YouTuber teaches youth to take action

Anthony works on his computer. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Anthony didn’t believe he was living up to his potential, so he did something about it by embarking on a journey of self-improvement.

The New Mexico teen now is helping other young people do the same.

Anthony, 15, posts videos on his self-named YouTube channel on such topics as How I first gained discipline and How I made not procrastinating my default setting.

“I did a lot of variety until just recently,” he said. “I started niching down. I've been really trying to focus now on procrastination. All of this self improvement stuff, it's great to know in theory. All these videos, they're great, but they don't do anything if you don't actually use them. That all comes down to procrastination, doing what you know you shouldn't be doing or not doing what you know you should. It's that phase where you know the information but you're not doing it or using it is the pain point that I experienced.”

Anthony explained how self-improvement changed his life.

“In middle school, I really struggled with personal problems,” he said. “I was really addicted to video games. Looking back, the only way I got enjoyment, fun was by playing video games. I was still having good grades, but it didn't really matter to me in a sense. I'm so glad I didn't get addicted to one of those games where you spend genuine years of your life. I would be playing a game for maybe a few months. I'll move on to the next, but all of my time, energy and focus would be dedicated to the game I was playing at that time.”

Anthony said the important things suffered as a result.

“I never got anything in the real world,” he said. “I didn't get a nice body. I didn't get much smarter other than school teaching. I didn't like educating myself by reading books. I was unhealthy as well.”

But Anthony eventually saw the light.

“I used to be addicted to a lot of stuff,” he said. “Whenever I first got into self-improvement, it changed. I wasn't feeling well. I wasn't confident. I wasn't living up to my potential in a sense. I didn't even find out about self-improvement as a whole until a little bit later. The first thing that I really did was I started working out at home. I started in January of 2023, so I've been working out for a year-and-a-half now. That was the first big thing that changed my life direction.”

Anthony said sticking to a workout regimen aided him in other areas.

“I only realized this later looking back, but I also learned discipline as well,” he said. “Even when I didn't feel like it, I still did it. That was a very powerful lesson that I learned. I didn't realize it then, but looking back, it was very crucial.”

One thing Anthony didn’t help with was academics.

“My schoolwork has always been fine,” he said. “But working out helped me. It gave me a base which I could build myself off of. It was the cornerstone from which I spread my wings. I just got better. I used to be addicted to porn, and that helped me. That was the second thing that I really got rid of. I quit that, and then I just spiraled. People say spiral out of control. I spiraled up. I started reading books. I started meditating.”

Anthony eventually decided to start posting videos about self-improvement.

“I started because I wanted to document what I was doing,” he said. “I was helping someone who might have just randomly stumbled upon it. I started really focusing on my channel about half a year ago, January 2024. Before that, I uploaded, but I had to force myself. I didn't really feel like it, but now I'm really focused on it. I came up with ideas by looking back on what I did beforehand. So I remember I worked out and that really helped me. I talked about that for a little bit. I read books that helped me. I transported the information into the now that really helped me.”

Anthony cited a book that details a major lesson people should learn.

“The best book out of all of those that helped me the most was Psycho-Cybernetics (by Maxwell Maltz),” he said. “It didn't address the symptoms, stuff like addictions and not caring for yourself. That itself is not a problem. It comes from the source of your brain and how you see yourself. You have two parts of your brain. That's what I learned from the book. You have your conscious, what I'm thinking and feeling right now, and you have your subconscious, all the stuff that you're not really aware of. Your conscious brain is what really makes your goal. Whenever I started my YouTube channel, that was all my conscious brain. That was I set a goal and I followed through on it.”

Anthony explained a person can become conditioned to do something based on the subconscious.

“If you set a goal to get good at golf, if you work hard enough, you'll eventually get good at golf,” he said. “But you can't always be focused on your goals. You can't be thinking about your goals 24/7. Whenever you’re not directly thinking about a goal of your conscious brain, your subconscious brain subs in a goal for your set goals. Your subconscious sets the new goal and how it decides what goal to set.”

“I want to focus on specifically helping people at taking action.”

Anthony gave an example of the phenomenon.

“It's like your brain associates with a kind of person,” he said. “It's like a smoker who's always seen himself as a smoker. He doesn't even have to think about it. He just pulls out a smoke and lit a cigarette and starts smoking. He doesn't even have to think about it. It's like he automatically does it without thinking about it. It's not conscious. It's always subconscious.”

Anthony explained why he helps others.

“I really had a low self-esteem, especially around middle school,” he said. “Only around the eighth grade, it started to pick up. But I remember that younger version of myself. I didn't realize it back then. I wasn't depressed. I was just in a period where I didn't really care. I'm playing video games, six, eight hours a day.  I'm eating junk food all the time. I used to eat cookies a lot as well, drink soda. I spent thousands of hours watching YouTube videos and not useful videos. It's the kind of videos that you would expect a 11-, 12-year-old kid to watch.”

Anthony found a way out of that malaise and wants to show others the same path.

“It was a miracle that I discovered working out,” he said. “I went out to be where I am right now. I know so many people even now that are still in that place. The most noticeable thing for me are people on TikTok. They can't pay attention. They can't focus on you. You're talking to them, but their brain isn't there. They're thinking about something else. They're already distracted. That just saddens me. You can't even be with someone anymore without hoping that they're not on their phone.”

Anthony is focusing on helping others take positive action in their lives.

“I want to focus on specifically helping people at taking action,” he said. 

Anthony wants to turn working with others into a business.

“I want to eventually start making money from it,” he said.

Anthony works out throughout the week.

“It's the cornerstone of my life,” he said. “I wouldn't give it up for almost anything. I've done almost 300 workouts. I do a push/pull/legs routine. I hate giving a specific routine because I would rather people just start doing it. At least get the start of going rather than getting the perfect plan or the perfect routine, because it honestly doesn't exist.”

Anthony listens to his body when deciding what to do on a given day.

“I really just work out if I don't feel really sore that day,” he said. “If my arms hurt a little, I'll still do it. But my back hurts. I'll just go for a run instead. I exercise every single day, but I only weight lift four to six times a week, around that range.”

Anthony also does jiu-jitsu.

“I've been doing it for about a year,” he said. “Me and my parents were just walking around town, and we just saw it by accident. They wanted to sign me up, and I just went along with it. They didn't so much force me to do it, but heavily encouraged it. I saw it as a good thing because it was cardio. It was like running for me, but instead a whole body thing, not just legs. I don't do it for just the cardio. The reason I keep doing it, and the biggest lesson I extracted from it was the value of humbleness and ego.”

Anthony explained how martial arts humbles a person.

“Whenever you’re actually on the mat and you're going against someone much better than you, you get beat up,” he said. “There's no two ways about it, especially when you're brand new. The only way you're going to go is tapping out. You have to get submitted to learn. That was such a valuable experience for me. The moment I stepped up to the mat — even though it's not a real fight, it's a martial art — I realized that I don't know anything. It wasn't so much that I want to get into fights, but it's just overall my ego. Not so much my self-esteem decreased, but just my humbleness increased, my understanding that I'm not all that.”

Anthony also plays the keys.

“I play piano,” he said. “I played it for a while. I've performed, but it's only local. Never in like a state championship or anything like that. The piano teacher invites some parents over, a church hall or something. We just play there, maybe five people playing. It's not like a big citywide event.”

Anthony said playing piano taught him another valuable lesson.

“As well as learning discipline, hard work, I learned that you have to fail before you first learn and then you actually succeed,” he said. “The first time you ever play a piece, it's going to sound horrible. Even if you're like the best type reader in the world, it's still not going to sound as best as it could be. And from that you have to learn. You get better, you play over time, you practice until the point where you can play it amazingly.”

Anthony said lessons he learned from his activities helped him become a content creator.

“Working out taught me discipline, hard work, which carried over to a lot of other things,” he said. “I'm only here, my YouTube channel, because I started working out. Doing jui-jitsu taught me the humility that I'm actually likable on camera. I'm not like that guy who is flexing (showing off). Piano taught me that I need to continue and keep going.”

“The sooner you start, that’s a day sooner that you’re going to be happier and healthier than if you started tomorrow.”

Anthony sticks to a routine to ensure he gets everything done.

“I try to push myself, but not in the sense that I have to scream at myself in my head to wake up,” he said. “I don't want to be that guy who has to push himself and convince himself every single day to do something. For me, what really helps in just staying on track doing at least something good every day is routine. I have a strict morning routine, but it's not as strict as I wake up at this time every day. Working out is easy because that's the third thing I do in the day. I eat a banana. That's a pre-workout meal. I go work out because it's a routine. It's a habit, and so I don't have to think about it. It's the same thing every single day.”

Anthony’s day continues in the same vein.

“I cook eggs in the morning,” he said. “It's a habit. I don't have to think about it. I shower in the same way every single day. And then I go record a video in the same way every single day. Not the same video, but just having the routine. The habit makes it so easy for me to sit down and do it, especially in the days when I don't feel like it, because I don't have to think about how bad I feel. I just do it.”

Anthony said an effective content creator doesn’t have to necessarily have an amiable personality.

“Because there's such a demand for content creators,” he said. “There's millions of people making videos. Of those millions people, there are billions of people watching them. And out of those billions, they don't want just people who are likable and friendly people. They watch people who they either look up to or relate to. I hope I am friendly. But if I was kind of a dick, I might turn a lot of people off, but there might be the few people that really like the way I put things. It really helps them and they might really relate to that. It might honestly help them more than a person who's just overall friendly, likable. If an introvert started a YouTube channel, they wouldn't want to fake being extroverted and all bubbly. They would want to be like how they are.”

Anthony said those wanting to embark on self-improvement don’t have to follow the identical path he took.

“I started with working out,” he said. “But for some people, that might not be the way they start. They might start reading books and then that's where they get all their knowledge from. Imagine telling someone who doesn't really care that they should work out because it's good for them. They don't care even if they know it's good for them. They don't comprehend why they would even want to do it.”

Anthony said those who are wanting to become fitter should do so, but it’s not vital to do it in one way.

“For someone who is looking to get into it, the only piece of advice that I have is you don't have to listen to a single person,” he said. “Don't listen to one piece of advice. Just go work out. Just start. It could be even as simple as you just want to start reading books because you just like books. It's that simple. The sooner you start, that's a day sooner that you're going to be happier and healthier than if you started tomorrow.”

Anthony said the key to change is taking action.

“There's three stages to knowledge,” he said. “You have ignorance, which is the first phase. Procrastination, which is the second phase. A lot of people go through that and quitting or doing action, which is the last phase. You could equate three adjectives to each of those phases. People say ignorance is bliss because you don't know any better. Procrastination is pain and quitting.”

Anthony said the optimum result is taking action.

“Action is wisdom,” he said. “People want to quit procrastination. I'm really focusing on it right now, but procrastination is necessary in the process. If you could decide you want to go to the gym, you find out it's good for you, so you go off from ignorance to the second stage. If you could just find out that it's good for you, you could just do it for the rest of your life. Everyone would.”

“You decay as a person when you quit.”

Anthony said the worst outcome from procrastination is when people give up.

“People start to go to this phase where they don't really feel like it, they don't want to do it,” he said about procrastinating. “And so they don't go on to the third phase where they just keep doing it and keep pushing. They go into a fourth phase where it's quitting. And quitting is out of all these, the worst phase out of all of them because quitting, you don't grow as a person. I would argue that you, what's the opposite of growth, decay.”

Anthony said procrastination can be overcome.

“You decay as a person when you quit,” he said. “Understand that if you're facing procrastination right now, it's not so much a problem. It's genuinely part of the cycle that you just struggle to work and continue with. It's not a problem with you. The only way that you can lose is if you quit. If you just keep pushing, eventually, even if it takes years, you'll get to the point where you reach action and you gain wisdom.”

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Anthony’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@go-do-it