The Mindset Mentor - How Hobbies Change Your Brain

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Join my free workshop on March 25th called Identity Upgrade where I’ll show you how changing your identity—not just your habits—is the key to finally changing your life. Register at https://www.2026upgrade.com 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 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 am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not you done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. And I am running a free workshop on March 25th called Identity Upgrade and You Should Be There. Because after 20 years of studying and teaching self-development, I've seen thousands of people try to change their life through habits and routines and actions, but nothing will stick long term if you don't change your identity. Because your behavior will always fall back to who you believe that you are. So in this workshop, I will show you step by step how to upgrade your identity and get rid of fears and limiting belief so that you can finally change the course of your life.

So if you're ready to become the next version of yourself, go to 2026 Upgrade.com and save your seat there. Today, I'm going to be talking about how hobbies change your brain. Because let me ask you a question. When was the last time that you did something purely because you enjoyed it? Not because it made money, not because it was productive. not because it helped you build your career, not because it was something that you had to do, but just because it was something that made you feel like you're alive.

Because there's something really fascinating and kind of sad about adulthood. Most adults don't lose their hobbies because they're busy. They lose them because their identity slowly collapses into basically one dimension, which is work or their job. That's it. And then when that happens, something really subtle starts happening to the brain. It starts to go into mental stagnation. And the scary part is that most people think that's just basically what adulthood is supposed to feel like. So today I want to talk to you about how to reverse that. And I want to talk to you

about how to bring more joy in creativity in your life and how to actually improve your brain while we're at it. Okay. So let's dive in. One of the biggest psychological shifts that happens in adulthood, is what I call identity compression. You know, when you're a kid, your identity is wide. Like you're an athlete and you're an artist and you're a builder and you're a gamer and you're a musician and you're, you know, a curiosity, like a curious explorer. But when adulthood happens, it's like all of that just compresses into just this little tiny bit of who you are.

You're like slowly, it feels like your identity just compresses into just like one thing. and that's like what you do for work. And maybe if you're lucky, it's like two things. What you do for work and that you are parents. That's basically what a lot of people's lives come down to. And your brain kind of stops exploring all of these new places in your brain, these new ideas and these new things you're curious about, and it starts optimizing.

And optimizing is useful in most cases, but when it comes to your brain, that comes with a cost. because the brain doesn't thrive on optimization. The brain thrives on novelty, on new things, on exploration, on creativity, on new ideas. And when your exploration disappears, your brain starts running the same neural loops over and over and over and over again. And then you have the same problems and you have the same routines and you have the same thoughts day in and day out. You know, 95% of your thoughts are the same as they were yesterday. In psychology, that's most people. 95% of your thoughts are going to be the same as they were yesterday. And that's the beginning of what

people call mental stagnation. But neurology, when you look at it and what's happening in your brain, it's more closer to cognitive atrophy. And so this is where all of it kind of gets really interesting. When you look at hobbies, sure, hobbies are fun. Hobbies can be entertaining. But hobbies are also really good for your brain. And hobbies are also a nervous system regulator. Most people try to regulate their nervous system nowadays by numbing themselves. Things like alcohol or drugs or scrolling or eating food or binge watching Netflix or whatever other numbing behaviors they come up with. So when their nervous system gets all out of whack, they go to numbing. Let me just stop feeling everything altogether. And the reason why they go to those things is because those things basically sedate your brain. Hobbies, though, they do something completely different than, than numbing. They engage the brain and they also calm your nervous system. So when you have an activity like painting or woodworking or martial arts or playing music or going out and even just gardening, all of those have measurable effects on lowering your cortisol, which improves your mood

and it also regulates your dopamine as well. And so what's good about a hobby is when you engage in a hobby, you're activating a neurological state that's called directed attention restoration. And this is the brain recovering from the exhaustion of life and work and constant decision making and trying to be productive and pushing and pushing and pushing. And what's happening is the good thing about having a hobby is that it calms your nervous system and you're working on something that is meaningful and not just numbing your way out of it. So you're creating in some sort of way versus just consuming or numbing, which is really, really good for your nervous system.

And instead of just scrolling, you might have actually created something, a beautiful song, or your garden might be better, and you might have some food, or you might have made a beautiful painting. And so the beautiful part about hobbies is that you're able to actually calm the nervous system in a productive way and you might get some fruits or you might get some paintings or you might get a beautiful piece of music that you've made from doing it as well. Here's another part that most people don't realize when you look at it. When you're trying to create, you're in a little bit of a mode of play. In play is not a childish behavior. When we think of playing, we think like that's what kids do.

I'm an adult. I'm not supposed to play anymore. Play is actually a core cognitive mode inside of your brain. And when adults stop playing, three things start happening neurologically. Number one, your creativity is going to start to decline. Number two is your cognitive flexibility drops, which is like you being open to new ideas and new things. And number three, your problem solving actually gets worse. In neuroscience, they actually call this functional fixiness. So your brain becomes really good at doing things the exact same way that it's always done,

which is good for routine, but it's terrible for creativity. It's terrible for innovation. It's terrible for new ideas. It's terrible for expanding of the brain. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. And so hobbies reintroduce the play circuits into your brain. And this is where, you know, this play is where creativity lives.

It's where your curiosity lives. It's where new ideas and insights come from, which is why some of the the greatest breakthroughs in human history came from people who were just playing with new ideas. They weren't like grinding away at their computer to try to figure out how to solve a problem. No, they're in the middle of play and just creativity. And because their brain was making these neural connections, they came up with new ideas. They were playing. They were being creative.

They were just sitting around and they were thinking to themselves different ways than they've ever thought to themselves. And the beautiful thing about hobbies is that it also expands your identity. like a deeper layer that most people never really think about, and I really think about a lot when I think of hobbies, is that a hobby, it isn't just good for you. It doesn't just regulate your brain. It also protects your identity as well. Because if your identity only exists in your place of work like it does for most people, then every failure at work becomes like an existential crisis. It's an identity crisis. It's a shot at your ego. and it feels like the world is crumbling. But when you don't just go to work and you're not just a parent, those are two very important things. Don't get me wrong, but you do a lot of other things, then you're expanding your identity of who you actually are.

Like you're a leader, you're a father or a mother, you're a musician, you're a runner, you're a writer, you're a builder, you're a student of something. Now your identity has multiple pillars versus just like one or two pillars. So if one of the pillars collapses, your whole life doesn't collapse with it. And this is one of the hidden psychological advantages of hobbies, is they basically diversify your identity portfolio. Just like a smart investor diversifies their money, smart humans diversify their sense of self. You're not just a person that goes to work and has a job. Like you're much, much more than that.

And I know a lot of people listening to this right now have, forgotten who they actually are. You've forgotten what you love to do. You've forgotten what excites you because you've just been stuck in the same mundane routine for the past five years or 10 years or 20 years. And so you've gotten so locked into an old routine. You've forgotten who you are. You've forgotten all of the things that make you excited. It's time to break out of that routine and expand who you actually are. And this brings us to something really important as well. Like many people believe that they can just figure out their purpose by sitting on their couch and thinking about.

They think like their purpose comes first and then they start taking action. But in reality, what I have found is that purpose is usually discovered through curiosity, through doing something new. And that curiosity usually starts as some form of a hobby. Like think about it.

Almost every meaningful pursuit in life started as something that somebody did just because it was interesting. Not because they were trying to make money because it was profitable. It was interesting. Somebody was excited about something. They pursued it.

They fell in love with it. They mastered it. And it became part of their purpose and their meaning and why they feel like they're alive on this planet. Your brain's constantly giving you signals of curiosity.

Like little tiny whispers of interest. But most adults ignore them because they think like, oh, well, that's not productive. Like, I just need to focus on being productive. And I'll tell me, I'll tell you this, like focusing on just being productive all the time will kill your fun in life. Like, trust me, I've gone down that route for years where I've just gone, I'm going to be productive and I'm going to go hardcore at work and I'm going to throw all my hobbies away. That's not the way to go.

You know, like, what if those curiosities and those little thoughts of like, hey, this sounds fun, maybe I should try this thing. You know what? Maybe on Sunday I should go try some, like a pottery class or something like that. What if those like little curiosities or ideas are actually breadcrumbs that you're trying to, the universe or God or whatever it is, is trying to lead you in a direction of something? What if the hobby that you feel drawn towards is actually your brain saying, hey, there's something meaningful here. Like maybe we should explore this.

You know, some hobbies stay hobbies. And that's completely fine. That's amazing. If you can find a hobby that actually fills your cup. But others, they slowly evolve into passions, like missions and careers and things. creative outlets and like the ways that you want to actually impact the world. Like purpose rarely arrives as like a lightning bolt. Like I don't know anybody's just been sitting on the couch and like, oh my God, I found

my purpose in life. Like more often it starts as something that you're curious enough to just try. Like I always tell people if they want to find their purpose and their passion here on this earth and this life that you have, like just continue to ask yourself like what am I really interested in learning or getting better at? there's usually something that lives in there. So now when you look at it, something that I would say is one of the most important things

that people don't realize about the brain is that your brain is built to adapt. It's built to grow. It's built to be constantly having new challenges and new ideas. But it only does that when it's challenged and when it has novelty and it's doing something different. When you repeat the same routines over and over again, you have the same problems that you're solving,

and you're in the same environments every single day. The brain starts to conserve energy because it's smart and it does this by running the same neural pathways over and over and over again. In neuroscience, this is called neuroefficiency. And so, you know, the brain becomes very good at doing the same things, the same way over and over and over again. That's a good thing when you're trying to create good habits in your life, but there's a downside to it. You know, when you stop learning, when you stop exploring, when you start, you know, you stop trying to create in some sort of way, the brain starts to reduce the growth in new neural connections inside of your brain. And over time, that can lead to what's called cognitive rigidity. And that's where thinking

becomes less flexible in creativity declines. Like, you see us a lot, like with older people, right? Where they've been doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. And you try to give them a new idea and there's no flexibility to the idea. You start talking about we should do something different. No flexibility. Start talking about something that's progressive in the world. They don't want anything to do with it. You see it a lot with older people. You know, they become less flexible in their thinking and their creativity declines. And they do the same things over and over and over again. And they get so set in their ways, there's literally basically no more cognitive flexibility. And I don't know about you guys. That scares the shit out of me. Like, I don't want to become somebody

like that. I want to become someone who's always open to ideas and trying to be creative. And when you have hobbies and creative activities, they do the opposite for your brain. When you learn a new skill or you challenge yourself to become better at a skill, like painting or building something or playing music or playing tennis or just trying something that's just new for you, the brain changes and activates neural plasticity, which is just the process where neurons in your brain form new connections and strengthen existing ones. And so when you have a creative hobby, you also increase the activity in your brain and a part of your brain that's called the default mode network,

which is a part of your brain that's associated with imagination, with insight, with creative problem solving. And this is why people often have their best ideas when they're doing something creative, when they're doing something they love, when they're doing something that's playful. Some hobbies are just for fun, but some hobbies actually improve the brain

when you do them over and over again, when you try to keep improving. proving when you challenge yourself. They keep your neural networks flexible and they stimulate dopamine pathways associated with with motivation, with drive, with curiosity, and they literally help your brain stay younger and more adaptable over time. So in other words, when life becomes nothing but routine and work, your brain slowly starts to decline and slowly starts to narrow. But when you do something new and you challenge yourself, you explore and you create and you play, your brain your brain actually expands and gets stronger.

And so if you feel like you've been stuck for a while and you feel like your brain's been stuck lately, if life started to feel like it's way too repetitive and you feel like mentally dull, don't ask yourself what's wrong with me. Like just try to ask yourself a different question. When was the last time that I let myself do something fun? Or I let myself explore just because it seemed interesting.

And I just wanted to do something different. Because hobbies, I used to think of, hobbies is like distractions or just something that I would do to have some more fun. But hobbies are expansions of your humanity. Like they regulate your nervous system. They protect your identity. And sometimes if you follow them long enough and get passionate about them enough, they can actually lead you to your purpose as well. So that's all I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, you will absolutely love my free workshop that's coming out on March 25th. It is called Identity Upgrade. I'm going to be live with you. And I'm

I'm teaching because after 20 years of studying and teaching self-development, I've seen so many people try to change their life and see that nothing sticks because they don't change their identity first. And so in this workshop, I'm going to show you step by step how to upgrade your identity so you can change the entire course of your life. So if you're ready to become the next version of yourself, go to 2026 Upgrade.com and register for free. Once again, 2026 Upgrade.com. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way to leave you every single episode. Make it's your mission, make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you. you have an amazing day.