Don't disappear for a year. Stay recognizable.

Okay, YouTube, I've had enough. I thought it was a phase, a trend, a bug in the system that will quickly go away. But no, it's still here. So I had to say something. You're saying that I should disappear for six months or even a year to come back unrecognizable. And that's the only way we can change our lives for the better. But I say, screw this. And here's why. First of all, the have to disappear. for a long period of time to change our lives put us in the waiting mode. We all start to wait for the magical one day when we save enough money to quit our jobs, the kids are older, economy is better, and things are a little bit more manageable so that everything and everybody can be left to function without us on autopilot. SPOILER ALERT It will never happen. The conditions will never be perfect. And if someone watched your video and then realized that they will never have such an opportunity to escape their life, to have this jaw dropping transformation, then it makes them hopeless. Does it mean that they can never improve their lives? No. The only way to change our lives is to For the better is to do it inside the life that we already have with all the jobs, all the kids and the economy. If you manage to work on your goals during the difficult situations, then working on them when things get easier will be like a piece of cake. If you start working out in the winter, when it's dark outside, there is no sun, the daylight is short, and you're just low on energy, then if you do that during the winter, then working out in the summer will be like a walk in the park. It will be amazing. And that brings me to my second point. Let's say that you've managed to escape for six months or a year, move to a remote island, work on your goals and come back unrecognizable. But what happens when you return? The conditions are there, the economy is there, people, hopefully, are still there, but you are in equipped to deal with this real life human imperfections. Then what do you do? Go back and become a hermit for the rest of your life? You will have to learn how to adapt your goals to fit inside your limiting conditions. By disappearing for a year, you just delayed this learning process. You will still have to do it. I have a favorite quote that has become a mantra whenever I face a limiting condition in my life. Start where you are. Use what you have and do what you can. And I found out there are always enough resources and knowledge to take the first step to start pulling the thread. And I think resourcefulness is in our genes, which is forget how to use it by the sheer fact of being born. It means that you have this in your DNA. It means that your ancestors were resourceful enough, and that's why you exist today. They didn't die of starvation. They didn't freeze to death. They managed to be resourceful and get to the point where they can have babies, and then those babies had you. And to take it a step further, I think we should celebrate the limitations and not try to run away from them. Thank God. They exist. And here's why. Imagine you go to a store to buy shoes. And you have zero constraints. You have unlimited budget, unlimited time, unlimited options. So you see shelves upon shelves of every shoe available in every color possible. Would it be easy? to make progress on your goal, buying shoes, when you have zero constraints? Of course not. It will be hell. Most likely, you'll run away from this store empty handed because it's so hard to make a choice when you don't have limitations. Now, let's impose some sort of limit. Let's say that you need to buy shoes that will go well with your jeans. That's a constraint. Now things got a little easier. You walk into the store and you can ignore all the fancy shoes because they don't go well with the jeans and can focus more on the casual ones. But still, there are so many of them with all the colors and different casual style. Still difficult. But I would say 50 percent easier than the previous scenario. Now let's add another limitation. Let's say you want the shoes to be warm enough so that you can wear them in late fall and early spring. Great! That reduced the pool of available choices even further and it made it easier for you to make a choice. So are limits a bad thing? Should we run away from them to a remote island because that's the only way to transform our life? No, I would say there are often prerequisites to making the first step, otherwise we are being stuck in indecision, overwhelm, and paralysis by analysis. Look back through the history and it has this lesson written all over it. Limitations foster creativity. Things were status quo till a certain limitation emerged. Things were good while people lived in Africa, but when they moved up north, then they had the limitation of winter, so food processing and preservation emerged. It did not emerge till the constraint occurred. Therefore, we should celebrate limitations and constraints. So in case you were watching one of those videos, I've probably seen a hundred of them on my youtube feed and you felt hopeless because you had so many constraints in your life that did not allow you to disappear and have your amazing transformation and you felt hopeless as a result. Now I want to encourage you to look at them as a blessing and have a sense of relief. Otherwise, we would all find ourselves staring in the abyss of endless opportunity and choices. Your adult responsibilities just saved you from that. Now, instead of having a thousand options on how to achieve a certain goal, you can say, what can I do with one hour a day and on this budget? And all of a sudden, the pool of unlimited options became very, very manageable and limited. And now you can actually consider different options and make the best choice for you. Constraints bring clarity. Therefore, if you find yourself lost, overwhelmed, or confused, chances are you simply don't have enough constraints in this situation to bring you clarity. So, if you want more clarity, define more constraints. And side note, it's not a surprise that the younger generation these days feel more lost and confused. Not only did their parents and grandparents work really hard to remove a bunch of constraints, social and financial, they also had an invention of intranet to add to this unlimited pool of options. Now the biggest constraints of geography and access to information has been removed. So now it's no wonder that they don't know what to do because there are so many options available. All of that is to say that limitations and constraints are great things. If you want to stop running away from your perfectly imperfect human life and start embracing it. as a solid foundation to start your journey towards your bigger goals and ambition, deciding that you have enough resources, knowledge, tools to take the first step. You can place yourself in the environment of like minded people, not some Instagram influencers who are showing you successful success and overnight transformation, but in the environment of real people. Like you, with full time jobs, families, kids, spouses, and other adult responsibilities, who decided not to wait for the magical one day when, but to take even the smallest step in the right direction. It's a place where we make resourcefulness cool again. We start where we are, we use what we have, and we do the things that we can. If you're interested to learn more, the link is in the description. I hope to see you inside. Cheers.