Matt Paulson presents a short motivational video arguing that people “become the content that they consume.” He explains the idea as a corollary to the adage that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and gives everyday examples (movies, business podcasts, finance books, fitness media, gaming, comedians) to show how consistent exposure shifts thinking and behavior. Paulson describes a personal experiment: reducing business-focused media and instead consuming Christian/disciplehip, books on marriage/fatherhood, and fitness material (e.g., Wild at Heart; The Meaning of Marriage; Jesse Itzler’s SEAL month) and reports short-term increases in motivation and family-focused behavior. He closes by encouraging viewers to try changing their media diet to test the effect.
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Hey, guys. Matt Paulfsen here in this video, I want to talk about a habit that you can implement in your life that will help you become the person that you want to be. There's an old saying that you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. Say you hang out with avid runners all the time, there's a pretty good chance you're going to start running. If you only ever hang out with drug addicts, there's a pretty good chance you're going to end up doing some drugs. And I think the same is true. The people that are around you really do rub off on you. And if you hang out with better people, you are going to become a better person yourself. But I don't want to focus on that principle today. I want to focus on a corollary of the principle that you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. And the corollary principle that kind of goes right along with that is the idea that you become the content that you consume. Don't miss this. You become the content that you consume. So the idea is that listening to somebody's podcast twice a week really isn't that different than spending time with them, having coffee with them. So if you are constantly reading books by the same author, listening to audiobooks in the same genre, or listening to a bunch of similar podcasts, you're naturally going to move your life in the same direction as the messages you are consuming. I think you probably already know this to be true, even if you haven't put it into words before. Who hasn't come out of a superhero movie and thought, man, I could just conquer the world right now, or I just wish I could take a leap and fly out of here, take a leap and fly into the sky. Because you just watch the latest Marvel movie. Granted, you're probably not going to fly because you watched a Marvel movie, but you're definitely going to be thinking about it and be full of energy and motivated because you watched a superhero movie of a superhero doing something very important and amazing. A little bit more down to earth. If you are only listening to business podcasts, you're probably going to be thinking a lot more about business in general, new businesses that you could start or how to improve your existing business. And this was me for years. I only ever read business books, listen to business podcasts. I mean, we're talking 30 business books a year, 20 business podcasts at a time, listen every week. And as a result, I was always thinking about my business and how to improve it. And that's worked out pretty well because MarketBeat is an awesome business now. And yeah, there's lots of other ways this could apply too. If you only think reading personal finance books and listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio, you're going to be thinking about your finances a lot more and how to get out of debt and improve your financial situation. If you listen to a bunch of fitness books or read a bunch of fitness books, watch a Bunch of Fitness YouTube videos, you're probably going to find yourself working out more. Because if you're constantly consuming content about a single topic, you think about that category a lot more, and consciously or subconsciously, you start to act to improve that area of your life based off the ideas that you picked up in the book or in a podcast or on radio or wherever. I think this is also true about unhelpful content that you consume. So if you're watching people play video games all day, you're probably just going to end up working out less and doing less healthy things and playing a lot more video games, which totally fine in moderation. But if your whole life is surrounded by that, that's probably not a good thing. If you're looking at shopping websites all the time, you're probably going to end up buying a lot of stuff you don't need. If you only ever watch YouTube videos of raunchy comedians, you're probably going to start making a lot more inappropriate jokes just because that's the content that you consume. In my personal life, this principle has really revealed itself in the last few weeks. I decided that a lot of the business books and podcasts I listened to were getting repetitive and starting to be really not super helpful. So I decided to start listening to other types of nonfiction content, mostly because I've kind of read what there is to read in the business book world, and the podcasts tend to be the same after a couple hundred episodes. So I decided, let's try something else for a while. Specifically, I decided to focus on books and podcasts that would help me become one a better Christian two. A better father and then three or a better father and a better husband and then three a better athlete. So I thought, okay, what are the best books I've read kind of in these categories and what are some other that maybe I'd want to read and see if that does anything for my life? And with it. It started out as an experiment. It was just more I was kind of sick of business content and decided I was ready for something else. So I reread a couple of books that have been influential in my life. One of them was Wild at Heart by John Eldredge, and second is the Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller. I've read both those in the last week and all I've been thinking about is how can I be the best father to my children and be the best husband I can to my wife? I think if you ask Karine how has Matt been the last week? She might have some good stuff to say, but you'd have to ask her about that. I also read Jesse Itzler's book about how he lived with a Navy SEAL for a month and the workouts they did. If that didn't motivate me to get up at 7am this morning and ride on my bike for 10 miles before I'm mowing cups, I don't know what did. That book is very motivating to anybody that wants to work out and get in shape. So I really do think that reading these types of books have implemented my life, at least in the short term. Who knows in the long term? But I think if I consume more of this type of content, I'll continue to move in that direction. So I'm going to continue this experiment. I'm going to listen to fewer business podcasts and audiobooks for probably quite a while and kind of focus on these other personal improvement categories and see how it impacts my life over the next several months. So that's kind of the principle that I wanted to highlight in this video. You start to become the content that you consume. So maybe consider changing the type of content that you consume and focus on more on content that will make you a better person if you implement the ideas that you consume. So maybe watch a little bit less Netflix this month. Pick a fitness book, fitness audiobook or leadership audiobook or a church leadership and discipleship book if you happen to be a Christian. And just try it. See what happens in your life. This is an ongoing experiment for me and I'd love you to join me in this process. Consider reading something a little bit different than you might normally read, or listening to something a little bit different than you might normally listen to and see if changing the content that you consume makes any changes in your life and see what happens. I encourage you to try it. Thanks for watching. Bye.
