How To Truly Get Better

Hey, how you doing? Alex here. Hey, thanks for joining me today and thanks for trying to get better. Right? If you guys follow me or read my emails, I'm always trying to find ways to get better and really to go through this journey myself. And I want to share as I go along and share what has helped me and what I've learned going through this process, especially a similar journey that you might be going through, whether it's through the recruiting process, baseball, but the topics today will definitely help with those. But it's also going to help just in general with your life. Whether it's relationships, whether it's school, whether it's how to deal with people, whether it's business, all of these can be applied. So I want to dive into it right now. I'm going to bring the whiteboard in here, the good old whiteboard. Make sure the light's not in there. All right? So the first one, seek and embrace constructive criticism. This is huge, especially on how to truly get better at something. Right? And again, this applies to a lot of things. We don't want to be the person that always has somebody patting us on our back, saying how good we are at all times, and you never get any constructive criticism, right? We're not going anywhere if we always get told of how good we are. We need somebody to also tell us where we need to improve, all right? And because it can help us improve, right? As we go through. So who do we go after? Who do we ask? How do we seek out these people? Well, it's people that are around you that you trust, okay? It can be your coaches, it can be your teachers, it can be your parents. Have an honest conversation with them and ask them, sit down and have a. Again, a good conversation of, hey, mom, where do you see that I can improve? Hey, coach, where do you see that I can improve? Hey, teacher, where do you see that I can improve? Let them tell you and then take that in. Embrace it. So this is the hard part, okay. Is when somebody tells you something that might be hard to hear. Try to just take that in, okay? And don't be so reactive of, hey, no, I'm not. Or, you know, whatever that response is. Try to take that in and see it from their perspective and see it as truth, because it is truth from their perspective, okay? And they're trying to help you, okay? Try to take that in and embrace it and work on improving that area. So seek it out and embrace it as we go. The next one is self awareness. And by the way, these are not in any particular order, okay? These are not in any particular order, but self awareness is huge. Hey, be self aware of what you're doing, how you're coming off to people, what you're doing in certain situations, whether it's at practice, whether it's at school, whether it's how you deal with certain interactions with people, okay? Be self aware. Be self aware of your body language. Be self aware of your tonality, okay? Tonality is huge. How you speak, right? Tonality. I fluctuate my tonality as I'm just speaking right here. Sometimes I go really high, right? And sometimes I talk like this. My tonalities change, and your tonality can change as you go, and it can change the aspect of the conversation as you go. So if I get an argument, I get really upset and mad. That's going to change the direction of the conversation, right? So make sure your tonality is good. And again, all this goes back to self awareness and then awareness in everything that you do. Having situational awareness. So we all really kind of know what, what is good and what is bad. Understanding the situations, understanding the people that you're around, understanding that maybe what's about to happen, all right? And whether it's going to be good or bad, if it's bad, we need to get out of there. We need to avoid that, okay? Whether it's the situation or the people. And if it's good, hey, recognize that in a. Well, helping in that situation, Be self aware in everything that you do. Pay attention to what you do and how you come off, okay? That's really important, okay? It's going to help you improve and get better. Now be your future self now, okay? A lot of us are aspiring to play at the next level to play college baseball. Well, I bet a lot of you want to be maybe a captain, whether it's on your high school team or your college team. Let's just say college, because we're talking about our future self right now, okay? And if you want to be that captain in college, okay, think about what that captain would be doing. What does a good captain look like? How does he act? What does he do? How does he interact with coaches? How does he interact with the players? What is he doing off the field, right? Making good decisions. Start acting that now, right? And then you're going to get to that spot a lot quicker and you're going to become that person, okay? So look at people that you admire, look at people that have good intentions all around and start implementing them and seeing yourself as that future Self of being that person and be that person. Now take action on that. That is huge. That's a big one. Okay? This is all kind of ties in, especially awareness and your future self being aware. All right? And surround yourself with good people and better people. I put good for a reason. Okay? Just because somebody's better at you than something, which, by the way, and basically everything that you do, there's always somebody just as good or better than you. Hey, you have to live with that, right? And you're trying to work to continue to get better. But again, just because they're better doesn't mean you need to surround yourself. Because what if they're not a good person? They're just super talented, right? But they don't make the best decisions. Maybe they're unethical or things like that. Don't surround yourself with those. Surround yourself with good people that are still good and still working to improve and trying to get better. That is going to help you get better. Look to mentors, look to people that are older than you, even younger than you, that you still admire. Man, that person just really has it put together. What does that mean? Again, they carry themselves the right way. They make good decisions, they're kind, they're respectful, but they're also a leader. Just a lot of a good person that's trying to get better. Surround yourself with those and it rubs off on you. But just like anything else, you. If you surround yourself with people that are making bad decisions, you know, whether it's in school and stuff like that, it can rub off on you. So be very careful with that last one. Take time to think. What do I mean by that? When was the last time you literally just took five minutes, you sat down in a chair and you just thought. You just thought, right? It's so hard right now. I'm included on this, okay? I'm really trying to work on this. Because what happens when we get bored or we don't have anything to do? What do we do? We pull out this thing. We pull out a phone, put that thing away and take time just to think about maybe your day that's coming up, or if it's at night, what's going to be happening tomorrow, or how to approach a game, or how to approach a test, or how to approach a class, or how to approach your parents about something, how to approach a coach, how to approach a relationship. Take time to think about it. Don't be so judgmental. Like, let your mind just work and have an intention to make good decisions and let Your mind, it's things powerful up here. Let it work. Right? Because again, there's so many times when we have a dull time, we get distracted, pull that phone out and then we're on social media and we're not actually taking time to think about maybe our future self. Okay, Take time to think each day and schedule that time. Last thing, I don't have it up here, but hey, plan out an ideal week for yourself. What would an ideal or perfect week look for? You write it down on a piece of paper. Monday, Tuesday, all the way through Sunday. And what time you wake up, what you're doing after you wake up during the day, what time you're going to bed, what does that day look like for you? And then try to execute that each week. You're not going to be perfect. You're not going to go 52 out of 52. That's how many weeks are in a year, by the way. Okay, but even if you hit half, what if you hit around 27 perfect weeks, that is outstanding in a year. That's great. Okay, so work on these. Look at this. And again, be self aware of what you're doing and really seek out and embrace constructive criticism. And of course, go through this list and see where you're at and try to improve that. I hope this helps you. I'll see you in the next video.