7 Simple Concepts That Make My Life Better

It's awfully easy to make life quite complicated, but it doesn't have to be that way. So I thought I'd make this to share a few thoughts on how to simplify your life. I wanted to give credit to Malama Life for this wonderful idea. I loved the creative challenge of distilling down simple tips that make life a little bit easier. One thing we are encouraged to do all the time, you see this all over YouTube, all over social media, all over the place, is to journal. I think we all agree. that journaling in general is a really powerful tool. It's good to write out your thoughts. It's good to see them on paper. One thing though that I think is a bit underrated that hasn't ever been encouraged in my adult life but was something that I did as a kid was to draw. I feel like it's a very different thing to try to draw out your ideas than to write out your ideas. You do not have to be able to draw well. This isn't art that you're making. I believe that drawing taps into a deeper part of myself, a part that isn't restricted by necessarily having to make coherent sense. It can touch on symbolism and interpretation and give me so much more room to explore an idea before it has to be perfect and presented. Messiness is welcome in a way that can be hard with writing. So I'd say the next time you're feeling a little bit lost or confused about something, it could be interesting to, instead of journal about it, to just draw it out. It has always helped me. with my personality type, wanting to do it all, all the time, to label things, to label phases of my life. It's not possible to go full blast in all domains of your life. I've tried and burnt myself out and spread myself too thin. Instead, I look at life in terms of seasons, with each season having a main focus. And the power of labeling the current phase that you're in is to essentially give yourself full permission to be focusing on what you're focusing on right now. and not feel guilty about everything else that you could be doing. So for example, there are phases of my life that I say to myself, you know what, I'm focusing more on work right now and that's okay. And there's other phases where I'm focusing more on family and relationships, or I'm more focusing on myself and personal time. And that can go down to whatever amount of time works for you. It could be a week. that's very dedicated in a particular direction or a series of months. Or it could just be like, you know what, this afternoon is just about this. But I find that being extra, extra clear with myself about what my main focus is helps relieve a lot of anxiety with regards to all of the things that I want to do and accomplish. Okay, this is going to sound really silly, but it's a giant help for somebody like me. with, you know, who has so many things going on in their mind all the time. And that is to say things out loud. So before I leave somewhere, I say out loud all the things I need to take with me. My phone, my wallet, my keys, whatever else it might be. Saying it out loud helps me go through the checklist. It's almost like if you're just trying to think of it or you're just kind of having that bounce around in your head along with everything else going on in your head, it's easier to forget. I think saying something out loud activates a part of your brain that is on when you're speaking to someone else, but is off when you're just lost in your thoughts. This can also apply to a particular afternoon or an evening or a chunk of time in general where a few things need to get done. Saying it out loud helps me figure out, okay, what do I need to do and in what order. Before going any further, I'd like to quickly thank the sponsor of this video, BetterHelp. Now, while therapy does not... suddenly erase all the complexities of life. It has really really helped me develop the skills and the emotional tools to better navigate tricky situations. It has helped me have the right perspective so that less often now I'm turning little things, little problems, into big things. And that's significant. That has had a definite impact on my quality of life. BetterHelp is 100% online. and designed to be convenient and flexible to fit into your schedule, which is another thing I really like. You can message your therapist at any time and schedule live sessions when it works for you. They give you access to a very large network of licensed therapists. So if your therapist doesn't work for whatever reason, you can switch to a new one at no additional charge. It's not easy figuring out therapy. So having the flexibility to try different things out is a big deal. If you're interested in checking them out, you can get 10% off your first month if you go to the link down in the description below. Betterhelp.com slash Nathaniel Drew. And giving them a try is a great way of supporting this channel. Thank you, BetterHelp, for sponsoring this video. I feel incredibly lucky to be at a stage in life where I'm in shape, that I feel good about my body and how I take care of it and just my physical state. This is called a Norwegian push-on. A Norwegian push-on, here we go. But it was not always this way. I actually used to be afraid of gym class in high school. I didn't like doing physical activity with the other students. I didn't want the judgment. I didn't know. There's just a lot of it that felt uncomfortable. The thinking behind this piece of advice is that for many things in life, the psychological element is actually the biggest obstacle. So making the size of the task less daunting and creating a positive association with it helps it become a core element of your life over the long term. The way that I did that is by not counting reps, not counting the amount of time that I work out, not complicating it at all. It can feel wrong to not do things the right way, to not count like whatever, 10 reps for this exercise or to do it four times in a row or whatever it might be. But letting go of that letting go of having to do things the right way is what unlocked the ability for me to just do it more in general and get better over time It's easy to wait for permission from someone to do things your own way But oftentimes you just have to give that permission to yourself And I know that there's a ton of fitness advice out there and there's plenty of fitness people that would completely disagree with what I'm saying and That's fine. I'm not saying I'm an expert. All I'm saying is that having that kind of approach made it easier. There was less friction for me to just go and exercise on a more regular basis. And that helped me get into a more of a flow and develop more of a positive association with it to the point now where I love working out. It's something that I feel helps me deal with anxiety. It helps me deal with stress. And if sometimes I just work out for 10 minutes or whatever, 15 minutes and it's just a few sets of whatever push-ups or whatever it might be. This was called a Norwegian dip. That's okay. It was something and I feel good about that. I feel good about being consistent over having to do this big complicated thing. When it comes to finances, I find it incredibly easy to lose a lot of energy on little things. This is part of a bigger idea that helps me make life a little simpler and that is that you can easily get lost focusing on the things that you can track. Oh, I lost this amount of money on this or that. There's a bigger thing that matters a lot more and it's my general well-being. My ability to just be at peace and enjoy my life. Letting little things chip away at that is a cheap way of giving away my well-being, which is worth way more than the money I lose from ripping a t-shirt or breaking a plate. So I found it really helpful to create what I call a dumb mistakes fund. I put a chunk of money there. It's like a savings account, if you will. Even $100 could make a giant difference. And it's this... amount of money that you can pull from whenever, you know, some sort of dumb mistake happens. More margin for error because in life in general, I think it's good to have a little bit of margin. And I think that's brought me a lot of peace of mind. Look, I tried to be proactive in my life just like the next guy, but I've come to realize that willpower will only take you so far. And I cannot count on it for things that cost extra bandwidth. And bandwidth is a constant struggle in my life. It's always this limited resource that I'm bargaining for more of. And what I do now, whenever I try to learn a new skill or do anything that requires more concentration, maybe it's something I've never done before, is I book it. I create time in my calendar for that. And I find that that helps me a lot. And I feel that it's really important to create space for it or it won't happen. What I've learned is that... doing things that are hard leads to a much greater feeling of fulfillment. This is just a general rule that applies to, I think, pretty much everything in life. A great example is dealing with taxes, or in my case, French bureaucracy, the bane of my existence. I always find a way to procrastinate and can turn a little thing into a source of stress or even panic. It can become a total monster in my mind. It can really knock on me knowing that I have to do something I find soulless and exhausting. But it has to get done either way. And my willpower at the end of a full work day is never enough. So I carve out time for it, knowing it will require my full focus and will be the only thing I have to do in that allocated time. Even if the task is very simple. Usually, the earlier in the day, the better. And I'm always happy with myself when I do this. Which reminds me that in life, not all tasks come with the same feeling of accomplishment. Sometimes finishing a simple but nasty item on your to-do list can make a day feel much more complete and well spent than getting a lot of easy things done. This is a bit of an existential tip, but when I'm feeling scrambled and lost in my life, one thing that helps me get back on track and feel aligned is doing something or exposing myself to something that brings back the perspective. And most often, that's being in the presence of something beautiful. So if that's waking up to a sunrise, or if that's going on a long walk, taking a cold swim or something like that, it's those things that kind of break the thought patterns and the ruminating and whatnot and get me back on track. Perhaps it's because I have a tendency towards an anxious response, but it's by doing these kinds of things that I'm able to remember that what I'm working through is not helped by stressing even more. No one teaches that in school. We learn how to do math and we learn science and we learn, you know, chemistry, but we don't learn how to get back on track and remind ourselves of the things that are important. And for me, that has been a giant revelation in my adult life, the importance of doing those little things, of exposing myself to beauty. I hope you found at least one of the things that I shared here helpful. Be kind with yourself. We are all figuring things out.

Get 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor https://betterhelp.com/nathanieldrew

my blog/newsletter → https://nathanieldrew.substack.com/
second channel → https://www.youtube.com/@nobackupplan
instagram → https://www.instagram.com/nathanieldrew_/
online courses → https://www.nathanieldrew.com/onlinecourses
music → https://johnny-harris-x-tom-fox.disco.ac/cat/1632843844

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro
00:23 – I. Drawing vs. Journaling
01:26 – II. The Power of Labelling
02:46 – III. Say it Out Loud
04:50 – IV. Simplifying Fitness
07:15 – V. A "Peace of Mind" Fund
08:18 – VI. Book the Things That Require Extra Focus 
10:01 – VII. How To Get Quickly Back On Track When You're Spiraling

------------

Music

The original Nathaniel Drew x Tom Fox soundtrack → https://www.nathanieldrew.com/nathaniel-drew-original-soundtrack