The Mindset Mentor - The Price of Not Choosing Yourself

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

What if the reason you feel stuck isn’t lack of effort but an outdated version of yourself running your life? In this episode, I break down how most of who you are was programmed before the age of seven—and how that 1.0 version may be holding you back and how to intentionally build your 2.0 self. If you want to be a high performer in 2026, click here: https://2026workshop.com/   If you want 2026 to be your best year yet then this video is for you. In just 30 minutes, I’ll help you build a clear, simple goal system so you stop guessing and start moving forward with confidence. 👉 Build your 2026 goal system here: https://www.goalmastery2026.com/lp1   High performers don’t wait for clarity, they create it. This Mindset University call will help you see your blind spots and your next level. Grab your spot here 👉 https://www.coachwithrob.com/mindset-university-call-rob   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 am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not, you've done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're the type of person who wants to learn and grow and improve yourself, I put out episodes four times a week to help you because if you can improve yourself, you can improve your life. And that's all we're really looking to do. Today, I'm going to be talking about the price of not choosing yourself and what

it would look like to actually choose yourself? Because you were born into somebody else's programming. Let that land for a second. Before you ever chose your first dream, before you chose your first outfit, before you chose what your beliefs were, somebody was already shaping you into who you were supposed to be, whether that be that they did it on purpose or just by proximity to them in growing up in the same household. And most of the time, what it really is, is, is, is just us becoming our parents, us becoming what society wants us to be, us becoming what our family wants us to be. And most people, they stay there forever. They never break out of it and they wonder why they can't create the life that they want. And those people are just running the same outdated

one point oh software version of themselves. And they're trying to get to the next level. They're trying to create an amazing life, but they're doing it with the first level identity. the one that they're supposed to grow out of. But what if the missing piece, like the real, real key to success, to joy, to freedom, to peace, what if the real key to all of that, it wasn't more hustle, it wasn't more strategy, it wasn't working harder, it wasn't fixing anything outside of you, but it was actually you deciding that you're finally going to choose yourself, learning how and when to choose yourself, in how to do it in a way that creates the life that you see in your dreams?

And so let's dive into it. I want you understand that the version of you that you came into this world as and that you learned, you know, basically majority of who you are by the age of seven is 1.0 version of you. And that is your default. If you're not paying attention, you will default to it all of the time. And most people think that it's their destiny, but it's not. It's something that you're supposed to grow out of. And so I'll hit you with the truth.

That first version of you, like the 1.0 version of you, it wasn't very. built by conscious choice. You didn't sit down at four, five, seven years old and said, who do I want to build myself into? It was built by what you learned. It was built by survival. It was built by fear, built by many different things. And it came from, you know, your parents' beliefs about everything. Your parents' beliefs about money. Your parents believes about love. Your parents' beliefs about safety. It came from the emotional tone that was set inside of your home. It came from the approval that you got. And what you you had to do to get approval, or it came from the approval that you didn't get. It came from

the way your teachers and your caregivers and your peers treated you. And it also came from what you thought about yourself or what meaning you gave yourself based off of how you see, like actually saw them treat you when you were younger. And so that version of you that you've built yourself into, you might be responsible. You might be nice. You might be a good person. You might be successful on paper. But deep down, you might be exhausted. you might be like, man, I feel like I've built my, I built a ladder up the wrong wall. You might feel like you're unfulfilled. You might feel like you're overgiving and like under receiving from people.

Whatever it might be, you're noticing in your listening this episode because you're going, there's something else outside of what I currently have that I'm trying to get or become. And I want you understand. Research from the University of Minnesota shows that our core beliefs about ourselves, about the world, about everything. 90 to 95% of them are shaped by the age of seven. Seven. And they're stored in your subconscious.

And rarely do we question them ever again unless we intentionally bring them to the surface. Because it is as true to us, because it was programmed into us at such a young age, it is as true to us as if I said, hey, what color is the sky? Everybody's going to say blue. And it's like, that is absolute true to us. What color is grass? green, absolute truth to us. Why? Because it was programmed into us. Those things were programmed into us before the age of seven. And so who you are, who you think you are, what you believe about yourself,

what you believe about other people, what you believe about love, what you believe about the world. Everything is built into your subconscious by the age of seven. And we rarely question it unless we intentionally bring it to the surface. So if you're in your 30s and you're in your 40s and you're in your 50s, and you haven't sat down and intentionally started to build yourself and change your beliefs? You're still living beliefs that you formed in the first grade. Like, think about that for a second. The first grade, do you really think that if you're 40 years old now, that maybe you have more wisdom than you did at six than you did at seven? Do you think that maybe there's some beliefs that could be shifted that you learned about the world or that you learned about love or that you learned

about yourself by the age of seven that at 40 maybe you could shift a little bit. Do you see what I mean? You're running 33-year-old outdated programs. And I want you to realize if you are, you're not broken. You're just running an old operating system. You know, if you really start to think about it, the 1.0 version of you that you have, that 90, 95% of you was built by 7 years old. That version of you, that child cannot create the 2.0 version of your life that you're trying to build. Think about that for a second. Right? And so I want you understand it is really about you learning to build yourself, to be very intentional about you building yourself. You know, you don't find yourself. You build yourself. You know, there's a lie that I think is sold to us in our

culture of like, one day, if you try hard enough, if you meditate long enough, if you buy the right journal, you'll finally find yourself. Nah, that's not it. You don't find yourself. You build yourself. You decide who you need to become and you start building yourself into that. You decide who you're going to be and you become that. Think about it. If you were building a new house, wouldn't you want to sit down and build out the

blueprints and the floor and the flooring and you want to put up the kitchen and what colors it's going to be? You're not just going to like figure out as you go along, right? You're going to build it and then you're going to put piece by piece together. That's exactly how it is when you're trying to build your. yourself into somebody. And so I want you to understand your 2.0 version of yourself is just ready for you to grow into them. They're not hiding. They're just buried under layers of people pleasing and fear of judgment and fear of other people's opinions and procrastination and perfectionism and playing

small and guilt for putting yourself first or all these old conditionings that are based in the past. And the crazy part about the people pleasing and the fear of judgment and all of that stuff. The crazy part is that you think that's who you are. It's not who you are. It's just the 1.0 version of you that's outdated and you need to let go of certain parts of it. You need to build new parts of it. And so here's what it comes down to. You're either brainwashed by your past or you brainwash yourself and you reprogram yourself for the future that you're trying to create. And if you're not actively choosing your thoughts and saying, who do I want to be, how do I want to think, and when you have a negative thought or a thought that doesn't align with the future that you want to create,

you change it immediately. If you're not actively choosing how you want to think and how you want to be, then you're being run by somebody else's thoughts and beliefs that come from your childhood. That's the old version of you. You've got to break through. There's a 2005 study done by the National Science Foundation that found that 80% of your daily thoughts are negative. 80% of our daily thoughts are negative. is that really facilitating the life that you want to create? And 95% of the between 60 to 90,000 thoughts that you have per day, 95% of them are the same as they were yesterday. The repetitive, meaning that you're reliving the same old mental script on a loop every single day until the day you die unless you interrupt it. And we will be right back.

And now, back to the show. always default to the 1.0 version of you. Turning into the 2.0 version of you, it takes time, it takes intention, and it takes a lot of work, as it does if you're building anything in this world, a business, a relationship, a building, all of them take work, time, attention, everything. And so you have to learn to start working yourself and to actually be comfortable choosing yourself. You know, like, let me call out the elephant in the room real quick that some people already thinking based off of your programming. Choosing yourself is not selfish. It's not. It's the most strategic thing that you can do to make your life and everybody else's life around you better.

Choosing yourself is not selfish. Because when you're depleted and when you're not showing up at 100% and you're not the best version of yourself, guess what happens? Everybody loses. You lose, your children lose, your spouse loses, your employer loses or your employees lose. You know, you think that you're helping your kids by putting yourself last? No, you're not. You're actually modeling self-abandonment to them. You think that you're helping everybody else around you by always saying yes? No, you're actually teaching those people to not respect your needs. So think about this for a second. If you're thinking yourself, oh man, like there's a part of me that comes to my childhood that says that it's so selfish to work in myself and it's so selfish

to choose myself and it's so selfish to put myself first. Think about this. It's just your family better off by living and learning from the 1.0 version of you or the 2.0 version of you? It's an easy answer, isn't it? It's a 2.0 version of you. Nobody in your life, nobody in this world wins when the version of you that's showing up is the 1.0 version of you. The version of you that's showing up is 10% of what you could be. The real paradox in all of this is at the moment that you start putting yourself before everyone else is when everybody else's life improves. And so I know, because there's so many people I know that are just such sweet people and people pleasers and they were programmed to think this from childhood. Choosing yourself and putting yourself first is not selfish.

Why? Because when you're better, everybody else is better. You have more energy. You lead with clarity instead of resentment, you can model what wholeness looks like. You can make everyone else's life better when you are better. And just so you know, this is actually backed by science. There was a study that was done in health psychology, where they found that people who regularly engage in self-care and self-reflection have a higher satisfaction in their relationships, they have better parenting skills, and they have greater work and performance. So taking care of yourself isn't an option. it's got to be something that is absolutely essential. You need to put yourself first. And the root of everything I want you to understand is your relationship with yourself.

Like let me drop the biggest truth of this entire episode and maybe of your entire life. Your relationship with yourself is the root system for everything in your life. If your relationship with yourself is broken, everything else is going to be broken in some sort of way. If your relationship with yourself is incredibly strong, everything in your life is going to be better. your career it'll grow from your confidence your relationships they will mirror how you treat yourself your finances they reflect what you believe your worth most people are working from the outside in oh they're trying to fix the marriage they're trying to get a better job they're trying to lose weight they're trying to make more money cool that's all great but all of those things the marriage will be

fixed when you work in yourself your job will get better you'll be performed better when you work yourself you will lose more weight when you work on yourself you will make more money when you work on yourself. So they're trying all these outside external things, but none of them stick because your inner foundation is cracked. It's like trying to build a life on quicksand. It's not going to work. You know, like I always say you can't out hustle low self-worth. You can't. You can't out-love lack of self-connection. If you want more peace in your life, get still. If you want more clarity in your life, sit with yourself. Take some time. Sit down and ask like, what? what do I need today? Like, how am I actually feeling? Where have I been ignoring myself? Who do I want to

be today? Nothing about the rest of your life. You can think about, I can have a North Star and angle of who you want to be, but let's just ask like, who do I need to be today? And get really honest with yourself because that level of honesty, that's where all of your upgrading actually begins. And it's really important that you work harder on yourself than you do anything else. You know, you have to work hard on yourself than you do anything else in your entire life. There's a classic Jim Rohn quote where he says, if you work hard at your job, you'll make a living. If you work hard on yourself, you'll make a fortune.

But I'll take that a step further. If you work hard on yourself, you won't just make money. You'll have incredible relationships. You'll have more peace. And you'll be able to create a life that actually feels good to you. And that is the best thing that you can have. And so you've got to figure out a way to make space every single day to sit in silence, to be with yourself, to question your thoughts, to question your beliefs, to question who you are

and say, does this line up with who I need to be to create the life that I want, or are there aspects of myself that I need to change? Or are there aspects of myself that need to strengthen? And actually sit with yourself, ask yourself these tough questions. Feel whatever needs to be felt. Parent yourself when old programming kicks in. You start thinking about your fears and limiting beliefs and doubts. Go, oh, hold on. No, no, no, that's just the 1.0 version of me. I need to be the 2.0 version of me say right now. And commit to that 2.0 version of yourself every single day, multiple times a day.

You've got to commit to being that person. Let me just really close with this. You need to choose yourself. You need to stop running from yourself. Your relationship with yourself is the most important thing in your world. Every time you choose others at the cost of yourself, every time that you ignore your own needs just so you can keep the peace, every time that you wait for permission, to be the real you, you pay. But the opposite of all of that is also true. When you choose you,

when you choose to build a deeper relationship with yourself, you win. And guess what? Everybody else in your life wins as well. So I want to be very, very clear. You need to choose you every single day, multiple times a day with everything that you have and without any apology. And if you do that, you will create a better life for yourself. And you will create a better life for yourself. and you'll create a better life for everyone that you love. And in turn, you will have a ripple effect that makes the entire world better as well. Hey, thanks so much for watching this video.

Based off of what you have been watching recently, YouTube thinks this video is the best one for you right now. And if you want to make sure to never miss another video, hit that subscribe button, and I'll see you on the next video. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please show it on Instagram Stories, tag me at Rob Dowell Jr. R-B-D-I-L-J-R. and if you're out there, you want to learn more about coaching with me outside the podcast.

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