The Mindset Mentor - The Hole In The Sidewalk

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 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 episode. All right. So today, I want to share a poem with you. I actually heard it because Wayne Dyer, who I love, was giving a speech and he mentions mentions this. It's from Portia Nelson, and it's called The Hole in the Sidewalk. So I'm going to share this poem with you and share how I feel. I've coached thousands of people over the years, how I feel this literally works perfectly with somebody's personal development and their enlightenment, and as they get older and they start to grow. So The Hole in the Side sidewalk, this is how it goes. I walk down the street. There's a deep hole in

Starting point is 00:00:49 the sidewalk. I fall in. I'm lost. I'm helpless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend that I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place. But it isn't my fault. It still takes me a long time to get out. I walk down the same street. There's a hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I fall in. It's a habit. My eyes are open though. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. And then lastly, I walk down another street. Now, why do I share that with you? Because there's five parts to this poem. The first

Starting point is 00:01:45 part is that, you know, she falls in, she's lost, she's helpless. It isn't her fault. It takes forever to find a way out. This is when we first go on this path of self-development, self-discovery is before we find ourself in this path of self-development and what we're working for, we see everything that happens around us is not our fault. We don't take responsibility for it. We don't know how we got there. We don't know how we made our lives this way. And it takes forever to figure out a way to get out because we're stuck in these patterns that we've been stuck in for 20, 30, 40 years. But we don't think it's our fault that we're stuck in this. Okay? So that's the first part of it. The second part of it

Starting point is 00:02:26 is walking down the same street, doing the same things that we've been doing, but we pretend that we don't see it. Like if I don't look at it, it's not there. But even if you pretend that you don't see it, you still fall in and then you still think it's not your fault. So now that you start to go on a little bit of a path of self-development, what happens? You start to go on this path and you start to see the issues that you have, the downfalls that you have as a human. And you try to turn a blind eye, like you can't see me, but my hands on the side of my face, as if I don't want to see what's over to the right. Like I turn a blind eye, like, no, no, no, I don't want to look at my problems. I don't want to look at the things that I do. I don't

Starting point is 00:03:07 want to look at the way that I treat people. And then boom, even if I don't look at it, I still fall in again. And I still think that it's not my fault. And it still takes a long time to get out of it. The next part, part three, is I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I'm looking at it this time. I know my patterns, my habits, my faults, the things that I need to improve upon, but I still fall in that damn hole, right? So it goes from not seeing the hole to pretending that I don't see the hole to seeing the hole and still falling in. So it's a little bit more awareness every single time, a little bit more awareness. And what happens in this part? My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. So the other ones take,

Starting point is 00:03:59 the other ones I'm not blaming myself. I'm blaming everybody else. I'm blaming society, the president, my parents, my family members, everything that I could possibly blame. I'm putting the blame outside of myself for the first two points. And then the third point, I fall in still, but I blame myself. And because I blame myself, I can get out immediately. It doesn't take time to get out. I've been here before and I'm going to start working past it. Part four, I walked down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it, right? So now we're going down the same path that we've always gone down, but we see our downfalls and we go around the side. We go around the hole in the sidewalk.

Starting point is 00:04:44 And what do we do? We spend a little bit more time focusing on getting around that and changing ourself as a person. And then the last one, part five, I walk down another street and that's when you completely change as a person. That's the path that we're all on. If you're in this and you're listening to this, you're on the path of personal development and you you know, there was a point in time in your life. I know that there was for me where I would fall into everything and it was not my fault. I would blame everybody. And I was, I was a freaking professional of making excuses. I was so damn good at making excuses and I was so persuasive. I could get you to believe them. But that didn't change my life.

Starting point is 00:05:25 That didn't make my life any better. It just made me realize that I had excuses and that I could blame everybody else. And then, you know, I started to notice, oh my God. So I, I am kind of like, I remember one time when I was a manager, I was, you know, 20, about 20 years old, 21 years old. And my manager pulled me off to the side. He said, hey, let's go get lunch. And we went and got lunch. And we went to Chipotle. And I remember it was one of the most life-changing conversations of my life.

Starting point is 00:05:57 And he was my mentor. And he said, hey, can I be honest with you? You're killing it in this company. You're making a bunch of money, making a bunch of sales. But if I could be honest with you, there's a lot of people that don't like you. And that was the first time I'd ever heard that. And I was like, what do you mean? There's a lot of people that don't like me. He said, you're very brash and you say things you're very, you're very to the point, but you say things almost offensively. but you say things almost offensively. That was the first time that I saw the hole in the sidewalk and I realized, oh, this is my fault. The reason why people respond to me in certain ways is not

Starting point is 00:06:34 because they are weak. It's because I'm an asshole, right? That's how it really was. And then what happened? I was still falling into those patterns and habits, but as I was falling into them, I would notice them immediately. It's called self-awareness. I became very self-aware. My eyes were open, as she says. I know where I am. It's my fault. I get out immediately. ZocDoc is a free app that shows you the doctors who are patient reviewed, take your insurance, and are available when you need them. On ZocDoc, you can find every specialist under the sun. Whether you're trying to straighten those teeth, fix an achy back, or get that mold checked out, or anything else, ZocDoc has you covered.

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Starting point is 00:09:20 life differently and i started to go you know what because Because I know if I'm being honest with you, I know why I was so brash to people because I was so weak and injured as a little boy that I was trying to put up walls and hurt you before you hurt me. And so I was trying to hurt people so that therefore they couldn't, you know, if I put myself out there as the big badass person and I have the really sharp tongue and I can say things real quickly and make you feel a certain way, then you're not going to come at me at any point in time in the future because you know how sharp my tongue is. I used to take pride in the fact that I had a sharp tongue. And then at the very end, I walked down a different street. I changed my mindset, the way I want to live my life. And I go, you know what? I don't want to be this way anymore. I just want to love people. I just want to do things for other people. I want to help other people more than anything else,

Starting point is 00:10:08 and that was me walking down a different street. So I want you guys to listen to this and start thinking about your own lives. You know, I love this poem because how often do we continue to go down the same road over and over and over and over and over again. So I've got a couple questions for you, and I want you to start to think of these. This is my assignment for all of you that are listening. So if you're driving, don't do this, obviously. But if you're at home, maybe you're sitting there, you're making a protein shake, I want you to take out your pen and paper, maybe put it in your phone if you're inside the gym or whatever it is. And I want you to write down these questions and I want you to journal through them. I'm going to give you the

Starting point is 00:10:49 questions and I want you to take time today. You know, don't just listen to the podcast. Take action after the podcast. The worst thing that could happen with this podcast is you just listen. Honestly, that's the worst thing that could happen with this podcast is that you just listen to it i don't want you to just listen to it i want you to go out and actually start making changes in your life so here's the questions i want you to ask yourself number one what are my three main goals okay and you can pause me if you need to next Next question, what do I need to do to hit those goals? Okay, we're going to now make a plan. What do I need to do to hit those goals? Okay, now let's talk about the hole in the sidewalk. What do I need to stop doing to hit those goals? Because most

Starting point is 00:11:42 of the time we think about what we need to do, but sometimes it's more important to find out what you need to stop doing. I'm going to help you walk around the hole in the sidewalk. What do I need to stop doing to hit my goals? Next question, let's also talk about the hole in the sidewalk again. How do I normally get in my own way? This is a question that I always ask myself and I always have my coaching clients ask themselves is as we're planning their goals out, I want to know how I normally get in my own way so that I can make sure that I make a plan of how to get past it. That's super important, and nobody ever talks about that. I know my habits.

Starting point is 00:12:18 I know my holes in the sidewalk. I want to walk around those freaking holes. Okay? the sidewalk. I want to walk around those freaking holes. Okay. Next, what can I do to make sure that I don't do that this year? So how do I normally get in my own way? And what can I do to make sure that I don't do that again this year? How do I normally get in my own way? And what can I make sure that I do this year to make sure that I don't do that? Okay. And then the last question that I have for you is what do I need to do to stay consistent? They say it takes anywhere

Starting point is 00:12:53 between 33 to a hundred days to change a habit, to break an old habit or to create a new habit. On average, they say it's about 60 days to break a habit or to create a new habit. So what do I need to do to stay consistent? Stay consistent for at least 60 days, maybe even 100 days. What do I need to do to stay consistent? Because what happens? You create new neural pathways in your brain. When you stay consistent, you're creating new neural pathways in your brain.

Starting point is 00:13:21 When you start doing something over and over and over again, and you can never get rid of a neural pathway once it's created. But once the neural pathway is not used, it starts to shrink because your brain needs to conserve as much energy as possible. So if you have old habits, they don't always 100% go away, but the habits, the strength of the habits go way down. The neural pathways shrink. That's why you need to stay consistent for 60 days, 100 days, and work at it and do the same thing over and over and over and over and over again. Because if you're doing the same thing, people don't talk about this, the way your brain works with habits. What happens is you're creating new neural pathways that are getting hardwired into your brain. And the more that you do them, the stronger that they get. And the stronger that

Starting point is 00:14:01 they get, the more myelin that builds up on the outside of it. Myelin is basically, the easiest way to explain it is this. If you think of your brain, there's neural pathways in your brain. And that's basically, if you look at a plug that's inside of a wall, like I'm looking over at my plug, you guys can't see it obviously, but I'm looking at my plug that's in my wall for my light. And it's a black plug. But the black is actually the rubber on the outside of it. On the inside of it is a piece of copper wire. The copper wire is a neural pathway. Now, why is there rubber on the outside? There's rubber on the outside because the rubber insulates the copper, which allows the signal to travel faster. Your myelin is the exact same thing, where your myelin is basically like the

Starting point is 00:14:46 rubber on the outside of a neural pathway. And the more you do something over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, the more myelin builds up so that the signal can run stronger in your brain. That's why you have to stay consistent. If you've heard me say it over and over again, you can't miss a day. If you're going for 60 days, if you're going for a hundred days, you cannot miss a day because what you're doing is you're trying to create new neural pathways in your brain and you're trying to get that myelin to get stronger and stronger and stronger. That's the reason why you have to stay consistent. That's how you break a habit. And if your brain is putting a lot of energy into growing a new neural pathway and to putting myelin on top of it to make sure it gets stronger and stronger and stronger, it's going to need

Starting point is 00:15:28 to shrink other neural pathways. And that's old, bad habits. So that's the point of staying consistent and why you need to stay consistent with everything that you do. So that's all I got for you for today's episode. Those are the questions that I have for you. What are my three main goals? What do I need to do to hit them?

Starting point is 00:15:46 And you make a plan from it. What do I need to do to stop? What do I need to stop doing to hit them? What do I normally do that gets in my own way? What can I do to make sure that I don't do that this year? And what do I need to do to stay consistent? This is how you start to change your life. On the path of self-development,

Starting point is 00:16:04 you start to realize all of the faults that you have, the holes in the sidewalk. You start to take control of them. You start to say, it is my fault. And then you start to make changes. And then you start to walk down a completely different path. So I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode.

Starting point is 00:16:22 Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - The Hole In The Sidewalk

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