Self Help

Hey, this is Leo from Actualized.org, and in this video, we’re going to talk about self-help.

Let’s talk about self-help. I love this topic, because I love self-help. Why do I love self-help? Why am I so passionate about it? I hope I can transfer some of my passion to you, because I think this is one of the most powerful ideas out there, for improving the quality of your life.

I’m honestly so passionate about it, because of the effect of it I’ve seen on my own life. I’ve proved it myself. You have to go through the process yourself, to prove to yourself that self-help is something that can be really valuable to you and really transform your life in amazing ways.

The Path Towards Betterment

The reason I love self-help is because, to me, it is the ultimate way to improve life. To me, it’s very obvious that if I see a tool I can use to improve my own life and get everything I want from life — get all the fulfillment I want, the peace of mind, the financial success I want, the relation success I want, the sex I want, the body I want, the fitness level I want, the health I want.

I want to do whatever it takes to get that. To me, when I’m firing on all cylinders and I have all those elements in place in my life and they’re all doing great, then I’m feeling awesome, and I’m feeling like I’m living to my fullest potential. I’m excited and happy, and I’m calm. What else do I want from life? That’s really all I want.

I want to be fulfilled. I want to be content. I want to be calm. I want to be secure. I want to be out there, giving my gifts and doing the best I can be doing, living the best kind of life I could be living. To do that requires something more than that the average person does.

The average person goes through life, and they do the things that society makes apparent and easy, and maybe even mandatory for you to do. What does that mean? That means you go to school. That means you go to college. That means you go and get married after that. You get a job. You save up some money. You try to retire, you try to live healthy. Try to raise a family.

That’s how life flows. Along the way, you learn a lot of lessons. You can’t go through that whole process and not learn stuff. I think the quality of life the average person has, in this country, is still not nearly even five percent of what it could be.

When I realised that, and I saw that there are books and seminars and ideas and tools and information out there, that can make the difference between living a life that’s five percent of my abilities, and ninety nine percent of my abilities, then I’m like “Wow. OK, I’m on board. I don’t care what it takes. I’m going to study this stuff. This stuff is awesome. This stuff can potentially do that.

There’s stuff out there that can potentially change my life so much, that I can’t even recognize where I came from. There’s information out there that can completely revolutionize how I see the whole world, my model of reality, make me successful, make me good in relationships, make me good in areas of fitness and nutrition. There’s information out there that can do that. Wow, that’s amazing.”

To me, that’s amazing. I can easily imagine a universe or a world where that’s not the case. I can easily imagine a universe where you’re born, and then you grow up, and then you’re stuck and can’t change. The conditions you were raised in are the ones that are now going to be guiding your entire life.

That you can’t do anything to improve your money situation. You just have as much money as you’ve always had. You can’t do anything to improve your health. You just are the way you were. You can’t do anything to change your relationships. Those are going to go in the same way they’ve been going, and probably not very good, in a dysfunctional sort of way.

You can’t really recreate your career into a really thriving career either. You’re just stuck at that original job you got. To me, that’s like… damn. I could easily imagine a universe that was like that.

An Imaginary World

In fact, most people in the world live their lives as though the world works this way, as though this was reality. They feel stuck in one or more of these areas. I was like that too. I still am that way, in certain respects. Not in any big areas of my life — I studied this stuff so much. I’ve processed so much self-help material that it’s basically impossible for me to now go back and play the victim in any major area of life.

I still find myself playing a minor victim in little parts of life. Even that I intend to burn out of my system through self-help. This is ultimately why self-help is so cool. Everything you want from your life, whether it’s more money, more women, more men, better relationships, a marriage, happiness, success, fulfillment, fame, recognition, more knowledge, more peace of mind, less stress, more health.

All of that is yours for the having. It’s all yours for the taking. You can take it. You can have it. You are going to have to do some work. That work is going to be called self-help. Self-help is really a movement that started to thrive in the last fifty years, and has been popularized by a lot of big names, people like Tony Robbins and Jim Rohn, Brian Tracy, and Zig Ziglar and all the other big name people out there, who are offering advice to ordinary folk about how to live their lives.

Even someone like Oprah Winfrey. What is she doing? She’s doing self-help. She’s showing you how to improve your life in all these different ways. On the surface it can seem like self-help is so corny, so silly, so stupid. That is one of the worst mindsets you can have.

If you think self-help is silly or somehow just blown up by the media, or somehow it’s just positive thinking and that all self-help is just positive thinking, and that it’s just overblown through advertising, and it doesn’t actually work, you can’t actually transform your entire life, those are just rare examples of freak accidents.

You can’t actually lose a lot of weight. You can’t actually earn millions of dollars. You can’t actually start an amazing business. You can’t actually create an awesome family. You can’t actually change how your relationships work.

Wow. If you think that, if that’s true for you, then you are so stuck. What’s even worse is that not only are you stuck, but you’ve taken one of the only tools that are out there and thrown it aside and discounted it, which is… wow.

I feel very sorry for you. You have thrown away so much. Basically, what you’ve done is thrown away literally your entire life. You’ve thrown away all of your potential in life when hold that mindset. That’s a really dangerous one to watch out.

Resources Galore

What I love about self-help is that there are books out there. There are information products out there. There are CDs, there are seminars, there are videos, there are YouTube videos, there are websites, there are blogs, there are magazines. There are mentors, there are people who can help you figure all this stuff out.

It’s out there, and most of it is relatively inexpensive. There could be expenses to self-help — some of these CD products are expensive. Sometimes you give lots of money on books. I’ve literally spent thousands of dollars on books. Seminars, trainings, video products — I’ve spend thousands of dollars on that.

To me, it’s worth it. I don’t know what else I could be pouring my money into, in life, that’s more valuable than this. Here’s how I think about it: if I read a bunch of books, and I go to a bunch of seminars, and I talk to a bunch of successful people, I’m going to get the wisdom I need.

Once I know, and I have the beliefs and mindsets, and the tools and techniques I know I need, then I can create any kind of life that I want. To me, that’s like… wow. This is the foundation of it all. Sometimes you can get discouraged, because you read a book, you go to a seminar, and it doesn’t quite click for you.

It doesn’t quite give you the promised results. A lot of time this stuff is a little overhyped, a little bit over advertised, but that’s just in the short run, not in the long run. What I found with self-help was that this was something you have to become a hobbyist in.

Become a self-help junkie. That’s what I did. I love doing this stuff. I love reading about self-help even if I don’t get paid for it, even if it’s not part of my job. I started off and started studying self-help for years before I really made a profession of it. I don’t think people necessarily need to make a profession of it.

You can just read self-help and get a lot of amazing nuggets to just help you out in the everyday things you do in your life. The business you’re running, the family you’ve got, the relationship you’re in, the health routine you’re trying to get established — whatever. You don’t have to become a self-help guru to start to get some of the benefits of this stuff.

Build From The Ground Up

You do have to start to build up a foundation. Part of the trick with beginning self-help is that you have to work a little bit at the beginning, to start to build up a foundation. What people tend to do is, instead of building a foundation, they just try to go and solve a problem.

They think that “Well, I’ve got this one thorny problem. If I could just fix that one problem I’ve got… For example, if I could just make my marriage run smoother, then that’s it. I don’t need this self-help stuff, it’s stupid. I just want a technique that will help me fix my marriage. Or a technique that will help me attract that girl in class I really like.

Or a technique that will help me overcome this problem I’m having with my business partner. My business partner and I aren’t getting along, something there is going bad. Or my money situation — I just don’t have enough money. If I could just pay my bills today, if I could just pay the bill by the end of this month, then I’m going to be happy.”

That is a short minded way to look at your life, and a short minded way to look at self-help. Maybe you can get a technique or a tip here or there, that will help you with that stuff. But it’s not going to create that awesome foundation for creating an extraordinary life.

To do that, I find you need to become a little bit more of a student. Not just a technique-seeker, but a student. Start to read multiple books. Start to buy into the idea that wisdom and knowledge is valuable and important in the long run. The knowledge and wisdom you accumulate right now, even from this one video that I’m throwing at you here, that you’re watching, is going to be knowledge.

That’s going to stick around for the rest of your life. Twenty years from now, you might remember this video and this video this might get you to go out there and buy an extra self-help book. Or it might get you to go out there and go see a seminar with somebody like Tony Robbins. Or go and maybe hire a coach. Or maybe just go and have a mentor who will mentor you for free — find a mentor, there are many mentors out there in the world.

Or it’ll just get you to already pick up that book that’s already on your bookshelf, without having to buy anything. Just pick up the book that’s already there and read it one more time. Study it, take some notes on it. Maybe refresh your memory.

That’s going to be the power. That’s the power of knowledge. It keeps coming back and paying dividends, year after year. It’s amazing. The investment you make right now of reading a book — sure, it’s a little bit painful, you’d rather go and party with friends or watch some television, it’s more convenient. I understand. I do that too — but the investment you make in reading a book will stick around for the rest of your life.

What happens is that when you make a series of these investments — if you just read one book, that will be nice — but when you start to read many books, start to attend several seminars, start to really get involved with self-help it builds and builds.

After a while, it’s almost like you were managing a portfolio of stocks. If you just have ten thousand dollars worth of stock, that’s not really a lot. It’s not going to do much for you. But when you get ten million dollars worth of stock, then just the dividend payments every quarter on that ten million dollars is going to be enough to live off of, and you can quit your day job.

That’s kind of like it is with self-help. You start to build up, and after a while, it reaches a critical mass. It reaches this critical mass where you start to see dividends paying out disproportionate to the amount of investment you’ve made all along the way. You see it’s going to keep paying out more.

It’s like “Oh my god, this is too good to be true. I can’t believe this is actually possible in our universe.2 It literally too good to be true, but it does take that initial build up of that critical mass. That means the first year or two of self-help might be a little bit slow for you. But you have to trust this wisdom will start to kick in.

Right now, if you’re reading a book and slipping up and not getting the results you want, or maybe you watch some of my videos and follow along with them, and you’re saying to yourself “Yes, these videos are awesome, but then I go out and try some of this positive thinking stuff, or I try some affirmations, or I do some technique here and it doesn’t really seem to change my life too much.”

Yes, that can be the case. That’s only because you’ve been doing it for a very short period of time. If you study this stuff and actually practice it, and stick with it for a couple of years, you’re going to start to see there’s really something here. You’re going to start to build up something powerful. You’re going to create that foundation of success, from which everything else can be rising out of.

You’re literally going to create a foundation for the skyscraper that’s going to be your whole life. Every aspect of your life can become extraordinary, because you’re going to have the wisdom and knowhow and the self-control you need to help yourself out of any problem and any situation you’ve got in life. It’s really quite amazing.

Ways To Do Self-Help

This is where I’m going to wrap it up. In short, what I’m going to say is that actual ways to do self-help, let’s summarize. One: reading books. Two: attending seminars. Three: buying and listening to products, video and audio products. I can’t recommend them enough. They’re amazing.

Four: studying, actually taking time throughout your day to sit down and not just read this stuff or go to a seminar, but then actually study it, process it, review your notes. Take notes. What’s next? How about introspection?

Actually sitting down and thinking about this stuff. Maybe in the shower, or while you’re on your way to work, or actually dedicating a block of time, like a half an hour to sit and introspect about this stuff. I can’t even articulate the benefits that will have for you if you make a habit of that.

How about journaling? Journaling is really powerful as a self-help technique. Meditation? Meditation is also an extremely simple and very powerful habit to build and it’s one of the most effective ways of doing self-help.

Coaching? Coaching is also great. I’m a life coach. I pitch my own services. If you want, you can use me, but go ahead and use any other coach you want, doesn’t really matter. Coaching can be a really powerful way to break through some sort of block that’s holding you back, whether it’s money problems you’ve got, or some really serious problem with your relationship that’s about to crumble, or you can’t hold together your current career, or the career you’ve got going for you isn’t what you really want to be doing.

Coaching can be really good for tackling one of those issues and helping you bust through it, so it’s never going to be another issue for you, in your whole life. That can pay big dividends, even though it can be a little pricey, because it’s done person to person, one on one.

There’s all that. Of course, you have to actually go out and take action, pushing your comfort zone. The bottom line of how you do self-help is that you push your comfort zone in any area of life you want to get better at. When you push your comfort zone, there’s going to be payoff from that, mental payoff.

There’s going to be learning. Learning is going to be happening. Wisdom is going to be created. Not only do you have to study this stuff, but then you have to go out there and apply it, you have to practice it and really start pushing your comfort zone. Going in and leaning into your fear, whatever it is that you fear. Start doing those things.

The more you do those, the more lessons you learn, the more self-developed you become, and the better able to help yourself in the future. When the new problem comes up, and a lot of times, life is all about problems recurring, it’s really nice to be able to solve that problem once and for all, by yourself, and to be able to help yourself through all the same problems that will be coming up for you.

What you’re going to notice when you’re doing a lot of self-help is that there are some very common threads between all the problems in life and that actually, when you get to the very core of them, and you break them down at the root, and you really understand them and solve them at the root, then it’s like a cascade effect.

All of a sudden, so many different seemingly unrelated parts of your life and problems in your life, become automatically solved, because you’ve really solved them at the root. You’ve identified the root of the problem.

Wrap Up

This is Leo, I’m signing off. Please post me your comments down below. Like this and share this with a friend if you would. Throw it up on Facebook, get some other people to see this stuff, get people more involved with self-help.

Then, of course, come check out Actualized.org, where we are all about self-help. Sign up to our free newsletter there, where I release self-help videos for you every week. You get video, articles, they’re all for free.

I’m going to have more amazing stuff coming out for you, all sorts of goodies. You don’t want to miss out on that. All the videos I’m shooting are telling you how to do self-help. This is the best of the best self-help I’ve discovered in the last five years, from all the literally thousands of dollars worth of material I’ve studied, and also personally applied in my life and helped my own clients apply.

I’m bringing the golden nuggets to you guys. If you really want to short-track your way to success, watching these video can save you a lot of time, getting you a lot of wisdom really fast, very efficiently. I don’t like to bullshit in these videos. I like to keep things really cut and dry, clear and straight to the point.

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