The Mindset Mentor - Turn Self-Sabotage into Self-Improvement

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Do you ever feel like you’re working hard but somehow sabotaging your own success? In this episode, I’ll reveal the hidden psychological force behind self-sabotage and show you how to flip it into a powerful tool for growth. 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.   Here are some useful links for you…  If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here: Instagram  TikTok Facebook Youtube

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. I put out episodes four times a week for almost 10 years now to help you learn and grow and improve yourself. So if that is something that you're interested in, hit that subscribe button, join the journey with me. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about the psychological.

reason that your brain self-sabotages you, but then I'm going to talk about how to become aware of that psychological thing, and then how to actually use it for your own self-improvement so that you can learn and you can grow. So let's play a little game real quick. I want you to think of one belief that you have, that you hold on to very strongly right now. It could be about politics, it could be about religion, it could be about money, relationships, health, any belief that you have. Do you have it in the front of your mind? Okay. Now, I want you to imagine that I hand you two newspapers, and both of them have articles on the front of them. One of those newspapers proves that your belief is absolutely correct. In the other newspaper proves that your

belief is absolutely false. Which one do you think you're more likely to read? Which one do you think that you're going to skip. Which one do you think you might skim through? Well, if you're like pretty much every other human that's existing on this planet, you will gravitate towards the one that confirms what you already believe. And that's not because you're stubborn. It's not because you're arrogant. It's because your brain is actually wired that way. It's called the confirmation bias. And it is this, this silent architect that is creating your entire. personal reality. And it doesn't seem like it's a really big deal. We're just talking about reading articles, but it's a really, really big problem when you are trying to grow yourself, when you're

trying to create a better life, and when you're trying to get out of your comfort zone to build something great. Because you have beliefs about yourself. You have beliefs about the world. You have beliefs about other people. And you will always look for confirmation that your beliefs are true. And what this does is it doesn't free you in any sort of way. It actually kind of creates an invisible prison that you're stuck in. And it's one of the main reasons why people stay stuck in the same place and unconsciously self-sabotage themselves. Like the amount of times that I hear coaching clients say, like,

I self-sabotage or I'm trying so hard, but I feel like even no matter how hard I work, it feels like my wheels are just spinning and I'm not going anywhere. Well, the confirmation bias is usually a really, really big piece. to this. And that's why I want to dive into it with you today. So when you look at the confirmation bias, basically at its core, the confirmation bias is the brain's way of protecting its existing model of the world, which would also be known as your beliefs. So what you will do naturally as a human is you will seek out evidence that supports your beliefs so that your beliefs actually get

stronger. You will also interpret neutral events in ways to fit your belief. So you actually take neutral events and shift them so that you actually see a neutral event as a way to actually show that your belief is stronger, that supports your belief even more. And then when you actually get evidence that challenges your beliefs, you will reject that evidence that is right in front of your face because it doesn't line up. And the reason why this is a trap is because, well, one of the reason why it's a trap is because the smarter that you are, the better that you are at rationalizing your bias. Well, that sucks, huh? Because I'm assuming if you're listening to this podcast, you're a pretty intelligent person. You want to learn and you want to grow and you're interested in science and

psychology and neurology and all of that. So you're probably pretty smart, which means you're actually better at rationalizing your bias. There was a study that was done that really like brought this home and turned it into a big psychological realm. There's a study that was done in state. There's a study that was done in Stanford in 1979, and they basically took two groups of people. One group supported the death penalty, and the other group opposed the death penalty. And they gave both groups two research studies. One of the research studies, quote unquote, proved that the death penalty stopped people from committing crimes. So it showed that this death penalty actually stops other people from committing crimes because they don't want to go and have the death penalty. And then the other

research paper proved that it didn't. And then they had both of them read through them. And guess what? The result? People on both sides, everybody doubled down on their original opinion. So hold on. You're telling me they didn't become more open-minded? No, they became more certain that they were right. They had proof that they were right, but then they also had proof that they were wrong, and they unconsciously identified with the research paper that proved what they already believed. Which means that your brain is less likely to be objective, like hopefully a really good judge would be, being objective in seeing all of the facts and everything that's in front of us. Your brain's less likely to be objective like a judge, and it's more likely to be

subjective like a lawyer that's hired to win your case, even if that means hiding evidence. And this is a really key part because I always say like your brain is like cosmic Google. If you want to go into Google and you type something in, you're going to find your answer in Google. And so one of the things I've been saying for years and I've always thought this is wild is if you go into Google and you type in, is coffee good for your eyesight, you will find tons of studies about how coffee is good for your eyesight. If you go into Google and type, is coffee bad for your eyesight, you will get a whole bunch of studies about how coffee is bad for your eyesight. Your brain works the exact same way. If you go into your brains Google and you say, why am I not good enough?

Why am I not smart enough? Why am I a loser? Why will never make enough money? And that's basically what we're doing all the time. Why am I not worthy of love? All of the data, all of the evidence that you need is sitting right there ready for it. But the problem is you're looking through that perspective and not the other perspective. and that's why you stay stuck.

And your confirmation bias will hijack your perspective and your perception. So, you know, to understand why it's so powerful, you need to understand, like, how and where it operates. So when you look at your perception, it's basically what you see in the meaning that you assign to what it is that you see. And your confirmation bias will really mess with this. So your confirmation bias will actually determine how you see the world, how you observe the world,

and then the meaning that you give the things that happen around you. And so, like, here's the way you want to think of the confirmation bias, okay? Imagine that I am driving a car and you're next to me in the passenger seat. And as I'm driving the car, I start hearing a weird clicking noise. And I'm like, oh my God, something's wrong with my car. And I pull off and I go into the next exit. My brain is going to filter out almost everything, except for what looks like it might be a mechanic shop

or someplace they can help me fix my car. If you're really hungry, you're not going to notice any of the mechanic shops. What are you going to do? You're going to notice every place that we could possibly eat. And then let's say our friend is in the backseat, our friend in the backseat really has to go to the bathroom. They're not going to notice anything,

except for places where they could possibly go to the bathroom. There's a gas station. There's a McDonald's. Oh my God, there's a bush. I have to go so bad just let me pull over to the bush. So we're in the same car, and this is a phrase that I always am quoted for, is we're all seeing the same thing, but we're all seeing something different. That is what perception is, and perception is changed by our confirmation bias. I'm seeing anything that looks like a mechanic

shop. You're seeing anything like a place where you could go and eat. Our friend is seeing anything that looks like a place where he could go to the bathroom. So you want to think of your perception as like your brain's interpretation filter. And here's how your brain's will be hijacked by your perception and also your confirmation bias. It will spot what supports you. So your brain will pay attention to the details that confirm what you already think. It will bend the meaning of other things. You know, research has found that we will actually change neutral facts to interpret them to fit our pre-existing story. And it will dismiss anything that happens to challenge what our beliefs are. So any information that you know,

that contradicts, will just reject it, we'll minimize it, or we'll just ignore it entirely. And so, like, an example of this is like, say you and I decide to go out and get dinner, and we have another friend that's going to be coming, right? And we go there, and one of our friends who's supposed to be coming the third friend, they cancel on us. And you might have the perspective of people are unreliable, just from beliefs and things that have happened to you in your past. Well, then our friend canceling, you're going to perceive that as proof. why people can't be counted on. And if I'm sitting there and I'm like, you know,

my perspective is life gets busy, then I might perceive it as just, oh, that's normal, it's not a big deal. Like, they have a newborn, so that's going to happen, and it's forgivable. It's the same event. It's different perception. And so confirmation bias works behind the scenes

to make sure that the story that is inside of your head matches what you're actually seeing in reality, what you're perceiving in reality, even if it means that you have to distort reality, reality. And I realized this. I actually love to challenge myself. It's a game I've really kind of become good at. And I noticed myself a couple years ago doing this in basketball. And I was watching basketball games and it was the NBA playoffs and my team was in the playoffs and there would be a foul and the other team would foul. And it'd be like a little, you know, they'd foul my team. It'd be like a

little barely touch them. I'd like, yeah, that's definitely a foul, you know. And then my team would barely touched the other person. I'm like, oh my God, he barely touched him. And it's like, actually, no, objectively, that's a foul. So even with my team, sports teams, we do this all the time. And, you know, my sports team is basically like someone else's equivalence of their belief of not being good enough or smart enough for any of that. We all do it. We all have the confirmation bias. And so what we need to do is really start to challenge ourselves, challenge our perspective. it because you can't completely remove your perspective because it's part of being a human, but you can challenge it and you can check it against reality so that you can actually see more

clearly, which is what we all really want to do. We want to see reality clearly, not through a distorted lens. And so here's what you need to do. Find all of your beliefs about yourself, about your religion, about the world, about politics, about other people, about everything. What you're capable of, any of that. Then when you notice that belief come up, What I want you to do, challenge it. I want you to act like your entire life you've been on one side of the debate room, and now you're going to go on the other side of the debate room, and you're going to try to debate yourself as to why your belief is actually false.

And you're going to look for evidence for why your belief is not true. Because your beliefs you should hold really loosely. Like, a belief is just a thought that you've had so many times that you actually think that it's true. But you're living in your own hallucination. your beliefs are very very very rarely objectively true almost any belief that we hold can be true can be you know proven false and so if we don't if we don't challenge our beliefs our beliefs can really become a prison and you want to be free so your goal here isn't to completely erase all of your perspective it's really just to try to see the truth more clearly because if you can

see the truth more clearly you can get yourself free from your own beliefs and your old identities, and then you can actually start to shift your life. You know, when you learn to challenge the angle that you're looking from, your perception stops being a mirror of our biases, and it starts becoming a window to see objective truth more clearly. And so, you know, why you want to change your confirmation bias? Because you might be saying, they're going, well, I have these beliefs. I've had these beliefs my entire life. Like, why would I need to change them in the first place? Well, because if not, we get to, stuck in echo chambers where we try to find other people who think exactly like we do and we

mistake agreement from other people for actual truth. This is why you'll very rarely ever see somebody who believes on one side of the political spectrum watching the news from the other side of the political spectrum is because they don't want to actually have their confirmation bias in any sort of way challenged in their beliefs challenge any sort of way. And when you stay stuck in any sort of place, you lose the opportunity to grow. You know, the stuff that makes you uncomfortable that you don't want to hear never gets past your mental firewall. And so you never grow in any sort of way. And so you build this distorted reality that feels real to you, but it's really just one giant hallucination that you live in. And the more invested that you are,

like emotionally invested you are in a belief, the stronger the bias actually becomes. And then that belief, especially if that belief is tied to your identity of who you think you are, then changing your mind and changing your identity and your belief about yourself feels like changing who you are. And your brain will almost always fight that at all costs. But this, for you guys that are out there that self-sabotage a lot or that start something and can't finish it, this is usually the main thing that's holding you back, which is your identity. This is my main thing that I really harp on and I really try to help people overcome and coach people on in stuff like Mindset University, which is my year-long course that I go

through. In Minds University, and I try to help people get free from the identity of who they think they are. Because you can try to change in your life and try to grow. But if you don't change your identity of who you think you are, you will almost always fall back into the cycle of self-sabotage. Your identity is just a set of beliefs about yourself. And as I said, beliefs are not objective. true. They are just thoughts that you've been thinking for so long that you believe that they are true. And so this becomes very uncomfortable for a lot of people. Most people would rather be comfortable, sit in their beliefs, and just stay in their beliefs forever. The reason why I feel so uncomfortable is because your brain actually treats belief-changing evidence as a physical threat.

This is why you see so many people get mad when their beliefs are challenged. It's like an animal that's being backed into a corner that needs to attack in order to get out. And there she found in fMRI studies, that when people encounter information that contradicts their really strong political beliefs, that their brain's amygdala, which is their fear center, actually lights up. It's the same region that's activated during physical danger. And so the translation of that is challenging your beliefs and your mind feels like death to your nervous system. But the paradox of all of this is that the willingness to be wrong and to challenge your belief,

any beliefs is the quickest way to changing yourself. Instead of being so set in your ways, be open to being more malleable, be open to being proven wrong. Because when you break your confirmation bias, you see things more clearly, not from a perspective that's clouded in old beliefs. You make better decisions, and then you will be able to actually grow. and at that point, stop self-sabotaging yourself. And so the thing that you need to realize when you start actually looking through this is that you find your beliefs

and then you challenge your beliefs in some sort of way. I had a client years ago and she had like a series of breakups, right? And she knew that she was the problem in her relationships. And it was her perspective and her identity was, I'm the problem in my relationships.

Nobody wants to be with me. me. And I was like, okay, so that was her perspective. And I'll listen to her perspective, but then I go, as a coach, I go, I need to challenge her perspective to see if maybe there's something that might be untrue in this perspective. So then we broke it down. And she had two breakups that were mutual breakups in a row. She had another breakup that was due to a relocation. The guy had to move for work. And one of them was, you know, someone that was incompatible with. So she had four breakups in a row that she was kind of looking through the perspective of, I'm the problem. Nobody wants to be with me. And as we went through, it's two of them, well, hold on two of those,

so 50% of those were mutual. She actually helped me, you know, break that relationship up. One of them was because the guy had to move. And the other one, she just said was incompatible. And so was it a fact that she was the problem, that nobody wants to be with her? No. That was her interpretation of the events that happened. And that's usually what our beliefs are and our perspective is. And so when we looked at the facts, her interpretation kind of dissolved, and then her story as it shifted had to shift her beliefs. So it's important for us to try to see the facts, the objective truth, and not listen to the interpretation. Her old belief had filtered all of this data to fit her story of, I'm the problem they don't want to be with me. And once she saw the full picture

and she saw all of the truth and all of the data, her story shifted. And as her story shifted, her identity was able to shift as well. So she didn't just change her perception. She actually changed her identity of herself as well. Oh, if I'm not the problem, then actually that might mean that I can get into a relationship again and be okay. And once you see it from a different perspective, you cannot unsee it. And so that's really what it comes down to, is that we are not seeing the world as it is. Like, you're not seeing the world as it is. You're seeing the world as you are through this lens of perception in your confirmation bias. And so you have a choice. You can live in the mental equivalent of sitting in a dark room with all of the blinds down and say,

this is just how it is, this is how the world is, this is how my identity is, these are my beliefs. Or you can realize you're in a dark room. You can rip open the blinds and you can see the entire truth. Because the scariest thing about the confirmation bias isn't that it makes us wrong. It's that it makes us sure that we're right. And certainty is one of the most dangerous illusions that you can believe in. And so what I want you to do is if you really want to grow and improve yourself, start to challenge your beliefs more often and see things from a different perspective. That is how you'll become more free. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. this episode, please do me a favor. Share it with somebody right now. Send it to them in a tax

to say, hey, this best, I love this. I listen to the entire thing. I'm listening to it at the end right now. I think you should listen to this. I think it would really help you out. Send it over to them. If you would do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. If you want to learn more about coaching with me outside of the podcast, you can go to my website at coach with rob.com. There's information up there. Once again, coach with rob.com. And with that, I'm going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission. Make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day. Thank you.