The Mindset Mentor - How to Destroy Your Negative Thoughts

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

In this episode, I will teach you how to destroy your negative thinking. Click here to follow me on Instagram @RobDialJr https://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 am your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button since you never miss another podcast episode. And if you want to follow along and see the inspirational videos we're putting up on YouTube, go ahead and go to YouTube, type my name in, Rob Dial, and be able to follow along with all of the stuff that we're putting up on the YouTube sphere. Today, we're going to be talking about how to destroy your negative thoughts and all of your negative thinking. All too often, I see people sit back and say, my life is the way that it is because of something. And that something always tends to be something

outside of them. And then they're like, oh, you know, it's my circumstances. It's my parents. It's the way I was raised. It's my family. It's my past. It's my children's fault. It's the president's fault. It's the government's fault. And they blame everything on something externally. And one of the biggest things, the biggest thing that I learned from my very first mentor when I was 19 years old, is that if I want to change my life, I need to take everything that's happening and just blame it on myself in a good way. Not in a bad way, not in a way to make me feel bad, but in a way of going, you know what? If everything is my fault, it then empowers me to know that I am the one

that's fully in control of my life. Because what you think in your head, you will get in reality. So if you're a negative person, you have negative thoughts all day long, what you think in your head, you will get in reality. If you are negative all day long, I guarantee you, you are going to find more negative things in your life all day. You literally create your reality. Let me give you an example of what I mean. There's a part of your brain called the reticular activating system. If you've never heard me talk about this, this is super interesting. The reticular activating system is your brain's filtering system. And so at one point in time, there's approximately 2 trillion bits of information per second that your brain could latch onto and have come into its awareness.

But your brain filters out everything except for 200 bits of information per second. This is why if you go and you buy a new car, you never see that car. And then you buy it and you're like, holy crap, this car is everywhere. I had an experience not too long ago. Someone that I knew from middle school passed away. And I went back onto his Facebook and I was looking through some of his pictures and seeing what he was doing and see what his life was. And I didn't know anything about it. I haven't talked to him like 17, 18 years. And I saw a picture of somebody that I haven't seen in a while. His name's Ryan. I was pretty good friends with Ryan back in middle school. And I hadn't thought about him in like 17, 18 years. And then the very next day I was at a coffee shop and I was working, getting my stuff done. And I look up and I see a guy with a dog

walking into the coffee shop. I was outside the coffee shop and I was like, oh my God, that's Ryan. I haven't seen him in so long. And then he turned around and I saw his face again. I was like, oh, that isn't Ryan. And I was so surprised because I realized that my reticular activating system, because I had seen a picture of Ryan the day before, saw him that day in somebody that wasn't actually him, even though I hadn't thought about him in 17, 18 years. So what happens is the same way that I'm going to start seeing a car that I haven't seen before, the same way that I'm going to see somebody that I haven't seen in 17, 18 years and someone that's actually not them. If I'm setting my reticular activating

system on what sucks in my life, if I'm setting it on all of the things that are negative in my life, I'm going to start to notice more negative things, which means, like I said, you literally create your own reality. If I'm waking up and immediately going to what sucks, I'm negative, this day sucks, I don't want to be awake, then I'm going to create more negative things by just having negativity in my awareness. If that negativity is circling in my awareness, I will find more of that. What you focus on, you will get more of. That's what happens with the reticular activating system. So if I'm thinking about negative thoughts all day long, how in the hell am I going to figure out a way to be positive?

How am I going to be positive? That's going to be really freaking hard, isn't it? Because if I'm waking up and immediately going to negativity, I'm going to find more negativity. And so before I give you tips real quick on how to actually change that, let me give you a couple of examples of the way negativity or positivity or anything works in your brain. Let me give you a couple of examples. Think about it this way.

Let's say that I have a big old bucket of water. And to the right, I have a flower bed. And to the left, I have a flower bed. On the right-hand side is all positivity. On the left-hand side is all positivity. On the right hand, on the left hand side is all negativity. I have an option of taking the water that's inside of the bucket and pouring it into one of the two of them. Whichever one I put my water into, it will grow those flowers or those weeds based off of how much water I put into it. The water is the equivalent to your energy and your focus.

If I'm putting my energy and my focus into the negative stuff that's around me in my day, that will grow. I will grow negativity weeds if that's what I'm putting my energy into. If I'm putting my energy into the flower bed and my water into the flower bed, that is what's going to grow. You will not have something grow unless you water it. But the water is your energy. What are you putting your energy to?

Are you waking up and saying, woe is me and oh, my life is this way because of my parents, because of the government, because of my circumstances, because of this, because of this, because of this? Or are you going, hey, these are my circumstances, but I'm going to take my energy. I'm going to take this water and I'm going to pour it into positivity and find something that I'm grateful for. Find something that I'm positive for and something that I can appreciate because I know that what I appreciate appreciates. So I'm going to focus on finding the things that actually I'm happy with and that are going well for me. The reason why this is important, because you have to realize that humans are inherently negative. Let me explain why that is.

Humans are inherently negative because negativity is bad. Our brain wants to search for things that are bad. And the reason why is because our brain wants to solve the bad because bad a hundred thousand, 200,000 years ago meant death. And so our brain wants to, our brain, the thing that it does more than anything else is its job is to keep us alive. Our brain cares about survival more than anything else. So our brain is kind of like a negativity searching mechanism. It's always looking for what is negative and what is bad around us because it wants to stay away from those things or pay attention to those things. So therefore we don't fall into that trap in die.

Now I know that if you wake up and you start thinking about how, you know, you lost your job, you're not going to die, that you're going to, you're going to, you're going to hate what's going on. That's for sure. But what happens is your brain will seek out what is negative. The reason why it seeks out what is negative so that therefore it can make sure that it avoids that thing because negativity means bad, bad means death. Your brain wants to avoid anything that's bad and negative because therefore it means death.

So your brain will find the negativity automatically. That's why if you want to be positive, you better make sure that with every action that you take, you're trying to find something that's positive because you're automatically most likely going to go to the negative. And so people are like, why do I have these negative thoughts that pop in my head automatically without me even thinking about them? Because that's what your brain is designed to do. So if you want to be more positive, you have to realize, hey, I got to do everything that I possibly can to be positive,

knowing that my brain is going to go towards the negative. Now, when my brain does go towards the negative, what do I have to do? I have to do everything that I can to pull myself out of that negativity, knowing that that's just what's going to happen. Make sense? Your brain's naturally going to be negative if you're like most people, which means that you're going to have to work harder to be positive. But it doesn't mean that positivity is impossible. It just means that positivity and being positive and finding things you're grateful for takes work. So you're going to have to put the work in. You also have to realize that sometimes what you're doing is you're actually searching for the negative things within yourself. This is where it gets really difficult because what do a lot of us do? We talk shit to ourselves in our head and we

say things that's not positive. We say things that's not motivating and we say things that we would never say to somebody that we love. Think of all of the negative things that you've said to yourself. All of the, you look fat in these jeans, you're ugly. Look at that pimple on your face. You're stupid. All of the things that you might've said to yourself and realize that you probably would never say any of those things to someone that you love, right? Like if your friend called you and she had a really bad first date, she's like, yeah, you know, I was really into the guy. And you know, he said that, that he, he thought we'd be thought we'd be better off as friends. You wouldn't go, yeah, well, Stacey, it's because you probably need to lose 15 pounds. Probably because your

haircut. Probably because you don't look too good. Probably because you're not too smart. You'd never say that to your friend. You'd be there and you'd be there to support her, right? So why would you do that to yourself? Because how many people go on to a date or have something happen and go, oh, you shouldn't have said that. That was stupid. You shouldn't have spoke up at that meeting. You're always so stupid. You say the stupidest shit. Be quiet. Don't start. Don't say anything anymore. Oh, that's why no one's interested in you because you need to lose 15 pounds because your hair looks stupid because that zit on your face. How often do we talk to ourselves that way? How often do we hold ourselves back from all of the amazing

things that we could do in this world because we're too busy talking trash to ourselves? You would never talk to someone that you love the way that you talk to yourself. Hey everybody, let me tell you about my favorite drink that I drink every single day first thing in the morning. It's called Athletic Greens. It's the very first thing that I have as soon as I wake up in the morning within the first two minutes of waking up and in one scoop in about 30 seconds I get 75 vitamins minerals and whole food source ingredients it has everything that a multivitamin has that you would take plus it's got greens it's got probiotics prebiotics digestive enzymes immunity formula adaptogens and so much more and I love it so much that literally when COVID hit

I sent it to my mom so that she could keep her immune system up and paid for it out of my own pocket because I wanted to make sure that her immune system was strong. So if you're looking to upgrade your multivitamin or just take one nutritional formula that's going to cover all of your nutritional bases each day, then you want to consider Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens makes it easy to get high quality nutrition as quickly as possible and as easy as possible without the need to buy multiple products. So make an investment in your health and try the ultimate all-in-one wellness bundle and support your immunity and gut health by

visiting athleticgreens.com slash dial. When you do, you'll receive a full year supply of liquid vitamin D for free with your first purchase. Again, that's athleticgreens.com slash D-I-A-L. So why would you talk to yourself that way? Because ultimately, the one person that you should love more than anybody else in the world is yourself. Because the more that you love yourself, the better that you are, the better that you leave the world, the better that you interact with everyone else that's around you. One video that I absolutely love that has to do with this, my friend Jay Shetty made a video and he sat down with some women who were in their late 20s, early 30s. And he said, hey, what I want you to do with the pen and paper is write down all of the negative stuff that you know

you say to yourself, all of the crappy things that you say, write it all down. So they have a pen and paper and they're writing it all down. They're writing it, they're writing it. And he goes, okay, what I want you to do is this, come with me. And he takes them into another room and they didn't know this, but in the other room are their little sisters, like 10 to 16 years old. And he goes, I want you to go ahead and say everything that's on that sheet of paper to your little sister. And these women are like, there's no way I can't do that. He goes, why not? He's like, because that's, why would I say that to a 10 and 16 year old girl? Like, how bad is it to say something like that to them? And then you realize that you're still that 5,

10, 16 year old person deep down inside. And you're saying that to your little self all day long. You would never talk to someone that you love the way that you talk to yourself. So why would you talk to yourself that way? What benefit has ever come from talking down to yourself? Ever. What benefit has ever come from seeking out the negative in everything that's happening? So what you have to do is you have to become very self-aware of when you start to do this. You have to become aware, number one, that you might have a problem. We all have problems in

different ways, but a lot of people have problems with the negativity side. So if we're trying to destroy negative thoughts, we need to first become very self-aware that we have a lot of negative thoughts and we need to pay attention to every single thought. Because what happens is a lot of times thoughts will come up. We just act like they're just reaction. They'll just pop up. They just pop up kind of like, you know, bubbling to the surface. And we're not in control of them.

And then when they come up, then we react to them. So what do we need to do? We need to become very self-aware of these thoughts. If we want to change something, we need to become aware of when this something that we want to change comes up. And here's a tip that I'm going to give you to help you out with this. Try this for one week. I know that majority of people out here listening to me right now won't do this. But if you're serious about becoming better at self-love,

about becoming better at appreciating yourself and finding more positive things and getting rid of the negative self-talk, This is a challenge I want to give you. Go to a store, Walgreens, CVS, whatever it is, wherever you live in the world, and get a little notebook. Like one of the ones that's like, you know, the size of your hand, basically the one that'll fit in your pocket. And I want you to, for a week straight, don't do this on your phone, do it with a pen and paper. Every single negative thought that pops into your head, I want phone. Do it with a pen and paper. Every single negative thought that pops into your head, I want you to write it down with pen and paper. Don't type it. I want you to write it down. Every single negative thing that you say. And the reason why is because you're

going to start to build awareness. You can't change anything that you're not aware of. And so I want you to take them from inside of your head to on a piece of paper. And you're going to build this awareness. And you're going to start to notice that when I do certain things, I start to talk to myself this way. When this happens to me, I start to talk to myself this way. And you'll notice, and listen, the thing I'm going to tell you is this. If you're going to be doing this, don't attach any emotion to this. Look at it as if you're just writing stuff down because the worst thing that could happen. And I know that some people do this. If I don't preface it this way,

you're going to write something down. And then what are you going to do? You're going to start to judge yourself for it. You're going to start to shame yourself for it. You're going to start to guilt yourself for it. Don't do that. You're just going to take whatever's going on in your head and you're going to put it down on a piece of paper. And you're going to start to build awareness around all of the things that you say to yourself that are negative every single day. Because when it's in your head, when it's in your head, it doesn't seem real. It's not tangible. It's not something that you can hold on to in this world. But when you take it and you actually write it down, going from your head and putting it on a piece of paper and it's physical and you can hold it, it becomes real. And then you look at it and go, wow, yeah,

I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to talk to myself anymore. And you start to realize, number one, the negative stuff that you're saying. Number two, what makes these negative thoughts come up? Maybe certain actions or certain feelings or certain people that you're around throughout the day make it come up. And number three, what you realize is that I can change this. And writing it down makes it real. And you're like, you know what? This is something that I'm going to take. I'm looking. I said 17 negative things to myself today. These are all the things. You look fat in that. You look stupid. You know, you shouldn't speak up because you got a lisp. Whatever it is, you say all of these negative things to yourself. So the first tip I'm going to give you is write down every single negative thought for a week.

Just the awareness will start to have you change your mind in the way that you are. Then what happens is you start to change that negativity and turn into positivity. So that's the second tip. Whenever I notice a negative thought pop in my head, that's one negative thought. I'm going to write it down. My job is to now say three positive things to basically take that one thing and trump it with something that's even bigger. So it's like, if I have one negative thought, I'm going to have three positive thoughts. And I'm going to do this over and over and over and over again. And by doing this, you're actually starting to rewire and reprogram your brain. You're not going

to be the most positive person within seven days. But if you do this for a while, over and over and over and over again, you're going to start to notice you're a lot more positive a person because you're starting to re wire yourself to be more positive and less negative. So that's the second tip I'm going to give you about it. First one, write every single negative thought down. Number two, whenever you get a negative thought, you got to go ahead and take it and make three positive thoughts out of it after you write down. And number three is to program yourself with gratitude and positivity from the beginning of your day. The same way that if I were to get into my car right now, I live in Austin, Texas, and I were to go, you know what? I'm going to go to Houston, Texas. What am I going to do? I'm

going to take my phone out. I'm going to get my GPS and I'm going to say, okay, here's my friend's address. This is my intention is to go from Austin, Texas to my friend Mike's house in Houston and it will take me there. I want to program myself in the morning, set my GPS every single morning to then get me to how I want to feel. My morning routine is not just a checklist. I want to feel. My morning routine is not just a checklist. My morning routine is actually giving me up for how I want to feel for the day. And so what do I do? The first 15 minutes, the very first thing that I do, I wake up, I go to the bathroom, I drink water, I brush my teeth. And then what do

I do? The first 15 minutes of my day, 10 to 15 minutes, I focus on what can I be grateful for? And I just find things to be grateful for. I'm I focus on what can I be grateful for? And I just find things to be grateful for. I'm not trying to find things to be grateful for, just be grateful. I'm trying to program gratitude into my brain. What you appreciate, appreciate. So if I'm going to find more things to be grateful for, I'm going to set that reticular activating system first thing in the morning, then I'm going to find throughout the day more things that I'm grateful for. I'm going to feel better and I'm going to create more things to be grateful for. So the same way that if you wake up and you're like, shit, I don't want to be awake. I don't want to be here. I wish I could just keep

sleeping in. I don't want to go to my stupid job. You start off on negativity. You're going to be more negative throughout the day. I'm going to program myself knowing that my brain is naturally going to gear towards negativity to actually program myself and set myself up, set my GPS up to how I want to feel, to be grateful and positive throughout the day. And so the third thing is to start every day with gratitude. Set your mental GPS for how you want to feel because negativity is what you will gear towards. But if you start setting your, if you turn your ship and go, I want to go this way instead, and you start focusing on things that you could be grateful for, you'll find more things to be grateful for.

You'll be more positive. And within six months, a year, two years, three years, you notice that you're not the same person. And the reason why is because you've changed yourself. You've rewired your brain and you've changed yourself to find things to be grateful for and to make positive out of negative and you become an optimistic person when you used to be a pessimistic person. So that is how you rewire yourself to destroy your negative thoughts to become a positive person. So that's what I got

for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share with someone that you know and love. Please go ahead and put 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 podcast. So I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. If you've ever gotten any value from anything that I've ever put out there, go ahead and share this on your Instagram stories

so that more people can find it. And I'm gonna leave it the same way I leave you every single episode, making sure mission makes someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.