Speaker A
Hey guys, I'm Heidi Prib. Welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new here. This season on this channel, we are talking about change. And when we talk about change, a big part of what comes into that picture is how much we
Heidi Priebe outlines five warning signs you're leaving too much of your life to chance, including cynicism, neglecting health, lack of fun, poor social circles, and not voicing your desires. Sponsore
Key Takeaways
- Passivity often shows up as cynicism, avoidance of health care, and neglecting enjoyable, meaningful challenges.
- Shift attention from red flags and system flaws to leverage points and green flags you can actively pursue.
- Engineer your environment and social circle to put you in contact with the people and opportunities you want.
- Voice your goals to others and run low-cost experiments to test possibilities despite rejection.
What the video covers
- Heidi Priebe frames the video around the balance between adapting to your environment and deliberately designing it, noting that both have their season.
- Sign 1: Spending more time worried about getting trapped in bad situations than thinking about how to put yourself in good ones, which signals cynicism and passivity.
- Cynicism can make people fixate on red flags in dating, jobs, and family; the remedy is shifting attention to green flags and where desired people are likely to be.
- Asking new questions such as 'What approaches have I never tried?' moves you from analyzing a broken system to finding leverage points you can actually act on.
- Health is a major area of passivity; Heidi shares how she used to only seek care in crisis, and recommends taking first steps early.
- Sponsor Zocdoc is presented as a tool to reduce friction in booking doctor appointments, letting users compare in-network doctors, read reviews, and book quickly.
- Sign 2: Not having much fun can indicate passivity; dopamine is tied to anticipating rewards, so pursuing meaningful challenges creates more motivating anticipation.
- Sign 3 (inferred): Limited exposure to diverse, inspiring people narrows opportunities; expanding your 'luck surface area' means spending time where desired outcomes are likely.
- Heidi stresses rest is valuable, but intentional rest differs from avoidance, and unresolved relationship conflicts can quietly drain energy.
- Sign 5: If nobody around you knows what you want, you're missing feedback and opportunities; sharing goals and testing options despite rejection increases chances of success.
Chapters
- 00:00Intro: Adapting Versus Designing Your Environment
- 00:59Sign 1: Cynicism and Fixating on Red Flags
- 03:04Shifting From Cynicism to Agency
- 05:06Sign 1 Continued: Health and Sponsor Zocdoc
- 06:25Sign 2: Not Having Enough Fun
- 08:28Sign 3: Surrounding Yourself With Inspiring People
- 10:59Sign 4: Avoiding Conflict and the Value of Rest
- 13:40Sign 5: Nobody Knows What You Want
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
are adapting to our environments versus how much we are exercising control or deliberate design of our environments.
Speaker A
And something I want to make really clear before we dive into this video is that I believe there's a time and a place for both things. So there's a time to recognize when things are going well for us, when we're not needing to go out
Speaker A
into the world and do a lot of sourcing of new situations for ourselves. In fact, it might be a lot wiser in those cases to stay present with what we have in our lives and work to optimize what
Speaker A
exists already inside of our frame of reference. But there is also absolutely a time to do the opposite. So a time to go out into the world and start sourcing more of what we want and stop leaving so
Speaker A
much of what is happening in our lives up to random chance. So what we're going to be talking about today are some of the warning signs or some of the kind of indicators that that might be a phase
Speaker A
that you are moving into. In reality, there's a season for both. And so what we're going to talk about here is how to recognize that change of seasons when it's happening. So first sign or first kind of indicator light that might go
Speaker A
off in your life to show you that you might be leaving too much up to chance is that you notice yourself spending a lot more time worried about getting trapped in the wrong situations than you spend thinking about how to put yourself
Speaker A
in the right ones. Cynicism can be a really strong warning flag that we're not exercising enough agency in our lives. So what does that look like in practice? When we are feeling cynical, we might be having thoughts like there
Speaker A
is something deeply wrong with every romantic opportunity we have available to us. The whole market is corrupt and everyone is full of red flags. And we might be getting really really obsessed with being able to identify every single
Speaker A
one of those and really convinced that the only wise move we can make is to learn how to protect ourselves from all of that corruption. The same attitude can happen in the job market or in family environments, right? where we're
Speaker A
getting really really obsessed with self-p protection at the expense of thinking about what is it that I do want that isn't currently being offered to me and how can I start pursuing that so taking my attention off of those red
Speaker A
flags and going okay what does a green flag look like to me and where do those green flags live the people who I want to be surrounded by where are they likely to be right now as I'm sitting in
Speaker A
my room thinking about What are they likely to be doing? How could I engineer more of my environment so that I'm putting myself in contact with more of what I do want on average as opposed to spending my time growing
Speaker A
increasingly cynical and bitter about what's around me? We can also have cynicism about the patterns of our own lives. So feeling like, okay, I keep trying to have healthy relationships or to find work that I love or whatever it
Speaker A
is, but things just keep patterning out in these same predictable ways that leave me feeling disappointed.
Speaker A
To switch from that cynicism to a more agentic approach where we are in control or at cause of what's happening to us, we can start asking ourselves different questions like, "What are 10 approaches that I have never tried? What are other
Speaker A
people who are getting the things that I want doing that I am not doing? And we can develop practices or experiments where we go out and try to source more of what we do want, which naturally takes our attention off of that
Speaker A
obsessive focus on what we don't. Right? So, this is moving from a frame of analyzing and staying obsessed with a system that might genuinely be broken.
Speaker A
Okay, so it might be that we actually are dealing with a dating market that has a lot of problems with it or a job market that is really hard to navigate.
Speaker A
But when we start turning our attention off of the flaws of the system and onto different questions like where are the leverage points where this system can actually be worked with effectively. Now we're asking ourselves the kind of
Speaker A
questions that are going to change our lives for the better. removing our attention off of those places that we can't control and deliberately placing them on what we can. Now, most of us would agree that one of the main areas
Speaker A
where it's important to not leave things up to chance is when it comes to our health. But it's one of the places where most of us are absolutely the most passive. So, I used to have a pattern of
Speaker A
being totally reactive about my health. So, I would only get medical care if I was already in distress and it was extremely clear that something was imminently wrong. Otherwise, I just did not want to go through the headache of
Speaker A
calling around to different doctor's offices, explaining my situation over and over again and trying to find an appointment time for something that I was honestly hoping would just go away on its own if I didn't pay that much
Speaker A
attention to it. And as a result of that, I often ended up struggling for a lot longer than I needed to with certain health concerns. That's why I'm excited to talk about the sponsor of today's video Zachdoc.
Speaker A
Zukdoc is a free website where you can search and compare in-et network doctors, read reviews from real patients, and see actual appointment availability all in one place. So instead of calling around, playing phone tag, or finally getting through to
Speaker A
someone only to hear that the next opening is weeks away, you can just go on Zockdoc, see who's available, and book instantly. Appointments often happen within 24 to 72 hours, sometimes even the same day. What I like about
Speaker A
Sockdoc is that it removes just enough friction to shift you out of that passive mode. When I know that I can make an appointment in under 5 minutes with almost zero administrative stress, I am way more likely to tend to health
Speaker A
concerns as soon as they first pop up, which can save so much unnecessary stress and suffering down the line. I think that for pretty much all of us, we are way less likely to leave things up to chance in life if we know what it
Speaker A
looks like to take that first step towards getting things solved with intention. And Zach Dog makes that first step very easy when it comes to health concerns. You guys know that I'm always telling you to take care of yourselves
Speaker A
and taking care of your health is a huge part of that. So, if there's an appointment that you've been putting off, I really encourage you to head to zoddock.com/hidyp or click on the link in the description of this video to get it crossed off your
Speaker A
to-do list in a way that feels genuinely easy. [music] Second sign that we might be leaving too much in our lives up to chance is we are not having a lot of fun. Okay, so this one might seem kind of counterintuitive
Speaker A
because a lot of us think of fun as a solely hedonistic pursuit, right? So when we're enjoying ourselves, it must mean that we are deliberately ignoring our responsibilities and not paying attention to what would give our lives more structure. And I think that this is
Speaker A
very often completely backwards because the way that dopamine works in the brain is that we get that rush of dopamine, that sense of joy and expectation when we are anticipating a reward. So when we are taking care to design our lives in a
Speaker A
way that sets us up to be consistently rising to a series of challenges that we find meaningful, what we're also going to experience is a lot more of those dopamine rushes coming in on route to those desires.
Speaker A
So this is what happens when we find ourselves building projects or working on something that we are genuinely interested in. when we are challenging ourselves to go flirt with that person who we find attractive or to go train
Speaker A
for that hike or that marathon that we would really love to complete. All of these things, even if they're taxing on a physical level, we're likely to be getting a lot of emotional and psychological returns from. When we are
Speaker A
taking care to do this, our energy is functioning very differently than when we are kind of constantly scanning our environments hoping something good is going to happen to us.
Speaker A
Sign number three that you are leaving too much of your life up to chance is that you are constantly finding yourself surrounded by people whose lives you wouldn't want. Now, the first thing I want to make clear here is that of
Speaker A
course it's really great to have a diverse group of people you interact with. Some of whom have lives that you really admire and would want for yourselves and others who might have lives that you see them thriving and
Speaker A
being happy with but that you would not want for your own life. However, if you find that you are very rarely in rooms filled with people whose lives you admire, that's a pretty clear sign that you're probably not being intentional
Speaker A
enough about environmental design. This is one of the highest leverage things we can do for ourselves if we want our lives to continuously be expanding.
Speaker A
Because when we are surrounding ourselves with people who have the things that we want or who live in a way that we find really inspiring, what our brains are subconsciously doing in the presence of those people is internalizing their strategies,
Speaker A
internalizing the energy that they're bringing into the pursuit of the lives that they want. figuring out what it is about their approach that we might be able to adopt to get more of the same things or to be able to live in a more
Speaker A
similar way to them. When we are spending time around people whose way of being feels intuitively inspiring to us, what we are naturally doing is expanding our luck surface area. So, this is a concept that I actually don't know the
Speaker A
origin of. This is not my term. I just see it everywhere on Twitter these days.
Speaker A
But the idea is that of course we can't force ourselves to get lucky in life, right? We can't just force the big break that we've been looking for professionally or we can't just will our soulmate to show up in our lives. But
Speaker A
what we do have control over is being conscious about creating the conditions where it's more likely that that luck is going to show up for us.
Speaker A
So what we can do is think about things like which types of rooms are the people who are offering the opportunities that I want frequently finding themselves in and is there a way for me to get myself into more of those environments?
Speaker A
Or if I'm looking to meet the love of my life, which environments is that kind of person most likely to be in and how can I go put myself in more of those environments? So this is about not
Speaker A
forcing the lives that we want to come to us directly but being deliberate about exposing ourselves to the environments where luck is more likely to show up. So one of the highest leverage things we can do if we don't
Speaker A
yet have the lives we want is get into consistent connection with people whose lives inspire us. This is going to passively expand us in massive, massive ways.
Speaker A
Sign number four that you might be leaving way too much up to chance in your life is that you feel at the mercy of your own energy.
Speaker A
So when we find ourselves in states where we are feeling kind of perpetually drained or stuck, it can be really easy to kind of go with the belief I will get back to my life or I will take more
Speaker A
action once I am feeling better. And what I want to get clear right from the get-go is that I am the biggest advocate on earth for periods of intentional rest. So sometimes we really do just need to put down the things that are
Speaker A
draining us and give ourselves time and space to return to regulation. But I think there is a very insidious pattern that it can be really easy to get stuck in that we need to watch out for which is periods where we are not
Speaker A
doing anything. So, we are taking a break from our work or our obligations or whatever it is, but we're also not properly resting because our minds are still stuck in anxiety loops. So, we are still feeling low-level activation even
Speaker A
if all we are physically doing is sitting on our couch. And very often, the reason this happens is because we have open loops in our thinking that need to get closed. Those open loops might look like thinking perpetually
Speaker A
about the emails that we know we need to send that we haven't sent yet or thinking about the tasks that we've been putting off because doing them brings up shame or uncertainty or stress or putting off those conversations with
Speaker A
people that we know we really need to have but we don't want to deal with the conflict or the murky feelings that come up alongside it. And so if we want to be intentional about how we're dealing with
Speaker A
those open loops, what we want to start zooming in on is which habits can we develop or which skills can we hone that would allow those loops to close faster.
Speaker A
Can we upskill in the department of having hard conversations so that we don't have 10 to 20 conversations that we really know we need to be having in the back of our minds at all times, keeping us away from deep rest.
Speaker A
Or if there are a whole bunch of administrative tasks that bring up shame and panic, so we've been endlessly putting them off, can we do some work on regulating around the completion of those tasks so that we can close those
Speaker A
loops and actually allow our bodies to rest. This is going to allow us to be much more in control of what is happening with our energy rather than simply hoping that it autocorrects and that we wake up one morning super
Speaker A
motivated. Sign number five that you might be leaving way too much of your life up to chance is that nobody around you knows what it is that you want. So if you have huge unrealized desires in your life that you are not constantly
Speaker A
telling people about or interacting with or showing people your work around, I guarantee you that you are leaving way too much up to chance because you are limiting your opportunities to what you can conceive of and completely leaving
Speaker A
off the table all of the wisdom that might exist in your network or your environment. all of the connections that might exist in your network, in your environment, all of the opportunities for luck that might come your way, if
Speaker A
you have 20 different people who have in the back of their minds, hey, you want to be connected to this particular opportunity. So if they come across it, they can now make that connection for you. But why do we not do this, right?
Speaker A
So I think that there are two key reasons. One is that we don't share our desires when we are not super clear on them. So we feel like talking about them would be bothering people or we don't talk about our desires when we are
Speaker A
ashamed of the fact that we want something we don't yet have. So this might look like you really want to be working in a particular field, but instead of talking to people about it, you are keeping all of that to yourself
Speaker A
until you become perfectly proficient at something. Or maybe you really want to be married, but you're not telling any of your friends and family members that because you're embarrassed that you want something you don't yet have. The problem is that in both cases, you are
Speaker A
now robbing yourself of all of the resources other people might have to help you get connected to whatever it is that you want. There have been so many times in my life where I have shared things with people that I think are so
Speaker A
shameful and embarrassing and then what's actually happened is I've gotten met with some version of either, "Yeah, me too. That makes total sense to me." Or, "Wow, it's really cool that you admitted that. I think things like that,
Speaker A
too, but I don't like to say them out loud." Right? The amount of times that kind of thing happens relative to the amount of times that we get overt rejection or judgment is often really really disproportionate in the favor of
Speaker A
sharing the things that we're embarrassed about being connective. But even if you're getting eight rejections for every two times that something goes right, you're still getting those two opportunities to test out what could go right. So, you're still a lot further along than you would
Speaker A
be if you were keeping all of it to yourself. Something it can be so easy for all of us to forget is that clarity tends to come after contact with reality, not before it. So, it is way harder to think
Speaker A
ourselves into clarity than it is to act our way towards it. Very often the absolute best thing we can do when we don't know what we want or when we're feeling lost or kind of in the dark in
Speaker A
some area of our lives is to start gathering more data in any direction. So if you have no idea what you want out of your love life. What if you went on 10 different dates? You will start getting
Speaker A
a clearer idea on a more embodied level of what feels good to you and what doesn't, which helps that clarity start to emerge, right? Or if you don't know which projects you want to be working at at a
Speaker A
given point in your life, can you just test out working a couple of very different jobs or researching different types of fields or talking to people who are doing different types of work and just notice what is consistently holding
Speaker A
your interest and your attention versus what isn't. Again, that helps us narrow down and gain more clarity. I'm going to say it one more time. When we don't know what we want, when clarity is not arriving to us, one of the best things
Speaker A
we can possibly do to practice more agency is to get out into the world and gather more data. And so, like any of the things in this video, I just want to emphasize again that this does not mean
Speaker A
that we need to always have a bias towards action. It just means that if we notice that we are spending a lot of time sitting around hoping that clarity or inspiration are going to strike us and we notice that in the meantime our
Speaker A
energy feels like it's kind of leaking into all of these lowquality activities or we're feeling generally unhappy or uninspired whatever it is these can serve as really useful signs that what is needed in our life is a little bit
Speaker A
more conscious intention and structure. All right, I am going to leave it at that for today. But as always, any questions, any thoughts that have been popping up for you as you've gone through this video, please leave them in
Speaker A
the comment section below. I love you guys. I hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other, and I will see you back here again really soon.
Speaker A
[music]
Topics:personal growthagencyself improvementmindsetcynicismhealthmotivationdopamineluck surface areaHeidi Priebe
