- [Mitch] Do you hate to wake up early? Or to go to the gym or to work hard in school or at your job? Do you often postpone the work
that you know you should do? Or maybe you just wish that somebody else would do it for you. If you answered yes to
any of those questions then the world has probably
told you that you are lazy or that you're a procrastinator
who lacks motivation. At least, this is what
I was personally told. And for a long time I believed them. I bought into their BS
and I labeled myself as that lazy procrastinator who would never achieve any great academic success, and I carried this mediocre mindset of getting mediocre grades
and putting in mediocre effort all the way up until my college years. But one day I was presented
with the opportunity to study abroad in Europe. And this got me really excited, and nothing ever remotely
related to school had ever got me excited. And I started to imagine myself
laying on the beach in Italy or eating churros in Spain or going to a party in the Czech Republic. And after weeks of research I decided that I wanted to study
abroad in Lisbon, Portugal because it had everything
that I had wanted. In my mind going to Lisbon
was going to be the thing that would make all my
academic struggles worthwhile. At that time it was the most
important thing in my life. But when I was talking
to one of my professors about the exchange program I learned a few interesting things. I learned that Portugal was the number one most popular choice
among all the students, so there was going to be some competition. And then I learned that
my university chooses where all the students go based on how good their grades are. And at this time mine were okay at best. And then I learned that only four students are selected to go to Portugal, which meant that if I
wanted to go to Portugal my grades needed to be in the top 1% of my entire business program. So it was me, the lazy procrastinator, going against all the other
kids who had dedicated their entire lives to school. That was my competition. So the next day I started to
study really, really hard, way more than I ever
had in my entire life. I can still remember
walking through the library and seeing the other kids from my class who I knew wanted to go to Portugal, and we would just make eye
contact with each other and we would just have
this intensity in our eyes because we both knew that we were competing for the same thing. So the stakes were really, really high. As the semester went on my
grades got higher and higher and my social life became
more and more nonexistent. But one morning near
the end of my semester my mom said something to me
that was really interesting. She said, "I have never seen
you work this hard in school. "Maybe you aren't a
procrastinator after all." And this line really got me thinking because during that particular semester no teacher, no student or parent
would say that I was lazy. In fact, they would say that
I'm a really hard worker who really gets after it. But in the previous semester,
just five months ago, those same people would all
say that I was a procrastinator and that I was lazy, so which is it? I can't be both, can I? The truth is, is that no
human being is just one thing. Nobody here is 100% lazy or 100% not lazy. I first really understood this
idea back in the 10th grade where I would do anything to
procrastinate doing my homework because I hated school. But I would put everything
on hold in order to play a computer game
called StarCraft II, which is actually a national
sport in South Korea. And I would spend hours just researching how to get better at StarCraft. I would practice my skills,
practice different strategies, and at one point I actually beat one of the top 200
players in North America. I'm not saying this to brag. I'm saying this to make a point that when it came to
school I was really lazy but when it came to
gaming I was the opposite. So the question, how do I stop being lazy isn't actually a great
question to ask yourself. A much better question would
be why am I feeling lazy? And the reason why I was feeling lazy and why probably most
of you are feeling lazy is because we were all
doing the wrong thing. Maybe you're studying the wrong stuff or you're working at the wrong job. When you feel lazy you should
pay attention and take notes because sometimes that is
your intuition or your body or spirit or whatever you wanna call it saying to you, hey, you're
doing the wrong thing. Do something else. So when you're feeling lazy and you truly want to feel motivated again, you need to understand
these two key things. The first one is to make
sure you know the why behind what you are doing. Because if you have this
you will always be able to do those things that you
don't really want to do, but they are stuff that you need to do. For me, it was being
motivated to do well in school in order to go to Europe. And yes, I did actually
end up going to Portugal. So the lazy procrastinator won. So there's hope for all of us. And two, and this is the
best option in my opinion, is to start doing something that you're actually passionate about, because life is short. If you have not found the thing that you really love to do, then you need to start at the
very least looking for it, otherwise, you will
wake up at the age of 80 and think to yourself,
man, I spent my whole life doing the wrong thing. And this image is really scary to me. But Mitch, how do I find something that I'm passionate about? The number one best way to
do this is to try new things. Unfortunately, despite
what the movies tell you, your passion is not just
gonna appear one day. It's not gonna come into your dream or just come into your life. It's something that you will actually have to go and search for. And the best resource that I
found to discover your passion is a website called Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community that can literally teach
you any skill you want. They have over 25,000 classes in design, business, technology. They can even teach you how to
become a successful YouTuber or a successful animator or
a writer or a photographer. And the first 500 people who sign up using my link in the
description will gain access to all of this 100% free
for the first two months, and the last time I
talked about Skillshare I think like 500 people
signed up in the first hour. So, if you click it and it's still there, consider yourself very lucky. Let's make 2020 the year where we finally start doing the things that we love to do. Thank you for watching,
and I'll see you soon.
