If you're in your 30s and you're lost and you feel like you've achieved nothing in your life, you're in luck, because you found this and there is still time. I've got great news: all of the mess that your life has been so far, all that feels like wasted time and nothing accomplished, is actually gold that will help you build the life of your dreams going forward. I'll tell you my own experience, so you know I'm doing this right along with you.
When I was 29, right when I turned 30, I was looking at my life. I was in Alcoholics Anonymous, just a few months into getting sober. I wrote out the story of my life — 10,000 words, an honest story leaving nothing out, putting all the ugly details in — and realizing, how did I get here? I later turned that into my life story in 10 minutes. The best part of my life by far was my wife, and I had a house and dogs I enjoyed. But my career? I had totally made a mess of being an entrepreneur. I'd wasted my money and my health. I weighed 80 more pounds than I do now — how I lost those 80 pounds came later. My body hurt, my mind was sick, and I felt lonely, isolated, and hopeless. I kept asking, how did I get here? I looked at my entire life and realized that I had made one choice after another to get where I was. And then the real question: where do I want to go from here?
Stop thinking about where you've been; start thinking about where you want to go
If you'll stop thinking about where you've been and start thinking about where you want to go — and how what you've been through can help you get there — that's where everything will change for you. That's where the magic happens. When I was sick, and the people I see in my life today who are sick, who I try to spend as little time with as possible, all they do is think about how things were: what's wrong, who's wrong, I'm a victim. And yet they go around causing all this chaos and trouble and never changing.
Simple little affirmations can help you change. Say: I am changing. I am willing to change. Ask questions like, how can what I've been through help someone else? You'd be amazed at how this works.
How this started for me in Alcoholics Anonymous
When I was in Alcoholics Anonymous, I was very sick. All I had to offer the group was a chance for them to help me. All that was coming out of my mouth was BS and trying to act — and then finally admitting, hey, I hate my life, I'm throwing it away, I can't stop, I don't like doing this. I don't like being sober, because I am not happy being sober, which is why I drink. I'd share it like that, I'd get honest, and then all these people would help me. And by helping me, they felt useful. They got to share all the messes that had happened in their own lives, they got to help me learn from their experience — from their addictions, from their struggles — and I got to take their life lessons on.
From there, that's where I realized my life has a purpose. And you don't need to define your life in terms of how much money you've got in the bank, how many likes you're getting on posts, how many views you're getting online, or how many subscribers you have.
Ty: a template for how your life can have meaning
I'll give you a very clear example of how you can have an incredibly meaningful life and, at least externally — the way what you might think of as the matrix, or the world, defines success — have almost nothing. There was a guy named Ty in Alcoholics Anonymous who has passed on and is happy for me to share his story with you.
In terms of what the world would think of Ty, he was a great guy who would blend right in. He was in his 70s. He had enough cash to get by, but he was certainly not rich. In terms of his career, there was nothing noteworthy that stood out. I believe he had a kid he didn't talk to, so in terms of being a parent there was no major success there either. He was a regular-looking old guy you'd pass on the street without a second thought. He had no list of accomplishments, no resume to impress you. In almost every way, he was an ordinary guy.
But Ty helped me massively. Ty was the first one I did a detailed fifth step with — that's a confession in Alcoholics Anonymous. I told him all my worst secrets, all my craziest thoughts, everything I had never wanted to share with anybody else in my whole life — things going all the way back to being a little kid that I'd never talked about with anyone. I unloaded all of it on Ty.
And Ty shared his life with me. His life growing up was brutal, and his history with addiction was thorough and deep. He had experienced much longer-lasting addiction than I had. Some of the addictions I'd struggled with while I was drinking, he had struggled with for years while he was sober. And he shared, and he helped me massively. He helped a bunch of other people around the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous change their lives and feel loved. When Ty died, it was as devastating to me as when I lost my father a couple of years before that.
This, I hope, is a template for you to see how your life can have meaning. Ty is one of the people I think of when I think of the people I've really loved in my life and who've made a huge difference — my mother and father, my brother, my wife, my kids, Ty, and a few others. Ty has been like a hero to me.
And yet if you'd looked at Ty in his 30s, he was just trying to get sober. His life was an utter mess. He hadn't accomplished anything. He'd been in the Navy for a while but got out. He went from one job to another in the middle of all his addictions. If you'd seen Ty in his 30s, from what he told me, it didn't look good at all — his life was a complete wreck, which is why he came to Alcoholics Anonymous in his late 30s.
If your life isn't going the way you want, that's good motivation to change
So if your life is not going the way you want it to, that's good motivation to change. If you don't feel like you've accomplished anything, there are one or two things going on.
One: you don't have proper perspective
The first — you don't have proper perspective about your life. And that is probably the number one issue. If you think you're in your 30s and your life's going nowhere and you feel totally unsatisfied, you probably are lacking proper perspective.
If you'll let other people help you, get to know other people, connect with more people, and get out there — places like Alcoholics Anonymous, or Al-Anon if you have alcoholic friends and family, or church groups, or all kinds of places in your community, or even online — you can get out there and help someone, serve someone else, share your experience, or make videos. You can be there for someone else. And that will help you get perspective on your life. It's the same reason I keep putting my own life out there in my Life playlist — sharing what I've been through is how I stay connected and useful.
The reason so many of you think your life is going so poorly is because you don't understand what's going on in other people's lives, and you don't understand how big a part of some people's lives you really are, and how much of a difference you really do make.
There are all kinds of people I come across in my life who I think of. I had a friend in college who passed away a few months ago — I hadn't seen him in about nine years before he passed, and I've had dreams about him. I was just telling my family how he and his wife and I went to St. Petersburg, Florida, where I live now; the first time I ever went was with them, back in 2009. I still think of him. I had a dream last night about a girl I was with for a week, like 10 — God, 15 years ago now. She's still a part of my life. Not much of a part — I don't think of her often, and she doesn't watch any of my videos, because she gets enough of me in person — but there are so many connections you have with people. If you're in this negative state of mind, making yourself worthless, you're blind to what a big part of so many people's lives you are. And you're even more blind to how you could be a hero, the way Ty was in my life — how you could be a hero in someone else's life.
Two: you have the perspective, and people are already telling you
The second — some of you do have proper perspective, and everyone in your life is already telling you. In my 20s, everyone in my life was telling me: you abuse alcohol, why are you doing this, what are you doing with your life? Everyone was making it clear that I was making bad choices, that there were better ones available, and that they'd be happy to help if I would be willing to accept it.
So many of you just don't have proper perspective — and you can get it by asking other people. Ask them, what do you think of my life? Ask for advice. I ran into a lady in AA the other day, after I'd shared about how I wake up feeling fantastic every day and I'm really excited for life. She said, that must be nice, because I wake up and it's a struggle for me just to feel okay. I told her: you don't have to keep feeling like that. You are choosing to feel like that. And I know, because when I used to wake up like that, I was making choices that led to me feeling like that — like staying up too late. Every little thing you do impacts how you feel.
If you'll go ask other people for advice, some will absolutely give you bad advice — but the bad advice will stand out against the good. If you ask everybody in your life for advice, for help, for feedback, and you just take the best of what everybody gives you, you'll be amazed how well life can go for you.
Wayne Dyer didn't even really begin until his late 30s
I think often of Wayne Dyer. Wayne Dyer's life was not going that well in his 30s, and he hadn't written any of his books — until he was 38 or so, when he wrote Your Erroneous Zones. Wayne Dyer is another one of my heroes; I've listened to hundreds and hundreds of hours of his talks. He got sober in Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was a gateway for him. He had a transformational experience where he went to the grave of his father — the father who had walked out on him and his mother when he was a baby, who he'd carried all this anger and resentment toward — and he finally healed that anger and resentment in his late 30s. From there, he wrote Your Erroneous Zones. And from there, it was over 30 years of him working before I ever found him. So the work he did didn't even really begin in his 30s — it took decades before it would reach me and I'd find it helpful.
So if you take care of yourself, you have a lot of time potentially left. Wayne Dyer was working into his 70s, doing talks and sharing his life experience.
Your mess is the gold that lets you help someone else
I was a police officer before. You can read those stories in my life story and the rest of my autobiography. I'm really grateful for all the crazy times I had in my life — being a police officer, all the drama — because now I can better help you. If I had just "done my life right," if I'd been smart all the time and everything had gone great for me, I couldn't relate to you. But if you're struggling and you feel lost and hopeless, I can relate to you, because I've been there and I got out of there. I'm not there anymore, and I haven't been in a long time.
Some days in my business, I feel a little struggle, a little frustrated, a little hopeless. And all I do now is say: I'm willing to change. Let me get the ideas that will help me. That's how I got inspired to start sharing these thoughts in the first place — and it looks like this is going to really rip, because I've been on YouTube since 2011. I know what to do: take model approaches that have worked in the past, and do them in my own voice.
You can be a hero in many people's lives. If all you have to work with today is a mess, failure, and struggle, you're in a position where all of that gives you experience that is genuinely useful — useful to help others, to lift others out of the same situation. But you more than likely need to let us help you first, because when you're in the mess, you're not in a good position to do it alone. It's like drowning: when you're drowning, you're not in a position to save someone else. But when you can swim, when you're strong, then you can get out there and help the people who are drowning. You can understand how they got there and how they feel, and you can help them not go back.
My goal is to lift you up. If you want me to get to know you, and you want someone who's been exactly where you are to help, you can jump on a one-on-one call with me. Those conversations give me a lot of motivation and inspiration too. And if you want to keep going right now, you can watch my newest videos in my Life playlist. I am really excited to see what you do with everything you've been through.