How to Live Your Best Life

This is a speech that I’m going to deliver to my High School Cross Country coach’s class. I try to make it relatable to High School students and I hope it can help them make a difference in their life. Enjoy~!

Introduction

Good morning everyone, it’s an honor to be here. My name is Sean Pan. I grew up in Milpitas, and actually went to this High school over 10 years ago. Ms. Hall was my cross country and track coach, and I was also a big member of the ROTC program over there. I went to UCLA to study Electrical Engineering and picked up my master’s degree. Now I work in Sunnyvale as a systems engineer building satellites, I’m a real estate investor and flip houses in the area, I’m the area director for several Toastmasters clubs where we train people on public speaking, and currently the host of the everything real estate investing show, a biweekly podcast where I interview real estate investors and professionals to get the inside scoop on their trades.

My Why

After working so hard in school and earning my masters in my field, I felt really discontent with my life once I started working. The pay, benefits, and work were all mediocre, and not what I imagined what it would be when I was still in school. I knew there had to be a different way to live life. A way where I was held accountable only by my own efforts and not based on what my employer would give me.

I wanted to find a way to maximize my potential in life and give myself the freedom to do whatever I pleased. That’s when I started thinking of what could I possibly do to start living my best life.

I don’t know about you, but when I was in high school, and even throughout college, I was lost and unsure of what I wanted to do with my life. My why and my reason for coming to talk to you is to help you break out of your regular routine and to help you find your way to living your best life.

Three Techniques to Living Your Best Life

Today I’m going to be telling you guys 3 ways to make your life better. The proper way to deal with stress and problems, how to accomplish any goal and think bigger, and learning to be eternally grateful. If you can master just one of these, your life will improve significantly, 2 even more so, and if you master all 3 you will be able to accomplish anything you want in the world.

How to Deal With Stress and Problems

The first thing I’ll go over is the most technical. How to deal with stress and problems. No matter what happens in your life, you will face stress or problems. Show of hands, how many of you have ever broken up from a relationship before, or how many of you have ever done poorly on a test? I guarantee you, in life, there will be problems, and that’s ok! Having problems isn’t a problem, it’s normal. The only people who have no problems are dead.

What you need to learn is how to deal with the problem. When I was 24 years old, I was in a very serious relationship. It lasted over five years and we went through many tough times together. But when it finally ended, I was crushed, it felt like a big piece of me was gone. We were known to our friends as the power couple, but now, I was all alone. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Some of my friends went through a similar situation. They would mope around and look at old photos of their girlfriends in bed and reminisce about the good times they had together. Some of my friends would try to numb the pain away by drinking or even doing drugs. These are very bad ways to deal with your problems because it doesn’t do anything for you. You’re just numbing yourself. Instead of doing that, do something positive. I was so sad, I couldn’t even stay home without feeling incredibly lonely. So instead I starting going to the gym religiously. Working out for me is my destress-er.

I also learned to read a lot of books and I started pouring my time into learning how stock markets and investments work. I used all of that mental frustration and energy to do something greater for my life. It was like I was a spring that got compressed and once you let go of that spring it jumps to new heights. Learn how to deal with stress the right way and your life will be much better.

How to Have and Accomplish BIG Goals

The second thing I want you to learn is how to accomplish any goal that you have. The first step is to have a goal. In high school, I didn’t have any real goals, just go to school, and do sports so I could get to college, homework, and then sleep. Once I graduated from college, I realized that the world had so many opportunities that it was overwhelming. Someone once said “the common thing between every actor, business man, and celebrity you know…is that once upon a time they were none of those things”. You have the ability to accomplish anything you want, no matter how crazy it may seem as long as you are willing to pay the price. And very rarely is that price financial.

One Armed Pull-Ups

After getting over the big break up, I decided that I wanted to do something cool, something unique. I’ve been training how to do pull ups since I was in high school, and after 7 years of training, I could finally do 10. I felt proud of myself, but decided that that wasn’t enough, I wanted to be cooler. Instead of a pull-up, what if I could do it, with just one arm! A one-armed pull up is like being able to go ski down a double black diamond. It’s an expert level skill, and in every gym there’s probably only 2 or 3 people who can do it.

After setting my sights on a ridiculous goal, researched how others did it on YouTube and fitness blogs. I planned a workout routine that would get me stronger for that particular skill. I even found a buddy who was crazy enough to do it with me. After 3 months of planning, exercising, and revising that plan. On Feb 24, 2015, we accomplished that goal. Do you guys know what true happiness is? True happiness comes when you work a plan to its fullest and achieve your goal.

Think Bigger

Think bigger, 10x your goal and you will find how quickly you will reach your initial goal. One of the real estate investors that I hang out with is consistently producing over $2 million a year, net. One of his goals in the past was to acquire 1000 apartment units across the United States to make another $1 million a year, passively. After attending a seminar, even he thought that his goals were too small. Instead of $1 million a year, he wants to make $1 million a month, passive! His target is now 10,000 units. Within the short amount of time that he shifted his mindset, he’s already under contract for over 250 apartment units. He’s already ¼ of the way from his original goal.

When you have ridiculous goals and big dreams, you will hit your original goals and dreams much faster. In the real estate investing world, there’s potential to make a lot of money. In the past, I would have been happy with just making $100,000 total. 10xing that goal means I need to make $1,000,000 a year. It sounds like a lot but it’s not. After setting $1,000,000 as my baseline standard and 10xing my original goal, I made over half a million in one year. I missed my mark, but I still beat my original goal.

Mentorship

Besides thinking bigger and laying it out, sometimes you need a mentor and a coach. A couple of months ago, I wanted to do something really cool. I wanted to learn how to do a backflip. I watched a couple of YouTube videos and thought it would be easy. Someone managed to do it in a day by just continuously doing it for hours. The limiting factor was just his fear. I’m not scared of anything, so I thought it would be a piece of cake. Wrong!

Backflips are hard, and landing on the floor with your face is hard too. I landed on my head, I stubbed my toe and the nail came off, I definitely landed on my arms a few times. After 5 months of trying to do it, I thought it was impossible for me, and since I announced that I was going to accomplish it in 10 days on my social media, I was embarrassed to even show my face. That’s when I met someone who told me about a gymnastics gym in Santa Clara. I’ve never done gymnastics before, but he says it’s a great environment to learn.

When I got there, I was surrounded by little kids who were just doing the most amazing tricks. They were soaring in the air without any fear and nailed every landing. The first few times I went to the gym, I spent most of the time trying to do it on my own, and still failed.

Finally, I asked one of the coaches there to train me on this skill. He was very experienced and knew what I was doing wrong. With just a couple of changes in my posture, and my initial jump, I was able to do a back flip within 30 minutes. 30 minutes! I was struggling for 5 months and injuring myself when I could have got serious training to shorten my time and my pain.

Mentorship is key in life. You need to find a coach who knows what they’re doing and can help you with your problem. They’ll make life a lot easier and will work with you to make sure you succeed in anything you want to do.

Being Grateful

The third key to living your best life is to be grateful. Being grateful is the opposite of being angry at someone. I remember when I was younger, I used to hate on a lot of people, but hating others is like holding on to a piece of hot coal and expecting the other person to burn. In reality, you get burned. Every day I write on a little note pad of all of the things I’m grateful for. My house, the good food I have, my friends, my family, etc… There are so many things that you have in your life that you take for granted, take a second in your day to pause and think about what you have.

If it’s hard to spend time to be grateful, associate it with a regular habit. Every time you brush your teeth you can think, wow, I’m lucky I have such white teeth. I reflect about everything I’m grateful for right before a meal. If you’re busy being grateful, you won’t be sad, or angry. It’s impossible to be sad or angry when you’re grateful!

My Goals and Current Life

By going through these experiences and opening my eyes to the real world, I’ve made some very controversial decisions. I will be leaving my full time job as a systems engineer in three months to pursue my goals to become an entrepreneur and real estate investor. I use these three things every day. Whenever I have problems I hit the gym. Even if I just walk into the gym I consider it a success.  A lot of people say they don’t have time for that. Well neither do I, but I make time to squeeze in a 30 minute session. Everyone has problems, just learn to deal with them in an effective manner.

I have big goals right now. $1 million/year isn’t the stretch goal, it’s the baseline goal. After interviewing so many real estate investors and by constantly hanging around them, I can see the path to $1 million a year very clearly, and it’s not that hard to go through. The stretch goal is now figuring out how to make $10 million a year. It could be through 1 10 million dollar business or 10 1 million dollar business. It doesn’t matter, what matters is having a large goal, a big dream to follow. It’s important to have big dreams, and it doesn’t cost anything to have them! Check out this cool trick I learned from Steve Harvey. This is a vision board, by looking at it multiple times a day, it will alter your subconscious mind and will attract all of the things you put on it.

And finally, throughout the process and going through life, you have to be grateful for what you have. You have to feel the happiness and be aware of everything you already have, otherwise, even if you hit the top of the financial ladder, you will still be miserable. Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanks once said, money is fun to make, fund to spend, and fun to give away.

Self-Discipline Will Get you Everything You Want

I realize that especially for many of you, a lot of things I talked about may seem impossible or irrelevant to your current situation. Many of you are stressed out over other things, like figuring out how to get that girl or boy to text you back, or by getting a good grade in Ms. Hall’s class. But here are some things that you can do TODAY to make your life better. Today, right now, I want you to make a commitment to yourself, to think bigger about yourself. Change the way you use your brain and all the other pieces will fall into place.

Out of all the skills that were mentioned in the past few minutes, there’s only one thing you need to focus on, and that’s self-discipline. With self-discipline, you can accomplish anything and everything you want. Without self-discipline, you will very likely fail at everything you try to do. So to build up this self-discipline muscle. I’m going to have you do just one simple thing. I’m going to have you all wake up with just one alarm.

One Easy Thing to Do TONIGHT!

How many of you set multiple alarms to wake up every day, or regularly use the snooze button? So starting today, you’re going to delete all of that. Trust yourself, set just ONE alarm, the very last one you usually have. There’s no point in setting one at 6:30, 6:45, and 6:50. Just keep the one at 6:50 and put it on the other side of the room. When that sucker goes off, it’ll force you to walk to the other side of the room. Once you’re up, tell yourself that you’re great and that you’re going to go out into the world to accomplish your goals. I set my alarm on for 5:45 every day. And every day I wake up and I think, ‘ugh’ I hate my life, and it’s cold, but I do it, I get up and run into the shower. But afterwards I feel great, the hardest part of my day is over, and I’m able to start accomplishing so much.

Finding good stress relievers, having and accomplishing big goals, being grateful, all ties in to having great self-discipline. Do these things and you will be living your best life. I didn’t know about these when I was your age, I only started figuring them out recently. You have a great opportunity ahead of you, you are young, and you have the ability to become anything you want.

Like I mentioned earlier, the thing that all celebrities and successful business owners and CEOs all have in common is that they were once none of those things. And like I mentioned earlier, doing these things isn’t easy, it’s basically shifting the way you’re used to living. Forcing yourself to change is the price you have to pay. But there is a cost to not changing as well. Where will you be a year from now if you don’t do anything? What are you missing out on?

Conclusion

By going through these steps, I’ve been able to change my life around. I have the freedom to do what I want, when I want it. I have a lot of pride in my self-discipline, and prefer to read books instead of watch TV or play games with my friends. I’m able to consistently go to the gym, attend networking events, and toastmasters meetings on a regular basis and even won the second place award for the district competition. By following the three steps, I found my freedom and happiness. I’m living my best life. Follow the three steps, and you will live your best life.