BuildsByGideon

Posts for Tag: What I Know Now

2020 - Best Year of My Life! | What I Know Now 12

I can say without a doubt that 2020 has been the absolute best year of my life! I've learned so much, and my motivation to really kick off my career and personal well being to new levels!

One of the biggest changes this year was my weight-loss! I am very thankful that I was able to find and follow the weight-loss plan that I did. It was significantly easier than I expected, and I lost nearly 100 pounds in 7 months! I'm not quite at my goal weight, but I will be pushing for that before the year concludes.

Another big area in my life. I am very grateful for is my work. During the midst of Covid, my boss decided to hire me on and had to jump through some legal hoops to do so. I've been very blessed to have him as my boss/mentor, and he's taken me under his wing in many ways, teaching and challenging me with many projects I wouldn't see for years at other shops!

I've made the most life changes this year and had so many opportunities to serve, love, and grow. I would almost say more than all my previous years combined! Though many have struggled during this time with work and uncertain futures, I was able to rise above the feeling of "it doesn't matter, it's Covid, I can give myself some leeway" and taking advantage of the opportunities given. I'm not saying this to boast, but to encourage those struggling with the feeling of, I can wait, to say no. Now is the most important time for everything; your life is defined by your now. Sitting on your phone for just one more hour is not going to be good for your long term health and happiness!

Do It Anyway - Making the Hard Decision To Stay on Track | What I Know Now 11

It's Thanksgiving morning today, and I'm out for my 3-mile morning run!

I am absolutely not looking forward to it, and the temperature is freezing outside right now. The one thing that's keeping me going is that it's just what I do, and I don't really have a choice in the matter. I've found that you can actually train yourself to do things almost unconsciously, even making decisions without thinking about it. Not going on this run would be as weird as jumping off a cliff into a pool of icy water. I don't really enjoy going out in the freezing wind every morning, but it gets better after your body starts to warm up.

Another key reason for running, this morning of all mornings, is to prevent the idea of overeating from getting into my head. If I haven't done anything productive or helpful in the day, I typically don't do anything productive or helpful for the rest of the day. I'll think to myself, "I already messed this day up; what's another bad choice going to do?" and that leads to overeating, poor moods, and poor performance.

Another huge thing I have to fight against is the thought of "it's the holidays, it doesn't matter, I can make an exception just for today" that's great and all, but without pre-defined restrictions leads to self-indulgence and sluggishness. I don't even properly enjoy the foods I want to eat because I have too many of them. Having specific plans for what you do is super important and gives you clear guidelines as to what is too much or little.
Key take ways:

1) Do it anyway; you may not like it right now, or even in a few hours after
2) Having something, anything, that you accomplished sets your day off on the right foot
3) Not doing something good or productive may lead you not to perform as well as you could later.
4) Don't let holidays be an excuse to pause good habits

Video Content Creation System Building | What I Know Now 10

One of my goals before 2020 ends is to upload 100 videos with written formats to my blog, Instagram, and YouTube. I calculated that if I do three a day, six days a week, I can manage to squeeze it in before 2021!

Time is of the essence with these videos, so I'm not focusing on the image quality, sound, or even speaking. I want to get as much content out there as possible and improve things along the way. I had to build a system for creating these videos, a simple step-by-step process I can follow to minimize wasted time and energy and get in my daily quota. Right now, it takes about 20 minutes from start to finish of each video, which means coming up with the topic to talk about, writing, editing, recording, making thumbnails, and uploading to social media.

My process is to find a topic to talk about, limit myself to only talk about that particular thing, and write no more than three paragraphs on it, then a takeaway at the end as something I can use to ensure I cover all the topics in the video and helpful for readers. I briefly edit the post and record the video. From there, I take a screenshot of the video and bring it into my already setup thumbnail creator, one for YouTube and one for Instagram. I'll upload the video directly from my phone to YouTube without content or image, and while that's uploading, I'll upload the Instagram post. Finally, I add the last detail to the YouTube channel, imbed it in my blog post, and publish it.

Key Takeaways:
1)  Reaching difficult goals isn't that hard if you have a plan and process
2)  You don't need perfect quality to get out there; you can get much farther just by showing up every day
3) Build systems that are easy to follow and don't take a lot of time
4) Enjoy the challenge!

Alternatives to Pop Music | What I Know Now 9

I hear all the time from great leaders that being aware of what content you're putting in your head is huge!

I find that if I listen to a lot of music with depressing or sad lyrics, it will often bleed into the rest of my life. It's like there's a guy in my head listening to it as reality, and that subconsciously makes me not feel like doing anything. The results come out as sitting on the couch longer or procrastinating tasks I need to get done, and the feeling of it doesn't really matter. Brendon Burchard says all the time, "Garbage in, garbage out" you will inevitably come in contact with down or depressing content throughout the day, but limiting your contact with it, I've found, will greatly improve your mood and motivations!

I really enjoy pop music; the tunes and upbeat feel about them is delightful; however, the lyrics are seldom appropriate or uplifting. I didn't want to remove the pop genre from my playlists completely, so I decided to try something new. Still listen to pop music but in different languages. Hear me out; you get all the benefits of the tunes and vibe of the songs and the good singing, without having to listen to trashy lyrics! Plus, you get the added benefit of being different and trying new things; I found that this opened a whole new genre that I previously wouldn't have even thought of!

Key Takeaways:
1) Be aware of what you put in your head; if its depressing content, that will move over your mood and motivations
2) Filter out bad music, replace it with an alternative
3) Listening to pop music in different languages gives you all the benefits of what you already enjoy consuming, without having to hear garbage lyrics.

4) Trying new genres and music styles from other countries open your pallet to genres you may have never heard of before. It also makes you different!

Morning Workout Routine Building as a Teen | What I Know Now 8

I've found that building a regular and consistent morning schedule is massively comforting always to have. No matter what happens in the day, I've got something that will be constant, and I can expect that in my morning routine.

I always do something in that routine that is always making me grow, or at least not fall backward on progress. I find doing this gives me a sense of, if everything else goes wrong today, at least I did something in this morning that got me a tiny bit farther than yesterday. I alternate weightlifting and running in the mornings for 6 days a week for my own workout routine. For my gym workouts, I'll heavily focus on one area of my body and push hard on that area for about 30 minutes. Today was leg day, so I did many weighted squats, leg raises, leg extension, and lunges with DBs. I always have a 5-minute warm-up and cool down on the elliptical that gets my heart rate up and loosens any stiff muscles.

Talking with someone I greatly look up to, he mentioned that training on weightlifting machines is not an idea, or rather, not the most bang for your buck. Basically, if you are using a machine at the gym that specifically targets one muscle in your body, it does a magnificent job building that one spot. However, the benefits of doing free-weights are that you get the muscle-building everywhere and not only those you're trying to target. Like with a bench press, if it's a hydraulic machine one, you don't need to worry about balancing the bar, so you don't get that added strength training. You're building muscle for it to be used, and the chances of you lifting something that doesn't require balance to some extent is very unlikely.

I've also heard that you build the most muscle when you are at the end of your strength. It forces your muscle to go past the point at which it had stored muscle and tells your body to grow that area. Talking with the owner of the gym I go to, he shared with me his workout process. He outlined doing 3 sets of max weight (12, 10, and 8 reps), then doing as many reps as you could do at a lower weight (typically 60% of your max) for 35-45 seconds. It confuses your muscles and gives you new overall max weight strength and endurance for doing more reps!

I am by no means an expert in any of this, but through a lot of trial and error, I've got a pretty decent system down, and I'm able to do it, which is most important consistently!

Key takeaways:
  1. Routines are good; they give you something that you can count on and feel good about
  2. Exercising your body or brain consistently, even small is amazing; it gives you a sense of accomplishment even if you do nothing else the rest of the day.
  3. Machines are good, but free-weights are best.
  4. Push your muscles past their comfort point
  5. Making your front hard push in the beginning, then smaller, longer endurance training, builds a well-rounded muscle. 


The Compound Effect - Doing Small Things As a Teen Consistently | What I Know Now 7

Reading through the book "The Compound Effect" by Darren Hardy, that got recommended to me by one of the guys in my mastermind group.

The book basically outlines that making small changes in the present makes huge differences in your life long term. It's the whole parable of the king, the wise man, and the rice. The king wanted to reward his advisor for an excellent piece of advice, and the wise man replied, 'the reward is more than enough for me that you took it.' But the king insisted, and the wise man said, alright, you could reward me by giving me one grain of rice on the first day, then double it each day for each square on a chessboard. And the king thinking it ridiculous said it would be. The first day the king sent the single grain of rice on a platter followed by a great parade of people, mocking the wise man in his weird request. As it came to pass, toward the end of the days, there wasn't enough rice in the entire country to fulfill what the king had promised.

The compound effect is massive, making one simple small act here and now can reap huge benefits down the line. The key is consistency, whatever it is, almost however small it is, as long as you are consistent in it, you will go far.

It's been hugely comforting to hear that again in another book and gives me great encouragement to continue being consistent in the things that don't necessarily give me a lot of value right now, but I know will down the line!

How I Find Good Learning Resources as a Teen | What I Know Now 6

The biggest part of furthering yourself is finding good resources that teach you well and teach you the right things.
I've found that if you look up "how to do better in school" or "how to make money fast," you will get thousands of videos, blog posts, and courses. Wading through all of that is extremely difficult and very time-consuming, plus you don't know what's good and what's BS.

Most of what you get when you do the first search or couple searches is pretty basic information and businesses trying to sell you something. You want to move past this and find the meat of the content. Learning how to do that well is a valuable skill to have in your arsenal.

Thus, I had to put together my own system for finding the right content and doing so in an efficient manner. The basic principle goes: google the broad subject question, speed read and watch a few videos to find the terminology, google the new terms and repeat until you find what you're looking for. Along the way, you will typically discover if it's even worth diving further into or just giving up on the idea.

Key takeaways:
  • Finding the right content is difficult and requires you to be intentional about how you find your learning resource.
  • Many people use general searching terms to do quick promotions and feed off the people who are only mildly interested. You want to move past that and find the real meat of the subject.
  • Google broad subject, find the subject's terminology, search the new learned names, and narrow down your focus. 


Writing - Early Teen Years to Now | What I Know Now 5

Something I've noticed from a lot of great leaders is their ability to speak and write well. You really don't have to be the best in any given avenue, and just being able to speak and write with confidence gets you miles ahead of the competition. People with good writing and or speaking skills really stand out; if they can clearly voice their thoughts, they get more attention. This makes sense; someone who can ask a good question stands out more in our minds than someone with a long-winded or common one.

This is a good and bad thing. Individuals with greater talent in any given subject may not get as far and so not have the opportunity to develop their talents fully. On the other hand, someone not quite as bright as the first now has the chance to soar above and make greater strides in their career.

My parents greatly encouraged us from a young age to start our own blogs and write posts about topics we are specifically interested in. They would review what we wrote and sat down with us to improve it and be more specific. Since then, writing has become almost as natural as talking, and I often only need to write a post in one shot and have little to no need for editing it. Writing a 3 paragraph post on what I worked on that day took me upwards of 2 hours to write. Now I'm able to blow through it in about 15 minutes!

Takeaway:
  • Writing is critical to get your message across, and doing it well makes you stand out.
  • You don't have to be the best; you just have to be able to speak or write better than those around you.
  • It's good and bad; the guy with more talent may not have the same opportunities as one with less, but a good speaking or writing ability.
  • Personal story, how I got started years ago from my parent encouraging us to do it regularly. 


Building My Own Learning Course | What I Know Now 4

I've found that there is almost no limit to the amount of information you can find for free online, and a lot of courses, be it college or otherwise, are just people who condense and put that together in an organized form of teaching. Finding relevant information that can impact your life is the difficult part. 

I've read many business and performance books that don't have specific relevance to my life right now, being only 17. This is good and bad, bad because you have to do all the work to improve yourself and you may waste time working on things that don't help. Good because you can go much farther and faster than through courses, plus all the knowledge you gained that wasn't relevant to you now maybe, later on, thus being an investment.

Because of this, I've had to change my mindset on learning from others and actually test out the advice given and see if it works for me. I also realized that a lot of the greater performance books have very similar information between them, and the key thing that makes one stand out from another is primarily how they deliver it. This doesn't mean that one book is "better" than another, but might connect better with certain people over others.

Takeaway:
  1. Knowledge is everywhere and free
  2. Teaching yourself takes a lot of work
  3. Not everything is relevant, and that's okay
  4. you learn much more on your own, and stuff that doesn't apply now will later
  5. Performance same general concepts, one might connect over another


Morning Routines | What I Know Now 3

I really started to get interested in the high-performance world was when I got turned on to Brendon Bruchard. 

One of the major key things I got from him and absolutely caught my attention was his consistency in showing up every day, always moving forward, and not having big ruts. 

He figured out how to plan out your life in such a way that keeps you always going, living every moment intentionally, and enjoying time with loved ones without the stress of work or education getting in the way. 

He talks a lot about building regular routines, eating right, and planning your time in blocks throughout the day. I've experimented quite a bit with my own workout regimens and still working on optimizing it. But I've come down to a six-day week morning workout routine run and lift weights each day, one alternating the other for six days, the last thing before I start my day at 6:30 AM. I start each weekday, waking up at 4:30; I get dressed and read from the bible for 15 minutes while sipping my coffee. I then review my 'Life Plan' and plan my day out in a journal, setting my mind on the things coming up in the day to stay focused.

It was definitely difficult waking up every morning at 4:30, but I've found huge benefits from the regular daily routine; I've got a mostly clear mind, I have my blood pumping and heart rate up, and I have my quiet time to gently meditate and read. I really enjoy spending those moments on my own, before the rest of the house gets up, just being in the moment and not ruminating on stresses in life. 

I'm still a beginner in building my mornings, and I know I will make many changes as I go! I by no means have a perfect routine, and I am not as 'present' as I would like to be. I also have a hard time sticking to my plans for the day, except when involved with other individuals.

Brendon Burchard, someone I look up to and has been the backbone of much of my learning in the high-performance world!