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hey this is Leo for actualised dot-org and in this video what I want to talk about is how to follow personal development advice all right welcome back let's talk about how to follow personal development advice now why is this even important why am i shooting a video on this topic actually I started to shoot this video and the reason I got an idea for it is because I've shot a lot of video now there's a lot of video out there on my website and on my youtube channel and people have been responding I've been looking at the comments and one of the things that I'm noticing is that there's a little bit of a disconnect between my style of delivery and the way that I want you to be receiving the information so here's what I mean by this and the whole general theme here is that I want you to be an independent thinker right you have to take everything that you hear whether it's for me or from anybody else that's teaching you anything in life any kind of wisdom that you take or advice that you hear from other people there's a certain way that you need to go about implementing it and hearing it and receiving it so that you're getting maximum results in your own life from that advice the fact of the matter is that there's a lot of people out in the world especially nowadays that will be giving you advice free advice paid advice whatever you know your friends your family stuff you buy books you read videos you watch on YouTube or anywhere else and the important thing here is to realize that no matter who you're listening to no matter how smart they are how wise they are how much of an expert they are in whatever field are teaching you when they're giving you a piece of advice that's something that they learned themselves right and the best advice is usually a combination of stuff that you learned through learning and book smarts as you might call it you know theory and best practices but then also in combination with your own life experiences when those two things come together you get a very solid piece of is a lesson for yourself which then you can distill down and pass on as advice to others so somebody might give you some real relationship advice or some business advice or advice about school or the the way that you should run your job or your career or whatever else and the problem with that is is that they've got their own biases right everyone who's telling you anything has their own biases and I'm no different I've got my own biases too and it's just it goes even deeper than just bias as it also goes down to values see every human being has certain values that they have these values you either grow up with them you develop them as you're growing up maybe even some of them are biologically instilled in you from your genetics and première your family background and all that stuff and so you're growing up and eventually you you come up and you become an adult and when you by the time you're an adult you have values that you're living your life by now most people don't consciously know what their values are which is a problem in and of itself I'll talk about that in other videos but the idea here is that these values there's about ten of them that really govern your life these are like core principles by which you live this is the stuff that you find very important to you well for every person that's slightly different and for some people it's radically different you could take two people have radically different values and this will explain why they pursue radically different things in their life why they lead totally different types of lives why they hang out with totally different types of people and why they have different types of problems in their lives and so this being the case just by the way that advice is structures by the way these videos are structured I'm delivering my advice to you the stuff that I've learned and I've really taken advice from from numerous sources hundreds of different places books and and incredible experts and authors and all the people and the clients that I've worked with so there's a lot of different perspectives that I'm synthesizing and bringing to you but in the end still it's coming through the filter of me right it's my values that are getting filtered here and so what I'm delivering something I try to deliver it forcefully because I think that's one of the problems and self development is that sometimes you get a week delivery a wofully delivery and people will tell you well maybe you should do this or maybe you should do that and because of this you end up not doing anything because it's very easy to just say well it doesn't really matter or you're not really clear so I want to give you crystal clear advice and I think that there is some really hard and fast principle that you have to follow if you want to be successful and happy in life and create the kind of extraordinary that you want so I'm sharing these with you but in the end I've got my values right I have certain values about relationships I've certain values about about money I have certain values about career and business and health and fitness and so this is the kind of stuff that my advice is getting filtered through these values which is which is why sometimes I'll say something but in the end if you're watching a lot of my videos you don't want to just be taking it all wholesale right because what works for me even though I try to take out what is particular to me what worked for me what works for some of the clients that I have doesn't necessarily mean that it will work for you you might be different in some important way there might be something about your life that's different maybe you're living in a very different country where the political circumstances are different maybe you grew up in a big family so family is very very important to you and you value that and so that's going to shift what you're chasing in life or maybe you've had some very traumatic events early in your life that have shaped who you are or maybe you have a physical disability or a disease or a health problem that I don't have or that an average person doesn't have so if this is the case then you need to apply what I'm telling you with some intelligence not blindly and that's what this video is trying to tell you to be intelligent about the way that you apply some of the stuff that I'm sharing with you you have to trust yourself above anyone else in life I see a lot of times people don't do this it sounds simple when you say it but a lot of times people will go out there and they'll listen to one person here and one person there and they'll just be like a leaf blowing in the wind and they take the advice in the opinions of other people or even society or organizations or social constructs they'll take those more important than their own opinions this is a problem because nobody can really tell you what's gonna fit in with your life no one's gonna really tell you what fits in with your values no one knows but you only you can know that and even for you that's a that's a struggle it takes time it takes months and years to really understand what will fit in for you in your life what will make you happy what will align with you what will really make you fulfilled maybe you get into a relationship and you get married because everyone around you is getting married everyone's telling you should get married and so you get married but then later on you find out that actually marriage was not something that was right for you because you've got some quirks and you've got some different values and you don't like being hemmed in a marriage or maybe people are telling you to go get a nine-to-five job and become an engineer or a computer programmer and so you go and do that and you think that that's going to work for you but then after a few years of doing that you realize you know what engineering and programming aren't actually what I'm passionate about I'm really passionate about art or I'm really passionate about working with people or something like that so see these are you know simple kind of situations and you can extrapolate these out and just and just imagine beyond this all the different things that people are telling you that culture is telling you if you are just blindly following those and vacuuming them up like oh you're sucking them up without thinking about them then your life is not going to be very happy it's not gonna be very fulfilling the whole secret to life is that you're this complex rich and unique machine running through life and so you're trying to set up your life so that the circumstances that are around you are the way that you want them to be not the way your mom wants them to be or your dad or your brother or your sister or whoever else in your life or even me that's why the stuff that I'm giving to you you have to custom tailor you have to be open-minded enough to hear it this doesn't mean to be closed-minded this is a very important distinction because I see a lot of people will make this mistake is that they closed their mind and they tell themselves immediately Oh I'm very different this couldn't work for me oh well I'm very different I have this condition in life or I have this life circumstance I don't have money or I don't have a relationship or I was abused when I was younger and so because of this now this advice that I'm giving to you you're gonna say now that's not gonna work see it's a little bit of walking a fine line you have to be able to develop a trust within yourself at the same time you have to do two things on the one hand you have to be very open-minded that means that whatever ideas or advice is being thrown your way you have to be able to listen to it to hear it - honestly intelligently entertain it and then maybe even go out and try it play around and experiment with it but then on the other hand you also have to be the final arbiter right you're like the ultimate authority on yourself so if you tell yourself you know what this thing that you're telling me leo it's really not gonna work because I've experienced I have some experience and then you know that really doesn't fit with my values it just really fit with Who I am so this this part of the advice that you're giving me isn't gonna work and that's okay I want you to be doing that right sometimes all all challenge people in them in the comment sections sometimes they'll tell me all that that wouldn't work or this wouldn't work and I challenge them very sternly and I really kind of like clash with them and the reason I do that is for the following reason it's not because I think that everyone should believe what I believe it's not because I think that everyone should honor my exact set of values and live life exactly like me I don't want to create you know a million mirror images of me that's silly that's not going to work what I want though is I want you to be not having ego defenses up and that's what I noticed a lot of people especially victims people who are victims in life and really stuck for example I want to talk about depression or when I talk about anger control or when I talk about taking responsibility for your life a lot of times will happen there is that I tell someone what they're doing wrong and then the reason that they're stuck in life and their ego feels threatened by it and so it does is it closes down the mind closes down and immediately starts coming up with excuses and justifications for why the the information that they heard is wrong and it starts to demonize the information and one of the ways that that happens is that your ego defense will say well this person he's not like me at all what does he know about my life how could he possibly know you know the abuse I had as a child or how could he possibly know that the crippling depression that I'm under how could he possibly know about that horrible miserable relationship where I was used in him and manipulated and and you know and abandoned how could he know about all that stuff and I'm sure that he doesn't have those things in his life so if he doesn't have those things in his life how can I relate to him how could his advice actually work it's a little bit hard right because on the one hand I want to deliver this advice very clearly clear-cut advice on the other hand I can't make it totally black-and-white because there's a lot of gray area and so it's this kind of balance between me being very clear in black and white and on their hand allowing you the freedom to customize what you want from the advice that you're getting you need both if you don't manage this right what's gonna happen that your minds going to close the ego defenses will come up and you won't hear the advice and so you'll miss the amazing opportunity that some of this information wisdom can have on you so that that'll keep you stuck on the other hand if you follow me blindly then you're probably going to dishonor some of your values and that will also get you into some trouble so you don't want to be doing either of those you have to use your judgment see I wish there was just a simple 1 2 3 formula that I could give you that you could just apply to everything that I'm saying and you would know what works and what doesn't in reality if it worked that way it'd be too easy you know there's there's there's so much richness to life they have to go out there and try experiment but don't use this as a as an ego defense to say that what I'm telling you can't work for you what I want you to do is I want you to honestly believe that anything I say can work for you you have to go out there and try it out give it a lot of effort do it honestly and ultimately what's going to determine if this is working for you or not is some hard and fast metrics right don't judge your life or the advice that you get or the advice that you try to apply by simply how you feel about it or what you think will happen if you apply it the way to judge the advice is to actually go out there and apply it and see the results right there's two things here you have to be growing constantly and you have to be getting better and better results if you're getting these two things in your life then you're using a strategy that's good so you're probably maybe already doing that if you're getting better and better results every day every week every year good good for you maybe there's a way we can make that even even faster make those results even like supercharge those and.and you're growing right and though in that case you're growing every single every single day every single week every single month every single year that's what you want but if you're not doing that and you're noticing that you've kind of been stuck in the same place in your life for a while now especially for a couple of years or more then you have to ask yourself wait a minute maybe there's something here that I'm missing maybe some of these reasons that I'm not following some of this advice that I know is because of these ego defense mechanisms which can be very very tricky very self manipulative very self sabotaging and so we gotta save yourself as ha wait a minute have I been growing very consistently very powerfully over the last few years or not if I haven't something is wrong or wait a minute have I been getting better and better results at my job in my business in my relationship with my health with my finances with my internal emotional mood am I getting better and better at those every single year wait a minute if I'm not that means that I'm using some sort of bad strategy because I can guarantee that if you if you use strategies the way that I'm using strategies I mean I'm taking stuff all over the place and then I'm applying it in my life I'm throwing stuff out too I'm filtering very heavily for what works for me and when I find those strategies the growth that I get is amazing that growth is that you're not the wait years to feel it you you can see that growth in weeks literally in weeks you see that growth so when you're really on the right track you know you're on the right track and that's what I want for you I really want every year for you to be like a powerful kick-ass year something where a year passes in your life and you can't even recognize where you were a year ago and this is not this is not this is not something that's ooh too lofty in fact pretty much every single year for me for the last man probably for the last five years it was like I was having major major growth I like to the point where I look back war just one year I can look back from today one year I'm like damn like my life was so radically less than it is now it's like every year expansion expansion expansion and that's why I'm excited to shoot these videos because I want that same expansion for you when you when you get that taste of expansions like oh man that's so amazing just the feeling of knowing you grown so much just that in and of itself for me is really really rewarding but of course it's not just that it's that your life is improving and you're feeling better you're having more success you're getting success in all these different areas in your life it's kind of like putting together a big jigsaw puzzle and it's a very customized jigsaw puzzle everyone's is unique that's what's beautiful about life is that you're crafting your own life and I bring you the principles and the stuff that I think is just very fundamental see sure you're gonna customize a lot of stuff but it's also the case that there's some basics to life that you have to have in place for example if we're gonna build a car you know there's there's a lot of detail to a car and there's a lot of customization you can do there's a lot of different cars out there and your taste in cars might be different than mine but on the same level there's a lot of similarities between cars - right most of them have wheels most of them have four wheels most of them have tires most of them have an engine in the front most of them have a trunk most of them have rear view windows and mirrors and so you've got all this stuff which is kind of like the fundamentals and what's actually refreshing about that is that if you get like the basic fundamentals in place which are the same for most human beings to be happy and successful then the the details you can you can customize those exactly how you want and that's actually really rewarding because your life then when you're customizing these details and you're doing this little like fine-tuning and polishing work on your life it's it's kind of like detailing a card so it's like it's fun it's rewarding and it's it's a form of self-expression your life can be a form of self-expression your life itself the way you live it the way you grow the things you involve yourself in the kind of principles and values that you embody and live up to and some it's a really powerful place to be in life and I want that for you so I want to help to put the fundamentals in place so that you can then get really curious and interested about that detail work all right so this is the basics of how to follow my advice but not just my advice anybody's advice use your brain be a critical thinker you are the final arbiter in the end I can't force you to do anything nobody can force you to do anything you are responsible completely for how your life goes which advice you adopt which advice you leave on the cutting room floor and I want you to be intelligent I want you ultimately to be nuanced develop these characteristics within yourself this is important because if you are going to be a black-and-white thinker or you're gonna be hemmed in with all these ego defenses you're gonna be putting all these walls up against receiving new information for people and considering other perspectives then your growth and success and happiness in life is going to be very very limited and that's not what we want here for you alright this is Leo I am signing off go ahead post me your comments down below I'd love to hear from you please like this video right now click the like button share it with somebody share with a friend post on Facebook and lastly come check out actualised org it's my website sign up to the free newsletter it's an amazing newsletter I'm really singing every week I'm creating new content on a weekly basis free videos just like this one about where I tell you the the fundamentals that it takes to master your life both the externals but also the internals right it's the mindsets you need to create a really powerful rich exciting life that is functioning in all the ways that you want to function money health relationships but for me the most important thing is like the inner satisfaction you get those higher level feelings of personal growth and that passion that you get when you get the life that you want wow it's amazing I've really struggled to find this passion myself 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