DECIDE and Achieve Your GOALS For 2023

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Almost done with the year 2022. Almost starting a new year. As we do every year, a good time to think about your goals. And a good time to think about your achievements.

Achievements meaning your successes. Your improvements. Our title today, Decide and Achieve Your Goals. We're going to talk about decisiveness, why decisiveness is so, so important.

I have some stories about this. The negative side of not being decisive, the positive benefits of being decisive. Join my VIP program at EffortlessEnglishClub.com. Decide and join my VIP program.

EffortlessEnglishClub.com. Start now. Start the year strong, the new year. You can start even before the new year, just before, so that you make some strong progress.

When you join my VIP program, I'll send you some emails with links to videos. And the videos are from other VIP students. They made the videos themselves, and they talk about their success, and they give you advice, they give you ideas how to succeed also. A lot of my VIP members have...

already become highly fluent in English really excellent English speakers you've heard me talk to some of them and they're really great and there are many many more of them but I appreciate those who made the videos for me and wanted me to share them with other new VIP members so effortlessenglishclub.com alright we'll talk about New Year's and all that but first let's talk about decisiveness

What is it? What is decisiveness? What does that mean? To be decisive. Decisive. So, of course, this is the same root, same word root as decision. Right?

Decision. We need to make a decision. To decide. Right? To decide is the verb. To decide. Right? It means to choose. Right? To choose what you're going to do.

But it's more than just choosing. It means a It's a strong choice. It means you choose and you also take action. This is why deciding is more powerful than choosing.

It's more powerful than just planning. We can dream about a lot of things, but then never do them. We can plan a lot of things, but never do them. We can have goals and never do them.

Never take any action at all, right? But when we decide, it's very strong. We decide it means we're not going to do anything else. We're doing this one thing and we take action to try to do it.

We might fail. We might succeed. We might, the decision might be a bad idea. It might be a good idea. But the main thing is we take action. This is the key thing about decisions is that a decision is not just a plan.

A decision is not just a choice. A decision is also taking action, doing something. So that is very, very, very important. And so decisiveness is the noun.

A decision is also a noun, but decisiveness is the... Sorry, it's an adjective. It's kind of like the quality of being... good at decisions, right? If you say he is a decisive, I guess decisiveness is a noun.

Decisive is the adjective. Decisive, he is a decisive person. It means he, the guy, he makes decisions quickly. He makes strong decisions. He takes actions.

The opposite is indecisive. So if you say he is indecisive, It means can't decide. Maybe you've been this way. Where you can't make a decision. You have to decide something.

You need to do something in your life, right? Maybe choose a job. Maybe choose something to study. Maybe, you know, whatever. A lot of different things.

Where to go to vacation. It could be something small. It could be something big. But you need to make a decision, but sometimes we get kind of lost and worried about our decisions, and we won't decide.

We don't do it. We keep thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it and planning and thinking and planning and thinking and never do anything.

That's called being indecisive. It means not decisive. Indecisive. Okay, so indecisive. Indecisive. Let's talk about this. I want to share on the screen real quick just some definition I found on some website.

I don't even know what the website is, honestly. Let's take a look. Decisiveness. What is decisiveness, they ask. If you look on my screen, this is just some website.

I don't even know what it is, but they have a nice definition of decisiveness. Decisiveness is a trait or characteristic that describes people. So it's a description, describing a person.

And what kind of person? It tells about what kind of person they are. What kind of person is decisive? A person that is biased towards action, even though they face uncertainty.

I like that last part. Biased towards action is the first part. Biased. Biased means they prefer action. Their first choice. Their preference or their first choice is what they want most.

Action. So this is the key thing. Decisive. It's not just thinking. It's not just planning. It's a bias, right? A desire for action. Doing things. And then the second part is very important.

Even though they, the people, face uncertainty. So this is the very important part about being decisive. Is that decisive people make decisions even when they are uncertain.

Right? Anybody can make a decision if it's totally clear. If you know you have 100% success chance. Easy to make a decision. But what if you're not certain?

Usually we're not certain. Usually we don't know if the decision is good. We don't know if we will succeed. We don't even know if we're doing the right thing sometimes.

It might be a bad decision. We're not sure. There's always some uncertainty in life. But decisive people, they make a decision and they take action, even though they're uncertain.

And that's the key thing. is not becoming afraid of uncertainty. This is what causes problems for so many people and why they are indecisive, why they can't decide or why their decisions are not strong.

It's because they're not sure, right? Oh, I'm not sure, I'm not sure. So they just keep worrying and worrying and worrying and worrying. I've seen this in a lot of people.

Recently I've seen it with some young people in my family. My extended family. So, for example, you know, I know a couple people actually. Excuse me. I know a couple people who have asked me for help to start a business and they want to start a business.

And I say, great, good. And I, you know, try to help them a little bit, give them some advice. And they think about it and they think about it and they plan and they think about it. And I say, okay, just, you know, make a, you know, decide what you want to do, what you want to sell.

and decide on your marketing, and then just do it. But they never actually do it. They just keep thinking about it and worrying, and maybe they think of a marketing plan. But then they think, oh, I'm not sure.

Is this the right marketing plan? Is this the right advertising or not? So they never try it. And they think, oh, no, maybe this is better. They think of something else.

But they're still not sure. Maybe that's not the right plan. Oh, maybe I'll try something else. Or a common one is price. Let's say they're selling, I don't know, let's say they make shirts and they want to sell shirts online to people.

But they can't decide on the price of the shirt. Should I charge $20 a shirt? I'll charge $20. Oh, no, maybe that's too high. I don't know. Maybe it should be $10.

It should be really cheap. Oh, no, maybe it should be $15. No, no, maybe $20 was right. And they keep going around and around and around and around and around.

And they never actually sell the shirts. In fact, they never even make them. They just get lost in indecision, not deciding. Right? Instead of just choosing one, just choose.

You don't know. You're never certain. Just choose. $20. Try to sell your shirt. at $20 and then see what happens. And if nobody buys them, maybe try a different price.

But you've got to just make a decision. You've got to make a decision. In other words, you have to choose and take action. Very important. I see this with English, with students out there who they keep trying and trying and trying and trying different programs.

Maybe I'll try AJ's VIP program. Oh, maybe I'll try studying grammar. Maybe I'll go to the conversation school in my neighborhood Maybe I'll go back to college and do a university course.

Maybe I'll study this grammar textbook. Maybe I'll take the TOEFL test and study for the TOEFL test. But they never really do anything. They do a little of one and then they change and they change again and then they change again and they change again and never really decide.

They never really focus and make a decision. Maybe I'll focus on grammar. Maybe I'll take a test. Maybe I want to do better... real speaking and conversation and this is a problem because then they end up doing nothing right they take no action or very little action they take weak actions so they never achieve anything so this is a common common problem and I recently saw this again with another relative you know more other people in my family and other people I know where they just can't decide

So why is this such a problem? Why is it such a problem, this indecision? And I think it's a couple things. Number one is the fear of failure, which, you know, part of that is like the fear of rejection, the fear of looking foolish, the fear of looking stupid, right?

But basically, these are all different kinds of fears of failure, just different kinds of failure. Fear of failing, right? Fear of making a mistake. Fear of failing.

And this just comes down to caring too much what other people think. Worrying too much about what other people think. And the truth is, first of all, the truth is most people don't care about you quite that much.

They don't really care if you succeed and they don't really care if you fail. And anyone who's going to laugh at you or... attack you if because you failed they're not really a real friend right so you shouldn't care about what they think anyway right it's your life it's not their life so you've got to learn to stop caring so much about what other people think and we all have a social you know some social instinct we we of course we care some what other people think and we

I don't care about other people, but you can't worry about other people's opinions about your decision so much and certainly not about succeeding or failing. You have to be comfortable failing because you're going to fail a lot, a lot, a lot in life.

And it's better to be decisive and fail than to be indecisive and don't do anything, right? People who are indecisive, they think they're waiting to be perfect, but the truth is they never really do anything. They don't succeed either, but they also don't fail because they just never do anything, right? So they avoid failing by doing nothing, by just thinking and talking instead of doing.

When you're decisive, you will fail more. For sure, you're going to fail more because you're going to make some bad decisions. especially when you're learning something new, you're trying something difficult, you're going to fail and fail and fail. You might even completely fail, right?

Meaning you might decide that, wow, I've just failed and failed and this is not for me. I've tried music several times in my life. I've tried guitar. I tried bass guitar.

When I was young, I tried playing the trumpet. And I failed at all of them, meaning I never really learned to play decently, not even good, just not basically never really learned to play much at all um so you know you could say i was a failure but so what you know i tried it i tried it and i finally decided you know i just don't think music's for me it's just something about it i i like the idea of it i like listening to it but um playing music it's just something it doesn't fit right just it just doesn't i don't know why i don't know why i've tried it many times and uh that's fine this happens in life sometimes it's okay

So what? Who cares? And then there are other things, like I try jujitsu, even though I'm kind of old to do jujitsu, and I also fail all the time in jujitsu, but something about it I love. I just love, and I keep doing it, and I'm like, this fits me.

I really enjoy this. I love doing it. I like failing. I like succeeding. I like just all of it, and I continue to do it. So this is how you figure out in life what really fits you.

How you find your purpose in life. How you find what you're good at. How you find your different passions in life. By being decisive. By just deciding and doing.

And jumping in. And failing a lot. And failing a lot. And it's the same with English. You've got to jump in and just do it, okay? If you want to try effortless English, well, jump in and do it.

Get one of my courses. Join my VIP program. Just do it. Don't think about it. You can always quit. You can always stop, okay? But jump in, do it, and do it for six months, right?

Because then you'll see. Then you'll know if it's for you or if it's not for you. And it's the same with anything else you want to do. If you decide that you really need the TOEFL test for some reason, okay, fine.

Take it. Just decide. and register for a date, and take it, and get a score, maybe it'll be a good score, that you're happy about, and maybe it'll be a bad score, that you don't like, but just do it, okay, a lot of people will just keep thinking about it, thinking about it, I'll take the TOEFL next year, no, no, I'll take it in two years, I'll take it in five, and they never take it, just take it, if you really, take it now, and you'll find out, and if it's not,

as high as you need, maybe you want to go to grad school in America or something, then, well, then, you know, you've got to work on your English more. And you've got to specifically work on that kind of academic English.

That's okay, too. But it's really important in life to make decisions. And it's the same with, like, jobs. People get lost. Like, I don't, especially younger people, they don't have any work experience or they don't have much work experience.

and they can't decide, what do I want to do? What kind of job? What do I want to study in school? Or what kind of job do I want to do? And they just think about it, think about it, think about it.

What you need to do is just decide. You pick something. It could be anything. Nursing. Okay? Get a... You could even get an assistant job. They're not ready to work, but it's easy to get those jobs.

And Do it for a year and see. Or maybe it won't last a whole year. But get a job as a nurse. Instead of thinking, I think I want to be a nurse. I think I want to be a nurse.

Maybe. I don't know. Should I be a nurse? Should I be a doctor? I don't know. Maybe I should be in business. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Well, of course, you'll never know until you do something. So just pick one. Let's say nurse. Decide. Boom. Go in. Get a job as a nurse or a nursing assistant before you do all the school.

Work in a nursing home. Work in a hospital. Be in that environment. Work with other nurses, with real nurses, trained nurses. Work with doctors. Work with all the techs.

Work with the patients. And then you'll get a better feeling about what the job really is. You'll get a better feeling if you like it or not, if it fits you or not.

And you might decide, oh, wow, this is not what I thought it was. This is, I don't like this. You know, and good. So then you decide you have, Decided.

You tried it. No, it's not for you. Great. Now go try something else. Pick something else and try it. And do it. You try something totally different like business.

Right? Or sometimes you find out the opposite. Then you love it. You're like, oh, this is great. I love working in a hospital. I love working with the patients and helping them.

Oh, I see. Now I really understand what nurses do every day. Not the TV version. Right? But the real life version. what they really do every day. I like it.

I think I can do that. And this is what I want to do. And now you've got a great motivation to go to nursing school. You have some experience. It'll help you get into nursing school.

You'll do better in nursing school because you have some real life experience in a medical environment. And much better, much better to just take action and be decisive.

And so you can see that There's really not a bad decision in that sense. I'm not saying there's never bad decisions. It can be really bad and cause you pain.

But most things in life, you gain experience. They're not dangerous. Nothing bad is going to happen to you if you decide to try it. Right? Right. So this is why it's going to endanger your life, cause you to do something terrible.

But, you know, most things that don't have kind of serious danger or moral problems, just try, just decide, just decide, decide and do, decide and do.

I've seen, especially young people, are so paralyzed. Paralyzed means they can't move. They're so afraid to make decisions, to appear foolish. They worry about what their parents will think.

They worry about what their friends will think. They worry about even what strangers will think. It's terrible. There's a sound problem. Let's try again.

Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Sound not good. Check, check, check. Now it's okay. Me too. All right, great. We're back. That was a YouTube problem, I think.

All right, so that brings us now to the new year, 2023. So people are saying something. It could be the cable. Let me check it. All right. Check, check, check.

Is the microphone good? Check, check, check. Check, check, check. Check, check, check. Checking the audio. Sorry, guys. It's good now. Sound change, but okay.

Oh, I think it looks like I'm getting a message from YouTube that it's a YouTube problem. Let me check my screen here. Oh, this is a YouTube issue, guys.

Okay, so it's not my microphone. This is lame YouTube. All right. So finally, 2023, as we know, every year people make New Year's resolutions, goals. I'll do another show soon about that after New Year.

But we need to be sure to take action when we do this, right? So it's good, maybe right now, the next couple days, you could think about what Do you want to do? What do you want to achieve?

What do you need to do next year? Right? But you don't want to think too long about it. You don't want to spend all of next year thinking about it and dreaming and planning and then never actually do it.

This is what a lot of people do. So if you want to start a business, start your business next year. Start it. I don't mean just think about it. I don't mean a business plan.

I mean, open your business and start taking customers next year. Preferably very soon next year. Okay? If you want to lose weight, don't just join a gym.

That's useless. Do something. You've got to do it. Start exercising. Right? It's not about joining a gym. Joining a gym does nothing at all. You need an exercise plan.

And I... A lot of people will spend a huge amount of time, a lot of time, trying to make the perfect exercise plan. But if you're in bad shape, if you don't have good fitness, you don't need a complicated fitness plan.

You just need to move. Go for a walk and do like two exercises for strength. You could just do an overhead lift and some kind of pulling motion. And then walk or run.

Do that. Do that almost every day. And that's a simple plan. Start simple. The most important thing is that you actually do something. Having a perfect plan is not necessary.

You can change your system. You can change the details later. That's easy to do. What's not easy for most people is to actually take action and to get started.

So that's the key thing. If you have goals with English for next year, you need to take actions immediately at the beginning of the year. Don't wait and wait and wait and think and think and think. And even if you buy something, if you join my VIP program, for example, it's not enough just to pay the money.

That doesn't do anything. You've got to actually use the lessons every day, right? You've got to start and do it every day. Start immediately. Some people, you know, they'll buy my courses and then they kind of download them and then they just wait, oh, I'll start using them later.

And then six months later, they have them on their computer or on their phone, but they still haven't done anything yet. That's no good. That's no good. That's not helping you at all.

You actually have to get started. Start right away. Start, you know, if you join the VIP program, start it the same day. Start doing the lessons that same day.

And if you're doing something else, if you get a TOEFL course or something, then again, start it immediately. The first day, start it. Do something. Action, action, action, right?

You can always change the details later. If you want to start a business, Start your business, you know, immediately. Better to just start your business with no plan at all.

Right? If you are not, if you're not foolish, if you do something super low budget, you're not risking a lot of money, then just start it. Start it, you know, start it this week.

Start it today. Start trying to sell whatever you're doing, whatever your service is or your product is. Start it right now and then figure out a better marketing plan later. Figure out the pricing later.

Make your product better later. All of these things, you know, figure out the taxes later. You've got time for all of that. Just get started. You can even make a whole business plan.

I recommend doing a business plan after you start. Unless it's a business that really requires a lot of money and you've got to get loans from banks and all that kind of stuff, that's when you maybe need some detailed business plan because the banks want it.

But if it's your first time and you're just starting something very small, low risk, just start it and figure everything out as you go. Right. And finally, this is the same true in terms of relationships and dating stuff.

That, you know, if there's a girl, if you're a guy and there's a girl you like, instead of sitting around, I don't know, should I just go out, just go talk to her. Okay, stop thinking about it. I'm worrying if she's the perfect girl for you. Who knows?

You never know until you talk to her. And, you know, will she like you? You won't know until you talk to her. So just go chat with her. Hi, how you doing?

You know, that's it. Give it a try. Just take some actions, okay? And then we'll talk about specifically different areas of your life to make goals and all of that.

We'll talk about that later. So let's get into our questions and comments now. And I'm sorry about the microphone. I keep getting these error messages from YouTube.

So YouTube's having problems. Surprise, surprise. Oh, cool. This is great. There's a great example. Ariel Rubel says, this year I plan to free myself from mental poison like social media and to stay focused on my goals.

My goals are learning English, finishing engineering school, physical health, and family. Awesome. Really great. So, what you want to do, Ariel, just as an example, is you need to take some clear, strong actions for these

decisions so social media what could you do delete your social media profile you could do that you could do that and that would be a strong action a strong decisive action wouldn't it or just starting today don't log on you know log out and don't use it for so you can don't check it don't use it nothing right starting right now today right so it's a great it's a great plan so but take an action take an immediate action to make it into a strong decision oh cool Anna Gregoriova says I recently took up learning Chinese and I'm sure you'll do great you've done so well with English I'm sure you're gonna do great with Chinese too I was strongly decisive about starting Chinese of course

I'll keep learning English. Every day starts with your podcast. I'm obsessed with them. Yeah, that's great, Anna. Good choice for language, I think, economically and opportunities.

Russian, Chinese, English, Arabic. Spanish is also very useful because it covers so many countries. Anna says. Anna, talking about a problem I also have.

The most difficult area for me is I can't be decisive in fasting and cutting sweet stuff. I have two little children. I'm absolutely exhausted. At the end of the day, I start eating sugar.

Yeah, me too. I do it. It's a weakness. So you just do your best, you know. Do your best. Sometimes, you know, we make a decision. We struggle, we struggle, we struggle with certain things.

I mentioned music as an example for me that in some things maybe... they're just not right for us and in other things maybe the timing's not right we're just something in our life makes it very very tough to do something so like you've got small children and um going like very low carb and fasting a lot i've also i haven't been fasting as much uh i'm not at all really except when i get sick um because uh you know same thing i've got two toddlers and they're twins and they they

When I'm fasting, the energy drops when you're fasting usually, and you kind of want to lay around and do nothing, and I just can't do that right now. So, yeah, it's okay.

It won't last forever. It'll get easier, and then you'll be able to get back on it. So I'd say just do your best. Do your best. Try to make improvements.

You don't always have to be perfect. You can just improve it. Eat less sugar. Eat more healthy stuff. Or, you know, in terms of sugar, eat healthier kinds of sugar.

Instead of eating a candy bar, eat, you know, dried dates or, you know, dried fruits and more, you know, other fruits and other maybe more healthy sweets.

Do your best. Ah, good. Priscilla Candido says, Hi, AJ from Brazil. Happy New Year from my family to yours. Thank you. I've been watching your content for a long time and love it.

Can't live without it. It's so powerful. Thank you so much. Aparva says, Lord Buddha, always bless you. Great, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you. We've got people from India saying, oh, and he's from, he or she's from India, from Mumbai.

Yeah. Chara says, I think that we hate to fail or lose. This is why we waste a lot of time thinking about the most perfect and complete idea, which obviously doesn't exist.

Exactly. You know, this is another nice jujitsu. Jujitsu connects to life so much. It really does. So when you're fighting jujitsu, wrestling, basically, there's sort of the same idea, right, that

If things are happening, the other guy's trying to beat you, you're trying to win. And if you try to think about what's the perfect move, what's the perfect thing I can do right now, then there is no perfect move, first of all. And you end up just not moving at all.

right, we're moving very slowly, and you're thinking everything becomes slow, and a lot of times it's better just to do something, just do something and try it fast, and yeah, maybe it doesn't work, but then you just try something else, and try something else, and try something else, and with experience you get better, with experience you'll make better decisions and faster decisions, but you only do that by deciding and doing, instead of just trying to freeze and not do anything, right,

So, you know, it'd be like, I guess, in boxing, if you just covered your head all the time. I guess that would protect you or, you know, just cover up all the time. But then you're not doing anything. You're not learning.

You're not getting better. Your timing doesn't improve. Your power doesn't improve. Your defense doesn't improve. Your movement doesn't improve. If all you do is just, you know, do nothing.

Right? And that's kind of true in all things in life. Perfect. There's no perfect, first of all. There's no perfect end. Second of all, to make better decisions and get better results, you have to just try more and do more, do more, do more, do more, do more.

Usually in life, it's better to take action, make a decision, think about it a little bit, and then make your decision quickly and just take action. And then you can change later if you need to. You're never stuck.

We're rarely stuck. I guess some decisions are permanent. But... A lot of decisions are not permanent. Most smaller decisions are not. In smaller decisions, there's no need to think about them too much.

And Ariel, oh, cool, this is great. George Suarez says, it's good to me. When I'm watching you, I understand 90% I am Brazilian. Man, that's awesome, George.

That's really great. 99%, fantastic. Oh, cool. Ariel says, taking action was my best decision this year. I threw away fear. I joined two academic competitions.

I was second place in both. I earned a great internship opportunity. There you go. See, it's the thing. When you take action, you get other opportunities that you never even imagine sometimes.

You don't even know about them, right? When you take action and do things, opportunities, new things open for you. And until you take action, you don't even realize that's possible.

That's a very good point. Hey, Ibrahim Ali, thank you. It says he's been a member for 18 months. Wow, thank you so much for supporting the YouTube channel, too.

Ibrahim says, how's it going? Long time no see. I'm glad to catch you live. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, Ibrahim. I know I've been less active on Gab.

The last few weeks has been busy for Christmas. Good things. Just family visiting. My cousin visited. We had a nice visit with my cousin from America.

She lives in Tokyo now. She visited Osaka this week. So we got to go out with her, with the kids. It was very nice. I've been busy with some family stuff and getting ready for Christmas and things like that.

Things will be more calm after New Year. Yeah, Fernando Diaz says, waiting for the perfect moment to do something is useless. The best moment to do anything in life, whatever in life, is now.

I agree, the bias towards action, right? Meaning, take action now. Usually the best decision, the best thing to do. All right, then the microphone was having problems.

Sound is better now, it looks like. Yeah, like Chara says, trying something and failing is still better than not doing it at all. At least you gain experience. And this is a huge point.

Everyone knows this, right? People say this all the time. But not many people actually believe it. Meaning they don't actually do it. When it's time to actually do something, they don't do it.

They're afraid of failing. But this is 100% true that when you fail, you gain experience. And this helps you make better decisions later, and get better results later, and fail less later.

So, you know, you hear these little sayings all the time, and they sound nice, but they really are true, that, you know, as long as you learn, failing leads to success. Many, many, many, many times, failing can lead to success.

because you learn, learn, learn. Now, if you don't learn, of course, that's not going to happen. So you do have to think about it and do some learning as you fail. But you don't learn anything at all when you do nothing.

When you do nothing, you learn nothing because you get no results. You get no feedback. Nothing happens. You're just lost in your head. Well, you can Kiet asked, will you continue doing intermittent fasting this year, AJ?

Dr. Sten Eckberg is a good recommendation for us. Dr. Sten Eckberg, I'm not familiar with him specifically. I have more followed Snake Diet. And what's the other guy's name?

I can't remember the other guy's name. There's another professor guy that I've watched. But intermittent fasting in general is great. That's probably what I'll do more this year, I think, is my plan is to do some intermittent fasting.

My challenge is I like going very low carb and fasting, but my challenge is with jiu-jitsu because jiu-jitsu requires carbs and energy. I don't do well in jiu-jitsu when I'm fasting a lot and when I'm very low carb. So it becomes tricky. So I'm trying to figure out a system where like how to eat where maybe jujitsu morning, like jujitsu days, like in the morning, maybe eat carbs and then other days, low carb and fasting on one of my days off.

I don't know. We'll see. It becomes complicated when you add in exercise. It can be. If you just if you just want to fast, if you can take a break, it's easy if you can just rest because that's ideally what what we should do.

Okay, Ibrahim Ali with a very, very, very good question. And I hear many people say 2023 will be a bad year economically. I think for the West it will be.

A lot of people are hopeless and depressed this year, but we have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Yes, I believe. I don't know if it's going to be every part of the world.

I think that certain parts of the world are going to be fine. or at least much better than others. But I think Europe, North America are probably going to have a bad, bad year.

I don't know about South America and Africa and other parts, but we'll see. So, you know, again, I think the way here's the good news. We don't really need that much.

We're used to being in this, I've been thinking about this lately myself, we're used to being in this materialistic culture, where we have so much stuff, but most of it is excess, meaning it's extra.

Also, we don't really need, what do we need? We need food, preferably, preferably healthy food. We need some kind of shelter, so we don't freeze, and clothing, shelter clothing, so we don't freeze to death.

You know, maybe some basic health care, hopefully, if you live in a country where that's not too expensive. That's mostly it, right? It's a place to live, decent food, clothes, you know. You have to realize that even just a couple hundred years ago, people didn't even have electricity.

We tend to think now that electricity, for example, is a necessity. But it's not, you know, if you've ever been camping, I've been camping. If you've been, especially if you've been camping or hiking for several days in a row, you realize you can certainly survive without electricity.

And, you know, in terms of housing and houses, we don't need huge, giant houses. I think in a lot of the world, certainly in the United States, The houses are gigantic. They're much bigger than people need.

Much, much, much bigger. So we don't need that. We could live in just one room with our family. We could. You know, it's a little crowded or whatever, but we're not going to die.

It's okay. And there are actually many advantages to having a small place. I think for families, having a small place makes your family closer together.

People have giant houses. Then the kids can hide in different rooms. Everybody's in a different room. you're not interacting as much so I think that there's no don't be afraid is one of my is my point about this because you don't actually need a huge amount of money and stuff to be happy to have a good life okay so if we do have bad years economically coming focus on the key things you know in terms of money you need to eat

And you need some kind of shelter or clothing. If you have enough clothing, you don't even need a lot of shelter, okay? Right? Like the most extreme example would be camping.

You could live in a tent if you had a good sleeping bag and a really great, like in winter I'm talking about. So if you lived in a cold, cold climate, you would need like a serious tent and a sleeping bag and clothing, right? Right? Do you want to live in a tent?

Probably not, but my point is you wouldn't die, right? People live, mountain climbers live on the side of Mount Everest in tents for, you know, sometimes for a month or more.

So don't be afraid. Prepare a little bit. Just make sure you're okay. Just like think of the worst thing. What if there was no electricity? What would I do?

How would we live? Well, we will put on all our clothes, I guess, in the winter. In the summer, no problem. Just take off your clothes, right? And just summer is maybe not comfortable, but you can still be fine.

You can still be OK. And then in terms of food, again, you plan out what's like the cheapest, simplest food that's still good nutrition. You know, maybe it's just a big bag of rice or flour to make bread and some vegetables.

You can live on that. right? You could live vegetarian, rice, vegetables, and bread, and don't eat at restaurants, and, you know, beans, right? A lot of people around the world still live on very little money, just rice, beans, some veggies, and fruits, right?

Maybe a little meter fish, if you can get it. So, no need to be afraid, and you can still have a happy... that's not what makes us happy that as long as if you have that then your happiness is more decided about your family and your you know faith and your your mindset and all these other things in life and we can so i would say simplify your life simplify simplify simplify your life even if you are making a lot of money now you've got a great job you're making a lot of money everything's great financially for you

Instead of spending a lot now, cut back, simplify, simplify, simplify your life as much as you can. And then if there's a bad year, if you still have your job, well, then you'll be doing very well. You'll be saving money. You won't have any stress.

You won't be afraid at all. On the other hand, if you do have problems, if you lose your job or there's, or just, you know, I don't know, if everything becomes more expensive or there's other problems, you'll be doing okay because you're used to living simply. It won't be so difficult or stressful for you because you're already used to it.

You're used to living simply. It doesn't bother you. You're not afraid. So I would say live, live, live simply, as simply as you can. Focus on family.

Focus on, you know, Dharma, Logos. God, religion, whatever that is for you. Focus on simple exercises, simple things in life. Getting outdoors and walking costs nothing.

You can do great workouts in terms of fitness. You don't need a gym membership. You don't need to spend that money. You can do it all with your body in your house or outdoors.

So I'd say that maybe that would be a good goal for a lot of people if they're worried about the economic situation and not just I think it's not just one year I think it's going to be several years coming well go ahead and instead of it being forced on you just simplify simplify simplify your life as much as you can now voluntarily by choice and focus on what's most important in life not that

Okay, a few more minutes, then I've got to go. I'm actually cooking rice right now, so it's almost time for me to go get it. That's one of my projects for the year, 2023. Actually, I started it probably a couple weeks ago.

I'm starting to cook. I'm going to spend the winter doing more cooking, trying to improve my cooking ability. So far, going very well. I've got a couple cookbooks.

I've been cooking a lot of stuff out of them. So very nice. Oh, there's my rice. I just heard the alarm. So I'll take a couple more comments or questions, and then I'm going to go and check on my rice that I'm making.

I'm making something called palau. I think it's called palau. It's like an Indian dish. So I'm focusing this year. I'm doing paleo dishes. from a paleo cookbook.

And I'm doing Indian dishes from a Hare Krishna cookbook. Kind of opposite styles of cooking. But they're both good. This one's from the Hare Krishna cookbook.

It's kind of like a vegetable fried rice. Okay, Arun asked, how to make podcasts like you in English in 2023? Okay, that's a good question. It's really simple.

So you get a podcasting. Join a podcasting service or app. There's a bunch of them, okay? That's where you will upload. That's where you will put your audio file, right?

There's so many of them. I can't even give you a specific one, but just look up, you know, podcasting. I don't know what you call it. Podcasting service.

And then you'll register your podcast with iTunes and several others. A lot of these podcasting services will do that for you. Makes it easy. And then just start recording and doing them.

That's the key. Just do it. Pick a topic and talk about it. Maybe decide what is your podcast about. I don't know if you're just going to talk randomly or you want to talk about some specific topics.

I don't know. But do your best. Just take action and do it. Gogo asked, do you like coffee? I do. I like coffee a lot. I like it. Yeah, Abraham Ali says, you're right, AJ.

We're not going to die. We just have to live more simply and cut the unnecessary expenses. For example, a lot of people eat at restaurants and never cook at home, and they still complain. This is a great example.

As I was mentioning, coming back here, this is one that I'm doing. Of course, since my kids came, we're not really eating at restaurants much anymore anyway, but my wife's been doing most of the cooking, and I'm starting to help her more, try to give her some help. So,

I'm trying to cook several meals per week as well. And I'm enjoying it this time. I'm actually quite enjoying it. It's fun. So I'm getting a little better learning how to cook more.

And it does save money. Cooking at home is much cheaper than eating at restaurants. So this is something all of us could do if you're worried about the economic situation. If you eat at restaurants a lot, stop doing that and eat at home.

Make things at home. Get some cookbooks if you need to. Lua from Brazil. Good to see you. Thanks for the nice comments. Cool. Fernando Diaz says, AJ, because of you, I've met so many people from all around the world.

Please organize for the future new conversation challenges. That's a good idea. I'll think about it for next year. Oh, cool. Kamala Kanan says, my goal is to do chanting meditation, 16 rounds a day.

This is my goal. That's fantastic. Rounds is on a, it's on a, like, basically what Catholics call a rosary, right? Joppa, we call it Joppa. 16 rounds a day, that's fantastic.

That's, depending on the mantra you're doing, probably, you know, maybe two hours a day. It's really good. All right. All right. Sound is perfect now.

Good. Anna says, I've always looked up to my classmate. She is the most decisive person ever. She could take a decision and immediately start doing it.

She lost 12 kilograms in a month. Yeah, it's great, right? We do admire people like that because, you know, someone who just decides they want to try something and they just do it. They don't think about it.

They don't worry about it. They're not, oh, what should I do? Oh, what if I failed? They just, boom! And they get so much done. Right? I agree. I admire very decisive people.

I'm much more decisive than I used to be. I've gotten more and more and more. Because I've learned with experience that it's just effective to be decisive.

There's no point with most decisions. There's no point taking much time. You know, most decisions in life are small decisions and we don't need to take a huge amount of time with them. And even in the times I've hesitated, even with some bigger decisions, I regret.

I regret hesitating. For example, having children. I hesitated for years and years and years. Oh, I'm not sure. Am I ready to have kids? You know, and I was so hesitant and indecisive and not sure.

Ah, ah, ah. And so I waited, waited, waited too many years, and thank God we still were able to have kids, but it was almost too late. That hesitation was foolish. The indecisiveness was foolish.

I should have just done it earlier. So I think it's usually good to be more decisive than less. We do need to think about some decisions in life, but we will often overthink decisions where you think too much. I think for most people that's the problem.

There are some people who don't think enough in life. You maybe know some. I know at least one in my extended family where they don't think at all and they just do things and they do really stupid, foolish things and then they don't learn from those things and they just do it again and they do it again and they and their life is a mess, that is a problem.

So I'm not saying don't think, right? But the key thing is to learn. Even doing that, if you make a fast decision and you get a bad result, that's still not usually so bad if you learn from it and don't do it again. The problem is people who make a foolish decision and then they get a terrible result

It causes a lot of problems. And then they don't learn anything about it, and the next time they just do the same thing again, and they do it again, and they do it again. You know, like addicts, like alcoholics are a good example of this, right? Okay, they get drunk once and do stupid stuff.

It's not such a big deal, as long as they don't. drive and kill somebody but uh if they don't do so if they don't do that if they just you know they act like an idiot and cause problems even lose their job or something like that okay that's that's a bad result but it's is not the end of the world if they learn from it if they would learn from it and just stop drinking or stop doing those things then no big deal they gained experience the problem is when they don't learn and they just go then they go you know Two weeks later, they get drunk and they do all the same stupid stuff again. And then they do it again and they do it again.

They just keep doing the same stupid things again and again and again. They never learn. That is a problem, right? So, learning is a part of being decisive.

You've got to learn from your decisions, too. Because you will make bad decisions. You certainly will. And you certainly will. fail, and you'll even do very stupid stuff.

Some of your decisions you'll realize later seem like a good idea, but you look back and you realize, oh, so stupid, right? That's because we don't know. A lot of us are ignorant, and we don't know. It means we don't know.

We don't have experience. We get lost in media. We get lost. We get influenced by foolish things and foolish people. And so we do make foolish, stupid decisions sometimes.

It's going to happen to you. I've done it. I think we've all done it. So just learn and keep going. Will you return to Twitter after Elon bought it? I do a little Twitter now.

I am back on Twitter. They unbanned my account my account's open again so I will I just when I do a show I put something on Twitter I just let people know that I'm doing a show but my main social media will continue to be Gab because Gab has proven that they are more open Twitter who knows I guess Twitter's better than it was that's good

But I think Gab's still much better. Elon is red-pilled. We'll see. Partially at least. Someone's asking, what are your goals for 2023? Do you have any book suggestions, any upcoming book clubs?

I need to think about a book club. I don't... I've been doing different little pieces from books recently, but I have to think of like a full book club to do. I'd like to do something a little different, right?

Not just the same kind of stuff we've been doing. I'll think about it. I don't have plans. For my own goals, I haven't really... I figured them out yet.

I've got certain categories like my family. What do I want to do with my family? So I do have some pretty clear ideas what to do. I'll be starting a more organized homeschool program for my kids this year.

We've been very loose until now. We'll still be pretty loose, but a little more scheduled, a little more organized. Cooking. This is a family goal, too.

It's a personal goal for me, and it's also just for my family. Better nutrition. Cook more. My wife already does it, but I'm going to do it. I'm doing it already more.

I've got some jujitsu goals, just some things I want to try to improve with jujitsu. Health and fitness, I'll probably just keep doing jujitsu, more or less doing what I'm doing now.

Business, I have a few business goals for the business. And that's it. My health, just eating more vegetables and fruits. Pretty simple. Yeah, Anna says, respect to those who decide to give up terrible habits and don't drop it.

Commit, don't quit. Yes, it's hard to break some habits, right, once they become strong habits. So it's better not to start. Much easier, just don't start.

I also want to ask them about the VIP pricing. It's $1 to try it. That gives you 10 days. After that, it's $37 a month if you continue. If you drop it before then in the first 10 days, then it's just $1.

So $1 to try it. It's not much at all. All right, I think that's about it for today. So I'm going to go check on the rice I'm cooking. And we'll be back again soon to discuss more specifically about New Year's goals and resolutions.

But the main thing, more than anything, is just be decisive. You don't need the perfect New Year goal. Okay? You can change it later. But what you do need to do is start the year.

I recommend start the year with actions. Action is more important than the goals. You can have, just make some goals, make them fast. You don't need to think about your goals forever and ever.

What's the perfect goal? What will I do in 2023? Just, you already have some ideas. I'm sure you already know basically what you want to do. So what's most important is in January to do things, to take strong actions.

Get those habits started, the good habits. Get those started, right? Do things, take strong actions. And stronger actions are better. Bigger actions are better.

So if your goal is to lose weight, you don't need to plan forever on finding the perfect diet. Just start a fast in January. Start a fast. Go three days and don't eat.

You can do research about how to do fasting, but take a quick, decisive, strong action immediately. Right? All righty then, lots of love to you all. I'll be back again, what's today?

Probably after New Year, and we'll talk more about goals and having a strong New Year. And we can also talk about some of the worries people have about 2023, about the economic problems that may, that probably are coming to the West at least, maybe other places too.

Okay, until then, join my VIP program at effortlessenglishclub.com. Lots of love, and I'll see you next time.