The Mindset Mentor - The Power of Choosing Yourself

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

Have you ever known exactly what you wanted to say, but still chose to abandon yourself instead? In this episode, I break down why you people-please, how childhood conditioning wires your brain for emotional safety, and what it takes to rewire it so you can finally choose yourself. I’ll show you practical, step-by-step strategies to build self-trust, embrace discomfort, and live a life that is authentically yours. Feeling stuck? It's time to take back control. If you're ready to master your mind and create real, lasting change, click the link below and start transforming your life today. 👉 http://coachwithrob.com   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.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. I put out episodes four times a week every single week to help you learn and grow and improve yourself. So if that's something that you want to do so you can improve your life, subscribe. And I'll see you on every episode. Today, I'm going to be talking about something extremely powerful. The power of choosing yourself in your life.

Because let me ask you something. How many times have you known exactly what you want to say? And then you said something else. How many times have you felt a clear no in your body, but you still said yes for some reason? And then you walk away and there's this quiet feeling deep down inside of you. It's not like a loud screaming feeling. It's not dramatic, but it's this subtle thought, this subtle feeling inside of you that's like, why do I keep doing that to myself?

like why do I keep abandoning myself for other people? And we're going to dive into it and talk about why and then how to actually fix it. Because here's the truth. You abandon yourself because somewhere along the way in your childhood, it worked. Think about that for a second. You learned to abandon yourself somewhere along the way because it worked for you. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, when you were younger, choosing yourself wasn't always safe.

safe. For most people that I've met and coached along the way, choosing yourself is not safe. It's not what your parents want you to do and they want you to do something else. A lot of people, you know, love comes with conditions in their childhood when they were younger. Maybe approval only came when you performed and when you got good grades or when you won a baseball game. Maybe peace came in the house when you stayed quiet and tried to be unseen. Maybe there were some, chaos that was in the house and you had to be someone different than you truly were in order to keep the peace inside of the house. But somewhere along the way, you learned that you needed to abandon your true self because it was in your best interest to do so. Like let that land in your

bones for a second. Somewhere along the way in your life, you learned that you needed to abandon yourself because it was in your best interest to do so. So what happens over time is because you start playing out this pattern over and over and over again, your brain adapted, not just emotionally, but actually neurologically. Like you actually unconsciously wired yourself to be somebody different. And now it's really hard to break. And then even though you're not a child anymore, you still do it. Even though you don't need to do it, you still do it.

It is a habit. It is a pattern that you have created. So now you're an adult and you're living out an adult life, but you're stuck in an old pattern from your childhood that is no longer necessary. So you're sitting there and you're like, oh my God, I want to stop being this way. I want to change myself. I don't want to constantly abandon myself and be a people pleaser all the time. But you don't really know how to stop. And so let's talk about how to actually do it because when you look at your brain, like your brain only really has one primary job.

You've heard me say this tons of times in the podcast. your brain's primary job is to keep you safe. It is not trying to keep you happy. It's trying to keep you safe and alive. And so your amygdala, which is your brain's threat detector, doesn't respond just to physical danger. It responds to social threats. What is a social threat? Rejection is a social threat. Disapproval, conflict. And so, you know, when you actually look at psychological research, it actually shows that social rejection, like rejection or failure in front of people or disapproval or conflict or being judged, activates the same brain regions as physical pain. And so your brain literally has linked being disliked to being hurt physically, even though you're not physically

being hurt. And so your brain over time has developed a strategy. And it's basically the strategy if I stay liked, then I stay safe. And so I don't want to hurt. And so I will do anything that I think I need to do in order to be accepted or to keep the peace. Does this make sense to you? Is this hitting home? I really want you to understand this. It's crazy because your brain actually lights up the physical pain regions when you have social rejection

or you're not liked by somebody or you feel like you're being judged. And so over time, you just patterned yourself. to be a certain way, even though it's not your true self. And so you fast forward to today, and you're not that little kid anymore. You got older. You're in an older body. You've got some wrinkles, maybe you got some gray hairs. You're in a completely different environment than you were in your childhood.

But your nervous system, it didn't get the memo. It didn't get updated. So you're basically like operating in your adult body with a childhood mind, with childhood fears and worries and childhood beliefs. It's kind of like trying to use an iPhone today that's 10, 15 years old. It didn't get up, day. It's not going to work really well. And so you still do the same things that you learned in childhood.

So that's why you abandoned yourself. That's why we abandon ourselves and why we show up this way. And so now as an adult, it shows up as you over-explain yourself, you apologize too much, you avoid conflict, you say yes when you really want to say no, deep down inside of you. You get quiet and you shrink in rooms where you really should be expanding and trying to be your true self. You people please and you abandon what your true wants and needs are. And the crazy part is you're aware of it. Like you're smart. You know that you're doing it. But you still do it. Oh, damn it. Can we still do it though, don't we? Why is that? Because

awareness doesn't override conditioning. Repetition does. Being aware. of the things you want to overcome doesn't change your conditioning. Awareness doesn't change it. Conditioning. The only way to change your conditioning is repetition. That's you taking a different action repeatedly. That's the only thing that actually makes changes. So your brain is wired based off of repetition, not what you would prefer. So if you've abandoned yourself for such a long time,

and the more that you abandon yourself, the stronger those pathways become in your brain. And so the more that you actually decide to take a different action and you decide to choose yourself, the stronger those pathways are actually going to become. That's neuroplasticity, your brain's ability to change itself. You're practicing, literally practicing, a version of yourself every single day. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. So the real question isn't really like, hey, why do I keep doing this? The real question is, what version of me have I been practicing? And then like, what version of me do I want to practice instead? If I've been choosing other people for the past 47 years, I need to get to a point where I'm like, no, damn it, I'm going to

choose myself from now on. I'm going to choose myself. I'm going to put myself first because if I improve myself and put myself first, everybody that I love in my life's lives get better. And so here's what we really need to get honest with ourselves. You're not just choosing other people over yourself. You're choosing temporary emotional safety over long-term self-trust. life is really simple. It's not complex. We try to make it more complex than it. Life is simple. You become what you repeatedly do. It's not magic. It's not like unknown. You become what you repeatedly do. That's it. You are born looking like your parents, but you will die looking like your decisions. One of my favorite quotes. So what decisions are you making on who you want to be every day?

What decisions are you making on who you're choosing in putting first every single day? because in the moment saying yes when you truly want to say no feels way easier avoiding tension feel safer keeping the peace feels like it's something that's smart something that you should do but every time you do it you create a micro fracture inside of yourself it is a teeny tiny breaking of trust and you're doing it 10 or a hundred or a thousand times a day and your brain it notices it doesn't go unnoticed your brain's always collecting data evidence about who you are and how you operate in the world. So every time you do something you don't want to do or you ignore your truth, your brain logs it as I don't have my own back. Or, you know, like, I don't show up for myself. I care about other people more than I

care about myself. I abandoned my own needs. And over time, this becomes your identity. And once it becomes your identity, it's not just a pattern. It's also who you believe that you are. Now that's really hard to change. Oh, I'm not confident. I'm not decisive. I am a people pleaser. I'm not trustworthy. And what makes it so hard is the cost of those teeny tiny decisions is not like it's not immediate usually it's you're getting some short-term benefit you're not getting into a fight you know there's no tension but the cost isn't immediate it's cumulative you don't notice the consequences in the moment but 10 years down the road you notice the consequences that self-abandonment doesn't just destroy your life overnight it slowly erodes it like water flowing over a rock slowly erode your confidence slowly erode your sense

of self until one day you wake up and you think like, I don't even know who the fuck I am anymore. Right? And maybe you've gotten yourself to that. And that's okay. So we need to actually learn to choose ourselves. So how do we actually choose ourselves? Not in like theory or like, you know, weird ways. Like how do we in real life choose ourselves? Let me give you a step by step process. Okay. The first thing that you want to do, step number one is to start catching the micro moments. like choosing yourself doesn't happen in big moments. It's not like one big like, oh, I'm going to quit my job because it's my passion to go be a painter. That could be it, but it's not those big moments. It's these micro moments throughout your day. These teeny tiny ones, they might happen 10 times a day, 50 times a day, a hundred times a day. You know, when you want to speak up, but you don't. When you want to leave, but you stay, when you want to say no, but you say yes, those teeny tiny micro moments. This is where you need to actually start. And you need to become aware of them.

Because you cannot change something that you're not aware of. And you start to think about it. And you notice, I wanted to speak up and I didn't. Like, where did I just abandon myself? Why did I do that? Like, is that what I truly want? And really what you want to do is you want to get curious. One of the best ways to start to change yourself is to stop being so freaking judgmental of yourself.

and stop guilting yourself and shaming yourself, but get curious. Why the hell did I just do that? Like, why did I say yes when I wanted to say no? Why did I do that? What do I truly want? You need to become keenly aware of yourself. All too often, like for decades at this point, because I've been coaching people for 20 years, over 20 years at this point.

I've heard so many people say, I thought I knew myself until I started really working on myself, like the way you taught. And then I realized I didn't know myself at all. So you need to become keenly aware of yourself and you'll start becoming aware of your patterns. A lot of people are aware of what they do, but they're not really aware of their patterns or why their patterns exist in the first place. So you have to become keenly aware of yourself. You cannot change anything that you're not aware of. And so the first thing is you've got to catch

those micro moments. The second thing is that when you start to choose yourself, step two, expect it to feel wrong. Like don't expect it to feel right. Please don't. Choosing yourself will not feel good at first. Be okay with that. You're going to feel like you're selfish. It's going to feel extremely uncomfortable. It's going to feel wrong. It's not going to feel good.

It's going to feel like anxiety. It's going to scare the shit out of you. Why? Because your nervous system thinks that it's a threat. It thinks that it's a threat because you've trained yourself to think that to abandon yourself is your normal pattern. So to choose yourself, it's going to feel wrong. Not because it is wrong, but because it's unfamiliar.

Do you get that? Not because it's actually wrong, but because it's just unfamiliar. You trained it one way. Doing something different feels wrong and it feels unsafe. Your emergency signals will go off inside of your body. Worry, threat, fear, all of that. Discomfort is not a sign that you're doing something wrong, though. It's a sign that you're doing something new.

I wish everybody could get that tattooed on the arm. Like it's not a sign. Feeling discomfort, it's not a sign that you're doing something wrong. It's just a sign that you're doing something new. And that's okay. So being uncomfortable and scared to do something is actually a sign that you're doing it right. It's actually a sign that you're starting to choose yourself, that you're starting to take new action,

that you're starting to build a new identity. So that's step number two. Step number three is to build self-trust. You need more evidence. that you have your own back. This is huge, like massive for people. You need to build up more evidence that you have your own back. Self-trust is built like this. You listen to yourself. You act on it. You prove to your brain that you're safe. And then you repeat it over and over and over again. That's it. It's simple. It's not easy. It is not easy, but you must do it. You have to

do that. You have to listen to yourself. What do I want? What do I truly want deep down inside of me? And then you have to act on that thing. And you have to go, hey, I just acted on that thing. Brain, do you see that we're safe? Do you see that we're okay? Yeah, I'm safe. Everything's okay. Okay, well, then I don't need to worry so much about it. And then you do it over and over and over again. Whether that's 10 times a day, whether that's 75 times a day. And the reason why this works is that when you follow through on your own decisions, your brain starts to reduce all of this internal conflict. It's not like your true self versus your conditioned self anymore.

You're actually acting from your true self more often. And so your brain over time will reduce this internal conflict. Because you know what I'm talking about, that internal conflict when you want to do something and you don't do it. Now you're just wanting to do something and you're doing it. So over time, after you stop, you know, you get past the uncomfortable, feelings over the first couple weeks or first couple of minds, your internal conflict actually is not going to be as bad. Your decision making is going to get better. Your stress response to making those

decisions and taking different actions will over time start to decrease. All of this makes it easier to do the next time because you're literally becoming a person who chooses himself, which is what we really want to do. So that's step number three. In step number four, let people be disappointed. This isn't common, but there might be a couple people like this. If you start choosing yourself, some people might not like it. Not because you're wrong at all, but because they benefited from the old version of you that didn't choose themselves. Do you see that? So you might lose one or two people, but honestly, think about this. Like, if somebody's mad at you for choosing yourself, is that really somebody that has your back? No. It's somebody who was only in a relationship with you

because it benefited them and they didn't give a damn about what you wanted. So you're not really losing something. You're actually gaining a whole lot more than you're losing. And so I want you to realize, like at the end of your life, the question you're not going to, you're not going to ask yourself like, did everybody like me? Was I accepted by everybody? Your question that you're going to ask yourself is, did I live a life that was actually mine? like under the five regrets of the dying, the number one regret of people dying is I wish I lived a life that was true to myself and not the life that other people expected of me. The number one regret of people on their deathbeds that know that they're leaving this planet is I wish I

lived a life that was true to myself and not the life that other people expected of me. Can we look at that and learn from them so that we don't live the same life? Because I don't want that regret. So the next time it's you, you feel that moment, the hesitation, that instinct, that quiet voice, you shouldn't say yes to this. Like, pause. Ask yourself, like, what would it look like if I chose myself right now? And then figure out what the next step is and take that step. Not a big step.

Not a big, scary step. Just a small step in the right direction. Because your goal isn't to become fearless. You will never become fearless. your goal is to build courage and to be someone who finally stops leaving themselves behind. 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 in at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-A-L-J-R. And if you want to learn more about coaching with me live outside of this podcast, you can go ahead and go to coach with

rob.com for more information. Once you can coach with rob.com. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I'll leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. you and I hope that you have amazing amazing day.