The Mindset Mentor - Do You Want to Change Your Spouse?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host Rob Dylan. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another episode. Today we have a question coming in all the way from Canada, so I'm going to go ahead and play it and then answer the question right after. Hey Rob, my name is Kevin. I'm up in Canada. How do you take a positive attitude and big goals, big thinking, how do you bring that home so that you can manifest that same thought process to your family who may not be on the same page? Thank you for everything you do.

Starting point is 00:00:46 Love listening to you. Okay, so thanks for sending the question in. If you're out there and you want to send a question to me and hopefully I can answer it for you, all you have to do, if you're interested, is send me a video, 30 seconds or less, to rd at robdial.com. Ask me your question.

Starting point is 00:01:02 RD stands for Rob Dial, obviously. RD at robdial.com. So me your question. RD stands for Rob Dial, obviously. RD at robdial.com. So when I'm listening to this question, I actually hear, you actually said it way better than a lot of other people. And you said it in a very nice way, where he says how to bring the positivity and the goal setting and the big thinking home and to manifest it into his family. So when you're saying family, there's three things that I think about. He says actually bring it home and manifest it at home. Number one is your spouse. That's the first thing I think about, which I will definitely talk about. The second thing is your family, which would be, you know, people in your family. But that could be your mother, your brother,

Starting point is 00:01:37 your father, your sister, cousins, all of that. And then the last thing I think about is your children. So I'm going to cover all three of those topics. Number one, and the most common one that I hear the most is, and I'm going to go ahead and assume that is almost a question that I get all of the time. And what he probably means is, how do I get my wife or my significant other to think big, to be motivated, to get into personal development, to get goals? And I don't know if this is true, but that'd be my assumption based off if I hear that question all of the time. So one of the questions I really hear the most is how can I get my spouse or my boyfriend or girlfriend to be into personal development, to read, to go to conferences with me, to believe in personal development, to work out more, to do all of these things. That's what I assume this

Starting point is 00:02:21 question probably actually truly is. I can't, I'm not a hundred percent sure, but that would be my guess. And I'll talk about that one. Here's the thing that I'll tell you in my very first, one of my very first mentors used to tell me, it used to drive me crazy because I used to have, when I first started my training company and a sales company, I was, you know, 21 years old and I would have these, these sales reps come in and work for me that had all of the opportunity in the world. They had everything set up. They could have been perfect. And I wanted so badly for them to succeed.

Starting point is 00:02:53 And I actually found that I wanted them to succeed more than they wanted themselves to succeed. And it drove me crazy. And I so truly just want to help people. I so truly just want to help people. And what he told me completely changed the way that I thought about training and helping people. And what he said was you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make a drink. And what he means by that is you can give, give, give, give, give, and try to help somebody and try to help somebody and try to help somebody. But ultimately it is their decision whether they want to take your help or not, whether they want to grow or not. And so the first thing that I'll say is when you're dealing with your spouse is you cannot change your spouse. Now I know some of you guys are out there like,

Starting point is 00:03:36 oh damn it, I really want to change my spouse, right? If you're into personal development and they're not into personal development, you can't make them get into personal development. The one thing that I do know is if you really want to have them resent personal development, try to push them into personal development. Try to force personal development on them and then they will absolutely hate it. So that's the first thing that you need to realize is do not push personal development on anybody because they will absolutely hate whatever it is that you're pushing onto them. So that's the most important thing for you to realize right now. If you want someone to read and to grow and to become like you in working out and being positive and thinking that way,

Starting point is 00:04:17 if you push it on them, they will resent it and they will resent you even more. So first off is you can't change your spouse. I'm sorry. There's nothing you can do about that. I will tell you though, and this is the answer for this one. And it's also the answer for all the other ones as well. The only thing that you can do is be a lighthouse. Now, what do I mean by be a lighthouse? You may have heard this phrase before. You may have heard me talk about it before. If you look at a lighthouse and you look at a towboat, a towboat and a lighthouse do the exact same thing. They get ships safely into the harbor, but the way they do it is completely different. What do I mean by that? How does a towboat get into, get it into the harbor perfectly? Get the boat into the harbor. They pull and they

Starting point is 00:05:01 pull and they pull and they tug and they tug and they tug and they tug and they tug and they tug and they use all of their force and all of their energy to bring them in to the harbor. And that's the way that most people tend to parent. That's the way that they tend to be in relationships is do this, do this, do this. You should do this. You should read this book. You should go to this conference with me. You should do this. And that will make people resent whatever it is you're trying to do. So you could be the towboat, and that usually doesn't work just so you know. Or you could be the lighthouse. What does the lighthouse do? The lighthouse stands in its spot.

Starting point is 00:05:32 It knows what it's supposed to do, and it does what it does. And it shines its light to the best of its ability every single day. And in turn, it gets the boats into the harbor safely. And what do I mean by this? If you tell somebody that they should start going to the gym, but you're out of shape yourself, they're not going to listen to you. But if you start going to the gym, you start eating really healthy, and you start having massive changes in your body,

Starting point is 00:05:58 eventually people are going to go, hey man, hey girl, what the hell are you doing? Like, can you give me some tips? Same thing happens for personal development. go, Hey man, Hey girl, what the hell are you doing? Like, can you give me some tips? Same thing happens for personal development. If you are normally very agitated as a person, or if you're normally, you know, a little bit out there, if you're normally a little bit, um, you know, harder to wrangle or you have a short fuse or whatever it might be. And you start working yourself and work on yourself and work on yourself and work on yourself, other people will start to see improvement. Just like the lighthouse,

Starting point is 00:06:27 don't worry about everybody else. Worry about yourself, work on yourself, and people will start to come to you. I've been in relationships before. I've been like, oh my God, I just wish that they would be, you know, go and read this book because I, you know, read books all the time. I wish they would go to this conference. I wish they would believe in this. I wish they would do all these exact same things. Essentially, if you're doing that, you're trying to make your spouse become you. You're just trying to date yourself. That's really what you're trying to do. Here's the thing that you have to realize. If you really want them to do it, don't force it on them. In fact, keep it away from them. Not hide it from them, but just

Starting point is 00:07:02 work on yourself and stay in your own lane and work on yourself and stay in your own lane. And eventually if they notice you more peaceful, more happy, more joyous, they're going to be like, Hey, what are you doing? Oh, you've been reading more. Well, what's a good book that you recommend that I read? Like, I can't tell you how many times I've had people come up to me like, Rob, I want to change my spouse. I want them to be more in a person. I want them to be more positive. I want them to stop being so negative. I want them this. I want them this. I want them this. The goal is to be the change you want to see in the world.

Starting point is 00:07:32 The great Gandhi quote, be the change you want to see in the world. Don't tell other people to change. Be the change that you want to see in the world. If you're trying to change your spouse, be the change you want to see in your spouse. If your spouse normally is very negative, well, change you want to see in your spouse. If your spouse normally is very negative, well, then you need to be more positive because what's going to happen if they're very negative and they're just getting stressed and stressed and stressed, eventually they're going to see you and be so positive. They're gonna be like, what the hell? Like,

Starting point is 00:07:55 how are you? How are you so positive? How are you not freaking out right now? And you're like, I've been working on myself. I've been meditating. I've been journaling. I've been working on my goals. I've been going to the gym. I've been working on myself. I've been meditating. I've been journaling. I've been working on my goals. I've been going to the gym. I've been working on myself every single day. They're going to go, well, tell me more about that. You can't change somebody else. You have to give them the opportunity to change themselves. And here's the thing. Maybe they'll change. Maybe they won't. But, you know, ultimately, you know, they either grow with you or they grow apart from you. Sometimes I don't know a way it's going to go in whatever way it works is the way it's supposed to work. You know, one of the things that really holds a lot of marriages back that I found from

Starting point is 00:08:35 people that I've coached is that it's kind of like, I will love you. You know, the marriage for a lot of people, not for everybody, but for a lot of people is I will love you as long as you're the same person that you were the day that I married you. And that's a weird contract because nobody stays the same. Everybody changes in some sort of way. Now I'm not, not, I'm not saying that every marriage is like this. Absolutely not. But I found a lot of them are like that. If they start growing and you start growing, then they start to worry of, are they going to outgrow me? Are they going to grow so much that they leave me? And that holds a lot of people back from their own growth is like, are they growing so much? They're going to leave me. And in reality, all it comes down to is a simple conversation. Hey, honey, listen,

Starting point is 00:09:15 I'm really working on myself. I'm working on my fitness. I'm working on my mindset. I'm working on my, my spirit, my body, my health, my mind, everything. Listen, I don't need you to be like me. I just need you to support me. It's that simple. I don't need you to be like me. I need you to support me. Can you support me as I try to grow? Because it's really important for me to work on my health right now. It's really important for me to work on my mindset right now. I've been really stressed and I want to get rid of my anxiety. So I just really need you to support me. Can you do that for me? And now it's a team effort to grow you, not just not grow them and to force growth onto them, but to grow you because now they have your back and neither one of you need to be fearful that you're going to grow apart. And then what happens is you start to turn into a team

Starting point is 00:10:00 and they might go, Hey, what is that book that you're reading? It looks pretty interesting. I like that title. And you tell them about it. They're like, huh, maybe I'll read it. And you're like, well, if I bought you a copy, would you want to read it? Sure. Okay, cool. I'll buy your copy. And you don't force them to read it. You just buy them a copy and see if they read it. And that's the way you really start to grow as a unit between your spouse, between your significant other, right? Same exact thing happens for your family as well, where you say, you know, I'm so worried that my mother or my father or my brother or sister are going to make fun of me, or they're going to see so many changes in me that they're going to start, you know, resenting it, or they're

Starting point is 00:10:39 going to think that I'm growing away from them. It's the exact same thing. You have to, have to, have to be the lighthouse. That's the easiest way that I can explain it. Now let's talk about your children because here's the thing. Ultimately, your children are going to do, whether they realize or not, they're going to do what they see in you. So if you happen to be a very, you know, short fused, angry person, you, number one, you probably learned that from one of your parents. There's a pretty good chance. And if you didn't learn it from seeing one of your parents, you probably learned it from, from realizing at a very young age, if I get angry, I get what I want. Maybe you got angry and you got the cookie that you wanted multiple times

Starting point is 00:11:18 when you were a kid and it went clicked in your head. You went, Oh my God, when I get angry, I get what I want. Like subconsciously that happened to your mind and it just stuck. And it's a habitual thing that always happens because anger is not just a natural thing. Like there's a lot of people that just don't get angry. And so anger is not a natural thing. It's some, it's a learned behavior. Being overly emotional is a learned behavior as well. Cause sometimes you learn as a child, if I cry, I get what I want. Or maybe you saw one of your parents do that. Maybe you saw your mother do that. Maybe your dad was very very emotional person and that's how he got to control your mother. I don't know how it works. There's a lot of different scenarios. But what I

Starting point is 00:11:53 do know is that whatever you are, however you are and your spouse are, your children are watching and your children are going to mimic. And so that should be more motivation than anything else for you to work on yourself, for you to grow, to go, you know what? I do have an anger issue. You know what? I do have an emotional issue. I do have this issue. I need to work on it because I need to be the best example for my children. And so what do you do? Children are much easier to mold and change at a young age than it is to change your spouse. So if you go, you know what? I'm going to start working like a, for instance, let's say you want to start working on your body more. You want to be more motivated to be more fit. You want to go out, you want to start working out more often,

Starting point is 00:12:32 take your kids out on the lawn and just be like, Hey, do you want to go hang out and throw the ball on the lawn? Do you want to go run around the house a couple of times? You want to do some pushups with me? Kids are usually like, Oh, hell yeah. Well, hopefully your kids aren't saying, hell yeah. Kids are usually like, yeah, let's go do it, right? I hope your kids are saying, hell yeah, that would be amazing. But they're like, yeah, let's go do it. And they get excited about those types of things. And they see in you the motivation to improve. They see in you the motivation to grow, to work on yourself. They see in you how important health is. And so if you have children, the thing that you really need to ask yourself is what characteristics and what qualities do I want to instill in my child

Starting point is 00:13:12 or in my children? And then ask yourself, are you the best representation of that? Because if you're not, they're not going to be that way. You know, would you ever treat your wife the way, would you continue? Let me just say this in a different way. Would you ever want your daughter to be treated by her boyfriend the way that you treat your wife? I don't know if that answer is yes or no. Hopefully it's yes. You know, would you ever want to, would you ever want the spouse of your child to be talked to the way that you talk to them or the way that you talk to your spouse? Because they're going to mimic. They're either going to mimic what you do or they're going to marry somebody that's

Starting point is 00:13:57 like you. Most of the time. Is it 100%? No, it's obviously not 100%. But the real thing that you need to think of is number one, as I talked about with your spouse, with your family members, besides your children, you know, you have to be the lighthouse and just be who you can be and grow yourself. You can't make somebody else grow. And if you try to force them, they will resent it. And they're less likely to grow in that case. So work on yourself. You got to get that internal motivation

Starting point is 00:14:21 and then ask for their support. Hey, listen, I really need someone to hold me accountable. Will you hold me accountable to this? I really want to work on this. And the second side of it is your children. Who do you want your child to be? Because a lot of people are like, I want my child to be better than me. Well, great. Well, then you need to be a better you. Think about that one for a second. Your children aren't just going to grow up to be better than you. You need to be a better you in order for your children to become better than you, right? It's kind of a tongue twister, but if you're looking at your children, you're like, I want more for them. I want them to be happier. I want them to be

Starting point is 00:15:00 healthier. I want them to be, you know, to appreciate the world more than I do and to go out and have more happiness and success and joy appreciate the world more than I do and to go out and have more happiness and success and joy and fulfillment and love than I do. Bring happiness and joy and fulfillment and love and all of those things into yourself so that your children can have more of it. Whatever you want your children to be, you need to be as well. And so it shows you a lot of times when you have children, the holes that you have in your own mentality, the holes that you have in your own self. And so what I would take from this is if you're trying to bring home motivation and drive and goal setting, well, then you need to be motivated and driven and set goals. And then what do you need to do? You need to bring in the family

Starting point is 00:15:41 for support. Hey guys, this is what I'm going to do. Does anybody want to join me? Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. Okay, cool. You tell your spouse, you're like, hey honey, you don't have to join in on this, whatever it is that you're working towards, but could you at least support me through it, please? It's really important for me to have your support and I would love it. Cool. Great. Okay. I'm going to go outside and work out. Do the kids, do you guys want to go outside and work out? Do you want to go run around the house? Do you want to go throw some weights around? Do you want to go throw a ball? Whatever it is. And then ask yourself, how do I want my children to be when they grow up? If I fast forward 20 years from now, maybe you have a seven-year-old and a,

Starting point is 00:16:17 you know, a five-year-old. If I fast forward 25 years or 20 years from now, they're 25 and they're 27. You know, who do I want them to be? How do I want them to act? How do I want them to treat others? And then look in yourself and say, do I show these traits? Am I these traits? And if not, it shows you where you need to work on yourself because ultimately they will grow up to be like you, or they will grow up to resent certain things in you. And hopefully they'll be like you because you worked on yourself as much as you did while they were a child and you were the lighthouse for them

Starting point is 00:16:49 as well as being the lighthouse for everybody else that you touch. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor. Please share it with someone that you know and love. Please go ahead and put it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L. And once again, if you want to send me a question and have me possibly answer it, send me a video that's 30 seconds or less

Starting point is 00:17:09 asking me your question to rd at robdial.com. And I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode, make it your mission, make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - Do You Want to Change Your Spouse?

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