The Mindset Mentor - How to Build Systems to Actually Achieve Your Goals

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Are your goals holding you back? In this episode, I’ll show you why focusing on big, long-term results can actually demotivate you—and how shifting to daily, action-based goals can change everything. 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 podcast episode. And if you're out there and you live in the U.S. or Canada and you want to get some inspirational mindset, motivational text messages from me sporadically throughout the week, text me right now, 512-8-0-9305. once again, 512-580-9305. Today, we're going to be talking about your goals, and I'm going to be talking to you about

the problem with your goals. I'm going to tell you why it is so hard for you to hit your goals, for you to stay consistent and taking the right action hitting your goals, and I'm also going to give you a hack in your brain to help you make it easier to hit your goals. And let's talk about goals, for instance, right? I could sit down and I could say, hey, let's come up with your 10-year plan. where do you want to be in 10 years? What do you want to have in 10 years? What do you want your family to look like? What do you want your happiness to look like? Where do you want to have? How much money do you have? What kind of house do you have? What kind of cars do you have? And it can be exciting in the moment. But then after you get done planning, one thing happens with a lot of people. It can become paralysis by analysis because you start thinking, here I am today. And that's where I want to be in 10 years. And your mind can immediately go to processes. And all of the things that you need to get done in order to get there, and it can seem so far away

that sometimes it could actually be demotivating. This is something I've learned over years and years of working with people. I thought that, hey, when you create a 10-year goal, you're excited, and then you work your ass off to get there, right? And you're all fired up that you're going to be there. And then you wake up the next day and you start thinking about how long this journey is, this journey of 1,000 miles, this journey of 10 years to get you where you want to go in the thought of how many things need to be done in order to get you there can actually stop you from taking action. And so really what it comes down to is we're focusing too much on the outcome and everything that needs to be able to get there over the next 10 years, like what we have to do

every single day over the next 3,650 days. And it's like, man, that's a lot of things. When really, we should be focusing on the process. And so that's what we're going to be diving into today is the process instead of the outcome because we all want the outcome we all want the goals we all want the money we all want the successful business the great relationship the incredible children that we've that we've we've been able to grow and help and create into these great humans we all want those things we want the goals but what we need to focus on is we need to focus on the process we need to focus on what it is that we need to do every single day and not just every single day each moment what's the best thing for me to do right now? And so most goals are focused on what I like to call

results-based goals. We're focusing on the result that we want. What we're going to talk about today is the benefit of having action-based goals, having daily action-based goals, right? So results-based goals would be like, I want to lose 10 pounds, and then I'll be where I want to be. Right? I want to make, I want to hit a million dollars in revenue in my business, and then I'll be where I want to be. and those are great those are those are results-based goals and i think that they are important to create but then after you create them you actually transition into creating from your results-based goals action-based goals what action do i need to do today in order to be in alignment with where i want to go what do i need to do today just focusing on today even just the next hour in order to get me to

where I want to go. And then we want to act in alignment with a type of person that we want to be, the type of person that we want to show up us every single day. You want your actions to reflect the type of person that you want to become. And so what you do is you actually focus on just today. And then what you do is you develop something called a dopamine reward system. So what is dopamine, right? So dopamine, most people think that dopamine is like the feel good chemical in your brain. And it does feel good, but that's more of a serotonin thing. When you look at dopamine, dopamine is the chemical of motivation. Dopamine is a very external-based chemical. Serotonin is a chemical of here and now and everything's peachy and everything's beautiful. Gratitude, grateful for what you have. Dopamine is

the chemical of motivation. Dopamine is the chemical of more. I want more. I did this thing and I want more of it. It's the chemical that's released also when you get really excited about something or you're celebrating something. And the best part about dopamine, it is completely subjective, which means that you can literally be in this moment right now and you can just decide, you know what? I'm going to try to feel my body up with as many good feelings as possible. Think about how amazing my life is. Think about how amazing these challenges have come in my life have helped me get better. And we can actually celebrate anything that we want to, make ourselves feel good, release dopamine, and when we release dopamine, because it's a chemical of more, our brain will actually want

more of it. What's the most common trait of the greatest achievers in our lives? When you look at people like Michael Jordan, you look at Kobe Bryant, you look at the greatest CEOs that are out there, some might say hard work, dedication, obsession, and that's all correct. But there's a secret behind all of it. All of those things are true. They are really hard workers. They are extremely dedicated. They are obsessed with what they do, but there's something underlying. Most of them fell in love with the process. They fell in love with the process. And most of them, whether they realize or not, probably created a dopamine reward system. I don't know if they meant to do it, but they probably did it. And it's just why you see somebody like, I always hear people that are like, oh, well,

if somebody's a billionaire, they're a millionaire, and they could retire, why don't they just retire and just enjoy the rest of their lives? Because they've actually fallen in love with the process. They've fallen in love with becoming the person that they're becoming. They've fallen in love and created a dopamine reward system, whether they realize it or not. And so I'm not sure that they knew they set up a dopamine reward system, but they did. So when you look at a dopamine reward system, what is it? What does a dopamine reward system actually mean? It's a way to get your brain to release some dopamine after you accomplish a task that's part of your process. So it's a way to get your brain to release dopamine as soon as you get done and you

accomplish a task that is part of your process. And once again, it's subjective. So you can basically feel excitement for doing something, right? So in the context of a dopamine reward system, Dopamine is released in response to rewarding or pleasurable stimuli. The release of dopamine, it signals to the brain that the behavior that led to the reward, the release of the dopamine, the celebration, should be repeated in the future. So the release of the dopamine signals to the brain that the behavior that led to the reward, the celebration, whatever it is, the, hey, I showed up at the gym and I didn't want to. Hell yes, congratulations. You're amazing. I'm so proud of you for doing this.

literally tell yourself this in your head. It's the release of dopamine and that signals to the brain that the behavior that led to the reward, the celebration, the being proud of yourself, should be repeated in the future. And this is because dopamine reinforces the neural connections that were involved in the behavior, making it more likely that the behavior will be repeated in the future. So I'll give you an example of what I mean by that. Let's say that you're trying to lose 10 pounds, right? You could be like, I'm going to, I'm going to lose 10 pounds. pounds and lose to pounds and lose to pounds and lose 10 pounds and you can focus on it but at some point in time you're probably going to do some really good stuff and you're probably going to fuck up

we all do right you're going to mess up at some point in time usually when people mess up they feel down on themselves they start to you know tell themselves what an idiot you shouldn't have done that you screwed up and instead of making themselves feel good about the correct actions that they took they make them feel bad about the time that they kind of fell off track and that's not going to motivate you to want to do it again and so what happens is how can we reward ourselves in this process? So let's say you did go to the gym. You showed up at the gym.

While you're working out, you're getting your first set in. Hell yeah, I'm so proud of you for showing up. You didn't want to be here. You didn't want to be here and you're doing what you didn't want to do. I'm proud of you. You get done with that next set. Hell yeah. Great job on this set.

Right. Releasing dopamine. Great job on this. I'm so proud of you for showing up. I'm so proud of you for showing up. Every single set. I'm so proud of you for showing up. I'm so proud of you for showing up.

You're doing what you didn't want to do. We're on the right path. We're in the process. We will get the outcome. We just got to keep going. You're talking yourself. You're talking yourself. You're talking yourself.

Right? You get done at the gym. Hell yes. I'm so proud of you. Instead of leaving the gym and look at yourself in the mirror and being like, damn it, I'm so far away from my goal. I'm still not where I want to be and getting pissed off at yourself. You leave the gym.

And as you're walking out of the gym, you're like, I'm so proud of you. You eat that thing that you wanted to eat. Hell yeah. I'm so proud of you. You say no to that thing that you didn't want to eat. or you know you shouldn't be eating if you're trying to get to your goal. Hell yeah, you said no to that bag of Skittles. I know you wanted that bag of Skittles, right?

Hell yeah, I'm so proud of you for this. See, the problem with results-based goals is that if we're only focusing on the achievement of the goal, dopamine won't be released until you achieve the goal. And that could be years down the road. If you set a 10-year goal and you're only going to be proud of yourself when you hit that 10-year goal, you're not going to get dopamine. You're not going to get proud. you're not going to get the chemical of motivation until you achieve that goal that could be years

down the road that's not motivating you to do it that way how can you use the chemical of more the chemical of motivation to actually want more and so when you look at like for instance a person pops in my head is Kobe Bryant because i used to i studied him after he passed away and just was like what what he was obsessed what made him obsessed he accidentally set up a dopamine reward system i don't think he knew that this is what he was doing but maybe maybe he did maybe he worked neurologist and they told him this, right? His thing was never about winning championships. His thing was never about winning championships. Did he want to? Of course. But his was, I'm going to be the best freaking basketball player that's ever walked the planet. I'm sure this is exactly what the Bronon

James is. I'm sure this is exactly what Michael Jordan had done as well. Right. But if we look at Kobe Bryant, he would wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning every single morning to work out. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. Because it motivated him, knowing that his average competition would wake up at 8, 9, 10 o'clock. And so he would tell himself how amazing it is, how proud of himself that he was, that he was working out while everyone else was sleeping. And he would do it over and over and over and he would be proud of himself for doing the thing that he needed to do.

So what does that make him more likely to do with the dopamine reward system? Show up tomorrow and do the exact same thing. And the end result, the outcome was five, I think he won five NBA championships, right? But it wasn't just the outcome. he was focused on. It wasn't just becoming the best basketball player. It was the process that he fell in love with. And this is why daily action-based goals is way more important than the results-based goals. Because you can celebrate yourself immediately while doing it. And if dopamine is released, you're more likely to do again. It's not about achieving the goals. Achieving the goals is the

byproduct of the process. Achieving the goals is the byproduct of stepping into being that person every single day. It's all about falling in love of the journey. Because humans, we're all biased towards the present. We're really biased towards the present if you think about it. Because if you go back 100,000 years to our ancestors, like it was the present moment all of the time. It was, we need to eat. We need to survive.

We need to be safe. We need to get water. We need to get food. All of this stuff. And so humans are very biased towards a present. So what happens is if we start thinking about that way, we're really biased towards the present. This makes sense why humans are so obsessed

with instant gratification. We're so obsessed with it. So what I would say is can we make the goal for 10 years for now and then forget about it and focus on the actions that you need to take every single day in order to hit that goal? And then celebrating yourself on the way to the process of hitting that goal. Right? So we have a problem with instant gratification.

We're not really good with delayed gratification. We want everything now. We want everything now. We want everything now. Which is normal because that should be built into our system. and that's how our ancestors survive. But if you want to build the business that you want, if you want to build the relationship you want, if you want to build the body that you want,

if you want to build the mindset if you want, if you want to build the amazing life that you want, it doesn't happen like that. It takes time. That's not how the world works. Everything great takes time. But we can hijack our system and give ourselves instant gratification now

for the things that won't happen for a while. Because you look at gratification, if you go to the gym now, you're not going to see the results you want for months. you're not going to see the results you want for maybe a year. If you go to college right now, you're not going to get the degree for at least four years. If you say for retirement right now, you won't get, you won't be able to retire for like 20, 30 years. And so when you look at instant gratification, the beautiful thing about instant gratification is that we are geared more towards

instant gratification, but our goals won't come for the future. So can we use the dopamine reward system to actually hijack our system and feel instant gratification for something that might not come for years that might not come for months that might not come for weeks and you think about that is actually kind of interesting to think about right so with instant gratification when we look at everything that we want we know that we can't get we won't go into the gym right now and have a six-pack as soon as we walk out of the gym that'll take delayed gratification instant gratification reward comes immediately delayed gratification is a reward comes later on down the line. And we can know this and we can give ourselves immediate rewards by releasing dopamine with action-based goals, with literally

the daily action-based goals. We can feel proud of ourselves in the moment. And that's the amazing thing about it. The immediate reward won't come for a while, but we can immediately reward ourselves for going to the gym. We can reward ourselves while we're in the gym. We can reward ourselves while we're making the sales phone calls. We can reward ourselves while we are waking up in the morning. We can reward ourselves for showing up and being present with our children and putting the phone away. The immediate reward doesn't happen when you just go to the gym, but celebrating yourself can actually feel like the reward. Think about this for a second. Can you hijack your system to make your habits, your actions to become easier? Because if you decide,

you know what, let's go back to the gym example. If you decide, okay, I'm going to, to go to the gym, like, I want to lose these 10 pounds, and I know that it's eventually going to happen as long as I take the right action. That's all I'm going to do. I'm just going to follow the right action. And then you just show up for yourself and you just do it every single day, every single day, every single day, you're going to get to where you want to be. The goals are a byproduct of the actions that you take. And the actions that you take become easier when you link a dopamine reward system to it. Habits become easier when you find pleasure in doing them. Not when you talk shit to yourself during it because you don't look the way that you want to look or because you're not

where you want to be or because it seems like it's so far away. And it's as simple as being proud of yourself for showing up and taking the step in the right direction. And a lot of times doing what you didn't want to do. See, because all too often, what we do is we pay attention to the bad. We pay attention to the negative. We pay attention to what we don't want. We pay attention to how we're not where we want to be. We pay attention to, man, I fucked that up in that conversation with my spouse. What we need to do is we need to get better at praising the good in ourselves when we did show up. My feet hit the floor at 6 a.m. I'm going to praise myself for doing that thing that I wanted to do. We need to get better at praising the good in ourself and ignoring the bat. We need to get better at celebrating ourselves

the same way that we would celebrate a child that ended up, you know, hitting the T-ball and getting to first base or your friend that calls you up because they got a job promotion. The one person that you want to see succeed. Can we get better at celebrating ourself the same way that we would celebrate someone that we truly love because progress feels good when we feel like we're progressing in the right direction it actually feels good can we feel the progress can we feel the feelings of how proud we are for ourselves for showing up and doing what we need to do and so the secret to all of this is we need the goals i 100% think that we need the goals we need the one-year goals we need the quarterly goals we need the five-year goals

10 year goals, whatever it is that you want. But then when you look at the goals, you've got to ask yourself, who do I need to be? What do I need to do in order to achieve this thing? And then all we do is we just show up every single day. And when we show up, we're proud of ourselves. And so the way that I've been using this recently, just to give you an idea of how I'm using it. So I've been working out on off three to four times a week for probably 15, 16 years now, right? But for me, it was always about how can I build muscle? How can I lose fat? How can I lift the most amount of how can I get as big as I possibly can, how it can become a beast in the gym, and all of that. And it was always goal, goal, like outcome-based, outcome-based, outcome-based.

And then I just decided this year, you know what, I'm just going to show up to the gym every single day. I'm going to move my body in some sort of way. Three to four times a week, that means lifting really heavy, right? Three to four times a week, the other three or four times, it's moving my body in some sort of way. Sometimes it's yoga. Sometimes it's going for a run. Sometimes it's getting in some floor movements and what they call animal flow and primal movements on the ground. Sometimes it's, it's, you know, doing crawls outside. It's just, what does my body feel like it needs to do today? And what's crazy about is this entire year, I am looking and I'm going, this is actually pretty crazy. I'm in one of the best shapes of my life. And I haven't been focusing on the outcome

at all. All I've been focusing on is what do I need to do today? And I'm going to tell you, majority of the days, I don't feel like moving my body. I'm just going to be honest. I'm like, I'd rather just sit here and do nothing. It's a lot easier to sit on the couch and do nothing. But I've been saying, I'm just going to show up every single day. So I'm going to do. I'm going to show up for myself today. And when I show up, I reward myself.

I reward myself with, hell yeah, great job. Once I start to feel the movement, I'm my heartbeat getting better, of getting a little bit more into it. I'm like, I'm in the zone. I'm starting to feel in the zone. This is great. And what I'm doing is I'm through the process. Man, you showed up and you didn't want to show up today.

I'm fucking proud of you for doing that. man looking in the mirror dude those muscles are looking good i'm really proud of you today like in just showing up oh my set was supposed to be done i'm going to do one extra one dude you just did one extra one you did an extra set i'm so proud of you for doing that and what happens is you start to actually get the results that you want you get the outcome that you want but you don't even focus on the outcome you focus on the daily processes the action-based goals of what needs to happen today and you celebrate yourself for it. And when you celebrate yourself and you release that dopamine,

your brain and your body go, hey, that's pretty good. We should do that thing again. Because if you go back to what I said earlier, when you look at the dopamine reward system, dopamine is released in response to rewarding or pleasurable stimuli. The release of the dopamine signals to the brain that the behavior that led to the reward should be repeated in the future. And this is because dopamine reinforced,

of neural connections that were involved in the behavior, making it more likely that the behavior will be repeated in the future. Find your long-term goals and then ask yourself, what actions do I need to take each day? And how can I reward myself every single day for taking those actions? Do that and watch how many goals you hit. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please show it on Instagram stories, tag me in at Rob Dowell Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, you want to learn a little bit more about coaching with me outside of the podcast. You can go ahead and go to coach with rob.com. Once again, coach with rob.com for more information. And with that,

I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Making sure mission makes somebody else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day.