The Mindset Mentor - How to Grow Through Suffering

Episode Date: June 15, 2022

Today I am going to teach you how to use suffering as a way to grow yourself into who you want to become! Want to master your mindset? Every Monday I send out an email with mindset tips for the week, click here to receive that email: http://mondayemail.com/ Follow me on IG for more inspiration here: 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 am your host, Rob Dial. And 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 live in the United States or Canada, and you want to receive motivational text messages from me directly to your cell phone, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, we're going to talk about how to grow through suffering and how suffering is actually necessary for you to get the life that you want. And this is going to be through a concept that I call applied suffering. And let me first

talk about suffering, okay? When we hear the word suffering, it has a bad connotation because nobody really wants to suffer. Nobody wants to suffer going through their life. And let's split up pain and suffering as two separate words so we can kind of even get a little bit more clear on what we're talking about here, right? So there's pain. Pain is inevitable in life. You're going to have pain. There's no way to go through your entire life without some sort of scars in some way. Suffering, on the other hand, is optional. There's some people that are still suffering an event or the emotions or the feelings of an event that happened 10 years ago. That's an option. That's not something that's necessary. Those people are waking up and choosing to basically emotionally punch themselves in the face, right? Pain is inevitable. Suffering is an option.

But let's talk about how to actually use suffering to grow. Here's the thing that I want you guys to understand. Pain is actually a stimulus for your brain or body to make a change. So let me actually give you an example of, you know, the pain and the suffering and how to use these things to actually help yourself, okay? When you're walking in the middle of the summer through a large, let's say you just got done on the beach, right? So you don't have your shoes on and you're walking through a large black concrete parking lot. And about 15 feet into it, you realize, holy crap, my feet are burning. What is that? That pain is a stimulus for your brain or your body to make a change. To make a change. That means, now pain,

ow, feet are hot. My feet are hot because I'm in a hot parking lot. I need to get off this hot parking lot. I need to either run back to where I came from, I need to put my shoes on, or I need to run to the car as quick as I possibly can. Pain is a stimulus for the brain or body to make a change. It is forcing you to move. It is forcing you to take action. If you go and you decide to work out, your muscles don't grow unless you put them through some sort of pain, a little bit of applied suffering. You're walking into the gym to apply pain and suffering, applied suffering, to your muscles. So if you're going to be working out your biceps and you want them to grow, there is going to be pain there. You know, how does a

muscle grow? It has to be put through some sort of pain. That's the way that it goes. How does a plant grow? A lot of people don't realize, and one of my favorite quotes is actually from, I think it's called Honey Boy, but it's a movie with Shia LaBeouf and it's about a little bit based on his childhood. And his dad says to him, in order for a seed to become a flower, it has to completely destroy itself. I just whistled really loud just then. Let me say that again. In order for a seed to become a flower, it has to completely destroy itself. What does that mean? The seed can't stay a seed forever if it's going to turn into a flower. There's got to be some pain. It's got to break through the shell. It's got to break through the

ground. It's got to go through some turbulent times, right? It's like before a tree grows high, it's also got to plant its roots really deep. Why? Because the wind's going to blow the higher that it goes. The higher that you go, the harder the wind blows. And so that's how mussels grow. That's how plants grow. What about a lobster? You know the story of how lobsters grow? Lobsters are not hard shell animals. Now, if you've ever picked up a lobster, you know that they have a hard shell on them. That's an exoskeleton. But inside, they're actually a really soft animal that never stops growing ever. Its entire life, it continues to grow and grow and grow. Now, what does that mean? Well, eventually it gets to the point where it actually outgrows its shell. And so what does it do? That lobster

actually has to go into a rock, like a hole inside of the rock, and it actually has to break its shell off, its exoskeleton, in order for it to regrow another one. Which means the stimulus for a lobster to grow is pain. It is suffering. It is literally so tight that it has to break through as this little thin, I mean, if you've ever actually felt a lobster before, I've been lobstering many times. I've had lobster quite a few times. The inside of a lobster is so soft, but somehow it has to get so big that it breaks this hard external shell and the shell is not very easy to break. And so how does a lobster grow? A lobster has to grow through some pain. It has to grow through some suffering. And so usually what happens, the universe or God or whatever

it is that's out there that helps us grow, will usually speak to you in a whisper. And then if you don't listen long enough, it'll slap you. And it's like the phrase that I always talk about, where it's the feather, the brick, and the truck. It starts off as the feather. It's like a little bit of a tickle on the back of your neck. It's a little bit of a whisper in your ear. If you don't listen, you don't listen to what you want to do and what you want to do and what you want to do, then it's like a brick. It's going to smack you with a brick. Things are going to get much harder. And then if you don't do what you're supposed to do in your life, your purpose, whatever it is you feel as you're calling, your gut feeling what it is that you want to do,

it's like getting hit by a truck. And usually that's something big that happens in someone's life to wake them up. It might be the death of a loved one. It might be a heart attack. It might be something that happens, right? That's usually how the universe comes through and speaks. And so all of these things that I'm talking about is some sort of pain, some sort of suffering that you have to go through in order to grow. that you have to go through in order to grow. But here's the problem with pain, with discomfort, with the suffering, is that people fear discomfort. People do not like discomfort. Most people try to avoid it at all costs. They try to do anything to avoid discomfort. And that's one of the things that I've noticed is that people continue to get more and more comfortable as time goes on. My generation is more comfortable than the generation

before. The generation before is more comfortable than the generation before them and before them and before them and before them. And so we like to do anything to avoid discomfort. The word discomfort implies the opposite of your comfort zone, right? It literally implies that you are not going to be comfortable. Discomfort means not comfortable. So look around you. Have you already gotten to the max of what your comfort zone will get you to? Like if you look at what you have, what you've accomplished, all that stuff, the comfort zone that you're in and everything that you have, you've probably gotten to the max of what you can accomplish in this comfort zone. And if you stay in that comfort zone,

your life is going to be the same forever. Forever, forever, forever, your life will not change. You're not going to make much more money. You're not going to have much more happiness. You're not going to have much more peace. You have to apply suffering, apply discomfort, get out of your comfort zone in order for things to change. It is a stimulus for growth. And most people, they end up getting into a comfortable place in their life and they stay there forever. And I understand it.

I think it's actually built into our system once we get comfortable to stay there forever. Because if you think about a caveman 100,000 years ago, they didn't want to leave the cave in the morning. They would much rather stay inside the cave where it's safe, where there's no tigers that are going to come in. They can protect the one opening of the cave. It's much more comfortable to be in a cave. It's much more safe to be in a cave and there's not much discomfort. Your comfort zone, though, is where your dreams go to die. Your comfort zone is where your dreams go to die. Discomfort needs to be your friend if you're going to do something amazing with your life.

You need to apply suffering. That's just the way that it goes. Because the applied suffering is a stimulus to growth. Hey, do you have an account with Coinbase or are you thinking of opening one? Well, with Alto Crypto IRA, you can trade crypto like Bitcoin and avoid or defer the taxes. Get into investing in crypto and do it in a tax advantage retirement account. Alto's Crypto IRA is the easy way to get crypto into an IRA. Trade all that you want without the tax headache, create an account in

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that you get it in time. Remember, head to zbiotics.com slash mindset and use the code MINDSET at checkout for 15% off. Thank you ZBiotics for sponsoring this episode. Now you might be looking and saying, okay, well then what does that mean exactly? Well, let's say your body for instance, right? If you want your body to become better, if you were, you know, wanting to have an amazing body for the summer, you need to get uncomfortable.

You need to apply suffering. You need to have some discomfort in order for your body to grow. You will not be able to do the exact same thing that you've been doing for years and years and years and expect that your body is going to change. It's like Einstein says, do the same thing over and over again, expect different results is insanity. It is insane to think that if you do the exact same thing you've always done, that you're going to get something different. Because if you do the exact same thing you've always done, you're going

to get the exact same results that you've always had. So if you want to change your body, what do you have to do? You have to hurt it a little bit. You have to do some lifts that are painful. You have to sweat. You might throw up from pushing your body so much. It's not recommended you do that every single workout, but sometimes it's good to do. Sometimes it's a little bit of pushing yourself past that point of comfort so you know where that point is. But when you do that is when your body grows. Your brain and your mindset work the exact same way. If you want to change your brain through neuroplasticity, neuroplasticity only happens when you do something that pushes you outside of what you typically do. If you think the same thoughts that you did yesterday, and just so you know, average person has about 60 to 90,000

thoughts per day, and about 90% of them are the same as they were yesterday. So if you think the same thoughts that you did yesterday, the day before that, the day before that, the day before that, the day before that, the day before that. Is your brain ever going to change? No. There's no reason for it to change because you're thinking the same thoughts over and over and over and over and over and over again. The way to change your brain is to actually do something that you've never done before, to think what you've never thought before, and to actually seek discomfort, to find a way to be uncomfortable. The more that I start to learn about neuroplasticity and neurobiology is you actually realize the brain doesn't change unless it is actually forced to change at this point. You have to put yourself into extreme focus, extreme agitation, and you

have to really focus on how do you change yourself and do it over and over and over and over and over again. The life that you want is on the other side of that discomfort. So you've got to ask yourself, okay, is this discomfort going to kill me? Majority of the time, the discomfort that you're going to do working out at the gym, you know, put it, making yourself uncomfortable by, you know, dialing some phone numbers of your salesperson, by knocking on a few doors, by asking that person out, by building that business, whatever it is you're trying to do, is it going to kill you? Come on. No. Is it going to help you grow? Most likely.

So if you ask yourself that question, is it going to kill me? No. Is it going to help me grow? Yes. That is something that you should do. You should do something that is going to keep you alive. I'm not saying just like jump out of airplanes with no parachute. What I'm saying, do something where you're still going to be alive and that's something that helps you grow in some sort of way. And if you can think of your brain like a muscle and ask yourself, am I safe? Am I safe going into this thing? And answer like literally as if you're talking to yourself, am I safe? Yes. Is he going to kill me? No. Could this help me grow? Yes. If so, go 100% full force into it. Balls to the wall, just freaking go for it. That's what I want you to do. So I've got an assignment for you and I would love for you to tag me in it. I've done this before years ago where I had people tag me or send me videos inside of my Instagram of them actually

doing it. I want you to do something today that makes you completely uncomfortable. Okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to walk into your coffee shop and when you walk into that coffee shop, I want you to ask for a 20% discount. And it seems silly, but why not? What are you afraid of doing? The person saying no to you? Well, that's something you should learn about yourself. I'm afraid of someone saying no to me. I'm afraid of rejection. I'm afraid of someone not accepting me in some sort of way. I had one time, probably about seven years ago now, I had a group of people. I was like, here's my challenge. Go ask for a 20% discount at the coffee shop. One of the ladies asked for a 20% discount

at the purse shop and saved like $300 on this expensive purse that she bought simply because she asked for 20% off. And the person was like, okay. Another thing you could do, go into the coffee shop and just ask, I'm sorry, instead of asking for a discount, just go into the coffee shop and just ask i'm sorry instead of asking for a discount just go to the coffee shop and just lay down on the floor why because you're not quote unquote supposed to do that right i had a video one time where i i gave this as an assignment years ago and somebody sent me a video on instagram this lady this is probably 24 25 years old laying down in the middle of walmart and now some of you guys like oh that oh, that's gross. That's so disgusting. The floors are so gross. Who cares? Wash your clothes, wash your hands. Not that big of a deal, right? What you really have to do though is you start

to ask yourself, like some people listening to me saying, asking for a discount are already getting triggered. Some people hearing me say, lay down on the floor are already getting triggered. And where you're triggered, you're not free. And so shouldn't we be constantly pushing ourselves a little bit to the boundaries of where we're not free? And lay down inside of a coffee shop. Just see what happens. Lay down inside of Walmart, whatever it is. It seems silly, but why not? Why are you afraid of doing it? There's some sort of discomfort. You've got to lean into the discomfort and just do something that you're uncomfortable with. And what you'll start to notice is as you push these boundaries over and over and over and over again, what you notice is that your comfort zone expands. What you're uncomfortable with. And what you'll start to notice is as you push these boundaries over and over and over and over again, what you notice is that your comfort zone expands,

what you're comfortable doing expands. And when your comfort zone expands, you expand. You grow through the applied suffering of doing things that you don't want to do, of jumping into that cold plunge, of putting yourself into the sauna longer than you want to, of doing the workout, of asking for the discount, of laying down in the coffee shop. You don't grow unless you do something different. And so when I say applied suffering, what I mean is how can I put myself into a state of discomfort because that means that I am out of my comfort zone every single day. And my comfort zone will grow. It will grow. It will grow. It will grow. So that's my assignment for you today. And what I want you to do, I know some people, majority of people are not going to do this, but there's my assignment for you today. And what I want you to do, I know some people,

majority of people are not going to do this, but there's a few of you that are like, fuck it, let's go for it. I want you to send me a video on Instagram, whatever it is, of you laying on the floor, of you asking for the discount, of you telling me how it went

so that I can actually report back to people who are here how it went and what you learned from it so that we can start to learn from what you guys are doing. It's funny, it's ridiculous, it's silly, but it is at the edge of most people's comfort zone and that's where we're trying to live. At the edge of the comfort zone, not inside of the comfort zone. So how do you grow? You grow through applied suffering. That is what applied suffering is, seeking the discomfort. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor, share it on your Instagram

stories and tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you're out there and you want to receive motivational text messages from me directly to your cell phone and you live in the United States or Canada, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. And with that, I'm going to 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.