Okay, so you want to change your life.
You want to unfrick your entire life and you want to do it in just one year.
Is that even possible?
Well, I think it's definitely possible.
But will you?
That's a completely separate question.
Most of you watching this video probably won't.
Just statistically, most of you are probably going to end up in a similar situation that you did at the end of last year.
Another year is gonna go by and you're gonna be in a very similar situation.
But some of you will pull ahead.
It just depends on if you break the cycle of mediocrity that you've been in recently.
I'm kind of talking to myself, by the way.
I don't know about you guys, but this past year was a pretty challenging year for me.
It did not go to plan.
I was not nearly as productive or healthy mentally or physically as I wanted to be.
And a lot of that had to do with the fact that I kind of destroyed my back.
I herniated two discs in my L5-S1 and my L4-5, and the road to recovery has been rocky, to say the least.
Due to my impulsive nature, I always try to push the agenda.
I always try to play hockey.
If I can physically walk, I figure, yeah, I can just glide around and play a hockey game.
Well, this has led to injury and re-injury and re-aggravation, and that was basically the entire theme of my 2025.
It was me, hobbling around, physically nerfed, which really affected my mental health, my productivity and overall lifestyle in more ways than I even care to mention.
So believe me when I say if you're watching this video on January 15th or February the 23rd or August the 5th, doesn't matter.
When you're watching this video, just know that I am right there with you.
I am intensely motivated to make the next 365 days better than the last.
So in this video, I'm going to go over some of the tactics and strategies that I am currently employing to guarantee that this year will be a bounce back year.
If you're interested in making this year your strongest year yet, then keep watching.
Number one, develop a positive vision and just forget about negative visions.
You hear so often that you should develop a positive vision about where you want to be in life yadda yadda, yadda.
But you should also develop a negative vision.
Think about all the things you're trying to run from.
What do you not want to experience?
What sounds like hell to you?
The problem I have with this is it has never worked for me.
If you're in a really challenging spot and life hasn't been going super well for you and you've had a lot of challenges, I don't think people need to be reminded as to how crappy it can be and how much worse it can get.
People are painfully aware of how much worse it can get.
There is no shortage of doom and gloom everywhere you look on the internet, but what people don't have is very much hope.
A lot of people I talk to can't even fathom a better life for themselves.
They can't even imagine how things could get better, let alone how to do that every step of the way.
I think that is the main problem.
Because once you start to outline a specific plan of action and you start to imagine that things in your life can and will get better, then you start to develop hope.
And hope is the most powerful motivation.
If you don't focus all your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new, then hope is hard to come by.
So it is integral, to develop a positive vision, not just a vision, a plan, which leads me into the next part of this, which is don't be generic.
This is a huge trap that people fall into when they start imagining a better life for themselves.
The first thing you're probably gonna do is you're gonna sit there and start thinking about all these things you want.
You probably want more money.
You want that bank account to be nice and fat.
You want to feel physically better than you do now.
You probably wanna go to the gym a lot more often and have a better diet.
As you think about the person that you want to be, you probably are conjuring up some type of cotton candy bubblegum version of who you want to be in the future.
The issue with this is that literally every single person on the planet is doing exactly what you're doing.
They are manifesting and conjuring up the most generic Instagram approved version of their future self, somebody that bears no resemblance to the person that you are now, to the friends that you have, to the life that you live, the hobbies that you're trying to get better at.
So if you actually want to develop an effective strategy for being better than you were last year and actually gain some traction in your life, then you have to develop a specific vision.
If you do this properly, you'll have an unlimited well of motivation to tap into all throughout the year, because your goals will be intimately linked with the things that you do every single day and you can see progress happen in real time, which generates its own motivation.
Let me give you a specific example.
One of my main goals for this year is to grow Nutrify.
I want to pour so much time and energy into making sure that Neutrify is a positive experience for people.
I essentially just want to run the best nootropic company in the world.
That is extremely ambitious, but it's something that I interact with every day.
It's something that I have direct control over and something that I find highly motivating.
And when it comes to fixing my back, well, what do I want to do with my back?
Well, I play a lot of hockey and I love the idea of scoring goals and just being an effective teammate and basically performing in a way that I know I'm capable of on the ice.
That idea gives meaning to my rehab my boring little bird dogs and dead bugs and McKenzie press-ups.
It's all lame .
I hate doing those things.
But when I think about it in the context of specific areas of my life that could be so much more enjoyable and fulfilling, then all of a sudden I have all the motivation I need.
The moral of the story is find things in your life that you want to improve.
Maybe it's a relationship that you have.
Maybe it's... the lack thereof.
Maybe it's about dying to yourself a little bit, foregoing some of these frivolous pleasures so that you can get into a more secure financial situation.
But then think about what that secure financial situation would give you.
What would it afford you?
How would it make you feel to have a specific amount more money every single month?
This sounds like I'm transitioning into an ad, but I promise I'm not.
I just wanna give a big thank you to Headspace for sponsoring this video.
And I'm really glad that Headspace, in particular, is sponsoring this video, because it's one of the best tools that I've found to help me mentally reset, slow my brain down and get into the necessary Headspace to tackle the obstacles in my life.
Which is great, because if you're anything like me, you probably spend a little bit too much time on your phone.
But since Headspace is an app on your phone, it's a great way to just click something else, mentally reset, so you can regain autonomy over your actions and mindfully do something more meaningful with your time.
And that's why over the winter time I've been using Headspace a lot more consistently.
When I'm feeling mentally scattered, especially in the afternoon, I just find it really easy to click on the Headspace app instead of some other time-wasting app on my phone.
Press play on a mindfulness session, bring my chaotic, scattered consciousness back into the present moment, and then use that peace and clarity as a launch pad to do something that better serves me.
And science backs that up.
After just three days of headspace, it's been proven to increase focus.
And after seven days of headspace, it's been shown to improve sleep quality, which also increases focus and productivity and so many other areas of your life.
So if you're interested in joining me and shifting your inner baseline, then Headspace has an amazing offer right now.
If you click my link in the description below or scan the QR code you're seeing on the screen right now, you can try Headspace for free for 60 days.
That's two full months instead of the standard trial.
So make sure to take advantage of that amazing offer.
And thanks again to Headspace for sponsoring this video.
Number three, and this is probably the most important tip in this whole video, and that is to grow your AMCC.
And what the hell is that?
Well, basically grow your anterior mid cingulate cortex.
So the AMCC is a part of your brain that literally grows and strengthens.
It increases in gray matter when you voluntarily do something that you don't want to do.
Let's take cold showers, for example.
Most people don't want to take a cold shower, they would rather take a hot one.
But when you say to yourself okay, cold showers, that sounds terrible, but i'm going to do it anyways, and you hop into that cold water, your anterior mid cingulate cortex grows and every day that goes by, as long as you hate that cold shower, every single time, your anterior mid cingulate cortex will grow stronger and stronger and stronger.
And what this does is makes you more capable of shouldering discomfort in the future.
But there's a catch.
If you learn to actually enjoy the cold shower, if you develop this attitude beforehand that hmm yeah, that actually sounds quite delightful.
I can't wait to hop in the cold shower.
Then, when you hop in the cold shower, your AMCC does not grow anymore.
The AMCC only grows when you don't want to do something and do it anyways.
It only grows through challenge.
The implications of this are astounding.
It's kind of game-breaking.
It is basically self-improvement.
Every self-improvement book distilled into one psychological fact, one neurological reality.
What even is self-improvement?
Like, what is that?
Well, if it's anything, it's growing.
It's challenging yourself.
It's becoming stronger instead of weaker.
It's becoming wiser instead of dumber.
Becoming more resourceful, more useful, and less pathetic to the best of your ability.
But what is your ability?
Now we're talking.
Maybe your ability to learn new skills, to stay calm in the face of chaos, to put in effort at school to read a book, to get yourself to the gym, to learn how to code a website, to stick with boring things.
It all comes down to tenacity.
It comes down to your ability to sit with tedium to endure uncomfortable situations.
Sit with it and work through it.
That is the way that you grow in life.
And your ability to do so might just have a name.
It's the AMCC, the anterior mid cingulate cortex.
Can you imagine how much further along you'd get in life if you could measurably progressively overload your tenacity skill?
That was a mouthful.
That basically didn't even mean anything, but it does mean something, hopefully.
Like if you have a jacked AMCC then you can go like oh yeah, like HTML.
This is really boring, but I'm just gonna sit here and kind of just do it and learn and get good.
And yeah, it's not that fun, but it's okay.
And I can do it. because I have a jacked AMCC.
Like I feel like 99% of people's problems in life, they're not a mystery, right?
It's not like you don't know how to do it or how to even start.
It's that you can't bring yourself to start.
You don't want to sit there and do step one because you know there are 356 steps.
You don't want to do step one and two and three because it's tedious and it's boring and it takes work and there's not a lot of pleasure.
But now that you know that the amcc exists and the more you challenge yourself to do these little things, there's a part of your brain that is growing and getting stronger and building that tenacity within you that helps you push past any obstacle in life.
That's an incredibly motivating thought.
There's this scene in Fight Club.
It's probably not the most memorable scene in Fight Club, but for some sick reason it's my favorite scene in Fight Club.
It's a scene where they're using the basement and Lou, the owner, comes downstairs and he's like yo, you're not allowed to use this building.
I actually have to blur this because it's so gory.
But basically Lou starts beating the living crap out of Tyler Durden and, as an absolute power move, Tyler decides to just take the beating to eat the punches, to let Lou know that he's not backing down, no matter how badly he gets beaten.
Unbelievable.
You don't know where I've been, Lou.
Oh my God!
And he starts bleeding on him.
He starts smearing his blood all over Lou.
Just basically saying like, I don't care what you do to me.
You might be physically stronger than me, but I'm mentally stronger.
To me, that is the essence of tenacity.
To me, that's what the AMCC means.
It's like that dog in you that can push past obstacles that can make things happen.
That more than anything, is the most important resource that you have.
It's like a raccoon-like mindset.
You're out there in the streets, you're diving in dumpsters because you need to eat and you're gonna get it done.
You will find a way to survive.
So next time you feel like, oh, I have to do something, but I don't really want to.
So I have to find the perfect mental angle to make it seem more interesting to me.
And that's sort of like a mental hack and forget it.
There is intense utility to doing things that you don't want to do specifically because you don't want to do them.
Make that your ethos this year.
The boys over at Yes Theory were right.
Seek discomfort.
It's good for you.
With all of these knowledge, mindsets, strategies, data, you and I are about to have our...
I can't speak apparently.
You and I are about to have our best year yet.
Book it.
Thanks again to Headspace for sponsoring this video.
If you click my link in the description below or scan the QR code you're seeing on the screen right now, you can try Headspace for free for 60 days.
