The Mindset Mentor - You’re Seeing This Just BEFORE Your Breakthrough

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Do you want a breakthrough in your life? In this episode, I share why true transformation requires destroying parts of your old self to make way for growth. From seeds turning into flowers, I explain why change feels so hard and why it’s always worth it. 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, 512-8-0-9305. once again, 512 5809305. Today, we're going to be talking about how to create a breakthrough in your life. This might be a little bit of a tough episode for some of you guys, but really what I'm going to talk about is how to create breakthroughs.

Because breakthroughs can happen in your life. The universe can give you breakthroughs, enforce you through breakthroughs, or you can go out and actually search for breakthroughs to make massive changes. So it might be a little bit tough to listen to, parts of yourself that you're going to have to give up. But I promise you it will be worth it. There's a quote that's from a movie, Honeyboy, with Shia LeBuff. And I actually referenced this quote inside of my book, Level Up. And the quote that he says is something along the lines of a seed has to completely destroy itself in order for it to become a flower. And I remember watching that movie and being like, holy shit, that is so true.

Like if you think about a seed, like this little teeny tiny seed, there's so much potential. You can look at a little teeny tiny seed and it has so much potential inside of it in order for it to be a flower or a tree or a massive plant compared to a little teeny tiny tree, I'm sorry, a little teeny tiny seed, but in order for it to become what it has the potential to become, it has to completely destroy every single bit of what it currently is. and so when you look at who you want to be and you look at the person that you want to be in a year or you look at the person that you want to be in five years, in order for you to become that person, you're going to have to completely destroy parts of yourself and you're going to have to completely destroy who you currently are. There's going to have to be aspects of yourself that are unrecognizable to you and to people around you. So to change and to become different, you literally have to become different. That's what's interesting about it is that a lot of people are

like, I want change. I want a better life. I want to be better. And they're like, okay, well, then you have to change yourself. Like, nope, nope, nope, nope, not going to do that. I want to stay exactly the same as I currently am. Nobody actually says this, but subconsciously says kind of what it is. hey, I want to stay exactly as I currently am. I don't want to change anything about myself. I don't want anything to be hard. I don't want anything to be anything to be difficult. But I want myself and everything else to be different in one year.

And the problem with that is that it's not going to happen. In order for you to have a breakthrough, usually you have to have some sort of breakdown. Breakdown of yourself. And like I said, it could be the universe brings this breakdown to you. Or you can go out and actually search for it. and your life cannot change unless you change. I said this a few episodes ago, but it's crazy to me how much people think that they want their life to be different, but they are completely unwilling to be different.

And they think, oh my gosh, like in a year from now, everything's going to be different. And then they don't change. And they're like, I don't know why anything's different. Like, everything's exactly the same. It's because you are the person that has to change to create the change. Your life will always be the same. if you are always the same. Your life will always be the same if you are unwilling to break down aspects of yourself. Like aspects of yourself have to completely die off and not exist anymore. And in place

of that, new aspects of yourself have to have to be strengthened or have to grow. It's kind of like a forest fire. We see a forest fire and it's like it seems like utter destruction. It seems like one of the worst things ever, right? But if you go to where the location of where a forest fire was a year or two years later, what happens is it makes way for new growth. It makes way because the trees were so big where it was before that a lot of the plants that were down below and the smaller trees and the seeds that had been planted down below were not able to get the sun. And so it's the same thing where sometimes you have to just light a forest fire for different parts of your life and say that aspect of me, that that aspect of me that loves to procrastinate and loves to sleep in and

and doesn't follow through with what they say they're going to do, I kind of have to burn it down and just see what new things I can have regrow. Your life and everything around you is based off of who you were in the past. So what you currently have right now in your life is based off of who you were a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. So if you look around you and you're not really satisfied with what you have and where your life is, it is because you didn't take the necessary actions in the past to create the life that you wanted right now. And so the life that you have around you is just a lagging indicator of what you've done in the

past. And so if you want things to be different, you have to do things different. And then the future that you have will be a lagging indicator of what you're going to do over the next year or two years or whatever it might be. And most times, like I said, you have to have a breakdown to have a breakthrough. Better times usually come after a breakdown. They do. Like life cannot be terrible forever. When things are bad in our life, it's hard for things to be bad in our life because we are going through shit, but then we think it's going to be bad forever. And that's just not true. Life ebbs and flows. It's like a wave. Sometimes there's good days. Sometimes there's bad days. And that's just part of being a human. I don't know if it could be good forever,

but it ebbs and it flows. There's peaks and there's valleys. And when you're stuck going through the shit, you'll soon be in one of the happiest moments you've ever been if you don't stop growing. If you're, it's like the phrase when you're going through hell, keep going. Don't stop when you're in hell. Keep on going through it. Because on the other side of that hell is usually beautiful moments. It's like it doesn't, it doesn't rain every single day. It rains some days and then the sun's out some days. And when the sun is out, after a long period of rain, you usually appreciate the sun a whole lot more. And so sometimes just kind of the way that life goes. Life is in expansion sometimes and contraction sometimes.

there's seasons it's just the way that that life is and so you if you're looking at your life you can you can wait for a breakdown to happen and you know whatever that might be it might be a health issue it might be someone that you love has a health issue it might be losing a job it might be i don't know a bunch of different things it could be right you can just wait for those to happen which is the universe coming to you and saying hey dude you've got to make a change like the way that you are can't stay this way or you can actually seek out breakdowns and break down certain aspects of yourself the way that you want to. And through that, breakthroughs will come. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. It's really hard

for us to do. And the reason why is because psychologically, us as humans, we resist change. You will always, always, always, always subconsciously resist change. And when you look at your subconscious, your subconscious is 95% of your thoughts and your patterns. And only 5% of what you do is your conscious mind. So 5%, your entire conscious mind can want change. and want something to be different. But that's only 5% of what's going on in your brain. 95% of you is going to resist it. And so the reason why is because change usually means a destruction of who you currently are.

And that is a threat to the human mind because there's a lot of unknowns and unknowns or threats. You know, you won't die from deciding to go on a weight loss journey. you won't die from deciding to get better and grow yourself more. You won't die from those things, but pieces of your old self have to die off. And that's when your ego starts to come in and tries to keep you in the exact same place. Your ego, this character that you believe that you are has to be destroyed. Because who you think you are is not who you are. It's not. It's just someone that's a character you have just woken up and just decided to play every single day. If you're somebody who has just been, you know, oh, I'm not really a happy person. Well, you've just decided

to not be a happy person. You know, you could, you could decide to try to start finding more gratitude in your life and decide to dance in the shower and listen to music that you like and start being more talkative and be, be around people who make you happier. And naturally, you're going to start to come out of your show more. You're going to start to be happier. And, you know, my favorite example of this, and I've also wrote about this in my book, is Jim Carrey in the movie, Jim and Andy. If you haven't seen it, I don't know how many times I've recommended on the podcast. You have to watch it. It's a documentary about Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman. And he is a method actor. So, you know, I won't go too deep into it. You can read my book. You can watch the

movie, all that stuff where we go, you can go much deeper into it. But basically, as a method actor, he has to play a person who used to live. And as a method actor, he never breaks character. So he becomes this character. And he was so deep in it, so deep in this character psychologically, at the end of the four months of shooting, he forgot who Jim Carrey was, which sounds nuts, right? It sounds nuts to us to be like, how did Jim Carrey not remember who Jim Carrey was? Like, he didn't remember what his beliefs were. He didn't remember what he liked to do, what his hobbies were, any of that stuff. And then he has a quote in the movie where he says, I realize that if I can lose Jim Carrey, then Jim Carrey is just another character that I'm playing,

just like dumb and dumber, just like the mask, just like anything else that he's played. And so when you look at who you are, your ego, your character is just who you have been deciding to play. And so the ego does not like for you to destroy that character. Because that's a threat. If you don't, if you're not that character, who are you? Right? Like if I look at myself and I look at who I am now, I'm not the same person that I was five years ago. I'm not the same person was 10 years ago or 15 years ago. And when I look back to who I was 10 years ago, I would have loved, I've been on this, this gratitude feeling recently where I've been trying to force gratitude, I guess you could say, where I've been waking up and trying to be grateful and going outside and think about what I'm

grateful for and meditating on gratitude. It's been working really, really well. But I keep thinking, man, myself 10 years ago would have absolutely been like, holy shit, this is a dream life that you currently have. And it's hard for us to be in the moment because we always want more and more and more and we want to be better. But I keep thinking to myself, myself 10 years ago, myself, you know, back in 2012 when I was backpacking Europe by myself for three months and I was living off of savings. And I was just trying to figure out a way to do something that I love to do would have been like, holy shit, dude, you have a dream life right now. And I think that to myself over and over again recently. But the person that I was in 2012 could not have the life that I

currently have. There's aspects of myself that had to die off, that had to change, that had to grow, that had to evolve. And so I'm not the same person that I was five years ago or 10 years ago or 15 years ago. I've destroyed that person. And just like the seed, I had to destroy certain parts of myself. Not all of myself. There's a lot of myself that is the same or even better in certain aspects. But I had to identify certain aspects of myself that needed to change, that needed to die off. And through that, through that forest fire, I had to build a new version of myself. You have to go on that same journey. There's parts of yourself that need to change. Life is about destroying the old version of yourself and making a new one. That's what self-development journey is really about,

is realizing there's aspects of ourselves that we need to destroy in order to make way for the aspects of ourself that we want to strengthen or that we want to start or that we want to grow. It's like knocking down an old building and then building up a new building, right? And it's really, really hard because psychologically we're going to resist and we have to just understand that we're going to resist right it's because it's our identity like who are we if we don't have our identity that's what we think to are i don't know i don't know who i am and if i don't know who i am that's scary and this is really just the backbone of personal growth is that you have to lose yourself in order to find yourself you have to get rid of the side of yourself that you don't want anymore the pieces of

yourself that you don't want anymore you have to let go of who you think you are in order to build yourself into who you truly want to become. You know, like, there's a lot of people that are like, oh, well, I just lazy. I'm lazy. I procrastinate. And when I think about before I discovered the first sales company that I was in, I was just a lazy piece of shit. I was lazy, didn't do anything.

I was not motivated any sort of way. And then I found an outlet that made me want to work hard. And then I learned how to work hard. I learned at that point in time, I was going up to 100 to 110 hours a week. So I went from this lazy piece of shit to. working 110 hours a week. Why? Because I found something that I truly wanted to do than I was passionate about. And so through this process, you might have to mourn the old version of yourself. Change is not easy. It's not. You know, there's going to be a little bit of sadness of like,

man, I missed that old version myself. You know, like I missed that verse. Like I, there's a part of me that really understands that ignorance is bliss. Because when I was ignorant to who I was, it was pretty, life was pretty easy. It wasn't, it wasn't satisfying. It wasn't fulfilling. But, before I went on personal growth journey and started, before I started push myself and growing myself, it was just like, hey, this is not bad. I could do this. But then I was like, but I'm not fulfilled. This isn't who I want to be. And so there's a part of you that might mourn the old version of yourself because change isn't easy, but it is really necessary. And it's like Tony Robbins always says progress equals happiness. When you, even if you don't create everything that you want to in

your life, which probably you'll never get there. It's like, it's like our goals are like the horizon. We're constantly pushing them a little bit further out and we'll never fully get to where we want to be most likely because if you're listening to this, you're probably an overachiever. But to know that you're progressing, to know that you're getting a little bit better, progress equals happiness. I've never seen someone who is in like real true progression and in learning and growing and becoming better that's unhappy because they're starting to see how they're changing and how they're getting better. They're starting to realize that they went from that seed to now they're starting to grow into a little bit of a flower.

The version of you that is the flower is in the future. The version of you that has the stuff that you want and is happier or is more loving or that has the family that you want or has the success that you want or the business, the money, whatever it is that you might want in your future. That version of you is the flower that's in the future. Right now, you might just be the seed. And so you have to start asking yourself, like, what aspects of myself need to change? If I want that life in the future, what do I have to destroy in myself?

What do I have to change? How do I need to grow? Because a seed has to completely destroy itself in order for it to become a flower. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please show it on Instagram Stories, tag me in at Rob Dow Jr. R-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 and leave you every single episode. Making sure mission makes somebody else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day.