Teen improves himself and others

Ruben Chwilkowski checks out his fitness progress. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Ruben Chwilkowski has a superior physique and mindset than he had two years ago. Now, he’s spurring others to begin their self-improvement journeys.

“That's my niche,” he said. “It's a pretty broad niche, but that's what it is: self-improvement. I share my own fitness journey. That is a topic that I'm really passionate about, going to the gym, the nutrition, the recovery, the training, all that. I'm a young guy still. I'm still at the beginning of my self-improvement journey. I'm learning all the time. I'm reading books. I'm experiencing things and I like to share what I have learned in the topic of self-improvement.”

The self-improvement influencer’s video topics include Why you must get out of your comfort zone! and How to tell apart bad genetics from good genetics.

Ruben, 19, of Germany, whose channel is called Ruben Improves, decided a change was needed a couple of years ago.

“Like most people, my self-improvement journey started with fitness, with going to the gym,” he said. “I always did like team sports. I played handbal., I used to play ultimate Frisbee. Then, I decided I want to build some muscle. After the Frisbee training, I went into the basement, started doing some push-ups, bought some dumbbells, started doing some curls. After a couple of months, I noticed this is something I really like. This is something I can see myself doing for years. I got a gym membership.”

Ruben said becoming fitter was the first step in a process.

“That's one part of self-improvement,” he said. “It's fitness. Most people start with that because it's something that you're in that's exciting. You can see the results for yourself. It's not like when you try to improve your mindset, that's really tough. You don't really see the results right away. But with fitness, after a couple of weeks, you see, oh, nice, my bicep’s getting bigger. That's something you can track really well. After I went to the gym, I started watching some self-improvement content on the Internet.”

Ruben participates in a 100km Ultra Walk Challenge.

For Ruben, one memoir stood out among the plethora of content.

“What really got me excited about self-improvement, really got me committed to that, was reading the book Can't Hurt Me (Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds) by David Goggins,” he said. “He is a really prominent figure in that self-improvement space. This is my second favorite self-improvement book of all time. It is really good. I listened to it on Audible. I listened to it whilst doing my first big challenge. When you look at my YouTube channel, a big part of my channel is challenges. Every month or so, I do a big challenge where I try to get out of my comfort zone, where I try to really do something that is really uncomfortable and that I am not sure that I could do.”

Ruben did that first challenge prior to producing social media content.

“The first challenge I did was — I didn't even do YouTube back then — it was a 12-hour walk,” he said. “I was trying to walk for 12 hours and do as many steps as possible. Coincidentally, the audiobook of that Can't Hurt Me book is roughly 12 hours long, so I listened to it in one go. That is what really got me excited. From that day onwards, I thought to myself, man, this is really something. I really want to get really good at this self-improvement thing. I was hooked.”

Ruben’s attitude changed.

“I noticed some pretty drastic changes in my mindset,” he said. “Aside from becoming more ambitious and disciplined, I noticed that I am way more grateful for what I have. I also noticed that I am now way better at dealing with misfortune, small and big. My confidence has increased significantly. I never was a pessimist, but I wasn't always as conscious of the negative effects an overly negative attitude can have on your mental health amongst other things. I would definitely say I have a more positive attitude now than some years ago.”

Ruben then used social media to connect with others also seeking to improve themselves.

“Building my YouTube channel was mostly because it was really difficult for me to find a community of like-minded people,” he said. “There are some really big communities and some really big influencers in the self-improvement space, but I find it really hard to associate with them because to get to a point where you're that big of a figure in that space, you have to touch on a lot of topics and you have to a lot of opinions that are broadly resonating with a broad audience. It's watered down or at least it feels like that I was having trouble finding people I can connect with on a personal level and that I can mentor and that I can be mentored by.”

Ruben decided to start his own community.

“That's why I thought the Internet is the place to make such a community, to create such a community,” he said. “Being a YouTuber or trying to build such a community through YouTube just felt like the logical step for me.”

Ruben said people seeking self-improvement aren’t fully committed to the work involved.

“One thing I've noticed that I've also had issues with myself is that a lot of people, especially new people getting into self-improvement and also people from the outside looking at that world of fitness and self-improvement, which goes hand in hand, is that, oftentimes, it is pretty extreme,” he said. “Let's put fitness as an example. Let's say you want to build as much muscle as naturally possible, you need to be extreme. There is no balance. You need to eat extreme, you need to train extreme, you need to recover extreme.”

Ruben said that intensity is required at every step.

“That is the same way with the other categories of self-improvement,” he said. “Let's say mindfulness. It's not enough to say I meditate five minutes every day, I'm mindful. No, there are a lot of things that you can do to push that mindfulness. You can read books about it. You can do exercises in your head. It's a lot of things that you need to do if you really want to be the best version of yourself, because that's ultimately the goal.”

Ruben stressed the opposite holds true as well.

“There are a lot of things that you need to stop doing that sound extreme,” he said. “You need to stop drinking alcohol. You need to stop eating certain foods. People struggle with that. The struggle with that is normal. I still eat junk. Yesterday, I had KFC, so I still eat junk food from time to time. But I know if I really want to push my self-development, at some point, I need to stop doing that. At some point, I stopped drinking alcohol. At some point, I stopped skipping gym. At some point, I started tracking my calories every day.”

Ruben said discipline becomes pleasurable.

“Some people have a hard time accepting that is something that can fulfill someone and is something that can make someone happy,” he said. “Because for me, this is what makes me happy. This is what I want to do. I want to be relentless in the pursuit of improving myself. That's what I want. I want to track calories. I want to train really hard.”

Ruben said some people can’t accept that notion.

“They don't see it that way,” he said. “They say, oh, don't be so hard on yourself. You can eat that. Why do you have to track every single meal as if it were a chore, as if it were something that I would be forced to do. But I want to do that. This mindset of going to the extreme sometimes, of not always having the perfect balance and everything, this is something that can be counterintuitive because we are always taught you need balance in everything that you do, which is true to a certain extent. You cannot be always extreme in everything that's unhealthy. But sometimes I want to be unbalanced. I want to be extreme to one side. I want to push my body to the edge. And that's counterintuitive for a lot of people.”

Ruben is selective about which topics he covers.

“I want to generally stay inside the self-improvement reach,” he said. “I don't want to go out there and do things that don't have to do with that. First of all, that's not good for the views. My viewers, they expect self-improvement content from me and that's what I want to give to them. Generally, I have ideas and I write them down on my phone. I have a long list of ideas that I could do. Some are good. Some are bad. Some I initially think are good, and eventually it turns out they're not really good ideas. I'm sitting on the train, I'm on the way to work and, oh, wait, this could be a cool challenge. One thing leads to another.”

Fitness challenges are among Ruben’s consistent content.

“I do the challenges once a month usually,” he said. “I do these videos where I talk about fitness. Let's say I did a video where I show some very good exercises for growing the arms. Next video could be good exercises for growing the shoulders. When I started out YouTube, I had a very different idea of what I wanted to do this year. My channel was actually called Posture Check. I wanted to get more into posture and all of that kind of stuff, but it turned out I never actually did videos about that. So I changed my name and I changed my idea of what I wanted the channel to be. It's not a fixed plan for me. It's just something that comes to mind and something that develops naturally.”

Ruben also does archery.

Ruben noted even before creating content that folks can be easily discouraged.

“It has a lot to do with self-confidence because that's something you build,” he said. “Bad things happen to everyone, and bad things will always happen to everyone. But once you know that you can push through, you gain a little bit of confidence. That's what I'm trying to achieve with my challenges for myself. It's not mostly about YouTube. It's about when I know I put myself in an uncomfortable situation. Let's say I'm 10 hours in on a 30-hour walk, and I got blisters all over my feet. How do I know if I keep going or if I stop? I have been in this situation before. I'm in this situation now. I keep going. After I finish that challenge, I gain a little bit of confidence. I know I can pull through when tough times come.”

Ruben said the same applies to content creation.

“It's the same thing with YouTube,” he said. “Once you figure out how you reach a lot of people, how you influence a lot of people, how you become successful on social media, you can replicate that.”

Ruben cited another example.

“It's the same thing with fitness if I were to lose all my gains right now,” he said. “Let's say I got into a bad accident, couldn't train for half a year, everything's gone. I'm skinny again. I have the knowledge and I know I have what it takes to build it back up. It's about confidence. But when you start out before you do fitness, when you're still skinny or you're still overweight, you don't have that confidence yet. You don't know that you can do it yet.”

Ruben said the same idea applies to content creation.

“If I would know 100 percent for sure I will be a big YouTuber, I will be a big star in one year, I will figure it all out then it would be way easier to put all my eggs in one basket and focus 100 percent on YouTube,” he said. “But I don't know that. I don't have the confidence. I haven't figured it out yet. It would be easy for me to get discouraged about YouTube because I don't know if I can do it. I will not get discouraged about fitness. I know I can do that. I know I can be successful at that.”

However, Ruben said some people can’t weather the time needed to make improvements.

“I have experienced a lot of people that get discouraged, especially about fitness, because that's something that gives you such instant feedback,” he said. “If you gain weight, you see it instantly. If you lose weight, you see it instantly.  A lot of people have asked me in the past about advice about fitness, because they saw me. I was always very skinny. Now, I build some muscle, and they ask me about advice: How do I gain weight? How do I gain muscle? I tell them this and that, do this and that. They try it. It's hard, and they don't know if they can do it, and they give up. That's just psychology.”

Ruben is in his third year of his fitness journey.

“I've been working out for over two years now,” he said. “I've been in the gym for about two years and two months now. For four months, I worked out in the basement. I wasn't so serious about it back then. I've been really serious about it for a good two years.”

There wasn’t a particular incident that led to Ruben deciding to become fitter.

“It was more a feeling,” he said. “It was not one particular memory. I was never overweight. I was never unfit. I always could run long distances. I always was good at sports, but I always was short and skinny. The short thing has taken care of itself. I started growing when I was 16, and now I'm tall enough. But the skinny thing, that didn't take care of itself. That stayed. People actually were worried about me. People who didn't know me, they were saying are you underweight? You need to eat more or it's probably unhealthy to be that skinny. Of course, that messed with my self-confidence. When people think you are unhealthy, even though you're actually not, because I was good at sports, you think there's something wrong with you. Eventually, puberty hit, and I started growing. When I started growing, I still stayed skinny. I was like it would be cool if I got some muscle on my frame. That's all it was. I just thought I want to build some muscle. Let's do this.”

As Ruben became fitter, he noticed more than just enhanced aesthetics and strength.

“It's a whole different feeling,” he said. “Your body feels differently as a whole. For me, it wasn't dramatic changes, because I don't train specifically for strength. I train for muscle hypertrophy, so for just building muscle. But my posture increased. That improved. That's something that I've noticed and that my mother noticed, too, and my friends noticed, too. I used to have the typical gamer posture where I was slumped over. My posture was terrible. I've improved that. I haven't done any exercises to improve my posture. When you have stronger muscles, you're going to carry yourself differently. That's a big improvement that I noticed. Also with posture improvement automatically comes confidence.”

Ruben’s improved fitness had a ripple effect.

“Generally, I can do more work in relation to my own body weight,” he said. “When I started out, I was not unfit, but I could do maybe five pull-ups. I've worked all the way up to 26 now and four muscle-ups. That's a totally different level. Same thing comes to climbing and stuff like that. I can compensate a lack of technique with strength, especially compared to my body weight, because I'm not a heavy dude. I can put on pretty impressive feats of strength compared to my body weight. Whereas for example, my bench press isn't very strong or these isolated lifts where it's just about lifting the weight, I'm not particularly strong in that because I don't weigh a lot. But because I don't weigh a lot, my strength feats compared to my body weight, they're pretty strong. That's a benefit I've noticed.”

Ruben plans to focus on the mental aspect of bettering oneself.

“I am very interested in the psychological side of self-improvement,” he said. “I plan on studying psychology in the future. Right now, I'm working. I'm going to apply to university for psychology. That's my goal in that term.”

Ruben also wants to grow his channel.

“From a YouTube perspective, I want to build a community,” he said. “I want my channel to be big enough to have a solid community of people helping each other, mentoring each other. When it comes to all things self-improvement, that would be really great. I would be really happy and satisfied if it came to that.”

Ruben said one point among all others should stick out for his social media followers.

“My main thing is probably just how beneficial it is to regularly step outside of your comfort zone,” he said. “Everyone has heard it a thousand times. Whatever discomfort needs to be progressively overloaded. That's something I've heard a couple years ago and that's something that I still stand by. Discomfort needs to be progressively overloaded the same way as you progressively overload in the gym. You use more weight every now and then to become stronger and stronger. In that same sense, you need to progressively overload discomfort. I did a 15-hour march. I did a 27-hour march. Everything was hurting. My feet were swollen and I just wanted everything to stop. But I pulled through and now I've just gained that little bit of extra confidence that I can endure in these situations.”

Ruben said pushing himself toughened him up physically and mentally.

“That is probably the thing that has also helped my mental health throughout the years,” he said. “Just knowing that I have this ability to endure in difficult situations gives me a confidence that I can replicate. It's the same thing with YouTube, the same thing with fitness, same thing with general life. I can replicate this endurance and I can take the same mindset I have during these challenges and put them on difficult situations in life. This confidence can only be created when you endure these hard situations, and everyone's going to have to endure them.”

Ruben said even when life isn’t difficult, that’s the time to create self-discipline.

“When you have the privilege to not have to worry about money or food or shelter, why don't you take that privilege and put it to use and put yourself voluntarily in those hard situations so you can build that confidence,” he said. “That's probably my number one thing that I would tell people to do. That doesn't have to be physical. That doesn't have to be the gym. You don't have to do hiking or walking or running or thousand pull-up challenges like I did. That can be meditation, that can be nutrition, that can be everything. It just needs to be uncomfortable.”

Ruben hangs out with buddy Ben Gutzik.

Although Ruben had to adjust to speaking to a camera, he never was shy about talking to people.

“Obviously, when I first started recording YouTube videos, I was not as confident as I am today,” he said. “But speaking in front of people has always been easy. I used to have a side gig as an actor in theater when I was in school. I was always in school theater plays. I was always very confident and very comfortable in those situations, so I think I have a bit of a natural gift for that. But speaking in front of a camera is something totally different than speaking in front of people that are live. Because when you speak in front of an audience, you have instant feedback. When you're in front of a camera, you don't have that. That has benefits and drawbacks in of itself. But speaking and knowing that some people that I don't know are going to listen to that is something that has never been that hard for me.”

Ruben stays motivated by not losing sight of his goals.

“I do the things that are important to me,” he said. “I do with intention. I work out with intention. I make YouTube videos with intention. I don't just make it because I have to do it, not because it's a chore. No, I have a reason why I do it, and that reason pushes me to even work through the things that I don't like. Intention and the reason why are really important.”

Ruben explained some people lose sight of their intention.

“Sometimes, it can get lost,” he said. “You need to be honest with yourself and think, why do I really do this? One mistake I often see when people get into fitness, they get into fitness and say I want to do this for my health. That's correct. But some people just want to look good, but they don't want to say that. So they say I just want to do it for my health. I'm trying to be healthy. Eventually, they lie to themselves and they lose sight of that actual goal of looking good. Someday, they wake up and they think wait a minute, my health is not that important to me. And then they stop doing it, even though they have a legitimate motivation that would push them to actually achieve their goals, which in this case is looking good.”

“Discipline and the habit of working hard for something that you really want to achieve is something that you’re not born with. That’s something that somewhere lies in every human and that has to be brought out somehow. ”

Ruben encouraged people to send inquiries or feedback to him directly.

“It's hard to find like-minded people,” he said. “If someone reads this interview and has any questions or wants to know more about something, you can find my email address on YouTube. I would feel honored if someone would come to me and ask me a question or even if someone disagrees with me, wants to engage in a discussion.”

Ruben stressed the need for people to be tough enough to accomplish anything.

“Discipline and the habit of working hard for something that you really want to achieve is something that you're not born with,” he said. “That's something that somewhere lies in every human and that has to be brought out somehow. Some are raised a certain way, so they have that, but as a society, you cannot really rely on that. To some extent, the schools need to focus on that a bit, not just say you need to be tougher. Teaching those people to just work for goals that they want to work for and that it is possible to achieve something that seems out of reach just by hard work. Everyone knows that is possible. Everyone has heard that before.”

Ruben said hearing about others accomplishing their goals isn’t the same as experiencing it.

“Everyone has heard of those success stories,” he said. “But it's a totally different thing to experience that firsthand, to do it and to see those results that others can't get that you got because you worked harder than others. That is something that you need to experience firsthand in order to really understand and believe in it. That is something that we don’t have enough of in our society or in our educational system going for my country, Germany, and also for America, as far as I can judge that.”

Ruben doesn’t lose focus on what motivates him.

“A big part of why I go to the gym, of course I want to look good,” he said. “I do that because I want to look good. I'm honest with myself in this case, so that's why I don't lose. I don't lose track of my motivation. I don't lose track of my reason why. The same thing for YouTube. Of course, I want to build a big community and that would be really nice. But a part of me also just wants to be the center of attention. It's honestly that way. It's true. I'm truthful to myself. I want attention. It's a part of that. If I would deny that, then I think I would lose a part of my motivation.”

Ruben offered advice to those wishing to embark on their own self-improvement journey.

“Self-improvement is such a broad topic,” he said. “There are so many variables, so many things that you can improve. My advice would be just start somewhere. Start on something that you honestly care about and just work a little bit on that. The rest will come.”

Ruben cited the example of one mental aspect of self-improvement.

“When I started, my priority was I wanted to become fit,” he said. “All the other mindset things that came out of that, those are things that for a long time I had no interest in. If I would have tried two years ago to start meditating for self-improvement, I probably would have quit after a couple of weeks. But because I'm already deep into that and I have learned from fitness and from YouTube and from achieving goals, it's easier for me to pursue this thing that doesn't come as easy to me, meditation, and pursue that and become consistent with that. Just start somewhere where you want to start. There's no right or wrong in that.”

Ruben also dispensed advice for those who want to start working out.

“That really depends on your goal,” he said. “If you want to just get fit, get healthy, look a bit better, feel a bit better, it's probably best to do a whole lot of different things and not really focus on one thing. Cardio has its place in that. Lifting has its place in that. One thing that you cannot get around is nutrition. That's the enemy of most people when it comes to fitness, because lifting can be really fun, running can be really fun for a lot of people. Everyone has a sport that would be fun for them that would be easy to pursue.”

Ruben said the key is watching what you eat.

“Nutrition, eating, it's tough for everyone,” he said. “Some people have the trouble of they need to eat less calories to lose weight. For me, it's the other way around. I have trouble eating as much as I have to eat to gain weight, to gain mass. It's probably best to start with the sport that you want to pick that really interests you and that it's easy to pursue. And then use that as a motivation to gradually push your nutrition into the correct direction because you cannot go from zero to 100, you will quit.”

Ruben eventually realized how essential nutrition is.

“The reason was I want to build muscle,” he said. “That's why I need to eat a lot of food. It took me some time. The first year, I did not eat a lot. I did not eat enough. I did not track my calories consistently. But as I realized there is no real way around it, I started to gradually push into the right direction. Now, I'm pretty on top of my nutrition and got that under control. The advice would be to just start somewhere where you know it's beneficial and what you know you can do and what you know you enjoy. All the other tough things will come after that.”

Ruben’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RubenImproves