sorry bro [Music] [Music] I was talking to my friend the other day about what we thought each of us had a chance of being the best in the world at and he said something that shocked me whatever it is I'm not the biggest fan of competition that's the softest I ever heard but he kept going I like doing things for myself and always find the most success in that rather than always trying to have the upper hand on someone else and getting judged for it also you can bench way more than me okay he didn't
exactly admit the last part but something about what he said hit me it's this whole idea of being driven by intrinsic or extrinsic motivator now every study says that intrinsic motivation is better at producing long-term results across the board but I'm pretty sure most people are always relying on extrinsic motivation in a day-to-day basis we live in a world where 99% of what we know about people's lives is through the lens of social media everybody shares this glamorous exciting highlight reel of their lives without actually showing what the day-to-day stuff looks like and I understand
why but all it does is get us stuck in this cycle of extrinsic motivation where you're constantly chasing and getting nowhere it's called the the rat race for a reason there was this study where they put a rat in a tube and they measured how hard it would pull to get at the smell of cheese in front of it and you'd think that it would give its all just to get to that cheese but that wasn't what actually happened it pulled pretty hard but it wasn't until the smell of a cat was wafted in from
behind it that the rat actually pulled as hard as it could now aside from those researchers kind of being to that rat I find the study really fascinating the cheese is a perfect example of an extrinsic motivator we're just like those rats man only difference is they chase cheese and we Chase bread but unless you're aing loser you're not running away from a cat so what is the thing that we're running away from what's our intrinsic Drive I think it's the same as those rats fear now I've always been a pretty confident person but for
some reason I keep getting into this mental tug of war between liking who I am now and striving to be better in the future just look at any of my other videos but it's only just now starting to make sense to me that all of it comes from a fear of not living up to my potential what a dumb word potential now if you're 20 something like me you've probably heard that word thrown out there about every Young Star whether it's an athlete or a singer or Drake's newest friend but just think about it for
a second I watched entire athletes careers pass by with everybody obsessed with potential and forgetting to appreciate what they were at that very moment and I get it watching a guy like wemi is crazy when you consider that this is probably the worst he'll ever be but can you just stop for a second and appreciate the 8ot sharp shooting demigod with a handle that he already is but it doesn't just stop there we do it with ourselves every single day I bet you're doing it right now without even realizing it whenever we waste hours of
our day in a trance scrolling and going from one video to the next there's part of us that's self-aware and screaming for it to stop that's the intrinsic motivation that knows what we could be doing with our lives instead our potential if you will so what do we do we suppress it with more just turn up the constant drip feed of dopamine and extrinsic motivation until our brain shuts up it's not that extrinsic motivation isn't entirely bad thing either it's just that it's super easy for it to be used against you what happens when the
thing you're chasing is in the hands of somebody who doesn't have your best interest in mind one of the biggest tricks I've learned about marketing is that instead of selling a product successful companies try to sell you a feeling any company can sell running shoes but only Nike can sell you the feeling of being an athlete lots of companies sell phones and computers but only Apple can sell the feeling of being a true innovator now I know those feelings might seem like intrinsic motivators but I don't think that's the case people only want to feel
like athletes and innovators because Society glorifies those things you wouldn't give your money to Nike if they were telling you to just wait until tomorrow so that's the secret the only way I know of to get out of the rat race is to just say the cheese and the cat too there's a quote I like that says the person who enjoys walking will always walk further than the person who enjoys the destination and when it comes to the things I've always enjoyed doing like making these videos I've realized that I've been kind of getting caught
up in the Des destination I've been studying the strategies of the best YouTubers analyzing videos reading books about storytelling and every single one of those things kind of helped me but they were mostly just hurting me I wasn't enjoying the walk anymore see by giving a sh about what other people say is the right or wrong way to make YouTube videos I actually started believing that there was a right and wrong way it's with pretty much anything I can think of sure there's moral and some legal boundaries I guess but there are no rules we
just impose these guidelines on ourselves because it's how we all convince each other that we should stay in the rat race with everybody else as soon as you start challenging the Norms you're indirectly challenging everybody else's comfortable idea of how the world Works people don't like that so you're left with no choice but to either conform or to be a social outcast but that's where I have one last quote for you easy choices hard life hard choices easy life now even though it might not seem like it initially it's easier being exceptional than it is
to be normal because once you finally stop playing that game that everybody else is playing you realize how stupid it all is it's easy for me to do the socially acceptable thing and limit my creativity by making videos like everybody else but it's really hard feeling good about those videos when I know that they're just a over refined chewed up version of what I'm already capable of creating I guess what I'm trying to say is nobody actually gives a about who you are and what you do they're all just subconsciously protecting themselves and their own
perception of reality we just blame these vague higher powers like society when we're really probably just worried about what one friend is is going to think but it's the being weird doing things in a way that you like and valuing that over anything else that's exactly what's worth doing by definition in order to be exceptional you must be the exception so what's stopping you [Music]
