The Mindset Mentor - How to Change Your Brain to Be Happy

Episode Date: May 15, 2020

Happiness does not happen by chance, we can chemically and structurally change our brains to be happy. In this episode, I will tell you how!Want to be entered into a drawing for a FREE coaching call with me? Share my podcast on your Instagram stories and tag me in it @RobDialJr https://www.instagram.com/robdialjr/ Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never, ever miss another episode. Today, we're going to talk about how to be happy as much as you possibly can. And this is going to be probably an eye-opening episode for most of you guys out there because I think that happiness is completely misunderstood by most people. And what I mean by that is this. Most people think that I need to have something happen to me or happen in my day or happen in my life or happen to someone that I know in order for me to be happy, right? You think that in order for you to be happy, something has to happen, which means that

an event needs to happen. An experience needs to happen. Something needs to happen for me to be happy. Otherwise, who knows? I might go down crap Creek and I might not have the best day ever. But I'm here to tell you that happiness is actually not an experience. Happiness is not an event. Happiness is a state that you live in.

Things don't have to happen to make you happy. You have to decide to be happy and to focus on the things that you love and to focus on the things that you want and to focus on the life, you know, focus on all the things that you have. And then what you'll notice is that things start happening in your life. So it's never external. If you guys know, I always talk about this. It's never external. Nothing is external. Everything that happens to you is internal. So if you're expecting for something to happen in your day to make you happy, you will be utterly disappointed

almost every single day because happiness is a state of being. Now, can you do things to make you happy? Of course. Yeah, I have a friend who he was fired from Facebook right before they went public. He was a number 30 employee, and he missed out on about $100 million. And he went into a mild depression, you could call it probably more than mild, after that happened because he missed out on $100 million. But he noticed that he had depression. He was going into it.

And he made this decision in his life of, I love this phrase because he says it all the time. I will not let my happiness or my depression be left up to chance. Let me say that again. I will not let my happiness or my depression be left up to chance. Let me say that again. I will not let my happiness or my depression be left up to chance. So when you wake up in the morning, whether you realize it or not, you're going through a set of patterns that you've been doing for years and years and years. And if you don't do something different, you're not going to feel

different and you won't have a different life. So happiness starts from the state that you're in. So if you go back to my friend's example, what he would do is he would figure out what he could focus on every single morning that would make him realize he can internally be happy. Think about that for a second. Not go out and do something, but to actually make yourself into a state of happiness. And usually where that starts is with gratitude. What are you focusing on in the day? If you wake up in the

morning and you feel anxious and you feel anxiety in some sort of way or depression or sadness or whatever it is, that's how most people feel when they wake up. Just because the fact is what usually wakes you up, just so you know, is cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone. That's what wakes you up in the morning. And so most people have their highest anxiety when they wake up in the morning. Now, knowing that that's the case, why don't we plan ahead and try to get past that? And what I mean by that is why don't we wake up in the morning knowing that we will probably feel more anxious at that moment and start to focus on what we can be grateful for. Not what we want to happen, but what has already happened or what we currently have, the things, the people, the job, the money in the bank account, the love that's around us. Focus on those things and feel internally grateful

for them. You feel grateful for what you already have. You want what you already have, which will already set you up into a state of happiness. Now, can you do things that will go out and make you feel better? Of course. So now that we wake up in the morning and we've decided we're going to start from a state of happiness and we're going to focus on what we have, not what we want. We focus on what we have, not what we want. We focus on what we have in our life. And then we go, I'm going to go do other things that make me happy as well. So I'm going to figure out what makes me happy. So I'm starting from a place of happiness and I'm going to put as many things

into my day to make me as happy as possible. And so this is another thing that I got from my friend as well. And what he says is he makes a list of all of the things that he loves, all the things that make him happy from hanging out with the dog to a certain type of breakfast, to having a long intellectual conversation with a friend, whatever it is, it could be anything, watching your children play, dropping them off at school. And then when you wake up in the morning, what you do is you have this massive list of everything that you love. You sit there in the morning and you feel internally grateful for all that you actually have. And you feel the feelings of gratitude and fill your body up with that feeling of gratitude. And then what you do is you look at this list of all of the things that make you happy, 30, 40, 50, 100 things that you just love that make

you happy. And then you look at your schedule for the day. And this is where most people mess up is they don't usually have a schedule for the day. you look at your schedule for the day. And this is where most people mess up is they don't usually have a schedule for the day. You look at your schedule for the day and you look at what makes you happy and you say, how can I put as many of these things as possible into my day? And so what you're doing is you're literally brainwashing yourself to be happy. You're starting from an internal place of gratitude and love and happiness. And then you're looking at all the things that you love and you feel like make you happy, or at least from an internal place of gratitude and love and happiness. And then you're looking at all the things that you love and you feel like make you happy, or at least from external to internal, as much as you can get that. And you're trying to place those things into your day as much as

possible. And the reason why is because you will actually start to change your brain. What people don't realize, there's a thing called neuroplasticity. And I could go on for hours talking about neuroplasticity, but there's three ways to change your brain. The first way to change your brain, and people think, oh yeah, you can't change your brain. I am this way. I've always been this way my entire life. No, that's complete BS. You can change your brain.

It's called neuroplasticity, actually changing the structure, function, and chemicals in your brain. So there's three ways to change. The first way to change and the easiest way to change is the chemical inside your brain. So there's three ways to change. The first way to change and the easiest way to change is the chemical inside your brain. Your brain functions by transferring signals between brain cells, between your neurons that trigger a series of actions and reactions inside of you. So if you wake up in the morning and you start to feel gratitude, that automatically is going to start to change the chemicals inside of your brain, which is going to change the chemicals inside of your body as well. Now, the more that you do this over and over and over again,

you're going to start to actually slowly change the structure of your brain. You're literally going to create new brain cells inside of your brain. You're going to change the structure of your brain. If you look at, for instance, musicians, people who play a guitar, they have different parts of their brain that are actually with their motor skills that are larger than other people's brains. People who read braille have larger hand sensory areas in their brain than other people. Why? Because they've used their brain over and over and over again to feel the words that they're supposed to be reading, which means that part of their brain grows. You can physically change the structure of your brain. So the first way is chemical. The second way is the structure of your brain.

And then the third way is the actual function of your brain, which means that when you change the chemicals, you change the structure, your brain will actually function differently. So if people are out there, if you feel like you're under a state of anxiety and stress or depression every single day, you can actually change by focusing on these things, the chemical, the structural, and the functional aspects of your brain to feel the way that you want to feel. aspects of your brain to feel the way that you want to feel right now. It's not like, oh, I was raised this way. I've always been this way and there's nothing that I can do about it. No, you can legitimately change your brain. And it starts with habits, doing it over and over and over and over again, because 48% of what you do throughout the entire

day is complete autopilot. Almost half of what you do, you don't even think about. You're on autopilot. It's just like zombie mode. And you're going to do the same things over and over and over again that you did yesterday. So if yesterday you felt like shit and you don't do anything different today, guess what you're going to feel like? You're probably going to feel like shit. That's just the way that it goes. So you have to realize, okay, if I didn't feel good yesterday, how can I wake up today, take these tips, wake up in the morning and think about, even if I don't have much, I can just think about the things that I am grateful for. I can think about the way that the wind feels on

my face. I can think about the fact that the sun's shining outside and I can go out and take my shirt off and get a tan and get the vitamin D, which helps me at my immune system. And I can think about those things that are absolutely free. You don't have to have anything in your bank account. You don't have to have anything. You don't have to own a car. You don't have to own a house to have something to be grateful for, right? And you think about, and you start from a place of gratitude and a place of happiness that will change the chemicals inside of your brain. And you do this every single day, every single day. You're basically priming your brain to feel the way that you want to feel. If you just wake up and leave it to chance, hey, it's going to be a crapshoot. Who knows what's going to happen? But if you wake up with

intention, say, I'm going to change the way that I feel every single day because I'm not happy feeling the way that I've been feeling for a while. And I'm going to focus on what I'm going to be grateful for. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to look at my list of all of these things that I love and the things that make me smile. And I'm going to put as many of those things into my schedule every single day because that will help create the feeling of happiness even more. So we're starting from a base of happiness. We're adding things that we love on top of it, which will make us feel even better. Feeling is a chemical feeling inside of your brain, inside of your body that will slowly over time, if you do it over and over and over and over and

over again, if there's chemical changes, it will create a structural change. And after a while, when you create a structural change, it will actually change the way that your brain functions. This is not some weird pseudoscience. This is actual real legitimate science, psychology put into how to create happiness. Happiness does not happen by chance. Let me say this again. Happiness does not happen by chance. It is something that you create.

So if you don't like the way that you feel on some days, you are creating that. And if you're not actually physically thinking about it to create it, your habits are creating it, which means that you need to change your habits, which is structure in function of your brain. So what you need to do is sit down and think, okay, knowing that I wake up in the morning and I'm going to probably be stressed out, I'm probably going to be anxious. I need to plan out the time that I'm going to wake up.

I'm going to give myself 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it is, to just feel the gratitude for my children and for the day and for the fact that I have a job and for the sun being out and for my family that's supportive and the people that are around me that love me. Just think about the things that you could be grateful for and fill your cup every single morning with gratitude and then bring that into everything that you do. And if you do this day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, day out, and act like your life depends on it because it does, it will change the structure of your brain. It will change the way that you live. It will change your interactions with everyone around you. It will change how you feel. And I guarantee you, it will absolutely 100% change your life. But here's the catch. You have to do it. Nobody else will do it for you. Nobody else

can change the chemicals in your brain. Nobody else can change the structure of your brain. No one else can change the function of your brain. You and only you can make yourself happy. But happiness is not an experience. It's not an event. It is a state of being. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it. Don't forget that if you share this episode in this week, every single person that shares this on their Instagram stories, as many times they share it, they get entered into a drawing for a free coaching with me, one-on-one, which is valued over $2,000. So take a screenshot, talk about it, share it,

and then tag me in it in your Instagram stories, RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L. I'll be picking the winner next week. So go ahead and share it. Help us spread the love. I appreciate you guys for doing it. 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.