Name: This will make you WANT to work hard.
Uploaded: 2024-08-21T12:32:21.000Z
Duration: 13 min 32 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

When you hear the word work, how does that make you feel?

Gerund

Tired before you've even started doing anything?

Work isn't appealing for most people and I'm no different.

At Caltech, I complained with my engineering classmates and I wondered, if I slack off, how bad would it really be?

You might associate working with more pain, more struggle, less happiness.

Thus, it's hard to outwork other people because you're literally putting yourself through more pain while other people are chilling at home watching Netflix.

However, there's a key that makes it easy and enjoyable to outwork your peers.

And that today is what I'm gonna share with you.

To become valedictorian and to get into a top 10 university, I did things like extra math outside of school, led multiple clubs, and played varsity sports.

You could say that I was outworking a lot of people, right?

You might think I had to be miserable, right?

To this day, when I work more than other people, like right now when I'm working way more hours than a typical 9-to-5 job, I can say that I've always been content.

But I think that what I'm gonna share with you in this video is the key that helps me be able to do this sustainably.

On the plane while flying to my sister's graduation, she also graduated from Caltech.

It was There's More to Life Than Being Happy by Emily Smith.

She explained that when people think all there is to life is to be happy and they chase happiness, people actually end up being way more depressed.

As famous author George Orwell says, men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

Like think about the United States as a first world country.

Our lives are actually really good if you think about it and you can watch this video on your phone or your laptop.

You probably have so many things that you take for granted but that make your life comfortable and nice.

However, why are the depression rates so high?

Why do kids have such bad mental health these days?

Emily Smith explains that the solution is not to chase happiness but is to find meaning in life.

If you're working and studying and you go about life on autopilot believing that you need to take more breaks to make yourself happier, you need more self-care to make yourself feel better, then you're more likely to feel the sense of despair like asking yourself, is this all there is?

That's why that ironically to live a better happier life, we have to reframe our mindset into making the things we do meaningful, not happier.

Now you might be thinking, Amy, why do you keep telling me just to think differently?

See, that's the issue with a lot of the content on YouTube nowadays.

It's all things like wake up at 6am, eat healthy foods, like you've heard it all before.

But what you're missing is the mindset part of yin yang.

Action and mindset go together in a self-perpetuating cycle where most of the time we struggle with doing the right actions because we don't have the right mindset.

So the key is to reframe in your mind each of the things you're doing as whether they're giving you meaning.

Emily Smith shares that according to a renowned psychologist, meaning comes from belonging and serving something beyond yourself and from developing the best within you.

Because I finally understood why I could work so hard.

It's because I felt enjoyment and fulfillment in improving my human capital by developing myself and helping others, making myself someone who is also greater able to help others in the future.

Work has a negative connotation, but waking up and having something to strive for, something you need to pursue, brings joy.

That's why several of my friends told me that their uber rich friends are depressed.

They can sit around playing video games and scrolling on their phones and buying as many Louis Vuitton bags as they want, but they don't feel like there's a meaning to their lives.

Now that we know the key is reframing, let's reframe five common things.

Think about work not as something you're forced to do or something that might get you a result, but think of it as you moving toward something you already know you can achieve.

My friend Taiki told me just yesterday that he feels anything in the world, he can achieve it if he wants to.

And that's exactly the attitude you need.

Believe that whatever you're pursuing, that that is already part of your destiny and all you have to do is continue putting in the actions to get there.

So believe in the potential that you were already born with and understand that everything in your life that's happened to you, all of your knowledge, experiences, relationships, are there for a reason to get you somewhere you're meant to be.

Here's how I use reframing to become valedictorian.

I believe that it was already in the cards for me to rank number one, as long as I put in the work.

If it's so definite that I will get the result I want, then why wouldn't I do those steps?

All I'm doing is making my ideal future happen.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with watching TV.

I watched Legend of Korra literally today while I was eating lunch.

But many people after work and school will spend all of the rest of their waking hours in front of the TV, on YouTube, flipping through Netflix.

Life is beautiful because of our experiences and memories.

So we need to reframe watching TV as not giving yourself new memories.

In five years, you will not remember the drama that happened on Grey's Anatomy.

Entertainment is something you use to fill space when you're bored.

When you're waiting somewhere, you try to entertain yourself.

If you have excitement towards life and the experiences you can have, there's no need to be filling that time as if there's nothing else to do with your life.

Movies and shows are still great, but I really try to watch them with other people so that it becomes a memory and a bonding experience.

Number three, of course, I had to cover this one.

Believe it or not, I tried getting into TikTok.

During lockdown, during spring of 2020, I downloaded TikTok and I tried to scroll through the For You page.

But each time, the moment I hit something I didn't like, I closed the app because I was like, ew.

I gave up trying to consume short form content completely because why would I want to risk wasting my time on something I don't like?

I don't even want the mere possibility of my eyes and brain getting hit with something it didn't want to see in the first place.

Yeah, sure, there are tips and hacks, but every time you save those videos, do you ever go back and actually use those?

In fact, sometimes if I watch a YouTube short, not by scrolling, but by clicking on it through the homepage, I find out facts that I did not need to know.

Like, I did not need to know that Ariana Grande's voice has changed again.

Like, that's just purely being out of control.

It's a lack of control because in life, with all the things that are outside of our control, why would we want to put one more thing outside of our control?

If I want a solution for glossy hair or how to get straight A's, I'll go purposefully search it up on YouTube, learn, and close it.

I didn't ask to be told I should buy things I don't need and that I never even knew existed.

I really liked games when I was a kid because I did have time to play them with my sister and I found that fun.