The Mindset Mentor - This Is How Geniuses Train Their Mind

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

Are geniuses actually born different, or do they simply train their minds differently than everyone else? In this episode, I’m going to show you the five mental habits that the smartest thinkers in history use to strengthen their brains—from deliberate thinking and journaling to questioning assumptions and connecting ideas across different fields. If you want to think sharper, become more creative, and train your brain like a mental athlete, I’ll walk you through the exact mindset workouts that can help you start thinking like a genius. 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'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 are looking to improve your life, you're going to want to hit that subscribe button. I put out episodes four times a week to help you learn and grow and improve yourself. So if that's what you're looking to do, hit that subscribe button. Today, I'm going to teach you how geniuses train their mind because you can train your mind

to think like a genius. and that's what I'm going to teach you because being smart is not just about luck or about IQ. See, geniuses actually train their mind. They train their brain in ways that most people never even realize. Your mind is the most powerful tool that you will ever have. And once you understand how geniuses really train their mind in their thinking, it can change the way that you approach your entire life. And so today I'm going to teach you five,

different ways that geniuses train their mind so that you can do the same. You clicked on this episode because you want to learn how to think like a genius. So let me teach you how. Genuices do not think better than you. They really train their mind. They train their thinking like a skill. Because thinking really is a skill set. Sure, we all are born with different circumstances and come from different gene pools. But thinking is a skill set that we can all grow. Ingenieces treat their mind like a muscle that needs to be worked.

And therefore, they create like a mental gym to grow the capacity of their brain in the way that they think. Like most people think that thinking is like breathing. Like it's just automatic. It's passive. It's just something that just happens. And that is true in part.

But just because it's automatic in some ways doesn't mean that you can't actually jump in there and change your thinking. Because great thinkers, they treat thinking the way that athletes treat training. They do reps. They fatigue their mind. They deliberately stress their cognitive system so that it adapts. It rewires itself and it gets stronger. And this is something that neuroscience is very, very clear about. Your brain is moldable. That is now a biological fact, which means it physically rewires itself based off of how you use it and also how you don't use it. So if that's true, then intelligence isn't just something that you're born with.

It's something that you can train within yourself. And so let me give you the actual five different ways that they really train their brain differently because it is like a gym. It is like mental reps. You know, nobody builds biceps by lifting one time. It's repeated strain in your muscles. and thinking really works the same way. And so if you want to really start to become smarter, you're going to have to have these five mental reps

and just different ways of doing it, okay? So the first thing that they do is they spend time deliberately thinking. And like it's in their schedule, deliberate thinking time. One of the habits of the greatest thinkers throughout all of history is something that really most people don't do anymore. And the reason why is because we have phones and we have TVs and you could be sitting down and it could be quiet and then you're like, I feel kind of awkward, let me take my phone out.

But deliberate thinkers scheduled time just to think. When you look at Darwin, he did this. When you look at Einstein, he did this. When you look at Charlie Munger, he did this. They sit down with a problem and they force their brain to wrestle with that problem. No phone, no distractions, no other person to distract them in some sort of way or brainstorm with. just the question that they have for themselves or the problem that they need to solve. It's kind of like this. This is kind of how I think it. Deep thinking is kind of like diving underwater,

right? It takes time before the mind starts to reach depth. Like what normally happens is you sit down for five minutes. Your brain starts toiling, going all over the place, think about a million different things. And most people give up at that point of time. It's like diving deep down below, you're trying to dive deep. And it's like most people jump back up to the surface and, you know, take a breath after 30 seconds. But like the geniuses, they keep going deeper and deeper. And when it becomes uncomfortable, they go deeper. Sometimes for hours.

And what's happening neurologically when you do this is your brain starts exploring new neural pathways instead of these old default ones. And that's literally how new insights form. And so when you start spending extended time in silence just to think deliberately, it forces your brain to change. It forces your brain to mold and to grow. And so what I want you to start to think about is how can I find time every single day to just sit and think about a question that I have or to sit and think about a problem

that's been kind of occupying the back of my mind for a little bit of time? And just try to see if you can find new solutions. Try to see if you can bring a creative, aspect to it that you've never thought of. No phone, like I said, no other person to brainstorm. Just you trying to expand the boundaries of your cognitive abilities. Just you trying to expand the box that you think of. Okay. So that's number one. The second thing that they do, it's been seen over and over and over again in geniuses, is that they use writing as cognitive training. One of the fastest ways to start to improve your thinking is to actually write with

pen and paper, not to sit at a computer and type it out, not to type it out on your phone and a Google document, but to physically write it pen and paper. And you're not writing to publish. You're not writing a perfect article so that you can put it on the internet. You're writing to clarify your mind. We're like hoarders is really what we are in our own brains. There's just crap everywhere. In writing forces your brain to organize the chaos that's happening in most people's minds into an actual structure. Like when you're thinking in your head, you think you know what's going on. Like most people are like, I got a pretty good idea of what's going on in my head. But then when you force somebody to write down what's going on in their head, that's really when they start

to realize how messy their brain actually is. Like, let's be real. In today's day and age, most people's minds are like an ADHD squirrel on crack. Like it's everywhere. It's all over. There is no method to the madness. And so when you sit down with a pen and paper and you start forcing yourself to write what's going on, what you're thinking about, what's happening in your brain, all of the mess, the problems that you have, the questions that you have, the things that you want to solve, the life that you want to create, all of the stuff that's kind of bouncing around all day long, it's going to be messy. And it's going to create some like cognitive friction. but that friction actually strengthens your cognition. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show.

And this is why many, many geniuses keep massive journals. And you can see it throughout the times. Like, Da Vinci is a good example of it. He had over 7,000 pages of notebooks. Not because he loved journaling, but because he was training his brain. And he was creating these magical ideas out of thin air. Like, we could say there's a pretty good argument that DaVinci might be one of, if not the most intelligent person who has ever lived, right?

And when you see a 7,000 pages of journals and the stuff that he created and the things that he did, like he created the helicopter. He created the parachute. He created the armored tank. He created the first idea for a car. He created the idea for a machine gun. And the problem was back in his day, the technology didn't exist for another three to 500 years. to be able to create these things that he actually wrote down and planned, but he had these working ideas in his journals.

And so it shows you what you, if I want to be a genius, if I want to act like a genius, I should start doing what geniuses do. And that's taking my brain, putting it on a piece of paper, and working out things. So that's mental rep number two. Mental rep number three is many geniuses have been found to question everything, to question assumptions.

One mental habit that really separates average thinkers from extraordinary ones is that the extraordinary ones attack assumptions. They attack beliefs. Like most people inherit beliefs from culture and from school and from parents and from media. And they really question them. But geniuses constantly ask, like, why do we believe in this? Is this like fundamentally true? is like written into the to the actual fabric of the universe?

Or is this just made up by some other person one day? Like what if the opposite of this thing was true? What assumptions are hidden in here? And so, you know, physicists use this all the time. Like Richard Feynman, who's also considered one of the smartest men to ever live. And, you know, one of the best physicists ever talks about how he would question everything and how he thinks science should always be questioned. And he used to always say, he's a famous quote that says,

I would rather have questions that can't be answers than answers that can't be questioned. And so he was known to question things and question things and question things to try to find the actual true fact that existed. And so when you question everything, you break everything down to the bare bones. You break ideas down to their most fundamental truths. And then from there, you can go, do I really want to continue to believe this? Or do I just want to rebuild from scratch? and you can see if these beliefs and these assumptions that many people live their entire lives off of are true. And you can decide, do I want to believe that? Or do I want to rebuild my own beliefs and my own assumptions based off of new thinking? Or do I just want to continue with

inherited thinking? And so this one of the most powerful cognitive workouts that you could do for your brain is to just question what everybody else is just taking his fact. So that's number three. The fourth mental rep that they do is what's called cross-disciplinary thinking. So another pattern that's found among many geniuses is that they study multiple fields. They study physics and biology and economics and philosophy and music and art. When you look at Leonardo da Vinciu, I was just talking about a minute ago, he wasn't just an artist, even though he painted the most famous painting that's ever been painted. he was also an engineer. He was an inventor. He was a military designer. He was an architect. He was a

scientist. He studied human anatomy. He did so many different things, which was just why he had all of these crazy ideas that came from basically seemed like nowhere. It just, they popped into his head because he was studying so many different things and they all kind of intersected in many ways. It's kind of like, when I was writing this episode, I was like, what's the phrase that I could use for this? Only thing I can think of, it's kind of like, a neurological orgy is basically all that it is. It's like innovation only really happens when two completely different mental models collide. Like your brain literally forms new neural bridges between different domains that exist in your brain right now that have never talked to each other.

And this is where breakthroughs happen. This is where the best ideas in the world come from. You know, like Einstein used thought experiments for when he was working through physicists, like as a physicist, inspired by philosophy. Like Steve Jobs is known for using calligraphy principles when he was designing Apple typography. When I had an interview years ago at Jeff Hoffman, who's the founder ofpriceline.com, he said that every single day he would read one thing that was completely out of his industry to see if he could get ideas. And then he said he came up with the idea for priceline.com when he read an article about how bananas are cheaper when they're closer to their expiration date. And he brought that idea to airlines and said, hey, if I could sell these seats,

like so that, you know, at least a butt is in that seat versus going, you know, making $0 off of it, it might be cheaper, but is that worth it to you? He brought the idea to airlines, created Pisline.com, and became a billionaire from it. And so great thinkers connect worlds. Because creativity is just pattern recognition, but it's across multiple disciplines. So that's number four. And then rep number five is what's called cognitive recovery. One thing that I don't really hear a lot of people talk about is that, you know, your brain, when it's working really hard, it does need deep recovery after deep thinking.

And just like muscles, like when you lift really heavy, your muscles need recovery after lifting. And so deep cognitive work burns enormous amounts of glucose and oxygen in the brain, which is why geniuses throughout history. history took deep long breaks. And one of the ways that I found when I was studying through different geniuses that a lot of them took their breaks is they would go for a walk. Darwin walked a lot. Steve Jobs walked a lot. Nietzsche walked a lot. Walking activates the brain's default mode network, which helps consolidate your ideas. And so when you're learning and you're working really hard and you're trying to put two and two together and you're trying to figure it out, when you just take a walk without your phone, without your AirPods in, without anybody talking to you,

it allows your brain to consolidate all these ideas that you've been having. And so many breakthroughs happen after thinking when you're just letting your brain just exist on a walk, not during the thinking. And so when you look at geniuses through this lens, I really wanted to break it down for you this episode and realize that, you know, I don't want it to look mysterious. I don't want this to seem unattainable. I want it for you to see this as you becoming smarter is something that is trainable.

Because genius's thinking is really just a set of mental workouts. You know, it's deep working sessions. It's writing to clarify ideas. It's challenging assumptions and beliefs of the world. It's studying across multiple disciplines. It's letting your brain recover. And over time, those reps doing them over and over 10 times and 100 times and a thousand times,

those reps will literally reshape your brain through neuroplasticity, and your brain becomes more creative, it becomes faster at forming connections, and it becomes better at pattern recognition. And it becomes more comfortable with complexity and with hard ideas and being able to think through things

that other people can't think through. And so the idea that I want to leave you with is that most people think that thinking is automatic. It's not. Deep thinking is a trained behavior. And all of the geniuses that exist out there, they simply just train harder and longer than anybody else. They're like a marathon runner, the way they train their body, but they train their brain. They've spent thousands of hours doing mental reps that most people never do. And so intelligence, yeah, you can be gifted with different levels of intelligence, but it's not just a talent. It's also something that you

condition within yourself. And once you understand, that your brain, your intelligence stops feeling fixed and it starts feeling like something that you can build. So that's what I got for you today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on the Instagram stories. Tag me in at Rob Dowell Jr. R-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. If you want to learn how to create the perfect morning routine, I created a worksheet and a checklist for you to create the perfect morning routine based off of science. You can get that at the perfect morningroutine.com. Once again, the perfect morning routine.com. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I 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.