Why Videos About Changing Your Life Won’t Change Your Life

Is it just me, or there is a surge of videos on YouTube all promising to change your life (usually) right this very moment?

Have you watched any of those clips? How does it work out for you? Are you a changed man/woman after watching?

I bet you aren’t.

Not really sure what I’m talking about?

Take, for example, The mindset that changed my life IMMEDIATELY (yes, all caps) by Sleepy Charlie.¹ Yes, you read that right: IMMEDIATELY (all caps). Apparently, Charlie, whose defining characteristic is sleepiness, didn’t even need time to sleep on it.

Then there’s 36 Things You Can Do Right Now to Change Your Life by Tom.² Thirty-six! Because Tom knows that your life is so spectacularly disorganized that one only life-changing advice simply won’t do the trick.

And then we have the conservative Change Your Life in 6 Months by Simon Alexander Ong. Poor naive Simon.³ He’s probably still learning and haven’t yet realized the fact that today’s audience demands Amazon Prime shipping on personal growth. His video, of course, has the lowest view count – because who can wait for six months when you can have instant transformation?

But let me ask you this: How do you feel about the actual content of these videos?

I suppose that, if not all, a solid part of what the people discuss in these short films is true and can considerably improve your life. Certainly not in the instant moment, as you eventually realize while you watch, but at some point in the future, yes, sure probably.

Yet, why does your life remain unchanged?

Why, despite the volumes of life-changing tactics you’ve acquired, you still remain unremarkably the same?

Here, I won’t discuss the obvious clickbait title that is crafted to attract (mostly) desperate people who are lost in life and searching for magic formulas to achieve unheard of success.

What I do want to focus on is this: Why don’t these videos work?

Why, no matter how many “transformational hacks” you tirelessly consume like candy at a Halloween sale, you still remain stubbornly, frustratingly… you?

Let’s get straight into it…

Videos Only Boost Your Motivation

Videos like the ones mentioned focus on just one side of the spectrum that can lead to tangible results. The motivation side.

These types of videos don’t exist to teach you something you don’t already know. (Surely you can rationalize on your own that not smoking, not spending all of your money, not using social media are all things good for you.) They are crafted to increase your level of motivation, but at the same time hinder something extra you need to make your life better: your ability.

You see, progress in a particular segment – and in everything for that matter – happens by having a net positive score in these two directives:⁴

1. Motivation
2. Ability

Motivation gets you to want to do something. Ability makes it possible for you to actually do it.

Here’s a short example: I need to be motivated to get fit in order to get dressed and go to the gym. But besides motivation, I also need to have the ability to visit the training center – e.g., enough time and physical stamina to endure a workout session.

Ability is characterized primarily by these 5 attributes:⁵

1. Having time.
2. Having money.
3. Having physical capacity.
4. Having mental capacity.
5. Having at least some understanding of the thing/topic.

In short, motivation is what inspires me to want to visit the gym, the ability is what makes it possible for me to go.

Imagine what happens if I only have motivation.

I can be super pumped about going to the gym after watching a short clip on the topic while I’m doom-scrolling on the toilet in between meetings. But if my schedule is swarmed with unavoidable tasks, at the end of the day I’ll be tired and won’t have the ability to go – i.e., in this case I’m lacking time and physical capacity.

Conversely, here’s what happens if I have zero motivation but huge amounts of ability…

Let’s say I live next door to a gym, I have all the time in the world, and I even own a pair of sneakers that haven’t been worn since 2017. I’m perfectly able to go. However, if I’m not motivated enough to want to exercise, all of these things won’t quite matter. As if the gym doesn’t exist for me in this case.

Here’s one extra example to really lock in the concept about motivation and ability:

Imagine that I’m extremely motivated to start an online business that will make me $1,000 a day using AI. You know, the totally feasible option suggested by gurus on YouTube these days. Yet, if I’m a newbie in relation to starting businesses or creating websites – i.e., lack basic understanding on the topic – I’ll won’t have the ability to use the advice by my favorite online celebrity. Yet, I’ll be quite excited when my guru of choice “suddenly” decides to sell a course on the topic that promises to make me enormously rich in just one afternoon.⁶

So, once again, to do something, anything, you need not only motivation. But also the ability to do it.

The Typical Dynamic of YouTube Videos

Let’s return to YouTube…

As said, we have tons of videos all promising to make your life disproportionately better. But why isn’t it happening? Why are you still unsuccessful?

There are many reasons, but the underlying point I’m trying to make here is that YouTube videos increase your motivation while at the same time hinder your ability.

Here’s how it happens:

You watch a video about the topic you’re passionate about – whether this will be traveling the world without any money, becoming ultra strong and/or extremely successful and rich, or typically all of these.

What happens next?

Except that you passionately nod along and agree with every syllable the grinning face on the screen spits out. Plus, feeling an overflow of pure dopamine circling through your veins while the author recites the usual script of how he’ll help you unlock your true potential. Yet, despite the long lecture of all the ways you can elevate your life, you do this…

You keep scrolling.

You keep watching videos.

You dive deeper into the rabbit hole of feel-good, self-help utopia. Each video is a warm, fluffy blanket for your fragile soul, so naturally, you don’t stop. You subscribe, obediently click that bell icon, binge-watch their entire catalog, and, for good measure, follow them on every social media platform they exist on. Because clearly, this person holds the master key to your destiny.

A few hours later, you feel like you can conquer the world, but what actually happened is that you exhausted your ability to make a change.

In other words, the day literary ended. It’s way past bedtime. You have to go to sleep because you’ve got an early shift flipping burgers at McDonald’s tomorrow. But at least you no longer feel bad about it because your YouTube celebrity mentioned that he, too, was working a dead-end job before rising to near-presidential glory. And now, since you can relate to his journey, you are saving up for their ultimate course on becoming a master of the universe.

If we can put all of this in the graph mentioned above, you are very high on motivation, but you are net negative on ability.

And it gets worse.

The next morning, you’ll likely rinse and repeat. You’ll queue up more clips, spend another three hours being told you’re just one mindset shift away from greatness. Plus, probably do spend $500 or more on some overly simplistic online course that will expertly upsell you extra “next-level” courses that teach you even less than the first course, but again, it keeps you feeling good about yourself.

But You Keep Watching Videos Anyway

You keep watching, though.

You cheer for your favorite creator like he is your personal savior. You keep nodding, keep commenting, and keep sipping the Kool-Aid.

I’m not even going to touch on the addictive nature of the online platforms. How the app will autoplay the next video. Ping you with timely notifications to watch more. And forever evolve their UX to extract every last second of your attention like a digital vampire by using dark psychological patterns.

I’m just going to discuss the nature of the videos. How they lure you in and keep you a subscriber.

How does it happen?

As pointed out above, the ability spectrum has a couple of attributes. But this also applies to the motivation spectrum.

Motivation is composed of these:⁷

1. Seeking hope and avoiding fear.
2. Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
3. Seeking acceptance and avoiding rejection.

And oh boy, do the “change your life” videos hit hard on all of these.

A typical video start with something like:

“I have been where you are. I was lost. I was overweight. I was broke. I was… [insert anything that resonates with the general profile of the average viewer.]” Then, the person usually unveils the “revolutionary” way used to escape his dark life and reach world fame.

Of course, this revolutionary way is not something particularly new or unique. It’s always the same tired script: Don’t waste time, change your mindset, have a goal, don’t have a goal, find your purpose, make good habits stick, and stay consistent. Sound advice, sure, but it’s nothing you couldn’t find on the back of a cereal box.

What keeps you hooked is the performance. Fast cuts every five seconds, pulsing background music, and a carefully curated narrative to keep your brain too distracted to notice the lack of substance.

All of this is surely complete BS, but creators do provide essential feel-good ingredients… hope, pleasure, and acceptance. By the time the person on the video has said “like, subscribe, comment,” you feel destined for greatness.

“Wow, this person gets me. He struggled just like I do, and he eventually triumphed. This means that I can too share nonsense on a platform that is all about view count and make it big.”

But while motivation gives you a lot of emotional satisfaction, it takes away the thing that can actually lead to some tangible progress in your real life.

You feel hopeful while you watch the video, but when you stop, you’re still afraid of trying something new.

You feel pleasure, but when you stop watching, you still don’t want to dive into the painful process of building yourself.

You feel part of a community of people who also have problems, but at the same time you are terrified of being rejected by the folks in your real life.

So you return to the glowing square on your phone to keep the dopamine hits coming. You might not always agree with what the person is saying, but the way such folks usually express themselves totally resonates with your current, vague ambition to turn your life into a montage-worthy success story.

And all of this is part of a bigger problem…

You keep watching and wasting your time with these self-proclaimed masters, but to you, it doesn’t feel like time is thrown away. It feels like progress.

“Oh, I’m getting so much value from this person. His wisdom resonates with me on such a deeper level. I should frame his quotes and hang them in my living room while keep bingeing until I’ve absorbed his genius by osmosis.”

Except you’re totally not.

The “value” you’re getting boils down to the same generic advice: set goals, build habits, don’t procrastinate – which you totally do by being glued to the app on your phone.

So here’s the terrible truth about the YouTube world…

And no, I’m not going to focus on the fact that these YouTube creators are all about making money from viewers. That they don’t actually care if you succeed or not. That their entire business model revolves around manipulating you to watch just one more video until you’ve binge-watched yourself into oblivion.

The real problem is this…

No amount of feel-good content will fix your life unless you daily do things that can make tomorrow a little, or a lot, better.

The reason your life remains unchanged is not that you haven’t watched the latest video produced by your favorite creator. But because you 1) haven’t decided what you actually want to do with your life and 2) you lack motivation and ability.

So Where Do You Go From Here?

“Are you saying that I should unsubscribe from all creators and find something else to do with my time?”

In theory, yes. In practice, it’s not that simple.

We all know that you won’t suddenly decide to embrace a digital diet and unfollow all of your favorite creators (whether this is on YouTube, TikTok, or whatever kids watch these days).

As pointed out above, these do help in your journey. They give you the motivation to keep wanting to change. The problem is often that we can’t escape the vortex of consumption.

If we don’t put some restraints in place, all we’ll do is watch videos about changing our lives without actually changing anything.

My view about how to orient ourselves in the midst of overabundance of content is the following:

Progressing in life requires constant calibration between motivation and ability, optimism and pessimism. You need motivation to want to change your life, but also the ability to actually start making steps towards that desired future reality. And while doing this, you also need a dose of optimism to convince yourself that you have what it takes to make it. But also pessimism to spot the BS attempting to sell you products/ideas you don’t need, and some extra pessimism to see all the ways you could fail, and plan appropriately.

Some Closing Thoughts

The monolog delivered by the video person aiming to inspire, transform our lives for the better is shamelessly followed by a prompt to like the video and probably watch additional videos that should somehow change our lives even more (somehow magically, I suppose).

The same speaker with the same suggestive and authoritative voice, which he has just used to impress you with the seriousness of the topic, impresses now upon his viewers the merits of clicking a thumbs-up icon and also other links that will change his life, not yours.

Each video throws more facts at you. But conversely to what you might think is important – the amounts of videos you’ve consumed – there is something else of significance.

It doesn’t matter how many famous people you vigorously follow, but what you do with the content they so frantically share.

I hope that this piece will help you realize that we, modern people, have consumed way too many facts about how to change our lives. The problem here is that although we know in theory what we need to do, we do not do it.

All our energy is spent hoarding facts about how to change our behaviors. About what should be our purpose. About being committed. But the only thing that stays constant is the commitment to our distorted habit of consuming facts, without actually doing anything with them.

Rarely we question the premise of this illogical activity. We do not stop to think that the only life that is changing for the better is of the people creating these videos, not ours.

Hopefully, since you’ve reached the very end of this piece, you’ll take a bit of time to stop and think about the following:

“I’ve watched this video about how to change my life. And this other ultimate video about how to design my dream life. But since I know so much about how to change my life, why am I not changing?”

Questions like this one are frightening because they challenge the very basis of how we spent our days. Due to the uncomfortable nature of the query, you’ll want to get rid of it as soon as possible.

Don’t!

Try to resist bringing your consciousness to the comfort of doing something else. Something easier – like probably watching even more videos about changing your life.

If you spend enough time with the question and be honest with yourself, you’ll realize the truth. The truth that modern man lives under the illusion that he wants to change, while he actually wants to feel comfortable in his own way of living.

Change will start to happen when you don’t feel the need to watch more videos or read more articles (yes, even like this one). But when you give yourself your own aim, which should serve as enough motivation to help you keep going despite the obstacles you’ll encounter along the way.

Thank you for reading!

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Footnotes:

1. The mindset that changed my life IMMEDIATELY. Sleepy Charlie. Available at: https://youtu.be/Vp-TVkqaCrQ?si=qovN3HzUVpJxTt8V
2. 36 things you can do right now to change your life. Tom. Available at: https://youtu.be/dKXxxPzxJAM?si=CWAaR4omx2LHzgIq
3. Change Your Life In 6 Months (This Is How To Make It Happen). Simon Alexander Ong. Available at: https://youtu.be/YMz91i7B2kw?si=nfAkkw8XI48RXP23
4. Fogg Behavior Model. Dr. BJ Fogg. Available at: https://behaviormodel.org/
5. Ability – Make behavior easier to do. Dr. BJ Fogg. Available at: https://behaviormodel.org/ability/
6. That’s the typical model of how gurus operate these days when they sell their courses. They fire you up with their videos, and then they pretend that their course will give you the ability to make your dream a reality. Typically, though, what you actually get is a collection of painfully ordinary instructions that barely rise above common sense.
7. Three core Motivators, each with two sides. Dr. BJ Fogg. Available at: https://behaviormodel.org/motivation/