The Mindset Mentor - How to Regain Control of Your Life

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

Too often we give up control of our lives by saying "that's just the way I am" but I don't believe that. I believe we can be any way that we want to be and in this episode, I am going to teach you how to identify habits and traits you want to change in yourself and how to change them.Follow me on Instagram @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 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. Today, we're going to be talking about how to take back control of your life. Now, if you listened to last episode when I talked about being offended by JLo's butt, I wanted to dive deeper into that. I don't want to dive deeper into her butt, but basically, oh God, this is really going well, guys. So I want to talk about that. What I want to talk about is regaining control of what you think about, of what you do, of your life.

Because I think that a lot of people out there living lives and not realizing that a lot of the things that they do and a lot of things they believe, a lot of things they think are completely unconscious. And all it comes down to is control. And that's really what we're going to be talking about is control of yourself. The question that I'm really curious of and I want you to think about is how much control do you actually have? One of the funny things is when I used to do one-on-one coaching, now I only do group coaching. One of the things that used to always be said to me was, I thought I knew myself until I started coaching with you. And then I realized I didn't

know myself at all. And the reason why I say how much control do you actually have is because we aren't even aware of how out of control our lives are sometimes. And I don't mean out of control in the fact that you're not paying your bills or that your children are not bathing or anything like that. I mean out of control in the fact that we are not actually in control of ourselves. We're not in control of our thoughts. We're not in control of our actions. We're not in control of our patterns. But we don't realize that we are completely in control of them. We've just given up that control for our entire lives. We just have said, oh, you know what? I just am this way. I just am an emotional person. I do just have a short fuse. That's just who I am. And one of the things that can really make people

react the most is words. Words are our words, I guess you could say. Words are the thing that really make people react the most because something can be said to them and they can react to them. And going back to the last episode where I talk about people being offended by J-Lo's butt, if you put that into words, people being offended by words, people are like, oh yeah, well, I only acted that way because she said this to me. I only acted that way because he said this to me. And one of my favorite quotes, if you listen to a lot of my podcast episodes, you probably heard me say it before, is from Eleanor Roosevelt. And she says that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. That's a great quote because what

it means is that if somebody says something to you, if we're just using words as an example, and you get offended by it, that's your fault. That's not their fault that you're offended. Because something happened and you reacted to it. Words were said and you reacted to it. It doesn't matter what they said. All that matters is that you reacted to it. Now, it was your choice to react to it. Now, it was your choice to react to it. Now, it might be almost an unconscious pattern or an unconscious thing that you do, but you had the option of reacting to it or not reacting to

it, right? Let's say somebody says something to you. You can either react to it or you cannot react to it. Those are the only two options that you have. And if you react to it, that is nobody else's fault, but whose? It's yours. It's your fault. And I think that the moment when someone truly becomes free in their life is when they decide that they're going to take 100% control of everything that happens to them in their life. And they see everything that happens to them as their decision, their fault. If they react to somebody, it is their fault. Because I know for the, if I'm being honest with you, the first 19 years of my life, before I get into personal development, I was the best at making excuses as to why

I was doing the things I was doing, why I was not where I wanted to be in life, why I was doing the things I was doing, why I was not where I wanted to be in life, why I was late to stuff, yada, yada. I was an incredible salesperson at giving you excuses. And then I was on a phone call with my mentor and I was late to the phone call and I was paying him $500 a month to coach me. I was 19 years old, paying $500 a month to coach me. I was late to all of the calls. I wasn't hitting my goals. I wasn't hitting my sales goals. I wasn't making the calls that I needed to in order to hit my sales goals. And he said to me, Rob, if a business fails, whose fault is it? And I said, it's the business owner's fault. He says, think bigger. If a business fails, it's a large business, whose fault is it? I said, well, it's the CEO's fault. He said, okay, well, if a business succeeds,

whose fault is it? And I said, it's the CEO's fault. And he said, the problem with your attitudes and what you do is that you're not acting like the CEO of your life. If you want your life to change, you have to act like you're the CEO of your life. If your life is an utter failure, it is your fault. If your life is a massive success, it is your fault. And so I want you to think about this. And I want is a massive success, it is your fault. And so I want you to think about this. And I want you to think about just diving into your own patterns and habits. And what would be really good is if you have a pen and paper is to ask yourself these questions. What is it that makes you mad? What is it? And it would be fine to pause me right now and actually write these down. And I realize most people listening

to me, you're not going to take the action to actually write it down. I wish that you would. I wish that you would take out a pen and paper and literally just take five minutes and ask yourself these questions. What makes you mad? Write every single thing that makes you mad. Okay. What makes you sad? Write down every single thing that makes you sad. Okay. What makes you pissed off? Write down every single thing that makes you sad. Okay, what makes you pissed off? Write down every single thing that makes you pissed off. What makes you depressed? Write down every single thing that makes you depressed.

What makes you anxious? Write down every single thing that makes you anxious. And then after you go through all of those, ask yourself this question. Why? Why does that make me sad? Why does that make me mad? Why does that make me pissed off? Why does that make me sad? Why does that make me mad? Why does that make me pissed off? Why does that make me depressed? Why does that make me anxious? And these things that happen, they might seem like they're out of your control and they may or may not be. The external things that happen in your world may or may not be in your control

But there is one thing in one thing only that I know that you can control and that is you That is your reaction to them. And that is what you do because of them. So if somebody calls you a name for instance And you react to it That is your fault. No matter what the name is, no matter if it's a word that you hate, a word that's derogatory, if you react to it, they have gained control over you because the only thing that you can control in this world is you. So if you're reacting to it, guess what? They have won. If you see something on TV, like a Super Bowl, and something happens, you get a reaction from it. They have won. You have to think about that.

Viktor Frankl, and Viktor Frankl, if you don't know who he was, he wrote an incredible book, I absolutely recommend it. It's called Man's Search for Meaning. In Man's Search for Meaning, incredible book. I absolutely recommend it. It's called Man's Search for Meaning. In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl was a psychologist who lived in Auschwitz in Nazi prison camp. And he wrote a book about it. It's an incredible book. And one of the things that he says, he was a psychologist that lived there. And he was an actual Jewish man who lived in the prison camp. One of the things that he says is he says that between the event, and this is, I'm butchering it, literally butchering it, but it's something along the lines of this quote. Between the event of something happening and your response to it

is a gap. So something happens and you respond to it. But before that response is a tiny little gap. So between the event and the response is a gap. And if you can master that gap, you can master your life. Because all too often, we act like what happens to us and our response to what happens to us is out of our control. That's just who I am. I just have a short fuse. That's just who I am. I've just always been an emotional person. And I always tell people, if you were having a conversation with me and out of nowhere, my arm, if you just imagine my arm, my right arm, you can't see it, but it's flying all over the place right now. It's all over the place. My arm's flying all over. You'd be like, what the hell is going on with Rob's arm? And I was just like,

oh, I can't control it. I just can't control my arm. It just goes all over the place. You'd be like, there's something wrong with that dude's arm. And I'm just like, yeah, I can't control it. You would be like, that's kind of crazy because Rob is under control of every other part of his body. Why can't he control his arm? It is attached to the rest of his body. Well, it's the exact same thing with

your mind. Where's your mind? It's in your head. Where's your head? It's on your body. So don't act like you can't control your mind because you can. You just haven't figured out the way to control it. Are you under the influence of patterns and habits that you've developed over 20, 30, 40 years of your life? Yes, absolutely. Can you change them? Yes, absolutely. And that's the thing that you want to dive into. I always say that personal growth, if you want to make personal growth or personal development or whatever it is that you want to call it, if you want to boil it down to the simplest thing as possible is this. I'll put it this way. Something happens to you. Like I remember when I was younger, you know, I'd have a, I was young, I was immature. I'd have a girlfriend and then

something would happen and I would be pissed off for like a week. Right. And I would hold grudges and I'd be angry and I'd be sad and I'd be mad. And you know, you guys know that the childhood, you know, you do something to me, I'm going to try to hurt you. I want to make you feel bad. I'm going to, I'm going to show you how bad I feel to try to make you feel bad. Whatever it was, right? And I'd be, I don't have a reaction time that was like a week. And it would go on for a week. And I was like, God, I want to make her as angry as she made me, right?

And it would go on for a week. And then you grow up a little bit and you mature and you grow personally. And then something might happen. And your reaction time that was once a week, you know, goes down to a few days. Maybe somebody says something to you. Normally, you'd be mad about that for a week. And you're like, no, I'll be mad for a couple days. You're mad for a couple days.

And then three or four years down the road, you've been working on yourself. You've been working on yourself. You've been growing. And the same thing happens in some sort of way. What would have pissed you off before, now instead of being mad for an entire week or a few days, you're mad for a day. It's still not great, but your reaction time is way less than it used to be, right? It's one seventh of the time that it used to be. Well, then what happens? You work on yourself a little bit, you work on yourself a little bit, and now your reaction time goes from that one day to one hour. Now you're just pissed off for

now. You went from seven days, you worked on yourself for what, 10 years, 11 years, whatever it is. And you went from seven days where you used to be pissed off to now you're only pissed off for an hour. And then it shortens to 30 minutes and this shortens to five minutes. And then you have mastered your reactions and something happens that's really not as significant as we give it. We act like it is. And that something happens that used to piss us off for a week. And guess what? We don't react to it. That is what growing is all about, where something can happen and you cannot react to it. One thing that I love is I love having conversations with older people. And I mean older, that I love is I love having conversations with older people. And I mean older, like, you know,

80s, because they just don't care about things anymore. Have you ever noticed that? Like, it just doesn't matter what people think of them. Doesn't matter what... It's just, they're just so free. It's almost like they go back to being children again. They're free from the constraints that we think society has on us. But in reality, we've just placed on ourselves. And what happens? Something happens and it's just no big deal. Something happens. It's no big deal. They don't get pissed off anymore. They don't get mad. And you've seen this before. You might have a, you know, maybe you're in your 30s or 40s or 50s, and you've seen this in your own parents, right? You've seen this in your parents where something would happen when you were younger and they would get pissed, like really mad. And as they get older,

same thing could happen. And they're like, whatever, not a big deal. They don't care anymore because what happens is they've learned to start to unravel the things that matter, the things that don't matter. And they are no longer under the control of somebody else. They have let it go off their back. It's not a big deal. Who cares? So to take your life back, to have it all come full circle, you have to realize that you can control nothing in this life except for your reactions. If somebody dances a certain way on TV and you react to it, well, is that the reaction that you truly want? If somebody says something to you and you react to it, however you react to it, mad, sad, pissed off, depressed, anxious,

whatever it is, if you react to it, is that how you actually wanted to react? When you look back, you go, oh God, yeah, I shouldn't have done that. Because what happens is that the way to go on this path of self-development to take your life back is to start to realize that you're in complete control of everything that happens to you in your life. You're in complete control of how you react to it. But you can't act like you're not the person in control. The moment that you decide to take control of your life and your reactions is the moment you start on the real path of self-development. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this, please share with someone that

you know and love. Also, go ahead and tag me on Instagram stories. For those of you guys that put this on Instagram stories and Facebook stories, tag me Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. I love to see all of the different times you guys post and talk about it and share it with everybody. And I greatly, greatly appreciate it. I love you for it. I appreciate you for it.

And I'm going to leave you 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.