The Mindset Mentor - How to Cope With Death

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Many people struggle with death - either the thought of their own death or the death of a loved one. In this episode, I want to share a different perspective with you on death and how you can learn to respect it and see it for its beauty, rather than be afraid of it. Subscribe to my YouTube Channel here: https://youtube.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 am your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never, ever, ever miss another episode. And if you want to receive motivational text messages from me directly to that cell phone of yours, text me right now, 1-512-580-9305. Once again, 1-512-580-9305, and I'll send you motivational text messages. I'll send you motivational videos. I will motivate the hell out of you. Today, we're going to be talking about death, one of the most motivating things in the world to talk about. We're going to talk about the death of everyone that you know that's around you and how to

cope with death. We're also going to talk about your own death and how to become more okay with it, right? And the interesting thing about death is that it is guaranteed. It will happen no matter what. And we really need to learn that if it's going to happen, it's nothing we can get away from. And we really need to learn that if it's going to happen, if it's nothing we can get away from, we need to try to become as okay with it as we possibly can. Because everybody that you love will die, right?

Like it sounds morbid, but in reality, it's not that morbid. It's just fact. And you will die. And so we're going to talk about both of those. Because I get a ton of messages, so many messages on Instagram from people. And I read all the messages, right? Of they lost somebody and they don't know how to get past it, right? They lost a loved one. They just died of old age or they had something that happened to them that was tragic or there was a suicide or it was their grandparents or it was their parents. Some people, it was old age. Some people, it was young age and it was something that was tragic that happened. It's every type

of thing that you could, some of them are overdoses, every type of death you could think of. I've been sent messages about it. And when I see something that comes through many, many, many, many times in my Instagram messages, I go, huh, I should probably make an episode on this because this is clearly something people want to learn about. So, uh, for those of you guys that want to message me and give me some form of request of what I should do an episode on message me on Instagram. That's where I usually talk to people, Rob dial junior, R B D I A L J R. That's how I communicate and talk with people. But when we're going into death and we're talking about death, I've seen it come up many, many times and people are struggling all of the time with how do they cope with it?

You know, someone that they love, they weren't expecting them to die. It happened. How do you work through it? The first thing that I think is important is before anybody dies at this moment, you have to learn to start becoming more okay with it because it's going to happen for everybody, right? To you, to your loved ones, to everyone. And that's not morbid. It's just a fact. So first let's dive into the death of someone that you know, before we talk about your own death, we'll talk about both of them. We'll dive into them and I'm going to make it as light as possible because the shit's going to happen. Why would I want to make it depressing? Right? So I'll talk about how, you know, in my instance of

how I've had some relations with death, you know, up into my first 14 years, I never knew one person that died, maybe some older person that I didn't really know that was in my family, like a distant cousin or distant aunt or uncle or whatever it was, but no one that was, I was really close to had passed away my first 14 years. Then when I was 15, my dad died unexpectedly. He was an alcoholic. We weren't expecting him to die. And he did. We were flying up to go see him from Florida to Tennessee. And we were getting on the, about to get on the plane to go see him because he was unconscious. And we got the message that he had passed away. I was in, you know, he was the first dead body I'd ever seen. And that left

a really big imprint on my mind of, holy shit, this is going to end like this. As much as you've ever been to a funeral of someone that you know, and that you're close to, it feels like a joke. It feels like they're about to pop up and be like, Hey, just kidding. No, no, no, just joking. I'm let's go hang out. Right. And it never happens.

And so it's the, it's that realization of like, oh, wow, this is going to happen to everyone that I know. And this is going to happen to me as well. oh, wow, this is going to happen to everyone that I know. And this is going to happen to me as well. I would say that moment changed my life as far as the urgency that I bring to every single thing that I do. And I'll talk more about that later. Right. I was also in the room about three or four years ago when my grandfather passed away. Right. I was in the room in hospice there. It's a crazy experience to be in the room when someone passes away, right? I was there. I was also there when my mom and her three sisters told my grandmother that her husband of 70 years

had passed away, right? That's a whole other thing to see is to see somebody process that in real time, right? I've had friends die from car accidents. I've had friends die from overdoses. I've had friends die from suicides. I've had friends die from overdoses. I've had friends die from suicides. I've had friends that have been murdered. I've seen a quite a few different sides of death. And, uh, I don't know if I just gave you like my qualifications for talking about death, but I guess I just did, but I'm going to tell you what I have learned through the process, being somebody who is obsessed with mindset, obsessed with trying to get better. And the first thing is, is there's always a grieving process, right? And one thing that I've noticed with people is they try to speed up the grieving process. Whatever the grieving process is,

the grieving process is. Don't try to speed it up. Don't try to not feel it. Don't try to keep yourself busy. That's one of the things that pisses me off the most is when somebody has somebody that they're dealing with the emotions of death and someone says, well, just keep yourself busy so you don't think about it. Yeah, that sounds like a really great way to just repress your emotions. You don't want to do that. Feel it. As beautiful it is to experience the most beautiful, amazing, joyful, loving parts of your life, the other emotions are also very beautiful and it's part of the human experience. And if you can't allow yourself to experience the lowest of lows, I promise you actually won't be able to allow yourself to experience the highest of highs.

So allow yourself to feel it. Don't feel like you, there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. There is no right, there is no wrong. Just experience it and see if you can enjoy no right. There is no wrong. Just experience it and see if you can enjoy this part of the human experience. Right. So I will say that. And as far as grief and the way that it goes is one of the best ways I've heard it explains, it's kind of like waves, right? Going out into the ocean, you know, in when you first have someone that you love that passes away, it's like the waves are a hundred feet tall and they're just crashing on you and crashing on you and crashing on you. And you can barely come up for air. That's like how it feels in the very beginning where it's like, you're just getting swept in every single emotion and feeling

and anger will come up and sadness will come up and fear will come up. And you're just getting hit by the constantly rocked by these waves. And then time starts to pass and the waves start to come a little bit less frequently. But when they do come, they're still a hundred feet tall and they'll still throw you upon the rocks and you try to get up and try to have some form of air to come up. Right. And then, you know, as time goes on, you tend to process and, you know, the waves will still come unexpectedly, But instead of being 100 feet tall, they might be 50 feet tall. And they might get to 20 feet tall and 30 feet tall. And sometimes, and then after a while, they come really unexpectedly. Could be a year, two years

down the road. And it might be like a song that you hear that just hits you again. And you can't help but be overcome with emotion. Or it might be driving past a certain part of town and seeing a gas station where you have a memory with that person and you just get hit again. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? The human experience is a beautiful thing. The highs are beautiful. The lows are beautiful. The worst thing that you could do is try to rush a grieving process or think that you're doing it right or think that you're doing it wrong. One of the things that I always tell people, if you want to help yourself, if you love somebody that died, right, they're not going to come back. Like I can promise you that.

But one of the things you can do is you can help them live on in you. And what do I mean by that? This is something that I did with my grandfather. My grandfather was like the kindest person that I've ever met in my entire life. He was incredible to the point where like, I'm finally at the point where I don't cry talking about him because he was just that incredible of a human being. Right. And so when he passed away, it was such a, another monumental event in my life that I wrote down and this was a few years ago. So I was at least, you know, emotionally intelligent enough to work myself through it because I had worked many clients through at this point in time, not like when I was 15 and I had never had a client, never really

worked in myself at all. Right. So I wrote down all the things that I loved about my grandfather, unconditioned, like literally the only person I know with unconditional love, like no matter what he was going to help you out. Right. He kindness and loving and joy. Didn't matter who you are, what you believed in, what you looked like. Didn't matter. Loved you either way. So I wrote down all the things that I loved about him and the character traits that I respected most about him. And then what I did was I went, I want to wake up every single morning and meditate on how I can be more like this. Cause if I fully respect somebody and who they are and the character traits they have wouldn't I want those character traits to also be inside of me

and isn't that the best way the best way to actually keep that person alive after they have passed away so I recommend if you have somebody that's recently passed away or you have somebody that passes away soon enough or even if they pass away in distant past write down the two three four five things that you loved most about them and then wake up every single morning and take five minutes and pause and read those five things and close your eyes and try to get into your subconscious of I'm going to bring these aspects of this person into myself every single day. And if you do that every single day, what you'll realize is you actually start to become

the aspects of that person that you love the most. So that's the interesting thing about the grieving process and how to help you work through it. When you're managing a team, it can be hard to get everyone on the same page, especially when your freelancers go rogue. But with Fiverr Business, you get access to an all-star team of amazing freelancers, plus all of the tools and the support that you need

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mindset. Another thing that will help you as well is to realize the difference between pain versus suffering. And this is super important, okay? Because pain is the pain that you feel and pain is inevitable. that you feel and pain is inevitable. You can't go through this life without some form of pain. Pain is inevitable. You're going to have scars in this. In any lifetime, you're going to have scars. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. What do I mean by that? Pain is somebody died and the emotions that you feel with that. Pain is the feelings that you feel from the loss of someone. Suffering is the resistance to someone's death,

which then makes it even worse. It is the unnecessary part of it, right? It's the thoughts of, oh my gosh, they were too young. It shouldn't have been them. It shouldn't have happened this way. Maybe, what did I do wrong? Part of this is my fault. I should have been, been there for them. I shouldn't have let them get in the car. I shouldn't have let

them do that thing. And most of the time, the suffering comes from not accepting, right? So there's the pain of the event that's going to happen. You're going to have pain. It's part of being a human. The suffering is not accepting it and wishing that it was different. There is no other way that it could have happened because it didn't happen any other way. It happened the way that it happened. It could not have happened any other way. Why? Because it didn't. You have to learn to accept. The suffering comes when you are resisting the way that the world is. There's nothing you can do about them. It is in the past. There's nothing you can do about anything in your past, right? The only thing that you can do something about is you. So you have to learn to accept. You cannot change. Accept that that's

just the way that the world is, right? Another thing that I always tell myself that I heard from Ram Dass, who is a spiritual teacher who passed away about a year and a half ago, is something that I say every, that I've noticed. And I start to say to myself over the past year and a half, when someone that I know passes away. And what he says is that a soul does not leave this plane that we're in a second too soon or a second too late. It happened exactly the way that it was supposed to happen. If you believe in God or the universe or fate, or, you know, the quantum realm of all of this stuff that's happening, you've got to believe that everything happens the way that it's supposed to, right? And I've

just accepted I'm not in control. I'm not in control of when someone leaves this time. I'm not in control of when I leave this. It's going to happen the way it's supposed to happen. A soul does not leave this plane a second too soon or a second too late. Just the way it goes. It worked out exactly the way it was supposed It worked out exactly as it was supposed to work out. That was, you know, if you want to say that was their karmic predicament, it could be. And the way that you're reacting to it is also your karmic predicament too, what's going on with that. So you have to realize that death is going to happen, but you can make it easier on yourself by instead of not accepting, actually sitting down accepting and start figuring out what you

love most about them and bringing that person into yourself and then being okay and not judging yourself for the grieving process and allowing things just to happen. So that's the death of a loved one. Now, let's talk about you dying because it's going to happen. You're not going to be able to live to 500 years old. You know, there's all these people that are talking about longevity and living forever and putting yourself inside of a freezer until something happens. I don't know what all that stuff is. I'm not going to resist it. It's going to happen, right? It's going to happen. And most people are terrified of it. It's going to happen. There's nothing you can do about it. So you might as well figure out a way to become at

least a little bit more okay with it, right? No matter how terrified you are of it, it's still going to happen. So you might as well accept that shit, right? But the way that I see death is I see death as a beautiful part of life, right? We're dying at every single second. If you're watching me on video, I am slowly decaying in front of you every single second. As beautiful as that sounds, right? I'm decaying in front of you. For those of you guys that are listening to me just on the podcast, my voice is slowly deteriorating for you, right? But the beautiful thing about death, in my opinion, is death gives your life urgency, right? If you didn't have to die, if you were immortal, you'd always have tomorrow. Why do I need to go ahead and try to build this business?

Why do I need to try to get into that relationship, help the world, make money, have fun, you know, change other people's lives? Because there's always tomorrow. But the beautiful thing about death is that there is not always tomorrow. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. And so if you take life and look at it that way, you realize that that should bring your life some urgency, and urgency in a good way. And if you deal with, if you've ever heard of stoic philosophy, there's a stoic phrase, and stoics, the beautiful thing about the phrase that I heard around it, not the original phrase I was going to tell you, I'll tell you that in a second. But a phrase I heard around stoicism is that stoicism doesn't take away human emotions. It domesticates them. It makes you understand the emotions, feel them, and be able to work through them and process them in real time.

And one of the things that they say, the phrase in stoicism is memento mori, memento mori, right? Which means remember that you're going to die. And you may have heard me talk about this in the podcast before. And I've thought this way even before I ever heard the phrase, you know, momentomori. And I remember I was having a conversation with my mom not too long ago. And I was like, mom, just curious, how often do you think of death? And she's like, oh, I don't know, maybe once a week, once every two weeks or so. And I was like, oh, okay. And she goes, why? Why? How often do you think of death? And I was like, oh, I don't week, once every two weeks or so. And I was like, oh, okay. And she goes, why, why, how often do you think of death? And I was like, uh, I don't know, probably every few hours, five times a day, 10 times a day. And she's like, really? I was like, yeah,

but not in a creepy way. Like, Ooh, I'm thinking about death or I'm thinking about dead people or that type of stuff. Or, you know, I can't wait until it happens. I wasn't thinking any of that type of stuff. It's just like, it's going to happen. And if I think about the fact that it's going to happen, it brings me urgency. I always say that I don't really have any fears anymore, except for one. Like I don't care what people think about. I don't care about other people's opinions or judgments. I don't care about failing. I don't care about any of that stuff. I've worked through it mostly. I won't say I'm just completely relieved of it, but it's basically mostly gone. Right. The one fear that I really do have though, is that I'm going to get to my deathbed in wish

that I would have done something more to bring out my true potential for the world. Right. The only thing worse than the pain of hard work is a pain of regret. I do not want to regret anything when I die. I want to get to my deathbed and be like, damn, that was fun. You did everything you could kid. You did it all. You did everything. You built the business you wanted to. You had the family you wanted to, you had the kids you wanted to, you impact the world that you way you wanted to all of that stuff. And the reason why I do what I do and the reason why I push so much harder than a lot of other people that are in my industry, because I'm going to fucking die. And I pay attention to that every single day. Like I think about it all of the time. I'm very aware of it.

And it's a beautiful thing. So I want to experience everything that there is in this world. I want to experience all of the beautiful, all of the hard stuff. I want to experience everything there is. I want to bring out all of the potential that I feel that I have inside of myself. And I know you all feel that you have some potential inside of you. I want to release all of it to the world. So therefore, when I do get to that day, when it will eventually happen, I can go, all right, I'm ready. I've done all that I can. So when you can come to terms that everyone that you know is going to die and you are going to die as well, and you can come to terms with it and see it as a beautiful thing and give it, give it, have it give you more beautiful things in life than negative things. When you start thinking about death and when death happens to see when someone else dies,

you can take that beautiful part of them and put it into yourself. And you can look at your own death that will eventually happen and have it give you more urgency to get off the couch, to get off to Instagram, to do the things you want to, to impact the world, to impact the people around you, to bring out your potential to the world, you realize that death is actually one of the most beautiful parts of life. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode,

please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way that we grow is from you guys sharing this with other people. So I greatly, greatly appreciate you from the bottom of my heart. Every single one of you that always shares these episodes

because that's what helps us grow into one of the top 150 podcasts in the entire world. And I'm gonna leave it the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you

and I hope that you have an amazing day.