Writing For Reinforcement

Writing, for me, has quickly become a form of art and expression.

Something else I discovered this week is that its helping me actualize the lessons I’ve learned and achieve my personal goals.

Laurel has been encouraging me for a long time to write about my thoughts.

Given that I'm typically a very 'heady' person, often getting consumed by the world inside my brain, having an outlet to express and organize those thoughts has proven to be extremely beneficial. I believe this benefit would extend to anyone.

However, I didn't anticipate that jotting down my musings, recounting experiences, or offering advice would effectively aid in integrating all of these aspects more permanently into my life.

Video Creation

About a month ago we released a video and newsletter title something like “What the world won’t tell you about success”

It’s theme was a inspirational story about everything we want to achieve in life having a process in which we must go through to be successful.

That process is never easy, it’s often painful and challenging, and often not related to the actual task at hand. But once you go through it, you come out on the other side transformed. With lessons that will change your very character.

A month ago we were really proud of creating it, as it marked the beginning of a lot of new things in our life, including the content we are producing and this very newsletter.

However today, after going through the process of making 4 more videos, we see so many things we could have improved.

Still, in hindsight there actually couldn’t have been a better message to be the first video of our new direction, and it’s lessons would influence this weeks content.

We spend a lot of time and energy creating this stuff.

It takes about a week of both of our times. 8-10 hours a day, just to create one newsletter, one long form video, and 2 short form videos.

As the writer, that means I spend an entire week engrossed with a single idea. I archive my experience with it, the lessons I have learned, and how to properly articulate it to an audience in a genuine and vulnerable way, while also trying my best to keep their attention. (Still figuring all of that out)

Then I write a newsletter or script, try my best to turn one into the other while also maintaining a different flare, condense the essence of both of those down to short form video scripts, then condense those further for things like twitter and threads.

It’s A LOT of writing on a single idea. Which means I get to go over the meaning of the story hundreds of times a week.

Lessons Learned

Since that video came out, I have found myself in many new processes.

We are constantly learning about storytelling, writing, cinematography, editing, lighting… basically anything to do with our video creation.. and you can stack organic gardening and living with nature on top of that.

We have little to no experience in any of these things, so there is a lot of frustration and disappointment as we try to work on these newfound skills.

And the strangest thing happens when I feel these ways now.

I get a mental picture of myself in that first video saying the words “That’s the process”

And suddenly, I feel better.

I take a deep breath and I keep going on whatever I’m working through.

As narcissistic as that sounds, I think there is actually something much deeper going on.

Hormozi Writing Exercise

Alex Hormozi, successful entrepreneur and multimillionaire uses a different technique to achieve a similar result.

He imagines that he is his 85 year old self, who has achieved all the things current Alex aspires to.

He then roleplays his 85 year old self and enters a full discussion on google docs with that version of him.

He asks for advice, how to face challenges, grow his businesses, be a better person, etc.

Then, he answers himself from the perspective of his “perfect” 85 year old self.

I’ll admit this sounded super weird to me when I first heard about it.

That was until I had something of similar nature happen to me.

My Writing Exercise

You see when Alex is looking for advice, he looks into the future, at a perfect version of himself that has achieved everything already.

When I was taking in my own advice, I was listening to a past version of myself who had already learned the lesson.

And to me this just makes a little more sense.

So here is my exercise:

• Experience an unconscious negative emotion: Me feeling frustrated or incompetent when dealing with new things.

• Become conscious of that emotion, & estimate the solution: That to grow and achieve my goals, I must first go through the process, and it’s inevitably going to suck, but it’s always worth it.

• Extract that knowledge: Bring it out of myself and into the material world through writing about it as precisely as I can manage.

• Share that knowledge: Telling my wife, sharing a story, writing a script & posting a video to YouTube.

This process closes an otherwise open circuit and creates a positive feedback loop in my life.

If I stop at the unconscious emotion, I continue to feel frustrated and incompetent when facing new things, with no awareness as to why.

If I stop at becoming conscious of it, I know why I feel that way and how to solve it, but I can just go on about my day and forget about it until the next time it comes up.

If I stop at bringing it out of myself, I am able to more clearly see the steps I need to take in my life to overcome it, but all responsibility is placed in my personal accountability, which for all of us, wanes at times.

But when I share that lesson with someone, my wife, the world. I bring the entire world into what I’m trying to overcome. I am now not only accountable to myself, but to everyone involved.

That is a heavier burden to bear, and necessitates real action.

We will often choose disappointing ourselves over disappointing others. It is part of our tribal nature.

We don’t want to be seen as hypocrites, or untrustworthy.

And as much as letting yourself down sucks, letting someone else down (that you care about) is always worse.

Make it Your Own

This exercise can look different for every individual, depending on the goal.

But I believe at it’s core, it taps into something universally true.

It is in essence, the act of creation itself. To bring something from your internal world into the material plane.

The word becoming flesh.

Obviously you do not have to create a YouTube video and share that with everyone.

But this can be done with your friends, parents or partners by simply letting them into whatever your trying to accomplish or work through.

You may even find an unexpected avenue of support from them.

Some people may not even require the last step because of their own resolve.

In this case it’s helpful to put something written where you will see it everyday.

But as I'm learning by making these newsletters and videos, this simple act can make all the difference in actualizing the lessons we are given, into our lives.

Journey well friends.

Ps. Don’t forget to check out this weeks video, it took us collectively over 60 hours to make 😬