This is it. This is my latest invention.
My latest grand discovery.
Life-changing, and yet so simple.
I'm about to tell you why a pack of index cards and a binder clip
is at least five times more usable than your traditional poster-sized vision board.
First of all, it's cheap and very discreet.
If you're lugging around a giant poster board with all of your hopes and dreams
on it, there's a big chance that somebody is going to see it,
and you might not actually want that to happen.
Instead of plastering images all over your wall or your mirror,
or trying to use them discreetly inside your closet or something - I've seen people do that -
you could just put them in THIS GUY and
throw them in a hiding spot when other people visit your apartment.
No one's ever gonna see it, and you don't have to deal with people judging your goals.
Along with the fact that it's discreet, it is also highly portable.
Easy to throw in a bag, take with you on a trip - wherever you're going,
you never have to spend a day NOT thinking about what you're trying to do with your life.
In addition, if we treat this as a "flexible
living organism," it is adaptable to any point in your life.
Let's say these are my core values and I will forever have them in my deck.
The next section might be something that I'm working on right now,
and in the future, I won't need these -
I can replace them with the NEXT thing that I'm working on.
In my experience, the goals that I have are forever evolving,
and yet my core values that I do find it helpful to review on a daily basis
are pretty much staying the same from year to year.
So, in this way, I don't have to recreate everything.
I can just evolve it to fit my current situation.
I don't know about you, but this actually reminds me
so much of doing multiplication flash cards when I was a kid,
and I hated them - but they worked. And they worked because of repetition.
If I have a big vision board in front of me,
and all of the images and inspirational quotes and everything are all laid out in one big board,
it's hard to create any kind of hierarchy while I'm looking at it.
I don't know where to focus. I don't know what to focus on first.
This centers your focus. You read this card and you move on.
And as you do these day by day, it kind of gets burned into your brain.
I'm sure you're all wondering what is on these cards - uh -
so I'm gonna flip through them.
I might not share all of them, because some of this is private,
which is why I don't have a giant vision board up in my apartment - I prefer this method.
But I'll show you what I got.
The first one says, "you're reading this right now, which shows that you care."
Because sometimes I think to myself: "well,
you're not working towards your goals as quickly as you should be,
and therefore, obviously, you don't care enough."
If you're reading this right now, it is proof that you DO care.
I think that's a good way to start it off,
and then I do go into next my "mission," which I've said before on a past video;
but my mission is to "provide an alternative to self-destruction,"
partially, just because that's what I need - but I think other people could use that as well.
And I get into it by saying "be yourself and share your style,
have fun in a HEALTHY pursuit of excellence."
I do want to pursue excellence, but I have "healthy" underlined here,
because that is the most important aspect of this.
I have a list next of things I've accomplished before, which I will not read,
because it will sound like i'm bragging...
But at the bottom of it, I have a line that says, "you can do it again,"
and basically what I'm trying to do here is to remind myself that
there are things that I've accomplished that I didn't think that I was going to accomplish, and
I was able to do it - so while I'm looking forward at what I'm trying to accomplish next,
whenever it feels like I'm never going to be able to accomplish that,
I can look at this and say, "well, you thought the same thing about these, and you've done it,
so you could do it again!"
If you breathed your last breath today, would you be okay with that?
Currently? No.
Currently, I'm not where I want to be, not even close.
So the answer is no - but it's good to think about that on the daily.
Then I get into beliefs.
I like to review my beliefs to make sure that I'm prioritizing the things
that I know to be important.
Belief number one is "my ideal will emerge through daily practice."
Might take longer than I want it to, but it will
if I stick to a practice daily, my ideal will emerge.
As a supplement to that, I have a card that just says "patience, persistence, tenacity," and
I am a pretty patient person -
(pretty patient person)
- but I'm not very patient with myself.
So that's always something I need to focus on.
Persistence and tenacity I don't have as much of a problem with as I do patience, usually.
Belief number two is "what would this look like if it was easy?"
This is actually an idea adopted from Tim Ferriss.
Oftentimes, I find that the thing that's getting in the way of me doing something,
getting something done, being productive, is me.
If I ask myself this question - "what would this look like if it was easy?" - I can then
go into that task pretending like it's easy,
and usually it is.
It really doesn't need to be that hard - just give in, stop resisting.
Belief number three is "I do feel wealthy, fortunate, and grateful,
but that doesn't mean that I feel fulfilled or challenged."
And that's okay, and I've had to remind myself of that a lot, especially over the past year -
I am extremely grateful for where I am - I'm extremely fortunate, I feel wealthy,
but at the same time,
I have this need to progress.
This want for different things - not necessarily MORE but
an exchange of some things that I have now -
some lifestyle, some habits, etc -
and I would like to change that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that what I have now is bad.
Spend your time, attention, and money on future pleasures.
This isn't always true - often times, when I'm by myself, this is true.
When I'm with other people, I like to be more present and not worrying about the future as much,
but especially when it comes to something like money, spending it on future pleasures -
such as retiring - is something that's good to think about,
even on a daily basis.
Belief number four is "you must think about your actions in terms of reward potential."
Drink water and stretch your hips!
These are two things that I know I need to do more.
And I know that if i can do this three times a day,
if I drink water and stretch my hips three times a day,
I feel so much better!
And yet, there's a part of me that resists both of these things, and it's stupid.
It's again "what would this look like if it was easy?" but why am I resisting things that I know
are going to make me feel better?
So this is just a reminder to drink water and stretch your hips, LEFIE!
Belief number five is "You already are disenchanted. You
are making progress, and you will get there as rapidly as you can."
Again, this goes back to feeling like, "well,
if you're not doing it fast enough, obviously you don't want it enough..."
Um - but I do! And speed of achievement is not guaranteeing the achievement.
I AM making progress. I will get there as rapidly as i can, but I -
again, I'm not going to let my health suffer (for example) in order to get there.
I do have some affirmations, which I have titled as "THE TRUTH."
I'm not going to show you this one, but basically I've
written down things that I know to be true about myself -
so one of those, for example, is that I'm open-minded.
That's true - I am open-minded,
and it's a good thing to remind yourself of the qualities that you like in yourself,
not to focus on these solely, but to remind yourself that when you are feeling down
when you don't quite think you like yourself very much,
read some things that you DO like about yourself, that you DO feel truly deep down are the truth,
and it can help you get back on the right path.
This next bunch are some photos - some reasons why i want what i want.
A lot of them are just titled "WHY" to remind myself of
why I'm going to the effort to adapt, to adopt new habits,
to change in general -
why is it worth it? And what I'm aspiring to. What i'm trying to do with my life over the next year.
That's all of these... I'm skipping those, not sharing those.
I'm not sharing this one either...
Uh, this one is about specifically career stuff and making things.
This is a list of things that I'm interested in making at some point in the next year so.
Again, this is a little bit more short-term;
it's not so far-reaching, you know, lifetime values.
It's more things that I want to do that are currently on the back burner but can inspire me to
kind of get the stuff that I have on the plate right now done,
so that I can move on and start working on THESE things.
These next three slides are me writing down things about my ideal self,
so if I think of who I want to be in 10 years:
"Who is she? What does she do?" is the first card.
"What does she wear?" is the second card.
(I've been thinking about clothes a lot lately.)
And then "What would she own?" which, honestly,
there's not that much on there... surprise, surprise...
The cool thing about this is when I was thinking about what would she do,
a lot of the things that she would do are things that I do already, but it's the way that she would
react to those things that's different.
So, for example, "gets enough sleep, really treasures it."
So right now, I do get enough sleep,
but the "treasuring it" part is something that I want to adapt.
I want to be grateful and conscious of the fact that I'm getting enough sleep -
really LOVE when I wake up and feel well rested.
Oh, here's another one! "Treat skin care like it's a sacred ritual."
So I already have pretty good skin care, but treating it like it's a "sacred ritual"
gives it more meaning in terms of self-care.
So while I'm doing it, rather than thinking, "this is something I have
to do," I could do the SAME THING and just change the way I think about it,
and say, "this is me taking care of myself."
That's what my ideal self would do.
So these are things that I'm working on changing through repetition. It's gonna happen.
"What would she wear?" It's -
It's very summer inspired, because I'm sick of wearing hoodies.
And "What would she own?" Uh -
there's a couple things on here like owning a house - I do not
own a house - I would like to have a pool table in that said house.
I would like more coffee paraphernalia, such as a Moka Pot and such as a Chemex,
but I have no reason to buy a Moka Pot or a Chemex - I could, but I have no reason to do that now.
I think that once I'm living with someone else, that would
actually be a reason to have something that creates more than one cup of coffee at a time.
Right now, I'm perfectly happy with my V60.
And then I do have a picture of my dream house, which I'm not going to get into,
but it is very inspiring to me.
I love the idea of owning a house someday,
and I have very particular tastes - specifically mid-century modern.
I don't think that's going to surprise anyone because of my Nelson clock.
The last cards are all more daily stuff, so
I have a card that has daily things on it that I want to make sure that I do.
So, for example, I want to go for a walk and listen to an audiobook every day - and this is
just to remind me that that's something that I value and I think is important,
so when it comes to that time of day - I read these note cards in the morning,
and I usually walk around noontime -
when it comes to that time of day, I can remember,
"Oh yeah, my notecard says that I should go for a walk, so I'm not gonna skip it."
I have a card that says "Free time? Free activities!"
and it's to remind myself that there are plenty of
things to do that do not require any money and that make me very happy.
And then these last four cards are just kind of the next steps
in my process for where I want to go with a couple of projects that i'm working on.
And so these cards, I would assume, would be switched out probably first, out of all of these.
Let me know if you use this method - I've only been using it for about a month now
but i liked it so far -
and I'd be interested to hear if you have a different method as well!
I'm always up for experimenting and trying new things.
That's all I've got for today - so
'til next time!
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