The Mindset Mentor - The Realization That Changed Everything for Me

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

Are you treating yourself like a person—or like a never-ending project that always needs to be fixed? In this episode, I share the mindset shift that completely changed my life after 16 years of self-development, and why true healing begins when you stop fighting the parts of yourself and start understanding them. I'll show you how to turn your fears, ego, judgment, and even your flaws into powerful tools so you can finally grow without being at war with yourself. 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. If you're out there and you want to create the perfect morning routine, go to the perfect morning routine.com right now and get my free workbook and video on exactly the step-by-step process according to science of how to create a perfect morning routine. Once again, that is the perfect morning routine.com.

Today, I'm going to be talking to you about something that really, really changed my life. This took me 36 years to figure out. And for the most part of my life, I saw myself as a project, not a person, not a whole human, a project, this never-ending to-do list of needing to fix. And that's kind of how I got into deeply into self-development because I saw these parts of me where I was like, I just need to fix this. I need to, I'm like a bus set up car in a mechanic's garage. And it was like, this is broken and this thought there's something wrong with and we've got to get rid of this and how the hell did this get inside of the exhaust, this lazy part of me, I need to trash that and get rid of it, the judgmental voice, I need to

silence it and push that out. I need to hate that side of myself. This being selfish, I need to shame it and get rid of it. And so what did I do? I do have hardcore to self-development. I hired my first one-on-one coach when I was 19, about turned 20 years old. I read as many books as I possibly can. And I really just went hardcore to self-development. And I want to tell you this, the reason why I went into self-development was not to love myself, not to really understand myself, but it was to fix the parts of me that I hated. And after about 16 years in self-development, I realized like,

no, this isn't the right way of doing it. Like, I've been working on myself so hardcore, and I've still got these parts of me. Now, they're not as loud as they used to be. They don't run the show as much as they used to, but they still pop up. And I was like, okay, well, then maybe I can't get rid of this part of me. Maybe what it's about is integrating this part of me.

Maybe it's about understanding that sometimes I do, need this part of me, but I don't need it to run the show all of the time. And so here's what I did. In the past, this old mindset that I had created a constant war inside of me. Because no matter how much I grew, there was always something that need to be fixed. How much my business grew and how much money I made and what my life turned into. Like, yes, I will tell you that working on myself made my life a lot better. It made everything better. It made me happier. It made all of this stuff. But it didn't make my healing really start. I wasn't really healing myself because I was always trying to fix something. Because I was always trying to fix something, I wasn't really healing the parts of

myself. I was attacking myself in the name of improvement. And so the thing about self-development. I love self-developing. I love changing myself. I love teaching this. There's nothing else that I love doing more than this. But self-development is a trap as well. If you're going to dive into, you've got to really understand the mechanisms of all of this that's going on. What I learned is the problem with a lot of self-help and self-development is kind of like in the, I don't want to say the message that it carries, but it's almost like the underlying message. It's not like somebody just specifically says this to you, but it's like an underlying message of like, you're not good enough until you fix this. And you don't really notice. I mean,

took 16 years for me to figure it out. Right. You don't really say it out loud to yourself. But deep down, it's kind of like this thought that we have to ourselves sometimes that's running the show. You know, like, once I stop being so lazy, then I'll love myself. You know, once I stop judging people, then I'll be a person that I accept. Once I become more giving, then I'll be more giving. Then I'll be worthy in some sort of way. And we fight the selfish side of us. We fight the lazy side of us. We fight the judgmental side of us. We fight all these different parts of us. And I'm going to keep using this word parts. But the more that you fight a part of you, the stronger that that part of you actually becomes. It's like you give energy to that thing and that thing needs energy for it to

grow. And I know this because I lived it for years. And no matter how much I try to work on not having a short temper, I'm still short-tempered sometimes. No matter how much I try to work on being judgmental, I'm still judgmental sometimes. No matter how much I try to work on not being selfish, I'm still selfish sometimes. Once again, it's not as bad as it used to be. Like if I had done no work on myself, I would be way worse of a person. I would be, if I had never worked to myself, I would be absolutely horrendous to be around. But, so I'm not like that, right? But at the same time, it's like, I still have these parts of myself. And those will never go away fully.

There is no destination. You're never going to get to the place. Like our goals are like the horizon. The closer that we get to them, the further that they get away from us. But here's really the shift that I think is important. I stopped trying to erase those parts of me and I started learning about how to accept them,

which is a journey of its own. But I really wanted to start to talk to you to have you understand it. I started to learn and go, okay, judgmental Rob, I'm going to stop fighting him because when I fight him and I put more energy to it, it's like watering a flower. It's going to just grow. That energy is like the water. It's just, I'm going to stop fighting him. I'm going to stop giving you so much energy. I'm going to say, hey, let me just figure out a way to accept it. This part of me lives in soot, at some point in time, being selfish or being judgmental, benefited me as a child. Maybe it made me feel safe. Maybe it made me feel like I was in control,

whatever it might have been in some story, but it made me feel safe at some point in time, most likely in my childhood. So I built that part of me unconsciously. And now I'm looking and going, okay, it's there. I accept that it's there. I don't want it to run the show anymore. Because even the quote unquote bad parts of you, like we like to put good or bad, positive or negative. Those are all just human labels. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. Like humans, we like to label stuff. But in reality, there is no bad part of you. There's no good part of you. There's just parts of you that just pop up and talk every once a while. But like, let me give you a real example. This example that really like clicked in my head a few years ago

when I was writing my book and really started to make me wake up to this. When I was writing my book, I was editing and editing and rewriting and tweaking and obsessing about like every single sentence. And then I asked myself, I was like, let me take a step back real quick. Why are you putting so much in this? Like, what's the drive behind this? Why are you putting 16 rounds of edits into one book? And I thought to myself, like, I really want to impact people. Like, I want someone to walk into a bookstore who's never heard of Rob Dial in their entire life

and go, huh, that looks interesting. I'm going to pick it up and read it. And they pick it up, they read it, and it changes their life. Because I've had that happen to me before. This book looks interesting. I'm reading the summary on the back. I take it home.

I read it. That person changed my life. I had no idea who they were before I walked in the bookstore. So I do want that. And then I was also kind of playing devil's advocate. And I was like, yeah, but also, you do want to be a bestseller.

And if you're a bestseller and it's like a perennial bestseller, you'll make money off this thing for years. Someone has a huge book. They make millions of dollars for years and years and years. So you do want to do that too, don't you? And I'm like, shit, yeah, I guess I do. And it's like, but I also really want to win. Like, I want to beat other books out. And so there's a competitive side of me. And I'm like, oh my God, like all of these parts of me are kind of working together to write this book. In that wanting to win, wanting to make money, wanting to get to the top of the best sellers list, is that ego? Absolutely. And for a little bit, I kind of judge. myself for it. And I thought about it and I was like, okay, like, let me really look at this.

If my ego, which is wanting to make money and wanting to be successful and want to be number one is also part of me that is making me re-edit this book and make it better and make it better and make it better and make it better, it's just as beneficial, if used the right way as the side of me that wants to change somebody's life. And so can I use my ego as a, tool to create a better book. And I was like, holy shit. Yes, I can. And I was like, damn, well, I guess my ego isn't evil. It's not something that I need to kill off. It's like one of my internal team members. And sometimes that team member needs to be brought up on stage. And sometimes that team members been on stage for too long and I need to rip the mic away from him and push them off the stage.

You know, sometimes I need to fire it up. Sometimes I need to tell it to chill. Either way, it's part of the crew. I ain't kicking him out. He's not able to go anywhere. It's just I'm learning to use these parts of me like tools in a tool belt. And the parts that we hate really might just be misunderstood in some way.

You know, like, what if the parts of you that annoy you the most are actually really valuable traits that we just misuse or misunderstand in some sort of way? You know, like the judgmental side of me that I talk about. Sometimes I'm driving down the road, having a great day, and I see someone the side of the road, and my brain just immediately goes to judgment.

And I'm like, where the hell did that come from? Like, it didn't even feel like it was me. It just flew out of my head, and I'm just thinking it. I'm like, okay, so maybe I don't need that judgmental side. I used to hate that judgmental side. And then I realized, like, yeah, in those moments, I don't want my judgmental side to pop out. But in certain moments in our life, is it really good to have a high level of judgment? absolutely. If you're in business, having judgment is a great idea. If you're investing into something,

it's a great idea. If you're around other humans, having some sort of judgment, can I trust this person? Can I not trust this person? Is something that is very valuable? If it's on the stage, screaming into the microphone, running the show all the time, is it beneficial? No, but when I need to pull it up, okay, I'm about to spend X amount of dollars by outsourcing this in my business. Let me have some judgment here and actually see if this is something that I should do. Okay, I can bring that tool out of my tool belt. What about being selfish, right? Maybe you've realized that you're selfish in some sort of way. Well, you know, there's a lot of people out there in this world that are people pleasers that have no boundaries. They actually need to be more selfish. So in that case, depending on the

situation, being selfish all the time is not good. But if you're the type of person that's a people pleaser. Yeah, actually, honestly, you need to be more selfish. You need to learn to be more selfish. So that's a good thing. What if you're a lazy person? Well, maybe it's also your body screaming for rest. Like, if you've been working really hard, if you've been trying to grow something, you're like, I've been so lazy the past couple days. Maybe your body screaming for rest. Or if you're lazy all of the time, maybe you just hate what you're doing in your life and you need to do something different. Maybe you're not lit up by the thing that you're doing every single day. I mean, I would be really lazy too if I was still going and working for a boss that I hated.

So it's not about deleting these parts of us. It's about understanding them. It's about integrating them into the whole. Your body, your brain, it's like this giant symphony. Now, you don't want the French horn playing over everybody every single time, but the French horn, even though I don't know what it sounds like, and I know there's always one inside of an orchestra, it's always in an orchestra.

So maybe you have this orchestra running, and it's just, it's playing. Okay, well, I need each of these parts of the orchestra. I need the brass and I need the percussion, need the woodwinds, all of those things. And I need to learn when to turn them up and when to turn them down. And when this guy gets a solo and when I need to tell them to shut the hell up because it's getting to be too annoying, right? It's like learning how to use the whole symphony that is you. you know and you're not here to just just leave this normal life and just just get by with the way things

are and if you're working on yourself i want to be really really clear in this you're never going to get fully rid of any part of yourself if there's a part of yourself that lives inside of you you're never going to get rid of it your judgments your fears your egotistical thoughts your lazy days your selfish needs, you're not going to get rid of those things. But as you keep working on yourself, you start becoming more aware of yourself. You start becoming more aware of like, oh, I know why I'm in this, oh, I'm noticing this pattern that I'm in. I'm noticing this emotion that's coming up. I'm noticing this thought that's inside of me and why I feel fearful to do this. And you have to start having these tools in your tool belt. And you have to understand that as you start to understand yourself,

you realize that these parts are all really beneficial. Getting rid of them is not the goal. It's not the point. The really, really big shift and why I say like you need to hear this, and I wish every person could hear this, is because the shift is when you stop seeing yourself and stop seeing those parts of you that you've been trying to fix or get rid of like I was telling you about. You stop seeing them as defects and you start seeing them as tools in some sort of way, tools that you can sharpen, tools that you can use when you need them and you can set them aside when they're not helpful. And you can become aware, oh, you know what, this part of it. me's popping up. And so I want you to understand, if you're on this journey of self-development,

you are because you're listening to this podcast, obviously. You're not broken. You don't need to get rid of any parts of yourself. You don't need to fix any parts of yourself. Now, the moment when your relationship with yourself changes is when you realize this. And you start accepting parts of yourself. You stop hating parts of yourself. You learn to start loving parts of yourself. Before you love any part of yourself, you have to learn to accept it first. When you do that, everything else changes because life just gets a whole lot lighter when you're not trying to fix and you're not constantly internally at battle. You know, that's really the shift that everybody needs. And that's the new kind of self-development that I think everybody needs as well. The next time you catch yourself

saying, I hate this part of me or I really need to get rid of this part of me. Just pause for a second and just say, okay, like what's the point of this part? If I could understand it instead of attacking, what's it trying to say to me? It's usually trying to protect you. Almost every single time it's trying to protect you in some sort of way. And then you ask yourself, like, how could I use this part of me as a tool instead of just something that pops up in what I'm not paying attention? When I'm unconsciously this living my life as a robot. And so that's really the transformation we're all working for. It's not about being better. It's about integrating yourself as a whole. So that's what I got for you for days episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram

stories. Tag me in at Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-L-J-R. Once again, if you want to download my free workbook and video on how to create the perfect morning routine based in science, go to the perfect morning routine.com right now and download it for free. And with that, I am going to leave you the same way to 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.