The Mindset Mentor - How to Be Mentally Strong

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

What if mental toughness isn’t something you’re born with but something you can create on demand? In this episode, I break down powerful psychology research and show you how anyone can become mentally tough by changing their self-perception and self-talk. If you want to be a high performer in 2026, click here: https://2026workshop.com/   If you want 2026 to be your best year yet then this video is for you. In just 30 minutes, I’ll help you build a clear, simple goal system so you stop guessing and start moving forward with confidence. 👉 Build your 2026 goal system here: https://www.goalmastery2026.com/lp1   High performers don’t wait for clarity, they create it. This Mindset University call will help you see your blind spots and your next level. Grab your spot here 👉 https://www.coachwithrob.com/mindset-university-call-rob   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 yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. And if you want 2026 to be the best year of your life, I'm running a free two-day live workshop on how to build yourself into a high performer January 14th and 15th. To learn more about it and register for free, go to 2026 workshop.com. Once again, 26 Workshop.com. Today, we're going to be talking about how your

Your thoughts and your words shape your reality. But today's episode, I'm actually going to show you an example, actually a couple of examples that show you how the way that you speak to yourself, the way that you think about yourself, actually shows the results that you're going to get in your life. And there's a, one of my favorite studies about this is a study that's called the Batman effect. And so the Batman effect was a study that they did on children a few years ago that were between four years old and six years old. And they took these children and they put them into three different

groups. One of the group, all they did was they just walked into a room and they did puzzles. And just so you know, these puzzles were unsolvable. So they put these children into a room. They gave them puzzles. They were completely unsolvable. That's group one. Group two, they put them into the room to do puzzles. But what they said to them is try to see yourself doing them from outside of yourself. So they taught them basically about what it would look like to look at yourself from a third person. So basically looking at yourself with more self-awareness is what they were teaching the children. So that was group number two. And then group number three, they had them do the puzzles.

But before they did the puzzles, they had to pick a costume of their favorite costume that they wanted to wear. So one of them was a Batman cape. Another one was a Wonder Woman outfit. Another one was Dora the Explorer. another one was their favorite Disney princess. And so they had them go in dressed up to see if maybe things change if they were dressed up as their favorite character. So group one, which was they just put them into the room and said, hey, do puzzles, did the worst out of all three groups.

Group two, which was the group that looked at themselves with more self-awareness, did 13% better than group number one. And so it's this idea of like self-distencing. they basically looked at themselves from outside of themselves, and because they were, in a way, watching themselves, they decided to work a little bit more and go a little bit further. Group three did 23% better than group number one, and that was the best one. And they found out that group three,

the ones that were dressed up as Batman or Door the Explorer, their favorite Disney princess, were more resilient and more diligent in trying to solve the problems. group one the children actually gave up really quickly that they were surprised with and what they ended of finding out and this is a really interesting part of the study is that the children their self-talk while they were quote-unquote failing and not figuring this out was mostly negative so children listen this between four to six years old their self-talk was mostly negative so they would be doing it and they weren't solving the problem and they would say stuff like I can't do

this or this is too hard or I'm not smart enough or I'm not old enough to get this. Now let's take a real quick step back, right? Okay. They're children between four and six years old. Where do you think that they got those thoughts from of I can't do this? It's too hard. I'm not smart enough. I'm not old enough to do this. Do you think those are the thoughts that just popped into their heads or do you think maybe they got them from somewhere? Yeah, they probably got them most likely from their parents talking to them, or hearing their parents talking to themselves around them. And so without the self-awareness of them having to watch themselves,

like group two, the children were basically on autopilot, which means that they were working from their unconscious programmings. So what I mean by that is they were working from what they have seen other people do and what they have seen other people say about themselves, and they were working from what they have been told from other people as well. Now think about this for a second. Once again, this is children between four to six years old. They say that your full self-identity is not even built fully until you're about seven years old.

When did you learn to give up? Like when did you learn what fear was? When did you learn what to fear? When did you learn who you were? were good, bad, too loud, too much, quiet, good boy, good girl, whatever might have been. Like, let me give you a real quick example. Does a baby decide to stop walking because it's taking too long to get it? I've never heard the story of the baby who decided to just stop walking and stop trying. No, they persist. They don't understand language yet. So they don't understand their

parents' words around them so they don't understand what quote-unquote failure means. They don't know what it means to give up. Now, the cool thing is when the children are seeing themselves from outside of their self, so they're seeing it from an outsider's perspective, it's almost as if they're being watched so they want to do better. So most of them are now becoming more self-aware. They're more self-aware. They're watching themselves versus just running off of programs. They're not running off of old programmings and whatever they might have been taught from their parents or brothers or sisters. And the coolest thing about this is the children that were wearing the costumes, their self-talk and the way they spoke to themselves out loud actually changed.

So instead of the children saying something like group one, which is like, I can't do this, this is too hard, I'm not smart enough. They said things out loud to themselves like, Batman would never give up. Come on, Dora, you got this. I believe in you. And so what's really interesting about the whole thing is based off of the way they were dressed, number one, their perception of themselves changed, and number two, their self-talk actually changed. Group one, children gave up pretty quickly. But group three, some of the children, they had to pull away from trying the puzzles because they weren't giving up. They were telling themselves. They were telling themselves, I'm not giving up. And so they had to pull some of those children's away

based off of who they were dressed up as. How they perceived themselves and how they reacted to the challenge changed based off of the way they were dressed. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. So what's the most important part of this whole thing? The most important part of the study is self-perception. And when self-perception changed, self-talk changed. and when both of those change, their actions change. And when actions change, guess what happens? Results change. They no longer viewed themselves as a little child. They viewed themselves as the best version of themselves that they could be, their favorite superhero. So that begs the question, what do you believe of yourself? Because what you believe of you and yourself will be your absolute

max of what you can achieve. If you want more for yourself, you have to believe more of yourself. Your belief of yourself, your self-perception is the thing that needs to be worked on. And so this whole study created something that they realize that that changes about people, which is called enclothed cognition. So it created this study, this basically this bucket of psychology of enclosed cognition, which is great. It works on kids, but how does this relate to adults? Well, I'm so glad that you asked. there was there's now been a bunch of studies on adults of in cloth cognition and there was a study that was done called the influence of clothes on cognitive processes in 2010 and the study looked at how uniform

clothing affects cognitive processing and so it particularly looked on how it impacts feelings of your power and control and so their methodology was basically this participants were asked to wear formal business attire or another group was asked to wear casual clothing. And what they did was they had them complete tasks that assess their abstract thinking. An abstract thinking is a measure that is linked to a sense of power. And so the results were pretty interesting. Participants that had the formal attire on that were dressed up exhibited more abstract thinking, which correlates to a heightened sense of power. They think higher of themselves. They subconscious. or maybe even consciously viewed themselves differently based off of what it is that they were

wearing. So it's not just the Batman outfit. It's also for some people, formal attire. And so consciously or subconsciously, these people viewed themselves differently based off of the way that they were dressed. I know we've all had this before, right? You decide that you're going to go to a nicer thing. Maybe you're taking your, it's Valentine's Day and you're going to take your wife out. Then you decide to, to wear a suit. You decide to put on a tie. And you get more formal, or maybe you go to a wedding. And you look at yourself in the mirror. And it's something that you haven't worn in a while. And you're like, shit, I look pretty good. And you think you're looking good. You walk a little bit different.

You talk a little bit different. You have better posture. You put your shoulders back more. You don't lean over as much. There's been many studies on this. There's the original study that was done, like Enclothed Cognition was called Encloth Cognition. And the study, what they actually did was they were trying to figure out if a lab coat would affect the way that somebody reacted and the way that participated. And so what they have is they would look like, hey, if we bring a lab coat in, will it affect the participants' attention? And the researchers performed several different experiences where the attire was changed.

And so what they did was experiment one. they had participants wear a lab coat, and they describe the lab coat, this is the important part of it, of a doctor's coat. And when they had a lab coat that was called a doctor's coat, the people who wore it had increased sustained attention compared to those who were wearing regular street clothes. So it's really interesting. If somebody just walks off the street, they're just themselves. But if they put a lab coat on, they think to themselves, oh, I'm a lab coat. I'm dressing up like a doctor, it showed increased sustained attention. So they had more attention while they were going through these experiments.

That was experiment one. Experiment two, this is a part of the study that divided participants a little bit more into two groups. So one wore the same lab coat, but they were told it was a painter's coat. It's the same coat. But they were told that, hey, go ahead and put this painter's coat on. and then another group wore the exact same lab coat, but they described it once again as a doctor's coat.

And those that were wearing the doctor's coat made significantly fewer errors on attention demanding tasks. The test was called the stoop test than those that were dressed up as a painter. They finished in less time with less errors simply by wearing a lab coat. And the participants who wore

a coat that was decided as a doctor's coat showed better attentional focus than those who wore one that was described as a painter's coat. It's the same coat, but it has different meaning. And this is, I coached this a lot, like I coach a lot of business owners. And this is one of the reasons why I tell people, like a lot of people work from home. I tell people, if you work from home, you have to, have to, have to go through your morning routine, get a workout into your meditation, whatever it is, your coffee. I don't really care what your morning routine is. But then make sure that you shower and get dressed as if you're going to work. If you wear your pajamas while working, it's a way different vibe than if you woke up,

you meditated, you got your workout in, you showered, and then you got dressed. It's this feeling of, I'm showering, I'm going to work. like most people if you're wearing pajamas pajamas, pajamas don't really seem to be the most I don't know focused outfit to wear the most productive outfit to wear

like nobody just walks if you work at Google you don't just drive into Google wearing your pajamas no you're going to wake up hopefully you're going to get dressed you're going to get showered you're going to get dressed and it's this feeling of like I'm showing up for work and if you wear PJs

you're mentally you haven't closed out the act of sleeping you haven't moved on to another chapter you never show up to the office in your pajamas so don't do it at home you know and this is this is another thing that i spoke about him before but my friend todd herman wrote a book called the alter ego effect and he talks about the difference of when he's going to work he dresses differently when he's going to hang out his family he dresses differently and he talks about it in his book called the alter ego effect of developing an alter ego. So when he sits down to work, he puts on glasses, and this is something that he did years ago when he was younger, where he was not confident. And he realized if I'm a, he was a professional speaker, if I'm a professional speaker,

I've got to be able to make cold calls. I got to be able to sell my services to people. And he would have this list that he need to make cold calls to, and he was just not doing it, not doing it, not do it. And he's like, you know what? I'm going to stop being Todd for a little while. I'm going to develop an alter ego. And Todd's middle name is Richard. So he developed Super Richard is what he called it. And Super Richard was a different person to him. He was badass. He was hardworking. He didn't care about rejection. And because when he first started his business, he was shy. He didn't want to make cold calls. And so he said, when I put on these glasses, and these are glasses that no joke are non-prescriptive glasses. They're just literally glasses.

He puts them on. He says, okay, I'm going to be Super Richard. And he imagines himself bodying embodying three people that he really looks up to. Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Campbell, and Superman. And he realized when he was Super Richard, he didn't give a damn if he got rejected because Todd didn't get rejected. Richard got rejected.

And so he had this thing of like, okay, this is who I am. I'm a badass, hardworking. Don't give a damn about rejection when I put on these glasses. What he realized, though, once he had a family, was that he didn't want to bring Super Richard home to his children.

and so what he would do, and now he works from home, and this is exactly what it does, when he's done with working, he closes out work, he doesn't want to be that person at home, so he has right outside of his office or right at the inside of his office door, he has a wristband that he puts on. And it says something like family first. And so what he does is he takes off his glasses, his super richer glasses, he puts him down, he's done with work. He puts on his wristband, and he imagines himself embodying the personalities of two people,

who he really looks up to that he wants to be like with his children. Number one is his father. He said he had one of the best fathers ever. He was amazing. And number two is Mr. Rogers. So he's like, when I put on this wristband, I imagine myself embodying Mr. Rogers and my father. And so now you can sit there for a second and be like, well, that's goofy. What does this guy know about developing alter egos? Well, he's the guy who told and helped Kobe Bryant develop his alter ego of the black mama. So clearly this guy knows what the hell he's talking about. And so really what it comes down to and what's super important about this whole thing is what do you believe in yourself? You know, if you just believe I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, you're not going to take as much action.

Study after study after study show that. But if you start shifting the way that you think about yourself and the way that you speak to yourself, all of that is going to change how you show up in the world, the actions that you take and the results that you get in your life. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. if you love this episode, please share it with someone that you love so we can impact their life as well. And if you want to make 2026 the year of your life that changes the entire course of your life, I'm running a free two-day live workshop on how to build yourself into somebody who is a high performer for this year and the rest of your life. To learn more about it and to register for free, go to 2026 workshop.com. Once again, go to 226 workshop.com.