The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Level Up: How to Get Focused, Stop Procrastinating, and Upgrade Your Life by Rob Dial

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

Level Up: How to Get Focused, Stop Procrastinating, and Upgrade Your Life by Rob Dial Amazon.com “Packed with valuable insights, unique lessons, and practical steps, this book will help you break through your procrastination and take immediate action toward your goals.” — Jay Shetty, New York Times bestselling author of Think Like a Monk and 8 Rules of Love Level Up will revolutionize the way you approach your life and your goals. This book from world-renowned high-performance coach and host of The Mindset Mentor podcast, Rob Dial, presents a groundbreaking roadmap to unlock your full potential and transform your life. In it, you will find: A transformative system designed to revolutionize the way you approach your goals, success, and personal motivation. Powerful secrets of highly successful individuals who have mastered the art of focus, defeated their procrastination, and achieved extraordinary results. Cutting-edge research in neuroscience and psychology, unveiling the science behind mental focus and motivation. Tools that empower you to understand and control your mind like never before. This book has cracked the code to peak performance and you will learn how to apply these secrets to your own life. Level Up is not just another self-help book. It is a step-by-step guide that helps you get from where you are now to the life you truly want to be as fast as possible. Whether you're struggling with distractions, overwhelmed by a chaotic schedule, or simply seeking a path to personal excellence, Level Up is the game-changer you've been waiting for.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big big show my family and friends the ladies and gentlemen children of all ages welcome to the greatest show on earth for 15 years two three times a weekday

we bring you the podcasts of billionaires ceos entrepreneurs newsmakers and the hottest authors that come on to talk shop and we have one today who knew uh it's showtime baby welcome to chris voss Show podcast. The family loves you but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly, as your mother-in-law. You never should have spilled that thing on her carpet. She will never forgive you. Anyway, we have an amazing gentleman on the show, as always. And, you know, we have the brightest minds on the show, which is all the more reason

you should invite your family and friends to subscribe to the podcast because uh you're gonna have to spend christmas dinner and thanksgiving dinner with them here in a couple months and you know what they're not as bright as you think they are or maybe you already know that so tell them to go to goodreads.com for just christmas linkedin.com for just christmas youtube.com for just christmas and christmas one on the tickety talky channel over there with the children or the kids or whatever the hell's going on over there these days. He is the author of the latest and newest book that comes out October 3rd, 2023. You can pre-order this book and, of course, put this on your Christmas buying list.

Buy like five or six of them. That way when someone gives you a gift that you didn't get them a gift because you don't care about them, you won't feel embarrassed. You just go, hey, I got this great book that's going to be awesome and change your life. The book is entitled Level Up, How to Get Focused, Stop Procrastinating, and Upgrade Your Life. Rob Dial joins us on the show today and he has led an amazing, fun-filled life throughout his history and we're going to be talking to him about everything he's done and what he's doing. Rob is a podcaster, a speaker, and high-performance coach. He's one of the most influential leaders in personal development.

He and his work have been featured in major media outlets such as Forbes, Inc., and Men's Journal. He is the host of the number one mindset podcast in the world, The Mindset Mentor, which has been downloaded over 250 million times, and he lives in Austin, Texas, to top it off. And now he joins us on The Chris Foss Show. Welcome to the show, Rob. How are you? Hey, man. I'm great. That was an experience. Normally, when someone just interviews me, they're like, oh, I'll do the intro later. But that was great. There's a whole experience with your intro right there.

Yeah, there's some that we just kind of make up as we go along. There's always something different in improv and the ramble. So it's wonderful to have you on the show. Congratulations for the new book. Give us a.com or plugs, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. Yeah, I mean, if they want to get it, they can go to robdial.com slash book and pre-order it there. And then if they love podcasts, like they probably love yours. It's everything that's under the mindset mentor in the podcast area.

There you go. They hate mine, but they just call in to see what the car crash is going to be for the day. And they're just like, look at this. This is a mess. Who did this, Chris? Anyway, it was me. So what motivated you to want to write this book, Rob? Is this your first book?

It is. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. I don't enjoy writing and writing a book is a labor of love. And it was a three-year process for me. We were talking right before we started. It was a process that took me three years to do. And, uh, and for me, it was like, the podcast is easy for me because I can sit down, I could come up with ideas and I can just talk about different things. You know, I'm, I put out four episodes a week as well. And so it's like, I put them out and I, sometimes I talk about anxiety, sometimes I talk about success, money, mindset, all of that. But like, I got this feeling in about 2020 where I was like, I really, I want it to be like a step-by-step process where

if somebody like picks this thing up, they'll figure out how to work on their life. And I didn't want to write like a self-help book. Like I don't, I don't like being called a motivational speaker. I don't, you know, I'm in self-development is the category that I'm in. But a lot of times, I think when I read self-development books, there's not like actual tangible stuff that's in it sometimes. Like it's good, but it's not everything that you, there's a part of us that's a little bit, is this real? Is this backed in science? And so for me, it's like, there's a lot of science that's in here. One of the things I'm proud of is I actually hired neurologists to actually go through and tell me if some of the stuff I was in here was incorrect

or correct. And we have literally eight pages of cited psychological studies to prove all of the stuff that we say inside this book from start to start to finish um is true and it's it's backed in science and so i we're born with like the most most incredible piece of machinery in the world which is our mind but we don't know how to use it and so i want to create a book of like this is exactly what you need to do to to level up your life there you go you got the science as they like to say the kids say that no they don't like science to back it up so there you go the science of life the science, as they like to say. The kids say that. No, they don't. Like science to back it up. So there you go. The science of life, the science of leveling up. So you call the book Level Up. What does leveling up mean in your terms, in your thought process? Yeah. So it's been a couple of different names. One of them was originally like the whole idea

of the book is how to take action. When I look at a majority of my podcast episodes, it's how to actually trick yourself into taking action. How do you understand your brain to see why it's holding you back? But the reason why we settled on level up was because I like to look at life as like a video game, where if you play a video game, it'd be really boring to play a video game

where it's the exact same level every single time and there's no challenges. And so when I look at my life, I look at my life like a video game and every challenge that comes in, same way that when you fight, you're on level one, you go and fight the bad guy, you are going to lose a few times. And eventually when you do get challenged and you do succeed, you go on to the next level, which is a little bit harder, but you get better. It's a little bit harder and you get better. And so I like to remind myself that when things get really

challenging in life, whether it's challenges that is thrown at me by some other force or challenges that I go out and actually seek. Every one of those challenges is designed for me to level up and evolve as a human. And so we settled on level up because I view life like a video game and it's like, Hey, here's the actual step-by-step process of how to try to master this video game that you're in. There you go. I think of my life as a video game but i keep having to buy all these damn season passes and these uh re re re re rolled remastered skinned uh life things and uh i don't know man i got my life is kind of like battlefield 2024 it just really didn't launch well all right you don't you don't get to pick the video game you're in you just know that you're in the video game you know damn it and i'm stuck in mario kart uh so give us a hero's

journey give us a hero's journey you didn't have to agree with me rob it's like yeah you are you're in mario kart you're not in call of duty you're in mario kart you're just screwed which is your mario kart's a classic like if there's one video game i want to go back to it's probably mario kart that one's always good there you go there you go well thank you thank you i i'll think better of my life now see you're already helping me level up here uh so give us a hero's journey for you uh uh what was your upbringing how did you come through life how did you get to where you are today which maybe which started the podcast and then helping people with their mindset. Yeah, I'll try to give you a quick journey. So I was raised in Florida. I live in Austin,

Texas now, but I was raised in Florida and my father was an alcoholic when I was a kid. So my parents got divorced when I was nine years old from him being an alcoholic. He eventually passed away when I was 15 from being an alcoholic. And so a lot of trauma came from that. And we didn't really have any money. My mom applied for food stamps, but couldn't get food stamps because she had a car. And for some reason, you can't get food stamps if you have a car. I didn't understand that. But so we were not in a good place.

And so therapy was not something that we could go and just buy. And when I discovered in 2019, sorry, 2006, I applied to work at a company called Cutco I sold Cutco knives in people's houses and literally almost like door-to-door and the one thing that really really big on in that company is personal development hiring coaches working yourself reading going to conferences and a lot of people don't like that for me I saw it as like it as like, oh my God, I can actually improve myself. I think everybody should go to therapy at some point, but I was almost like, oh, I can kind of become my own therapist and start to work on myself. So I was with that company for a while. I got promoted to run my own office in Fort Lauderdale. I ran all of Broward County. I trained over 2000 sales reps when I was there by the time I was 24.

And I was training them how to sell knives. But really what I sales reps when I was there by the time I was 24. And I was training them how to sell knives. But really what I was doing was I was training them on their mindset, training them on who they were and how to become better. And when I left that company and went into other sales jobs, I just missed teaching people. That was the thing I missed the most. And I felt like I had knowledge in my head of things that have helped me improve my life. And I felt kind of obligated to teach it, but I didn't really have a forum to do so. What I did have though, is I did have a computer and I did have this microphone right here because I was a musician. So I had the microphone and I was in Jason's deli with my girlfriend at the time, wife now back in 2015.

And I was like, I'm going to start a podcast. And she's like, all right. And you know, podcasts weren't really a big thing back in 2015. It wasn't a way to make money. And she's like, all right. And you know, podcasts weren't really a big thing back in 2015. It wasn't a way to make money or, but I was like, I feel- Wait, there's money in this? Yeah, there's money in it, right? I feel like I can, I feel like I'm obligated to teach the things that have helped me. And the thing I missed was teaching people. And so I started the podcast and it started growing and growing. And then, you know, it was, it was, it did well for a really long time and then 2020 hit and it was just like a hockey stick. And I think I was just in a, an industry where people would go to iTunes and type in mindset

and they were like, I want to listen to this. And some people like it and some people didn't like it. And the people who liked it kind of stuck. And it's been, it was like a massive growth at that point in time. And now it's this, it's, I'm like, I'm humbled because it's become this huge thing that I didn't think it was going to become. But I have this platform now where I feel humbled that people follow me and they like the stuff that I say, but I also feel very obligated to continue to keep working on myself to give them new things to work on. There you go.

Hey, hang on one second. Hey, this guy says I'm supposed to get paid for this crap. Anyway. There's a lot of money out there. He's going to go get it. I want $5. I'm going on union strike like the autoworkers. But you're obviously doing very well.

You're inspiring a lot of people. You're motivating a lot of people. They're obviously downloading the podcast and all that stuff, and they'll be scooping up your book. Let's dig into the book some. There's a lot of things that you talk about in the book uh you started with fear and what holds us back from achieving our goals let's delve into that a little bit and give us some teasers if you would please yeah so when i was writing the like i told you the original title of the book was take action that's what i wanted to do was like take action but taking action

doesn't sound really sexy so leveling up sounds a lot sexier. That's why I settled on that one. And, um, and I started breaking down before I was thinking to myself, before I teach people how to take action, I'm really curious why people don't take action, which probably talk about that first. So there's three parts of the book. Part one is why you don't take action. Part two is how to take action. Part three is how to actually use neuroplasticity and science to change your brain, to make taking the action that you want to habitual. And the first thing when you dive into fears, people usually don't take action because they're afraid of something. And what's really interesting is when you look at fear, you can then take fear and I try to make things as

simple as possible. Like that's the one thing I try to do as much as I can. When you look at fear, there's two different types of fears that I break down. There's primal fears, which means that there is pain, like physical pain or death attached to it. But in 2023, there's not a lot of physical pain or death that's omnipresent like it was for our ancestors. On the other side of that, our amygdala still creates fears in our life. So we go to intellectual fears, which is the fear of judgment, the fear of abandonment, the fear of success, the fear of failure, not being good enough, losing your job. There's all these fears that come from that. And it's really interesting because when you look at intellectual fears, they're not physical. They're not like they're

in reality. If you're looking at primal fears and a primal fear might be like, there's a tiger, that's physically there in your reality. the presence of possible pain or death is physically there in your reality. When you look at intellectual fears, none of them are actually in front of your reality. They're not there. And the biggest thing that really shifted my mindset around fears is I was listening to a spiritual teacher that around the time I was writing this episode, not that episode, that chapter. And he said something, I put inside the book and he said, most people ask, how do you overcome fear? Because we've identified our fear. That's the first step. And then we go, well, how do I get rid of it? How do we overcome it? And I put it in the book.

He says, you can't overcome something that doesn't exist. And so we have to realize like none of our fears that are actually holding us back intellectually are actually really present in this moment. It's a projection of our mind into the future of thinking of something that might happen. And so it is a projection of this might happen. And so because that might happen, I'm just going to not take any action anyways. And so when you look at the fear of failure, you could really get deep into be like, well, what is failure? What is success? What are all of these things? And you can't physically hold them. They're not tangible in this world, which means if they're not tangible in this world, where are they? They're literally all in our minds. And so what we're doing is we're creating the boogeyman and then fighting the boogeyman our entire day. When in reality, if we turn the lights on, we're like, oh, I'm the only one in this room. And you realize that

you're actually the one that's in your own way by creating these fears that don't actually exist in reality. And it's a battle that a lot of people are in. If they can just remove themselves from realizing that those fears, you know, remove themselves from the fear and realize that it's not present right now and it never will be. It makes it a little bit easier to start to work through from there. And that's the first step to it there you go it's always good to take the first step you know primal fear with the tigers is just uh in life or death situations scenarios uh that's what we call fridays around here so that's it you got you got tigers that come around on fridays today it's fridays you're trying to get there we go to vegas that sounds

like a yeah it sounds like one of those jokes who are those two guys in vegas back in the old days that was interesting sigfried and roy yep and uh don't do that kids uh so uh the identity trial is one of the things you talk about in helping people achieve goals dealing with their fear i thought this is pretty interesting can you share out some uh teasers on that? So yeah, fears will hold you back. Another thing that'll hold you back is your identity. And so like for instance, we'll make it really easy. I like to talk about physical fitness or health just in general, because it's physical, you can see it. A lot of stuff in your mind, you can't see. And so with physical journey, if somebody says, you know, I want to lose 50 pounds, they can want that. But a lot of people have the identity of, well, I've been overweight my entire life, it's impossible. Or, you know, it's just in my genes, I'll never be physically fit, because it's in my genes to be overweight. And if my identity is it's never going to happen, why would I ever take the action to try to make it happen. And so we can want something we all consciously want many things but your conscious mind is only about five percent of actually what's going on in your head your subconscious is 95 percent of it so your

subconscious 95 percent stronger and with your identity your identity is going to feed into your actions so whatever actions you do or do not take your actions are going to feed into your results and your results are going to feed back into your identity. You need to strengthen that identity of like, yeah, see, you worked out for a week and you didn't lose any weight. So you might as well just stop. And that feeds back into your identity, either strengthens the identity or you lose a few pounds and go, oh wait, maybe I can do this. And it starts to actually test the identity that you have. Because for a lot of us, a lot of people that I find is we think that we are who we are, when in reality, who we are is just a choice that

we make every single day. And when you look at like your personality, the actual root word for personality is persona. And persona was actually the mask that they used to wear on stage at theater in the Greek years. So Greeks would wear a persona on their face. And so we think to ourselves, like, I am who I am. But in reality, that's not true. You can change yourself at any moment. And one of my favorite quotes around that is Alan Watts always said, you're under no obligation to be who you were five minutes ago. And so we can look at it and say, to have a fixed mindset and say, hey, this is who I am. This is who I'll always be. And that's my identity. Or we can look and say, hey, I can change myself at any moment. I'm just going to decide to be somebody different

today and try that identity on for a day. See how it fits. If we have an identity, if I'm shy, you can be shy if you want to. Or you can say today, I'm going to be somebody who's outgoing and try to start talking to people who are behind you at Starbucks and even get into a conversation. And if you like that identity, keep it. If you don't like that entity, go back to your old one. You can change it as often as you change your shirt if you really want to. There you go. Now, can I change my identity when the bill collectors call? And I can be like, hey, Chris Voss, he's not living here anymore, eh?

I'm the new guy. Yeah. You could, but they're probably still going to hunt you down. You probably got to move houses if that's the case. Now, how do I get this new identity to have a Social Security? Anyway, whatever, man. They're just jokes here, people here people don't do that i'll get calls from the social security division uh no but i love this idea because identity is a major form for us and people don't realize you know they sometimes they think like you said they're they're locked into it

and and that's what they have they have a hard time getting out of it it kind of boxes them in a way doesn't it oh yeah and limits their identity can either be yeah it could be either be freeing for you or it could be just a construct that you have built so i always tell people like like i'm in a room and the room is probably our studio is probably 14 feet by 14 feet and if you look at it you're like okay well what could i do in this room well i could you know i could change this in this room too i could obviously use it as a studio i could transition into a this room? Well, I could, you know, I could change this in this room too. I could obviously use it as a studio. I could transition into a living room. I could, um, only fans turn it into a tiny little theater. Yeah. I could turn into a tiny little theater if I want to. But if I were to ask you, ask myself, like, could I, could I hold the entire

Superbowl in this room? The answer is no. And the reason why is because it's too small. But if I went to, like, I went to the Superbowl this past year in Glendale, you know, 70, 80,000 people that are there. Why can I have the Superbowl there? Well, it's just larger. And then you say, well, in that larger place, what could I do? I could have a, you know, we could watch the Superbowl. We could have another game. We could have, you know, Garth Brooks come and play inside of that. There's a lot more things you can do, the more expansive that a space is. And so when you have an identity, an identity can be really restrictive. And it's like these four walls that are around me where it's like, I've built myself into these four walls and I live in these four walls and I can't get

outside of it. And when you have those four walls up and you're your limited self and you're trying to become the greatest version of yourself, you can only become the greatest version of your limited self. And so really what you have to start identifying is what are the walls I'm building around myself of this fake identity that I think are true? Do I want to stay this way or do I want to change it? And if somebody decides they want to change it, well, then at that point, you really have to figure out what walls you want to take down, what new walls you want to put up and realize that you're not some little being that is in 14 by 14 walls you are expansive and can be as expansive as you want to be that sounds like my belt line uh that does never slow down my belt line my belt lines must

have read your book early on because it's like we're going expansive after taco tuesday we're going to expand we're going to continue to expand forever it's like the universe right just continues to expand forever yeah that's the analogy i, right? It just continues to expand forever. Yeah, that's the analogy I'm using when people are like, are you bigger now? I'm like, shut the fuck up. One of the analogies you have that I really liked was live in the headlights. This sounds like Saturdays at my house in Vegas. What does it mean to live in the headlights?

And does it sound like something where you should play chicken with cars like that? It was that one movie with the bald-headed guy they race cars or were, I don't know, live in the headlights. I don't know if I've seen that one. It's uh, I'll give you, I'll give you an example in real life of, of how you could use it. So like for me, people keep asking with, with interviews to this book, like, how did it come about? What did it look like?

And so living in the headlights is a lot of people get paralysis by analysis. So like we set a goal, we want to go for that goal. We want to figure out what that goal is going to be and start working towards it. But when you think of all of the things that you need to do to get there, there's a lot of things that you need to do. So like I live in Austin. If I want to drive to Houston, it'll take me about three hours. When I get in my car at night, I can't see the entire route to Houston. All I can see is whatever my headlights are lighting up in front of me. And so once I get past those a hundred feet though, I can see the next a hundred feet and then I can see the next a hundred feet. So like even writing this book, like I don't like writing at it. I didn't enjoy

having to sit down and write the book and the process of it. But what happened was in 2020, I called up my friend and I was like, Hey man, he's a, he's a got a huge book. They've sold almost 3 million copies at this point. I was like, I'm thinking about writing a book. What should I do? And it was like the first little bit of a hundred feet of headlights in front of me. I didn't see the whole route of the last three years, but he was like, I'll get you on a phone with my book agent and you can see if he likes it. So I was like, okay, cool. He sends me a text. We text, we got into a phone call eventually. He's like, yeah, this is a great idea. We should do it. I call up another one of my friends who had just had a book come out and I was like, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this. What do you think? He's like, yeah, you should

definitely, here's a couple of tips to help you get better on it. And what happened was it step by step by step eventually came to the point where now there's like a physical book that's sitting in front of me three years later. But there was a lot of trips and turns and detours all along the way to getting a book published and finished and everything. But it wasn't like I was worrying about the entire process. I was going, what is it that's in front of me right now? What's the next hundred feet? I need to go these hundred feet. And once I'm at those hundred feet, I trust that the next hundred feet is going to be lit up. And that's what living in the headlights really looks like, which is

the phrase, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step you can't go to step two if you haven't been on step one you can't be at step 1000 if you're only on step two and so it's like just one step at a time is really the the secret that i think people need to take from that there you go wait your booking agent uh you texted him my booking agent gave me a snapchat so i don't know yeah well that explains everything damn it uh no i love what you said there because you know the the journey you know comes from one step at a time i always call it uh chew the elephant uh one bite at a time you know take on the elephant but staring in the headlights uh in business i used to call it looking in the mouth of the dragon and if we could deal with whatever was going to come with that and stare down the dragon, then we'd go for it.

And so I love that because, you know, sometimes you don't know how it's going to be, but you've got to take those steps. And then eventually it all comes together. And then you reach the point that you're at now where you're like, holy crap, there's a book. And we wrote it and we went through the gauntlet of hell, hell, fire, and damnation. And the great thing is, is your book comes out on October 3rd. On October 4th, everyone's going to say, so what's the next book? So watch for that.

Well, they already are asking you that. I'm like, listen, not only did it take three years to write, it could have taken three years off the end of my life. And so we'll see. It's going to be some time before the next one comes out. Bubba says, hey, let's get this market. we got to get this guy working on the next one it's like led zeppelin the first three albums or something uh so that leads us into uh the one thing you have that you talked about where all we need to accomplish is working to achieve just one percent more every day and does that play into what we were just talking

about? Yeah. I mean, for me, I first discovered self-development when I was 19. So 18 years ago at this point, I'm 37 now. And when I discovered it, it was like, I was trying, I wanted to be so much better. I remember comparing myself when I was like 21. I was like, man, why am I, why am I not rich yet? Like there's so many people there. I was comparing myself to other people and I was like, well, they're so successful. I'm not successful yet. I'm not where I want to be. And a lot of times we do that. Uh, now that I'm 37 years old, I look back and I was like, oh, I was comparing myself to guys that were like 63 years old. They were three times my age. It took, just takes time for things to mature sometimes, you know? And so with the 1% Better, that was actually one of the titles we

were thinking about. So it went from Taking Action to 1% Better to Better Than Yesterday was the last title before we went for Level Up, which is instead of just saying, hey, how can I make massive strides in my life, which we all want? It's compounded. It's just little teeny tiny things every single day. And the idea is super simple. It's how can I just be 1% better today when I go to bed than when I woke up? And if you're 1% better every single day, the way that it works in math is when you're at 1% better, you're just a little bit better. And then you compound that and you're just a little bit better on top of it. And when you do the math of, of 1% better over 365 days, that compounds and you're actually approximately 37 times better if you do the compounding on it. And so it's like, it's like the idea of if I give

you, would you want a million dollars today? Or would you want a penny that's doubled every day for the next 30 days? And people are like, I want the million dollars, but you don't realize that if you just have a penny that doubles and gets a little bit better every single day, over the next 30 days, it's going to be on a being, I think it was like $9 million, $5 million. And so it really comes down to the compounding effect. And my grandfather, he wasn't a super successful guy. He was an engineer, but he was really smart with his money. And he built a successful life from it, but he was really good with money and what to do with it. I remember after he passed away, we were looking through his drawers and cleaning stuff out.

Literally, his first drawer, you pull it out and right at the top, there was a sticker on top. And it said, if nothing else, just remember that compound interest will always save you. And I was like, damn, this is crazy because things that compound over time are really small as a compound. But if you fast forward 10 years, it's massive. And we think that success is one big, massive event, but it's literally a lot of times doing the boring things day in, day out. and that compounds over time and eventually gets where you want to be. There you go. My dad used to always do the one penny thing back in the day. I don't know where he picked it up,

but he always used to tell people in the day or he'd ask us as kids, we'd be like, I don't know. We're like kids that we don't know math. We don't understand what money is. You're like, I don't even know how much a million dollars is. Yeah, like who cares? Hey, I want a toy. Candy. So, you know, but you're right. These,

these small steps, you know, you go on these journeys. I would, I have people that will come to me and they'll be like, I want to be like you, Chris, I want to be an entrepreneur. You know, I started my first company, I was 18 and they're like, I want to do my own business. I got this idea and I'm like, okay, we'll go do it. And they're like, ah, I got gotta wait until it's perfect. You know, and that's one of the things you talk in your book about is perfection and kind of the, the fallacies of it. And, uh, and then I'd be like, no, you should really do it now. Cause it's a journey and you do have to live in the headlights. As you say, uh, you've got to go through that gauntlet and it's just, you just got to do it. It's just, it's like walking across the desert. You just got to do it. And so it's like walking across the desert you just got to do it and so uh and then i would meet them you know six months later he has a business going i'm starting waiting for

the perfect you know i'm waiting to get everything just perfect for it and now you're like it'll never be perfect but uh have fun with that and you'll see him years later how'd that business work out for you still waiting for it to be perfect you know as you said you've got to take those first steps you got to go into it uh one thing i thought was interesting about your book was uh you talked and you mentioned this earlier with the science stuff neuroplasticity and how our brains can be rewired now will this work for all six of my personalities too yeah you can you can use it for all of your personalities yeah it's um all the time the judge says i can't use anymore maybe we can get him to wire they don't know what they're talking

about you can do whatever it is this is your life you can do what you want you know that's what personality six with no plasticity it's it's pretty amazing because i think that um we think that as we get older like we've heard the phrase over and over again our lives you can't teach an old dog new tricks which is not true in any sort of way and science actually proves that it's not you can change yourself you can change your brain it just takes a lot more time than it used to when you were younger and um neuroplasticity is is the actual showing that the phrase means basically that you can change your brain however you want to and um it's really interesting because there interesting because there's a, there's a lot of science. Like this was, people keep asking me like, what's your favorite chapter? And I'm like, might be this one. It might be because we put so much

research into it and, and, and figuring all of this out. And there's so many studies that we put into it of people actually changing their brain. And so like, for instance, there's a thing that, that, uh, in order to become a London taxi cab driver, they have to memorize every single street that's in London. And I think it's like 20,000 streets or something like that. And they have to go through this process of memorizing it because they've been doing this since before GPS is. So people had to, they didn't know every single street. And so they did a study on their brain and found out, you know, they did a study right before they became a London taxi cab driver and three years after. And they actually found that three years later, the spatial recognition parts of their brain that map out areas was larger than it was when they started. And so it actually shows that your brain will change, but it requires a lot of repetition over. There's two ways to really change your brain. Um, there's, there's like maladaptive plasticity, which means that maladaptive means like an event happens.

It's an extremely heightened emotional event. And you know, like PTSD would be considered maladaptive plasticity. One event happens, your brain is different. It changes. Uh, my, my best friend was in a car accident and he was T-boned years ago. And the next time he got into a car, he was terrified. And it was an immediate thing. It was an immediate shift in his brain and he had to work through it. But that doesn't really happen a whole lot in our lives. The other way to change it is adaptive plasticity, which is continuing to show up every single day. So it's either a huge event or it is consistency of showing up every single day. And there's another study that I have inside of the book talking about people who are really expert pianists. They sit down, they play the piano,

and they're really good at it. And they've actually done studies on their brain. And they realized that as you become a quote unquote expert pianist, and you can play really well, when they're soloing, you would think, okay, they're soloing. They're not playing something that they played over and over and over again. Their brain is going to require more blood flow in order to do that. What's interesting is they've been able to play so many times that they're actually kind of mentally able to get out of their way. And their brain has less blood flow to the executive function parts of their brain because your brain changes three. There's three, there's a three-step process, basically changing your brain. The first way is chemically, the second way is structurally, and the last way is functionally.

So chemically is like, if you've ever sat down and like, play the piano, and you learn a song real quick, and you're like, Oh, I'm pretty good at it. That's a chemical change. But you can come back tomorrow or in two weeks. And you're like, Oh, damn, I don't remember how to play this anymore. Or you can remember like just parts of it. That's because it was just a chemical short-term change. As you continue to keep doing it over and over again, your brain actually changes structurally, which is what I was talking

about with people who are the London taxi cab drivers. The structure of their brain actually starts to change. And then when you go into functionally, which is the example of the blood flow to the penis brain, the function of their brain will actually start to change. And so we can think, oh, I am the way that I am. And that's our identity. And we can say that way. And I'll always be this way forever. Or we can go, hey, there's scientific proof that I can change no matter what. And that's through neuroplasticity. It just requires, number one, it takes the self-awareness, it takes intention, and it just takes a lot of effort and a lot of times people just don't want to show up and put the effort in there you go rob just ruined it for all you lazy people i'm gonna throw his book at you anytime you say to me

i i am what i am popeye or was it popeye i said that i don't know so there you go uh yeah this is pretty cool the science of the science of your brain and it can help people expand their identity uh one last thing that i thought was interesting to tease out dopamine reward systems now how much cocaine is involved in this well i can actually talk about cocaine if you want so this is also inside the book as well it's like it's perfect it works perfect so uh let me talk about dopamine real quick so a lot of people think that dopamine and serotonin, they usually like put them together. So serotonin is the both dopamine and serotonin are both feel good chemicals in your brain. Serotonin is more of like a gratitude, feeling good for where you currently are. Dopamine is being motivated.

It's an external chemical. It's being motivated for to go and do something. And so dopamine, for instance, if you're highly motivated, what they call that in neuroscience is that is a high dopamine state if you're highly motivated. If you are demotivated today, you are in what's called a low dopamine state. And so when you look at somebody like you just said, like cocaine, for instance, when you do cocaine, you are 250%. Your dopamine level spiked 250%. And so the ones that have the craziest drugs that you think of, like the people that are most motivated to go get it again, guess what type of drug they are? They're high dopamine

chemicals that they're really working with there. And so when you look at the dopamine reward system, it's funny because these are the two chapters that are my favorite. I don't know which one's a favorite between the two of them because it's neuroplasticity and then it goes to dopamine reward system. And dopamine reward system, I was so excited to put this into a book. So I was like, if people can use this and learn it, this could 100% absolutely change your life. And it's how to use understanding what dopamine is and understanding that dopamine is 100% subjective as well. It can be very subjective. So I can basically celebrate myself for anything. And my brain will release a little bit of dopamine, which makes me then want more.

Like we're dopamine fiends. We want more dopamine. And here's what happens is you take dopamine reward systems and you ask yourself, okay, like if I want to, let's go back to the same way, the same thing you said before, lose 50 pounds. The way I used to be when I was younger was I will not be happy until I accomplish X. I'll be pissed off. I'll be mad at myself. I won't be happy until I accomplish X. And when I'm happy, when I accomplish X is the only time that my brain in that process

is letting dopamine into my brain. So it's actually holding back the most important chemical for the motivation. So instead of going, and that's what I call that inside the book, I call a results-based goal. My goal is based off of results, which are important to have, but what you do is you make a results-based goal and then you, you create action-based goals based off of that. And so an action-based goal could be, so if the results-based goal is I want to lose 50 pounds, the action-based goal is I can celebrate myself when I walk into the gym because I didn't want to be here today. That's going to release dopamine. It's going to want to make me keep going. I can celebrate myself after every single set that I do and allow my brain to release dopamine

multiple times, which actually starts to get me addicted to the process of getting to that results-based goal. Like if you look at, I talk about Kobe Bryant inside of the book. Kobe Bryant is known for being somebody who would work out almost every single day since he was in high school at 4 a.m. And his trainer who also trained Michael Jordan, Tim Grover said the hardest thing to get Kobe to do was to stop because he was just so driven. And so I don't think he did this on purpose, but there's many times when I was researching him where he would talk about how proud he was

of the fact that he was working out knowing that his competition was sleeping, knowing that he was putting in the work when they weren't. And so what happened was instead of getting two workouts a day, like an average basketball player does, they wake up, they do one at like 10, they do one at two and they get their two workouts. He got three in. He knew every single day he was going to be 50% better than them. And if you multiply that over 10 years, no one can compete. And so he set up a dopamine reward

system, probably unconsciously of celebrating himself. As soon as he gets done with the workout to want to show up for the next workout and his pride in himself made him release dopamine and then want to show up the next day and to continue to keep doing it. So it's always really important to have goals and to have results-based goals, which is the long-term ones. But after you set those, what's really important is actually the, the short-term action-based goals. There you go. And like we talked about earlier, you talked about earlier, you know, doing the short stuff and doing the daily stuff, you know, going to the gym every day.

Hey, good job. Hey, going, you know, and you wake up one day and then it's compounded and you've got these great results for your long--term goal as you mentioned i like how you've built the book around this gamification mindset because a lot of a lot of people now you know they know if the gamification especially if you're a man you play video games uh everywhere you go there's gamification so is gamification probably a good analogy of how you've set up and pitched the book yeah i mean i think that it's it's more fun to me like i grew up playing sports it's more fun to just think of everything as a game right like everything is more fun the the whole idea of this being a video game that we're playing you know it's like people always talk about if you look at like elon musk talking about like the simulation theory where it's like we are humans in this but maybe we're actually just video game characters in this crazy hyper reality thing that

we're that we're in this crazy virtual reality maybe that we're, that we're in this crazy virtual reality. Maybe that's true. Maybe that's not, I don't know. I'm not smart enough to know those things, but I like to make everything into a game because it makes it more fun. You know, it makes it, it makes it more fun to have a win or lose. It makes it more fun to be able to celebrate yourself for showing up. And, um, BJ Fogg, who I talk about in the book, he wrote a book called tiny habits. And, um, he's like, you can basically gamify any of this stuff. And he says, there's a, you know, the, the, the way that you can do it, that's very easy is you can take your habits that you currently have that are, are normal habits. And you can take the habit that you want and put it on the backend of that. And it's called habit stacking. So you take an old habit, you put your new habit on top of it

and you do them at the same time. So like for instance, let's say somebody wants to start doing a hundred pushups a day, right? And they're like, I'm going to go do a hundred pushups a day. You could force yourself to schedule it and figure out where you want to put it in your day. Or you could take something that's already a habit and you could put it on the back end of it. So for instance, hopefully everybody who's listening has brushed their teeth in the morning and the evening. So you could say, when I brush my teeth, I'll do 50 pushups. And so in the morning, when I brush my teeth, I do 50 pushups in the evening. When I do it, when I brush my teeth, I do 50 pushups. Boom. I just got a hundred pushups done, which is my habit that I was working for can actually be accomplished without having to schedule new time

to do it. And then at the end of it, the thing that he talks about is, is the important part is celebrating yourself. And it's, it sounds, I get it. It sounds like for someone who's like a hard worker and analytical, it sounds corny to be like, yay, I did it. Good job, Rob. Like that seems real corny, but actually like just sitting there and feeling pride and doing the thing that you didn't want to do or taking yourself one step closer is, is just a way to set up a dopamine reward system to make yourself want to do or taking yourself one step closer is is just a a way to set up a dopamine reward system to make yourself want to show up and do it again tomorrow there you go you should sell a controller with the book you know like a little game yeah i should right i don't know i don't know people people don't seem to like controllers after a whole titanic thing that

happened in the uh oh yeah that's uh i didn't it's probably it's probably a bad idea. But the controller, I can be like, hey, hit that neuroplasticity button and then all that good stuff. So there you go. Final thoughts as we go out. I'll leave it to you, Rob. Pitch the book and all that good stuff. Yeah. I mean, as far as the book goes, once once again, if it's, it's not a self-development book, it is like a step-by-step manual for how to get yourself from where you are now to where you want

to go. And so if anybody wants to buy it, it's, it's level up. It's everywhere. You can buy a book. What's cool about it is it's, it's on presale right now and it's already hit number one in psychology, neurobiology. It's at number one entrepreneurship business and education as well. And so it's, it's already out there. It's doing pretty well. I'm proud of it for, for what it's done. And, um, and so if somebody wants to step-by-step process, that's the best way to do it. And then somebody likes listening to podcasts like yours, obviously, wherever they listen to podcasts, they can listen to mine, which is a mindset mentor. And you know, they can, uh, they can listen to me there and, uh, and follow it. And I put out four

episodes every single week and all of them are based around mindset because if you look at the basis of everything, it always comes back to the way that you're thinking about stuff. And so for me, it's just my place where I like to serve and try to help people as much as I possibly can. And, uh, it's, it's been a journey. It's been a beautiful thing. And I'm 1400 podcast episodes in, which I think we're right about the same. You think you're right about 1400 as well? And so, uh, so, so we got a lot. And, and what's funny about that too, is I had a lady come up to me the other day and I was at an event and she came up to me and she's like, Hey, I, I follow your podcast. And I just started a podcast like a week ago. She's like, what's the biggest tip you can give me? Cause she's like, I heard

yours is one of the top 100 of the world. How do I get to one of the top 100 of the world? I said, here's what I want you to do. You ready? For the next eight years, I want you to put out four episodes a week. And then I want you to talk to me because people always want like the secret sauce. Right. And it's like, I'm sure you, Chris, are better now than you were in the very first episode. Like I listened to my very first episode. I kind of cringe a little bit sometimes short, but it's like you only get better from actually doing the thing. Everybody wants like the secret sauce and how do I get myself to do it? I'm like, just put in the work.

That's what you have to do. And so that's what the, the podcast has been for me. Put in that 1% every day, you know, just like you're, that's right. Like you're saying,

as 80% of podcasts fail by episode seven, cause people give up and the, yeah, that's actually, that's funny. You give up and the yeah that's actually what's funny you're the only other person that's telling me that statistic i actually when i started my podcast i had heard that most people give up by episode seven and so when i started the podcast i recorded 14 before i put it out because i said i'll try 14 if it works it works but at least i did double what the average person did and if it doesn't work it doesn't work and it started getting movement and i was like okay i guess i'm going to keep doing this thing good job the the other

20 to survive but 80 of the 20 will die by episode 20 to 25 especially if it doesn't have its own dot com so uh you know i've had people come up to me and they're like i'm a top two percent podcaster like how many podcasts you have a hundred how many downloads you have for like 200 you know per episode and i'm like that's because 97 of this business is like zombie podcast so uh good advice there's uh there's like two million podcasts and i think there's like 200 000 are actually still doing it so it's like 90 are already gone they're already dead they're just having to still live on on on itunes because nobody deleted them you know yeah i got it on authority that uh anchor has like half a million dead zombie podcasts on it they're just really

abandoned yeah they're just abandoned carts they're just running around they're not doing nothing um i call them zombie podcasts so there you go uh it's been wonderful you have on the show rob and you're inspiring people. You're getting people level up. And I like how you figured out a way to really get people to motivate themselves because there's nothing worse than you're just like, oh, I'll celebrate it when I lose 100 pounds or I'll celebrate it when I get this. You know, you can use it as a way to motivate yourself to get there. Final.com as we go out for people can look you up on the interrupts yeah robdial.com so there's r-o-b-d-i-a-l.com and then i'm everywhere that that that stuff is so

like if they like instagram i'm on instagram if i'm on someone's on tiktok i'm on tiktok youtube i'm in all of the places someone just types in rob dial i'm i'm gonna pop up usually wherever they are. There you go. Thank you very much, Rob, for coming on. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks, man. I appreciate it.

There you go. And to our audience, order the book wherever fine books are sold. You get a pre-sale at October 3rd, 2023. It will be hitting the bookshelves live. Level Up, How to Get Focused, Not Procrastinating, and Upgrade Your Life by Rob Dial. Get it while the book's coming hot off the shelves. And order up spares for Christmas. It's always good to have this gift to give away.

Thanks to our audience for tuning in. We love you. We couldn't do it without you. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, youtube.com, 4chesschristmas, linkedin.com, 4chesschristmas, TikTok, chrismas1. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

And we'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.