The Mindset Mentor - The Problem With Your Brain

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

Have you ever felt like you know exactly what you need to do to create the life you dream of, yet find yourself not doing it? Or maybe you're doing it, but just not as wholeheartedly as you could? If that sounds like you, you're not alone! It's not about knowing what to do—it's about choosing to actually do it. Today, I'll walk you through understanding and overcoming this mental barrier.We'll explore the concept of "Opportunity vs. Obligation," and how shifting your focus from the obligations (the must-dos that feel like a drag) to the opportunities (the exciting potential outcomes) can dramatically change your approach to everyday challenges.So, if you're ready to stop letting your brain hold you back and start taking bold steps towards the life you truly desire, this episode is for you!  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 of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, I guarantee you'll also probably love getting a couple emails from me a week that kind of dive deeper into your brain, into your psychology to help you grow and improve. If you want to be a part of that, go to mindsetemail.com. Once again, mindsetemail.com. It is absolutely free to join my newsletter and I'll send you emails sporadically throughout the week to help you grow and improve. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about one of the biggest problems that I see with the human

mind. It's a good thing, but for trying to be successful and to get outside of your comfort zone and build the life that you want, it is your biggest hangup most of the time. One of the biggest things that I see that stops people from taking action and creating the life that they want is this thing. If you can understand this first off and you can master it, it will be so much easier for you to take action, to do the things that you need to do and stop holding yourself back. Very rarely do I talk to someone and they don't know what they need to do to create the life that they want. Usually everybody has a pretty good idea of what it is they need to do to create whatever life it is

that they want. Everybody listening to this podcast has something different that you want to create in your life, but you probably aren't doing it. And if you are doing it, you probably aren't doing it to the full capacity that you could. And so a lot of times it's not that we don't know what we need to do. It's just that we're not doing it. And the most important, the most important decision that we can make is whether we decide that we're going to go for the life that we want or we're not, because it takes the decision. Like you gotta, you can't sit on the fence. You've just got to decide.

I'm either going like there's a fork in the road. I'm either going to stay exactly as I am in the same place, and I'll fast forward in 20 years and my life is going to look pretty close to what it does right now, or I'm going to change. And it requires a decision. You've heard me say this many times in the podcast. The root word in Greek for decision is dikideria, which means to cut off, to cut off all other options. I am going to go down this path of creating the life that I want to, and that is it. And so if you do decide that you want to create the life that you want to, want to create the relationship that you want to, the family that

you want to, the body that you want to, the health that you want to, the business you want to, all that stuff, you've got to understand how your brain is going to work. And it's this little thing that I always call opportunity versus obligation. Okay. There's always opportunity that we have out there of what our life could be if we do this thing, but we usually don't focus on the opportunity of what it could be in one year or five years or 10 years. We usually focus on the obligation and the obligation usually makes us a little bit negative and not want to do it. What you have to understand about your brain is it's got this incredible protection mechanism built in. And that protection mechanism built into it is to try to keep you inside of your comfort zone to keep you alive. That is awesome for staying alive. It is terrible for building a life that is amazing.

The reason why is because if you're going to grow yourself, you're going to expand yourself, you're going to have to get out of your comfort zone. And that is absolutely terrifying to the human brain because the brain will almost always try to pull you back. And so you can consciously want to build the life that you want, but your brain is going to give you things and make things pop up and give you certain feelings that your body's going to create to try to keep you in the same place. It is kind of a little bit of you versus your brain in a lot of cases. So like, for instance, I'll give you an example of like opportunity versus

obligation. You know, you're going to go to the gym and you're, you know, you're a skinny little person. You're trying to put on some weight, right? You're trying to put on some weight. You're trying to put on some muscle, the, the opportunity versus the obligation, right? The obligation is that you have to put your body under strain and it's a lot easier to do nothing. Life is, there's always an opportunity to do nothing, and it's always easier to do nothing. And if you're a skinny person, like I was a skinny little guy for a long time, and I remember hitting the gym really hard one time, so hard that when I worked my biceps, I wasn't able to put my arms down. Like they were stuck at like 90 degrees because it hurts so much to put it lower. And so in my mind, that hurt.

That was a lot of pain. I don't want to go do that again. It's easier to do nothing. And so what happens is our brain will immediately go to, oh yeah, well, working out, whether it's putting on muscle or trying to lose weight. Oh yeah, working out. Yeah, that's a lot of strain. That's a lot of, it's easier to sit on the couch.

And so your brain is focusing on the obligation, what you have to do. But that's your unconscious is automatically going to go to that. And it's going to go, yeah, you know what? Maybe I should stay on the couch. You have to always start thinking about the opportunity, the focusing on what you want to be. Well, the opportunity could be that I lose 30 pounds and I feel like there's less weight on my knees and I feel better about myself and I look great in a bikini this year. Or it could be, hey, I'm going to put on some muscle so when I go to the

beach and I take my shirt off, I look good and I have a six pack, right? So it could be losing weight, being proud of the way that you look, gaining muscle, all of that stuff. There's always an obligation of what has to be done, which is what your brain usually focuses on and tries to make it feel as painful as possible. Because if it feels as painful as possible thinking about it, you're less likely to do it. But you have to consciously make yourself think of the opportunity of what can come from that, right? So I'll give you another example, right? Let's say eating healthy is another one. The obligation is you have to stay away from certain foods that maybe taste amazing, right? Now, is there good healthy food? Hell yeah,

there's great healthy food. And this is where most people usually don't eat healthy because they're like, I don't want to change. Like, I really like the taste of whatever this thing is, a bag of Skittles. I really love, I don't know about you guys, but I really love the taste of ice cream. Oh, the obligation is I have to stop eating ice cream. That sounds like shit. I don't want to do that. Oh no, I don't want to do that, right? But so that's the obligation of I have to give these things up or I have to prepare

my meals. That takes a whole lot more have to prepare my meals. That takes a whole lot more energy to prepare my meals, to eat healthier, to meal prep for myself. It's easier to just watch Netflix and see what goes on in the world on Netflix. It's easier to do that than it is to meal prep for the week. That's the obligation, right? Our brain will always go to the obligation, try to make it look as painful as possible. So therefore, what do we do? Stay in the same place. We have to know our brain's going to do that. We have to go, no, no, no. I'm focusing on the opportunity. I'm focusing on the fact that I'm going to live longer for my kids. I'm going to walk my daughter down the aisle

because I'm not going to have a heart attack early. I'm going to be able to play with my grandkids at 65 years old, right? That's the opportunity. Most of the time though, we're focused on right here, right now. That's usually what your brain wants you to do. You have to get up and go to the gym, or you have to get up and meal prep, or you're not allowed to have certain meals that you're used to. We have to consciously fast forward ourself into the future and say, no, I'm going to make this decision because it's better for me and it's better for me long-term. And I might not have any, any, any right now. I might not have any gratification in this moment, but long-term I will have gratification from it. So it's instant gratification versus delayed gratification. I would rather have the delayed

gratification. Let's say you're in sales, right? And you've got to make phone calls because you want to be able to, you know, buy a new house for your family. So the obligation is you got to put in some work right now, right? I know salespeople. I've trained over 2000 salespeople. I've had to do this before. It is hard to get yourself to go, all right, I got to make a hundred calls right now.

Oh God, that sucks. Right? So the obligation is you got to put in some work. You got to call people up. You got to have some people say like not even answer. You got to have some people actually reject you. Oh God, do you know how painful that is? Maybe some people are going to hang up on you. So your brain immediately goes to that obligation. No, no, no, that's going to be painful, right? Brain a lot of times immediately goes to negative, negative, negative, negative. Almost always a brain left to its own devices will go negative. Some people are going to hang up on you. You're going to get rejected. It's going to make you feel like shit. It's going to bring up all of your insecurities. But that's what our brain goes to. That's the obligation. We still

have to make the phone calls, of course. But now I need to consciously take myself and be intentional and fast forward into the future of how making these phone calls is going to help me create the life that I want. You know what? I'm going to be able to make enough money to buy my first house, to put my children, and we're going to move to a better part of town. They're going to be able to make enough money to buy my first house, to put my children, and we're going to move to a better part of town. They're going to get a better education. Yeah, that's way more important to me than someone rejecting me. I'm going to take my family on a trip.

You know, I've been telling my wife that we're going to go to Spain for five years and we haven't had the money to do so. So I'm going to start to think about how amazing it would be to be in Spain, which then makes, I'm thinking of the opportunity while I'm doing the obligation. You know what? I'm going to buy my mom a car. My mom's never had a nice car before. I'm going to buy my mom a nice car. And you start thinking about that. And all of that, I promise you makes the hard work worth it. But a lot of times we're not focused on the opportunity. What do we focus on? The obligation, what we have to do. Waking up early. The obligation is you got to get out of your warm, comfortable, amazing bed. And I don't know about you guys, but like the second that I wake up, my bed is the most

comfortable place in the universe. And I have to get out of it to get up early to do like a workout and meditation and stuff. Oh, yeah, it's much easier to stay in bed and just not do that. I have to leave the most comfortable place in the universe to go do a workout, to do a morning routine. It's so much easier to stay in bed. Hey, just stay in bed. So the obligation is, yeah, you got to get out of this comfortable spot. Yeah, you got to go put in some work. It's so much easier just to stay where you are. Rob, you might as well just stay where

you are. Don't worry about it. Just stay where you are. But the opportunity could be, think about how much better you're going to feel after your morning routine. I don't know about you, but when I miss my morning routine because if something happened to whatever it might be you know life gets in the way sometimes I don't feel as good I just feel better when I have a morning routine when I take some time to myself when I have some time to to have silence to do meditation do breath work to do some some reading to get a workout in no and if I do have that time, I feel so much better after morning routine. That is the opportunity. You know what? I actually treat people better if I get my

meditation in. That is an opportunity that's there as well. You know, I train a lot of coaches on how to grow their coaching business as well. And so, you know, I always talk about, we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago, where it's like doing sales calls and getting somebody onto a phone call and chatting with them. The obligation is you got to put some work in. You might get rejected. Someone might say no. Sometimes that doesn't feel very good.

And you can look at that and be like, yeah, that sucks. But that's, and that's the obligation. And that can bring up your insecurities. The reason why somebody doesn't want to make calls or do whatever it is they want to do is because they might get rejected. And if they get rejected, it's going to bring up their insecurities. And they're going to start to feel not good enough, not smart enough. Childhood things are going to come up when they're bullied and they start feeling the

same way, whatever it might be. It's easier to not do all those things. So the obligation is you have to go and possibly get rejected. The opportunity is what if somebody says yes, and you work with that person for three months or six months and you change that person's life? Well, at that point in time, now we're talking about a big difference. So there's always going to be things that you have to do. That's just the way that life is. There's always going to be things that you, excuse me, that you, that you should do or could do or need to do or whatever it is. I don't know the correct phrase because have to, you don't have to do anything. You could just sit on the couch and stare at the ceiling if you want to, but there's always going to be

things that need to be done in order to get the life that you want. And you have to get to a point where you make a decision to do the hard things. And if you don't want to do the life that you want. And you have to get to a point where you make a decision to do the hard things. And if you don't want to do the hard things, then just make the decision now that you're not going to do the hard things. Just stay as you are forever. If that's the case, and that's what you decide, then do it. But make the decision. Don't be on the fence anymore. It's either I'm going to change my life or I'm going to stay the same. Make the decision of what is it you want to do. It's like my very first mentor used to always say this. It was like the first real phrase, I guess, in self-development

and working on myself that kind of got hardwired into me. And it's you're either green and growing and brown and dying. There is no staying the same because if you're the same now, let's say that again. If you're the same now if you're let's say that again if you're the same in five years as you are right now you're older but you're not any more wise you're not any further along so it's not even really staying the same it's actually kind of going backwards and so you're either green and growing or brown and dying so you have to make the decision are you going to take the route where you're going to be green and growing or you're going to take the route where you're going to be green and growing? Are you going to take the route where you're going to be brown and dying?

It's completely up to you. This is your life. This is completely your life. No one can make you do anything that you don't want to do. But at some point, you have to grow up and put the work in if you do want to change your life. No one's going to come and save you. There's no knight in shining armor that's going to say, hey, you know what? Take a nap.

I'll go ahead and build your life for you. I'll build that perfect business. I'll build the perfect body for you. I'll do all, I'll go ahead and stay inside of your bed. I'll go ahead and do your morning routine for you. No one's going to come and save you. And we're owed nothing. The universe owes us nothing. All we got to do is we got to put in the work to create the life that we want. So what I want you to do is understand that if you're starting to think, man, I want to take this action, but I'm not doing it. Why the hell am I not doing it? You're probably not focusing on the outcome that you want. You're probably not focusing on the opportunity that's in front of

you. You're focusing on, oh, I have to do this thing. Oh, I've got to, I've got to put some work in. I've got to strain myself. Oh, it's going to be a little bit hard. I don't know if I can do this. Your insecurities and your fears and limiting beliefs might be coming up. But it comes back to that phrase, when you think about quitting, remember why you started. When you think about quitting, remember why you started. Why are you doing in the first place? Why are you wanting to grow your business? Why are you wanting to make these sales calls? Why are you wanting to get up early? Why are you wanting to eat healthy? Why are you wanting to work out? When you think about quitting, remember why you started.

And if you do that, that is a perfect example of focusing on the opportunity versus the obligation. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And with that, I'm gonna leave 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.