The Mindset Mentor - 3 Pieces of Advice I’d Give My 20 Year Old Self

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

What would I tell my 20-year-old self? In this episode, I share three lessons to help you avoid burnout, redefine success, and build real confidence through action not pep talks. Feeling stuck? It's time to take back control. If you're ready to master your mind and create real, lasting change, click the link below and start transforming your life today. 👉 http://coachwithrob.com   The Mindset Mentor™ podcast is designed for anyone desiring motivation, direction, and focus in life.     Past guests of The Mindset Mentor include Tony Robbins, Matthew McConaughey, Jay Shetty, Andrew Huberman, Lewis Howes, Gregg Braden, Rich Roll, and Dr. Steven Gundry.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not you done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, you want to get some mindset tips and tricks, text directly to your cell phone. And you're in the U.S. or Canada, text me right now. 512-9305. once again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm going to be giving you three pieces of advice that I would

give my 20-year-old self. Because a question that I've been asked many times is if you could go back and give your 20-year-old self-advice, what would it be? And my standalone, normal answer is just do what you've always done. Just keep on going. I don't need any advice. But for years, I didn't really know how to answer that question. But today I actually forced myself as if I could go back and talk to 20-year-old Rob to make his life better, what could I teach him? And so if you're younger and you're in your 20s and 30s, this is going to help you out a lot, but this is also really going to help you out if you're 40, 50, 60, even 70-year-olds as well. Here's the truth. Most people wake up at 40, 45 years old and they can be successful on paper, but quietly are living a

miserable life. And I have seen this many, many times from some very, very successful people. They follow the script, they grind, they level up, they achieve, and they still feel behind, tired, disconnected from themselves and their family. And if that's where you're headed, this video is going to be your wake-up call. Because you don't need more hustle. You need better habits. You need clear intentions, clearer values, and a life that actually feels good to live. And so in today's video, I'm going to show you exactly how to reset your definition of success and design a life that you don't need to escape from, the kind of life where you have self-trust that changes everything in your life. And so don't wait to fix what you can catch today. Okay, so let's start off with number

one. Number one is stop chasing the wrong finish line. Everyone has a different finish line that they're working towards. When I was in my 20s, my main focus was how can I make as much money as possible. I thought that making a significant amount of money would fix everything in my entire life. The truth of it is, and what I have found, is that the only problems that money solved are money problems. Achievements of any kind, whether that be a title, whether that be a certain amount of money in your bank account, whatever it might be, will not fix what's going on inside of you. If you're an unhappy person and you're poor, you will be an unhappy person. You will be an unhappy person when you're rich. So you might think and I thought, oh yeah, like once I just make

six figures, then I'll feel secure. Once I get a $5 million net worth, then I'll feel secure. Once I get that title, then they'll finally respect me or if I looked like that, then I'd be confident or I just need to make sure I get a piece of paper with my name on it saying that I graduated from someplace and then I'll be able to do whatever it is that I want. And so you have to understand that achievement for a lot of people as they're younger becomes their focus. If I can just cross this thing off my list, then everything in my life will get better. Then what? You hit it. Did it make you feel better? No. What do we usually do? If you're the type of person who's listening to this podcast, you're probably a type of person who moves the goalpost as soon as you hit it. Your goals are like the horizon.

Every time you get closer to them, they get further away. Every time you hit that goal post, it moves. you raise the bar, you go for the next thing, you delay your peace, you start believing that I'll be happier when I achieve the next thing and I'll be peaceful later and that stress is just the cost of ambition. And what you do is you hit the goal and you never actually enjoy the life and celebrate it. I've done this many times. I've seen many people who I respect do this as well, they hit a big significant goal. And then they just go on to the next thing. I did this shit. When I wrote my book, I had written my book and it took me three years to write as my very first book that I ever wrote. And like two months later, my VP of Operations is like, hey, have you

ever celebrated yourself that you wrote your book? And I was like, no, I haven't. She's like, do you realize how big of an accomplishment that is? And I was like, well, I mean, yeah, I guess it's pretty big. But a lot of my friends have like two or three books. So I'm comparing myself to everybody else versus going, oh my God, wait, hold on. Nobody in my family has ever written a book before. Maybe I should look at this thing instead of going, oh, I did this thing. Now I need to go to the next thing. And it was about, hey, how can I take a step back? How can I appreciate this big accomplishment that I just have? And how can I relish in the fact of the person that I needed to become in order to achieve that thing? You know, is it, are we just going to keep going for the next

thing and the next thing? Like, is the reason why we were put on this planet just to chase some random goals around until one day we die? Like what a hollow existence if you really think about it. And I lived that hollow existence for years. Like so many people in this world are just living hollow existences. They're just chasing the next thing and they don't even enjoy their fucking lives. And so here's the real reframe we need to start to think about in this situation. Real success is not about what you achieve. It's about who you are. And and how you feel as you're on the road to trying to achieve those things. As corny and cliche as it is, and cliches are usually cliches because they're true,

it is actually about enjoying the journey and making sure that we are actually enjoying our lives as we're trying to achieve. Achieving is a great thing. It's everybody needs something that they're working towards. Progress equals happiness, as Tony Robbins always says. We need something that we're working towards. It makes us excited to learn and grow to achieve things, but really what we need to do is make sure that while we're trying to achieve these things, we're actually enjoying our life in some sort of way. And also what's really important in this is who you become in the process. It's not just achieving the goal. It's that I couldn't achieve the goal at some point in time, but I built myself into the type of person who could achieve

that goal. So in order to achieve something better than we ever have before, we must become better than we are right now. And this is the really cool part about being a human, is you're are the one that's in charge of your own evolution. And most people don't realize this until they're halfway through their life. And they've realized that they've built a life to impress other people that they don't even like. And that's where a midlife crisis comes in, where someone wakes up, they're like, I didn't even really consciously choose this life and I don't want it anymore. And so here's the big lesson in this one right now. What you want to do is build a life that feels good on the inside, not just a life that looks good on Instagram. So that's number one.

The second thing that I would really focus on is designing a life that you don't want to escape from. Most people that I coach are extremely successful, really successful business people. They have employees. They do millions of dollars or billions of dollars in sales and their companies. And most of them aren't exhausted because they work too hard. A lot of them are exhausted because they've been sprinting towards a version of success that they don't want. and so they're trying to figure out a way to either number one become okay with the life that they've built and actually start to enjoy it or number two remove themselves from whatever it is

the business or the relationship whatever it is that's stressing them out so that they can start to build their life from version 2.0 of themselves and so they've built a life or a business based on what would look impressive to other people or what would make the most money. or meeting someone else's expectations, meeting their childhood expectation, meeting their parents' expectations. And now they're stuck at the top of a ladder that was leaning against the wrong wall the entire time.

And that is one of the worst places to find yourself. And so if you're 20 or 30 years old, please save yourself some time and go, if I'm building this ladder, is this the wall that I want to find myself on the top of in 20 years? years because most people build the wall because they're just thinking I can make money doing this or I can have success doing this or this is what my parents told me to do. They get to the top of

this quote unquote ladder of success and they realize like I never even wanted this in the first place. And so here's the shift. What I would recommend that every person do listening to this is to start with the end in mind. Not the income, not the job title, not the version of you that looks good on LinkedIn to everybody else so the version of you that your parents can brag to all of their friends about what you do, the version of you where the end is in mind from the very beginning. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. And so you've got to ask yourself, like, what kind of life do I want to wake up in? Like, what do I enjoy so much that I would do for free? Like, what energizes me without needing caffeine? And you can, you

can become successful at anything. I always say if you're trying to make a million dollars, a million ways at least to make a million dollars. Why not? At least try to be successful or love what you're doing with something that you're passionate about or something that you're interested in. The more that I meet more people who, you know, having the internet is this great opportunity for people to make money in many different ways. And the more people that I meet, the more I'm surprised from like, wait, you do what? Like, you make money doing that? You make a lot of money doing that? That's crazy. And so what I would always recommend is that you start with the end in mind and think, like, what kind of life do I want? What kind of life do I not want a vacation from? What would

I love to wake up and do every single day? Because if I'm going to wake up and be alive and work towards something, why don't I enjoy what it is that I'm working towards and be excited about whatever this end that I get to? Because when you go for money first, which I have done, and I know, many people who have done as well, you will always eventually hit a dead end. But when you build from a place of being passionate about something, money then follows. There's a quote that Oprah says that says, money should always come second. Passion should always come first. And so the reason why I think that's important is because if you're trying to be successful in life, would that be financially or happy or, you know, full of love or whatever it is that you want in life, that is going to

take a lot of work. And it is a lot easier to put in a lot of work towards something when you actually enjoy what it is that you do. And you will work longer hours than anybody else if you enjoy what you do. And so ask yourself, like, what is something that would look like work to everybody else but feels like play to me? Like, do something that lights you up, not just something for money or for accolades or for achievement. You will have a longer runway. It's like another phrase that I always hear about this is the man who loves to walk will go further over the course of his lifetime than the man who's running towards a goal. So like if you're just trying to run a marathon, you know, you're going to get a certain amount of miles in. But if you're somebody who loves

walking over the course of your lifetime, you will walk more miles than that person will ever run just simply because you love doing it. So design your days like somebody who wants to stay in them. Design your days for a life that you don't need a vacation from or you're not excited for the weekends. Now, I did this in my first companies where I went after just success and achievement because I thought that was supposed to do that. And I built my first company. I built my second company. And then I was in Starbucks and I had this epiphany. I was working on my business and I had an Amazon business at the time and it was doing really well. It's brand new. We were doing over a thousand units a month and I started thinking to myself, if I fast forward five years, do I still want to be doing

Amazon stuff? Like, do I want to be known as the guy who makes money on Amazon? And I was like, no, like that doesn't sound fun to me. And I thought to myself, if I fast forward five years, do I want to be known as a person who's coaching and helping people in their lives? And it was immediate like, hell yes. And I was like, that's my path in life. I've already done multiple things that I don't want to do just trying to make money. I'm going to do the one thing that I'm passionate about. And now it's been over a decade and been doing it and I don't want to slow down because I just love doing it. And so that's what I would recommend is to design a life that you don't want to escape from. And the number three, the third thing I would tell my younger self is that confidence that you're

looking for comes from proof, not from pep talks. And so when I was younger, I was not confident in any sort of way. I was really shy when I was a kid. I'm a really big introvert. I don't really like talking to people, which is funny because that's what my job is to do. But like, I would rather just chill and not be around a whole bunch of people. A lot of people that I've seen that are very big business owners are introverts. And that's why they can work so because they are an introvert. So if you're an introvert, don't worry. It's not a bad thing. But when I say confidence, I don't, you don't need a motivational quote. You don't need just to like, quote unquote, believe in yourself. What you need for confidence is evidence. People always want,

oh is there a book on confidence what tip can you give me on confidence there are none you need evidence the way i like to think about confidence to make it visual is like anytime you do something that you said you were going to do any time that you're the type of person that you want to be whatever it might be it's like taking a little jingo block and stacking it and every time that you do something that builds your confidence it's like one little confidence block that's put down one little jingo block one little jingo block And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to stack as many confidence blocks as I possibly can. But every time I do something or I don't do something that I said I was going to do, it's like removing one of those jingo blocks.

And then I said I was going to wake up and I didn't wake up on time today. And I said I was going to work out. I didn't work out today. I'm stripping away these jingo blocks. And so I must win more than I lose. And if I do that, I will start to build more confidence in myself. Because confidence isn't a mindset like people. thing. Confidence is a pattern. It's what happens when you show up again and again and again and

again and you prove to your brain in your conscious and unconscious brain that are both watching every single thing that you do. I show up. I do hard things. I figure it out. I'm the type of person that people can rely on. And your brain starts to see evidence in your life that you are the type of person who follows through and does what you need to do. And it's like, jingo block, jingo block, jing a block. And now you have this giant stack of confidence. Why? Not because you read a book, but because you showed up. Like most people wait to feel ready. But readiness is a byproduct of putting in the reps, not the requirement for them. You know, I personally was not born confident. Like I said, like I was very shy. I never wanted to do any public speaking. I was incredibly shy. The first time

I was thrown on stage at 19 years old to have to speak to a group of 20 people, I feel like I was going to piss my pants. I didn't want to do it. But the company that I worked for is kept putting me out there and putting me out there and putting me out there. And the more that I did it, the more I realized I wasn't going to die if I did it.

And the less that I had fear around it. And then the more I did it after that, I started to realize, oh my God, I gave a message and actually helped people. I started getting more confident, more confident, more confident. And then within about five years, I had like 15,000 hours of public speaking experience. And then it just became something.

I became confident in. And so if you're doubting yourself and you're looking for confidence, there's no other thing to do except for just show up and do what needs to be done. You know, if you're out there and you're doubting yourself and you're trying to figure out what to do, take whatever big goal that you're trying to work towards this month or whatever it might be this year and just shrink the goal into a small task that you can accomplish today. Like, whatever this big goal is, and it's like,

hey, I want to lose 40 pounds. Okay, well, then what is the thing I need to do today? I need to just get, I need to burn 400 calories on the bike. Okay, that's it. That's all I need to do. And if I do that, I'm going to give myself a little confidence jingo block. And I just keep doing it. You keep stacking days. Eventually the confidence is built. You fast forward a year from today. You've lost the 40 pounds and you're way more confident as a person.

And so you want to celebrate yourself and celebrate showing up and celebrate putting in the reps, not just getting the result. You know, the proof of you doing when needs to be done is what builds trust within yourself. And trust builds courage. And then your courage is what builds your confidence. And so if you take only one thing from this, let it be this. Stop trying to think your way into confidence and start acting your way into confidence. And so if you're younger or if you're at a big point in your life where you're trying to make a massive change,

the biggest question that I think that would really help you with, you know, number one, number two, number three that I just gave you is what do you want? I ask so many people what they want and they don't have an answer for it. You need to figure out what it is that you want. And if you do, it will make it way easier to accomplish number one, two, and three. Number one, you're not going to be chasing the wrong thing. Like I was talking about number one, because you've already figured out what is that you're chasing. Number two, you're going to start designing a life that you actually want to be a part of

because you started with the end in mind and what do I want. And number three, it's going to be easier to take action. And if you build action, you will build confidence. And so those are the piece of advice that I would give myself. in my 20s and my 30s. So that's where I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories, tag me in at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-L-J-R. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, you want to learn more about coaching with me outside of this podcast. I have programs that go from 12 weeks all the way up to 12 months to really make

massive changes in your mindset and also your life. If you want to learn more about it, go to coach with rob.com. Once again, coach with rob.com. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way, leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.