The Mindset Mentor - Clearing Space for Humanness: Discover Your True Self

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

In this episode, I get real with you about my own journey of learning to reconnect with my emotions after years of unintentionally shutting them out. Ever catch yourself staying busy to avoid facing tough emotions?  We've all been there! I'll talk about why that's a common defense mechanism and how it can hold us back from truly experiencing life's highs and lows.I'm all about finding inspiration everywhere, even in nature! 🌿 I share some fascinating insights into how animals process traumatic experiences, hinting at the importance of releasing emotions rather than bottling them up. 🐾But fear not, my friends! I'm not just here to chat about problems - I've got solutions, too! I'll dish out some practical tips, like giving yourself permission for an "adult temper tantrum" in a safe space.  Because guess what? Expressing your emotions is key to unlocking a happier, more authentic life! 🗝️So, if you're ready to embrace your humanness, join me on this journey of self-discovery and growth! Don't forget to spread the love by sharing this episode with your fellow humans who could use a little mindset boost. 📺 Watch this Episode on Youtube 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.If you like this episode… Make sure to share it with someone that needs to hear it and help us get the message out there so that together we can help make people’s lives better and make the world a better place. And BY THE WAY:My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.Within its pages, you'll discover powerful insights and practical steps that will revolutionize the way you approach your goals, personal motivation, and mental focus.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/book Here are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robdialjr/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@robdial?lang=enFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/themindsetmentee/Or visit my Youtube page that is designed specifically for anyone desiring motivation, direction, and focus in life: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHl3aFKS0bY0d8JwqNysaeA Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast, the number one mindset podcast in the entire world, thanks to you guys out there listening. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. Today, I'm going to talk to you and teach you why you should make more space for your humanness. And I'm going to teach you from my own past struggles, because this is something that I really struggle with for a really long time. And I always like to say it on the podcast, I am in no sort of way a perfect human. I am just another flawed individual trying to figure out

this whole life thing. And as I start to figure more stuff out, I start to share more stuff with you guys. I always like to use myself as the guinea pig. And one thing that I learned is that I had picked up a defense mechanism early in my childhood, my teen years, and it kind of carried with me for a little while. And one thing that I noticed in other people, because of the fact that it's like, oh, I can see this in myself, I know how to work through it. Then I start to see it in other people is that one thing that I notice in this defense mechanism that we all kind of build in ourselves is that we we tend to block out a lot of feelings

and a lot of emotions. And for me, I blocked out a lot of my feelings and a lot of emotions for years and years and years. And, you know, I think having an alcoholic father and, you know, things that came from it and him saying he's going to pick me up sometimes and never showed up, stuff that I experienced before the age of 10, before my parents got divorced, just kind of made me start to block out some emotions. And I think a lot of people do this. You know, then there was him passing away at 15 years old. And I think a lot of people do this. Then there was him passing away at 15 years old. And like four days later, I went back to school and I told nobody. I think I just learned, not purposefully, it wasn't something I did consciously in any sort of way. I just

learned not to allow myself to feel my feelings and then just to have things happen in my life and then just to go on about my day, pushing them all away. And to the point where actually, you know, at one point in time, there was one day where I actually wondered, I was like, do I just not have any feelings towards anything at all? Like I had pushed them away for so long that I was just kind of numb to feelings. I was kind of numb to everything. And I had to go on this path of like rediscovering my humanness. And so I think a lot of people do this. I think this is something that we all kind of naturally do. You know, a lot of times, you know, you can have something really bad happen to you. Like somebody, somebody that you really love dies and it hurts so

much that what you would rather do is be busy instead of actually feel it. Like we've all heard someone do this before. We have done this before, right? Someone is going through a lot of pain. They're going through a lot of grief. And instead of actually feeling it and processing it and letting go of it and releasing it, they say something like, well, I just need to keep myself busy right now. AKA, I don't want to let myself feel the pain. We all know someone who's done this before or have personally done this, right? I'm just, yeah, I just gotta,

I just gotta keep busy right now, which basically means I need to stay busy so that I don't feel my pain. I don't process my emotions. But if you don't feel it, if you don't process it, it stays with you. And I realized that some of the most emotional people in the world actually do this because their emotions can be so strong. I had someone that was in a coaching group of mine about three or four years ago. And she was like, you know what? Like, I just don't feel as deeply as others. I don't, I don't understand when people feel deeply about this. And by that time, I had been coaching her for about six months or something like that. And I said, no, that's bullshit. I think that you actually feel deeper than others and you're afraid of it. And so you've

learned to shut it off. And, you know, there's childhood traumas and things that came about that made her be that way. But after I had said it, she's like, oh my God, I think that you're right. It's not that I don't have the emotions is that the emotions are so strong I don't know how to handle them and I've just learned to repress all of my emotions and so when you look at being a human being a human is this incredible experience this whole life thing is fucking crazy right it is amazing it is hard it is beautiful it is a shit show. It is all of these things. And one of the beautiful things about being a human, about being born into this

body that you're born into, is that you get to experience feelings and emotions. And that's one thing that most animals and most living beings on this earth don't really get to feel. They don't really get emotions. They don't really get feelings to work through. And there's a lot of highs in life and there's also a lot of lows. And one thing that I have realized is you can't experience the highest of highs if you don't allow yourself to experience the lowest of lows. The amount that you restrict the low in your life and the amount that you'll allow yourself to experience and you restrict the low in your life and the way that the amount that you'll allow yourself to experience and you restrict those low feelings, you will also restrict the high feelings in the exact amount as well. And so if you really want to feel the highest of highs

in life, you also have to let yourself feel the lowest of lows when they come in. And I remember for me about, you know, let me think, what year is it? Yeah, about 13 years ago, I remember I was going through something that was really, really tough and it really like hurt so bad for months and months and months. And I remember even though I was going through so much pain that I was going through, I remember taking a step back in my mind and being like, this is crazy that I can feel this much. Like, even though this sucks and it's painful and I don't want to be going through it, how beautiful is it that I have the capacity to feel this deeply towards anything? And it hurt, but at the same time, I was like, damn, even the hurt can be so beautiful.

It's like, I can't believe that I can feel this deeply about anything. And usually, instead of letting ourselves feel that deeply, we try to close off and not allow ourselves to feel it. And I don't know how it happens in everyone's life, but somewhere down the line, lots of us are programmed to stop feeling and to stop showing our emotions. Not everybody is this way, but somewhere down the line, lots of us are programmed to stop feeling and to stop showing our emotions. Not everybody is this way, but lots of people that I have found are programmed, accidentally, not on purpose, to just stop feeling. And I believe that our body is made to release these emotions, to not hold on to those emotions. Emotions are not meant to stay in you forever. They're meant to work through you

and for you to release them. And so I've given this example a couple of times, and I recommend that you actually go and look at these two videos on YouTube. One of them is called, I think it's called Polar Bear Trauma. If you YouTube Polar Bear Trauma, you'll see it. And there's a video of these researchers in a helicopter and they have to shoot a polar bear with a tranquilizer. And so it's awake, but it's very sedated, right? And it starts to like shake. It looks like it's basically convulsing, right? And the polar bear is convulsing, like literally shaking as if it's having a seizure. And then it just takes, you know, after convulsing for a few minutes, it just goes, takes a deep breath and starts breathing really deep.

And the guy who's sitting in front of him, and that's the researcher, says, you know, he's going through such a heightened traumatic experience. His body is releasing all of the cortisol, all of the adrenaline that's built up in his body, so that his body doesn't hold on to it. And so his body is really convulsing to release the traumatic experience so the traumatic experience doesn't stay inside of him. And then there's another video that if you go to YouTube and you type in impala stress, you'll actually see this video of this, it's probably, I think it might be a jaguar that

attacks this impala and it's got its head basically in its mouth and the animal gets scared off and the impala is laying on the ground for a couple of minutes and then it starts doing the same thing the polar bear does. It starts having a seizure. It starts convulsing and it's sitting on the ground, laying on the ground. It's convulsing for a little while. It's shaking, it's shaking, it's shaking. And then it stops and you can see it take a deep breath and then it stops, and you can see it take a deep breath, and then it gets up and runs away. And so it's built into us to release trauma from our body, release the heightened emotions, the extra cortisol, the extra adrenaline, so it doesn't live inside of our bodies. And this is something that we naturally do as well. So a polar bear that lives in a completely

different place in the world than an Impala does the exact same thing. And this is something that we know how to do to release emotions and let them work through us so we don't have to carry on with them. How do we do it? Well, children do it all the time. Children throw temper tantrums when it's a very heightened experience. Now, mind you, children don't process the world the same way that we do. And one of the biggest things that I see that parents make huge mistakes of is treating their three-year-old or four-year-old as if they're a 27-year-old and they're processing the world the same way. They're not. What can be traumatic to them is absolutely nothing to us.

And so, you know, children will throw temper tantrums. And at a certain age, it's fine. It's not a big deal when they're a newborn. But at a certain age, the parents are like, I've had enough of this. And most people's parents just say, hey, enough of the parents are like, I've had enough of this. And most people's parents just say, hey, enough of the temper tantrums, and they make them stop. And I think that we subconsciously learn that those feelings and those emotions and expressing those emotions are bad. And so we learn, okay, I feel this feeling of I need to let go of this emotion,

okay, I feel this feeling of I need to let go of this emotion, but I don't, I'm just going to hold on to it. And we kind of learn that, you know, I'm not blaming anybody. Children do what they do. Parents do what they do. But I just want you to become aware of maybe your children, if they're throwing a temper tantrum, now, obviously they might be trying to get what they want, but maybe there's also emotions running through them that they're trying to get rid of. And so the important thing to really think about is that most of us have been taught to repress and depress our emotions instead of express them, right? So when we depress them and we repress them instead of express them, it can lead to depression. There's just so much emotions inside of our body. We don't know what to do with it. We don't know how to release it. And it's just easier to do almost nothing. So what do we do? We're in this

situation. Some of you guys listening are like, man, I completely relate to that. What do I do? Well, you've got to give yourself permission to feel again. That's the first thing. well, you've got to give yourself permission to feel again. That's the first thing. Give yourself permission to feel, to have emotions, and to be a human and realize there's nothing wrong with it. Coming from somebody, me, who cut off his feelings for a very long time, I'm giving you full permission to feel again. And when you take, you know, I always love to use the example that Wayne Dyer always uses. When you take, you know, I always love to use the example that Wayne Dyer always uses. When you take an orange and you squeeze the orange and you put a whole bunch of pressure on that orange, what comes out of it? Orange juice does. When you put pressure

on that orange, whatever's inside of it is going to come out of it. Well, when you have a lot of pressure put on you, what comes out? When it's getting to be too much, when life is just boiling up and things just feel like you're spinning a million plates, you don't know how to keep it all together. What comes out of you? Is it anger? Is it sadness? Is it just rage? Is it crying? Is it confusion? Lots of times the circumstances in your life that are causing so much pressure, that are making you feel like you're under pressure, they're not causing the feelings of anger, sadness, rage, crying, confusion, any of that stuff. But it's getting to a threshold where you can no longer hold onto these feelings. There's so much pressure on you,

or feels like there's so much pressure on you you that whatever's inside of you is going to come out. The same way that whenever you squeeze and put pressure on an orange, orange juice comes out. Why? Because orange juice is what's inside. Well, whatever comes out of you when there's a lot of pressure put on you is what's actually living inside of you at all points in time. Once again, the circumstances of your life don't create those feelings most times. But that pressure is what helps you release those feelings. You know, when you go on to, if you ever happen to be a type of person who wants to go on a psychedelic journey, do spiritual journeys, something like that, when emotions come up,

one of the things that they always say is they say what's coming is going. So what is coming up in those journeys is actually what your body's trying to get rid of. What's coming is going. It's trying to release all of that stuck energy that you have inside of you. So we all really need to make space for our humanness again. We need to make some space to be human. Allow yourself to feel. Allow yourself to be again. So how do you do that? Well, I'm going to give you a couple different tips. Number one, I'm just going to give you a huge tip. And this is coming from someone who's very busy, you know, has the podcast that he runs, has a whole other side business with 30 employees. Stop being so fucking busy.

Like, stop being so busy. A lot of times people are keeping themselves so busy and so distracted so they don't have to feel anything. And so they will be working all the time. They'll be busy with their children. They'll be on their phone all the time. They'll be distracted. They'll be watching TV.

Like, give yourself some space. Give yourself some silence. Like give yourself an opening for you to finally get back to feeling again. Don't be so busy. That's the first thing. The second thing is allow yourself every once in a while to throw an adult temper tantrum. Now, don't do it around anybody else, but I'm just going to give you permission to do this, okay? We all need to get better at expressing versus repressing our emotions and repressing them and not allowing them to come out. Now, I'm not saying that you need to take this and direct it at somebody else, but allow yourself to express all of the emotions in the moment

or as close a moment as possible so it doesn't stay with you. Because if it stays with you, it will eventually come out and it'll usually come out at the wrong time. So the problem is a lot of times it comes out, your emotions and your things that you've been repressed for so long come out on the people that you don't want it to. So, you know, you might get a little bit stressed, things are going off at work, and then what happens? You blow up on your children when you get home. But that anger is probably misplaced from something that happened to you years ago, a breakup that you didn't heal from, something that your parents did when you were 12 that you never fully expressed. And your children are basically just collateral damage for your feelings that you never let yourself feel.

Think about that for a second. A lot of times your children, your spouse, the people that you're closest to that you love the most become collateral damage for the feelings that you've been depressing in your body, in your life for so long, and you never let yourself feel. It's not their fault. So what do we need to do? We need to be able to have an adult temper tantrum every once in a while. Everyone's out of the house and you've just had a stressful day. Children aren't there. Wife isn't there. And you just really need to get something out of you. Whatever it is you need to do to have an adult temper tantrum, to work out as tough as you possibly can, to scream as loud as you possibly can into a pillow, to punch your bed, to beat a pillow against the bed, to go to a kickboxing class, to run until you start to cry because it's so, I don't know what it is, but whatever it is for you, figure out what feels the

most authentic for you to be able to get that out. Whatever it is that feels best for you in that moment, do it, right? Just make sure you get it out of you. Make sure, first off, that you're safe. And second off, that no one else is around you that can make them feel unsafe. And then whatever it was, it won't come out at the wrong moment at the wrong people. And you can say, you know what? I'm not going to hold on to this anymore. I'm not going to hold on to this anger that I have towards this person, towards my father from when I was nine years old. I'm going to allow myself to feel it and express it.

It might be screaming. It might be crying. It might be screaming. I'm crying. I don't know what it is. But you have to allow yourself to get back to feeling your feelings and feeling your humanness. And one of the things that you'll start to notice is as you allow yourself start to release a lot of these things, if you think you're the type of person that has a short temper,

you don't have a short temper. You'll notice years down the road when you start expressing all this stuff that you don't really have much of a temper. The short temper was just a buildup of all of these emotions that you never let yourself feel. All this anger from your childhood and your teenage years and being bullied

that you never let yourself feel. You didn't have a short temper. You just didn't process your emotions correctly. You're not a sad person. It's just maybe you didn't process that sadness when you were younger. And so allow yourself just to kind of reconnect. Give yourself permission to be a human again. Because I promise you, you can feel at a much

deeper capacity than you know. And as you start to get better at expressing your emotions, you'd also start to understand your emotions a whole lot more. And that is for a whole other episode. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a massive favor. There's a lot of people in this world right now that are going through the exact same thing and need to hear this. If you could share it on your Instagram stories

and tag me in it, RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R, I would appreciate it. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it and from grassroots. And so I want to continue to help more and more people. And the way that we do that, obviously, is from more people finding out about it from you sharing it. So if you'd like to share

it, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. I just had a friend text me this morning who lives in Rome, Italy, and he's in a group text with his volleyball group. And a lady that's in his volleyball group shared one of my podcast episodes inside of their WhatsApp. And he sent me a screenshot and he's like, this is awesome. So like she loved the episode. She sent it to 18 of her friends that she plays volleyball with. So whatever it might be for you for sharing it, I would greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm gonna leave the same way I leave you every episode, making sure mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.