Don't Want to Ruin Your Life? Never Do These Things

hey 42 here by 1978 dickie eklund was on top of the world a successful boxer he was the only man alive to go the distance with sugar ray leonard one of the greatest fighters who ever stepped foot in the ring but by 1993 this would all change as a subject of an hbo documentary eklund led a group of filmmakers around his home town of laurel showing them where he grew up and outlining his intentions to make a comeback into the world of boxing but the documentary was not what he expected it to be called hyung crack street lost lives in lowell the documentary was an expose on the crack epidemic of the early 90s tracing its origins and focusing on the lives of free addicts in the economically depressed former mill city of lowell massachusetts a prostitute her pimp and former boxer dickie eklund the film documented eklund's struggle with addiction his attempts to reform himself for his career and his young son as well as his efforts to prevent his habit from relapsing and when he failed the crimes he committed to feed it it was a documentary eklund saw for the first time in prison after he had been arrested although fooled by the documentary crew the film was simply about what was happening before the camera had ecklund recovered from his addiction and pursued boxing it would have been about what he wanted but instead his addiction had consumed him and for now destroyed his life nobody wants to ruin their life and perhaps you never think you will but every day many of us make decisions that fundamentally and irrecoverably alter the trajectory of our lives sometimes for the worse whilst many people's lives are destroyed through no fault of their own such as health issues or a lack of support or opportunity others are caused by the decisions we make every single day decisions each of us hold responsibility for so here are some interesting ways you can totally bugger up your life that can mostly be avoided most of us understand that having good finances is important but few understand just how destructive being fiscally irresponsible can actually be and just how easily money issues can tear your life apart and sometimes end it all together whilst your mind may immediately jump to the most extreme financial issues such as bankruptcy and homelessness there are more subtle but insidious ways that poor financial planning can utterly destroy your life and you're probably doing at least one of them already scientists have spent years studying the many health risks that come with poor finances and because in america at least 62 percent of people's mental and physical health is directly affected by financial stress these risks have to be taken seriously financial stresses aren't just psychological they also physically hurt and even damage the body possibly even fatally migraines insomnia increased levels of physical pain inability to go to work which further increases stress and cardiovascular disease are all strongly linked to having financial stresses cardiovascular disease at 23.5 percent is the world health organization's leading cause of death globally generally speaking it's not a good idea to increase the likelihood of your most likely cause of death but you could be doing exactly that with your finances right now and you might not even realize it but even worse than this financial stresses have been demonstrated to have a clear negative effect on mental health triggering destructive conditions like depression hopelessness and other mood disorders perhaps even more concerning is that financial stresses drive at least one-third of us to seek out unhealthy ways of coping such as overeating drinking or perhaps worst of all compulsive spending that's right sadly many people spend to deal with their anxiety over their spending issues these only exacerbate your financial problems and further degrade your mental health trapping you in a painful toxic spiral interestingly financial stress also affects your ability to problem solve so before you think well i'll just put myself up by the bootstraps think again a study published in science demonstrated that people struggling with poverty found it far harder to engage with abstract thinking and cognitive control when faced with expensive bills the mere sight of something they would struggle to afford was enough to significantly impact their ability to problem solve the irony of this is what makes financial hardship such a vindictive destroyer of lives but how does this subtle yet destructive financial stress come about obviously debt is the largest cause of financial stress but often debt can be so sneaky you don't know it's happening to you until it's too late 80.9 of american baby boomers are in debt as are 79.9 of gen x's and the average uk household debt stands at 15 400 pounds these are typically credit card debts medical debts student loans personal loans overdraft charges payday loans and overdue phone and utility bills in other words money borrowed to pay for something that could not otherwise be afforded whilst this in itself may seem like a harmless choice at the time such as taking out an expensive phone contract for the new iphone the way debt is structured can cause lasting and debilitating effects on one's life not only are you paying a whole chunk more overall for the item than you would if you purchased it outright with cash but if you fail to pay back the loan or don't make payments on time then you will usually be hit with a higher interest rate every year until the debt is paid off which compounds the debt further increasing your liability this is made even worse when you consider that roughly 22 percent of people default on loans and end up taking out another loan to pay it off which adds multiple levels of compound interest because you're essentially paying interest on a new loan to pay off interest on an old loan plus the amount borrowed of course this only compounds stress and only delays the inevitable debt also hurts your credit score which can greatly affect your ability to take on necessary debt in the future such as buying a house or car it also in effect takes away from your future income if you are in debt with minimum payments of 100 pounds per month then that is 100 pounds you have to pay or it simply increases the next time possibly even resulting in debt collectors knocking on your door or a date in court i know that sometimes debt can't be avoided and i'm not trying to berate those who get into unmanageable debt i'm simply discussing how it can unfortunately ruin your life for all the incredible good that capitalism does debt is undeniably one of its ugliest facets compound debt is precisely what happens to former billionaire and liquor tycoon vijay malia aka the king of good times he racked up enormous bank debts and when i say enormous his company kingfisher airlines owed 1.35 billion us dollars in 2015. his high-flying party lifestyle certainly didn't help matters vijay was left unable to pay his debtors and the bank soon came after him using a diplomatic passport he fled india to the uk but as of april of this year his appeal against extradition failed and he'll likely be brought home to face justice and further ruined to his reputation the king of good times for others maybe but not so much for himself alongside dead many of us have no savings which in easy times is fine but in times of crisis such as now or retirement can become a serious problem that greatly affects our life almost one third of all u.s adults are reported to have no emergency savings and one survey even found that 58 of americans have less than 1 000 in savings if you find yourself on the wrong end of ill health you could find yourself in desperate wants of money you never knew you needed so is there anything else in life that can totally destroy your future like debt can well yes try poor social skills believe it or not but the consequences can be just as bad in simple terms poor social skills don't allow you to foster meaningful connections with others and when this happens we experience a painful sense of loneliness and when i say painful i mean quite literally loneliness isn't just some fleeting mildly annoying phenomenon it's one of the most dangerous persistent and damaging emotions to your health and minds that you can possibly experience unlike when you're late for an appointment and the stress leaves as soon as you arrive in the case of loneliness you're left with a persistent aching feeling that does not go away unless you form a meaningful reliable relationship and this can take a lot of time this is why lonely people often feel like they're searching for something they need but cannot find it and this searching process is extremely painful social skills are largely formed amongst your family and learnt over time but whilst they can be learned few of us actually practice the skills needed skills such as opening up to others emotionally supporting them asserting oneself starting relationships or introducing yourself to people you meet in the world we generally interact with others with little regard to the skills we're developing this has been made a lot worse by the fact that modern communication methods such as instant messaging don't produce the intimate neurochemistry needed to form lasting bonds teach social skills and heal loneliness which can only be gotten from face-to-face communication the lifetime costs of this can be immeasurable for example loneliness is deeply linked to stress depression and anxiety which have widespread effects on every aspect of your life and overall well-being likewise it is also strongly connected to dementia heart disease and overall mortality with some writers and researchers referring to loneliness itself as an epidemic that must be treated especially when loneliness traditionally high in the elderly has been growing in young adults and teenagers it's no wonder then in the uk alone loneliness related conditions like depression and anxiety cost a country 77 billion pounds per year more abstractly while's loneliness may have debilitating effects on your mental and physical health gradually degrading the quality of your life poor social skills will also affect your opportunities in life and your career asserting yourself and asking your boss for a raise will be significantly more difficult and you won't have the widespread social connections that gave birth to the phrase it's who you know not what you know which unfortunately is true more often than not just as damaging our poor relationship choices choosing your partner in life is one of the most important choices you can make but few of us understand just how important that truly is many studies have concluded that a bad marriage is as damaging to your health as heavy smoking or drinking whilst huge sways of evidence suggests that married couples live longer and are happier so if it's good it's great if it's bad it's terrible with a failed relationship there are several costs the pain of the breakup is obvious but in the case of marriage well 50 of marriages in the u.s end in divorce and each comes with an average of 15 000 u.s dollars in legal fees and because most couples split their assets 50 50 psychologically you have to deal with the blow of losing half your assets for some couples this can be extremely destructive both financially and psychologically the rate of suicide is 2.4 times higher in divorced couples and divorced men are nine times more likely to commit suicide psychologists think that the biggest cause of poor relationship choices and bad social skills is a lack of emotional intelligence emotional intelligence is essentially one's ability to recognize his own emotions and the emotions of others and understand how to interact with them in layman's terms it's about having empathy but whilst a lot of us sweat about our iq how many of us are actually concerned about our emotions well you should be there are some alarming costs that come from having poor emotional intelligence to name a few you will tend to blame others more become more argumentative communicate poorly get easily and needlessly offended lose control over your emotions and have outbursts project your own flaws onto others and fail to recognize that you are doing so have no idea what others are feeling and thus unable to help them you'll probably call them overly sensitive you will easily get overwhelmed by emotionally intense situations you will likely damage your work relationships personal relationships and reduce your psychological well-being and you are much much more likely to be psychologically destroyed by trauma so all in all having poor emotional intelligence is fairly bad news but another way that many of us ruin our lives is that we fail to work on the things we want to work on or even worse fail to develop a work ethic of any kind now don't worry you need to pull a mark wahlberg and start waking up at 2am to pray and play 30 minutes of golf before you hit the gym but you definitely need to at least have an average work ethic failing to do so will leave you chronically unproductive possibly unemployable expose you to greater risk of financial problems and potentially even have you ostracized by your friends due to your bad influence all of which comes with the costs i've already discussed but the bar isn't that high really in a nine to five eight hour working day studies have shown that people on average only do work for free of them so you only need to develop the habit of being able to focus on the work you're doing for free hours not much and as authors like daniel goldman have noted focus itself is a muscle so the more you work at it the better it gets focus and self-control are so important that one longitudinal study from new zealand that followed one thousand people over five decades noted that young children self-control predicted their health wealth and criminal history later in life no matter what their social background or iq so start practicing that focus but be warned it goes both ways the less you practice it the worse it gets over time like a big life-destroying snowball likewise many of us don't work on our dreams we want to be an author a filmmaker an inventor or better yet a handsome mustachioed youtuber but we think we can't do it or worse think we can but continually wake up feeling like we don't want to that day and tell ourselves we'll do it tomorrow but you know the drill that tomorrow never comes i've got news for you not many successful people actually enjoy the work they do on a daily basis they may claim they do publicly but the truth is they enjoy achieving their goals but not the menial daily slog consider this quote i hated every minute of training but i said don't quit suffer now and you'll live the rest of your life as a champion well if even muhammad ali hated what he did why would your process be any easier this is one of the secrets to getting things done you're always going to have to do something that sucks you are always going to have to do something you don't want to do so choose the thing that sucks the least after all if you don't push yourself and you simply sail through life have you actually lived as mark twain said 20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than the ones you did do so throw off the bowl lines sail away from safe harbor now there's one method of ruining your life that is perhaps more effective than all of the others combined and it is the same one that tore dicky eckland's life apart addiction addiction is one of the most dangerous conditions you can deal with in life and will certainly rob you with your money your mental and physical health friendships relationships change your personality for the worse land you in prison or kill you and it's far easier to suffer from than you'd actually think addiction comes in a variety of forms sure drugs and alcohol are the obvious but there are countless others such as sex gambling and even video games and internet use which can all be equally as bad unless of course it's an addiction to my videos one of the reasons addictions are so powerful is that generally they all operate under the same principle they hijack your brain's dopamine reward system which controls your motivation and reward centers and focuses all your brain's energy on whatever that addiction is smoke more crack drink more booze play more call of duty this creates a vicious cycle where one continually engages with his addiction despite the negative costs to his own life it doesn't matter if we don't do the work we need to we stress our partner out or blow all of our money eventually it's hard to think about anything else other than how and when you're going to get high again but whilst the drugs themselves come with literally hundreds of life-destroying symptoms there are a couple of symptoms that come with any addiction the first is withdrawal because of how effectively addiction hijacks your dopamine reward system when you take away your source of addiction i.e going cold turkey you will begin to experience withdrawal for example people who quit certain drugs can have terrible seizures and migraines but even people go in cold turkey on their video game addictions can feel terrible feelings of emptiness and sadness depression and desperate attempts to rationalize returning to gaming this means that unlike other issues in this video addiction is extremely hard to curb once it has its claws into you everything in you will want you not to quit another symptom is the cost it has to relationships as addiction takes over more and more of your life it has a trying cost on your relationships building the lack of intimacy trust and distance between you and your close friends and partner when they start voicing their concerns about your habits you will often resort to lying to get them off your back or worse violence and whilst you're probably thinking look that's fine and all but i don't have an addiction perhaps you need to take a closer look addiction doesn't start with some dramatic movie-like choice where something traumatic happens and you suddenly down an entire bottle of jack daniels with your cornflakes an addiction's origin is usually more camouflaged and much more insidious most addictions begin by accident you try something once like everyone does thinking what could go wrong but whatever sadness emptiness or pain you had thought was normal to live with suddenly goes away as soon as you take your drug gamble or play your game things just seem to feel different and better when you're using or doing it life seems better until of course you stop and from there it's a very very slippery slope to wanting more and more with devastating consequences but look i don't want to end on a down note to bring it back to our story at the very beginning former boxer dickie eklund was in a bad place he'd destroyed his life through alcohol landed himself in prison and even had his entire failure broadcasted the world over hbo but his story didn't end there eklund strived to get clean faced his withdrawal head-on and began to regain some control over his life eventually succeeding eklund was released from prison and helped to coach his half-brother and former boxer mickey ward on his comeback trail he coached his brother for 26 fights including what became ward's legendary trilogy against arturo gatti all three of which were awarded fight of the year and will go down in history as some of the greatest boxing bouts of all time and although he has struggled with addiction since he has taken the steps towards regaining control of his life showing us all that the important fights we win aren't the ones in the ring but the ones we face against ourselves thank you for watching if you enjoyed this video then please consider supporting me on patreon because it really helps me to continue to make these videos the links in the description also you can get your hands on a first edition signed copy of my new book stick if liking it by heading on over to unbanned publishing and pledging today the links in the description thank you

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 908,876

Rating: 4.9230661 out of 5

Keywords: life, psychology, social, life hacks, debt, money, finance, advice, life advice, self help, credit card debt, how to pay off debt, lifehacks, personal finance, pay off debt, life coaching, useful things, relationship advice, dating, marriage, divorce

Id: 5Tj_946U9Cc

Length: 22min 40sec (1360 seconds)

Published: Wed May 13 2020