how to discover your authentic self. | Jack Hopkins

0:00Discovering your authentic self is like becoming a magnet that attracts everything you desire. Being you after all is the only thing you'll ever be best at. The problem is you don't know who the fuck you are and it's holding you back. There's a saying that pain introduces a man to himself. And that's what this video is about. The pain a man must go through to find himself and uncover his call. Three years ago I decided I was done with a normal life. I wanted to live life on my terms. I broke up with my girlfriend. And I would never leave you. And you never will. But I've got a job to do too. Where I'm going you can't follow what I've got to do you can't be any part of. And I booked a one way ticket to Thailand. I didn't know it at the time, but that decision to throw away normal, going an adventure would change my life forever. As with all good stories, that adventure has consisted of success and failure. Parties, alcohol, sobriety and everything in between.

1:00In the same time, I've managed to earn a couple million dollars doing what I love. And this video is a guide on how you can do the same. I'm not who you truly are and the success that comes with it. A genuinely think the hardest thing in the world is to be yourself. And the problem is, the less yourself you are, the less success you have. The only times I've had success in my life, the only times life started to give me things that I wanted was by becoming who I was rather than what everybody else had told me to be. So this video is for those of you that feel lost. For anyone that feels lost as I did, five years ago I was an alcoholic and a drug addict. Three years ago I had a nine to five and now I'm sitting in Dubai with multiple online businesses and a personal brand. So although I'm not 100% sure, even who I am, I've got part of the way there. And I'm going to share with you what I've learned on that journey over five years and my system for getting closer to who you truly are, how you can unlock the power of being yourself and how to discover it, what pain you need to go through as a man to try and discover those things.

2:02So without further ado, let's begin. Every good story and every good life I believe starts with the journey. The hero has to go on a journey and the journey is to find himself to uncover his true power. And that's why I believe the first thing you should do is leave the nest, leave your hometown. When you're in a hometown, it provides you with a lot of comfort. It's where you know, it's where you've grown up. And the problem with comfort is it doesn't force you to grow. And the people around you already know a current version of you. So when I left the UK, I went on a mission alone, the reason why is because when I got to Thailand, I could become the person that I want it to be. Hello, my friends. Is my past a freedom. I'm fucking English, this is the world right now. When I was in the UK, I was known as a bit of a party animal. I had a 9-5 job, I was a sales guy. And people kind of like that personality. The friends that you have obviously like those parts of you, they like hanging out with you, they like partying with you. You're family like the way that you are. And often people find it inauthentic when you go and try and become who you truly want to be.

3:06And that's just because it no longer serves them and their life. So the best way to break that is to move away from home. As I did, I moved to Thailand halfway across the world and I went there alone without knowing anybody. And a strange thing happened, as soon as I got to Thailand, I found myself becoming this person that I'd had a dream about in my mind. I found myself not limited by inhibitions anymore and able to go after what I truly wanted and start making content. Day two, we're out here, we're in Bangkok. Nice pool out there. Club today at 4.50, out to Khosamuri. It's a very tight club. And when I'm net people, I would tell them I was a content creator, even when I'd had no success yet. And I started to live that version of me. And when that started to happen, money started to flow to me. The journey I took has been around three years now since I left home. And I feel like I've had 30 years of growth in three years. The power of these new experiences causes you to level up at such a rate that I now feel and I kind of act way above my age, which is just 25.

4:11And I've achieved things far past the average for my age. And I strongly think that's down to being able to go away and have an adventure. I'm going on an adventure. Life should really be an adventure and that adventure will challenge you. It's really painful and that's what causes you to look inside when there's no support around you and find out who you truly are. Now the next lesson I've learnt so far that's helped me really uncover myself was not to fear heartbreak. I've had heartbreak many times in my life from when I was young with relationships to heartbreak with friends and family, being away from them. And heartbreak has always led to growth because it can be a huge source of pain. Heartbreak is like nitroglycer in fuel and it can blow you up. Now, die, my life! It can destroy you. I've seen many friends, I've seen family members be crushed by heartbreak. But for those among us that learn to use heartbreak to their advantage, heartbreak gives you a chance to look inwards.

5:12A lot of people will go and find love. And the reason they find it is because they don't feel fulfilled inside themselves. They don't feel happy with the way that their life is going so they look for love. Now love is just a mask because you can project onto somebody else and use somebody else to make you feel good, to make you feel success, to make you feel loved. But it's just a facade because you always need that drug. I think of love like drugs. You always need that drug and you always need more and more into the pressure on the relationship of you needing more and more love causes it to explode. Now if you don't fear that, if you stop fearing that and you understand that it's okay to fall in love and it's also okay to have your heart broken because every heartbreak will lead you closer to who you truly are. Because heartbreak for a man can be taken in two ways. You can go off the cliff and you can self-destruct. Or you can go the other way and you can use that power to self-develop, to self-improve. So every heartbreak I've had, every mistake I've made with women, every time I felt like this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me, has allowed me to grow.

6:12Because I've taken that anger and that fuel and I've pushed it into my training, into my body. And I've gone on periods of self-discovery when I'm alone and I spend time on my own and I start looking at who I truly am and what I want to be in the mistakes that I've made. And in the end you grow wiser. Now lesson number three is about alcohol drugs and sobriety. Because I've had extended periods of using alcohol, of using drugs and then extended periods of sobriety. The thing about sobriety and this is something I got from a book called Turning Pro by Stephen Pressfield. A fantastic book, very short read if you want to get into it. Stephen Pressfield says, the artist and the addict are essentially the same. And they're dealing with the problem that we all face and that's the pain of the human experience and trying to deal with that. The artist uses the pain of the human experience to create art, to create videos, to act, to create a business. He uses that pain to push him forwards and changes reality. However, the addict feels that same pain and instead of finding a productive outlet, he uses that pain to destroy himself.

7:18He finds his fake high and I've done both of these things. I've used creativity to get rid of that pain and I've also used drugs and alcohol to get rid of that pain. The problem is with creativity, you're not harming yourself. You're actually creating something beautiful and it builds your life and you feel fulfilled from it. And alcohol and drugs are temporary. I'm not going to pass judgment on you if you use that stuff but understand that it's a facade. It's all a fugasi, you know what a fugasi is? It's a fake fugasi, it's a wazzy, it's a wazzy, it's a fairy dust. It doesn't exist, it's never landed, it is no matter, it's not on the elemental chart, it's not fucking real. And a temporary fix and it's taking you further away from your personality. And the only true way to become happy as a man is to find who you are sober and create the book that I used to get sober for the first time was the easy way to control alcohol by Alan Karl. That really helped give me a mindset shift to controlling alcohol, not letting it control me. When I took away that crutch of alcohol and drugs, it gave me the pain I needed to make change.

8:20All of my best periods of life and the times I'm most proud of myself have come from those periods of sobriety. Because you stick to your goals and you find who truly are and the thing that fulfills you. Lesson number four was that the human memory is shockingly bad. And the way I discovered this was by journaling. Every day I'd write a journal at the end of the day, I'd just have a journal page on notion and I would write in how I was feeling for the day. And the problem with the human memory is you forget so quickly your previous problems from the past. But when you have a journal there, you can keep track of these problems and you can go back a month and see, oh shit, I'm doing the same things over and over again. I'm always self-destructing in this certain way. And that was a massive game changer for me because I actually realized something when I looked through my journal when I was having the same problems come up and I was trying to get to know myself, I realized that I was getting a lack of sleep. A lack of sleep led to a lack of discipline. A lack of discipline led to not completing the tasks I set myself, which led to no feeling of fulfillment or happiness.

9:22Then I would find happiness with alcohol and drugs. Then life would get worse. I would have a crisis and a lot of pain that I had to deal with that would lead to discipline. Discipline would lead to better sleep, better productivity and a happy life. That equal success, success equaled partying that led to a lack of sleep, which led to a lack of discipline. And that was the perpetual cycle of my life and still can be sometimes though I understand it, I've identified it and tried to control it. That's really what I try to protect. If you protect your sleep, if you protect the basics of your life, your self-discipline, which we'll go into in this video, if you protect yourself discipline and the basics of your life, everything else runs freely. Lesson number five, blood, sweat and tears. I've found that only in the darkest hours can a man uncover his true character. I've spent periods of my life avoiding pain, avoiding struggle, running towards comfort and never felt fulfilled. And then I've been so pleasantly surprised by giving myself challenges by signing up the martial arts, by signing up for competitive fights, which I've won and I've lost.

10:31But every time I've done that period of discipline, every time I've pushed myself further than I possibly could, when I've had the darkest days, the darkest hours, the biggest problems in my life, there's a seed of hope that I've found inside of those hours that gives you all the fulfillment that you need. When you look at yourself in the mirror and you've dealt with something hard the right way, even though it was painful, and you start to walk a little bit taller, you start to be a little bit prouder. If you want to find yourself, you need challenge, you need to go on an adventure, and you need to push yourself to the limit. And I think the easiest way to do that as a man is to sign up for a competitive fight, because fights are not about the physical. They are about controlling the mental, they are about understanding if you are the person that you say you are, and this can become a very difficult thing to deal with. For me, as you will have seen in the intro of this video, and I can show you again now, I'd lost the fight that I put my all into in my training up to that fight. My first professional fight, I live streamed it, I had it go out to my whole audience, and I lost that fight.

11:33And I had to deal with the fact that I was not as good as I thought I was, and it allowed me to learn more about myself, and it allowed me to deal with a new set of problems, and become stronger inside, and show that I could deal with a loss. And that tested my character, it tested who I was, and it actually made me more fulfilled, and I will come back and have another fight, hopefully before the end of this year, but we'll see what happens there. And I've also won fights before, I had a fight in MMA fight, which can bring up now, that I won by submission, really make a joke in a second round. And the feelings from that, you then have this huge surge of confidence that you can use to take steps in other areas of your life. And these are both very important lessons, so if you have not done it so far, and you want to understand yourself, and you want to become authentic, to be yourself and be authentic, you have to have the ability to protect yourself, because you have to be able to protect your opinions and your values, and your views towards other people. Lesson number six, in finding yourself is solitude. You cannot find yourself surrounded by the noise and clutter of other people. You have to find yourself alone. I say to people, if you find yourself never being able to stay alone, that's when you need it most.

12:40And if you find yourself never wanting to meet other people, that's probably when you should go and see your friends, because there's introverted and extroverted personalities. So the extrovert needs more time alone, that he naturally won't get, because he always wants to be around other people, and the introvert actually needs to see other people for new ideas and fresh inspiration, as long as there's the right guys. When you take solitude, there's a few ways you have to do this. You can't look at your phone, you can't have entertainment, that's not solitude, that's distraction. You can't have music. I would recommend you spend an hour alone in your room with no distractions, no phone, you spend an hour thinking, just thinking and seeing what comes into your mind, and you write some things down on a piece of paper, and you start to discover what you really want, what your mind wanders to, when you are left alone. Solitude for me is one of the most beautiful things. I think men that want to create something, you have to take time away from the people around you, you have to find your core, you have to find who you truly are before you can build a team around you, you have to become very solid and knowing what you actually want.

13:45Lesson number seven is something that I've learned over time by becoming progressively crazier and crazier and posting more content and just doing my thing and realizing that nobody gives a fuck what you do. Nobody cares because we all ask inherently selfish and we just think about ourselves the majority of the time. So I used to get very, very concerned when I was first going out into the social media world that everyone was going to judge me, what my friends are going to think, and the thing is people do not care anywhere near as much as you think. Some people view that as a bad thing and for me personally I find that very liberating because I know I could do pretty much anything and everyone forget about it in a week's time. Life if you look at it is incredibly sure and to spend any time not going after what you truly want, I believe is a waste because you really can do anything you put your mind to. If another human could do it then you could also do it and that's what I think made me I'm crazy, but for me it is served me very well and that started by just letting go of judgment by understanding people don't care and testing the things you want to test and running towards fear.

14:52Being scared and having fear the things I was scared of most through my journey through my life so far have always been the things that have turned into the most beautiful moments in my life that have led to growth. So if you're worried right now about being your authentic self just remember that nobody really cares and when you try and be someone else people can tell. I'm not afraid to be who I am I'm not afraid to talk about my past I'm not afraid that occasionally I'm a degenerate and I don't need to be perfect because none of us are in anyone that says that they are is is lying to you and they're covering things up and I think we can all tell that so when you find someone authentic when they just live how they want to live and they don't pass judgments on others. I find it to be a very endearing thing so just make sure whatever quirks you have enjoy them because when I became the person that I am today and I started talking how I wanted to talk and I didn't copy anyone else and I got inspiration from others about their discipline and things that they do. But I just became who I was and interested in what I do and the more I lean into that the more successful I become and the more people like me and the more I try and be somebody else the more about fathers in my face.

15:59So I think that's really all you need to know in terms of becoming comfortable in yourself is that it's your biggest superpower the quirks that you have personally will take you all the way if you can just learn to express them. Lesson number eight is to find a purpose to find a craft to hone to find something to put your time into something that you can productively work on day in and day out and allow some of your creativity to bleed through to trust the internal creator to trust what you're given when you write down on a piece of paper and something comes out of your mind to trust that is the right thing to do one of the best ways I found to do this I read a book called the artist's way to do it. The artist's way by Julia Cameron and she recommends three pages of morning writing every day as Stephen King had a favorite line he used to say was that I only write when inspiration strikes luckily it strikes at 9 a.m. every morning and that's what these three pages are there three pages of creative flow of any blabble that wants to come out of your mouth or out of your mind and onto paper and what you find by just doing that consistently is that you start to find your inner artist.

17:08Now what I would recommend is you have a skill or some sort of craft to create even devor it could even be a hobby a YouTube video like this one this was a creative endeavor for me this is something I've really enjoyed making and building I've built it all myself I've done all the editing all the shots with a bit of help from my team and we put this thing together with the music we wanted and that was just an inner expression of what I want to say and what I want to do and honing my craft and I find that to be incredibly powerful because you have to listen to yourself and you have to know who you are to get that creativity out and it helps you get closer to your core and it's just all about trusting that maybe you will have a good idea that the ideas the good ones don't come from you anyway I believe in universal intelligence that your ideas come from the cosmos and that you just wire into them that you are infinitely more intelligent than you think you are because you can access information that you don't even know about and you'll find that often with writers they can write about experiences that they haven't had they can write characters that are smarter than them and that's because we can draw creative inspiration far more powerful than ourselves and I believe everything truly comes down to art what humans like and the reason we buy products and the reasons we like people

18:21and the thing that really speaks to our soul is art and art is an expression of the human experience of the pain that we all feel and showing that to people across any realm whether it be a blog or an email list that you write or some text on your website or a video that you make dialing into your art is a massive part of discovering who you are and it's one of the most beautiful journeys in my opinion and will help you in business And lesson number nine which is actually my final lesson that I've learnt so far is that the true freedom comes from discipline that we don't actually want to be able to do whatever we want all the time and discipline is the key to our soul the happiest times in my life have been times of extreme discipline times when I look back and think Wow, how the hell did I make it through that? How did I stick to that schedule? And you become proud of yourself. And when you become proud of yourself, you start to listen to yourself more, you start to treat yourself better, you start to understand who you truly are. So I would recommend just as a starter, you wake up at the same time every day,

19:23you train really fucking hard, you go and do martial arts, and you create something on a daily basis, whether it's in your business, whether it's a sales call, a blog post or an email or an Instagram story, you work hard, you set a schedule, and you stick to it over a long enough period of time to feel self-growth. And there's a great quote again from Turning Pro by Stephen Pressfield, when he talks about going from amateur to pro, the majority of people in life are amateurs. They never take anything seriously, they can never stick to a plan, and they never achieve their dreams. And he talks about what it was like for him when he turned pro and turning pro is just taking life seriously essentially. That year made me a pro. It gave me the first time in my life an uninterrupted stretch of month after month that was mine alone, that nobody knew about but me. When I was truly productive, truly facing my demons and truly working my shit, that year has stuck with me. The hero wanders, the hero suffers, the hero returns, you are that hero.

20:23Hello. Hi.