The Mindset Mentor - This Book Changed My Life

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Have you ever wondered what timeless lessons could transform your life? In this episode, I share the seven biggest takeaways I’ve learned. These principles shaped my mindset, purpose, and success. 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. And if you're out there and you live in the U.S. or Canada, and you want to get some inspirational mindset, motivational text messages from me sporadically throughout the week, text me right now, 512-5-8-9305. once again, 512-580-9305. When I was 19 years old, I read a book that completely changed my life.

And it made me realize that success was not something that just happened to people accidentally. It was something that anyone, including myself, could do as long as they just followed the right steps. And it made me realize that there was a blueprint to becoming successful. And if I just followed this blueprint, I could be successful too. And so I read the book, I became obsessed with everything that it said in it, the strategies, the tactics, all of it. And over 20 years later, I can tell you it worked. So when I was 19 years old, all I wanted to be was just rich. And so I got into personal development, frankly, because I wanted to get better, because I wanted to get rich.

And I thank God that he used money as my carrot to chase because that that. is what got me into self-development, into working on myself for over 20 years, and that's what made my life amazing. And so I am going to talk to you not about getting rich today. I'm going to talk to you about the life lessons that came from this book. And so today, I'm going to teach you my seven biggest takeaways from the book, Think and Grow Rich. So if you've never heard of Think and Grow Rich, it was one of the very first self-help books ever created in 1937. And I'm going to take you through my seven biggest takeaways from this book and I'm going to tell you how I use them in my life. The first thing that was a big takeaway for me in this book is to have a definite purpose

to pick a north star in your life and then design your entire life around that north star. Every single piece of your life. Before this book, I never wrote a goal down ever. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And my life had no real direct. direction. And the first thing that I realized when I read this book was that I needed to have a North Star. I needed to figure out what I wanted from my life and then actually start to work towards it. I needed to decide what I was here for, what I wanted, and most importantly, where I was going. And the reason why this is important is because everything that you do, every decision that you make, everything that you think about has to filter through your North Star

once you make this decision. If something aligns with the direction that you want to go with your North Star, then it's an easy yes. And if it does not align with your North Star, that is an easy hell no. And it allows you to make decisions very quickly, efficiently, and most importantly, not second-guess your decisions after the fact. Because if you make a decision and it's not align with your North Star, you don't go, oh, well, should I have done it? Should I have not done it? It's like, no, it doesn't allow with my North Star. It's an automatic no. Because as long as you made a decision that is in alignment with your North Star, your purpose, the thing that you're working for in this world, you made the right decision. The other thing that I learned from that is that most people

have very, very vague goals, like very vague North Stars. I want to be happier. I want to lose weight. I want to make more money. I want to be able to have a nice house. This book taught me to get extremely, extremely, extremely clear with what I want. The more clear that I can get with it, the more likely that I am to get it. So that is number one. And number one brings me to number two. Number two is the power of desire.

In the book, Think and Grow Rich, he calls it a burning desire. Desire is a difference between like dabbling. and being fully devoted to something. Most people are just kind of dipping their toes in the water throughout their entire life. And for you to make something of your life, you have to just cannonball on the deep end. And once you figure out that North Star, that thing that you want in your life, it needs to become your obsession. And the way I like to think about it goes back to the great philosopher Marshall Mathers. And the quote is, success is my only motherfucking option failure's not. And so once you decide that this is the thing that you're going to do,

you burn all the boats. There are no other paths that are going to go down. There's only plan A. There's no plan B because plan B distracts from plan A. And when I look back at turning points in my life came when I stopped wishing for something and I decided and started desiring so deeply that I just made the decision. Like, I'm going to get this thing or I'm going to die trying. That's it. Like there was no other option. And through this, I learned that when I make a decision, there's no turning back. That's it. Most people, they hesitate to make a decision. And then once they make a decision, they question the decision, and they never need to take any true action towards what is that they want. For me, there's like, all right, I chose my destination. I'm either

going to get there. I'm going to die trying. I remember about probably 12 years after reading this book, I got into business with one of my best friends. And I was with another one of my really good friends. And he was like, hey, why did you guys decide to be business partners together? And my friend said something and I never really thought of it before. He goes, the reason why I want to be business partners with Rob is because Rob just doesn't give up. And I was like, oh, that makes sense. Like once I set my mind to something, I go for it and I don't have any other thing. So through this book, I learned to be persistent. I realized that when I was young, most people just don't start. So if I just start, I'm already way past most people. And then most people who do start, like most of them end up

giving up at some point in time. So if I don't give up, I'm going to be light years ahead of everybody else. And I will eventually get whatever it is that I want. And so that's number two. Number three is the power of faith. And I don't mean faith in the religious sense here. I mean the faith within yourself, your self-belief. Before this book, I can honestly never, I can say I never really thought about how I spoke to myself. Like my inner dialogue was just something that happened kind of without me noticing. And once I became aware of it and how negative it was, I realized that I needed to change it. And I learned that I needed to completely reprogram the way that I spoke to myself. Because if I did not change the way I spoke to myself, then I would not be able to believe in

myself. And if I did not believe in myself, there's definitely no way in this world that I'm going to get what I want. It's wild to me how many people think that they can create the life that they want, but then they talk trashes himself all day long in their head. And so I had to start reprogramming my inner dialogue. I started paying attention to all of my thoughts, questioning all of my thoughts. Does that thought align with the person that I want to become? If so, perfect. Keep it. If not, then I need to replace that thought because I want to make sure that every single thought that I have or as many thoughts that I can possibly have line up with where I'm trying to go. Will I be perfect in my thoughts? Of course not. We've all got automatic negative thoughts that come in. But if you don't have faith in yourself

and personal belief in yourself, you will try and try and try and try and you will get nowhere. number three. Number four is the idea of auto-suggestion to program your subconscious on purpose. I honestly don't know if I ever heard the word subconscious before I was reading this book. And through this book, I realized your subconscious mind is running the show whether you like it or not. And it's actually proven in neuroscience and psychology and everything that 5% of your thoughts are your conscious mind. 95% of your thoughts are habitual thoughts that come from your subconscious. So your 5% is always going to lose to the 95% unless you change in 95%. And that's why most people like, they want success in their life, but they're holding

themselves back. Because 5% of you wants it. The other 95% of you is all unconscious programs that are pulling you back when you're trying to move forward. And once I learn this, I became obsessed with trying to reprogram my subconscious. This book talks about reprogramming yourself in three separate ways. Number one, affirmations, the words that you use and how you speak to yourself and to be very on purpose in the way that you speak to yourself. The second way is through visualization, which I had never really done any visualization. I'd visualize one other time in my life before this.

So visualization and to actually sit down and make time every single day to visualize as clearly as I possibly can the life that I wanted what I was working towards, which is why number one is very important here, which is what I said is you need to be very, very, very clear on what is that you want. Because if you're clear, then you can visualize it in more detail. That's number two and the number three are the actions that I take. So if I'm going to reprogram myself, I need to pay attention to my affirmations, the way that I speak to myself, I need to visualize what it is I want every single day. And I need to pay attention to the actions that I take and make sure

that the actions that I take are lining up with the direction that I want to go. And if my affirmations are not the right place, my visualization not the place, my actions are not the right place, I need to change them so that it aligns with my North Star. As long as I focused on these things, I could completely reprogram my subconscious over a couple years. And so this really shifted me from being stuck in old patterns, feeling like I was just spinning my wheels, like I wanted to be successful, but I wasn't moving forward. it shifted me from being stuck in those old patterns to actually believing that I could create

anything that I wanted to create and stop holding myself back and I can actually start to follow through on what I needed to be doing in order to get to where I wanted to go. So that's number four, reprogramming the subconscious. Number five is to get focused on specialized knowledge to go deep where it pays off and to ignore the rest.

information is everywhere. And the funny thing was, he said that in 1937. Today, there's hundreds of thousands of more bits of information out there for anyone to consume. It's everywhere. But real, real deep wisdom is very, very rare. And so I stopped chasing all of the knowledge and to learn as much as I possibly can. And I try to start going deep into what really mattered. I stopped watching things that didn't feed my brain. I stopped hanging out with people. who were bad for me. I started reading books and taking courses and hiring coaches that were aligned with my North Star because I wanted to get there faster. And so I started taking action towards everything based off of my North Star. And I focused on making my knowledge as deep as I possibly

could. And very, very few things were actually part of something that I focused on. And I've said this in the podcast before, but I realized that most people's knowledge is an inch deep and a mile wide. They know a little bit about a lot of things. I wanted my knowledge to be an inch wide and a mile deep so that I could have so much specialized knowledge compared to the average person. So that's number five. Number six is that I needed to make decisive decisions, like make them without hesitating quickly and not go back on them. I was very indecisive before I read this book. And I realized that successful people make decisions very quickly. And I needed to learn to make decisions very quickly as well and then not go back on my decisions.

They make decisions quickly and then they change their mind very slowly. I realize that most people, including myself before this book, are extremely indecisive. And after this book, I realized that I needed to make decisions on what I wanted, to be very, very clear on what I wanted, and then to constantly be focused on making sure that I talked to myself the way that I needed to, that I visualized the way they needed to, that I took actions the way that I needed to. And as long as I did that, I would probably get to where I wanted to go. And so I learned to make decisions very quickly. And one of the biggest pieces of that is going back to the North Star.

If it aligns my North Star, let's go for it. If it doesn't, it's an automatic no. And so I learned to make decisions very quickly versus sitting around and being so indecisive. so that's number six and number seven is i needed to learn to overcome fear and i think that for most of my life before this book i was afraid of a lot of things and what i came to realize is that fear really shrinks your life if you stay in your comfort zone i always say your comfort zone is where your dreams go to die if you want your life to change you know you need to get out of your comfort zone but very few people actually push themselves out of their comfort zone and so i learned that it's

about not having fear, it's about learning to face your fears with courage to stop in the moment and go, okay, I'm feeling fear right now. I'm afraid of something. What am I afraid of? Is this going to kill me? No. Do I need to take this action in order to go and create the life that I want? Yes. Okay. So then what I need to realize is that my fear that I'm feeling right now about taking this action is just the physical manifestation in my body of my comfort zone. I'm hitting the wall of what I feel comfortable with. That's why I feel fear. My body thinks danger, danger, danger, but there's nothing really to be afraid of. So I feel the fear. I'm at the edge of my comfort zone so I can, you know, like I have most of my life, I can lean back and I can get away

from my fear, or I can lean into my fear just a little bit to push a little bit. One step past my comfort zone and prove to myself I'm not going to die. And facing fear taught me to stop making safe choices and to start making choices based off of alignment. Overcoming fear became the bridge between the life that I had and the life that I wanted. And at one point in time, I realized that I think that the worst thing in the world is fear. I think that every problem that humans have come from fear in some sort of way. Whether that's one country going to war with another country, it's usually because of fear. One person that is having some sort of turmoil in a relationship, with another person usually comes down to fear. A person not taking action towards the life that they

want usually comes down to fear. So I need to understand that I will never get past my fear. So I don't need to worry about fear. What I need to worry about is being more courageous. And how do I be more courageous? Notice the fear and take the step anyways. So those are my seven biggest takeaways from Think and Grow Rich. I absolutely recommend that you read it. It changed my life. I don't think I've ever read any book in my entire life as much as I've read this book, I've probably given this out to a few hundred people. And so if you want to think and grow rich, I recommend that you read the book. So that's what I got for today's episode. If you love this episode, please show it on Instagram stories, tag me in at Rob Dowell Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you're out there

and you love this podcast, you want to learn a little bit more about coaching with me outside of the podcast. You can go ahead and go to coach with rob.com. Once again, coach with rob.com for more information. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way to leave you every single episode. making sure mission make somebody else's day better i appreciate you and i hope that you have an amazing day