How I Changed My Life’s Trajectory in Only 1 Year

And became excited about what the future holds

I remember clearly the night my life began to change.

I woke up around 2 am, full of energy, due to jetlag from my flight to Japan after a holiday in France. I couldn’t sleep so I grabbed my phone. I fell upon a video from Tom Bilyeu about improving one’s life.

It wasn’t the first video I ever watched on the topic but I was suddenly receptive to the information. I downloaded 40 different apps to improve my life and fell back asleep an hour later.

I woke up a few hours later and deleted most of them. Yet, I had already become someone else. Something had changed in my brain. I didn’t realize it yet but I had made a choice that would change my life. One day.

A year later, I saw life in a whole new light.

That year began a lifelong journey. A path I could have never walked had I not woken up that fateful night. The cards were in my hand and it was time to play the first of many rounds.

If I were to summarize into a word that year, I’d choose “start”. It was the start of a long but incredible journey. A journey I’ll happily continue for the rest of my life.

I Began Learning

At the time, I had already reached a high level in 6 languages. I had concentrated all my efforts in life on languages. I had never really dived into any other endeavor. I knew nothing outside of languages.

As a result, I began watching a whole lot of videos about self-improvement, productivity, focus, and the brain. I became obsessed with that kind of stuff. Since I knew nothing, everything felt amazing.

My understanding of the world was flawed and I was fixing it.

Since then, I’ve never stopped researching more about the brain and what it means to learn. It turns out how we learn is much more complicated than it seems.

All this learning made me start other things as well.

I Began Meditating

I had always looked down on meditation. I thought it was a “hippy” and “girly” thing to do so I stayed away from it. That year was different.

Everywhere I looked, it seemed like happy people meditated. It seemed like I was refraining myself by not being at ease with my own thoughts. And so I tried it.

At the time, a yearly subscription to the app Headspace cost $100. That was a big deal for me as I had never really saved money, but I dove in. I figured if I paid that much, I’d actually do it.

And it worked. I began meditating every morning and evening. Whenever I couldn’t, I meditated some other times during the day. I never meditated for more than 10–15 minutes, but I did it anyway. My motto for this was “More is the enemy of done.”

I barely felt any “improvement”. I sometimes thought it was pointless and continued only because I had paid. Two years and a half later, I thank my past self for starting this small practice. Also, thank you sunk cost fallacy.

Meditation made me more patient. It made me more at ease with silence. It allowed me to slow down my otherwise fast-paced life. That, in turn, opened new doors.

I Started Writing

When I was a child, I wanted to write. I even wrote a book at 7 called “The kind is poor”. Here it is in its entirety: “The king is rich. A thief steals his money. The king is now poor.”

It’s magnificent, isn’t it?

Even though I later stopped reading books for a decade, the thought of writing never left me. And so I finally began writing.

I decided to never set imposing goals of money, to avoid stopping this new endeavor. I settled for 4 posts per week from October of that year but in December I decided to switch things up and set a goal of one post a day for the entire incoming year.

It was hard but I did it. I learned many lessons. I discovered how much I loved writing. I discovered how great it felt to share my love of languages and newly-found interest in productivity. I still remember the first-ever truly touching comment I ever got, here.

I Started Reading

Have you ever heard of a writer who doesn’t read? I haven’t. So I began reading again. I read books and articles about learning, the brain, and writing.

As someone who was always either on social media or studying languages, this was a major change for me. A positive one though.

Meditation was making me more at ease with silence. Silence allowed me to read again. Reading then allowed me to expand my views of the world further.

I Started Saying No

Back then, I said “yes” to pretty much anything. I had a strong case of FOMO.

When I realized how often I was seeing other people and how little time I had left for myself, I decided to stop.

I began refusing parties with people I had seen two days prior. I stopped accepting every request for my help. I started accepting requests from myself instead.

This had an impact on my relationships. I lost some of my less intimate ones but it was for the “greater good”. If someone couldn’t bear giving me the time to be with myself (or others), that person wasn’t meant to be in my life. I felt sorry for a while but don’t regret it at all today.

I Started Valuing Less External Approval

There was a time in my life I felt I had to keep learning languages. It was “who I was”. A friend of mine always introduced me as “Mathias, the dude who knows nothing except languages.”

He wasn’t that wrong (nor that correct). But to keep that image high, I felt I needed to show results. I needed to improve quickly in any language I learned. And so I burned out.

That fateful year, I became more at ease with who I was. I realized how much I could change. How much we can all change. I discovered the growth mindset.

As Carol S. Dweck describes it:

“In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I’m going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here’s a chance to grow.”

I began to change. I began to accept who I was. My flaws and my merits weren’t there to stay. Who I was one day could change the next.

“Who cares if it makes you laugh that I *insert random thing I do*? I enjoy it and that’s what matters.”, was my mental state.

I Started Being Consistent

I’ve always told my friends all I did to learn my languages was staying consistent. I still stand by this statement.

That fateful year, I realized I had never transferred that to other areas of my life. And so I began.

I kept meditating every day. When I missed a day, I started again the next, sad to have lost my streak but moving on. I kept writing every day. When I missed a day, I made sure to have written enough before to have a post come out on the day either way. I kept reading every day, if not books, at least a few blog posts or interesting articles online. I kept saying “no” to what mattered less. I kept accepting who I was more and more.

My life didn’t change because I started all these things. It changed because I became consistent.

Today, I’m back to living with my parents. That’s something I would have never accepted two years ago, thinking it’d be shameful. Now I’m glad I am back because I can focus on other things.

2 and a half years ago, I began a journey. Today I write online and share my love for languages. I see doors opening day after day for a future even more improbable than the one I am living now.

I never stopped writing. I never stopped meditating. I never stopped trying to improve myself.

Now that I think about it again, I realize I was wrong to summarize everything with the word “start”. There’s no point in starting anything if it’s to stop right away.

The keywords should be “start” and “consistency”.

I’m not telling you to follow my path. You’ll need to create yours and make your own mistakes along the way.

Start your own journey. Be consistent with whatever you decide to explore. Discover and build a new life for yourself. One you have no shame in living.

When you’ll look back at it a few years on, you’ll be shocked how tiny changes compound.

Enjoy!