Rob Dial - Mindset & Motivation Expert | Why You're Failing To Achieve Your Goals

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We're fighting the boogeyman and wasting our energy fighting the boogeyman all day long first to just take an action towards the thing that we want. From delivering pizzas and working minimum wage jobs to building multi-million dollar businesses rob dials journey as proof of grit resilience and the power personal growth starting his sales career at 19 with Coco. He quickly broke company records and trained over 2,000 sales reps by the age of 23. I was making great money 29 years old and I was like I'm miserable. I left my job. I left. I was full of fear. There was no money in podcasting nine and a half years ago. I was kind of like jumping off but in my heart like I felt like this sitting I'm supposed to do. But as soon as the paycheck stopped coming in I started getting like really really full of fear. The loss of his father at 15 became a turning point fueling his drive to create a life of impact and purpose. That passion led to the creation of the MWF Motivation Podcast that inspires millions to unlock their potential. I believe that whatever you believe in is always speaking to us. We just have to be quiet enough to listen to it. I went back home my sister just comes up to me and she's like hey have you ever seen this box of dad's stuff? And I was like no reading these letters the very last sentence one of them. I hope you live your life with courage, love and laughter. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is deciding that you are going to move forward in spite of it. I think my dad wrote this for me and I was like this is the universe telling me I have to do this and the universe will support me and I have to trust. This is the story of a man who turned personal challenges into a mission to help others demand greatness and live a life of purpose. I always recommend that people make a decision and they just go. You should try to de-risk it as much as you possibly can or create the longest runway that you possibly can when you're making a big life adjustment. Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network HubSpot not only supports this show but they support entrepreneurs. That's why it's such a huge fan of HubSpot and I'm very grateful for HubSpot for supporting the show because they help entrepreneurs and as a fellow entrepreneur I know it takes a lot to grow your business, a lot of audience attracting, a lot of sales, a lot of marketing, a lot of lead scoring, a lot of channel management, a lot of content, a lot of long days. Late nights, a lot of weekends, a lot of wishing there wasn't easier way but there is with breeze. This is HubSpot's new collection of AI tools. It's easier than ever for marketers, for entrepreneurs to attract audiences, to increase leads, to score customers, to close deals fast. Which means pretty soon your company will have a lot to celebrate. Visit HubSpot.com slash marketers to learn more. Rob, I'm excited you're here today. It's going to be a lot of fun. The way that I wanted to start this off, just to frame what you've accomplished. So you've, like we just spoke about, you've built one of the largest self-help personal improvement podcasts, mindset mentor, I love your background. You've been doing that for almost 10 years now. You've built a massive community, you've coached tons of people, your book level up, how to get focused, stop procrastinating and upgrade your life. That was sort of your more recent project. But if you look at all the content you put into the world and all the people that you help, I have to ask, what do you love about what you do? It's a great question. I've never thought about it before. I think what I love about what I do is that I feel like, and at least, you know, at least from the response I've gotten from people is I feel like I help people remove themselves from the prisons they create in their own mind. I think that's the main thing that I help people doing. So, you know, is the podcast was was pretty steady as far as like numbers and it stayed the same for about five years and then in 2020, like really took off. And then it doesn't happen often, but sometimes people recognize me in the street or like I was just in an event this past weekend in Scottsdale and there was a bunch of entrepreneurs that were there. And this lady came up to me and she's from Poland and she's like, I just have to tell you she's like almost crying. She's like, I just have to tell you that you've changed my life. Like I run a business now. I was so scared when I first started my business. I don't think I would have followed through on it had I not found your podcast. And so I think just the feeling of like I'm doing something good in the world, you know, I've had jobs before where I felt like I was just trying to serve a corporation and they didn't feel like there was ever any good that I was doing. And so I think as small as it might be, I know there's, you know, seven, eight billion people, a percentage of those people listen to podcasts and I feel like I'm at least in my own way making a little making the world a little bit better. And for me, that's the most fulfilling thing in the world for me. And so I always say it's like when you're a coach, it's like you don't need to do drugs or alcohol or any of that because when someone sends you an email and says you've changed my life, it's like it's like our version of crack. It's like this is the best thing ever. And so that's that's what I love the most about what I do. Why do you think that people build this cage around their mind and they set up all these limiting beliefs? I mean, if you you've without sounding too cliche. Your journey is very similar to a lot of people who listen to your podcast. So you were in a nine to five. I think you're making, you know, $250,000 a year, very good job at a young age. But you could say at that point, you were still your mind was still in that cage was still in like this safety net that I think a lot of people fall into the golden handcuffs, whatever you want to call it. So why do people create this cage around their mind in terms of what they're able to do and then the follow up. And as a podcaster, I know you probably hate to prong questions, but I have to include this anyways, it would be how did you escape the cage that you built around your own mind to go out into the world, try to build your own thing. Yeah, it's another great question. I don't think people intentionally build the prisons of their mind. I think it's actually unintentionally and unconscious and subconscious from childhood. So like I have a baby that's downstairs, he's four and a half months old. And I'm I've been coaching people for years and trying to fix the relationship with their parents as their adults, which is really fixing the relationship with themselves. And so as I see my son, I'm now like in this moment of, well, I hope I don't screw him up. Like a lot of people get screwed up in this world. So I'm thinking that in my head because I'm, but he's there and I'm like, this is a perfect human. Like this is how every one of us that's here came in. There's no, you know, we've got all of the hardware, but we've gotten none of the software installed. You know, like he can't even like put a pacifier in his mouth without taking 15 attempts. Like it's, it's not all there. Like the hardware is not downloaded yet. Some of your software is not downloaded yet. And so he's got all the hardware, but the software is like what we install as parents. It's what society says installs. It's what teachers install. And what happens is children are, you know, I come from a really big family. Children are wild, you know, like they're nuts. And you've got to keep them alive. And so sometimes that means that like, you know, they're about to jump off of a wall while they're playing outside. And you just like a moment of like panic scream at them. And then you just, you know, you're keeping them safe, but also at the same time they're thinking to myself whenever they hear that like, Oh, I don't, it's not consciously thinking they're subconscious thinking himself like, Oh, I don't know what I'm doing or I'm not smart enough or I'm not good enough. A lot of parents also unconsciously in order to get their child to do what they want them to do. They, they do some sort of a form of retracting love from their child. And it makes the child feel like, well, I've got to change myself in order for my mom or my dad to love me. Like the average child is reprimanded eight times more than they're praised, which means the average child thinks I'm not subconsciously. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I don't know what I'm doing. And all I really care about is my mom and dad loving me because that makes me feel safe. You know, they children care about safety and love unconsciously more than anything else from their parents. You know, if our, of our son is in the bassinet, he's crying in the middle of the night. If we pick him up and hold him almost immediately, it stops. What does he want? He wants safety and he wants love more than anything else. And so what it comes down to is over time, these are hundreds of thousands of events where we unconsciously think like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm doing it wrong. And we all build this internal narrative in some sort of way that could be it's usually any flavor of I'm not good enough. Like I always say, it's like ice cream. It's just all different flavors like some people like vanilla. Some people like chocolate. They're both ice cream. They're just two different flavors. So it's like the ice cream here is I'm not good enough for I'm not enough. And that can go into I'm not smart enough. I'm not pretty enough. I'm not lovable. I have to achieve in order to be worthy of love. There's all of these different flavors of it. And it comes down to the fact that that in order for a child to fit in with society, which I, you know, in order to be fit in with society, which I called domesticated in order for us to domesticate a child. It's kind of the byproduct of the way that is like for years, I've been like probably about nine, 10 years has probably been working it. I'm like, I've never met somebody who doesn't have the core of I'm not enough. And why is that I've been trying to fear is it possible for us to not is it possible for us to raise a child to not have that to feel like there are enough no matter what. And I don't know if there is a way to do it. And I think that it's actually the journey we're supposed to go on in life. As you have to lose yourself in order to find yourself, you cannot find something that you've never lost. And so we're born into this world as perfect child as being and we can basically become a chameleon for our parents, for our friends to fit in for, you know, whatever it is. And then at some point in time, a lot of people, probably people who listen to this podcast wake up and they're like, who am I? Like, I don't like who I've become, which is what happened with me was I was like, I followed what I thought I was supposed to do and I was making great money at 29 years old, you know, quarter million dollars or 29 years old, but I was like, I'm fucking miserable. You know, like, I don't, and if I fast forward at my life is going to be in five years, like, I don't want my boss's job. She works more than I do at a job that I don't even like. So why would I want to work harder to make this more money? You know what I mean? And so for me, it was this thing of like, what do I really want? Who am I? Who do I want to be? And it was like, I'm just going to start at ground zero and just like start to build myself up. And as you start to do that, you start to realize that what you're looking for from the external world, love, acceptance, all of that. Whether you think that you have to be a certain person or you have to achieve to be worthy of it, if you're looking for love and acceptance from the outside world, you're actually just really looking for it from yourself. You're looking for the outside world to give you what you're not giving yourself. And so for me, as a journey of like, I do need to start accepting myself more, my good stuff, my flaws, all of that. And if I need it less, if I have it from myself, I don't need anybody else to give it to me. And I think that's like the core of like self love, self acceptance, and also like the foundation of building your own confidence within yourself. I just want to take a second and thank Cornbread Ham for supporting today's episode. Now Cornbread Ham CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit. I don't use them every day, just when I want to win wine after those extra busy weeks, but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off and just find your balance really just shut off from work. Now what makes them special is how Cornbread Ham crafts them. They only use a flower of USDA Organic Ham plants. That's the best part for the purest, most potent experience, no fillers, no artificial fluff, just clean, full spectrum goodness and delicious watermelon berry and peach flavor. I keep them in my nice stand for those moments when I just need a little extra help relaxing. And I love how transparent they are too. Every batch is third party lab tests. It's you know exactly what you're getting and they put together a special offer for all success story podcast listeners. All listeners can save 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbread hamps.com slash success and use code success at checkout. That's cornbread hamps.com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing gummies. I think that's it's incredible and it's it's it's very impressive that you discovered that on your own because that that inflection point where you took a look at your boss's job and you're like, my God, I don't want to be my boss. I really just don't want to be my boss. So I better figure my shit out. I think a lot of people have that feeling, but very few take action on that feeling. I would say that the this audience. I don't want to I don't want to get a twist of this audience is very entrepreneurial. So a lot of people in this audience have taken action. But sometimes they've taken action and they go back to their job or they take action. They're not sure if it's the right action or they take action towards one business. And they start five more because they're almost like over indexing on taking action. So it's still a very messy road. It doesn't matter how you do it or they just don't take action at all. So what is the what is the mental framework or the mental model when you're at this inflection point in your life, you see your future. You're not happy with it. Obviously you're scared. You speak about fear a lot. There's a lot of fear inside and that can either stop you from taking action or it can prompt you to take incorrect action. How do you manage fear and sort of use it as a tool to move in the direction that you should be moving. Yeah, good question. So I love fear and thinking about it. I don't love the feeling of it, but I love the way it manifests in humans lives fear at its simplest form is just a defense mechanism. That's all that it is. It's trying to protect you. And so if it's like, Hey, you should leave. If I have this feeling if I should leave my job and that is me thinking that and that's like my gut feeling, but my brain pops in is like, Hey, but how are you going to pay the bills. That is just at edits at its core. If you look at Nazo's hierarchy of needs security is the number one thing. That is what we're looking for. And so it's like, OK, if I lose my job or if I leave my job and I start growing my own business. What if I can't pay my bills? What if I can't feed my family? Like that is like at the root of what we are as humans like we need that security before we can do anything else as far as sex self actualization goes on the other side of that. And I'll answer it how it works in the human brain. And this is I wrote I've an entire chapter on fear in my book that was really open to me for when I came across and started realizing this stuff. And I'll tell you that actually happened in my life with the leaving of it, leaving a job doing what I do now all of that. So I had a friend that wasn't was chatting his name is chat. He's still alive. So it's not West chat chat is still alive. So chat and I were having a conversation years ago and he he's a very alternative lifestyle post type type person. So he went down and he lived with a native Brazilian tribe in the middle of nowhere. And when I say native Brazilian. I mean that he flew down to Brazil. He got on a boat and it took two days of sleeping overnight to finally get to this tribe. There's no roads. There's no that's the only way he can get to this tribe. You got to take take a you know go down the Amazon all that to get there. So he lives with them. So like chat chat is done for sure. Like I was good. He's at all. That's how we got there. Right. That's what I mean by alternative lifestyle. He's awesome. It's like I know one of one of the most amazing humans alive to like just calming peaceful presence when you're in this test. He's also like 40 pounds of muscle more than I am in the same size me right. So but amazing human and he went down there and he lived with them. And to the point where he like lived in TPs he had to walk around the machete they hunted anacondas and he said he said he said if a jaguar sees you it's already too late because it's now allowing it to it's now allowing you to see it because it's like an attack you like that's there it's it's fear of safety all the time. And he said he said what's really interesting is none of these people were depressed because they don't have time to think about depression. It's kind of like there's a phrase that says like one of the the greatest faults that we have is human is having enough time to sit around and ask myself like am I happy. Like there's a lot of people who don't even they can't even think am I happy because they're just worried about survival. And so then we started talking about the primal fears that exist when you live in the Amazon like primal is like and then there's and then so we started talking about well what okay we don't really have primal fear so what do we have and we're like we have basically intellectual fears. So like then in my book I split up of two different types of fears so a primal fear the way I describe it and the way that we still think about it in our head. Unless we constantly bring to the service and actually think about it is a primal fear means that there's there's physical pain or there's death that's potentially attached to it right that's why people have a fear of heights that's why they have the fear of spiders that's why people. You know if you're walking through and you hear a loud noise in the jungle you're getting it's there's a primal fear on the other side of our intellectual fears and an intellectual fear could be because of fact that we don't live in the middle of the jungle anymore our brain creates all of these other fears the amygdala still exists inside of our brain so it's still always creating these fears. So an intellectual fear be like fear of other people's opinions the fear of rejection the fear of failure the fear of success and the way that you can distinguish the two of them is if you ask yourself this fear. Is it going to kill me and does it exist in reality like if you look at a fear of rejection does it exist in reality is a tangible can you hold it physically you can't. What does it exist that exists in your mind which means that you're making it up you're literally making it up and. I remember I was as I was writing the book I was listening to a lot of I'm listening to everything I possibly could as I was writing it and I think it was sad guru that I was listening to and he was talking about fear and how we make up all of these fears and he said in this what I write about the book is. Okay now that I've identified my fear of success my fear of failure my fear of rejection my fear of other people's opinions how do I overcome it. And the answer is you can't overcome something that doesn't exist because it doesn't actually exist and so we're basically waking up in the morning we're creating the bogeyman which is these intellectual fears that don't exist in reality and instead of taking action on the life that we want what are we doing we're fighting the bogeyman and wasting our energy fighting the bogeyman all day long first just take action towards the thing that we want. Now how did it manifest in my life I'll tell you like I almost went back to working for somebody else so I left my job it was like right before I was those would have been October of 2015 so yeah nine years ago at this point is October of 2015 and I was like I left and I was full of fear because I get like we were talking about before you started podcasting there was no money in podcasting nine and a half years ago there's none right there's no sponsors people even know how to listen to podcasts and so. So so there's no money and so I was I was kind of like jumping off but in my heart like it felt like this is the thing I'm supposed to do but as soon as the paycheck stop coming in I just had an I bought a new house like four or five months before in July and I had to still pay for myself and pay for my food and pay for my car payments and all of this and I went through my first month of just not having money coming in and paying bills from my savings and it coming out I started getting like really really full of fear and I believe that the universe. That the universe God life whatever you believe in is always speaking to us we just have to be quite enough to listen to it and I had this feeling of like maybe I should go back and work for someone else maybe I should like maybe I should go back on I'm terrified I'm full of so much fear now went back home to Florida I live in Texas now when back home to Florida my sister just comes up to me and she's like hey have you ever seen this box of dad stuff and my father died in 2001 he's an alcoholic you know passed away when I was 15 and so what do we talk and that's the 14 years before he had passed away she's like I've ever seen his box of dad stuff and I was like no and it was like old T shirt of his is his glasses is his watch and then there were letters my father was in jail for a little while and he's to write his letters and I was reading these letters and the very last sentence of one of them was it was a letter to my sister on a 19th birthday the very last sentence was I hope you live your life with courage love and laughter and then it said in and it had like courage and then it had a little asterisk next to the word courage and then down below it had courage is not the absence of fear it is deciding that you are going to move forward in spite of it and I read it and it was this weird like the universe like warped and I was like oh my god I think my dad wrote this for me the universe was speaking through my dad to my sister for me to find this in this moment right now and I was like this is the universe telling me that I have to do this like I have to go forward with it like I have to burn the ships like there has to be you know as a great philosopher Marshall Mather says success is my only mother fucking option failures not that's what I have to think about with this thing like I have to do this and the universe will support me and I just have to trust and I was like what do I need to do and I was like I need to get this tattooed on me like I need to just burn the ships and so literally it's my dad's handwriting is on the inside it says live your life with courage love and laughter on the enemy arm this is his handwriting blown up in my arm very first tattoo that I ever got and only have two the only other one that I have is the Roman numo for 10,000 for the 10,000 hour rule and so for for me I always recommend that people make a decision and they just go will you fear the fear absolutely every single day but it's not about not feeling feeling any fear it's about feeling the fear taking it understanding is trying to protect you but deciding to move forward anyways and so I think that's the biggest piece of it now if somebody's like I want to quit my job and and started company I don't think you should just leave like I did I actually recommend you make a transition plan like make a year long transition plan make it to your transition plan what you're going to be out you're going to save up and you're going to start building money and decide decide business on the side of in the weekends um so that therefore the fear starts to go away because the bottom of Mazzo Mazzo's hierarchy needs is taking care of which is my safety I can pay my bills so now I can leave my job today's episode is brought to you by Taylor brands now here's a wild stat 60% of Americans dream about starting their own business but less than 20% actually take the plunge now why is that let's face it building a business feels overwhelming but what if I told you there's a way to make it simple this is where Taylor brands comes in your complete business building companion they've turned the intimidating process of starting a business into something you can actually handle if you need an LLC done in minutes if you're trying to protect your personal assets if got you covered the whole deal with everything from legal documents to licenses departments even a personalized business plan plus their business coaching program will guide you through your crucial first 100 days and the best part is you get all the tools you need to build your brand manager and voices handle your bookkeeping basically everything you need to launch with confidence and there's an exclusive deal for all success story podcast listeners you get 35% off when you visit Taylor brands.com slash podcast 35 don't let your business dreams stay dreams get started today with Taylor brands I understand yeah that makes perfect sense and I think that when you look at fear that way in action spite of it fear no longer fogs your judgment because like I mentioned like yes there's sort of like two components to what you're talking about right now there is acting in spite of fear but then there's also de-risking the opportunity so that you move forward regardless when you look at when you look at sort of like the two opponents the two components that I just discussed like de-risking versus acting in spite of fear how much do you think you should de-risk an opportunity versus jumping in and figuring it out and burning the boats because you can de-risk an opportunity is de-risking an opportunity ever just almost like an excuse to take massive action I guess the question is like how do you understand when's that what's that point where you do have to dive in I think it depends on the person right like some people are I am a type of person where I will take risk but they're very calculated risks my best friend he will take very uncalculated risks he has no problem with like I don't I don't even like gambling he loves gambling so I think it depends on the person or some people that are very risk-adversed and some people that don't care about risk and so I think it depends on the person for me I'm in between where you know I want to make sure that what I'm stepping into is the correct thing for me I'm very logical in the way that I think and then at the same time I want to de-risk it as much as possible so that therefore I'm good to to take action on this thing if it's something for like where we're talking about a very serious life event that someone's moving into where they're wanting to start a business I am a really big believer in going with your gut feeling with stuff and then people ask like well how do you find your gut feeling what is all of that I think your gut feeling is a blend of intuition and also experience and so you know like I have a friend that gave me a great example is like you should definitely go with your gut feeling if you're a pilot that has 40,000 hours in a plane and you hear a noise that you've never heard before it's like okay there's something wrong I'm gonna go with my gut feeling if it's your first flight and you're just soloing for the first time ever there might be as noise you've never heard before because you've only got 40 hours under your belt there's a big difference between the two and so I think it's an intuition is a gut feeling but it's also a little bit of a blend of experience as well so for me like it was a little bit easier to jump off and grow a business because I grown businesses before in the past that failed and that's why there's a lot of fear behind them and then I went into corporate as well and so I think more than anything else I think it depends on the person and how risk adverse they are but I do think that it is somebody's runway of how long they have to mess up will be longer the more that they can de-risk the situation which could be I have you know 40,000 dollars saved up I'm good for the next year of of bills I can put everything into it so I think it depends on the person but I also think that you could you should try to de-risk it as much as you possibly can or create the longest runway that you possibly can when you're making a big life adjustment I love that talk to me about talk to me about identity because I think that it's very obvious that fear stops us from moving forward I think maybe a less obvious thing that sort of plagues us and stops us from moving forward be how we associate ourselves like what do we associate ourselves with so if I've only ever worked a nine to five and my parents have only ever worked a nine to five and that's what I've spent I went to school for this thing and I'm moving up the corporate ladder and that's my whole identity yeah I could have some fear maybe I can act in spite of that fear but also I don't even feel like that's me it's not a fear thing it's like I just don't feel like that I don't feel like I am quote unquote an entrepreneur that wasn't what I was raised to be so talk to me about identity beliefs about identity how we can sort of reconcile past identities with sort of future goals so when I when I was writing the book it was like the whole book was originally going to be called take action because I was like most of what I do is just mental frameworks to help people get out of their own ways so they can take action create the life they want and so the first question I asked myself was like well why don't people take action the first thing I popped up was fear that was very obvious which we just spoke about like they're afraid of something the not so obvious one is that people just don't think that that's who that they are like they they're not aware that they're like yeah I want to be an entrepreneur but I've never run a business before before I don't know anybody's run a business before I want to school to be a you know a a nurse so I don't know anything about it like how am I going to do it and so the the thing that I have found is the most potent thing for whether somebody does something it does do something is who they think they are and when you look at identity it's a very slippery slope as you start to dive really deep into it is because you know when you are like well I this is just my who I am this is who I've been all the time it's who you've just decided to be every morning unconsciously whether you realize that or not and so there's a really really good movie I actually I recommend this movie almost every single week to somebody I'd literally recommended it last week when I was at this event and there's a review scene the movie Jim and Andy about Jim Carey yeah okay yes I thought if you guys have noticed people listening have you noticed this huge like shift that Jim Carey has had him like the past 20 years where we are from like there's crazy funny guy till like now he's very spiritual and all that's still crazy and funny but he's like definitely yeah he's very introspective yeah very introspective everything what happened at a movie that he was shooting the movie is called Man on the Moon and there was a documentary that was put out about this movie that was called Jim and Andy and it was about how Jim Carey wasn't a method actor so he became Andy Kaufman who was once a person who was alive and he played him and when he the cameras turned off he was Andy Kaufman still and then so the his his driver would drive him home and he would still be Andy Kaufman he pick him up in the morning so be Andy Kaufman Jim Carey's dad said it would drove him crazy because he just wanted to have a conversation with the sun but he couldn't for three months because he wouldn't stop being Andy Kaufman then what makes him even crazier is that Andy Kaufman when he was alive played other people like Tony Clifton which was a fake character he made up so if the movie stopped shooting that day and he was Tony Clifton he was Tony Clifton when he went home and he was Tony Clifton when he was picked up in the morning and if his dad called him he was Tony Clifton so it's this weird like loss of identity over the course of four months that he has right to the point where to go one level deeper uh Andy Kaufman's daughter started going to therapy sessions with Jim Carey as Andy Kaufman so that she could start to heal her issues about her dad dying early so it's like deep down the rabbit hole right and at the end of it there was a there's a REM did that song man on the moon and they were like hey can you do uh can you be in the movie with like you be in the the music video with us and he's like I can't I can't go back into that because I I don't want I've lost myself so much that I can't pretend that I'm him even if it's just for a day to shoot this music video and he said when he stopped shooting he had to remember who Jim Carey was because he had lost himself so much he's like I forgot my beliefs I forgot what I like to do I forgot what I hated I forgot my hobbies he's like I had to rediscover myself and in through this rediscovery I realized that Jim Carey was just a character I was playing every single morning unconsciously I was just waking up and starting to be him but he was as much of a character and as fake as a character as the mask as Ace Ventura as anything else that I've ever done and so what happened was he's like well that means that I can just change myself anytime that I want to and like one of my favorite quotes Alan Watts says you have you're under no obligation to be who you were five minutes ago and so you can just be somebody different and so what I was recommended people is like if you identify okay this is who I am this is who I've always been like you and I we're both wearing black t-shirts there right we could just decide you know you know I want to go put on a white t-shirt and we can just change it like that well what if we say okay I'm wearing a black t-shirt now okay I've been this person my entire life and in order for me to get the life that I want and this is what my life looks like I'm gonna need to shift a little bit like I'm gonna need to be a little bit more outgoing like I'm a I'm a pretty introverted person right I can make myself be extroverted if I need to but I'm very introverted I'll usually choose to stay at home versus go out almost all of the time and if I'm the type of person who isn't sure and I am more shy then I notice okay if I'm gonna build my business I'm gonna put myself out there I need to just get a little bit more extroverted so today what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna wear a different shirt I'm just gonna wear the shirt as an extroverted person and just see how it feels right like there's some colors I put on and I'm like oh yeah I don't like that color that I like that with my skin tone doesn't work really well right and there's someone like yeah this does look really good same thing try it out and what does that mean okay well then what are the couple things that I can do to just get myself to push my boundaries of who I think I am okay if I go to a to a coffee shop and somebody's in line next to me and I'm normally shy I don't say anything I'm gonna give that person a compliment and see if I can start a conversation with them oh I really like your your earrings and have a conversation with about it where did you get them oh my gosh that's amazing and show myself that just communicating with another person is not that hard and anybody can do it it's a skill set that I can learn and so it's like why don't we just test the boundaries of who we think we are and try to be somebody different if I'm you know really angry person and a very short fuse well what do you look like if I went out today and I just decided to be the most calm if I just want to act like Buddha today nothing's gonna sway me I'm gonna be perfectly fine what would that look like and I think that if we just all kind of test the boundaries of who we think we are then we could change our personality because if you look at the root word for personality its persona and persona was the actual mask that the Greeks would wear on stage two thousand years ago and you know if they could take that mask off the persona personality means that we could try to change ours at any moment if we want to and so I think it's just don't massively change your entire life but just like test the boundaries a little bit and just see what you like and what you don't like and just try to become a different version of yourself because I'm not the same person I was you know before I discovered self-development at 19 years old 19 years ago so we are always constantly evolving and changing we're the only one that's trying to keep this mental framework of who we think we are together oh I love that and I think that's so powerful that that one idea that people think they're staying the same and people think that they are the same person that they were 20 years ago they aren't regardless of whether or not you're being purposeful about it you aren't so why not at least architect a person who you can be proud of who's accomplishing the goals that you actually want to achieve as opposed to just arbitrarily going through life and letting life and the people around you and the jobs you do that will influence you and that will shape you into a different person if you sort of don't take control of it yeah it's kind of like the way I think about it's like you know they call it bodybuilding because a bodybuilder would look at a part of their body and be like oh my my arms look great my biceps look great my my pecs don't look as good I need to build my pecs and so what do they do they work out their pecs to make them larger and they make them bigger and they make them so it's the exact same thing it's like well I'm going to build out this part of my personality today I'm going to build out this part of my personality this month and it's like can I just build out the person that I need to become because we think we are who we are but we're just we are we just are the person we just continue to side to keep being every single morning so it's like why not build out hey 10 years from now this is what my perfect life looks like and this is the type of person that would create this perfect life this is what they do this way they think about themselves this is who they surround themselves with this is what their morning routine looks like and then just wake up and try to be that person every single day allow that person to be your north star and then when you're about to scroll on your phone ask yourself would the perfect version of me 10 years from now be scrolling on the phone no okay can I stop doing it and it's just like this simple question my my very first mentor gave me which is is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further for my goals which you can if you just if it's a yes keep doing it if it's a no just stop doing it and you will eventually become the person who you need to become to create that life it's interesting because I think that I think that if I think the average person looks at things that they're not good at and they kind of just accept them as deficiencies and I've always thought about this I'm like should you lean into the things that you aren't good at or should you lean into the things that you are good at and find the way to outsource the rest but I think there is something to be said I mean if I look at like sort of my own personal example and I'm sure you felt the same way when you started your show I I kind of screwed up in the best way possible and I landed some really big guests like way sooner than I should have so I was scared shitless dude like I was like I think I had a guy Kawasaki one of the first you know apple employees I'm sure was like the first 10 episodes if I go back and check I would do I was so nervous I was so nervous but in that moment I'm like listen he said yes I got to figure it out I got to be like you know like a list podcaster in this moment and you just lean into it and you do it enough and then you become that person but I do think that there's a bit of the mindset but there's also a bit of like you mentioned like putting in the reps and the exposure to these uncomfortable situations and start to create this like these like mental calluses that allow you to do that thing again and again with less friction or less stress or less energy and eventually just becomes who you are yeah no I mean he bring up a really good point man which is is okay should I look at all of my deficiencies and ask myself should I get better at all of them no definitely not but in your case where you're talking about I need to get better as an interviewer get be more outgoing if if it if it is something that you need to create what you want in the future then yes so like for me like I am I'm a really good numbers person and I'm really good at putting the numbers and being a visionary in my in my business I'm not the greatest if you've read the book rocket fuel I'm really great into a really great vision and I'm not a great integrator so I forced myself to integrate for years until my business got to a certain point and then I hired an integrator who is a million times better at it than I am so I can outsource those things to other people but as far as like I think everybody has a zone of genius and you can build that zone of genius and say okay what am I really good at like there's a few things in this world that I'm really good at I'm going to double down on those and if there's anything that I'm not good at that supports the things that I am good at and the life that I want well then I'm going to figure out a way to get better at it and that's really what it comes down to like I don't have any wants to become a great cricket player you know I don't even know how the game is played and so it's like because I'm bad at this thing doesn't mean I need to get better at so it's like what are the strengths and traits in the qualities I need in order to create the life that I want and I'm going to double down on those things and those things only because I don't know about you though the most successful people that I know don't know a whole lot about anything but they know a lot about like one or two things and so if I want to take my knowledge and my skill set instead of being like a jack of all trades I always say like instead of my knowledge and my skill set being like a mile wide and six inches deep I want my knowledge and my skill set to be a mile deep but only like six inches wide like I want it to be deeper than anybody else that that comes in contact with me and anybody else that might be my competition and business whatever it might be so that someone's like yeah this guy's got it I want to trust this guy because he seems like he's been doing it for a long time and I think if people think that way usually the people they get paid the most in any industry are the ones that have the deepest knowledge and skill set in that industry I just want to take a quick break and thank the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story for the past two years now the HubSpot podcast network has other incredible podcasts like my first million now if you are an entrepreneur or you are ready to turn your entrepreneurial dreams into millions you have to listen to my first million it's a show that is revolutionizing business podcasting it's hosted by Sam Parr Sean Perry this is a HubSpot podcast network original it brings you unfiltered conversations with self-made millionaires who actually tell you how they did it if you want to learn how Alex from Mozi built his fitness empire or how Sophia Amaruso turned nasty girl into a fashion phenomenon these aren't just success stories they're the blueprints for your own journey to the top each episode breaks down the exact strategies and hidden opportunities that you can use right now don't just dream about your first million learn how to make it listen to my first million wherever you get your podcasts you mentioned something you mentioned zone of genius um I think that's a very important concept I think that it can't be it can't be confused with passion because I don't love telling people to follow their passion I think that there's I think there's better I think there's better ways to architect or improve the odds of being successful at something and just following something you're passionate about I mean you can you know reference icky guy where you meld your your passion with what you're good at with what the market needs or some version of that but when you think of when you think of all the people that come to you and are trying to figure out okay I'm at this again this inflection point I want to know where to go in my life do you tell them to follow their passion do you tell them to walk through some other mental model that allows them to find their zone of genius like what's the framework to set them on the right path so that they're happy with the North Star they've chosen but they also have the highest chance of success doing it yeah well so there's a couple things that that's important so I write about purpose in in passion side of the book and one of the things that that I do put in is icky guy there's another question I add there's four questions in icky guy which is like what am I good at what is the world need what can I be paid for and I don't remember where the other one is something else the other question I add to it that I think is you know wrote the book two years ago so at this point I'll remember anymore I always forget the fourth though I saw you guys but the fifth one that I created is what am I really interested in learning about and I think that I think that that it's there's a couple things that's really important the first thing I'll go back to what I just said in a second is that I heard a really good example one time where people with their passions can be one of two things they can need to be a jack hammer or they can be a hummingbird and so a jackhammer is like me I have like a jackhammer personality which is I don't think that there is anything else in this world that I'm supposed to do and I think that I will probably be if I'm a hundred years old and I live another 61 years I'm probably going to be the hundred year old guy that has to be wheeled out onto the stage to speak like that's probably going to be me because I just love it in the way that I know that I love it is that I get energy from it like it gives me energy so I heard a phrase one time that said anything you do something that is in that is in resonance with the laws of the universe the universe will provide energy for you anytime you do something out of resonance with the laws of the universe you have to come up with that energy yourself I translate that into purpose and passion in when you're doing something that is in line with what you're supposed to be doing in this world the universal provide all of the energy in the world for you like I know but by the time I get done with this podcast episode I will 100% have more energy than when we started how the hell is that possible right like it's it's not like I had coffee during this but it's just like something about this makes me come alive and then on the other side of that if you're doing something that's not in line with your purpose or what you're supposed to be doing in this world you have to come up with that energy when I need to drive people underestimate how much energy it takes to get yourself to wake up early to get dressed to get in a car to fight traffic and to stay at a job that you fucking hate all day long it takes way more energy to do that than it does to come up and do something that your your purpose is now there's a caveat to that I think a lot of people are misrepresenting in thinking that their passion needs to be their paycheck some people it is some people it's not some people you just need to find something that you enjoy enough that will pay your bills give you a little bit extra money and it you can have extra time to be able to follow what your passion is and so I think that's that's where it's like it's like it's really convoluted because everyone thinks well my gosh there's these internet marketers telling me that I'm supposed to like follow my passion they'll have a Lamborghini maybe if you find the thing that's like you're can turn into a paycheck but not necessarily for some people it's like you know your passion can be that you want to be the best possible mother that you can well then you know you can either be a stay-at-home mom if you if it's possible for you or can you get a job that pays the bills that make the life comfortable that you know give you a little bit extra but allows you to come home and not be so drained from hating your job that you can come home and have more energy and be excited and spend the most the most amount of present time that you post can with your children that might be your passion in your purpose is raising the best possible children to be adults doesn't mean that you have to make money doing that some people create podcasts and YouTubes and books around being the best parents and they make tons of money off it maybe that's what you do maybe it isn't what you want to do and so I think that's really important as you start to look at like you know the the passion the paychecks going back to the the hummingbird in the the jackhammer is I'm like the type of person where I know this is the thing that I want to do most people though what I've heard are not jackhammers they're more of what they call hummingbirds if you ever watch a hummingbird we have a lot that are in central Texas they'll go from one flower to another flower to another flower to another flower some people their passion is only like a three or four year stint before they go on to another one and there's nothing wrong with that so it's like they go they do this for a little while and then they put all of their passion and purpose into it and they do this for a little while and they do this for a little while and so it's like when you're doing something you're like should I step into this the real question is like could I see myself doing this for next three or four years and putting everything that I have into it and after those three or four years I'll make a decision whether I want to stay or not and sometimes that passion or purpose you you get the skills and the knowledge you should need for the next thing for the next thing for the next thing and then it gets you to the point where you find something that is like the thing that lights you up the most and you realize that all of the other flowers that you had to hit before were necessary for you to be able to absolutely execute on the last one that you're right now oh I love this this is this is like the concept of seasons to your life I think is such an important concept and I and I hear a lot of entrepreneurs who are sort of bought into hustle culture and toxic productivity and again going balls to the wall because they've made that jump into entrepreneurship and then they burn out or they're or they've ruined the relationships with their family or their spouse or their kids because they don't understand the concept of seasons in your life and something can be a season of your life it doesn't have to be your whole life and something a business your building can be a season for three or four years but the next thing doesn't have to be the next season doesn't have to be a business the next season can be having kids and spending more time with your wife or taking care of your parents or whatever it is but I love the concept of seasons have you you know you're in build mode now but I mean I know you also have a family have you ever adopted that concept into like how much of yourself you give to your business for a period of time and then after that period of time or maybe in the future you thought okay in five years from now I do have to take my foot off the gas to a degree so there's there's this is this is a really kind of eye-opening thing that I came across for I don't know 2020 when stuff got really crazy right and so when you look at seasons I love we all come from nature I love to look at nature and learn because we're from it and we act like we're not from it and so it's like you can talk about seasons and either I was in Sedona and it was going through a season and it was changing and it was going from from like you know the fall into the winter and things were starting to you know die off and everything and I realized that everything in this universe is always expanding and contracting everything's expansion contraction and I think humans are the exact same way where we're expanding and we're contracting and even if you look at like the universe the universe is supposedly expanding but they also think it might contract again so it's like everything if our heart is expanding and contracting in order to send blood to us right our breath our lungs are going in and out all the time in order to keep us alive and and give us oxygen so the way I look at it is that with the seasons there's always expansion and there's contraction there's expansive contraction so like the reason why like we're about to go into winter a lot of the leaves are going to fall off they have to fall off and the winter is a time of contraction so therefore when spring comes it can go into expansion and now all of those trees can grow longer and they can have new leaves that come out new you know the roots go deeper everything so everything is expansion contraction so I break it up into life is sometimes in seasons where it's like you might be in a three-year season of expansion I'm definitely not in as much expansion as I used to be like when I was younger it was hardcore expansion I'm more in contraction which is like I will do what I'm obligated to do in my business and what I need to but I have very firm boundaries that when I'm done working I'm done working you know when when when five o'clock hits sometimes six o'clock each day I'm done if it's the weekend I'm done because I want to spend time with my family like my father was not a present father and one of the things that I built a business for was so that I can be as present as I possibly can be with my son right like right before we start this episode I was downstairs for like an hour with my son right in the middle of the day and so it's like those moments and so you can look at life on a year to year of like am I in expansion mode am I in contraction mode you can look at over the course of one year and you could say this quarter am I expanding I contracting but what I've actually come to realize you can look at expansion and contraction on a daily basis so like this morning woke up it was one of the few mornings I didn't have to run my team meeting at 9 am which is normally just go go go so I was like I'm gonna stay in bed we're gonna have coffee in bed we have like a nice view so we were looking at the view we stayed in bed we went on a walk this morning that's all just contraction I didn't have to talk to anybody in my business until about 11 o'clock then I was like okay I've got I've got obligations I've got you know meetings I got to jump into now so then I did I have this obligation so now I'm kind of expanding right like I'm putting all of this energy out and then you know by the time we get done I got I've got a couple of reels I got to do and then I'm done for the day so I'll be done by like forish my time right and then I'm done for the weekend and so it's like we can think of seasons and seasons can be a yearly thing but in in expansion and contraction it could be a quarterly thing it'd be a monthly thing a weekly thing but we can actually just look at it daily and be like okay I'm in expansion for the next two hours which will then allow me to contract and if I know that I'm turning off at a very specific point I work harder and expand more and I do better what I know I'm done and then what I'm done I'm fully done and so I think that we can there can definitely be seasons of life absolutely but there can also be seasons of life literally on a a micro scale if you look at a day and if people are starting to use that to think like okay I just got to expand for an hour if I put my best in this hour and then I get off and then I've got the weekend I'm good to go you know it's like I think people can start to look at it that way and and kind of change the way that they look about being productive and having to work all the time if there's a tree that expands all of the time hustle hustle hustle hustle it's gonna die faster than all the other ones and it's gonna it's not gonna last I think that's so powerful I think it's very smart because you know we spoke a lot about fear when we just first kicked this off we spoke about fear like in the context of taking the job making a leap taking the next step in your life but entrepreneurs have another fear that I don't think is discussed quite often and it's fear of okay I've started and now I don't want to screw up the decision I made to start so it's almost like a secondary fear replaces the first fear it's all like you mentioned it's intellectual fear it's not real but what but the the effects are very real the effects are broken families it's stress it's heart disease it's high cortisol it's burnout it's mental health issues so the effects of that secondary fear are very real and I don't think that people are prepped for that secondary fear because they think that the only fear they have to overcome is just starting and then they've started and then they they're not going to go back and they don't want to give up and then it's like okay now I got to work 10 hours a day for the next 20 years of my life so the concept of seasons I think is very important and I think that that cycle of this of this hustle culture or this toxic amount of work I think it's super easy to fall into because if you made that first jump you can yeah go ahead no I was gonna say I'm sorry the interrupt but the thing that I found is I have I was giving a speech at like a high net worth mastermind and everyone there was worth at least 50 million dollars and my speech that I had to give to a bunch of guys who had sold businesses for hundreds of millions of dollars and everything was how most people succeed from a place of lack of self worth like they're trying to fill a void within their soul usually comes from like and it was it was like there was a lot of nerves for me because I was like these are people that are very successful that have you know crushed it in life and they have some random guy that they don't know talking about how most people that are successful are the most screwed up usually and it's true though it's absolutely true like I know a guy who is worth $5 billion and he is miserable like money doesn't buy happiness like people think that it does it doesn't equate for happiness and so it uh because it all depends like what do you what do you what is success mean to you and why are you trying to succeed and when do you get there and so most people that I have found that are extremely successful not all of them but most of them think that success is going to make them feel better about themself it's going to fix their problems the only problems that money solves is money problems that's it doesn't solve any of the other problems it doesn't make your relationship better doesn't make your parents love you more whatever it might be and so um one of the things that I think people need to realize is that if you're trying to succeed and you're trying to get there wherever there is um you need to understand that it's not going to change your relationship with yourself it's not going to make you better father or mother it's not going to make you a better uh husband or wife and so it really comes down to and I made this mistake for me it was like the first 30 issues in my life was how can I make as much money as possible work as hard as possible and just be better than everybody else and then I realized like once I got to a certain point I checked off a bunch of milestones I was like I don't feel like I achieved anything like I don't feel like there is anything that was achieved like I can show achievements but I don't feel different about myself and then I realized like oh that was only business success right that was only success in one category of life but like I'm also in a relationship like what is relationship success look like you know now I'm you know we've for years we're like all right we're going to have kids I knew we were eventually going to have kids now we have a kid now it's like well what is what is being the best possible father I can be and it's just like anything else we said we're changing our personality a minute ago which is I have skill sets I need to learn I have knowledge I need to learn and so instead of this mindset of which is a scarcity mindset which is like well I can either be a great business owner or I can be a great father it's like no no no that's scarcity scarcity is or it's either this or it's this abundance is and I'm going to figure out a way to be an incredible business owner and be the best possible father that I can be how do those two realities exist I don't know yet I probably need to evolve myself into a greater version of myself to make space for both of those realities to exist and so for me it's like there is there is no business or amount of money that could make me be like yeah I don't want to be with my wife and child right like that doesn't you couldn't pull me away from it but I also do really love business and I really do what I do like I love what I do more than anything else that I could do so I'm not going to stop doing it so it's like how can I make sure that these two realities I guess three realities best business owner best husband best father all exist in one reality and how do I need to change and evolve myself to make sure that those fit knowing that success in business and financially and all that stuff is not going to affect anything else outside of it and and really it comes down to like working on those things of going this is what I want in my life who do I need to become to make sure that those exist and I'll just tell everybody now just being successful financially in business getting achievements will not change anything as far as the the self worth that you're looking for or the wanting to feel good enough for smart enough for pretty enough and so it's really like what we're trying to think is that the external can influence the internal like if I'm successful in business then I'm going to think I'm not not good enough anymore like I'm just going to be like oh I am good enough it won't happen right the only thing I could do is I can work on myself to make myself feel like I'm good enough and at the same time then I'll just grow a business as well and so it's it's there's a lot of different facets to it but business doesn't affect anything outside of business money doesn't affect anything outside of money and please don't be the type of people because I had conversation when many of these guys are worth immense amounts of money that screwed up the first relationship that didn't see their children they had their their first wife resents them their children resent them for a business that they eventually sold and they've got nothing from it and so it's like why don't you try to succeed in all facets of your life I know that you're going to have a good answer for this and it's a very loaded open-ended question but this is like listen you you deal with this question a lot and this is really what people are looking for when they consume your content just summarize like what is happiness after your lived experience after all the people that have consumed your content what is your best definition that you can think of that is happiness and I know it's very unique to every single person but I know you have a good answer for this one yeah I mean I think I think that happiness in peace are interchangeable more than anything else I think that I think it was a naval that said this where peace and happiness are basically interchangeable happiness is peace at play and peace is happiness at rest and so I think the best way of describing happiness is actually not a word it's for me it's the feeling of like it's like it's like a deep sigh you know when you're having like a you're sitting there and you're like huh like that feeling I think is what we're all searching for in some sort of way and so we think like going back to what we were talking about a little while ago when I make enough money then I'll be happy well it's like no what do you think what does money represent to you what do you think that it's going to give you well it's going to give me I can finally relax because I can pay my bills well are you paying your bills right now well yeah I pay my bills but I'm not a millionaire yet and it's like well can you feel the peace and the happiness before you get there and people hate when I say this sometimes I got made videos where I put it up online but happiness is really a decision it is it it's a it's a fully a decision that you can make and our mind there's a quote that I love that says our minds can make heaven out of hell or hell out of heaven there's many people that have incredible lives that just are still in hell and they've created that hell that's inside of their mind and if they could reframe it they could probably find oh my god they're in heaven and there's some people that have lives way worse than everyone listening but they're way happier which shows you that it doesn't matter where you are in life what your life circumstances are how much money you have in your bank account it shows what is my perception of what I currently have because essentially you know if you look at life as simple as possible I think naval so say this one too you're you're born and you die in over the course of that time you just have a sensory set of circumstances just things that happen to you things as you see that you touch that you hear that you feel but that's it you're born you have a sensory set of experiences you die how you interpret those experiences make the quality of your life and so I think people should start saying like if they're not happy which I have been before it wasn't the circumstances of my life that made me unhappy it was how I was viewing the circumstances of my life whereas like I had my bills paid and I was okay and I had food and water and shelter and clothing and I had a couple of people that loved me but I wanted more and so I think if people have like a feeling of lack a feeling of loss and one of the biggest things that steals people's happiness more than else's desire when you desire something I'm like all of this is literally me this is you can go back and listen to naval because I'm literally somehow putting all of his his exact quotes together naval listen naval is fabulous right naval it's very like don't get you can about my dim this is really good and I'm like oh I think he said this before too I think he said this but if you if you look at it and you start to look at what happiness is and what you really want it's like nothing in this world is going to make you happy and nothing in this world is going to make you sad and nothing in this world is going to make you upset it is your interpretation of the circumstances that make you feel that way and so it's like okay if I look at my life it's not like saying hey I'm not going to want to achieve more I'm not going to achieve more it's I'm going to just decide that I'm very happy right now as I go and achieve more as well not like I will be happy when I achieve this thing and so the the phrase that that I was going to say with naval is that he says desire is a contract that you sign with yourself to be unhappy until you get what it is that you want so when you desire something you're making a contract with yourself to be unhappy until you get that thing so why don't you just say hey I'm going to be happy with everything that happens no matter what happens that is my my decision the same way they said decide to put this black shirt today I'm deciding that I'm going to be happy no matter what life circumstances happen but I am going to keep working keep evolving myself and I'm going to keep accomplishing but I'm not going to say when I get there I'll be happy now I'm going to be happy and then I'm going to get there I just want to take a second and thank fresh books for supporting today's episode now there are three numbers that you have to know 30 million 60 billion 192 hours what it is me over 30 million people have used fresh books over 60 million in voices have been paid through fresh books and over 192 hours have been saved annually using fresh books all in one account if you're an entrepreneur a freelancer a solo printer if you are tired of chasing payments and drowning in receipts fresh books is here to make your life easier it's the all in one accounting solution that helps you manage everything from 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dash offer the no very well said and I know that some of that is is borrowed from the vault but I think the way that you just sort of like wrap it to the people understand what the how they should live in the moment and how they should look towards their future goals I think it's fabulous I think it's a really smart way of looking at how you want to go through life and how you want to live your life one one thing that you mentioned that I fully agree with that I was listening to again you know when I prefer podcasts I'm listening to other shows that you've done and this concept I'm going to mention in a second is something that I believe fully and it kind of ties into desire and your ability to stick with it but I've never actually heard anyone else say it outside of myself and it's it's really this lack of of love with the concept of motivation I do not like motivation and I've heard you've mentioned this before and I want you to maybe tie it back into why motivation is not the best thing to look for when you're going on this journey when you're setting your goals I think that it personally like when you now that you just sort of unpack like desire and the contraction the contract you create with yourself to be unhappy I think that motivation can just like further as aspirate that issue like if you have this desire and you want to apply motivation to get there and I then motivation burns out then all of a sudden you don't have this you don't have this way forward and it's just creating this horrible it's this horrible place that you're stuck in so talk to me just a little bit about motivation then I want to pull out some like last ideas and frameworks but I think that that's a really interesting novel concept that people don't necessarily agree with um definitely something I do but talk to me about motivation maybe why you don't like it so much well so yeah I mean before my podcast was called the mindset mentor it was actually it was actually called mwf motivation because it came out Monday Wednesday Friday and then I started people started hauling me and go to age so hey people started calling me a motivational speaker and I was like no I don't like being called and I still get called a motivational speaker I was like I don't like being called a motivational speaker because I don't want to motivate people that's not one of my desires my desires to make people understand themselves so that they can they can work past their mental and psychological constraints so that they can create the life that they want that's what I want if it motivates them and that's a byproduct cool great but that's not my desire so that's why I change it to the mindset mentor because I was like I don't want to be known as the motivational guy and so I change it and the reason why is because I've seen many people that wait around for motivation like they they don't they're just like I'm just hoping motivation comes through today and then I'll go and decide to take action and it shouldn't be that you want that you hope to be motivated like you shouldn't be I shouldn't I shouldn't desire to be a motivated person what I should want is to be a driven person to be a consistent person to be a person who follows through with everything that he says he's going to do and there's actually been psychological studies that find most people think that they sit there and they like well I'll wait till motivation comes and then I'll work out but what they've actually found is that more often than not motivation follows action not motivation happens and then you take action so it's like you take action and then you become more motivated and so like very simple example I told you that I went on a walk this morning right so when I woke up this morning I didn't want to go on a damn walk I didn't want to and knew I wanted to work out I didn't want to work out like I was like I should work out today but I don't really want to we have this really big hill that's right next to my house and so my wife myself my dog my son we went out and we did it and we just started and I just started on the path and I took one step in front of the other one by the time I got back to my house because we have to walk back up till to my house I was out of breath my heart was moving and I was like I'm gonna work out why because my my body was already in that flow versus me sitting on the couch and looking at the ceiling and being like well I hope motivation comes through today so I can work out and so motivation is very fleeting but what I'm striving for is to be somebody who's consistent and to be somebody who is driven and I am so driven in what it is that I do because I have a really strong why behind what I do and you can tell the difference between a motivated person driven person like when you meet a driven person like you can see it in their eyes where it's like I better not get in their way because they're gonna plow me over like not like they're gonna want but it's just like I'm not gonna stop them because they're so driven yeah there's no there's no way to stop this person so I want to be a driven person driven comes from like you are wide behind it like why you want to do this and for me like I know that there's you know and I'm gonna do this is you know start my podcast in 2015 there was people hurting and struggling in 2015 16 17 18 19 but then 2020 hit and now it's just like this massive influx of people who are hurting and struggling and anxiety and things they've never been through before and so for me it's like I have even more drive and more reason why I need to keep working harder and going for putting out as much content as I can I don't put out content to be famous I don't put out content because I want to become you know super rich I put out content because I feel obligated to put it out because it has helped me in my life and I feel like if it's helped me it'll probably help other people that's the only reason why I do it it's never been like I want to do this because it's going to be a great lead source for my business it's just like I feel like this the thing I was supposed to do if I was never paid another dollar for the podcast any of that stuff I would still do exactly what I'm doing now if I was given one week to live one of those days would be me figuring out the last couple podcasts I can do so that I can put all of my knowledge out there for for the world to hear for my wife to hear for my son to hear for everyone else to hear and and that's what I think is important about it and that's why I'm driven is because I'm not sitting around waiting to be motivated I'm just doing what I say I'm going to do I'm consistent every single day and I have a really strong why behind the reason why I'm going for it and so I think that's the reason why people should should focus on being driven and finding their why versus like just hoping that this fleeting emotion of motivation comes sweeping through like the wind I 100% agree I've always found that that if you are looking for motivation it it it comes it goes I mean even when go listen to a quote unquote motivational speaker you get all fired up and then you go home and you do nothing so I mean really what good is it doing I mean maybe a small percentage of the crowd goes home and takes action but listen you go to Tony Robbins once and then you go back next year then you go back the year after nothing wrong with Tony Robbins but there has to be more than just getting fired up at a specific point in time for you to really change your life so driven systems processes frameworks whatever it is that keeps you on track far beyond the motivation whenever that runs out because you know we were even talking about how long you've done your podcast which is almost like 10 years now like I have this this concept that I love it's just called the 10 year rule like if you want to build anything significant find a way to commit to it mentally as well as structure life so you can do it for the next 10 years and maybe that means iterating changing pivoting whatever but understand that motivation is not going to last for 10 years trust like it does not last so long it lasts two three weeks maybe a month or two max yeah I don't know motivation it's like 10 minutes I don't even know I don't even know yeah it's not it's not long at least for me that's like I got it for 10 minutes I better I better execute right now yeah um okay you teach over a lot of frameworks mental models um just great insights that sort of help people optimize and improve their life I know you teach over a lot of different ones if you would pick one that you think has been like the most impactful mental model that you've incorporated into your own life what would it be yeah I mean the thing that that's like really the most for me at this point like I uh I've I've read so many business books and I've read so many mindset books and so many different books about success that eventually I felt like my like self development cup was kind of like full and then I started reading a lot like spirituality books and you know like what else is out there besides just self development I realized like myself development cup was full my spiritual development cup was pretty empty so I was like oh there's like a it's there's a whole other layer of stuff here and so for me I think the uh the framework the thing that I always go back to more than anything else is um the thing that I've been saying a lot recently that I've passed a couple years and I've really been realizing and I don't know if it's a framework I don't know if it's a model but it's basically this the only problems that exist in your world are the problems that you're creating that's what it comes down to and and I get it because some people listening to this are like no Rob but you don't understand I've got to pay my fucking bills next week that's a problem and I'm like I understand that but in this moment right now there is no problem for most people if you're listening to this podcast there's probably not a problem in the immediate second right now and so when I start to notice myself like ramp up like I'm a I'm a human as much as any other person I have all of the exact same flaws and problems that I did years ago the only thing is now I just have a little bit more tools in my tool belt to get me out of that suffering quicker when I notice myself ramp up and like I can feel stress or anxiety or fear whatever it is inside of my body I can always notice that my body will shift first there's usually a thought that comes before that but I don't usually notice the thought like in cognitive behavioral therapy they say that's an automatic thought just kind of comes through some consciously my body feels something my body starts to feel something I take a step back and I ask myself what was I just thinking what was I just thinking if I feel angry if I feel sad if I feel stressed if I feel anxious what was I just thinking oh you know what I was just thinking I was just thinking about how you know we just got a refund in the business and for some reason my brain immediately went to well what if we go out of business like when your brain will always go to the worst possible case scenario right and and it's like I know I'll give you a great example the very first time my business hit a hundred thousand dollars in a month was uh 2009 summer of 2019 I did this this event there was a 30 day event and I had people sign up and I had over 1500 people sign up for this event and I made over a hundred thousand dollars doing it and the day the event launched I had a lady that sent me an email and said hey I've had a really big life event all this stuff can I get a refund and I felt so much fear and anxiety because I and I've realized I thought everybody was gonna ask for a refund after that and I was like but I've just made all this money and now it's gonna disappear and what happens is is the problem right there was not that she wanted to refund the problem was that I was creating another problem on top of it which is oh my god what if I lose it all I just made all of it what if I lose it all and so there's really for in most cases the only problems that work that exists in our life the problems that we're creating and so what happens is we have this thing like in a lot of people's cases if we're not talking about paying the bills it's usually like okay I have this this side of myself that I don't like right like I am very judgmental and we see like that's my and as you know Krishna Merti is a guy who I follow pretty closely he says that is a conflict in our minds I am judgmental now I don't want to be judgmental I've created another conflict so now I have two conflicts in my mind which is I am judgmental and I don't want to be judgmental so now I'm battling two conflicts at one time so I need to release the I don't want to and how do we do that that's through accepting us because accepting as we are all the time and then the other way to get rid of the the the first conflict which is I am judgmental so that doesn't run me as much is accepting that it exists which sounds really counterintuitive because it's like this is a problem that's in front of me how do I get rid of it we you have to understand that every single aspect of yourself is like a symphony in order for a symphony to work you have to have the really high highs like the piccolos and you have to have the really low lows like the bases and when they're all playing together in the way that they're supposed to it makes a beautiful sound if the piccolos just going all of the time it's not going to sound good so it's like okay I need to turn the piccolo back a little bit and so when you look at like okay but I want to get rid of my judgment Rob okay is it is it is it is it not necessarily conducive to be judgmental all the time with every single person you meet absolutely is there are there moments in your life where having extra judgment towards something can help you absolutely of course we're making about to make a business deal if you're about to invest a hundred thousand dollars into something if you're about to decide that you want to quit your job to start your business judgment is absolutely necessary so it's like oh wow that's actually pretty good I should I should have that but I should know that getting rid of it is never going to happen it's a part of me and so I'm just going to be the person that's in charge of bringing it up to the service and working on it and and using it when I need to oh I need to use my judgment under be my judgment up a lot of people are like I'm selfish that's something that I the selfishness is bad I need to get rid of it conflict number one I want to get rid of it conflict number two right so it's like the selfishness and the one to get rid of it how do we get how do we let go of both of them you know so they don't run our lives is there times are other times in your life where being selfish are important absolutely if you talk with enough people pleasers you realize that they need to be more selfish if you're in a mode right now or you're 25 years old and you're needing you know wanting to build your business for the next two years yeah you probably should be more selfish you probably should disappear if your mom has a health problem and you want to spend more time with her you should be more selfish so that you can spend more time with her and so it's like selfishness is not a bad thing unless it's running the show judgment is not a bad thing unless it's running the show and so I think it's about understanding that you as a human are this symphony of thoughts and emotions and feelings and you only create the problem when you want to get rid of one of those things you can't get rid of it it's like going oh I don't like my arm I'm going to chop it off that's probably not the best idea it's like you need the arm sometimes and so it's about understanding that you are like this giant symphony of feelings thoughts and emotions and if one emotion is running the show well then that's something I mean to work on to kind of pull it back a little bit but how can I use these emotions and thoughts and feelings to basically you know one of these can do a solo when they need to the other one can do a solo when it needs to so therefore it creates whatever I need to so that's the one thing that I've been working on the most of people is I used to think that self-development was about addition how can I do more how can I become more what do I need to learn what skills all of those they're important but real self-development is actually about subtraction which is instead of doing more I need to do less and then really just understand that it's not about it's not about just like completely changing who I am and getting and you know getting rid of these things and becoming more and all that it's like hey how do I go you know what this is symphony this needs to play this time this needs to play this time and I just need to become more aware of when one of them's taking over too much me being too judgment being too angry all of that and so that's just kind of what I've worked at is like can I just accept all aspects of Rob all the time and it ain't easy but it makes you a lot of time but you're not adding more problems you're not adding more problems which is very important like that's that I love it I think that's very important that's good advice because again every emotion every aspect of your personality will have a there's a reason why it's there and there's a reason when it can be used as another tool in your tool about and there's a reason when it definitely shouldn't be used but you don't want to create more problems and more headache and more frustration out of the problems that you're already dealing with um thank you net sweet for supporting today's episode now 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I'm just curious I mean feel free to elaborate or not it's totally cool I guess this is a little bit more of like a personal question but you mentioned that you add yourself development cup full and then you started to incorporate some more spirituality is not a spiritual podcast by any means but I'm curious what did you mean by that and how did it impact sort of how you go through your day and your life and how you look at these self-development topics where these acceptance of yourself and who you are does it does it play a part do they have like a major impact oh yeah well it all happened because I went to you know I started getting into meditating and then I heard about this thing like we were talking about called i waskin I did it and I did a bunch of other ones and then I started realizing that I was you know the first one that I ever had was I realized I had a control problem that was like the biggest thing that I got from it and I realized that I'm going to ruin every one of my relationships and businesses in the future if I can't let go of control and trying to control every single circumstance and so then what happened was I asked well why do I have a control problem and it was well if you look over the course of your entire childhood growing up with an alcoholic father the number one word that you could put over your childhood was uncertainty and the only way to try to overcome uncertainties try to control every single situation so as a manager as a business owner in the past I was always micromanaging and all of this stuff I wasn't good at delegating all of this now it's like I would rather delegate than do anything right so it's like I trust I delegate I'll train you I'll hire really well but then I'm going to trust you and then we can we can help you get better from there and so yeah that that was really eye opening for me because I realized that I was I was in self-development thinking that if I it's kind of like it's kind of like this this is the only thing that's popping in my head it's kind of like I was just spring perfume on a turd that's really what it was like I was like I have this turd that I need to learn more I need to get better I need to achieve more and that's just me spraying perfume on this thing right that's really what like my and what it really in reality is like well let's change the turd like let's just throw it away and so it was all of these these these deficits that I thought that I had my lack of self-worth from you know my father not being around and I thought that if I achieve if I make more money if I do this and that and people like me if I get some sort of fame whatever it is then it's going to make me feel better about myself and it never did and then I realized once I was going through these different journeys and and you know I haven't done any psychedelics in years at this point and I do a whole lot of I've done 10 day silent meditation retreats though I've done all of these different things that just can be done on a daily basis and I do breath work at least once a day sometimes three or four times a day to like bring myself calm and centered is that um yeah is that I wasn't accepting who I was and I was always trying to change who I was which goes back to what we just talked about a minute ago versus like the the quickest way to piece or happiness which we were talking about a few minutes ago is to accept all that is regardless of the circumstances and the faster that I can accept myself forgive myself and accept all of my circumstances it puts me at a better baseline to go out and actually change the things that I want to change it's not about the like resigning and saying I'm never going to achieve more or um try to build a business or build a podcast or any of that stuff it's not resigning and just saying I'm done with the world it's like I'm going to come from a different place where I do accept my life circumstances I do accept exactly where I am exactly who I am who I'm surrounded by and if I want to make a change I'm going to make a change and so those are the biggest things that happen for me is just like getting this place of like accepting all aspects of Rob even the ones that I think are like the darker dirtier ones like I always say like there's really beautiful parts of Rob there's really shitty parts of Rob but it's not about me hating the shitty or parts of Rob it's about me actually figuring out a way to love those parts of me knowing that they came about because they were protection mechanism that I developed as a child right there were to protect me because I developed as a child because of certain circumstances so of course I show love them because they they serve their purposes at some point in time but I'm going to be in charge as a 39 year old adult of when they step on stage and when I give them microphone they're not going to just be the one that's a control all the time it's not about getting rid of it it's not about changing it it's about going hey I'm just going to be the one to see control of when it does pop up because every aspect of yourself no matter how dark it seems played a role in your life in the past that's how it got there and if used properly we'll be able to be a tool in your tool but they can be used when you need it you know the question I always ask at the end of these podcasts is is what would be a lesson you'd tell your 20 year old self and some people have like very quick answers but I can't remember who gave this answer but I thought it was great doesn't matter who it was the lesson is the same and he said something along the lines of I wouldn't tell my 20 year old self anything because all the mistakes that I made made me who I am and I'm actually very happy with all the shit that I've gone through this has been the end result and you know what I wouldn't change it for the world and I think that there's some there's some beauty in that wisdom that listen for all the for all the you know all the tough times that we've gone through definitely for a lot of people listening to this show and I'm sure for you as well and me like listen there's been times when life has not been so easy but this is what made us who we are and this is how we got to where we are and all those to most of his times are only going to keep adding to our lived experience is going to allow us to get to really the next stage in this life and this in this video game we're all playing so I think that that's that's incredibly good advice um I would say you know just to just to wrap up obviously my answer do I know the answer I'll click what I would tell myself I am exactly on the same lines as that guy I would knock myself a piece of ice but I would say keep going because your life in 19 years is fucking awesome because I always knew it would be better I had a feeling I just play this way I thought it would be better but I never knew for sure it would be better so if I could go back to 19 years ago I believe dude everything is awesome don't stop that's the only thing I do I wouldn't give him any advice I wouldn't take any of his failures away his challenges away but I'd be like it's awesome in 19 years just keep going that's the only thing I would do I love it is there anything I mean we went through a lot today obviously like dude we could chat for a while like I think that I think that this is a good spot where we can at least we can finish up this one is there any like last piece of wisdom or question that I should have asked you that I didn't ask you that you just want to leave the audience with no man I think this is great this is this is fun yes some great questions thank you dude I appreciate yeah coming from coming from a podcaster that means a lot I appreciate that a lot um okay uh where do you want to send people so you have mindset mentor that's your podcast uh that'll go in the show notes book go in the show notes um what's your social uh just if if if anyone whatever social they want if you just type in rob dial I pop up so it's just r-o-b-d-i-l yeah the podcast is the mindset mentor and then you know I'm on YouTube I'm on TikTok I'm on Facebook Instagram all of those places so someone wants to follow me on whatever their favorite platform is I'm on all of them awesome dude what do you have coming up in the future you can drop some hints for people that are are already fans that really have a lot coming up in the future I don't have anything planned I'm I it for me it was I was like I didn't know it would be like to be a father and have a kid and I've done a lot of stuff and it's like I don't really it's interesting I don't have I'm in a weird place my life right now where I'm so good with where everything is I actually don't have anything I'm shooting for I do have okay that's a lie I do have a a a a course that I'm putting out in January that I'm really excited about there's no name for it I don't know what it is we've already planted all out but what I really want to help people with is be high performers and this is what it's about but high performance from a place of high fulfillment as I told you like I work with one of my bread and butters is working with people who are very successful high net worth people and they're successful but very rarely are they fulfilled it's like there and and it's they succeeded from a lack of of self worth and so what I've been working on is like how do I create a framework where people can perform at a really high level but be fulfilled at a really high level and not to really what I think is missing in a lot of the places around the world and so for me like that's the the thing that I've got there's no there's no landing page for it there's none there's nothing for there's no name for it can't send anybody a lead magnet or any of that type of stuff but it's coming out I'm just excited about it because I think like that's it's uh it's kind of like the when you give a dog peanut butter and the pills on the inside like the pill in the peanut butter like the high performance is like peanut butter but the pill yes I'm gonna make sure you're fucking fulfilled as you do this that's really what I'm trying to do with the with what I'm doing did your analogies are like fat I've never heard any of your analogies before but these these are fabulous analogies because they they make so much sense in the most in the strangest way possible yes I totally get I totally get what you're doing you have to first of all because the people that are high performers I know what the last question I'll ask you is but the people that are high performers they do not know they they over index on performance and under index on actual markers of success and fulfillment because they think that perform they use like performance as a a painkiller yeah for all the other stuff that isn't working in their life yeah and that's not good you work with all these high performers you've had again great success in your life if you look at all the case studies if people that made you know tens of millions hundreds of millions of dollars plus what you've accomplished in your life what would be your definition of success my definition of success is creating a life that you love like I know if we were talking about Tony Robbins a little while ago when he says like success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure I 100% agree with that I know people who have been worth incredible amounts of money in fame that have killed themselves because they thought that that thing would give them what they wanted and like I said it didn't fill any void within their soul and so I think that for me it's like I used to think when I was a kid like success was like being worth like a hundred million dollars whatever it was and has nothing to do with money it has everything to do with do you have a life where you love every single aspect of it and can you say if you don't love it right now it's like all right well what do I what would make me love my business what leave my bank account what maybe love my my relationships what would make me love my my romantic relationship my friendships my child relationship with all of that stuff I would say getting a 10 out of 10 in every single one of those that's absolute success that's what I think someone doesn't need to be worth a ton of money I don't people that are absolutely happy and they make way less than the billionaires that I know that are fucking miserable and so I think that it comes down to like you know do you have a life that you have intentionally built to to give you what you wanted to be happy around it I think that's absolutely success