I'm checking in from a beautiful and cold Scandinavia.
I'm braving the cold because I have the greatest insight, the greatest teaching, the greatest advice possible to give to you.
And I have you have probably seen me quote Aristotle many times over all these years.
And his best quote, and what basically sums up this fine video, is excellence is a habit.
So I titled this video something along the lines of your greatest victory, your greatest triumph, and your greatest mistake.
Now, you might look now, you might look at certain things, why certain things happen to certain individuals, and you might wonder why that is.
And I can tell you that it's basically all about your habits, it's all about your routines, your habits you have in your everyday life.
So if you look on, I can take a few examples from my own life.
If we're talking about gaining an audience on social media, gaining many subscribers on a video platform, I've never had one video which really took off.
I've never had a viral video, but what I have had over all of these years, I've had a consistently good enough quality to facilitate growth.
Now, of course, there are many better video makers than myself.
I can say that Dauntless is a better book than the majority of books, and I can say that my podcast is better perhaps than many other podcasts.
I'm not so narcissistic when it comes to the videos because I understand that there are better video makers, but the quality has been good enough at least to it's been good enough consistently over a long period of time and that has enabled me to for you to see this right now.
So it's never been once I've had a you know home run shot or anything like that.
It's been a consistent progression over all of these years.
It's been a habit to I do try to make videos, I do try to give some insight that might improve your life.
That is my approach to making videos so it should be a hopefully a pleasant video to watch.
I am yeah that's why I like to make videos in nature so you can look at a nice blue sky and yeah you can hopefully gain some insights that you can incorporate into your life.
So that is my perspective when it comes to video making.
It's not about one single video which really made me take off or anything but it's a consistently good enough quality.
So that is in terms of video making.
It's a habit.
I have tried to get into my video making and of course I've also tried to make the videos better.
I've tried to continue my own path of enlightenment, to be able to give better insights and stuff like that, which actually brings me to my own greatest victory, I would say, at least when I analyze things.
It's probably that I got into the habit of reading at an early age because that has helped me, especially when it comes to content creation.
Now I've been a content creator for eight millennia.
My spirit has lived for so long as a venerable ancient.
So I have I've read a lot of books.
Perhaps my spirit was actually present in the library of Alexandria when it was still up and running.
Who knows?
Anyway, point being is that I have been supremely thankful for having gotten into that habit because it has helped me tremendously when during my journey as a content creator, you know, posting stuff on social media for eight years.
You will need to have a lot of content in your mind to share.
So, and a little anecdote here.
Back in the day, I had a gym friend, we were walking through Uppsala, and we went past the English bookshop.
I pointed to it and said, That's my favorite shop in all of the world.
And he looked at me disbelievingly and he said, I can't imagine you sitting down calmly to read a book.
Now, he had only seen me basically in the gym when I was all hyped up.
I wanted to do some heavy deadlifts, so it's a completely different energy you bring into the gym, of course, than you when you are home with a book.
Anyway, that was a little anecdote.
Point being that I am supremely thankful for having gotten into the habit of reading at an early age.
So, it was not a single book or a single video or a single documentary that triggered my path to that enabled my great enlightenment.
I apologize for sounding very narcissistic here when I say how enlightened I am, but yeah, I'm sure you understand what I mean when I say that.
So, anyway, that is one thing, and I'm also trying to on yeah, here in when I make videos and when I post book reviews to my site, when I post pictures of books, I'm also trying to get you into the habit of reading because I know it's supremely important.
And the more you read, the easier reading gets.
So, you can start off by reading easier books, and then when you get into the rhythm, you can delve into deeper esoteric materials.
So, it's a bit like the gym, you start with a lightweight and then you work your way up.
Speaking of which, of course, the yeah, perhaps the most important habit I have ever gotten into is the Temple of Iron.
And same thing here, I've never had one particular session that's been extraordinarily good.
I have had many sessions that were extremely good.
Many of them are, yeah, you can search on my channel for deadlifts or whatever you'll see some epic sessions.
But the point here is that I've gotten into I got into a good habit, a good routine early on over 10 years ago now.
What a long time I've been at it.
But, yeah, the victory for me was not any particular competition or training session, it was getting into the habit.
If you search on my channel for the golden one strongman, you will actually get to a strongman competition for students that I won.
But the victory itself was actually that I made a cool video out of it.
The victory was not that I got a medal, the victory was that I could post it to YouTube.
And also, that wasn't even my most popular video because I've made more popular training videos.
So, my point is that it's the habit, it's the routine, it's consistently putting out good stuff.
That is the victory itself.
Same thing if we're talking about business or whatever, it's not one product that really sets everything off, it's a consistently good output of great products like this fine wool sweater, for example.
So, it's again a habit of excellence.
So, anyway, that was my own experiences with habits.
If I look at the good things I have, it's because of habits.
And I made a video a while back saying semi-jokingly, but yeah, it's actually true that most people at least do like me.
Why?
Yes, it's because I have a habit of being kind and polite to people.
And that is when you go in with that habit, if you have a habit of treating others in a nice way, they will respond and treat you in a similar way.
And yeah, this is a bit of a tangent, but I want to emphasize it as often as possible that you should always be kind and polite to people who are working in professions where they have to deal with a lot of people.
So, always be nice to the waitress, always be nice to the bus driver, always be nice to anyone at the cashier because chances are that they have to work an entire day dealing with a lot of idiots who are rude and unpleasant.
So, then you have a good opportunity to bring some light to those individuals.
And you will notice if you are a bit polite and kind, they will respond and enhance your day as well.
And ultimately, it costs you absolutely nothing to be kind and polite to someone, but it will make you feel better, it will make someone else feel better.
And if you believe in karma, yeah, it's what comes around goes around.
So, the universe will treat you better if you treat others in a good way.
So, if you wonder how someone can be popular and well-aliked, it's probably because they have a good attitude.
They are, yeah, again, I repeat, I repeat myself because it's important.
Kind and polite.
So, anyway, that's something you can keep in mind.
Now, on to a more negative, there are, of course, many negative habits.
I talk a lot about porn.
I do it because it's a no matter how much I talk about it, I know that many guys say that, oh, I stopped watching porn, but I also know that many guys they're still watching porn.
It's not because they don't respect me, it's not because they don't understand it's bad, but it's because it's a habit.
Again, keyword for this entire teaching is habit.
They have a habit of watching porn, so you have the contents of the pornographic contents itself, and then you have the habit.
So, you have two things to defeat.
Habits are hard to defeat, whatever habit it might be, and it becomes especially hard when it's something like pornography.
So, if you want to stop watching pornography, you have to first figure out a way to replace your habit, replace your routine of doing things.
Then, of course, when you haven't done it for two weeks, you have won.
That's your victory.
So, the victory is when you have successfully implemented another habit that takes the place of your porn habit.
So, as I might have said before, you can use gaming as a substitute for porn.
So, if you have the habit of watching porn at a certain time each day, instead, do play a game that requires you to focus intensely, and then you play that until the time frame has passed for you to The usual time for you to watch pornography when that has passed, then you can stop gaming.
Then, of course, I don't necessarily endorse gaming per se, but it's a hell of a lot better than to watch pornography.
So, main point is try to substitute your negative habit with a less negative habit.
Something else I've talked about many times because it's such a common thing is your amount of caffeine.
Some guys they are addicted to energy drinks, and that's not really good because it's too much caffeine.
And I say this as a proud owner of a coffee brand, I say that you should drink less coffee.
I do it because ultimately, I must be as honest and clear with you as possible.
I drink one cup of coffee each day.
Now, sometimes I go up to two cups each day, but now one cup.
And I do recommend that you drink less coffee or caffeine or energy drinks.
So, if you are used to drinking three energy drinks over a day, yeah, try to cut down to one at least and try to just get out of the routine and the habit.
Because all of these things, when you do it over a long period of time, it will have a massive impact for the worse.
So, just as you can have a good routine, you have a good routine of getting eight hours of sleep each night, you can also have a bad routine, which is to stay up gaming until 12 or 1 o'clock in the morning.
So, you might say, How can I be as productive as possible?
And I say, The greatest victory is for you to get into a habit of going to bed a bit earlier to sleep a bit more.
Doesn't sound particularly heroic or dramatic, it's not perhaps something you would read from Homer, it's not something you would see in the Iliad perhaps that everyone took great care to get their beauty sleep.
But it has an impact, it has a huge impact in terms of being productive.
Now, anyway, I think I have rambled on for long enough.
I hope it's been insightful.
I hope I make sense.
Main point: your greatest victory is when you get into a good habit, when you get into a good routine.
That is the victory.
Then, victories per se might come as a result of that.
But the important thing: if you want to transform yourself to a force of nature of ultimate enlightenment, it's all about habits.
It's all about you getting into the habits of things.
So, if you want to, as I mentioned in the greatest glory podcast episode, you can award yourself glory points when you've done something good.
So, these victories award yourself a glory point if you go if you get into a good routine, or indeed, if you are replacing a bad habit with a good habit.
So, you replace whatever habit it can be, you replace a bad food choice with a better food choice instead of eating whatever it might be, something bad, you replace it with eating some liver.
That's a good victory if you get into the habit of eating liver, for example.
So, my point here is that the greatest victory is for you to get into a good habit.
Your greatest mistake is to have bad habits or to not have good habits.
So, try to get into as many good habits as possible, and you will see that the universe works more in your favor.
You will see more opportunities come to you, and you will also be able to pounce upon the opportunities.
Will be able to do a lot more if you are prepared to if you have the capability of acting on opportunities.
