I'm recording my vlog for February 27th, 2025, my 5,022nd day on YouTube. Right before I went to bed tonight I was listening to something by Vanessa Van Edwards about how important it is to talk with your hands. In most of my videos, you've just seen my head, with everything else cut off. Apparently that makes it much harder to trust someone, because it's much easier to lie using just your mouth. Your hands are far more expressive, and it's much more natural to see someone the way you would when you're actually talking to them in person.
So I've changed my office around a bit. I've backed that camera up, and I'm standing right against the wall where I'm talking now. I zoomed the camera out so it doesn't feel like I'm so intimate and in your face, and now you can see my hands move a lot more. This is even weird to me, because I'm so used to having the camera zoomed in on just my face, where my hands can relax down at my sides or make these little motions. But when I'm talking in person, I am much more expressive. I realize I am very animated. I have the ability to be much more interesting and exciting and all over the place than I usually am. With these head-only videos, I've been getting away with being lazy. Now I want to stop being lazy and get much more animated. It's amazing how one little video can change your mind, expand and open things up, and get you thinking.
Learning from a secret service agent
I also listened to a video yesterday from Diary of a CEO with a great title, "Secret Agent." She'd been in the secret service and the NYPD, and she was talking about how much your body language communicates. I really resonated with how she described the way the people you surround yourself with make such a big difference. I've been saying for a long time that your partner is so important. You need to pick a partner who will help you. Your partner is the most important person you pick in your life. Whoever you're living with really can push you up or take you down. That interview is actually how I got back into listening to Vanessa Van Edwards again. I'd listened to her before, but for some reason I hadn't really internalized all of it as it relates to my own creativity.
I just love constantly learning and taking in new information, and then getting a chance to share it and apply it. What I love about how I work is that I apply things immediately. I take something in and immediately put it into practice. I do have to be careful, because if I take something in that messes me up, then I'm immediately applying something bad. But even on that point, the secret agent (I can't remember her name) talked about the importance of just making decisions, at least doing something. I'm always doing that too. I'm deciding to do this or that, always taking action. That's really good for me, because it keeps me always learning something. Each decision you make and each action you take results in learning something.
Watching the pros lift my tennis game
My tennis game was so on point today. I'm speaking as if this is the same day, though technically I just woke up the next day, but my tennis game was incredible. I'd finished watching Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi play in the US Open, and something about watching professional tennis players lifted my own game. I was slaying tonight in the tennis clinic. I was cranking these hard forehands right over the net. We were playing doubles, and I'm so happy there were three other players besides me. We were doing doubles, one-on-one, and then rotating players, so I played with everybody. For the first time, I won every single doubles round. They were just having a hard time returning my shots. I was cranking my forehand right over the middle, running up, playing aggressive at the net, pounding the ball down. I even got a lefty shot in there at some point. Just watching professional tennis players helped me be a better tennis player.
Yesterday I played the same way. I played much better, even though my opponent is still far superior to me. I enjoyed my play more from watching the professionals go at it. Then I understand my own perspective better: I'm just not that special. I'm a regular tennis player. This is a game of tennis.
Your stuff is not that special, and that's good news
That was one of the points the secret agent made: stop thinking you're special, that your problems are so different, that you're so unique. Almost everybody can relate to you. If you'll share with people, you find out they're having the same issues you are. That's why I've found that being a very open person has been so helpful, because you'd be amazed how much other people can understand you. We're all going through the same stuff. Your stuff is not special, and my stuff isn't special either. There are lots of people who do YouTube. There are lots of people who have creative jobs. There are lots of people learning to play tennis who have a family and kids. In my neighborhood, there are lots of people who got their houses flooded. Your life situation is not that special. And because it's not that special, there are tons of people you can ask for help. As long as you have discernment, when you ask somebody for help you can tell whether it feels good, or whether it's the kind of thing you want to keep away from. In my experience, that combination of openness and discernment has made a huge difference.
It's amazing how much more animated this is, talking with my hands. I'm so excited to explore it.
A full, healthy day with family
Yesterday, which is technically the same day as this video, I went to a power yoga flow in the morning, which was great. I was up there doing push-ups and vinyasa flows, standing on one leg and everything. It really gets me fired up and full of energy. I also did my one-mile run under nine minutes for the first time in forever. It's been at least a decade since I ran a mile in under nine minutes, and I didn't even feel like I was running that fast. I was just hauling. For the first time, I was kind of surprised when it was over. I was enjoying the run and having a good time, and I couldn't believe it was over already. This little one-mile run every day is firing me up so much. I absolutely love it.
I had hours this afternoon to spend family time with the kids. I washed dishes, got them food, and made some kale chips, using both kale from my hydroponic garden inside the house and kale from the garden outside the house. We had kale chips and asparagus for dinner, super healthy, super filling, plus a nice after-school time with the kids. We were getting the baseboards put in during the day, so I moved around some furniture. I recorded several videos, and I'm really excited to try this more relatable, hands-on format to see if it helps my videos. A lot of other people have copied me over the years, and other people have copied them, so a lot of crypto content is just this headless, talking-at-you experience.
I had another wonderful day. I went over to see my mom at the end of the day and walked the dog. That's when I listen to stuff on double speed too, which is nice because I can take things in twice as fast. Now, you don't want to take in junk twice as fast, but if you can take in good information twice as fast, that's just wonderful. I'm going to keep doing the videos in this format with the more hands-on approach. I uploaded some more gaming videos and didn't make any music on this day, but I'm always thinking about making my music and wondering how I can make it a little better, how I can have more fun with it but still do it really fast. If you want to follow more of these daily reflections, you can find them all on my Life playlist. It was such a great experience, and I really appreciate the chance to film this for you today.