The Mindset Mentor - You Get What You Focus On

Episode Date: July 2, 2018

Episode 449 - Too often we focus on what we don't want, but then get mad that we get more of it. In this episode I talk about the power of focus and how it is proven to be true through science. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere 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 TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, one of the top rated motivational podcasts in the world. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I come out with a short, to the point, no BS podcast designed to transform you from who you are today into who you want to be. There's no fluff here, just life-changing content. My name is Rob Dial, and the podcast starts now. Welcome to today's episode. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another episode. And also, if you have not done so lately, share this with someone that you know and love. Share this episode or share this podcast with someone that you know

and love. We're trying to change the world here and we need your help. So if you enjoy this, I'm sure someone that you know would enjoy it as well. And also, last but not least, if you did not hear the announcement last episode, I'm looking for a part-time assistant to help me change the world. So if you're someone that's out there, like I said, you have to be extremely organized. You have to be extremely self-motivated. You have to be a go-getter, a driven person who wants to change the world. And this would probably be perfect for someone who is right out of college that's trying to get some resume experience, that wants to learn a lot about social media, that wants to learn about

how to build a brand, how to run an online company, all of those things. That is what I'm looking for. So if you're someone who wants to change the world, you're extremely self-motivated. I don't have to motivate you myself. And you're also at the same time organized and driven and want to go out there and you want to help be part of what we're building here. Send me an email, rob at mwfmotivation.com, with information about you, why you feel that you're best for the position, and also your resume as well. All of the information you can send me, the more the better. Anyways, that would be the best thing for you to do. So send me an email, rob at mwfmotivation.com,

if you're interested in applying for that part-time position. Okay. So what I'm going to be talking about today is something called inattention blindness. Inattention blindness. And I've been thinking about this and I noticed how I was thinking about this earlier this week and then something happened today, which made me go, I have to actually do this episode. So I was driving down the interstate and I've noticed this, that it's illegal to park your car on the side of the interstate. And I realized that sometimes people will have their cars on the side of the interstate. It breaks down, whatever it is. And the reason why it's illegal is because people run into those cars. So you can think about it this way. There's three lanes of traffic,

but for some reason, people still hit the non-moving car that's off to the side and not even in the way. For some reason, they veer off into it. Today, I went to a friend's birthday party, and we rode these go-karts that were going like 65 miles an hour. And the guy who actually owns the entire course, and we had so much fun today, but the guy who owns the course was an actual Ferrari racer. He raced for Ferrari. Excuse me.

It's been a long day. He raced for Ferrari. And he said, whatever happens, if somebody spins out in front of you, do not look at their car. Look past their car. He said, don't look at their car because it's like a magnet. If you look at it, you're going to slam right into it. Because what you focus on is what you're going to go straight towards. And that was, he said it today and I was like, I have to do an episode today because I've been thinking about doing an episode on focus

and I've been thinking about using this analogy. And then this guy used this analogy today and it was perfect. So inattention blindness means that, I'll give you a quick synopsis of it. Too much information is coming into our minds at one point in time. We have too much coming in at one point in time for the brain to actually get every single piece of information. I read a study that said, on average, at one point in time, your brain could take in about 22 million pieces of information just by what you're looking at. So what happens is if you're focusing on, let's use this as an example, if you're focusing on the car that's

wrecked in front of you and you don't look past the car or look somewhere else, you're going to go straight towards that car because that's what you're looking at. And what you're looking at and focusing on is where you're going to go. So with that being said, if you think about it with thinking negative, if you think about it with thinking positive, the way that you think, no matter what you're focusing on, whatever you're focusing on straight ahead is where you're going to go. If you're focusing on every single thing in your life that's negative, then the rest of your life is going to be negative. And the thing about it is this, with inattention blindness, what that means is when you're focusing on something, you're blind to everything else that's happening around you. You're completely blind to certain things. And there's a video that I'm going to share if you go to mwfmotivation.com

slash episode 107. And the actual video, I'm going to give it away because it makes sense for this podcast. So, you know, you're going to see it when you watch the video. But it's a video of two different teams, two different teams of, I think, five people, one of them wearing white shirts, one of them wearing black shirts. And it says in the video, count how many times the team in white passes the ball to each other. And so what you're doing is you're watching this video of all of these passes go back and forth. You're going one, two, three, four, five, six, 79. And you get to the end and they say, how many was it? And you're like, it was 13 and it was 13. But what you're not realizing is that in the middle of the video, there's a guy

dressed in a bear outfit that does the moonwalk straight through your vision, but you don't see it because you're not focused on it. And it's the exact same thing for everything that happens in your life. If you don't focus on the positive stuff, you're not going to see all the positive stuff around you happening. If you don't focus on the opportunity, you're not going to see the opportunity. If you don't make your mind focus on specific things, it's going to focus on something else. So we all know people who are some of the most negative people you've ever met. And the reason why is because they focus on the negative and they can't look at the positive around them because they're literally blind to

the actual positive stuff happening around them because they're so focused on the negative. So with our brain having so much information come in, we blind everything else out when we're not paying attention to it. We don't pay attention to what we don't see. So what can you take from this? From concentrating, the things that you concentrate on is what you're going to get out of your life.

Concentrating on the positive things in your life versus concentrating on the negative things in your life. If you concentrate on all of the stuff that's negative, then you're going to have a completely negative life because you won't be able to see the positive around you. If you concentrate on the reasons why you will succeed versus the reasons why you might fail. And that's a big one because most people look at something and they say, you know, here's my goal, but look at all of the ways that I could fail. I could fail all of these ways

versus looking at the goal and go, I could probably succeed if I took all of these routes. And that's the thing that you need to concentrate on is realizing that you need to focus on the reasons why you will succeed versus the reasons why you might fail. Another perfect example is concentrating on the opportunity that you have in the future versus looking at all of the failures that you've had in the past. Because most people, they know that there might be an opportunity. They know that they might have

something in front of them, but then they look backwards and go, yeah, but I failed so many times. There's no possible way that I could succeed at the next thing. So they look at all of the failures behind them, which are behind them. So they should leave them there. But they focus on those instead of looking ahead and going, what could I possibly do to succeed? What are the opportunities in front of me where I could possibly succeed? And it's the perfect example of why I don't watch the news. I was watching a basketball game today and I never watch TV. The only time I watch TV is for sports. And right

after the basketball game, it was on ABC, came on the local news and it was on for about five minutes. And my girlfriend and I looked at each other and I was like, this is the most negative stuff I've ever seen. Now I know why I don't watch the news anymore because it's talking about people getting killed. And then it's talking about a police officer who was killed in duty when he was driving his car and talks about all this stuff. And every single piece was negative. And the reason why is because people are attracted to negative because it's more of an interesting negative. And the reason why is because people are attracted to negative because it's more of an interesting story. And because of the fact that thousands

of years ago, we had to pay attention to all of the negative, all the ways we could possibly die, all of these things, because we had to get away from the berries that John ate and John died. We had to remember those types of things. So naturally we go towards the negative, but we have to make the conscious decision to look at the positive versus looking at the negative. And that's why if you listen to me when I talk about brainwashing yourself to be successful is I don't listen to the news. I don't read the news. I don't know what's going on in the presidential election because honestly, I don't give a crap. And I'm going to do another episode on why I don't give a crap who gets elected because they mean absolutely nothing to me. The time that I could be spending on my business, I would rather

spend on my business versus taking a couple hours watching a debate and doing all of those stupid things because they're going to do what they want to do anyways. We have very little control over that. So that could be a whole other episode by itself. But I would rather focus on what I can control versus all of the things that I can't control outside of it. So with the news, the reason why I say brainwash yourself to be successful, don't watch the news is because the news is always so negative. So why don't you not watch the news? And why don't you listen to podcasts and audiobooks and fill your mind up constantly throughout the day as much as you possibly can with positive stuff, with personal growth,

with success stories, with autobiographies of people who had it horrible and found a way to succeed because their success stories and their autobiographies will inspire you. So with the inattentive blindness, inattention blindness, what it means is what you focus on is what you will see, but you will also be blind to everything else that's around it. So what you want to take from this episode, focus on, try to concentrate on the positive stuff in your life versus focusing on the negative stuff. When you wake up, start your day with gratitude. What are you grateful for versus all of the things that are going wrong? The next thing, when you think about reasons why you will succeed

versus reasons why you might fail, concentrate about reasons why you will succeed versus reasons why you might fail, concentrate on reasons why you might succeed. And also concentrate on the opportunity in the future versus concentrating on the failures in the past. But with that, I want to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission today to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you go out and you have a positive day because you're focusing on the positive and not focusing on the negative. Have a great day. Well, that's it for today's podcast.

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