years that all
the other little things i've been trying
to do little experiments and offshoots
often come back and help me become even
better at the main thing later on and i
am not alone in this in fact the book
range by david epstein makes this its
central argument in this book david
epstein argues that in many fields the
top performers aren't the people who
started practicing when they were two
years old in fact it's actually the
people who got started a little bit
later in life and spent their earlier
years exploring and trying lots of
different things the tennis champion
roger federer is a great example the
book talks about how he didn't get quite
as early of a start as a lot of his
peers and he spent his childhood playing
lots of different sports not just tennis
but nonetheless he came up and
eventually became one of the greatest
players of all time and this happens in
a lot of different fields people do some
exploring when they're younger and
eventually they hone in on a field where
they start to practice start to be
consistent but they have this base of
other experiences from their past that
they're able to draw upon to be more
creative and more adaptable than the
people who only worked in that single
field since they were little kids
epstein also points out that there are
two different kinds of learning
environments or maybe there's a spectrum
of learning environments with two
different extremes kind and wicked
learning environments so in kind
environments feedback is almost
immediate and it's usually perfect as
well in chess for example when you make
a move you get perfect feedback there's
almost no hidden information golf is
also a great example and it's worth
noting that tiger woods is sort of the
prototypical example of somebody who is
a champion who started off really really
early on in their career but most fields
are not like chess or golf most fields
are a bit more wicked the feedback you
get from them is often confusing it's
often incomplete and the information
available is also often incomplete as
well these are much more complex
learning environments and in these kinds
of environments people who have a
diverse array of experiences are often
much more adaptable and i've experienced
the benefits of these little experiments
and diverse experiences myself with
guitar i remember taking a bit of time
off to learn piano for a little bit when
i came back to guitar i realized that
learning piano actually changed the way
that i look at the fretboard it's
actually not much easier to look at the
fretboard in ways to help me to build
cores that was pretty tough for me in
the past and with business with content
creation all these little different
things i've done in the past like
dabbling with website development or
dabbling with graphic design all these
different things have come and made me a
better content creator overall so if you
feel like you're kind of behind in life
i think there's a better question to ask
yourself which is am i constantly
learning am i constantly pushing myself
forward in interesting directions
because if you are it's very possible
that what you're doing right now is
going to loop back around later on and
help you with the next thing it might
take a bit longer than you want it to
but it doesn't mean that you're wasting
your time reason number two that you are
probably not behind in life is that the
term late is kind of relative isn't it
see i think a lot of the anxiety that we
feel around being late or feeling behind
in life is this idea that the window of
opportunity has closed for us but in
many cases that absolutely isn't true
jimmy is a perfect example of that 32
broke washing dishes living with mom and
dad 42 running a successful art business
making millions of dollars so really it
just takes a lot of consistency and
patience steve carell is also a great
example he didn't get his first big
break the office until he was 43 years
old in 2005. before then his career
really hadn't taken off at all and the
common thread between these two people
is that they were consistent and they
put an effort for a very long period of
time which eventually did pay off jimmy
has another post on his instagram
talking about how he started being
serious about art all the way back when
he was 20. and if you dig into steve
carell's career you'll find that back in
the late 1980s he was acting for a
traveling children's theater troupe so
they both put in a ton of effort and
they were patient and eventually it did
pay off now in addition to that patience
and that consistency there are two mega
important habits that you need to
practice in order to make sure that late
doesn't turn into never for whatever it
is that you want to do the first is to
simply take care of yourself because
while it's true that we are all going to
age how gracefully you age is almost
entirely dependent on your habits how
well you take care of yourself we've all
seen people in their 40s who look and
act like they're in their 60s and vice
versa we've also seen people in their
60s who look and act much younger they
are a lot more energetic much more
exuberant much more mentally sharp and
think about it if the habits you adopt
today add 10 additional happy healthy
years to your life then what the heck
does late mean anyway if i'm gonna live
10 more years because i have great
health habits that's 10 more years i can
spend playing the guitar doing whatever
it is that i want to do in that case
late really doesn't mean anything so
seriously try to take care of yourself i
think about this a lot more now that i'm
30 and it's going to be more and more
important as i get older and the same is
true for you make sure you're getting
eight hours of sleep at night make sure
that you are dialing in your diet making
sure that it is balanced and ideally get
some exercise every day as well the
second mega important habit to practice
is something called beginner's mind this
is a concept from zen buddhism the way i
originally read about it in a book from
mark benioff the ceo of salesforce.com
and essentially beginner's mind means
going into new experiences and trying to
drop your preconceived notions you want
to listen actively and assume that you
always have something new to learn from
every new experience and we all know
people who got through school they got
their job they get comfortable and they
sort of dropped this they kind of think
that they already know everything and
they become much more hard-headed and
once you become like this you become
much less adaptable and your doors
really do truly close but people who
practice beginners mind people who are
always open to learn from new
experiences and from new people they are
much more able to adapt and to learn new
things and to progress all the way
through their lives so yes it is true
that you cannot get back any of the time
that has already passed none of us can
do that but it doesn't mean that you are
too late it doesn't mean that the doors
of opportunity have closed on you and
you would be insanely surprised at what
you can do by adopting beginner's mind
and practicing it for the rest of your
life by taking care of yourself and by
consistently putting an effort into what
it is that you want to do for a long
period of time there's this fantastic
visualization by jack butcher that i
want to show you here because it is very
possible that you are right here at the
this is pointless stage and you just
need to put in a bit more effort now
before i go i want to share one of the
most important skills that i've learned
over the past few years as both my
business and my youtube channel have
grown and that is the skill of
delegating to other people which has
classically been very difficult for me
i've always had this very diy mindset
but i've also found it very rewarding
because when i can give my work to other
very talented people that frees up my
time my energy for other more important
things that i can do to grow this
business and one of the most important
things that my team and i have realized
for working as efficiently and as
effectively as possible is that we need
to document our processes so now we have
this entire knowledge base where i've
created instructions on everything from
how to connect to our video editing
server to how to publish a video to
youtube and while sometimes i do just
write out these instructions most the
time i actually record my screen using a
tool called loom now loom is sponsoring
this video but i reached out to them
directly and asked to work with them
because loom is seriously one of my
favorite tools and i use it almost every
single day loom lets you almost
instantly start recording your screen
your camera or both either on their
desktop apps in the browser using their
extension or on your mobile device it is
asynchronous video messaging for work
and i absolutely love the fact that
anytime i need to document something or
send a message to my team showing them
how to do something i can near instantly
record my screen and then the link to
the video is automatically put on my
clipboard so i can just paste it into
our messaging app and they see it right
away they also have some other cool
features like automatic transcriptions
and even a button to remove filler words
like um and ah and lots of words that i
probably used in this video like i said
my team and i use this every single day
they have 14 million other users and if
you would like to give it a try as well
the team over at loom is currently
offering my audience a 14-day free trial
of their business plan with all these
cool features just click the link in the
description down below or the one on
screen right here to get started if you
enjoyed this video a like for the
algorithm would be very much appreciated
and you may also want to check out this
video right here on seven books i think
everyone should read in their 20s or
maybe this video over here on how to
stop overthinking everything check one
of those two out if you want something
more to watch thanks as always for
watching and i will see you in the next
one