That feeling when you do everything perfectly to a T. You dot all the I’s, you check every box, you do everything you could have done, and things still don’t work out - that’s emotional waterboarding for me.
Somewhere in the afterlife, Frank Sinatra is singing “that’s life.” Through every dropped ice cream cone, every mistake, and all my failures, there’s a humble thought that gets me through it all. It’s self-talk and goes something like this:
“This isn’t new, even if it’s completely new to me.”
“This isn’t unique; many people have lived and are living this right now.”
“If I can control it, I need to step up and control it now.”
“But if I’m here in the first place, I likely can’t control it, and that’s fine - that’s life.”
Here are some things you can and can’t control. You know all of this, but it’s a nice reminder.
You can’t control the bad things that happen to you — but you can control how you react to them.
You can’t control how your body looks — but you can control what you eat and how hard/smart you train.
You can’t control the feeling of not wanting to work — but you can do the work regardless of the feeling.
You can’t control someone’s attitudes and behaviors — but you can discuss it with them and accept that not everyone can change.
You can’t control luck or opportunities - but you can put yourself in a position to utilize them to their full potential when they come along.
I hope this reminder helps you out if you’re struggling with anything, big or small.
Let’s get onto something lighter, shall we?
I recently figured out how powerful YouTube was.
📹 I Knew YouTube Was Good But…
Over the past 2-ish weeks, I’ve been posting videos to YouTube, three videos to be exact. It’s in a niche I like, and it was a blast making the videos. The contents aren’t important to you, but this picture below is 100% important to you.
361 views, 29.5 hours of watch time, and 20 subscribers. All from simply posting onto the site. That is some insane reach and attention. The YouTube algorithm has gotten so good at recommending content that it’s all independent of subscribers or previous experience.
If you’re a content creator and have something to offer, there is a 99.999% chance that one of YouTube’s 2,000,000,000 monthly active users will find your content valuable. So make a video, utilize the platform, it’ll be worth it.
If you blog, narrate them and post them to YouTube. If you’re a photographer, upload a tutorial. No matter what you’re doing, YouTube is an excellent way to add another degree of “findability” to your content.
I knew I should have started earlier, but anyone can make up for the lost time.
If you create content, try it out and let me know how you go. 💪
🔗 Link Dump
A little link dump for this week - I just haven’t found any crazy useful things, okay, get off my back. 😂 But these are quality, so hopefully, that makes up for it!
💸 The story behind my top article on Medium. How it made $2,852 and is still #1 on Google.
🧘 The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - a free eBook on powerful concepts for wealth and health. Easily the best thing you’ll read this month.
🎣 A classic story about an American businessman visiting a Mexican village.
Thanks for tuning in this week, ladies and gents. As always, I hope you got some value from this one, and if you know someone that’ll get some value from this one, send it their way. 👍
Cheers,
—Sah