The Mindset Mentor - The Hard Truth About Making Your Dreams Come True

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Are you choosing the kind of suffering that builds you up or the kind that slowly breaks you down? In this episode, I break down the truth about pain, sacrifice, and why taking the hard path now leads to freedom later, while the easy path leads to regret. The Mindset Mentor™ podcast is designed for anyone desiring motivation, direction, and focus in life. Past guests of The Mindset Mentor include Tony Robbins, Matthew McConaughey, Jay Shetty, Andrew Huberman, Lewis Howes, Gregg Braden, Rich Roll and Dr Steven Gundry.   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  TikTok Facebook Youtube

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 you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, do me a favor. Share it with one person today. If every single person that listen to this podcast will share with one person, we would literally double the amount of impact that we have in the world. So if you would do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it.

appreciate it. Today, let's dive straight in. I want to talk to you about pain and suffering. Let's just dive right into the meat and taters. You in life are going to suffer. There is no way to avoid it. There's no way to go through an entire life without pain and suffering. But there is a very, very big difference between meaningless pain, which is what most people in this world go through and a sacrifice with purpose. So there's meaningless pain, which is a pain of, you know, a type of suffering. And then there is sacrifice with purpose, which is also a type of suffering. So the real question is, for you out there listening, are you suffering for something that is building you into a better version of yourself or something that is slowly breaking you down

over time? Because either way, you're going to pay in life. And so let's say, let's dive into it. Let's break it completely open. The lie that we all believe is that we can avoid suffering in some sort of way. We as humans, we as organisms, want to avoid pain and suffering. And so just like water, we will take the easiest route. The difference is, is we taking the easy route over time that's going to catch up with us in some sort of way. And so we think like, oh, you know, in the front of our heads, I can avoid suffering in some way. Like if I just find the right life hack, if I just play it safe, if I don't take any risks, if I do what's comfortable for me, then I can just bypass all the pain in my life, right? No, dead wrong, not even close. What you're

doing is you're not feeling the pain and suffering right now. What you're doing is you're delaying your suffering. You're deferring your pain for later on down the road. You're kicking your can down the road for another time. Sure, you won't feel suffering right now, but I can guarantee you 100% suffering is coming at some point in the future, and it is not the type of suffering that you want. The pain's always going to find you, and when it shows up later, it's usually compounded over 5, 10, 20, 30 years. And I always go back to this quote about like thinking of risk and taking the hard route. And the quote is, in life, if you don't risk anything, you risk everything in your life. So if you don't risk anything in your life, you risk everything in your life. And when you look at

it, like let's stop pretending that there's a choice between pain or no pain. You know, there's really not. I remember years ago I did an episode that was talking about, you know, pain is really something that is going to be coming down the road and it's inevitable for every single person, but how you choose it. kind of a little bit similar to this episode. It's probably five years ago. And someone got whatever I said in that episode tattooed on their leg. And I was like, oh my God, this must have meant something to somebody. And so I hope this means something to you as well when you're listening to this, right? So there is pain now where I'm going to choose my pain right now, and I'm going to choose that pain and suffering with purpose and with growth. Or there is pain later,

which usually comes with regret and decay. And so let me give you a couple of examples. of exactly what I mean, right? So I have trained thousands at this point business owners over the past 10 years. If you want to start a business, there is absolutely suffering that's going to come with it. You will have to sacrifice. You'll have to sacrifice time. You'll have to sacrifice sleep. You'll have to sacrifice your Netflix binges, some nights out. You'll have to face all of your insecurities because all of your insecurities will pop up as you grow a business. I'm not smart enough, pretty enough. I don't fit in. People don't want to be around me. I'm afraid of failure. All of those things are going to pop up while you build your business. And you must

face all of them to build your business or give up. Or on the other side of it is you don't start a business. And you don't start a business. Like, you have this yearning inside of you. I want to start this business doing X, Y, Z. But you're like, no, you know what? I'm not going to sacrifice. I'm not going to feel the pain and the suffering and all of the stuff that comes from that. And so what do you sacrifice instead? Your mental health, because maybe you go to a job that you hate, your dreams for your life, the financial potential that comes with running a business, your freedom, your financial freedom, but also your time freedom and your decision making to do whatever is that you want to, you know, possible time with your future children because you're stuck at work, you know, not being able to have choices in life of, you know, can you send your kids to college or can you not? Can you send them to a a better college or do you have to send them to a cheaper college it's not as good you have to sacrifice like feeling maybe at the end of your life or the last 20 years of your life that you had wasted potential and now it's too late that feeling that you could have been more you'll have

to feel regret so in these two situations of building the business whether you build the business or don't build the business either way you suffer so why not suffer for something that means something like why not suffer for something that builds a life that you're proud of so that's one example of like suffer now or suffer later another example is like getting in shape you know if you want to get in shape and work out consistently you're going to have to sacrifice you're going to have to sacrifice comfort you know maybe some of the fried foods that you love the greasy things extra drinks whether that's soda you're going to have to sacrifice or alcohol you're going to have to sacrifice sleeping in in lazy mornings, you know, you're going to have to sacrifice those

things. But if you don't take care of your body, down the road, you might not have anything happen to yourself today, tomorrow, the next five, 10 years. But if you don't take care of your body, you might have to sacrifice energy in the future, longevity, how long you're going to live, maybe confidence when you look at yourself in the mirror, maybe sacrificing the ability to play with your kids or your grandkids later on down the road. You know, the chance to, you know, if you have really bad issues, years of your life maybe, right? So either way, there's going to be some sort of suffering. But one of these sufferings leads to you becoming better and you stepping into your personal power and the other one leads to limitation. You see what I'm talking about?

It goes back to one of my favorite quotes I'll talk about in a minute, which is life is either hard now and easy later or it's easy now and hard later. Either way, life is going to be hard for you at some point. Now, in the third, I'll give you one more example. One third example is going to make a lot of sense to you, right? Building a strong relationship. If you decide that you want to build a strong relationship, you're going to have to have tough conversations. You're going to have to do things that you don't want to do, like maybe talk about some of your trauma and work through them and work through your triggers with your significant other. So you might sacrifice like your pride. You might have to sacrifice your

avoidance, you might have to sacrifice some emotional comfort. You might have to sacrifice you, you know, more than anything else, being vulnerable. And that's really hard for a lot of people. And maybe even sacrifice being right. You know, maybe you have to make the decision of like, hey, I'm going to decide that my relationship is more important than being right. And so there's sacrifice in a long-term relationship. But if you avoid the conversations, if you delay and you say, no, I'm going to take the easy route right now. You'll sacrifice true intimacy that you could have with somebody of fully being seen and then fully seeing you. You have to sacrifice some trust. The relationship itself may be, because obviously if you don't talk and you avoid

the hard things for long enough, it could turn into divorce, or even worse, like you live in the same house as somebody, but you feel like your worlds apart from each other. Either way, there's the pain and sacrifice. There's the suffering there. One turns into, connection in a deeper bond, and the other, over time, dissolves the connection that you have, which turns into disconnection. And so the one thing that we all need to know is that avoiding hard things does not save you pain. It doesn't. Avoiding doing the hard things does not save you pain. It guarantees that a greater kind of pain and suffering is coming to you in the future. one of them though is unavoidable like if you don't do it you're going to get some pain later on down the road

and i'm not saying this to scare the shit out of anybody i'm just telling you you know what one of the truths of the universe really are is that it's happening but one of them the best parts about is we can choose our hard we can choose our suffering to mean something for us and to grow us into a better life you know and so it's it's the the one that's coming later on down the road that's unavoid is the pain of like wasted potential like that's my biggest fear if I'm being honest with you like because I've I remember when I was a kid and I was 15 and I saw my dad in the casket after he had died from you know having liver failure from being an alcoholic and I thought oh my god like this guy had so much potential he had so many dreams and he didn't get any of them to come true

and so I thought to myself like I will not get to the end of my life and not have done something amazing with it. Like, I don't know what that means. At this point, at 15 years old, I didn't know what that meant, you know, almost 25 years later. I'm like, yeah, I get it now. But like, it was a part of me where I was like, I will not waste my potential here. I'm not going to end up like this. It could also be the pain of the guilt for what you didn't do in some sort of way. It could be the pain of like this numbness inside of you because you didn't bring your true gifts to the world. You know, and you got more than anything else, the life that you just decided to tolerate instead of celebrate. Something that I have found that, you know, I don't understand the laws of the universe, but there's one thing that I've found that's near absolute truth is you can coast your way to a life that you hate. And I've seen so many people do it. They're like, I just want to coast. And as they're coasting, there is this silent gnawing in the back of their head of just like this, this, I hate this job. I hate this life. I hate what I'm doing. I don't enjoy being here.

is this all that there is in life, you know? And so if you choose to suffer and you choose to suffer and to do the hard things now, it will create a better life later on down the road. And so you have to think about that. And so what I said just a few minutes ago that you have to really think about is, and I want to make really crystal clear, is that life is either hard now and it's easy later or it's easy now and it's hard later. You know, if you decide not to do the reps and go to the gym, cool. That's completely your prerogative. That is. is your decision, but your body carries the burden. If you decide, you know, not to follow your dreams and build that business, uh, well, your bank account can become your prison in some sort of

way. If you don't invest in your relationships and making them better, well, the feeling of loneliness can be a result. The feeling of never actually feeling like anyone ever knew who you were could be a result as well. And so, you know, this just kind of seems to be like a law of life. It's not personal. It's not unfair. It just seems to be something that's really true. But I have not found any acceptance to this rule. It's the difference between delayed gratification and instant gratification. And we are trained at this day and age to get instant gratification right now whenever we want. If I want food, I can get food delivered to my house in the next 30 minutes. If I want someone to come pick me up and drive me to the airport, I can get somebody here

in five minutes. If I want something from Amazon, I can probably get it here by tomorrow. morning. You know, it's like we're so used to just instantly getting everything that we want, but an amazing life is never an instant thing. It is something that takes time to build, and it takes a lot of pushing through the suffering of not wanting to do it. And so now that you know this, you can't unsee it. Like, you can't unsee what we are now talking about. You can't be ignorant of it anymore. You know, you can't go back to pretending that your comfort zone is not going to cost you later on in life. So right now, the good thing about it is you are aware and you are aware of everything that we're speaking about. So now you need to figure out which pain you decide to go

for, which suffering you decide to go for, you know? And so who and also who you're going to become through that suffering, which I think is a very important part of as well. Like, just imagine for a second. Just imagine that you could flip a switch in your brain with me right now. And you became the type of person that chose the hard path every single time. Like even to the point when you see an elevator and stairs right next to it, you take the stairs. Even to the point when you see an escalator and everyone's going at the escalator, you decide to walk up the stairs. Like, just run that in your head for a second. What could your life be like if you just chose the hard thing every single time? You show up to the gym even when it sucks and you don't feel like

it. You launch the business, even though nobody believes in you and you're absolutely terrified of failing. You tell your partner the hard truth and be vulnerable with them, even when you're terrified that you're going to offend them or that they will leave you. And even if your voice shakes the entire time, you go after your dream, even though it's terrifying and you don't know what's on the other side of it. You do the thing that you need to do not because it's easy, but because it's worth it. Now ask yourself, what kind of life does that person get to live? What becomes of that person a long term? It's always going to be better than if they choose the easy route, isn't it? What kind of legacy does that person leave? Now you have to understand, we're not

talking about someone else. We're talking about potential you if you chose the hard thing. You know that in your long term, if you plan this out, you do this every single time, you choose a hard way every single time your life will be 100 times better than if you choose the easy route. It will be 100 times better if you choose the hard route than if you choose the easy route. Instead of staying in your comfort zone and taking the easy route, you know that. But also think about this. What does your future look like if you decide to just take the easy route from now on? And so what I really want you to everyone listening to this podcast to just wake up to

and hopefully for a lot of you this is like a wake up call is that choosing hard now will equal a exponentially better life later on down the road. Hard now equals freedom later. Easy now equals regret later, a personal prison later. Either way, there's something that we have to pay. Whether it's so we decide to pay the toll now, we decide to pay the toll later on. But the best part about it is that you get to choose

which one of the hards that you want. And if you want to create a great life, start to notice when you have a decision to make, ask yourself which one is the harder route to go, which one do I have more resistance towards, and then take the harder one that you have more resistance towards. And if you do that, you will build yourself into a stronger person and over the long term, create a much, much better life. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on the Instagram stories. Tag me at Rob Dowell Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's

stay better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.