The Mindset Mentor - This is the Meaning of Life

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you don't yet follow me on Instagram, follow me on Instagram right now, Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. We're about to hit 300,000 followers on Instagram. And when we do, I'm going to be giving out some pretty amazing prizes you're not going to want to miss out. Today, I'm going to talk about what the purpose of life is. Yes, I'm going to go into the subject. I'm going to dive into it. I'm going to try to answer the toughest question in the entire world, the question that every single person since the beginning of time has asked themselves.

Starting point is 00:00:44 Why am I here? What's the purpose of me being here? What since the beginning of time has asked themselves. Why am I here? What's the purpose of me being here? What's the purpose of my life? And before I dive into it, let me state my ignorance, okay? I don't know all of the answers. I don't claim to know all of the answers. I definitely don't think that I know most answers. I'm 35 years old. Don't claim to know everything. I don't think that I'm a guru. I never want to be a guru, any of those things. I'm still working on myself. I think I'll be working on myself to the day I die. And I've been working on growing myself for 15 years now.

Starting point is 00:01:14 But with that, I have coached thousands and thousands of people over the time that I've been working on myself and working with other people. And I feel like for most of the boxes that people want to check off in their life, as far as happiness, success, money, whatever it is that you want to say, I feel like I've checked off most of the boxes that people want to check off in their time. And I spent a good portion of my life being happy and creating some form of happiness, but more than anything else, actually just going straight for money. Like money was my main purpose in life. It's the

Starting point is 00:01:49 thing I was going after more than anything else. And, you know, I was able to realize the way that we all know, right? That money doesn't give you happiness. Like money does not make you happy. I realized what everyone before me has ever said, right? And I knew that money didn't make me happy, but I was like, you know what? Let me make some money first and then decide if I want to be happy from there or not, right? It didn't change anything in my life. Everything was exactly the same. The only thing it really allowed me to do was to be able to do things that I wasn't able to do before and to be able to buy things that I wasn't able to buy before. But doing the things that I did didn't make me happy and buying the things that I bought didn't make me happy as well.

Starting point is 00:02:29 So if I felt like I checked off many of the boxes that I'm supposed to check off in my life, but I still wasn't happy as I could be, or I didn't feel as fulfilled as I could be, then why the hell are we here, right? What is the purpose of this life? And my personal opinion, and once again, you can take this for what it's worth. You could take it and fully believe it. You can take it with a grain of salt. Either one is completely fine. It's completely up to you what you decide to do with this information. I think the purpose of this life is to grow spiritually. And I don't mean religiously, because I think a lot of religion actually restricts most growth and most spiritual growth and most personal growth. And I'm not

Starting point is 00:03:11 mocking religion in any sort of way. For some people, religion is the path to their enlightenment or to happiness or to fulfillment. For me, it just wasn't. And so when I say, you know, it's the path, the work of just spirituality. For those of you guys that might be atheists or might be agnostic, another way of saying it for you, just so everybody can kind of join in on this path that we're talking about here, is I think the purpose of us being here, if you don't want to say grow spiritually, would be just to learn. We're here to learn.

Starting point is 00:03:46 That's it. That's all we're here to do. Life is a classroom. And that's all that I think that it is. We're here to learn. We're here to grow. We're here to get better. And hopefully by the time that we leave this place, we end up doing a pretty good job of it, right? I do believe that there's something after life. There's times where I've bounced before, like, you know, is there something after life? Is there, is there not something after life? I've bounced all around. And I personally believe that there is. Um, I personally think that we might, you know, have a lot of lives after this one, you know, there could be reincarnation. Uh, didn't think I'd ever say that before. Uh, it could be on this planet. It could be on another planet. It could be in another dimension. It could be somewhere else that we don't know about. I don't know. I don't ever,

Starting point is 00:04:29 I'll never act like I know. But all I know is that I get this feeling that I'm here to learn. I get this feeling that the purpose of me being here is to grow, to learn, and to get better. is to grow, to learn, and to get better. And this life that I have is just basically a really big classroom. And this classroom is not here when I consciously decide to step into the classroom and learn. It's not here when I sit down, you know, I consciously decide, you know what, now I'm going to sit down and I'm reading a book. That's not when I step into the classroom. Or when I sit down and I say, you know what, I'm going to journal, that's not when I step into the classroom, right? When I step into the classroom is when anything happens in my life, not when I just decide to journal, not when I just decide to meditate,

Starting point is 00:05:16 not when I just decide to read or to write or to do something. My personal belief is that the classroom is every single second of my life. Do you feel that way? Is there something inside of you that kind of feels the same? I'm curious. I'd love to hear from you. Do you feel like it's the same? Do you think that it's different?

Starting point is 00:05:35 Once again, I don't have many of the answers. I just feel like for me, this is what feels right. And once again, this isn't something that's just like, hey, when I consciously decide to sit down and do something, that's when I enter the classroom. It is every single second of my day is an opportunity to learn and to grow and to get better. That could be spiritually, that could be mentally, that could be physically, that could be in my personal growth, that could be my spiritual growth and my relationships with other people. Every single second, life or God or the universe is throwing people in circumstances and things at me to allow me to either stay awake and wake myself up out of this autopilot that I can go into

Starting point is 00:06:21 or to wake up and grow from it. And the thing about it and the way that I think about it is I don't think that there's a finish line that I'll ever cross, right? For like a lot of people, they think, oh, well, one day I'll eventually get to the place that I want to be. One day I'll eventually, you know, I'll eventually become enlightened. One day I'll eventually learn all the things that I need to learn to know. One day I will get to the point where I have all of the knowledge in the world. Or one day I'll finally not be stressed out or not have anxiety or whatever it is. I personally don't think that there's ever a finish line that I'll cross. I don't know if that's the truth or not. I just have the feeling for me that it is the truth.

Starting point is 00:07:04 And for some people that can be stressful because they're like, oh my God, that means I'm going to feel this way forever. Oh my God, that means that I'm never going to cross the finish line because our Western society, we're raised to think like you have to do and produce and achieve that goal. And so when we think growing, or we think we're here to learn, or we think we're here in school, we're here to learn spiritually. We think that there's supposed to be like some award that we get at the end of it or some like test that says we got an A or, you know, some diploma that says, hey, you passed the spirituality of life or whatever it is. And for some that can be really stressful to go, oh my

Starting point is 00:07:40 God, I don't know if there's a finish line. This is literally what I'm going to be doing forever. That's kind of stressful. But for me, it's super freeing because then I know that's all I'm here to do. There is nothing else for me to do except for me to be inside of a classroom, to learn, to grow, and to get better. Now, I understand there's some people that are listening to me right now and you're like, hold on, that's not the only thing, Rob, because I'm a parent. I have to take care of my kids. I'm a spouse. I can't just not pay my bills. My wife will want to divorce me. What happens to my family if I just go on this spiritual learning journey that you're talking about? What happens if that happens? And what I'm saying to you is that if you're thinking that, I think what's happening is you're missing the point. Your growth doesn't come in spite of your family. Your growth doesn't come in spite of the people around you or, you know, you don't have to leave your family and

Starting point is 00:08:35 go to India and go on some spiritual journey in order to grow spiritually, mentally, physically, whatever it is. Your growth doesn't come in spite of everyone that's around you. Your growth comes through everyone that's around you. They are your actual path. These days, it can be hard to find the time to sit down and learn a little bit more. And it's not easy with social media and everything that can be so time consuming and addictive nowadays. So you might think to yourself that you might not have time to develop yourself, but I highly recommend an app called Blinkist. Blinkist is for anyone who cares about learning, but doesn't have a whole lot of time. And it takes the key ideas and insights from over 4,000 nonfiction bestsellers and gathers them into 15-minute text and audio explainers that help you understand the core ideas of each book.

Starting point is 00:09:22 And over 15 million people are already using Blinkist right now to broaden their knowledge in 27 nonfiction categories, including self-improvement, personal growth, management, leadership, mindfulness, and happiness. And I love Blinkist because it's short, 15-minute explainers, and you don't have to go through all of the fluff that a lot of books have. And right now, Blinkist has a special offer for our audience. If you go to Blinkist.com slash mindset, you get a seven day free trial and 25% off of Blinkist premium membership. That's Blinkist spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T Blinkist.com slash mindset to get your seven day free trial. That's Blinkist.com slash mindset. They are your path. So, you know, I remember, I think of, you know, a story that Ram Dass says when, you know, Ram Dass is a spiritual teacher. And, you know, he was a professor of psychology at Harvard.

Starting point is 00:10:17 And then he, you know, started doing some psychedelics. He went to India. He went on this spiritual journey. You know, he was wearing a white robe. He thought that he was enlightened. And he had just, you know, he was in India for a year or two years, whatever it was. And he came back and he was on, you know, nothing can bother me. Life is beautiful. I'm this enlightened being. And then his dad, who was a lawyer, picks him up at the airport. And within like 15 minutes, his dad goes, so when are you going to get a job? And immediately

Starting point is 00:10:42 set him off again. It was a trigger. And he realized in that trigger that he wasn't free. He wasn't free of his past. He wasn't free of all of the things mentally that he needed to overcome. He still had work to do. So that is the perfect example of the growth coming through them, right? How many of you listening, your mom or your dad or your brother or your sister can say one thing and it triggers you. They can say one thing and it drives you nuts. They say one thing and it's like, oh my God, I was having such a good day before that happened, right? Your growth is on the other side of that, right? It's not that they trigger you. It's that they said something that brought up something in you that was already there. Nobody gives you, nobody makes you mad.

Starting point is 00:11:31 What happens is they do something that brings up the madness inside of you or the anger that's inside of you, right? Your journey is through them, right? Your mom saying the stuff that drives you nuts. Your children having a mental breakdown inside of Chick-fil-A, right? Like your spiritual journey is through that moment, how you react there. Your spouse doing and saying the things that drive you crazy. You're like, oh my God, how many freaking times do I have to tell him to stop putting his underwear on top of the kitchen sink? Whatever. I don't know. Hopefully your husband isn stop putting his underwear on top of the kitchen sink, whatever. I don't know. Hopefully your husband isn't putting his underwear on top of the kitchen sink. Whatever he's doing, he's doing something. And your spiritual journey is not in spite of that. Your growth in this world

Starting point is 00:12:13 is not in spite of that. Your growth is through that. All of it, all of it is here for you to grow. Every single second is here for you to grow. And I personally see all of this as a game. Life presents you with things, with people, with opportunities, with circumstances to show you where you're still hung up. A trigger is a teacher. It teaches you where you still need to do work, where you still have work to do. So do I still get triggered? Absolutely. But then I'm like, oh, yep, still hung up there.

Starting point is 00:12:53 Still got some work to do, Rob. It's all like a little game. And it becomes fun, in my opinion, because you start to notice this game. It's like I'm constantly playing a game all day long. And the better that you become at this game, the better that you work through, the better that your life becomes. So the better that you become at this game, the better that every single person's life becomes around you. Every single person that you're close to, everyone in your family, every single person's life becomes better when you work on yourself every single moment to become better.

Starting point is 00:13:26 Does that make sense to you? Because the more you work on yourself, the better you become. And the better you become, the better the lives around you become. Not just your family, but every single person, the person that's handing you the coffee in the drive-thru, that person's life becomes better by you being better and showing up there, right? The energy that you bring to that person, the way you interact with them. And it's going to be that way till the day we die. In my opinion, you know, once again, take it for what it's worth. I think it will be that way until the day we die. Every single person you come in contact with. And maybe we, we, we go on this spiritual journey and we die and we go somewhere. Maybe we die and we get another life.

Starting point is 00:14:05 Maybe we die and nothing happens. I don't know. I'm not going to sit up here and tell you that I know what happens. Like a lot of people will. I don't know what the hell happens. But from my point of view, when you live your life, knowing that this is a classroom that we're going to be triggered, those triggers are teachers that we're going to get hung up, that we're going to get agitated. We're going to get pissed off. We're going to be triggered. Those triggers are teachers that we're going to get hung up, that we're going to get agitated. We're going to get pissed off. We're going to get sad. We're going to mess things up. We're going to act in ways that we look at and look back on and wish that we would have done different. We're going to mess things up. All of those are just opportunities to show us where we need to get better next time.

Starting point is 00:14:45 Not to judge ourselves and think about how terrible that action was and to judge ourselves and to put emotion into it and to get pissed off. No, none of those things. It's the opportunity to go, yep, I see what I did there. I did mess up. You know what? Next time I'm going to do it better. It's a teacher. It's a lesson. Every moment is a teacher. Every single moment is a lesson. And to ignore those lessons is like failing a test and then not studying before you take the test again, right? Imagine that you take a test and you don't do well in the test. And the teacher says, hey, I'll give you one more chance to take the test. Come back next week. Would you study? Of course you would. Hopefully you would. But to have a trigger happen to you,

Starting point is 00:15:31 a lesson, a teacher happen to you, and for you to do nothing before it happens again, is like failing at a test, doing nothing in between the time of the next test, and you take the next test and fail again. It's all just classroom. It's all just lessons. It's all just teachers. And once again, this is not just when you sit down. This is every single second of your day. Are you taking a step back and seeing what's going on in your head, seeing how you're reacting, seeing what's going on because it's all in front of you. Everything you need to work on in your life is literally, it's right here at every single moment to improve, to get better, to improve, to get better. You are here to learn. What are you here to learn? What are you here to grow from?

Starting point is 00:16:18 Think about that. Write it down. What am I here to learn? What are some of the triggers that set me off that I know I need to work on? What are some of the triggers that set me off that I know I need to work on? What are some of the things that I don't like about my reactions that I get angry too quickly, that I get emotional, that I get sad too often? What are the emotions? What are the triggers? What is it that my mom does? What is it that my dad does? What is it that my spouse does, that my children do? What is it that they do that trigger me? Because once again, it's not that they're bringing that thing to you. It's that they're bringing that thing out of you. So if somebody, something happens and you get really angry, that anger

Starting point is 00:16:56 was inside of you. That person didn't create the anger. That anger was inside of you. Okay. So what do I need? Why did that trigger me? And what do I need to do to release that anger? So that next time that happens again, I don't react in the same way. Right. Failed the test last time. Going to make sure I'm going to pass the test this next time. Right. Where are you still hung up? Where are the triggers that are in front of you? It's so important to think of this way and to realize we're going to be here for life, baby. There is no getting out of this thing. There isn't, you know, like there's literally, if you guys have been following me long enough, I have a tattoo on my wrist. You might be able to see for those of

Starting point is 00:17:32 you guys that are looking online, you know, there's a tattoo on my wrist and it's a Roman numeral for 10,000, right? I've only got two tattoos. This is one of them. It's a Roman numeral for 10,000. It's an X with the line above it. And because I personally believe in the 10,000 hour rule, which is, I love the idea of mastering something. And in order to master something, it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, not just like practicing, but deliberate practice, pushing yourself to be better, pushing yourself, pushing yourself, push yourself for 10,000 hours. The reason why I got this on my wrist is because I believe that personal mastery is not just a 10,000 hour thing. Personal mastery is the rest of your life thing. And once again, like I said earlier, that can be stressful for some people to think, oh my God, I'll never get

Starting point is 00:18:13 out of this race. I'll never get out of this classroom. Or it could be really freeing knowing I just got to wake up and try to get better each day. I just got to wake up and try to be nicer each day. I got to wake up and be less angry each day. I got to wake up and try to get better each day. I just got to wake up and try to be nicer each day. I got to wake up and be less angry each day. I got to wake up and treat people better each day. I got to wake up and do one good deed for people every single day. So what are you here to learn? Where are you still hung up? And where do you have the opportunities to grow? Because that's all that we're here to do. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way that the Mindset Mentor podcast goes is from you guys sharing it. So I greatly

Starting point is 00:18:53 appreciate you from the bottom of my heart every single time that you share it. You are the reason why I won the top 200 podcasts every single day in this entire world out of 1.75 million podcasts. And I'm going to leave you 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.

The Mindset Mentor - This is the Meaning of Life

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