The Mindset Mentor - Are You Numbing Yourself?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you want to receive motivational text messages for me directly to your cell phone, send me a text message right now, 1-512-580-9305. Once again, 1-512-580-9305. Today, we're going to talk about the action of numbing. Now, you might not know exactly what that means, but let me take you back and tell you really why I'm going to be talking about this in the first place. I was talking to one of my friends earlier this week about how we as humans will numb ourselves in so many different ways so that we don't do the one thing that we truly need to do in this world, whatever that thing is. And so when I

Starting point is 00:00:55 talk about numbing, I'm talking about occupying your mind, finding anything that you possibly can to occupy your mind so that you aren't thinking about the one thing that you truly need to think about. Now, when I say numbing, most of you out there are probably thinking drugs or alcohol, right? Which, yeah, you know, there are drugs or alcohol that people can numb themselves with. People turn to drugs and alcohol because they want to numb their minds from feeling something or from thinking something. But there's so many other forms of numbing that we don't ever think about. So we can look at someone and be like, oh, that person's an alcoholic, but not me. Or, oh, that person's a drug addict, but not me. But there's so many other forms of numbing. For instance, food is numbing. I know

Starting point is 00:01:39 that some people listening to this, food is the way that you numb yourself so that you don't think about the things that you don't want to think about, or you don't feel the way that you're actually feeling. You use it as a crutch to get away from reality. And we all have so many different ways of doing this. Sex is another way of doing this for some people. The television, just sitting down and watching Netflix is a way of getting yourself out of your own reality. A very common one that's actually really hard and really tricky because of the fact that we live in Western society is being a workaholic, working so much that you don't think about things you need. For me, this was mine. Never had to worry about food, never had to worry about alcohol, drugs, TV, any of those things. For me, it was working

Starting point is 00:02:20 too much. I was working so much, 110 hours a week to keep my mind occupied so I didn't think about the things that I needed to work on myself that I hadn't overcome from my father's death and from things that happened after that. And so I would work 110 hours a week. And that, the thing that's tricky about that one that made it so hard is when you work and work and work and work in Western society, people actually applaud you for it. And you think that you're doing a good job and you don't even realize that you're running away from stuff until one day you wake up and you're like, I just don't feel good doing what I'm doing anymore. I don't feel right. And for me, that was a really big wake up call.

Starting point is 00:02:59 What other types of numbing are there? Social media, Social media. Why is it so freaking big? Because it's such an easy way to numb yourself, to get your mind off of something that you should be thinking about and keeping it busy and preoccupied with something that's small and minute and stupid and doesn't really mean anything to you. And the reasons why we do it is because we're trying to keep our mind off of something like, you know, what you need to work on in your life. Maybe it's your anger issues. Maybe it's your relationship with your father. Maybe it's your relationship with your mom.

Starting point is 00:03:32 Maybe it's your relationship with your children, with your spouse. Maybe it's the relationship with yourself. Maybe it's the relationship with your mind. Maybe it's the relationship with your own body. There's so many different aspects of what you could be trying to run away from. What else could it be? It could be what's wrong in your life. There might be a lot of things that you don't enjoy. There might be people in your life that you just need to get rid of and let them go, but you aren't doing it. So you're not paying attention to it. You're keeping yourself so preoccupied with something else so that you don't have to think and work through that thing that you truly need to do.

Starting point is 00:04:08 It could be the fact that you're numbing yourself because you fucking hate your job. You don't want to be at your job anymore. You haven't want to be at your job for 12 years and you're still there. And it may be the fact that you're just trying to numb yourself so you don't have to think about how soul-sucking your job is for you. You might be numbing yourself because of the fact that you just want your parents to finally accept you for who you truly are. You might be numbing yourself because, you know, you're in a relationship with someone

Starting point is 00:04:33 that you don't love anymore and you're just trying to run from it. You might be numbing yourself because you're not living up to your true potential. You know that there's more for you, but you're not doing it. You might be numbing yourself because you look in the mirror and you don't like the way your body looks. You might be numbing yourself because you have children that you didn't raise correctly years ago, and now you're hating yourself

Starting point is 00:04:53 for the mistakes that you've made and you don't want to put the effort forth. There's so many different reasons why people numb themselves. Essentially, numbing is just another form of running away from the real true thing that you know that you should be doing. So I have to ask you this question. Are you numbing? And how are you numbing? Let's go ahead and self-diagnose. How are you numbing yourself? What is it? Is it anything that I mentioned? Is it something else? Is it drugs? Is it alcohol? Is it food? Is it waking up and binge eating ice cream in the middle of the night? Is it sex? Is it porn? Is it watching too much Netflix? Saying that you need to finish a show when in reality you're so addicted to it? Is it that you're a workaholic and can't

Starting point is 00:05:38 stop working? You can't even come home for your children because you're too busy thinking about work? Is it that you're addicted to money? Is it that you're on social media all of the time because you're trying to get rid of all the things that are going on in your head? What is it? How are you numbing? Be truthful with yourself. How are you numbing if you are? And then the next thing we need to think about is if you are numbing, what are you trying to numb yourself from? What feelings are you trying to numb yourself from? What thoughts are you trying to numb yourself from? What feelings are you trying to numb yourself from? What thoughts are you trying to numb yourself from? What are you trying to run away from that you're too afraid to look in the mirror and say, yes, this is the first thing that I need to work on in order to get to the next level of myself? Is it who you're with? Is it the way that

Starting point is 00:06:23 you feel? Is it the way that you act? Is it that there's something wrong in your life who you're with? Is it the way that you feel? Is it the way that you act? Is it that there's something wrong in your life that you're not coming to? Is it that you're working a job that you hate? Is it that you're not living up to your potential? Is it you're still with someone that you don't love? What is it? And what is the solution? What is the solution that you need to come to? You know, you have to look at where you are right now and then you have to ask yourself, okay, I'm in this situation. I'm going to look at myself with love. I'm not going to look at myself and be like, why are you not doing this? Oh my gosh, I'm so depressed. Because one of the things that people really have trouble with, I've coached thousands of people, is that when they

Starting point is 00:06:58 start to notice things about themselves, or you could call them deficits about themselves, or things that are holding them back, when they discover them, they get really emotional and they get mad at themselves. Don't get mad at yourself. Give yourself some grace. Give yourself some love and say, okay, self, we're going to work on this together, even though there's only one of you. We're going to work on this together. We're going to figure out a way to get past this situation. What is it that you need to do? There's so much happening in the world right now in business and finding the right talent can be really time-consuming frustrating and really

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Starting point is 00:08:21 Because when you look at it right now, it might not seem really all that bad that you watch a little bit of TV when you come home, that you spend a little bit of time on social media, that you spend an extra few hours at work, that you end up doing different things like having a couple extra drinks when you come home, maybe a glass of wine, maybe two glasses of wine, just to take the edge off. It helps you sleep better, whatever excuses you want to make. But what people don't normally do is they don't normally take the present moment and then multiply the present moment times the next 10 years, times the next 20 years, times the next 30, 40 years, and think about where that would take them. For instance, if you have a hamburger today, hamburger is not going to kill you. It's

Starting point is 00:09:06 not going to give you a heart attack. Nobody ever had a heart attack from one hamburger. Nobody's ever weighed from one hamburger. It's hamburgers and, you know, quote unquote hamburgers, all these different types of decisions over the course of 10 years when you fast forward, that gives somebody a heart attack. So let's say that maybe one of your things is that you spend time on social media. So for this episode, I decided to research and I was like, I wonder how much time people actually spend on social media per day. The average person actually spends, crazy enough everybody, two hours a day on social media. Now, some of you might be a little bit less. Some of you might be way more, but let's just do the math real quick. If you spend two hours on social media today,

Starting point is 00:09:43 not really a huge deal. There's something else that you could have done, obviously, but you just spent two hours on social media today. No big deal, right? What if you did it for the next year? Well, that's 730 hours this year that you would spend on social media. Okay? If you fast forward that 10 years and you just spent two hours on social media, that's 304 days. That's almost, that's getting close. That's approaching an entire year. Almost 10% of the next 10 years of your life would be spent on social media. Now, let me ask you a question. Is that social media doing anything for your life and where you're trying to go? Maybe, maybe not. Something

Starting point is 00:10:31 to think about though. Think about what the next 10 years would be. Okay. Now let's go ahead and see how much time people spend on TV per day. This one was really surprising to me when I looked at it. The average person spends four hours per day on TV. Four hours a day. Now, obviously, this is taking into account Saturday and Sunday. So if you're like, well, I come home from work and I watch for a couple hours, this is also Saturday, college football, Sunday, NFL, whatever it is that you spend your time watching. So four hours per day over the next 10 years is 608 days over the next 10 years. 608 days over the next 10 years. So if you were to look between just social media and just TV, that right there is 912 days over the next 10 years. That's 2.5 years of your life. 2.5 years of your life over the next

Starting point is 00:11:31 10 years spent on just social media and TV. That's 25% of your time, which is crazy because 25% of your time when you actually go through and look at the next 10 years will be spent sleeping. when you actually go through and look at the next 10 years, will be spent sleeping. About 50% of your time will be spent at work. That means the other 25% on average is spent on social media, TV, then doing some other things as well. So how much time are you wasting and numbing? And what would that do if you had that time back? One of the things I hear from people so much, Rob, I want to transform my life. I want to be a coach. I want to be a painter. I want to be a musician. I want to be this thing, whatever this thing is. I just don't have time for it. And then I immediately go to, well, how are you numbing yourself? Because if you can figure out how you numb yourself, you can figure out how to find more time because you're spending a lot of time numbing. Imagine if instead of spending 608

Starting point is 00:12:32 days, six hours per day, instead of spending all of that time on social media and TV, what if you put all of that time into your book? What if you put all of that time into becoming a better musician, a better painter, a better coach, doing something that you truly love, working out, eating healthier, going for swims, going for runs, whatever it is that you want to accomplish. Imagine how much further ahead in life you'd be if you just stopped numbing and you just started working on yourself and your craft and whatever it is that you truly want to do. It's so much. Now, you might look at it and you might say, okay, well, that's time. But you know, mine is that I come home and have two glasses of wine every single night. Well, that's not too bad if you

Starting point is 00:13:15 have two glasses of wine tonight. But if you multiply that 10 years, that's 7,300 glasses of wine. Holy crap. That is so much freaking wine. What is that doing to your body? If you have that much wine, you know, depends on what type of wine you have, but wine tends to have a lot of sugar in as well. So how much more fat is that putting onto your body? How much more strain on your heart could that be putting on if you have more fat? Think about these things.

Starting point is 00:13:41 If you spend an extra two hours of work, two hours a day at work and not come home with your family and you multiply that, that's 7,300 hours over the next 10 years that you don't have with your children. How much better of a father or mother could you be if you spent an extra 7,000 hours with your children, making sure that you're making the best that you possibly can? There's so many places where we're numbing, and you have to ask yourself, how am I numbing? How much time am I spending numbing? And what if I just went to that thing that I'm numbing myself from,

Starting point is 00:14:17 that relationship issue, that job that I hate, that thing that I need to talk to my mom and my dad about that's hindering our relationship? Maybe it's the feelings that I still have from my childhood mom or my dad about that's hindering our relationship? Maybe it's the feelings that I still have from my childhood. Whatever it is, what if you just finally looked at it and you said, you know what? I'm not going to allow this to hold me back. Is it going to hurt to go through this? It will possibly hurt to go through this, but I'm going to do it because I could get an extra 7,000 hours of my life back over the next 10 years, spend that time with my children, spend that time on my craft, on painting, on eating healthier, running, or becoming a better musician, whatever it is that you want to work on.

Starting point is 00:14:53 You have to think about this. And here's what you have to do. You have to think of ways to become more self-aware because we find ourselves numbing. And we don't even, number one, most people before listening to this podcast, you might not even have known that you were numbing yourself. So you have to ask yourself, why am I, how am I numbing? Why am I numbing? And what do I need to do to get past it? So maybe what you do is you have a plan that anytime you notice yourself scrolling through social media, you just immediately, I'm going to take out my journal. I'm going to journal some stuff. I'm going to take out a book. I'm going to read. I'm going to try to get smarter over those 7,000 hours. I'm going to go out and buy some course on how to become a better painter, better at social media so I could build that business

Starting point is 00:15:33 that I want to. Whatever it is that you need to do, I'm going to spend that time doing something that I want to learn how to become better at. I'm going to spend that time working out. So next time I notice myself on social media, I'm going to get up. I'm going to do 50 pushups. I'm going to do 50 jumping jacks. I'm going to go for a mile run. What would your body look like if you did something like that? What would your life look like if you did something like that? And then I got to ask you this question because I know what some people are thinking, but Rob, I just go on social media when I'm bored. You know, I just don't want to be bored. Well, I got a question for you. And this is something I really want you to think about.

Starting point is 00:16:10 What's wrong with being bored? Being bored just simply means that you're just sitting there with nothing to do. What's wrong with having nothing to do or nothing to focus on? What's wrong with just sitting there with a cup of coffee and go, you know what? I'm just going to think about my life. I'm going to think about how I can improve. I'm going to think about how I can make my relationship better with my wife. I'm going to think about how I can make my relationship better with my kids. I'm going to think about how I can get my next promotion. I'm going to think about how I can start my side hustle. What's wrong with just being bored and just sitting in the boredom? We're taught like boredom is this bad thing.

Starting point is 00:16:45 There's nothing wrong with it. You're just sitting. And here's the crazy thing you'll realize. Some of your best ideas in the entire world for you come when you're silent. They come when you're just sitting there. They come when you're just allowing yourself to be a human. They call you a human being, not a human doing. Are you spending too much of your time doing when you just need to spend more of your time being, just existing? Stop numbing yourself. Figure out why you're numbing yourself. Work past those things and become the best version of yourself that you can because I promise you this, one of my favorite phrases in the entire world is, inside the cave that you're

Starting point is 00:17:25 so afraid to enter holds the treasure that you seek. That conversation that you're afraid of having, that job that you're afraid of leaving, whatever it is that you're trying to numb from, whenever you go and you conquer that one thing, your life takes a step in the direction that you've always needed it to. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it right now with someone that you know and love. Please go ahead and share it on your Instagram so that more people can see this and hear this and be a part of it. And then tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R.

Starting point is 00:17:58 Once again, we only grow when you guys share this. And we're one of the top podcasts in the entire world because you guys are the greatest audience in the world and you share this with people and we grow through grassroots. So if you would share it, I would love you deeply from the bottom of my heart. And I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - Are You Numbing Yourself?

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