Let me tell you a story about two friends. There were two friends that grew up together. They went to the same school.
They had matching hobbies. They even had the same ambitions. You could say that they were identical in every way.
However after they were done with their education, they went their separate ways. Many years later, this is how they ended up. One friend became extremely successful in every aspect.
He became financially independent through a series of businesses he started. He made a circle of quality and trustworthy friends. He was healthy and fit enough to run a marathon.
And most importantly, he was happy and content with his life. The other friend however, became the exact opposite. He failed at every business he started and wasn't even able to pay his bills.
He barely had any friends. He became overweight and taking the stairs was enough to tire him out. And worst of all, he was miserable and frustrated with his life.
However, no matter how different their lives became, those two friends still kept in touch. In fact, they talked to each other every day. That's because those two friends were actually the same person.
The first friend was that person's best and ideal version, while the second one was his worst version. You and me both have those two friends inside of us. All of us do.
What I wanted to tell you with this story however, is that we can become either one of them. We have the potential to become the successful friend, just like we have the option to end up being the miserable one. Which one we end up becoming though, is determined by the choices we make each and every day.
The first friend didn't become successful overnight. Instead, he achieved his success slowly, through a series of good daily decisions. The second friend also didn't end up where he did, in a single day.
He also did it slowly, by making bad daily choices. It's just that those choices, then added up over the years. Let me show you exactly how both friends ended up where they did.
Every day, both of them had to choose between a few options. When they got hungry, they had a choice between eating a chocolate bar or preparing a healthy meal. When they got home from work, they had a choice between playing video games or reading a business book.
When they got bored, they had a choice between mindlessly watching TV or spending some quality time with friends. I think you can guess which choice each of them made. Of course, that one decision didn't make a ton of difference.
At least, not at first. But because their choices were repeated over and over again, after a few years the consequences began to show. The unsuccessful friend might have only eaten one chocolate bar per day, which was roughly 200 extra calories.
But when he repeated that every day, over the span of 1 year he gained an extra 20 pounds of weight. Quite a lot for one tiny chocolate bar. The successful friend had read 10 pages of a business book per day, which took roughly 30 minutes of his time.
But because he managed to do that every day, he read 15 business books in a span of 1 year. Not bad for a 30 minute investment. This is why I want you to think about the choices you make on a daily basis.
It's important that you don't neglect the impact they may have. Because when we repeat a certain behavior again and again, it has dramatic consequences over time. Now let's say that over the span of one day, you make roughly 10 of these small decisions.
And each decision takes you 1 step in one of the two directions. Either towards your ideal self, or towards your worst self. When you choose to eat a salad instead of french fries, you make a step towards your ideal version.
Likewise, if you eat fries instead of the salad, you make a step towards your worst version. Ok, so you make 10 decisions per day, which means you make 10 steps towards either direction. But if you're like most people, you're not heading down either path.
Instead you're standing somewhere in the middle. Each day you take a few steps towards one direction, but then you also take the same amount in the opposite one. 5 good decisions and 5 bad decisions.
Basically cancelling each other out. Now imagine if you could replace just one negative daily behavior with a positive one. What if instead of 5 steps forward and 5 steps back, you make 6 steps forward and only 4 steps back?
Suddenly you're on a completely different trajectory. Instead of standing in the same place, you're making 2 steps towards the best version of yourself. Of course, it's even better if you can make 10 good decisions every day.
However that's highly unrealistic since nobody is actually able to constantly do that. But you don't have to do it all the time. It's enough that you pick the good decision more often than the bad one.
The only thing that matters is that you're heading down the correct path. So next time you jump on the couch, in front of the TV with your phone in hand, ask yourself if this is the best choice you're making. Or is there something else, something better that you could choose to do instead?
I like to think about this all the time. To be more precise, the question that's often on my mind is: "What would the best version of me do? " This question is really useful, as it allows me to pause, evaluate my behavior and re-adjust my actions if needed.
I understand that if I want to become the best version of myself, I need to be doing today, what my ideal version would. Not tomorrow, or next week, but today. A lot of people love to delay their actions.
They believe that in the future they will somehow be more motivated, more energetic and hard working. But it's that exact belief that keeps them from their true potential. What most don't realize is that when the future rolls around, they're not going to magically be a different person.
They're most likely going to be the same person they are right now, if they don't take the necessary actions to become better. And most recognize this only when they've spent years on the wrong path. They kept thinking that they would change in the future, but in the end, they never did.
So now they need to make even more good daily decisions just to get back on track. This is why it's important that we do what our best version would do today. Not tomorrow or next week.
It's the decisions we make on a daily basis, that dictate who we become in the future. So ask yourself what would the ideal version of yourself be doing today. It's a really good question to ask yourself.
I know you understand the importance of daily choices now. They have the power to dramatically impact your future, for better or for worse. You might not see the impact of your decisions today, probably not even tomorrow.
But when your choices are compounded over time, they begin to show. When we make good choices over and over, we become the successful friend. When we repeat bad choices again and again, we become the unsuccessful one.
So which version will you choose to be today? Your worst version or your best version? Thanks for watching.
Hopefully you're going to be your best version today. After all, this is how you actually become better than yesterday.
