The Mindset Mentor - How to Become World-Class

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you want to receive an email from me every single Monday with my intentions going into the week so that you can steal my intention or you can learn from my intentions so that you can be intentional about going into your

Starting point is 00:00:29 week. Go to mondayemail.com right now. Once again, mondayemail.com and I'll send you an email every single Monday of how to be intentional going into every single week. Today, we're going to be talking about how to become obsessed so that you can become a master at something. And one of the things I love about being a human is I truly believe that all of us have the opportunity to be world-class at whatever it is that we want to become world-class at. So whatever it is that you want to improve at, whatever it is that you have a passion towards, whatever it is that you feel deep down in your heart that you want to do, you can do. And the only thing that's limiting you from that, guess what, is you. But what it takes is something called

Starting point is 00:01:16 an obsession. It takes thousands and thousands of hours to become really, really good at something. And so can you find something that you absolutely love so that you can put the time in so that you can become world-class at it? And if you did, what would that thing be? That's what we're going to talk about. I always like to look at people who are massively successful at something and try to learn from them. That's one of the things I think that's amazing about being a human as well, is there's so many different examples of people that we can look at and realize that they weren't necessarily born with talent. What they have developed is skill. And we're going to talk about that today. If you look at one of the quotes that I love around this, whether you love him or whether you hate him, Conor McGregor, who is in

Starting point is 00:01:59 the UFC, he was a featherweight champion. One of the quotes that he said is he says, there's no talent here. When he's looking at himself, there's no talent here. This is hard work. This is an obsession. Talent does not exist. We are all human beings. You could be anyone if you decide to put in the time. You will reach the top and that's that.

Starting point is 00:02:20 I'm not talented. I am obsessed. And when you look at that quote, you realize this guy who became a UFC champion, and I'm gonna give. I am obsessed. And when you look at that quote, you realize this guy who became a UFC champion, and I'm going to give you many more examples today, he wasn't born with the skills to be a talented UFC champion. And one of the things that I think about and I think is really important, I remember having a conversation with Jeff Hoffman years ago on the podcast. And Jeff Hoffman created Priceline.com. He's a multi-multi-billionaire.

Starting point is 00:02:46 And one of the things that he says is get a gold medal at one thing. Get a gold medal at one thing. Don't try to focus on doing this thing and this thing and this thing and having a plan A and then having a plan B or any of that stuff just in case plan A doesn't work out. One of the things that Will Smith says is there's no reason to have a plan B because it distracts from plan A. So let me ask you, have you had a plan A and only a plan A? There's an ancient Chinese proverb that says you try to catch two rabbits at one time,

Starting point is 00:03:16 you'll catch neither one. And I like the idea of the 10,000 hour rule. If you've been listening to the podcast long enough, I actually have a tattoo on my left wrist. I've only got two tattoos. And on the left wrist is the Roman numeral for 10,000. It's a Roman numeral X with a line above it. And what it means is that 10,000 hours is what is required to become an expert, to become a master at something, to become truly world-class at something. And I learned this from a couple different books, but one of the books is called Talent is Overrated. And he talks about how talent

Starting point is 00:03:51 isn't something that you should be worried about. Skill is something that you should be trying to focus. If you look at world-class, like the top 0.01%, 0.001% of whatever it is that you want to do to become the top of the top of the top, one of the best in the world, it's going to take about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, of working really hard at your craft, whatever that craft is. It's about 10,000 hours or about 10 years. Now, when I say 10,000 hours or 10 years, you may have worked in whatever industry that you're in for 10 years, but is it 10 years of learning, of hard work, of improving at your craft every single year? Or did you just learn your first year and you've been basically reliving the first year for the past 10 years? Is it 10 years of focusing and getting better? Or is it 10 of the exact same years? And it's important,

Starting point is 00:04:51 not just for those who want to be world-class out there, but for everyone listening that wants to improve at anything. Whatever that thing is that you want to improve it, you absolutely 100% have the opportunity in front of you. Like if you make $50,000 a year right now, and you want to make $100,000 per year, you're going to have to double the value that you bring to your employer, that you bring to the world, that you bring to your clients, that you bring to your business, whatever it is, in order to double your income. And it takes, inside of the

Starting point is 00:05:23 book, Talent is Overrated, he talks about the thing called deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is this. Deliberate practice can help you with the skills that you need to acquire. It's not 10,000 hours of just showing up at the same job and you get 10,000 hours of showing up at the same job. It's 10,000 hours of hardcore deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is practice that is hard and it pushes you every single time. But here's the problem with most people. Most people, we don't want to take the hard route. We want to take the easy route. It's just natural for us. And so sometimes what you have to do is you have to actually focus on bringing in as much as you possibly can to whatever it is that's getting hard for you.

Starting point is 00:06:09 So when you're not good at something and you're new, everything is deliberate practice. It's deliberate practice. If you want to start playing guitar, it's really hard and it's deliberate and it's deliberate and it's deliberate as you continue to start trying to get better. But over time, you learn a few songs and you hit a plateau. And we've all done this before. We've all hit a plateau in something. And that is usually when most people quit. They go through and they think, you know what? This isn't for me. They're pretty good at something. They stay pretty good at it forever. The example of guitar, I've been playing guitar since I was 15 years old. And I noticed sometimes that if I want to sit down and play guitar, now I'll just sit down and I'll

Starting point is 00:06:50 play something that I know. Instead of actually sitting down and going, okay, I'm going to find a song that is really hard, that's pushing me. And so whenever I sit down and play guitar, I can go back to all of the old songs that I've known forever. Or I can say, you know what? I'm going to find a song that pushes my boundaries. And that is a difference between playing guitar and putting another hour of playing guitar of stuff I already know and actual deliberate practice. So what is the one thing that you want to become deliberately good at? You want to work at, you want to become better at. You don't want to just hit the plateau and not improve and not get better. Deliberate practice is not always fun. It's not sitting and playing the same songs that you know over and over again, because you already know those. Your skill is to improve. To get more skill, you have to push yourself to improve.

Starting point is 00:07:41 And the pushing yourself for hours and hours to learn a new song that you can play, that you can get better at, is going over one small part of the song over again and messing up and going over again and messing up and going over again and going slower until you get it right. And there's only one reason why people get really, really good at something. I'm going to give you a few examples of that. It's because they work on the things that are really hard with that. They understand that in order to get better, they're going to have to push themselves. It's like you could walk into a gym,

Starting point is 00:08:15 and you could go and you could lift 20 pounds and do 20-pound curls every single day and 20-pound curls every single day and 20-pound curls every single day. Eventually, if you want your muscles to grow after they hit a plateau, you're going to have to start lifting heavier. Deliberate practice is the example of lifting heavier because talent doesn't exist. This is the thing that I think is beautiful about it. And they say inside the book, talent doesn't exist. The existence of talent has never really been proven. The word talent takes away

Starting point is 00:08:46 from the hard work that somebody put into their craft. I hate when I see a professional athlete or a really good actor and someone's like, oh man, they're just so talented. No, no, no, no, no. They're not talented. They're skilled. They've put in the work. They've put in the hours. They've put in deliberate practice to get to where they want to be. The best part about the 10,000-hour rule is that means that you can become great at anything that you want, whatever it is that you want. Hey, everybody. It's hard to imagine, but spring is almost here. We're so close to feeling that soft grass under our feet, but first we need to get our lawns back. Thankfully, Sunday gets your lawn growing and helps you keep it healthy all season long. If you're worried about all of the chemicals that you have to use to keep

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Starting point is 00:11:46 That's C-U-T-S clothing.com slash dial for 15% off the only shirt that's worth wearing. Now, you might be thinking, oh, well, what about Mozart though? Mozart was this child prodigy. We always hear about child prodigies, right? Well, a lot of people don't realize that Mozart's father was actually a famous composer himself. Mozart's father hired an expert teacher to live in their house and teach Mozart at a really, really young age. And what's crazy about it is his father quit composing and creating his own music at the same time that Mozart started composing. It's actually thought that his father actually helped him compose his first few compositions. And his first true solo competition wasn't until he was 21 years old. So when he came onto the scene, everyone's like,

Starting point is 00:12:37 oh my God, this child prodigy is only 21. He's making amazing stuff. But guys, he started actually practicing at three years old. He had been putting in deliberate practice with himself, with his teacher, with his dad for 18 years before he had his first true solo composition. Another example of this is you can look at Tiger Woods, right? There's a really good documentary that came out not too long ago. It's like three parts, like hours and hours long. I think it's like three hours long. Tiger Woods and his father. His father was retired when Tiger was born.

Starting point is 00:13:12 He had nothing else to do, but he was absolutely obsessed with golf. So he thought, hey, I'm going to teach my son golf. And so he gave Tiger his first set of metal clubs at seven months old. He gave him his first set of metal clubs before he could walk. And before Tiger was even two years old, he was already golfing and practicing regularly. So his first major win, and when he was like massive on the scene and people were like, oh my God, this child prodigy was when he was 17. But he had been practicing with his father, with a teacher, with all of his father's friends for 16 years by that time. 16 years of deliberate practice and coaching from his father, from his teachers, and all of his dad's friends. That's well over

Starting point is 00:14:00 10,000 hours of work. And the beautiful thing about it, there's so many examples of this. So we can look at someone and be like, oh my God, they were just so talented. They must have been born with it. And it's easy for us to say, oh, they were born with it and I wasn't. They were born with the talent and I wasn't born with the talent. But there's so many examples of people who weren't talented, but they put in the work. When you look at basketball, my opinion is that Michael Jordan is the best basketball player that's ever lived. You know, you might have different discussions on it, but Michael Jordan was cut

Starting point is 00:14:30 from his high school basketball team. Michael Jordan, the best basketball player and considered one of the best athletes that's ever existed, was cut from his high school basketball team because he was not good enough. And then, so what did he do? He forced himself to get better.

Starting point is 00:14:47 He forced himself to improve. He would not leave until he made over 100 shots, free throws every single day. What did he do? He put in the deliberate practice. He was cut from the basketball team and became what is considered one of the best ever, if not the best ever. Shows you talent wasn't there for Michael Jordan. What about Kobe Bryant? Kobe Bryant knew from reading about Michael Jordan and hearing about him that he would have basketball at 4 or 5 a.m. every single day from 14 on. So you're looking at somebody who wasn't necessarily just talented, but he developed a

Starting point is 00:15:37 skill of being better. You know, if you figure out the average person in high school, they're probably playing basketball. If you're, you know, on the high school team, two hours a day, maybe three hours a day. This guy was putting in two to three hours a day before any of his competition even woke up in the morning. That means that you can do pretty much anything that you want to. And there's going to be roadblocks. There's going to be things that are going to be hard. But as long as you concentrate on trying to become world-class at it and knowing that you need to put in the deliberate practice, you can basically become good at anything that you want to become good at. So what's the thing for you? If you look at, you know, Will Smith just had a new book come out and he talks about how he was obsessed, obsessed with rapping. And then what happened

Starting point is 00:16:20 was he started finding DJs and they would work, but they wouldn't work as hard as him and they would work and they wouldn't work as hard as him. And they would work and they wouldn't work as hard as him. And then he found DJ Jazzy Jeff. And DJ Jazzy Jeff was, he says in his book, the only person that he had ever met to this day who ever worked harder than him. He would eat, sleep, and breathe being a DJ. He would eat his food, breakfast, lunch, and dinner

Starting point is 00:16:42 while he was DJing. He was basically, the only time he wasn't DJing is when he was going to the bathroom. And so what was cool about it is that Will Smith had this crazy work ethic that he learned from his father. And then he found another person who had crazy work ethic as well. What happened? It made him work harder. And here's what's crazy. Will Smith is known for being this incredible actor. But a lot of people forget he was actually the first Grammy-winning artist in the rap category. So he was world-class at one point in time in rapping

Starting point is 00:17:14 and became world-class as an actor. And what's crazy about it is if you watch The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in the first year, you can actually see that Will Smith wanted to become so good at acting because it wasn't something that he was good in, that not only did he memorize his own lines, he actually memorized everybody's lines the entire first year. And so it's funny to watch because you can actually see some of the times that he's actually waiting for somebody else to stop speaking and

Starting point is 00:17:40 another actor is actually speaking, he's actually mouthing their words because he knows what they're supposed to say as well as they know what they're supposed to say. So I really want to build into and really make you believe and sell you on this fact that talent is not something that you need. If there's something that's out there that you want to become good at, that you want to improve at, that you want to become world-class at, that you want to become good at, that you want to improve at, that you want to become world-class at, you can do it. But you absolutely 100% want to put in the work. You have to put in the work. And so I want to ask you this question. I want you to think about this. What is something that you're really, really interested in? What is something that you want to become good at?

Starting point is 00:18:20 What is something that even if you didn't get paid for it, you would do it? Because if you find people, if you look at the best in every single category, no matter what it is, that person wasn't born with the skill. Michael Jordan wasn't born with this amazing talent and becoming the best. He wasn't the best basketball player. He wasn't even a good basketball player. He was literally dropped from his high school team, which means that he was actually a shitty basketball player. But from going from cut to the team to one of the best that's ever done it shows you that anybody can do it. And one of the things that I really want you to start to think about is this idea of what is it that I could put time into? What is it that interests me? So like for me, I like playing guitar, but it's not something that I could put time into? What is it that interests me? So like for me, I like playing guitar,

Starting point is 00:19:05 but it's not something that I want to become world-class at. It's just fun for me. But for me, the thing that really interests me the most is learning about people. It's understanding how people work. It's like trying to put the puzzle together, understanding psychology, neurology, early childhood development.

Starting point is 00:19:21 And that obsession has put me into doing what I do now. And I don't see myself ever stopping. I see myself continuing on this path. And I think the more that I do it, the better that I'll become. And if you fast forward and you fast forward and you fast forward, eventually I think that I'll be world-class at what I do.

Starting point is 00:19:36 That's the exact same opportunity that you have. There's nothing special about me. There's nothing special about Will Smith. There's nothing special about Kobe Bryant. There's nothing special about Conor McGrath. There's nothing special about me. There's nothing special about Will Smith. There's nothing special about Kobe Bryant. There's nothing special about Conor Mcgray. There's nothing special about Michael Jordan. The only thing that's special is that they made a decision. They decided to do what it is that they're going to do.

Starting point is 00:19:53 They dedicated hours. They dedicated their lives to this thing. What is something that you're so interested to, so interested in learning and figuring out, or just seems fun to you, that you would be okay dedicating the next one, two, three, four, five years of your life towards. Because if you can dedicate your life to something and you can put in the work, if you fast forward five years from now,

Starting point is 00:20:16 10 years from now, 15 years from now, you will be world-class at that thing. Why? Because the average person gives up. If you decide to go down a path of deliberate practice in 10,000 hours and try to become world-class at something, and you simply decide that you're not going to give up, you will eventually win. That is a fact. You might suck at whatever that thing is now. If you play basketball, you might be terrible at it. If you're a podcaster, you might be terrible at it. If you're an actor, you might be terrible at it. If you're a singer, you might be terrible at it. But if you put in the work and put in the work and put in the work and you just don't stop, you can become world-class at whatever that thing is. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you

Starting point is 00:20:59 love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at RobDialJr. And once again, if you're out there and you want to receive a email from me with my intentions going into every single week, you get it from me every single Monday morning, go to mondayemail.com right now, sign up there. And I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better.

Starting point is 00:21:18 I love you, I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - How to Become World-Class

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