This Realization Changed My Life (It Might Change Yours)

Summary

Have you ever had a realization that changed the way you see yourself and the world? A few years ago, fresh out of my architecture school (narcoleptic, unemployed and burnt out from spending years hustling for 100h/week to get a useless degree), I had mine. It changed everything.

Transcript

Have you ever had a realization that change the way you see yourself and the world in an instant, hopefully you have is one of the best moments in life. And this video is about the one that made me who I am today and transform the terrible trajectory my life had at that time. Let's get to it.

[INTRO] Hey, I'm Leon Castillo, founder of Selfmastered, a high performance training company that helps entrepreneurs scale their businesses by solving their solid bottleneck, their own performance, will transform the unproductive, overwhelming focus entrepreneurs into laser focused business athletes that can achieve in one day, what they previously achieved in one week.

So the story begins, like a decade ago, when I finished my architectural studies, I started in the best architecture school in Spain, who really cares, but that's what they say. And it was a prototypical place where everybody in the outside wants to get in. But everybody that's in wants to get out, there was a terrible place to be that forced us to pull a lot of all nighters per month and work more than 90 hours a week, in order to finish all the coursework. I graduated after seven years at school, the average back then was nine years and a half. So I was one of the fastest people to graduate. And when I finished, I was totally destroyed, I developed many physical problems and back pain, I had developed narcolepsy, which is a sleep disorder that essentially doesn't allow you to sleep for eight hours in a row. So you sleep anywhere, so and you cannot, you're not allowed to drive in the most extreme cases, and you just fallen asleep in whatever place you can find yourself. And it's very dangerous when you're driving. So I was totally destroyed. I was jaded. And I was frustrated. Because I had finally had an architectural title, I graduated with a master's in architecture, but that was worthless.

At that time, there was no job available, and everybody needed to emigrate to find a job. So I didn't like really my career, I didn't like the results, I didn't really care about being an architect, and I was physically destroyed. So at that time, I started looking for answers. And one of the things that I kept asking myself was, how is that I couldn't focus for more than 10 minutes, because I was so exhausted, and I was falling asleep, every hour and a half, whatever, I found myself, but all the people that were much older than me, were able to be crazy, effective 400 hours a week, let's say Elon Musk, or whoever is building big things these days. And if they were older, how could they do that? And I could not.

And that's when I started looking for answers, and eventually came to this realization, which is that everything that happens in life is really the effect of causes that have been pulled out in the universe. And this cause and effect relationship are related through systems. So if you understand what systems live behind the effects in your life, you can tweak those systems to perfection, you can, in other word gets the outcomes you want, if you fit into the system, the right causes.

So if I found myself jaded, frustrated, destroyed, from a health perspective, visiting the hospital, three or four or five, six times every year, because of my back pains, it was because I hadn't done the right things to cure my back, I hadn't rung the right things to understand what was going on with my sleep disorder. And I hadn't studied something that motivated me. And I hadn't had a pleasant educational experience. So all of those things were in the past, I couldn't change them. But most definitely could change the inputs of the future effects. I could, in other words, change my life by understanding and fixing the causes of all those things. And that's when my life changed.

That's when I finally understood that I was in control, because I was willing to analyze my life from that perspective, I was devoted to creating a life to designing a life that I could be proud of, and I will never be at the mercy of those terrible teachers in my architectural school, or the ignorance that I had shown in the past with not taking care of myself. And that's why everything is started by understanding the systematic universe, that everything happens for a reason and not in not in some sort of magical bullshit Law of Attraction type of way. But in a very clear, distinctive cause and effect relationship type of way, if I want this effect, what is the cause? And what is the system, the process in between that I need to understand and optimize to get that effect? It's all about inputs and outputs. If I feed the right inputs, I get the right outputs. And that's when things started changing.

I realized that I wanted a career in business or in finance, because I understood that if I really wanted to have some sort of personal liberty, I needed money. And it is was interesting to see that most people don't get rich oftentimes because they do not chase it. They're not working on the things that can make.

Right so I said like, Well, I'm just going to do in finance and business I didn't know anything about to business and finance. So the first thing I do is to take a loan, and go to business school and why business school, and I train myself in business and finance, I love the experience. This is a degree that I actually have in my home because I decided to never step back in my old architecture school ever, and I never come back, I don't even have a title that says that I'm an architect, even though I grew for seven years.

So I love the I experience is a fantastic place to be. And I learned the extent of my ignorance, how much did I lack if I wanted to be in business, but that allowed me to get a job in real estate consulting. So I want you to Deloitte, which is a big four consulting firm, I fitted the right input into the system, like knowing business and finance webmasters, so that I could get the effect, I wanted a job that I could apply. And when I entered Deloitte, I find myself at 27. That's when I started my career, let that sink in folks, I started at 27, because of how fucked up is the Spanish graduate system, and I would find myself competing against people who were 2324, maybe 25. And they had started business and finance. So I wasn't at this advantage. I didn't know as much as they knew, but business and finance and real estate, and they were younger than I was, so I had to do something about it.

And that's when I doubled down on the same principle, this unsystematic understanding that had led me to the light, which is okay, what are the inputs of the equation, I need to be the guy that works the hardest, that in order to work as hard as I can, I need to be able to sustain my energy, I also need to be able to learn faster than anyone else, I need to segment my day and structure my day to have those learning sessions.

I also need to find clubs and membership of people that know what I want to know, in order to become better fast. And I started applying this idea of cause and effect of inputs, processes and outputs to everything that I did. And that's how over time I became very good very fast. In fact, only 20 months after becoming an analyst, I was hired by a private equity fund as a manager. And then 10 months later, I was promoted to director so took me 30 months from zero from being a real estate analyst to being a private equity, real estate director. How did that happen? Well, I took a lot of risks.

I was, let's say lucky that there was a fun who was hiring at that time. But I was also very concerned just about all the changes that I needed to implement in my life, you know, to have a shot, adapt, Seneca said that luck is preparation meets opportunity. And I truly believe this is the case. And that's when things accelerate at that time, I got involved in venture capital, I was invited to become part of a seed capital fund that was active those days. So we started investing in startups. That's when I started working on entrepreneurs, I understood that my idea of business and finance in the beginning could be like the vehicle that could probably give more meaning to my life was entrepreneurship.

And that's how over over time, I decided to end my private equity career and become an entrepreneur. But everything started by internalizing this core idea that it's all about putting the right causes in the universe to get the desired effects. And if you see your life as input process and output, it is very easy to get the outcomes you deserve. And that's essentially what we teach now in sales Master, we transform people's performance and therefore their businesses by understanding what are the inputs that are putting the equation? What's the process? And what are the outputs that they are willing to get.

And it's just as simple as it sounds, if you master your inputs, your outputs will take care of themselves. And this is a huge realization that changed my life because I am where I am right now, because I fully understood the implications of this idea. And I truly, truly believe that this is one of the most powerful things that you can implement in your life, because he goes beyond the typical things happen for a reason.

If you work on the right things, you're gonna get it hard work is what you need to be doing. That's just only one side of the equation, what you need to understand is what is the actual outcome that I want? What is the process that will lead me to that outcome? And let's try to understand what are the inputs of the equation, of course, you can never had a full picture of all the inputs. I'm not saying it's easy.

Oftentimes, like information, you have a bad model of reality, or you just are oblivious, to how much work it entails. But if you make the effort of charting and mapping out everything that you feel you need, you will have a better chance of getting what you want.

So this is my 10 minute life story. I hope it was useful. I definitely one of the best things that I've ever learned, really, and I highly encourage you to apply this idea and let me know in the comments if this was useful if there's some sort of further clarification that you may need, happy to provide it. And if you're not subscribed, remember to subscribe!