Welcome back to the newsletter! It’s been a great new year so far, filled with a ton of action — I’ve loved it so far. Hope yours has been great, too.
Ideas
Heal whatever’s stopping you from executing. If you can’t execute, there’s something in the way that is essential to heal at a root cause level. Then, as soon as you’re able to, get to work. I healed some key blockages this week, especially around my perfectionism, slow creative speeds and my resistance around getting things done in the evening. Since I focused on healing these, I’ve been dialled in. The action has been great, my creative speed has been infinitely faster — and I’ve been working at night again! This stuff works.
Focus on building your videos for retention and YouTube will reward you. I spent a ridiculous amount of time editing the video of my first drone flight with watch time in mind and delivering the best video I could make. Well, it paid off big. After receiving high enough watch time, YouTube began recommending it to the drone community and I’m up to 5K views as of writing, along with 350+ hours of watch time and a ton more subscribers. When you make great videos that people statistically want to watch and then tell YouTube exactly what the video is about and who it’s for with SEO, YouTube will help you get it out.
People on the sidelines are often the quickest ones to criticize. They’re stuck in a state of inaction and to make themselves feel better about it, they’ll be quick to judge you on your actions. If they were truly in the game, there would be mutual respect for their fellow competitors who are actually in the arena, taking action. They also wouldn’t have the extra time or energy to sit there and judge you for how you’re doing things — they’re focused on their own lane.
You are not your number of followers or subscribers, how many likes you get on your content or the other metrics you deal with. Though these numbers are useful, they are just feedback and not something to base your identity around. Ideally, you don’t have an identity at all, but if you’re going to, don’t base your identity around something outside of your control that could change at any moment. Instead, choose an identity that based on what’s within your control, is internally derived and can’t be ripped out from underneath you.
Resources
The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. I’m only an hour in, but this has been a great guide so far for cleaning the right way as I prepare to go through my possessions before we move at the end of the month.
Jackson Triggs Cabernet Sauvignon boxed wine. I always knew of boxed wine from college students trying to save money, but if you can find the right flavour for you and you can let go of your fanciness for a second, the deal on boxed wine is great. Thanks for the gift, Dad! Bonus tip that I got from my Mom this week, too: try drinking your wine out of a mug. It makes it taste so much better.
AOC’s Hypocrisy on Full Display in Florida by Ben Shapiro. This is a prime example of the elected clowns at the moment: they say one thing and then they do the opposite. These people don’t actually believe what they were saying anymore. They’ll lock down their liberal location but then move or travel to a republican location because they don’t want to participate in their own restrictions. So many of these people don’t give a flying fuck about you and it’s time we stop electing people who just want the celebrity, financial and power gain that comes from being an elected official.
How I Edit My Photos by Peter McKinnon. As I begin to get more serious about photography and lightroom, this helped me a ton by showing through example what the software can do, his creative process for editing photos and inspired me to be even more creative with my future images.
Latest
100+ subscribers. Within just a week, thanks to the success of the drone video, I not only hit 100 subscribers, but I’m now up to 150+ as I write this. I’m so thankful for all the new people who found the video so enjoyable that they decided to stick around and see what else I’m going to make, too. Honestly, because I’ve been so used to minimal metrics over the past 4 years, this feels like I just got 10,000 subscribers, lol.
7+ new videos on my second channel. I’m not kidding when I say magical things can happen when you clear your energetic blocks. I’ve been ripping through edits and I posted daily last week. Here were my favourites: Launching my main channel, deleted scenes from the drone video and my first time voting.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.
Until next week, much love.
—Josh
