The Mindset Mentor - How To Transform Your Beliefs and Unlock You Potential

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

If you like this episode… Make sure to share it with someone that needs to hear it and help us get the message out there so that together we can help make people’s lives better and make the world... a better place. And BY THE WAY: My first book that I’ve ever written is now available for pre-order. 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.Within its pages, you'll discover powerful insights and practical steps that will revolutionize the way you approach your goals, personal motivation, and mental focus. 📚If you want to pre order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/book Here 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: https://www.instagram.com/robdialjr/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@robdial?lang=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/themindsetmentee/ Or visit my Youtube page that is designed specifically for anyone desiring motivation, direction, and focus in life: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHl3aFKS0bY0d8JwqNysaeA 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

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you love this podcast, you will absolutely 100% love my new book. It's called Level Up, How to Get Focused, How to Stop Procrastinating and and upgrade your life. If you're interested in checking it out, it took me three years to write, 17 years of working on myself and working with other people and 16 rounds of edits. So if you want to go get it, go to robdial.com book. It is now available for pre-order in the United States, the UK, Germany, Australia, a bunch of other countries as well. So if you want to learn about it, go ahead and go to robdowell.com slash book. Today, we're going to be talking about how to
Starting point is 00:00:49 actually transform your beliefs and unlock your potential. I'm going to talk to you about this thing that is called the self-perception theory and really a deep dive into understanding who you are as a person. Because what it comes down to is when you look at self-improvement, I would say like the cornerstone, cornerstone, cornerstone, not corner store. The cornerstone of self-improvement is self-awareness. And in really developing this, what this is going to help you develop a psychological framework to understanding yourself through this thing that is called the self-perception theory. Self-perception, you look at yourself, is basically what it comes down to. And this was proposed by a psychologist, Daryl Bem, in 1972. And the theory basically says that we develop our attitudes, our beliefs, and our feelings by
Starting point is 00:01:36 observing our own behaviors and deducing what attitudes must have caused them. So when you look at the self-perception theory, at the heart of self-perception theory is the concept of introspection. Or another way of saying introspection is self-observation. A lot of times we do things, but we don't ever think of why we're actually doing them, how it's affecting ourself, how it's affecting our mindset, how it's affecting our lives, how it's affecting other people. And we don't really take a step back and look at ourselves and really ask ourselves, is this something that I want to continue doing? A lot of times we just say, oh yeah, no, that's just how I am. That's how I've always been.
Starting point is 00:02:15 You know, I've always been a little bit angry. I've always had a short fuse. That's just how I am. And that's not true. That's not who you are at the root of who you are, right? It's who you've decided and who you've chosen to be over your lifetime. But nothing is set in stone. If there's an aspect of your life that you don't like, you can decide to change it. If there's an aspect of yourself that you don't like, you can decide to change. If there's an aspect of your beliefs that you don't like, you can decide to change it. Nothing is the way that it is forever. The only thing that's constant in this entire universe is change. And you are a part of the universe. You are a part of this giant universe that we're in. So to think that everything in the world and the universe changes,
Starting point is 00:03:03 except for you, you are the only thing in this universe that doesn't change. It's crazy. And to think that you are the way that you are and you're just going to be that way forever is insane. Everything changes in the universe but you. You're the one sole thing in this entire universe that doesn't change. It's crazy because there's no part of you that is the same. Every single cell in your body, trillions of cells in your body, are not the same cells that they were seven years ago. Your body has fully 100% killed off old cells, brought back new cells, and you have brand new cells. So when you look at your human body, there is not one part of you that is exactly the same as it was before. Seven years, completely different,
Starting point is 00:03:46 which means that there's no part of you that's the same except for the fact that you think and act the same. You're deciding, once again, it is a decision, whether it's unconscious decision or a conscious decision, you are deciding to stay the same person, which is fine if that's what you want. But if you want to stay the same, you're probably not going to be listening to this podcast. You're listening to this podcast because there is something that you want to change in yourself, in your life, in your relationships, in your bank account, in your mindset, in everything. So then we look at it and we say, we do want to change. That's why we're here. So how do we start to use the self-perception theory?
Starting point is 00:04:27 we start to use a self-perception theory? Well, pretty simple. I want you to observe and question everything about you. And what I want you to do is to start to test the validity of every thought that you have. Because I always say this in the podcast, when you're in the jar, you can't read the label, which means when you're in your own mind, you can't actually look at yourself and start to become very perceptive to one of the things that you do every single day. And so what you have to do is you have to take yourself out of your mind, aka out of the jar, and look at yourself as if you're a different person looking at you, right? You need to kind of go third person. You need to pull yourself out and look at this person and say, huh, the way that person just reacted, the one that's named
Starting point is 00:05:05 Rob, the way that he just reacted, is that how I want to be? Is that who I truly am? Are those my beliefs? The way I was just triggered? Oh, I just got angry. Is that what I want to do? Do I want to continue being the angry person? And you actually take yourself out of the jar and you start to read the label. And this self-perception process requires a lot of reflection, requires a lot of insight, which is why most people don't do it because most people are just lazy as hell and they prefer to do nothing than actually improve themselves. So you're here because you do want to improve yourself. It requires you to put in the work.
Starting point is 00:05:36 If you're not going to put in the work to improve yourself, this doesn't matter for you. Turn the podcast off and go to something else that makes you feel better, right? Like that's just where I'm honestly say you have to decide that it is important enough for you to be like, I'm going to put in the damn work to improve myself. Why do I act this way? Why do I think this way? Does this thought process line up with who I want to be in the future? Yes or no. And then you decide from there whether you want to keep it or whether you want to change it. The self-perception theories works because it basically pulls up two psychological principles.
Starting point is 00:06:08 Number one is cognitive dissonance. And number two is inferential insight is what it's called. I would never say that when I was talking to somebody. But inferential insight is the actual psychological term. So with cognitive dissonance, it's a state of tension that pops up when your behaviors conflict with your beliefs or your attitudes, or when someone says something that conflicts with your belief in some sort of way. Cognitive dissonance is awesome because it's showing you where you're stuck in some place. Now, inferential insight is basically your ability to derive meanings or conclusions from your
Starting point is 00:06:50 observations. So when you use both of these, inferential insight and also cognitive dissonance, you start to realize what's happening is this is what happens, right? You're going about your day, life is happening, life is the way that it always is. You're doing your breakfast exactly the same. You're going out and you're driving on the road. You get to the office and then something triggers you. Something triggered you. You went from having like a fine day. It was just normal to now something inside of you is not happy. You might be pissed. You might be sad. You might get anxious. You might be fearful, whatever it might be, but you're triggered in some sort of way. Being triggered is one of the best things that you can have to learn who you are. So many people try to go through their entire life trying not to be triggered. For me, I would love to be triggered because it's showing me where I'm not free. It's
Starting point is 00:07:40 showing me where I'm stuck in some place in my life. And so when you find yourself, okay, I went to the office. My boss was an asshole like he always is. I'm triggered. Why am I triggered? First thing you need to do is you need to calm yourself down and you need to start asking some questions. So if you start asking questions immediately, here's what you'll realize. When your emotions are high, when you're triggered, angry, sad, pissed off, anxious, whatever it might be, When your emotions are high, your logic is low. When your emotions get really high, it actually turns off a part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex. It stops sending so much blood to your prefrontal cortex. So you don't actually think as well. That's where your executive functioning comes from. That's why you
Starting point is 00:08:17 can get into a fight with somebody. You say something and then 30 minutes later, you're like, yeah, I probably shouldn't have said that to her. Right. And so what you need to do first, you need to calm yourself down, take 60 breaths, remove yourself from the situation, and then take out a pen and paper and start asking yourself some questions. Okay. When, instead of becoming triggered, when you become triggered, what I want you to do is when I become triggered, I will become interested, right? I'm triggered. Hmm. That's interesting. Take yourself out of the jar, read the label. Why did that person act that way? Okay. The boss said something. That person got triggered in some sort of way. They got really anxious. Why did that person get anxious? Now that person is you, but you're taking yourself
Starting point is 00:09:02 out of the jar. And what you're going to do is when you become triggered, after you calm yourself down, you become interested. Let's try to figure out this complex being and try to figure out the hell's going through their mind. What were they just thinking? Okay. They were thinking, oh, well, my boss said this to me. And if he says this to me, he must think that I'm an idiot. If he thinks that I'm an idiot, he must think that I'm not good at my job. And if he thinks I'm not good at my job, then he thinks that maybe there's a possibility that I might get fired. And if I get fired, then I'm going to not have a way to pay for the bills. And then my children are going to be starving and then they're going to be taken from me. And child service is going to come take my children. And then my wife is going to leave me because I'm lazy and I don't
Starting point is 00:09:36 have a job anymore and I can't pay for the bills. And I'm going to be on the side of the road by myself. And you go through this whole train of thoughts. But in reality, your boss just said something. And now you went through this whole anxious thought process. All right, take yourself out of the jar and read the label and go, what was just happening in that head of that person? And start to ask yourself, what was I just thinking? And then question the validity of the thoughts. OK, well, he said this to me.
Starting point is 00:09:59 Does that actually mean that he thinks I'm an idiot? Or is that just some sort of trauma from my childhood that is being triggered by my boss and I'm you know thinking about when I was bullied when I was a little kid and that bully is now my boss in my mind and I'm being very triggered oh look at that I just realized that my boss is triggering me the same way bullies are I must I'm triggered by this person okay I brought the bullies I must be stuck in time my brain and my body must be stuck in time to when brain and my body must be stuck in time to when I was bullied. Let's see if I can start to help little Rob out, little 13 year old
Starting point is 00:10:30 Rob when he was, you know, bullied in middle school. What was he thinking? What was he going through? Was, you know, and then you start to realize that your boss just said something and it could have been a complete joke, but you went through this whole process of my wife's going to leave me. I'm going to get fired. My children are going to be taken from me and I'm going to be homeless. Right. And then you start to actually realize how crazy some of your thoughts are. Hey, are you a coach, consultant, or expert in your field, but you struggle with how to market and sell your services effectively? Well, you may not know this, but along with this podcast, I also own a company called the School for Online Coaches. And since 2019, myself and
Starting point is 00:11:03 my team have trained and supported over 1400 coaches in starting and growing their coaching businesses online. This is where I teach everything that you need to know to start and grow your own coaching business to $10,000 a month in as little as 30 to 60 days. So if you're dying to see what it's like to be your own boss, work remotely, and create a business that helps people change their lives and feels fulfilling to you. Head over to schoolforonlinecoaches.com right now. That's where you can learn more information about how to grow your business. Once again, it is schoolforonlinecoaches.com. And I realize to start to figure yourself out is uncomfortable. It really is. And that's why
Starting point is 00:11:41 most people don't do it is because most people don't like being uncomfortable. They like to be comforting. They like to feel good. They like to be in a warm blanket and they don't want to be triggered. And they just want to go through their entire life like they're just covered in bubble wrap, just bouncing off of walls and not being triggered and not being hurt in any sort of way. So it's uncomfortable when you start to actually think about these things, because sometimes old thoughts and feelings and traumas will start to come to the surface. But if they're coming to the surface, it's because they live there, right? It's not making you feel this way. It's bringing out something that lives inside of you. Like if somebody makes you angry,
Starting point is 00:12:14 well, first off, the idea of somebody making you angry is complete bullshit because you're deciding to be angry. That's a whole other conversation that we can have on another podcast, but nobody can make you do anything, right? It's like Eleanor Roosevelt says, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. You're consenting to being angry, but let's say whatever it is, person X says something to you, you get angry. And you start to realize that you're getting angry because you're stuck in time in some sort of place or something that you did not heal. So it's not that they're making you angry. It is that they are bringing anger out of you that lives did not heal. So it's not that they're making you angry. It is that they are bringing anger out of you that lives inside of you. Think about that for a second. If you can
Starting point is 00:12:52 fully understand this, it'll blow your minds. Nobody makes you angry. What happens is somebody is a mirror to you to bring anger that lives inside of you out. Nobody can make you do or feel or any of that type of stuff. What they do is they bring out what lives inside of you. It's like if I take an orange, right? And I squeeze an orange, what comes out of an orange? Orange juice, right? Why? Because it lives inside of it. Well, when I put you under pressure, what comes out of you? Whatever lives inside of you. Sadness, anger, frustration, anxiety, all of that stuff lives inside of you. So when someone triggers you, that's why they're a gift. It's because they're finding ways to help you become free. And so it's basically just like the universe coming to you as a gift in the form
Starting point is 00:13:36 of your boss to show you where you're not free so that you have something to work on to improve yourself. And that's why it's uncomfortable for people because it's not really comfortable. It makes you feel certain ways that maybe you're trying to avoid. And so you start to realize that you probably, you know, are being triggered because of something happened to you in your past, or maybe a set of beliefs that you have been following for a really long time that you learned along the way. And you probably learned those beliefs from somebody else that's no smarter than you as you are right now as an adult. But you just decided to take those beliefs on and say, yes, this is my beliefs because I was told as a child that these are my beliefs. It might not even be your own belief, right? And then under the lens of the
Starting point is 00:14:13 self-perception theory, you start to find your beliefs and decide if the beliefs that you have and you've been living by your entire life align with who you want to be or who you are becoming. And then you start to find the actions that you take and you decide if those actions align with who you want to be or who you are becoming. It's not easy. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of intention to remove yourself from your own head when you're triggered. But if you can do this, you can start to change yourself very quickly, like very, very quickly. And that's the important piece of it is if you really want to change, you've got to start taking
Starting point is 00:14:49 yourself out of the jar and reading the label. You've got to start looking at yourself and start questioning the validity of every thought, every action, every time you're triggered, all of your beliefs, all of that stuff. The reason why the self-perception theory works is because our self-perception plays a really crucial role in shaping our personal narrative in our lives. A narrative that in this narrative that's going on in our head, our story that's going on in our head is really our compass for where we go in life. Everything that happens to us, around us, everything filters through your internal narrative, the story in your head.
Starting point is 00:15:22 And humans are inherently meaning-making creatures. You're filtering everything through your head and making some sort of meaning out of it. The same way that your boss says something to you, you made meaning out of it. All he did was say something to you. It could have been a joke and you took it completely incorrectly because you weren't paying attention, right? You could have just missed the joke, but you made meaning out of it based off of your life and your past story that you have inside of your head. And I'm going to give you an example of that in just a minute of someone I've actually worked with on this. So what's the meaning that you're creating around what's happening?
Starting point is 00:15:54 And so let me just, I'll just go, I'll dive into it now. I'll give you an example, right? So a couple of weeks ago, I was working with a lady and which is a mother and daughter, right? And I was speaking with the mother and the mother has a small, the daughter has a property, right? And there's a small house that's on the property. There's their house. And then there's a small house that's on the property. And the mother has transformed the small house on the property into her house. She has another place that she lives in, a small condo. And about once a month, she'll go up to the property and she'll stay at her daughter's property in the house that is basically like, quote unquote, her second home.
Starting point is 00:16:31 And her daughter, the mother's daughter and children, her grandchildren, use the small house when the grandmother is not there. And so recently though, where it starts to get really interesting, I'm going to show you the processes behind and the stories and the narratives and all the stuff behind this. Recently, every single time that the mother goes and comes over to the house, the small house, all of the mother's stuff is put away inside of a closet, right? And so all of her stuff is put inside of a closet. And so the mother sees all of her stuff that she feels is important. These are things that she's had for a long time. These are family heirlooms, all of that stuff. And the mother sees all of her belongings inside of a closet tucked away.
Starting point is 00:17:13 And so the mother says what she had said to me and her daughter was she said she feels like she doesn't matter anymore. When she sees all of her stuff tucked away inside of the closet, she feels like she doesn't matter anymore. She feels like her daughter and her grandchildren are pushing her away. And she said, the exact phrase was, I feel like putting all of my stuff away is making me invisible. Like they don't want me around anymore. Right? So that's what happened. That was the person's meaning that came from everything that was happening. Daughters on the call as well,
Starting point is 00:17:45 I'm speaking to the daughter, and they were putting the mother's stuff away when, you know, I'm going through the call. What happened was they were putting all of the mother's stuff away because she didn't want her four kids breaking any of her stuff. And she was trying to take care of her mother's belongings. She could have done a better job of taking the belongings and putting them back after everybody was done before the mother came. But what happened was she was taking all of her stuff and putting it away, not to push her away, mother away, not to make her invisible. She was putting her stuff away so that therefore the mother's stuff wouldn't be broken. But the mother had an internal narrative from childhood, an internal story from childhood of I don't matter. And when
Starting point is 00:18:26 you have the story of I don't matter, you're going to place that story on top of every circumstance in your life until you start to actually pull that apart and show yourself that narrative isn't true. So she took the narrative of I don't matter, saw all of her stuff away inside of a room and said, oh my God, they're trying to get rid of me. Oh my God, they're trying to make me invisible. And she felt like I don't matter to my daughter. But once the daughter shared why they moved all of her stuff, the mother's narrative is destroyed because she was able to see it once again, not from her own head, but from someone else's perspective. It no longer holds weight anymore, does it?
Starting point is 00:19:08 In fact, the daughter said that the reason why, she said, it's crazy you think that you don't matter. Like, it's wild that you think that you don't matter because you think that you don't matter. But we have a house in the back of our house that we could use for something else. And we wanted to change it into your house so that you could come over and spend time with us and spend time with your grandchildren, because we actually love you so much and you do matter. So if we, if you didn't matter, we wouldn't want you around. We wouldn't, if we didn't want you around, we wouldn't have said, Hey, do you want to take this house? See the whole thing here is the problem is we don't
Starting point is 00:19:42 see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. The mother didn't see reality as it is. She saw reality as she is. And she took an internal narrative and placed it onto a circumstance that was happening in her life. And so we filter everything through this story, through this internal narrative, and we make meanings out of the narrative that's inside of our head. Now, you know, the mother could have taken herself out of the jar and read the label.
Starting point is 00:20:10 You know, oh my gosh, I'm really triggered. All of my stuff is away. And she could have used a self-perception theory to see if she could help her. She could have sat down with a pen and paper and she said, you know, written down, does moving my things mean that I don't matter to my daughter and my grandchildren? And then answering that. Are they actually trying to push me away? And then actually trying to answer that. Are they trying to make me invisible? And then actually answering that. Could I be seeing this
Starting point is 00:20:34 incorrectly and actually start to journal through that? And if you ask yourself enough questions about a circumstance, you actually start to realize that we develop this whole narrative and none of it is ever even true. We're only, we don't, once again, see the world as we are. We don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. And so when you can sit down and ask yourself questions about something that has triggered you, using this can help you develop a ton of self-awareness and resolve a ton of inner conflicts and start to help you construct really empowering personal narratives and get rid of the ones that don't work. And so what it really comes down to is, I'll give you two reasons why this works so well, but also tips to kind of help you with your
Starting point is 00:21:14 self-preservation, self-perception theory. So the first thing is mindful observation and cognitive reframing. And so the reason why this works is because when you go through this process of consciously observing your surroundings and then your behavior to surroundings without any judgment, and you start asking yourself, why am I feeling this way? What does this say about me? What does it say about my attitude? What does it say about my beliefs? What does it say about my feelings? What does it say about my actions? And then what you do is you reframe. You try to reframe them and see them from a different perspective so that you can destroy your limiting beliefs. Because if the mother would have gone, okay, let me take myself out of my, let me go ahead
Starting point is 00:21:50 and put myself in my daughter's shoes. Is there a reason why she might be putting my stuff away? She might've come to the conclusion of, oh, she doesn't want my grandchildren to break my shit. And then she would have gone, oh, damn. Yeah, I didn't realize that. And so it can resolve so much inner conflict by doing this. A lot of times, a lot of times,
Starting point is 00:22:07 your beliefs are like a house of cards. Like they're barely hanging on. And the more questions that you ask around your beliefs and try to see an opposite perspective and to try to actually reframe it, it's just like going up to that house of cards and just flicking it. Like it's so easy to knock down
Starting point is 00:22:23 when you actually start to ask those questions to yourself. So that's the first thing is you want to actually be mindful of what's going on and try cognitive reframing. And then the other thing that I recommend to really help you with this is to ask for feedback. Other people who you trust offer really valuable perspectives about you, about your behaviors, and you're going to start to see yourself from a completely different way. It is extremely uncomfortable to ask other people about you, about your behaviors, and you're going to start to see yourself from a completely different way. It is extremely uncomfortable to ask other people about you. I promise you, I know this. But when you ask for feedback from people who are close to you, who you trust, who you love, and you know want the best for you, you can actually start to see yourself from a different light and start to build yourself up on a different belief pattern than you want to.
Starting point is 00:23:01 And so really what it comes down to is if you get nothing else from this podcast episode, question everything about yourself. Question your thoughts, question your feelings, question your beliefs, question your actions, question the story that's inside of your head. And what you'll actually start to see is a lot more freedom and way more calm in your life because you realize you're not caught up in narratives. You're not caught up in fake stories and you realize that when you are triggered, you can work yourself out of being triggered way faster. And that is how you really start to transform your belief and unlock your potential with the self-perception theory. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love
Starting point is 00:23:37 this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. Send this over to a friend. If you have a friend who needs to hear this, send it to them in text message. Say, hey, I thought you might love this. Go ahead and listen to it. And once again, if you do love this podcast, you will love my book. If you want to go ahead and order it, go to robdial.com book. It is available in many places throughout the world. I don't know where you live, but it might be available where you are. I do know that it's available in the US, the UK, Australia, Germany, Canada, a bunch of other places. Go ahead and check it out. RobDyle.com slash book. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you
Starting point is 00:24:11 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.

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