The Mindset Mentor - How To Reclaim Your Brain

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am 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 love this podcast, I guarantee you this. You will absolutely love and have your life changed at my three-day in-person event in Austin, Texas. Later on this year, the information has not been announced yet. You cannot buy ticket. But you can join the waitlist at Freedomwaitlist.com.

And you can actually be the first to learn about it. and also get the biggest deepest discount. So once again, that is freedomwaitlist.com right now. Today, I want to talk to you about how to reclaim your brain. Because if you feel stuck right now, if you feel anxious all the time, if you find yourself overthinking and procrastinating and doubting yourself and falling back into the same old patterns over and over again, the problem is most likely inside of your own head.

So today we're going to talk about how. how to reclaim your brain, how to finally become conscious of the patterns that are controlling your mind and your entire life. And I'm going to teach you how to stop letting your mind be the one that runs your life and how you can actually master your own mind. And we're going to talk about the two systems that are running in your brain every single day all day long, whether you realize it or not. If once you understand how these two systems work by themselves, but also how they work together, everything changes. It changes your anxiety, your habits, your reactions, your confidence, your overthinking, your self-talk, your ability to take action. Because the truth is that

most people are not consciously living. They are unconsciously reacting to life based off of an old set of programs. And there's a huge difference between those two things. So, let's dive in. There's a psychologist named David Kahneman who wrote a book called Thinking Fast and and Slow. And it's a great book, but let me just summarize what I think is the most important part of okay. In the book, he explains that your brain operates through two separate systems. So there's system one and there's system two. And I spoke about this about a month ago, real quick on a podcast episode, but I was like, you know what, I need to probably dedicate an entire episode to really diving into this. So let's talk about system one first. And I want you to think about this is this.

There's two separate parts of your brain that are basically operating. It's not like there's, yes, there is one brain, but it's kind of like there's two brains inside of your brain. Okay, so system one is fast. It comes in immediately. It's basically become automatic for you and you don't even notice it. It is usually emotional. It is reactive. It is instinctive. And it's usually based in fear. and it's the part of your brain that jumps to conclusions immediately when something happens. It reacts emotionally. It assumes. It judges. It overthinks. It catastrophizes. And if not checked, it will spiral automatically, usually into some sort of anxious feeling. Okay. System 1 is the autopilot mind. It is your conditioning from your childhood and everything that has happened to you since.

It is the program that is running at all points in time. It's not who you truly are. It's not the truth of the world. It's a program that was accidentally installed into you in your younger years. It's what was downloaded into you from the moment that you were born. It's the reason why you can do something as an adult and go, oh, shit. That was like just like my mom. Right?

Like you can notice it. Or maybe your spouse goes, oh, my God, that was literally your dad. Like what you just said was exactly what your dad would say. And here, this is the reason also why, like, we have the same mannerisms a lot of time as our parents. These are things that are downloaded into us without us even realizing it. So the important part to understand is that system one is mostly built from your past. Okay. Your childhood, your experiences, the trauma that you have had, your environment that you are raised in, your patterns, all of that. So when something happens in your life, you usually don't respond to it, usually react first. And I want you to fully let that sing in for a minute, like really understand it. When something happens to you or something happens around you or something happens in your life, you don't think first and then react like you might think that you do. You react first and then you think. That's system one and then system two coming in. System 1 is that automatic reaction that you don't even notice.

And then system 2 will come in a little bit later. System 2 is more of your conscious mind. System 2 is slower. It comes in a little bit later, maybe 5, 10, 30 seconds, 60 seconds later. It is more intentional. It's more logical. It is more aware. System 2 is the part of you that you can pause and you can actually say,

hold on. This thing that I'm thinking, is this actually true? Like, do I really want to react this way? Is this fear real? Or is this fear conditioning? Like, is this helping me in some sort of way? That is system two. It's not reaction. It's not based off the past. It is slower, more methodical, more intentional, and it is usually based in this present moment. And here's why this matters so much. Most people think that they're their thoughts. And so they think that they are the reaction. And so they think that they are the reaction that first comes in through system one. But you're honestly not your thoughts. You are the awareness behind your thoughts. You are the observer that's behind all of your programming. You are the awareness that's behind both systems. Right. So there's system one and system two. Both

of those are part of your brain. To be honest with you, you are the consciousness is behind all of those thoughts. And once you realize that, like truly get it into your bones, everything will start to change. Okay. So let's dive a little bit into it a little bit more and then we'll talk about how to actually use it. Your first thought, as we said, is usually conditioning. You've heard me say this so many times on the podcast. You cannot control your first thought, but you can always control your second thought. What that means is you cannot control system one, but you can always control system two. Why? Because, like I said, your first thought is usually system one. It's your conditioning. It's your patterning. It's your programming. Like let's say, let's say somebody doesn't text you back, right? System one will go to

they must be mad at me or they don't care about me or I'm not important or I must have done something wrong. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. You ever have that happen before or am I the only one? Oh my God, I must have done something wrong. Did I say something? And I start thinking about the things I did before, right? It's usually automatic. It comes in. It's instant. there's no real conscious thought that is behind it that's involved. Let me give you another example, right? Lots of people who listen to this podcast are either business owners or they want to start a business, right? System one will come in.

You say, I want to start a business. System one will come in and say, no, you're going to fail. You're not smart enough. Who do you think that you are? What if people judge you, right? All of it. It'll just bring it all up. That's not truth.

That's just programming. That is old conditioning that is just trying to keep you safe. once you realize that everything that's holding you back is just your brain trying to keep you safe, you can start to look at through a different lens. Because your brain's number one job is not happiness, it's survival. And your brain would rather keep you familiar than happy or fulfilled. Even if that familiar thing is making you miserable. And so that's why people stay in toxic relationships,

or they stay in jobs that they hate, or they stay in patterns that destroy them, or they stay in self-doubt for years, because familiar feels safe to the nervous system, even if it's chaos, even if it's painful, familiar feels safe, even if it's not making your life head in the right direction, okay? And this is the reason why anxiety feels automatic.

Like, if we think about anxiety for a second, Most anxiety is system one trying to predict danger. That's it. Your brain scanning the future and saying, what could go wrong? What if this fails? What if they reject me? What if I embarrass myself? Protection, protection, protection, protection.

And your body responds like the danger is happening right now, even though it's all imaginary. It's all in your mind. Your heart races, your chest tightens, your nervous system activates because your system one, part of your brain, cannot tell the difference between real danger that's actually in this present moment and imagine danger that your brain is just conjuring up out of nothing. Which is why people, myself included, I've done this many times in my life,

can literally stress themselves out while laying safely in bed. That's how powerful your mind is. Like think about this, for instance, right? Have you ever had this happen to you in some sort of way? Like maybe you're in a dream and you're being chased by a tiger, or you're running from somebody with a knife or you're on the edge of a building or whatever it is. And it freaks you out so much that you wake up. It's so intense and it's so vividly imagined that you wake up and when you wake up, you're sweaty, your heart is racing, you're anxious.

You have to understand. Your body did not move anywhere. It was in the same spot. but your mind was so vividly imagining something that you started to sweat, that your heart started racing, that your breath changed, that you woke up full of fear and anxiety. Isn't that crazy? Like we are low-level doing that almost all day long, a lot of us, by just imagining these fake futures, and then our body is just getting beat up because of it.

And the scary part is that most people never pause long enough to question those thoughts. They just believe them because they've thought them for so long. you know like you might have a thought that's like i'm not good enough and they go yeah yep that's true or you might have a thought that's like i'll probably fail and you're like yep that's probably true i probably will fail or you have a thought like oh yeah nobody likes me yep must be true right we just never question them thoughts are not facts thoughts are electrical patterns running in the same way that they were when you got them installed as a child that's it like for instance i live in a house it's 20 years old, right? It's built in the early 2000s. And we have electricity throughout this entire

house. If I don't do anything about those electrical systems, it's all going to be exactly the same. You know, we got a sauna installed and we'd have an electrician come in and run from the panel a brand new wire directly to it. That is the equivalent of what we have to do in our minds if we're trying to change it because thoughts are just electrical signals going from one place to another inside of your brain. So most people are like, you know, my house is 20 years old. So they have 20 years of programming and it's running the same electrical signals over and over and over again. And they're like, I don't know why my life isn't different. And I'm like, because you've got to stop some of the electrical signals and you've got to start installing new ones. Your life will just not change for the

hell of it. You have to consciously be the person to change those thoughts, right? Because you've repeated those thoughts so many times, your brain thinks that their reality. And you actually believe them. You actually believe what goes on in your head and you think that it's truth. And this is why people can spend 20 years reinforcing an identity that they don't even consciously want anymore. The truth is, your mind will keep producing the same thoughts until you consciously interrupt them and install new wiring. That's what we need to dive into next. And so what most people don't realize, and if you don't do this, system two is not just going to automatically challenge system one. Most of the time, system two agrees with number one, which makes you actually hardwire number one and even more.

Like system, I'll give you an example, right? System one will create a fear. Then system two will start building a case for why that fear must be true automatically. So your system one says, I'm not good enough. And your system two goes, yeah, remember when you failed before? Remember when they rejected you? Remember when you embarrass yourself? So now you're conscious mind is using logic to defend your unconscious conditioning. What the fuck? Right? Like, you think of what I'm thinking? Oh my God. That's why we think we're being rational when we're, oh my gosh, well, this is my fear. Oh yeah, well, that fear seems rational. But really what we're doing is reinforcing old emotional patterns. So reclaiming your mind starts the moment that system two stops

defending your system one and it starts questioning it instead. And so how do we reclaim your brain? Reclaiming your brain starts with awareness. That's the first step. That's it. Not being perfect, just awareness. The moment you notice a thought and you see the thought as a thought, you are no longer trapped inside of that thought. If you can see something outside of you, or whether it's actually in a physical mind or your physical reality or in your mind, you're not it if you can see it. And so that's huge. You separate yourself from the thought. You kind of like see it at a distance. And at that moment, you are no longer your thoughts. That moment you can say, interesting, my brain is catastrophizing right now. When you do that, you have separated yourself

from the pattern. The moment that you say, ah, there's my anxiety again, you're no longer fully identified with it. That's system two stepping in and that's that's you consciously interrupting the conditioning. That is where your power is. Not in never having negative thoughts again. That will never happen. But in becoming aware enough to choose differently. So like let me give you an example, right? Let's say you want to post a video online. You know that that could help your business if you posted it. You know that it could change your life. But system one starts screaming, what if people judge you? What if you look stupid? What if nobody watches it? So what happens? Most people obey that thought. And then they say, oh, well, I procrastinate or I'm lazy or I don't have discipline.

No, it's not any of that. It's just unconscious emotional avoidance is really what it is. So system one is trying to avoid discomfort or pain or fear or worry. But system two, if you consciously step in, can say, hey, I hear the fear and I'm going to post it anyways. that moment right there, that is how you reclaim your life. That is how you build the new wiring inside of your brain. Not by these massive overhaulings of your brain, it's by noticing the little system one thoughts that come in hundreds of times per day and changing them when system two kicks in. Instead of allowing system two to agree and try to prove system one right. This in psychology is called cognitive reframing, which is noticing a thought in choosing a different thought over and over and over and over and over and over again.

And eventually your thoughts will start to change. This takes a long time, years. People always want it to happen in like a week. No, if you've been thinking the same thoughts for 46 years, you're not going to fix it in a week. You have 46 years of programming we need to fix. It's going to take a long time. But I promise you, it will work. And it is worth the work.

Okay? The goal is not to kill System 1. System 1 is not bad. You need it. System 1 will help you survive. It helps you drive your car. It helps you recognize patterns quickly. It helps you react fast when needed.

So the goal is not to eliminate it. The goal is to stop letting it completely run your life unconsciously. Like you want System 1 to serve you not to control you. And the way you do that is by strengthening your awareness, strengthening your ability to pause as soon as it comes in, and then strengthening your ability to choose your next thought, right? So let me give you some practical steps to actually use, like a step-by-step process to reclaim your brain, okay? Number one, start catching your thoughts.

Not changing them immediately, just catching them. Become aware of them. Notice them because every single time that you notice negative self-talk and catastrophizing and overthinking and all of that, notice it and then just say it out loud. Ah, I am noticing that I am overthinking. I am noticing my negative self-talk. I am noticing that I am catastrophizing. When you say that, you are distancing yourself from your thoughts, which means that you can no longer identify as your thoughts, which most people unconsciously do. So that's the first thing. The second thing to ask

yourself this question, is it actually true? Like your brain system one says, I'm going to fail. Pause. Is that actually true? Or is that just fear pretending to be true? Most people never question their thoughts. And so you want to start questioning as many thoughts you can by asking yourself, is this actually true? Okay, step number two. That's step number two. Step number three is to practice choosing your second thought. First thought, I'm not good enough. Okay, the system one. Okay, we're noticing it. Second thought, system two. Hey, you know what? I am a beginner, which means that I can always get better. I am learning. I am growing and I don't need to be perfect to begin.

Right? That second thought, that's where your freedom is. And you're going to need to do this 10 times a day, 20 times a day. For some of you guys, 200 times a day. But what are we doing? We're the electrician. We're going in and we're rewiring is what we're doing. That's the third thing. The fourth thing and what's really important all this is to start trying to reduce your overstimulation, which seems like it's not related, but let me show you how it is.

You cannot hear conscious thoughts and unconscious thoughts clearly if your brain is drowning in noise. So if you're constantly on your phone or constantly checking your emails or constantly thinking about work or constantly doing something else trying to keep yourself busy, playing video games, watching porn, whatever the hell you do with yourself, if you're always doing that, you'll never really be able to hear your thoughts to be able to work through them. spend more time walking, journaling, meditating, sitting in silence, being without stimulation. So you can start to hear those fears. Like if your life is too loud, you'll only hear all of your fears and all of your worries.

But if you can get more silent, if you can have more boredom in your life, if you can have more space, you'll find more of your deep wisdom that lives inside of you, that can come out and that's where your inspiration is. Your fears will scream at you. Your inspiration will whisper. your wisdom is that silent little voice you can barely hear. Make some silent space you can find it. You're a human. You're patterned. You're conditioned. The beautiful thing about patterns is that patterns can change. Your brain can change. Your identity can change. Your reactions can change. You can be the electrician to go in and rewire the situation. But it starts with your awareness. It starts by

understanding what's going on in your brain. System one and system two. It starts with noticing them. It starts with realizing like, I don't have to believe every thought that comes into my mind. That right there might be one of the most freeing realizations a human can ever have. I don't have to believe every thought that I have. That way you can reclaim your brain. You can interrupt the pattern. You can pause long enough to see System 2 kicking in and start to choose differently because your life is not built from your first thought. Your life that you want is built from the thoughts that you continue to believe and hopefully, if you want to change your life, you start to change your thoughts and change your beliefs.

So that's what I got for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on the Instagram stories, tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And once again, if you want to learn more about my event that is coming up later on this year, go to freedom weightlist.com. You'll be the first to know about it. You will get the biggest discount, and you can get there before tickets sell out. So once again, it is freedom, waitlist.com. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.