I was just this lanky Asian nerd who played chess.

Aaron Mani, he's one of the UK's most successful ever

youtubers.

I was getting some sort of sick thrill out of seeing the numbers go up,

so I made one video every single day for at least six months.

It drove me to the point where I, one time I just broke down crying on camera.

I never published that, but I have a photo which I sometimes look back on to remind me of like what what it took

There's that there's some things about you that you can't fix and I think you just have to be very mechanical about them and be like this this is me, I have good things and I have bad things, but the bad things I can't change. I'm going to lean on the things that are good about me, fix the things I can fix, and the rest is life. Emotionally physically just exhaustion I think is

how I would put it very very tired. It was actually a bit of a pivot point in my career

because I sat down like this isn't actually what I wanted.

It was a realization that I've actually, you know, my channel's growing,

all these metrics are looking up, but this isn't, you know, my brain.

Not many people know this actually but

Aaron Maini he's a creator and entrepreneur with over 8 million subscribers.

His story is unconventional, a young kid from the UK that was bullied in school and whose path to escape that reality

would turn out to become his dream, his purpose, his meaning.

But as Aaron will tell you, he made the critical mistakes so many of us make when we're chasing our dreams.

He became obsessive. He sacrificed too much.

Things that mattered more.

And at some point that would lead to him having a breakdown. things that that mattered more.

And at some point that would lead to him having a breakdown. And that breakdown was a moment of inflection.

And he's figured out that all-important balance of striving

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