The Mindset Mentor - The Science of Making & Breaking Habits

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. If you're out there and you love this podcast, give us a rating and review, however you listen to us. Go ahead and give us a review. The reason why there's more positive ratings and reviews that we get, the more those platforms just show this podcast to people who have never listened to it before, which allows us to grow, which allows us to improve more people's lives and hopefully change the world in some sort of way. Today, we're going to be talking about how to actually change your brain through neuroplasticity, through science, to actually become kind of

Starting point is 00:00:44 addicted to the habits that you want to create in your life. So instead of having bad habits, it's how do we create the good habits? And also, how do we not just create the habits, but how do we make our brain fall in love with the process of creating these habits? And it's going to be something that's done through neuroplasticity. It's also done through a thing called the dopamine reward system. And I love this topic so much. It's one of my favorite things to talk about because I love how you can take neuroscience and use it when you understand how the brain works to your benefit, to help you create the life that you want. I love it so much. I actually literally did an entire chapter on this in my book. My book is called Level Up. It's actually on sale for the next week on Kindle. If you want to get it for $1.99, go to Amazon. You can check

Starting point is 00:01:29 it out. It's $1.99 right now. And it's the last two chapters of my book. I actually talk about this. And so when you look at it, we can struggle our way to success, or we can figure out a way to love what it is that we do so that we can continue to keep doing it for a long time. And so there's a phrase that works perfectly with this. There's a quote and it says, the man who loves walking will go further than the man who is running for a goal. So if somebody just loves walking, over time, they will go much further than somebody who's like, I have to train to get a marathon done. Because eventually once they do that marathon, the goal's over. And so it's like, how do we start to fall in love with the process of what it is that we need to do to create the

Starting point is 00:02:16 life that we want, the actions that we know we need to take in order to create the life we want, versus feeling like we have to force and struggle and white knuckle our way to success. And we're going to talk about something that's called the dopamine reward system. Now, when you look at your brain and you look at dopamine, what exactly is it? Well, most people think dopamine is a feel-good chemical in your brain. They usually take dopamine and serotonin and put them together and say, those are the feel-good chemicals in our brain. But dopamine is actually called the chemical of motivation. Dopamine is a very external-based chemical. And so serotonin is like the here, the now, the gratitude, grateful for what you

Starting point is 00:02:56 currently have. That's a feel-good chemical. Dopamine is the chemical of more. In fact, the most addictive drugs in the world are always dopaminergic ones where they actually want you. Once you get it, you want more of it. Once you get it, you want more of it. Dopamine is the main thing that's involved there. There's many books now that are coming out around dopamine. We're all addicted to dopamine in some sort of way. When you have a piece of chocolate, your brain releases a little bit of dopamine. When you do something that you want to do, your brain releases a little bit of dopamine. When you get on Instagram, your brain releases a little bit of dopamine and we become addicted to wanting more of that. And so it's the chemical that's released when we get

Starting point is 00:03:38 excited about something or if we're celebrating it as well. And so I'm going to talk about how to use this chemical in your brain to take action that you need to, to create the life that you want. Wouldn't it be nice if like we wanted to do the things that would automatically make us successful versus like wanting to do the things like sitting on the couch or scrolling on Instagram. And so when you look at the greatest achievers in our lifetime, when you look at the most successful CEOs that existed, when you look at the most successful athletes that have ever existed, when you look at like Michael Jordan, or you look at Tom Brady, you look at Kobe Bryant, or any of them,

Starting point is 00:04:16 what's the number one trait or one of the biggest traits among them. Sure, you could say hard work, you could say dedication, you could say obsession, and all of those would be true. But with hard work, with dedication, with obsession, what happened with all of them, whether they consciously realized they did this or not, is they fell in love with the process. So they could fall in love with the process of knowing they're going to be coming better, knowing that they're going to win their next championship, knowing that they're working when nobody else is. And that's what they're becoming, quote unquote, addicted to, is they fell in love. Addicted has a bad connotation.

Starting point is 00:04:55 So falling in love is a better way of saying it. They fell in love with the process. And I'm sure they probably didn't know it, but I'm sure they accidentally set up dopamine reward systems that were attached to that process. And so what is a dopamine reward system? Now that we know what dopamine is, what is a dopamine reward system and how do we build it? It's a way that you get, you get your brain to release dopamine after you accomplish a task that is part of your process that you need to become successful, whatever success means to you. So let me give you like a few examples. So it makes a little bit of sense.

Starting point is 00:05:29 The very first time I used a dopamine reward system, I didn't know I was using a dopamine reward system. It was just something that my manager taught me. My very first sales company that I was in when I was 19 years old, my, uh, we would sit there and we would make so many cold calls. And if you've ever made cold calls before, it's brutal. It's terrible sitting there making cold calls. And so we would get these trackers and it was a piece of paper. And on the piece of paper had number one to 100. And every time we would make a call, we would just mark off, scratch off one of those numbers

Starting point is 00:05:59 until we got to 100. And that means we made 100 cold calls. It took a couple hours, two, three hours to get this done. And my manager somehow knew that we should actually reward ourself as we're doing this. And so he said, what's your favorite candy? And I was like, Skittles. He goes, okay, next time you come in, bring a bag of Skittles with you. I was like, all right. And so what he would do is he would take our piece of paper and it had one through a hundred. And then next to the number

Starting point is 00:06:30 10, he would put three Skittles. Next to the number 20, he would put three Skittles. Next to number 30, he'd put three Skittles all the way down into a hundred. And so once I made my first 10 phone calls, I got to eat three Skittles. I gave my brain just a little bit of what I wanted. A little bit of what I wanted. Hey, it's a little bit of a reward for doing those 10. Then you make another 10 phone calls, you get three more Skittles. Another 10, you get three more Skittles. When you finish the 100 calls, you just finish the bag of Skittles. And now back to the show. And it wasn't making a sale that I was, he's teaching me in my brain to fall in love with. It wasn't making a sale or only rewarding myself when I made a sale or only rewarding myself when I got to the end and got 100 calls done. It was rewarding myself while I was in the process of what I needed to do.

Starting point is 00:07:26 And so it made me want to do more calls to get to the next three Skittles and get the next three Skittles every time I did this. And if you look at how animals are trained, if you look at when scientists or neuroscientists take rats and they take other animals, they take rats, I mean, every type of animal, they take rats, they take ra animals. They take rats. I mean, every type of animal. They take rats. They take ravens. They take crows. And they teach them, okay, you push this button and this comes out. You push a button, a piece of food comes out. You push a button. They do this with squirrels. They do it all the time. And they start to train them. You do this and you get this. You do this and you get this. You do this and you get this. And over time, your brain

Starting point is 00:08:02 starts to say, I really like what I get when I do this action. So I'm going to start doing this action more often. And so it makes you fall in love with the process of doing what needs to be done versus, oh, I'm only going to be happy when I get to this point. And so basically the way that it works, it's quite simple. And so basically the way that it works, it's quite simple. A dopamine reward system is like the breadcrumbs that you set up for yourself on your path for success. It's the breadcrumbs on the path to success.

Starting point is 00:08:33 If you remember E.T., the movie E.T., for those of you guys that remember it, there's like the Reese's Pieces where they put like one Reese, they're trying to get him to move across the room and they give him one Reese's Pieces and then like another one three feet out, another one three feet out. That's basically what you're doing with yourself. And research shows that even something like having a small piece of chocolate after a workout made somebody more likely to show up the next day. And so I'm not saying, hey, eat an entire candy bar whenever you get a workout done, but it's giving yourself a little bit of a prize for just the process. So most people say, okay, I want to lose 20 pounds. And then they go to the gym and this happens. I hear

Starting point is 00:09:13 this all the time. They go to the gym, they do their workout, they come home, they take a shower, they look at themselves as they're changing and they're like, you're still fat. And instead of celebrating the fact they went to the gym, now they're talking shit to themselves. That's not going to motivate you to continue to keep doing it. So you're actually doing what needs to be done and then breaking yourself down. Doing what needs to be done and then breaking yourself down. No wonder why you give up so easily and why you give up every time you start something. Because you're not celebrating yourself. You're not releasing dopamine. It's not a dopamine reward system attached to the process that needs to be done

Starting point is 00:09:47 to get you to where you wanna be. So instead of, okay, I wanna lose 20 pounds and I'll only be excited and I'll only reward myself when I lose those 20 pounds. No, you want to reward yourself for every step in the process that gets you closer to that. And now it doesn't mean you have to have Skittles. I've said a lot of candy for some reason.

Starting point is 00:10:04 Skittles or Reese's Pieces or chocolate. You can celebrate yourself for literally just showing up. What does celebrating yourself look like? Well, the great thing about dopamine is that dopamine is a completely 100% subjectively released chemical, which means that when you get excited, when you celebrate yourself, when you talk to yourself in a positive way, your brain releases a little bit of dopamine. And so you can celebrate yourself for literally walking into the gym. All right, she made it. You didn't want to be here. I'm so proud of you for showing up. And then you're like, I'm going to go on the treadmill. I'm going to warm up for five minutes on the treadmill. And you're just talking to yourself. I'm so proud of you for showing up. I'm so proud of you for showing up. I'm so proud of you for showing up. And you're talking to

Starting point is 00:10:50 yourself. You're fucking awesome. You're amazing. You're going to be, you're going to be so fit. You're going to look so good in that bikini in three months. And you're just talking to yourself. You're talking to yourself. Then you go in and you're like, okay, after those five minutes, you feel way better than talking trash to yourself when you're on the treadmill. And then you go and you do your first set. And after you get done with your first set, hell yeah, I'm so proud of you. You don't have to yell it to yourself out loud. I'm so proud of you for showing up. You're creating a better body for yourself. You're going to live longer and be around for your children, your grandchildren longer. And every single set that you have, you're basically

Starting point is 00:11:22 just releasing a little bit of dopamine, which is making you fall in love with the process, aka addicted to the process of what needs to be done, what you need to take action with in order to achieve whatever goal you're working towards. See, most people say, once I achieve my goal, then I'll celebrate. No, once you achieve your goal, you celebrate is you're delaying the dopamine release for way off into the future versus I want to try to give myself dopamine every step of the way. And so, like I said, it's completely subjective. And so after you do something, just talk good to yourself, talk well to yourself. Oh my gosh, I'm so proud of you,

Starting point is 00:12:03 you're doing so well. And you try to build an excitement and a feeling of accomplishment. And then notice when I say this, and I want you to really understand this part. This is a really key part I want you to get in your head. This is not attached to the end result. It's attached to the process. That's why when you hear like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and Tom Brady winning championships and then waking up at four o'clock in the morning and working out the next day is because it was never about the championship. It was about working out and becoming the best they could possibly be at that sport. It was about fully bringing their full potential out. And then the byproduct of it was just winning the championship. It wasn't about winning.

Starting point is 00:12:48 It was about becoming the best they could possibly be. And so they loved the process of becoming who they could be. They loved the process of living up to their full potential. Winning was a byproduct of them falling in love with the process and working harder than anybody ever had. There's actually stories of Kobe Bryant working out at 4 a.m. every single day since he was in high school. And he celebrated himself for showing up. He said his greatest satisfaction was knowing that he was putting in the work when his competitors were sleeping.

Starting point is 00:13:20 Not winning championships. He would talk himself up and be like, nobody else is awake. I'm the only one that's awake. I'm going to get my first workout done before any of these people wake up. And that was his greatest satisfaction was knowing that he was putting in the work when everyone else was sleeping. It's the reason why people who become extremely successful, billionaires worth hundreds of millions of dollars don't stop working when they become wildly successful because it was never about the money in the first place. It was about them becoming better or them mastering the game of entrepreneurship or whatever it is that they were doing. Money was just a byproduct of their actions. And so people

Starting point is 00:14:00 are always like, oh my gosh, he's worth $10 million. Why doesn't he retire? Because it wasn't about the money in the first place. Money was just a byproduct of what he did. And it makes it a lot easier to do what needs to be done. Now, mind you, I just want to say this. There are people who force and struggle their way to success. Absolutely, 100%. But there's also other people who love the process of what they're doing to become better. Wouldn't you rather want to take the action that you need to do to create the life you want versus feel like you have to force yourself to do

Starting point is 00:14:29 it? And so what you do is you attach reward systems to the effort, not the end result. Because I want to fall in love with the effort, not the end result. If I fall in love with the effort, I will automatically take the actions and I will eventually get to the end result. If I fall in love with the effort, I will automatically take the actions and I will eventually get to the end result. It's about having what I call action-based goals versus results-based goals. So you attach your reward to the action-based goal of making the calls versus instead of attaching your reward to making the sale. You would attach your reward, attaching your reward to making the sale. You would attach your reward, whatever your rewards are,

Starting point is 00:15:09 to the action-based goal of finishing the workout, not losing the weight. You attach the reward to the action of reading five pages, not finishing the book. Because eventually, when you attach the reward to the process, the end result always happens. So you would attach the reward to the action-based goal of eating a healthy meal, not the way that you look in the mirror, because the way that you look in the mirror will change as you start eating healthier. You attach the reward to the action-based goal of practicing

Starting point is 00:15:37 for an hour, not winning the championship. You attach the reward to the action-based goal of learning one difficult bar of music, not playing the entire piece. You attach them to making the calls, not making the sale. Finishing the workout, not what the scale is saying to you. And so it's really important to figure out, first off, what the hell do you want? Like, what do you want with your life? And you get very, very clear on exactly what it is that you want, exactly what it is that you want to achieve. Not like, I want to make more money. Because if you make a dollar more this year, then you made more money, you achieved your goal.

Starting point is 00:16:15 But I'm sure if you want to make more money, you'd want to make a dollar more. Not like, I want to lose weight. Get very specific. What exactly do you want to weigh? How much weight do you want to lose? When do you want to get it by? Like, get very, very clear on what it is that you want. And then figure out what actions do you need to take to get there? What is going to be required of you? What does the process look like? And then you start to look at it and you ask yourself,

Starting point is 00:16:39 can I set up a dopamine reward system that I can attach to the effort, that I can attach to the process so that I start to become addicted, aka fall in love with the process of what needs to be done, so that therefore I start taking action naturally because I like to, because I want to, because I'm rewarding myself every single time. And so how can you set up a dopamine reward system that is attached to the process and attached to the effort? Because if you do that, you're going to want to show up later. You're going to want to show up tomorrow. You're going to want to keep doing this thing. And eventually if you just keep doing it, yeah, then the success, the end result, whatever it is you want is just a byproduct of what it is that you did with the effort and the process. And so that

Starting point is 00:17:22 is how you brainwash yourself to success, to use neuroplasticity to change your brain, and so that you actually start to fall in love with the process of the actions you need to take to create the life that you want. 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. If you want to learn more about my book, once again, I said for the next few days, it is on sale for $1.99 on Amazon under Kindle. So if you want to get the Kindle for $1.99, just go into Amazon, type in Rob Dial. The book is called Level Up, How to Get Focused, Stop Procrastinating, and Upgrade Your Life. And with that, I'm going to leave it the same way I

Starting point is 00:17:59 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.

The Mindset Mentor - The Science of Making & Breaking Habits

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