The Mindset Mentor - How to Understand Yourself

Episode Date: November 25, 2019

In the 13 years that I have been coaching people, I have come to realize that it is very common to see that people really do not understand themselves. They think they know themselves but then the more they work on themselves, the more they realize that they have been running unconscious patterns for their entire lives. In this episode, I am going to give you my #1 tip for truly figuring yourself out.Follow me on Instagram @RobDialJr https://www.instagram.com/robdialjr/Check out Vincero Watches: https://vincerowatches.com/dial 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. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another episode. Today, we're going to be talking about something that I think you're going to enjoy. And the reason why is because, you know, lots of people get really stressed out. Lots of people get a lot of anxiety and they worry a little bit too much. And, you know, before we dive in, I want to, I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to answer this to yourself, whether that's out loud, whether that is in your head, doesn't really matter, but I want you to answer this question. Do you worry too much?

Answer that question. Okay. Next question. Do you get too stressed out about things that are happening in your life? Okay. Answer that question. Next question. Do you get too much anxiety around the future? Okay. Answer that question. And then last question, do you sometimes have trouble understanding your emotions or just what you're feeling in the present moment? Do you sometimes get mad and you're like, man, why the hell am I mad? Do you ever have trouble understanding your emotions? Okay. If you said yes to any of those, this episode will 100% help you out. And the reason why is because,

well, first off, let me do this before I even tell you why. Let me take a step back and talk about, you know, trying to do math, for instance. Okay. If you've ever, like, for instance, I'm really good at math, but you know, sometimes numbers get too large in my head and I'm not able to do them anymore. But if you give me a pen and paper, I can figure out almost any math problem that I could with a calculator. It's just going to take me a little bit longer. But you know, if you give me 374 times 1,718, I'm not able to do that in my head. But if you give me a pen and paper, hell yeah, I could do it. I could figure it out. Same thing goes for if you ask me how to spell something, you know, I can spell something if I write it down. I can't spell it though. If I'm trying to

just say it most of the time, I'm okay with it. Like yesterday, Lauren, my girlfriend asked me, how do I, how do you spell psychedelics? And I was like, S Y S oh shit. How do I spell S P S Y-E. I don't know what it is and I couldn't figure it out. But if I were to write it down, it makes it a lot easier because I can see it. And when I can see it, I can process it, right? Answer me this question. Do you feel that way as well? Is it easier for you to do math on a piece of paper? Yes or no? Okay. Is it easier for you to spell if you have a piece of paper? Yes or no. If you answered yes to those questions, well then guess what? I'm going to teach you how you can figure out the answers to the questions that you said yes about at the beginning of this episode.

So when we say, you know, if you ever feel stressed, if you ever see anxiety and you don't know anything about your emotions or you're kind of confused, the reason why, and this is huge for a lot of people, the reason why is because you're keeping it all in your head, right? Your brain is abstract. When you keep something in your mind, it's very abstract. So when you get stressed out or you have a feeling or you get emotional about something and you're trying to process it just in your brain, it's just as hard as it is to do trigonometry in your brain. But if you have a pen and paper, it makes it a lot easier. It's just as hard as trying to figure out things that are happening in your brain. But if you have a pen and paper, it makes it a lot easier. It's just as hard as

trying to figure out things that are happening in your brain without writing them down as it is to try to spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious without writing it down. But once you write these things down, once you do the math on a piece of paper, once you write the word on a piece of paper, it makes it so much easier to do it because you can see it. And when you can see it, you can process it. And when you can process it, you can work through it. So, so often we're struggling to try to figure out why the hell we feel the way, why am I so stressed out right now? Why do I have this anxiety? Why do I feel this anger towards somebody? And you're not even really sure.

But the reason why is because you're keeping it all in your head. You're keeping it all in your head the same way that you would be as if you're trying to spell in your head, the same way that you would be if you're trying to do math in your head. The secret to figuring yourself out is to get an old school pen and paper and start writing it down. You heard me. Old school pen and paper and start writing it down. You heard me. Old school pen and paper. Start writing it down. And you write down the questions. What am I feeling right now? What am I feeling? Because you get those feelings. I don't know if you've ever been there. I'm sure

you've been there where you just get stressed for some reason. You just get anxiety for some reason or you just get mad for some reason. You're like, why the hell do I feel this way? And with a pen and paper, you just write down, what am I feeling? Okay. I'm feeling stressed. Why am I feeling stressed? I'm feeling stressed because I'm actually thinking about that meeting that I have next week. Okay, cool. Well, now I know what's causing my stress. So now I can ask myself questions to try to work through it. And this is the key to journaling that people would understand. People think that when you journal, what you do is you sit there and you're like, dear diary, and you start writing things down.

No, you ask yourself questions and you force yourself to find the answer to those questions and to start processing what's going on in your head. Because once again, your mind is so abstract. So you say, okay, God, what am I feeling right now? I'm feeling stressed. Okay. Why am I feeling stressed? I'm feeling stressed because of this meeting that I have next week. Okay. Do I need to be worrying about this right now? No, I don't. Okay. So then what should I worry about instead? Or what should I focus on instead is a better question to ask yourself. If I don't need to be worried about this, what would be better use of my time and

my energy to focus on? Oh, it would probably be on, you know, making lunch for my kids because they're in front of me and I want to be the most present that I possibly can be. Right? That's the first thing. You start figuring out what you should do instead. Now, if you do answer the question of should I be stressed out about this right now? And you would say well it is coming up next week Okay, what would help me be less stressed? Or how could I relieve myself of this stress or is there an action that I can take right now? to relieve myself of this stress

Because ultimately if you don't put this stuff on a piece of paper, you don't write it down. It's really freaking hard to understand. It's really hard to figure out what is going on and to put our emotions into words. But as you're writing it down, you start going, oh, that's why I'm feeling this way. That's what I'm stressed about. You know, if you're, if you're thinking about, oh man, you know, I've really got this going on. I've got this going on and got this going on. And you write it all down on a piece of paper and then ask yourself the question, what's the worst that could happen? What's the worst that could happen? And you realize that what you're stressing about, probably the worst that could happen is way less than you thought it was going to be, right? A lot of times people, you know, I've been in this situation

before in my past where I've been really stressed out about money when I was younger, before I was able to build a company and be able to be blessed enough to be able to, I guess you could say, have some level of success. I remember the days where I was stressed. I remember the days where I was living off of pasta for two months. I remember the days where I was like, I don't know if I'm going to be here forever. And then what happens is as you're worrying about money, if you ask yourself, what's the worst that could happen? A lot of times that worst that could happen that you write down is way, way less than your brain, your animalistic

survival part of your brain is thinking. Because when you're starting to get low on money, your brain immediately goes to, oh, we're going to be homeless. Oh, we're going to be, I'm not going to be able to feed my kids. But in reality, very rarely have you been in your life completely not able to eat, completely not able to provide. But what you realize as you start working through your brain is that your brain, because our brain is so animalistic, it's so, I mean, it's, there's certain parts of our brains that are 200,000 years old that we still haven't evolved from. So we have that animalistic part of our brain that still exists and it just freaks out about certain things. And then you have to really write it down on a piece of paper and be

like, what's the worst that could happen? The worst that could happen is if you're really struggling for money, maybe you borrow it from somebody, but you'll never be homeless. There's a pretty good chance that you'll never be homeless. And I can't speak for everybody. Maybe you will be homeless. I'm not really sure, but I guarantee 99.9% of you that are listening, you're not going to be homeless. You have people around you that would help. You have people around you that love you. You have things that you can do to make the money. If worst case scenario, you stay up an extra couple of days after you get done with work or on Saturday and Sunday, you drive an Uber instead. You won't go hungry. You won't go homeless. So you have to remind yourself that what you're stressing about probably won't even actually happen.

Right? You ask yourself the question, you know, this is so, I'm so stressed out about this thing. Why does this happen to me? Why do I get so stressed out? And try to connect some dots. Think back to your childhood. Were your parents really stressed out? Were they stressed out a lot when you were a kid? I remember, you know, there was a really, really eyeopening experience for me. I was listening to a podcast. I remember what it was, but the guy who was on it was talking about how he, um, he realized one day that he was addicted to stress. And I was like, huh, that's really interesting. He was addicted to stress. And I thought to myself, am I addicted to stress? And I started working through, I, I kind of realized that I always had a,

this is a few years ago. I always had a low level, underground level of stress, basically. It was never hardcore stressed out, but it was always like just a little bit of stress. And I was like, why was I stressed? And I think that when I was younger, I was stressed out a lot. You know, I never freaked out. I never had any of those things. But I think that with my father being an alcoholic, I was stressed out. And then also with being, you know, made fun of and bullied as a kid, I was stressed out. And so I think that those kind of ran in my head in the, in the background. And as I got older, I had to create things to be stressed out about. And so then I started unraveling these little habits and traits only by putting it down on pen and paper.

And I was like, why do the first thing was, was, do I feel like I'm addicted to stress? And my gut went, yeah, you are. And I was like, holy crap. I feel like that something tells me that's right. And I was like, why am I addicted to stress? And I'm writing these down. I'm writing the question out and then I'm writing the answer out. Why am I addicted to stress? I'm addicted to stress because I think that I was really stressed out about my father's situation when I was younger. Well, damn, that makes a whole lot of sense. Okay, cool. What else do we got? Okay. What do I need to do to work through this stress? What do I have to be stressed out about now? I have nothing to be stressed out about now. But what happens though,

is my brain's addicted to that cortisol. My body's addicted to that cortisol because I had cortisol. It's just as if I were to drink alcohol every single day for the next 10 years, I'm going to become addicted to it. My body will become physically addicted to it. Well, you have to realize stress and cortisol, which is the stress hormone and adrenaline are hormones, chemicals in your body. Just as my body can become addicted to alcohol, my body can also become addicted to stress, cortisol, all of the different hormones that my body can release whenever that happens, the stress, the adrenaline. And so what happens is it's hard for me to get rid of it. So my brain is naturally going to search for things to stress about. When I realized this, it was a huge eye-opener for me.

And so I started unraveling it and just asking myself questions and answering them and ask myself questions, answer them. Who, what, why, when, how? I would ask myself questions and try to figure out what came to it. And what I realized was that I was just living with an underlying low level of stress all of the time. I was like, man, that is fricking eyeopening. And then, so I said, what do I need to do to get rid of it? And I started processing and figuring out, I need to remind myself of all the things that I have to be grateful for. I need to remind myself that I have nothing to stress out about. I need to remind myself that I am the most blessed and then the best, you know, literally it's like every day gets better. How can I be stressed out if every single day gets better? And it will forever get better. In my opinion, it will, you know,

and that's the thing is you have to, you have to identify what's going on in your brain on a piece of paper. And then just as a, if, as you would a business plan, you start to figure out the solution and then you start to come up with a plan. But the only way to do this is to get a pen and paper and to start writing it down. So next time you feel feelings, whether that's stress, emotion,

you're pissed off, you're angry, whatever it is, or you're just confused, you're not sure what's going on, get a pen and paper and start working it out. Because just as it's hard to do a crazy math problem in your head, and it's way easier to do on paper,

and just as it's really hard to spell a long word, but it's easier to do on paper, it's exactly the same thing with figuring yourself out. So next time you're in that situation, get a pen and paper and freaking figure yourself out. So that's all I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it with someone that you know and someone that you love. And I'm gonna 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.