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These past couple days, I've been doing a lot of,

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not soul searching, but a lot of memory retrieving.

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And I've been really looking into my childhood,

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just trying to remember what my childhood was like,

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because if you're like most people,

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you actually don't remember it quite well.

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And it's because I have a theory that

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there's two different reasons.

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One, we don't really tell stories that often.

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Anymore in our society.

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And so, and I'm talking about personal stories,

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like just stories that happened in our lives

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and in our childhood, we don't really tell it that much.

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It's just not a norm anymore.

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And then it's also probably because

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ever since the Industrial Revolution,

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we've been, we kinda stopped just sitting around

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doing nothing, we kinda just stopped loafing around.

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And I say that because now instead of just sitting down

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and doing nothing and just thinking,

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we sit down and do nothing, but we're occupied.

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Like we're reading a book or we're watching a movie

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or we're playing video games or whatever it may be,

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we're still doing all these things.

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And we just don't really find the time anymore

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to just sit and think.

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Much less sit and think about our childhood.

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And so, I've been really making it like my mission

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to remember a lot about my childhood lately.

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And I have been talking about it a lot

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over the past couple days, but one thing,

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one massive lesson that I learned today was,

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I always thought that I ruined my life in middle school.

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And I always thought that I would have been

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so much better off, so much more progress made on my life

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if I didn't waste all my days playing video games.

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I always thought that I ruined my life playing video games.

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But then I was like trying to remember.

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Like I was doing this exercise that I heard about

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in the book called the Power Personal Storytime.

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And it was basically, we were doing this exercise

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it was basically where you take out a sheet of paper

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and you write down a vertical line in the middle of the sheet

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all the way up and down the paper.

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And you basically write down zero at the bottom

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and then your current age at the top

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and then you label the left side did not do

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and then the right side did do.

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And sorry if I sound weird, I'm shaking

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because I'm freezing and it's always cold in the basement.

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But pretty much you label the graph

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and then you divide the line based off

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of how many years you've lived.

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So for me, I'm 18.

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So I basically divvy up the line by years of two.

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So I say zero, two, four, six, eight, all the way to 18.

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And if you're older, you might wanna do years of three

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or years of five or 10, I don't know.

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But pretty much I divvy it up

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and then once you do that, you basically have to try

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and think back to all of the most impactful crossroads

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or decisions that you've made

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or someone has made for you in your life.

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So for example, some of the most impactful decisions

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that I wrote down where I started, I got an Xbox

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and then I COVID happened.

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So the pandemic happened.

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That was a huge impactful crossroad in my life.

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But it wasn't necessarily a decision I made.

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It was a decision made for me,

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whether it was like one person or like the world.

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Like it pretty much any crossroad,

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it doesn't have to be just like a decision.

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It's just like a crossroad in your life.

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So I got an Xbox, COVID happened.

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What else?

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I started going to the gym.

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I got cut from the soccer team.

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I started reading books.

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Like these were all huge crossroads.

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But the three that I wanna focus on right now

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are me playing Xbox.

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Like I started getting an Xbox in fifth grade.

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And then in junior years,

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when I decided not to go to college,

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that was another crossroad.

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And then senior year, I graduated early.

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So these are the three I wanna talk about.

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So then once you write down all of your,

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like your list of all of the crossroads,

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I basically, then I go through,

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like what you're supposed to do next is

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you go through and ask yourself,

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like you basically ponder these events.

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So you ask yourself, like,

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what were the circumstances that led up to this decision?

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Like, do I regret it?

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Do I not regret it?

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What would my life be like otherwise?

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Or like, what were the influences in other people's lives

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to help make this decision?

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Like all of these, like you basically just ponder it

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and ask like, why, why not?

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You like, you kind of just like get familiar with it.

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And so I'm sitting there in my room

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and I'm just pondering Xbox.

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I'm like, why did I get the Xbox?

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Like this ruined my life.

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Like I could have been so much better off.

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But then I just kind of let my mind drift onto,

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like I just let my mind bring up like the answers.

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Like why did I get the Xbox?

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Well, I got the Xbox because

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I had been, I had an Xbox 360.

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So by the way, if you don't know,

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there's an Xbox 360, which is the older one,

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and then the Xbox one, which was the newer one.

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And so I had an Xbox 360 and I played it,

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but I only played it when my friend came over

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and we would play together.

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So I probably played it like once a week

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or something like that.

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And we didn't play it all the time when he came over.

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We would just like play every once in a while.

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So I had the Xbox 360.

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And I knew that the Xbox one was so much better.

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And I knew that I couldn't play with my friends

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unless I had the Xbox one.

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And a bunch of my friends had the Xbox one.

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So, but not my best friend at the time.

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Like my best friend had,

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he didn't even have an Xbox at the time.

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And so I'm just like, oh, I want the Xbox,

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but I had the 360, so I don't really care

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to get it that much, even though all of my other friends

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had it.

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But then I, like Christmas season comes around

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and we're making our birthday or our Christmas list

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and my friend for, he wants to get the Xbox.

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So he decided to get the Xbox.

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And I was like, okay, now's the time.

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Now I have to get the Xbox because he was like the only person,

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like he was my best friend and I'm an introvert.

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So like when you have a best friend,

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that's like really your only great friend is what I'm trying.

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I don't know how to describe that.

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It's like you're, it's like the Pareto's principle.

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It's like the 80, 20.

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So if your best friend is like 80% of your friends

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and then the other people are just like 20%.

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Maybe like significant wise, I don't know.

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But pretty much my friends started,

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decided to get an Xbox.

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So I was like, okay, well now I got to get it

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because I don't want to be left out.

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And so I'm sitting there in my room,

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just remembering this memory.

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I realized that I had FOMO, fear of missing out.

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I didn't want to miss out from like what was going on

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on the Xbox.

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I didn't want to miss out while my friends were playing

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Xbox.

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And so that's something that I realized.

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I had FOMO, so then I made the decision to get an Xbox

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even though it was bad for me.

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I didn't know it was bad for me at the time,

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but in hindsight, FOMO, and then I got the bad thing.

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So fast forward, I quit Xbox, I sell it,

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I delete all my accounts.

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This was like last summer, so a couple months ago.

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And I did stop playing Xbox like a little bit while before

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that, but I didn't actually make the decision

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to sell my Xbox until a little while after I quit.

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So then I, so then after that,

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I, going back to the graph, like the original activity

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of writing down the vertical line and labeling all of your

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like crossroads in your life.

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So then once you do that, you, I don't know if this was

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like part of the activity, but what I ended up doing

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was I was like, how are these related?

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Like how did this crossroad impact the rest of my life?

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So I'm asking myself, how did this impact the rest

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of my life?

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Well, obviously it ruined my life because I would have been

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so much better off, but then I realized that it's not quite

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how I expected because then going back to the next

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crossroad of my life, or not the next one, but like the next

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one that I'm focusing on right now is I decided to not go

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to college.

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And so I'm thinking, how is this, how did getting an Xbox

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affect me not going to college?

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Well, I learned my lesson that just because I have FOMO

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doesn't mean I should go into it because it's bad for you.

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It could be bad for you.

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I learned my lesson from Xbox, from getting Xbox.

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So then I learned that lesson and then that prepared me

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for my future because I had FOMO for college.

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I didn't want to miss out on what people were doing

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at college, but then I was like, but it's not going to be

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good for me.

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Like it's probably not going to be good for me.

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Like I don't want to waste four years of my life working on

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like a career that I'm going to have to work for someone else

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for the rest of my life.

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I want to focus on my own things and actually work for

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myself and build my own future.

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So I realized that college is probably not good for me.

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So that prepared me.

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And obviously I didn't realize this lesson at the time,

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but me pondering, me sitting there in my room,

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questioning how are these connected?

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Well, it prepared me to not go to college.

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And then I'm like, how did Xbox connect to me graduating

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early from high school?

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Well, the decision to graduate early from high school,

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senior year, cut senior year short, which is probably the

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most fun of the four years out of all of them,

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the decision to cut the most exciting year off short

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in high school to pursue my passions,

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even though I may fear missing out on things.

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Getting an Xbox and the lesson I learned from that

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prepared me for what was to come.

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It prepared me for graduating early.

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And I then connected it all together because,

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and I basically kind of like confirmed all of this because,

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or I realized that this is actually a huge advantage.

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I always thought that Xbox was terrible for me.

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I always thought that I'd be so much better off

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if I never played video games.

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I thought that I would be so good, so progressed

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in myself improvement in my life and everything,

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if I never played video games.

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But now I'm kind of changing my mind and I'm thinking,

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well, I needed to go through that to prepare me

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for what was to come because I was talking to my friend

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at school like a couple months ago,

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telling him that I was graduating early.

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And he was like, whoa, I kind of want to do that,

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but don't you worry about like missing out?

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And I didn't think anything of it at the time,

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but in hindsight, I was thinking,

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like I was pondering that memories.

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And I realized that this guy was not prepared.

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He didn't have that, like he didn't go to the bottom

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of the pit like I did playing video games.

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So he wasn't prepared to make the decision,

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the tough decision to stop going to high school.

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He wasn't prepared to make that decision,

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even though it may have been good for him.

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So playing Xbox actually like dramatically improved my life.