So 2025 is about to end and 2026 is literally a couple of weeks away.
But I'm going to make a hunch that you haven't changed much since last year or last last year.
You probably set a bunch of goals, but then you realize that you haven't really pushed through with them.
And now it's another year.
And just like every end of the year, everyone is going to be on their winter arc.
You're going to change.
This is going to be the year, but how do you actually make it the year?
How do you actually change and not make it like every other year?
Well, in this video I will go through an actual actionable plan that you can follow, not just having some random fantasy plan, but can actually take you from a regular new year to an actual transformative year for you.
And I'm not just talking about getting your grades to the next level, but even your fitness, your social skills, your everything.
You're literally going to be a new person, even learning stuff like computer science, math in your free time, because that's right.
This video is in partnership with Brilliant.
Because I genuinely think that they are a company that I would fully endorse when it comes to becoming an actual polymath.
Basically becoming that student that knows everything, has their life together fitness, whatever that.
So with that being said, let's start your 2026 glow up plan, starting with the plan.
Now, I want to specify and I want this to be clear.
You need to spend the least amount of time with the plan.
And this is why I'm starting this video with the plan immediately, because nothing will change if you put most of your energy into the planning, into the planning of.
I will do this and that.
OK, every day I'm going to do this and that.
I'm going to make a system, blah, blah, blah.
Like you're just.
You're just going to waste your time instead of taking action, because you can watch as many self-help videos about changing your life, or you can read as many books as you want, but if you don't get up and actually do the work, you are not going to go anywhere.
You're not doing anything.
Granted, reading those books and watching those videos can change your mindset in a way, but it's so pointless, like i swear.
It's so pointless if you're gonna do everything and you're just not gonna do the thing.
So forget about setting an intricate plan or a system or a routine, because what i want you to do, if you want to change and glow up for this 2026, is to literally just start doing.
Focus 80 of your energy on the doing and 20 on the planning.
Stop thinking about optimizing everything, just Do it.
You should only worry about optimization when you're already at the peak of your performance.
But I'm gonna go on a limb and say you're not even consistent with the habits you want to start with.
So why are you already thinking about doing the optimal thing, doing this and that?
You have to get out and do it.
If you want to start working out, just start working out.
Don't think about optimizing the best time to work out, thinking about how to fit it to your schedule.
You don't have to worry about that right now.
The moment you have free time, tell yourself, OK, I'm going to work out.
This is the exact mindset that I've been having for the past couple of months, and I don't even stick to a very strict schedule anymore, because every time I do have a free time in my day, I just tell myself OK, I'll get up and I'll just go to the gym.
I don't schedule things anymore because I just try to do as much as I can.
Probably a lot of people get stuck spending all their time planning organizing, but they just never do the thing that they have to do.
So the plan I'm telling you is to not have a plan.
You can have a plan later, but the plan right now is just go.
Do you have free time?
Go study.
If you have free time, go work out.
But I don't have a plan.
How am I supposed to start this glow up if I don't have a plan or direction?
Well, let me introduce you to the next step, which is the ideal self philosophy.
Basically, as humans, we're naturally driven towards specific goals.
I mean, I think we can all agree on that.
And especially in the self-improvement area, we all have an ideal version of ourselves in our heads.
I think most of us in our lives are just trying to become that specific person that we want.
So instead of focusing on a plan of like okay, I'm gonna work out in this amount of times per week on a specific schedule, I want you to try and think about what your ideal self would be doing every single day.
And the reason why I want you to think about this is because you need to start having a sort of direction to why you are doing all this, because I can tell you to create a system, but then if you don't feel like it matches your values, then what's the point?
You're just going to end up not doing it after a couple months.
Consistency comes from congruency.
If whatever you're doing matches your goals and your values, you'll find yourself doing them in a long term, rather than a sudden burst of motivation.
For example, my ideal self would be someone who's active, someone who works out every day, engaged in his hobbies, doing well in school, staying consistent on YouTube and balancing his social life.
I'm kind of happy to say that I'm almost there, but I do still have plenty of work to do.
And that's the thing, chasing your ideal self is a never ending pursuit.
The point of an ideal self is to give you direction.
For example, I'm currently recording this video and that is literally what my ideal self would do.
He would be recording his YouTube channel and he'll be consistent with uploading content so that he doesn't miss an upload every week.
Or another example of an ideal self of mine is that he would study four to five hours intensively every day, consistently.
And I'm still working towards that, even though at times, you know, it's kind of hard to really balance everything, as I've been doing so much for the past few days.
But the point is that I'm trying to get to that goal slowly.
The point is trying to get there.
The point is not being there.
The point is trying to go to that specific ideal self.
Notice that I'm not setting a rigid standard of having to do X Y, Z every day because of my ideal self.
It's more of doing what I can right now and moving to that direction.
Another perfect example is that I've been using Brilliant recently to study computer science.
I've been very interested in that topic even though my whole course career is in medicine.
And that's because I kind of have a future project that I have working in my head.
And that's the thing.
I'm not expecting myself, okay, I'm gonna finish this project in a couple of days.
No, I'm just trying to show up every day by studying more computer science.
And this project is something I hope to launch in the near future.
I'm not ready to talk about this yet because I want to make this a little secret, but I just want to tell you that, reusing Brilliant, I was able to understand the fundamental concepts of computer science and coding, And even though I didn't learn CS overnight, doing those practice problems with Brilliant just helps me show up every day, step by step.
And because Brilliant offers a convenient way to learn subjects like science and math and CS, I don't pressure myself to complete a set number of lessons every day.
I just tell myself I'll do what I can every day.
And so far it's been working really, really well.
I've been completing lessons on my phone, whether that be on the go or outside.
And I'm always surprised how straightforward learning computer science and programming has been with Brilliant.
Again, Again.
Normally I'm not someone who likes passive learning, so that's why I really like how Brilliant makes you solve problems instead of just letting you learn the topic itself.
They actually let you interact with these problems, as well as motivating you forward and encouraging as well, step by step.
Even Brilliant has their own progression system in real life.
Like literally it's giving me a good foundation of CS and programming.
And because of that, it teaches me how to do logic, ensuring correctness and efficiency.
And that all came from just doing problems 10 minutes a day.
Like I'm not even trying to push myself to do an hour every day.
I just wanna show up and do these brilliant problems.
And it even came to a point where I could imagine vibe coders, or basically people who use AI, could confidently use this course as well to really refresh their CS knowledge.
What I'm trying to say is that, instead of trying to really just push yourself at one point, what really matters is showing up every day.
You just have to do little by little every day and, trust me, your progress will improve, skyrocket.
And now this is literally the final step, and i'm not even joking.
Literally this video is just three steps.
I promise this is the last one because i don't want to make this video way too complicated, because glowing up is actually not that complicated, because people who focus on less actually achieve more.
If you really want to glow up or if you want to change, then you need to find a way to track your progress, which is why you need to also track.
This is to make sure that you're actually setting in the right direction and to be productive with your actions.
And this is kind of where optimization could sort of come in, once you have a good rhythm with your habits and pretty much try to do what you can every day.
If you're able to do that, we can start talking about optimization.
So, for example, in my CS course, since Brilliant is structured as a course in a fun way, it also pretty much shows me where I am in terms of progress, which gives me motivation to push me forward.
And the good thing about Brilliant is that, since they know that I'm an actual beginner in this field, it essentially just personalizes my pace.
So it starts me on the right level, based on my background which is, you know, literally zero background.
And I just started real slow as well.
And that is also what I want everyone to take away from this progress.
I know this is a sponsored video, but I really want you guys to just take it slow.
I'm telling you, glowing up takes time.
Most influencers will say you could glow up in 60 days, in 30 days.
I'm gonna tell you, you can't.
You can't just expect instant results, because the thing about glowing up is that you also have to change yourself.
And by doing small steps every day and if you stick it consistently, you know, just showing up every day you will create lasting change, because progress just doesn't happen overnight.
It really does not.
You have to keep going, you have to keep showing up.
When you show up each time, Slowly your values start to change as a human being.
You start growing up takes a huge mindset shift as well as a behavior shift that not everyone can do overnight.
It's something that really takes a lot of time.
I've been doing YouTube for almost five years, four years, and I'm still trying to change slowly.
I'm still not the ideal person that I am.
I'm still, until now, pursuing an ideal version of myself.
And the thing is, you really need a good reason to why you're doing this.
If your main reason is just oh, I wanna come back with muscles and impress the ladies and show my classmates I'm gonna get high grades, that's really it's an okay reason, but they're not great deep reasons.
Why do you want to do these things?
What about it do you value in life that makes you want to push yourself to change?
Now approaching the end of the video you might be thinking Is literally your advice.
Just do the thing.
And yes, that's literally my advice.
It is not that complicated.
Changing yourself, setting goals, and going through a glow up isn't as hard as people make it seem.
The problem is...
Can you really do this for the next 90 days?
Can you do this for the next year?
Like, be honest with yourself.
Are you willing to change for the next year or so, 365 days?
Because the thing is, if you actually do the things that matter for the next 60 to 90 days consistently and I'm not even talking about just doing the same things, but actually pushing yourself you will start to change as a person.
Trust me, you will.
We're talking about glowing up here.
I'm not talking about staying in the same shell.
You need to have that drive in you.
You have to have that reason why you wanna push outside your shell.
For example, if you wanna build muscle, you have to push harder and lift harder.
If you wanna get abs, you gotta change your diet slowly every day.
If you want to see better grades, you just gotta shut up and study.
If you want to be a polymath, just stop and do those brilliant practice problems.
The whole point of this video is rather simple.
Planning alone won't get you anywhere, and you can download every app that you want, you can fill every spreadsheet, you can have a journal or whatever.
All those things are not doing the thing.
If you're not doing the actual work, Nothing will change.
Action is the only thing that will move you forward.
So I hope that's the main takeaway you get from this video.
If you're curious, I highly recommend checking out Brilliant.
There is a link in the description down below and the pinned comment.
You can go to brilliant.org slash kindnotebook.
I've been using it for months and honestly it's been so fun exploring different fields like science math, computer science and I don't know.
It just makes learning so fun.
And I genuinely recommend this.
Like, I'm not even kidding.
I know they sponsored this video, but I genuinely recommend Brilliant.
It's really a fun way to learn new concepts.
If you want to learn Brilliant for free, then go to brilliantorg slash kainopuk again, or you could even scan this QR code on the screen right now.
Or you could just check again in the link in the description.
Brilliant has also given Kainopuk users a 20 off 20 off their annual premium subscription, which gives you unlimited, daily access to Brilliant.
I know this is kind of corny, like a little corny joke, but I literally feel so brilliant whenever I use Brilliant because I don't know, I just really love their problem solving structure.
So yeah, it definitely helps expanding my knowledge with computer science and definitely will help a lot with my future projects.
And do take note that these materials are actually created by researchers and educators and actual professionals from like MIT Harvard Stanford, Caltech and Google.
And it's literally high yield learning.
So again, I want you guys to check out Brilliant in the description.
Thank you again to Brilliant for sponsoring this video.
But with that being said, I'm not gonna waste any more time.
It's time for you to hit your goals.
Go crush it, drink some water, and I'll see you in the next one.
I hope you have a good glow up.
Bye.
