3 THINGS You Must Understand to Level Up Your Life

And he says, yeah, so if the business succeeds, it's the CEO's fault. If the business fails, it's the CEO's fault, right? And I said, yeah. And he said, okay, do you want to know what your problem is? And I go, sure. And he goes, you're not acting like the CEO of your life. When things go well, you want to take all the compliments for it. When things don't go well, you blame everybody else in every outside circumstance you possibly can. He said, so if you fast forward and you get to the end of your life and it is not what you wanted it to be, and you didn't have the success and the happiness and the joy and everything that you wanted, whose fault is that? And I was like, that would be my fault. And he goes, but if you do get to the end of your life and you have all of the joy, the happiness, the peace, you took the action, you impacted lives, you did everything you wanted to do, and you feel like, I did it, whose fault is it? And I said, that would be my fault. He said, if you want to change your life, you need to act like the CEO of your life and stop blaming other people, stop blaming your circumstances, and just figure it out and get it done.

Hey everyone, Dr. Josh Axe here. Welcome to the Growth Lab Podcast, where each and every week we uncover the science behind how to grow yourself, your health, your wealth, and take your career and your relationships to the next level. This week we've got an incredible guest, Rob Dial. He's known as the Mindset Mentor, and he's an inspirational speaker. He's a coach. He actually helps people coach and how to grow themselves, but also their businesses. And he's created just some amazing viral content over the years. And whether you're looking to, again, grow yourself or your business, He is an incredible mentor, and I think this is something more people need today. People need mentorship. It's the greatest way that you can grow. And so we brought him on here as an expert to talk about how to master yourself, your productivity, and even, even improve your relationships. But here's one of the big things we're gonna get into today, how to overcome limiting beliefs and roadblocks and things regarding your mindset. You know, mindset's critical to Healing, it's critical to success in every area of your life. So I want to welcome, uh, Rob, excited to have you on the show today.

Hey man, thanks for, uh, thanks for having me. I've been following you for a long time, so it's good to actually speak in person.

Yeah, well, hey, it's, it's good to follow you as well. I think about a year ago I, I started getting turned on to your content. You're putting out so many great podcasts and videos on a regular basis and helping people with mindset. And you know, I look at today, we have more mindset issues and Somebody could argue than ever before. You know, you look at mental health issues, they're on the rise faster than cancer and heart disease and other health issues like that. And so, I know mindset is incredibly important for people to succeed in any area of their life. And one thing I wanted to ask you is what made you choose to really focus in on mindset? Again, you're known as in the sort of, you know, social media world as the Mindset Mentor. What caused you to decide to focus in on mindset specifically?

Yeah, it's the thing that, that interests me the most. Like, humans just are so intriguing to me. Like, I just— I love sitting down with somebody and being like, why are you the way that you are? Like, what's, what's your relationship with your parents and with your mom and your dad and your, your family? And what was childhood like? And so for me, the way that it all kind of started is my story is I was— my two parents raised me. My father was an alcoholic and my parents got divorced when I was 9 from him being an alcoholic. And then when I was 15, he passed away from, from his alcoholism. And so he was the first person that I ever knew that passed away. Like, I never know anybody that died before then. And I always felt like, you know, I kind of could go to therapy. I should go to therapy. But we didn't really have money when I was a kid. We were pretty poor. And, and then in— but I was at 15 and then at 19 I started with a company called Cutco, and Cutco is really big on personal development. We literally just sold knives in people's houses. And, um, and they forced us to like grow. It was either like— there's a phrase that we used to always use was either push up or push out. Either somebody gets better or they decide this isn't the place for them. And so I really like thrived there. And I hired my first one-on-one coach and spoke to him every single week. And, um, and the guy changed the course of my life. I paid him $500 a month when I was 19, which was more money than I had. I put on a credit card. Um, it was— I paid $350 a month for, for rent at the time. So I paid more to my coach than I did in rent. And the guy like changed the course of my life. And then I started teaching other people. So in Cutco, usually like they recruit about 40,000 people a year and like 100 stick. And I was one of the 100 that stuck. I ended up being promoted to an assistant manager, then to a sales manager, then to a pilot sales manager, and then to a district manager. So I actually ran my own office with them and I trained over 2,000 sales reps. And it wasn't really sales that interests me the most. It was more of like helping them improve their mindset. And so when I left there, I was there for 6 years, did really well, got to the number 1 office in the company, won the trophy, and then I was like, I'm done. I'm kind of burnt out. I want to do something different. I got into sales, and for 5 years I did, uh, you know, sales for other companies. And then one day in 2015, I told my girlfriend, who's my wife at the— my girlfriend at the time, she's my wife now— I was like, I want to start a podcast. And the reason why is because I felt like I had a lot of knowledge of things that had helped me and helped some of my old clients when in and students that were inside of my business with me, and I just felt obligated to teach it because I feel like I helped myself through things that— I'm not saying that, that reading and working on yourself can be a replacement for therapy, but it can definitely help people become more self-aware and build self-awareness. And so it's just the thing of like, even if I didn't teach this to people, I would still be reading about people all day long and trying to figure out why someone is the way that they are. And so, um, I see that there's a lot of suffering in the world, um, and there's a lot of suffering— there's not, not pain. Pain and suffering are two different things. Pain is something that happens. Suffering is something that you continue to pull with you after the pain is over. And I just want to try to help as many people get past their suffering as they possibly can by giving them free tips and tricks and things that, that help me. I use myself as a guinea pig. And so it's just all kind of tools in my tool belt to— I try to help relieve as much suffering as I can.

Well, I love it. I mean, that's, that's such a great mission. I know one of the reasons why I— the main reason why I got involved in natural medicine and now the even leadership and personal growth space was looking at my own mom. My mom had cancer many years ago and I remember how sick she was and thinking, gosh, I really want to help people not have to suffer like she was suffering. And then later on, I saw her have a lot of mindset issues related to limiting beliefs and wanted to help that. And so, I love the motive behind that and I think it's so powerful. And I also think the fact that you were able to do this yourself, cultivate a certain mindset with all of the, uh, you know, difficulties, even growing up without a— with a father that was an alcoholic and that you lost early on. I mean, those are some really incredible lessons. You know, you mentioned something, I think it's really, really important thing that you, you brought up, and that is awareness. How important is it that people cultivate awareness if they want to be successful in their health or their career, any area? And how does somebody cultivate a greater level of awareness?

I mean, I, in my opinion, and I'm biased, I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing that someone can have. And I've, I've been asked on other podcasts like, hey, if you could, if you could get ever, give everybody in the world a superpower, what would it be? And I always say extreme self-awareness because I think that if everybody was extremely self-aware, the problems of the world would disappear of, you know, how we're affecting people based off of where we buy our goods or, you know, how much we're how we interact with someone on the street or, you know, saying I want this product to be cheaper. So, you know, use it, buy it and buy it, make it in another country and we'll get it cheaper here. But then there has to be some sort of, you know, really bad labor conditions for those people. So it's like people are not very self-aware. I think a lot of times, and self-awareness is not something that's like taught to us. I think that a lot of us have parents that are very unself-aware as well. And so I think self-awareness is the most important thing. And, you know, with you, like, I'm, I'm really big in health too. Like, I'm, I'm very, very conscious of what I put in my body, how much I sleep, water. Like, it's hardcore. The one of the things that I'm really focused on, and, um, pretty much as much as mindset, is my health, because I see them all as one system. The mind and body is just one system working together. But, you know, if you also think about it, I think it's approximately like 33% of medical healings come from the placebo effect, of someone just thinking that they're healed and they heal themselves. Like, I think I always talk about— I think like that's one of the most incredible things that people almost never talk about, which is people think that they're healed and they heal themselves, and we're just like, oh, it's the placebo effect. But it's like, take a step back and be like, oh my God, that's one of the most incredible things, is that someone can heal themselves based off of thinking that they're healed. But then it's like, okay, do we also make ourselves sick by also thinking that we're sick? Like, is that possible? I personally think that it is. You know, they call it the nocebo effect. And so, um, as far as how we can develop self-awareness, I think the easiest way to do it— there's two, two real ways, and they're both very simple. Uh, one of them I think is meditating. A lot of people say they struggle with meditation, and one of the reasons why they struggle with meditation is because they'll sit there and they say, well, my mind doesn't stop, it just keeps going and going and going. And really what I see meditation as, uh, is kind of like a magnifying glass for how you are all day long. And so if somebody has trouble with their mind not stopping when they're meditating, I would just ask them, does your mind not stop when you're going all day long anyways? If you're overthinking, if you're thinking you try to do it perfectly, are you asking yourself, oh my God, am I doing this right, am I doing this wrong? You're probably second-guessing yourself all the place in your life. And so I think when you take a step back and you take out all stimuli, then someone has to sit there quietly. I think that a lot of times it's like, that's what's going on in your mind. Whatever happens to you during meditation is what's happening to you usually all day long. It's just a spotlight is on it at that moment because you can't distract yourself. And the other thing I think is super important is journaling. I think that there's so many complex things that happen in your mind all day long. Like, if I always say— if I were to say to your listeners, what's 5 5? They'd be like, 10. But if I say, what's 4,387 10,413?

Most people can't do it in their head.

But if I were gave you a pen and paper, you could figure it out. And so it's like, that's a little bit more of a complex math problem with pen and paper. But you have so many complex problems in your life, and you have this thing that just popped up, and you have the relationship with this person, this person, that person. You have your kids, you have your job, you have— it's so much more complex than that math problem. But we try to figure it all out in our head, and when we can't figure out why we can't figure— like, we can't understand why we can't figure it out. And so I would say is literally just take everything that's going on in your head Put it down on a piece of paper and then just ask yourself questions around it. A lot of times people are— people have a lot of stresses because their brain keeps going and going and going, and it's like, put it on a piece of paper and then see if you can start to work through it as if it were a math problem. And a lot of times what happens, I hear it all the time before I start telling people to journal, is they— and they start doing it consistently— is they almost say almost the exact same thing. And it is, I thought I knew myself before I met you, but— and started journaling, but I didn't know myself at all. Because you start figuring out your emotions and why you feel this way. And why did— when she say that to me, it triggered me. Oh, it reminded me of when my mom used to say to me when I was a kid. And so it's like, I think a lot of self-awareness comes from just the simple practices and the mindfulness of meditating, but also putting all of your thoughts on a piece of paper.

I love this, Rob. And, and this gets me excited about this conversation too, because this is something that I've been diving into a lot over the past quite a few years. And one of the things Jordan Peterson says is that there's really no difference between thinking and writing. He said, really, writing is the greatest way to discover what you actually think about yourself and the world and about other people. I do think awareness is one of the top, if not one of the— it is one of the absolutely top things that somebody can do in order to, um, grow in life, right? And be better. And I think one of the things I think about that with as well is these, you know, I see a lot of people today and they struggle with these— I'm just going to call them mental roadblocks. You know, they've got these roadblocks in their minds and it's like, it's kind of like if somebody says, I just can't seem to grow, I can't seem to grow my business, I can't, you know, I've got relationship issues. What are some of those most common mental roadblocks you see in people that are keeping them from experiencing freedom and success?

So I think that the main thing with that I see with mental roadblocks is I think the main thing is that there's a lot of fears. And so like So when I was, when I was writing my book, the whole book was going to be called Take Action. And because I— but it's not sexy to be called Take Action, so it's called Level Up instead. But really what happened is when I looked at almost everything that I do and I was like, what, what do I do on the podcast? And it's, it's a lot of times like tips and tricks to get past your own mental roadblocks, to stop holding yourself back, to get past fears so that you can actually just take action towards the life that you're trying to create. Like, that's like 99% of the podcast. It's like, here's a, here's a tip, here's a trick, here's more self-awareness. And so, um, when I was sitting down to write the book, I was like, okay, I'm gonna write a book on taking action. And the first question popped in my head was, well, why don't people take action? And so that's like— my book is split up into 3 parts. First one is why you don't take action. Second one is how to take action. The third part is how to actually, you know, through neuroscience, actually make action become habits. And so there's 3 things I talk about in my book that, that talk about this. The first thing is people's identity of themselves is super important. So there's identity, there's the fears that you have, and there's your purpose. So identity Identity is really important because, you know, we have our conscious mind, we have our unconscious mind. Our conscious mind is about 5% of what's going on in our head. Our unconscious or subconscious is about 95%, so it's 19 times stronger. And so I can consciously want to lose weight and be in shape, but if my identity is I come from a family where being obese is just in my genes, there's no reason to ever take action, there's no reason to do it. And so my identity of myself, if, if I think that I'm going to be overweight forever why would I ever take action? Why would I ever eat something healthy? I mean, let's be real, eating pizza all day long, it tastes way better than eating something that's a little bit healthier. Like, we can find healthy food, but I'll pick pizza every single day if I could. But it's like, that's not really the healthiest thing for you, but it's easier to not take action, and it's easier to, to eat the unhealthy foods. And if my identity is there's no point, I'm going to be overweight forever, then action's not going to be taken. And so it could be that. It could be, you know, some people have a lack of worthiness or feel like they're unlovable based off a relationship relationships with their parents or past relationships. So they think to themselves like, I'm unlovable and no one loves me. Why would they ever get into a relationship with somebody? They can consciously want a relationship, but subconsciously they think like, what's the point because I'm unlovable, or people won't love me, or I'm not worthy of love, or I'm not good enough. And so the first thing I think that people need to figure out is like, what's their identity of themselves? And the thing that I love about identity is it's completely moldable. It can change at any moment. So like, if you look at someone's personality, uh, the root word, Greek word for personality is persona, which is the mask that Greeks would wear on stage when they were in theater. So it was like literally the mask that they would wear. And the phrase I always go back to is Alan Watts, who I love, says, you're under no obligation to be who you were 5 minutes ago. And so, like, if I want to just change my identity, I can just change my identity immediately. I can just say I'm— I can just be different. And by being different, I start to step into that. So that's the first thing I think is people need to figure out, like, who do they think they are? Because your actions are going to line up with who you think that you are. There's a really— I write about this in the book, but there's a really incredible movie that people should watch about identity. It's not really about identity, but if you watch it, you'll understand it. It's called Jim and Andy. It's Jim Carrey. It's a documentary on Jim Carrey when he was doing a movie called Man on the Moon, and he was a method actor. So Jim Carrey played Andy Kaufman, and Andy Kaufman was a real person who was once alive. He passed away, I think, in like 1980 or somewhere around there. And he's a method actor, which means he never broke character. So Jim Carrey became Andy Kaufman. What made it crazy, though, is that Andy Kaufman also played other characters. So he played people like Tony Clifton. And so Jim Carrey would be Andy Kaufman playing Tony Clifton. And even his driver who drove him to his house and to and from his house every single day said he never broke character, even in the car. So if he was Tony Clifton when he got done shooting that day, he was Tony Clifton on the ride home. He was Tony Clifton to his parents. His parents even said, like, he never broke character at home. All of this. It goes so crazy where he actually starts doing therapy sessions as Andy Kaufman with Andy Kaufman's daughter. So he like lost himself completely. And then he realized that the end of it, he couldn't— like when they stopped shooting, he was like, okay, I got to be Jim Carrey again. He's like, I don't remember what I like. I don't remember what I don't like. I don't remember my beliefs. And the quote that he says in it is, I realized that if Jim Carrey was so hard to find, he was just another character that I was playing, just like any movie I'd ever played. And that's like when his big spiritual awakening happening from that. So people can change their identity at any point in time. The second thing that you go into is like, what are you afraid of? And so if we want to take action but we're not taking action, we're probably afraid of something. And so when you look at it and I did a lot of research on the book and went through, there's only two real ingrained fears that people have when they're, when they're children or babies, and that's the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. Which means that every other fear is basically ingrained in us some sort of way. And then I had— so I started breaking it down. I was like, well, what is a fear? When you look at like a primal sense, I had a friend who lived with a native Brazilian tribe in the middle of Brazil, like 2 days into the forest, no roads, all of that. And he said that they, that they had so many primal fears, they had no intellectual fears. And so like a primal fear is like pain or death is attached to it. Intellectual fear is I think pain will be attached to it. And so it could be like the fear of rejection, the fear of success, the fear of failure, the fear of other people's opinions, the fear of not being good enough. And so I think if someone's not taking action, what they're doing is they have some sort of fear a lot of times, and they're projecting that fear into the future and they're not taking action because they think to themselves, I'm going to— if, if I, if I'm starting a new business and I've had failed businesses in the past, 3 or 4 failed businesses in the past, If I'm starting a new business and I'm thinking, okay, I want to start this new business, but man, I've had 3 other failed businesses in the past. This one could be like the last ones. If I'm projecting into the future, this business is probably going to fail anyways. Why would I take action? Because it's the same thing as if I think I'm going to be obese forever. Why would I ever work out? If I think this business is going to fail, why would I take action and try to build the business? And so a lot of times what's happening is people are perceiving threats in the future that don't actually exist. They don't exist in the future yet, and they don't exist in this present moment, which is the craziest part about it. And so, um, the, the, then the next question that people always ask is, how do I overcome my fears then, right? Like, if I have these fears, how do I overcome them? And I was listening to, uh, a spiritual teacher when I was writing the book, and he started talking about this, and he was talking about fears, and he said, you can't overcome fears because they don't exist. So if you have an intellectual fear, which means that, you know, it's not a primal fear, an intellectual fear, you can't overcome something that doesn't exist. It's like the boogeyman. You're trying to fight the boogeyman all day, but the boogeyman doesn't even exist in the first place. And so it's like my fear of failure. Are you failing right now? No, you're thinking that you're going to fail in the future. My fear of rejection. Are you being rejected right now? No, you're thinking of something in the future, but then you can go really deeper and be like, well, what is, what is rejection? What is failure? What makes this happen? And you can't physically hold them. They don't actually physically, tangibly exist in this world, which means they're all just perception of our mind. So they're all just a piece of our mind. And so we realize that nothing is holding us back other than just ourselves and the way that we're thinking about the future. And so I think that's what happens with fears and limiting beliefs, is they're all kind of one and the same. And it's just we're creating the boogeyman, and then all day we're fighting the boogeyman, and it doesn't even exist in the first place.

I want to think about limiting beliefs for a minute. What are some of those? And those could be tied to fear, it could be tied to identity, but what What, what are limiting beliefs, and what are some of the biggest limiting beliefs you see out there? And then how can people change a limiting belief?

Yeah, so there's— I'll answer that question. I actually want to give you an interesting statistic around what you said before, which is us perceiving and worrying about something in the future. Um, so with all the research I did, I was like, I wonder if there's ever been like studies that have been done, um, that I could put in my book about worrying. And there was, there's a psychological study that was done, uh, that psychologists did, and they found out that 85% of what people worry about never happens, which means that first off, that's a huge number. 85% never happened in the first place, which means that we're worrying about things 85% of the time that will never happen. Out of the 15 remaining percent, only 12% of them are— I'm sorry, the 12% of them are not as bad as we think they're going to be. And so we're looking at 97% of the stuff that we worry about either never happens or doesn't happen as bad as we think it's going to be, which means only 3% of the time, 1 out of 33 times, is it as actually bad as we think it's going to be. Which means that we catastrophize way too much of what we think the future is going to look like in order to protect ourselves. And so that's just a big statistic I like to bring in because people are like, I had no idea it was that bad. It really is that bad. Like, we create these things to be afraid of all the time. So that's the first thing as far as limiting beliefs go. And the ones that— this is the way that I explain it is it's like ice cream, right? Like ice cream is all ice cream. It's just different flavors. And so when you look at it, Everybody has all these limiting beliefs of I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'll never be loved, I won't be able to provide for my family. What if my wife leaves me? What if I don't make enough money? What if I'm not successful? What if I don't impress my parents? There's, there's so many different limiting beliefs. Oh, I'm, I'm ugly, I'm fat, I'm stupid. I come from this part of town, so therefore I can't get any more successful. I'm this gender, I'm this sexual preference, I'm this skin color. We have all of these different constructs and there's meaning attached to them depending on who we are. That's like the ice cream of different flavors. But when you really go to the root of it, like when I draw it out a lot of times and I show in like a presentation is it's basically like one big ball in the middle and there's all of these— you guys remember when you do like a brain map, a mind map, and you put like one thing in the center and then you put them all over the place. The thing in the center is I'm not enough. And if I'm not enough, I won't be loved. That's the root of all human fears and limiting beliefs that I've found. And, you know, if you look at like, if I'm not enough is the thing, the story we're telling ourselves in our head all the time, it can take on different flavors. And so it could be, you know, I won't make enough money to provide for my family, and that could be my biggest limiting belief. But that means that's because I don't think I'm good enough to be successful, to provide for my family. I'll never be a great parent because I don't think I'm good enough to be a great parent. I, I have— I'm not pretty enough. It's because I don't think that I'm good enough for someone, or I'm not lovable. I don't think I'm good enough for someone to love me. And so I'm not good enough. I'm not enough is usually the actual core of it. And our greatest fear is that if we're not enough, we won't be loved. So then the natural next question that comes from that is why, why do we all have this? Like, and why, why do we all feel at some point in time that at some, for some reason, we feel like we're not enough? And so I've spent a lot of time thinking on it, and I read a lot on early childhood development, and the average child is reprimanded 8 times more than they're praised. Now, first off, children are crazy, and as a parent, you have to try to keep your child alive. And so there's a lot of stuff where you have to be like, no, you can't do that. No, you can't do that. No, you can't do that, because you're trying to keep this freaking human alive, right? But what happens is the average child is reprimanded 8 times more than they're praised. And so, which means that unconsciously the child is thinking 8 times more than they think that I'm good enough. They're thinking I'm not good enough, I'm not enough, I don't know how to do this, my parents have to tell me how to do this because I can't figure out how to do it right. And so what happens is, I think over time, we have to— children have to be socialized, right? We socialize children so they fit in with society. I like to actually change the word up to make it kind of hit home more with people, is they're not socialized, they're domesticated. The same way that we domesticate an animal. Like, children are domesticated. And so, like, for instance, I was— my best friend, my business partner, I was out to dinner with him and his family about 6 months ago, and he's got a 3-year-old. His name's Denver. And we're at this nice restaurant, everything's nice, and out of nowhere he just screams at the top of his lungs. No reason, just screams at the top of his lungs. And they're like, Denver, no, you can't do that. And so he's thinking to himself, and it's so many times it happens to us as a kid, it's through our parents, it's through society, it's through going to school, is we have to tone down our true self in order to fit in. And so a piece of that that comes in with us, I think a lot of times, is we kind of have to kill off parts of ourselves that are our truest selves, and we have to kind of take on a definite identity of what so we want to be domesticated or socialized into, which makes us think, well, he might have been thinking unconsciously or subconsciously, I really just want to scream because I have so much energy. And so he screams, and they're like, no, don't do that. He's immediately thinking to himself, is there something wrong with me? And we— I think kind of kids are thinking, is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with my true self? And then we develop this identity of like, hey, this is who you have to be. But if the average child is reprimanded 8 times more than praised, the average child is thinking to themselves, oh, there's what I'm, what I'm doing, my natural self, maybe isn't right, maybe isn't good. Maybe my— and one of the problems I think with a lot of parents too is, is we— the way that a lot of us are raised is that the way that we get children to do what we want them to do is by retracting love from them. And so the child doesn't feel the love that they want from their parent. We retract love from them, and then they think to themselves like, well, I'm going to do what I want. I'm gonna— as a child, we think, I want to do what my parents want me to do because I want to get love. And so, you know, there's so many different tentacles that go out as far as what our limiting beliefs can be. But almost every single time I talk to somebody, the core of it is I'm not enough. And if I'm not enough, if I'm not enough, I won't be loved. And so that's really what I find most fears and limiting beliefs actually come from, is that core belief inside of them.

Yeah. You know, I think it's a really good point, and I agree that that is absolutely this feeling of self-doubt, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy, is, is, is, is a core of limiting beliefs. You know, I want to go back and I, I wanna just share a thought on something you said, and I think it's a, it's a good example. You know, I, my, my belief is very much that I should have a combination feeling. I should feel like I'm not good enough. I actually think that I should feel like that. Um, but I also think I should feel like I'm incredibly valuable. And here's what I mean by that. This idea of, I think there's a level of, we want this blend of of humility and confidence. I'm humble knowing I'm not everything. I can't do everything. I need other people. I need, you know, God. I— there are things that I need, but yeah, I'm incredibly valued and worthy. I'm the— there's no one like me in the, in the world. There's no one likely that has my talents. There's nobody that has my gifts, my personality. So I think identity very much should be the sort of— give it this sort of beautiful, as you mentioned, this self, this confidence of like, this is who I am. And if I'm connected to other people and if I believe in a great God and things like that, it's very, very strengthening to our confidence, our self-worth, our value. And by the way, I had this happen. I have a 3-year-old too. So, uh, her name's Arwen. And, um, we were at literally almost the same— okay, we were at this restaurant called Urban Market. It's in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville. And, uh, we were listening to this song on the drive and then she, you know, she's standing on— we have a bench there and then she starts singing at the top of her lungs. And my wife is so good at this. And so it's like, hey, Arwen, Arwen, hey, come here, honey. Hey. And she sat her down and this is how she handled it. And I thought she did a good job of it because, right, I mean, some people might be thinking, well, do we just let the kid scream out in the restaurant? But with Arwen, my wife goes, Arwen, You've got such a beautiful voice. So beautiful. But remember, when we're inside around other people so they can hear each other, we use our inside voice. Hey, as soon as we get home, can you sing to me like that at the top of your lungs? Daddy and I will sit down, we'll listen to you, we'll watch you. Is that okay? Yeah. You know, so anyway, that's amazing. But, but I do think your point is really good. And this is, this is so important. This is tied to identity, right? All the things you're saying are so interconnected. That there's this identity issue. And part of that identity, which is tied to a limiting belief of I'm not good enough, and part of that is I can't, you know, I'm not valuable and I can't add value to others. And we know that no, most every person alive can add a tremendous amount of value to other people. And, and how much, you know, one of the things is I started learning about you, Rob, and following your, your, your, your teachings over the past year. I was really impressed by something I thought you did so well, and that's helping people identify what they're good at, helping. And I think when people discover their talents, whether that be you— I know you coach people in business and you coach people in their personal lives and helping them grow personally. So personal development and professional development. Talk to me about that a little bit. What are some of the things that you do in order to help somebody grow and understand what they're good at and why they're valuable?

Yeah. So you're— it's, it's perfect because you're literally asking me the third part of, of the— so there's fears, there's identity, and then there's, there's your purpose, which is why people don't take actions because they don't know why they're here. And I've been in that situation. So here, I'll pull it up because I don't remember the 4 questions, but I'll give you the 4 questions. There's a thing, there's a Japanese thing called ikigai, and ikigai is I-K-I-G-A-I. And it's basically in Japanese means your reason for being. And there's 4 questions you should ask yourself. And then with each question, you write down as many things as possible. So question number 1 is, what do you love? Question number 2 is, what are you good at? Question number 3 is, what can you be paid for? And question number 4 is, what does the world need? And so it's what do you love? What are you good at? What can you be paid for? What does the world need? And if you can find where all of those intersect, you're usually finding like your reason for being. And so, but you're supposed to write everything down. So you could say like, what do I love? Puppies. Cool. Write down puppies. It could be Rocky Road ice cream. Write down Rocky, write down everything, right? And what's interesting is that there's, there's kind of, there's kind of like 3 groups of people the way that I see it. There's people who are, who don't know what their purpose is, and they might never find their purpose, or maybe not. Maybe it's not, they're not even aware that they don't know what their purpose is. They're just, it's, they're ignorant to the fact that there is a purpose they could have for them. Then there's people who, who know what their purpose is, but they don't follow it. And then there's people who know their purpose and they follow their purpose. So the first thing is, is if we go to the first type of person, which is I don't know what my purpose is. This ikigai practice makes it a lot easier. And so you try to see where there's some overlap. So if it's like, what do I love to do? I actually love public speaking. What could I be paid for? I could be paid for public speaking. Uh, what am I good at? I'm good at public speaking. What does the world need? The world needs people who speak around XYZ, whatever it is. For me, it's mindset. It's also business, but it could be the world needs people who go and speak to people about anxiety who have anxiety. They need people who can go to an AA meeting and speak to people about being an alcoholic, whatever it is that they want. And so you can look at this and I could say, okay, I could be a public speaker. And then I could look and I could say, well, podcasting is kind of on that same route. And the reason why it's important to find your purpose here is because when you find your purpose and what it is that you could do, you don't really need to search for energy for it. And so I heard— I've heard you mention God a couple of times, right? I believe that when you— I heard a really good phrase about this one time, and it was when, when you're doing something that is out of alignment with your purpose, you have to come up with energy for it. But when you're doing something that's aligned with your purpose, God will give you energy for it. And so for me, like when I get off of a stage, when I get done with a podcast, I have way more energy than when I started. And it's almost like God saying, this is it, this is your thing, keep going and doing it. And I'm sure it's probably the same for you. Like when you start researching things, when you start developing new products, getting on and doing the things that you do, you get energy from it. But a lot of people work jobs where they don't get energy from it. They don't feel fulfilled. That doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel aligned with them. And so I think what's, what's really important is, first off, number one, becoming aware of what it is. And then the second thing is there's a lot of people that I work with where they, like you said, I work with business owners. A lot of them know their purpose, but they're afraid of actually stepping into it, of like really stepping into that purpose. And Ignorance is bliss. So sometimes it's better to be in the ignorant category and not know what purpose is or not know what yours is. But once you know your purpose— I had a friend tell me this one time, and it's one of the truest things I've ever heard— is once you have found your purpose, if you don't follow your purpose, your purpose will destroy you. And it's like, once you know what it is, if you don't follow it and you fast forward 30 years, that thing's going to destroy you. Knowing what you could have been, how you could have impacted people, how you could have helped the world, how you could have built a, a business to help your family and put your children into a better education and and all of that, it's just like it'll start to destroy you and eat at you. And so for me, that's actually what started happening with me was years ago when I, uh, when I just like— when I was in Cutco, I left Cutco for years, and I was like, I just want to teach people again. Like, I miss teaching people. I feel like that's a skill set that I'm good at and I miss it. I started kind of getting depressed, and I was like 27 years old, and I was, I was depressed and I wasn't feeling good, and I started getting sicker. My girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, was like, you, you don't, you don't seem normal. Like, what's going on? And I was like, I just I'm not happy. Like, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't, I don't want to just make money. Like, I was making money and I was getting paid to work from home, all of this stuff, and I was making great money. But I was like, it doesn't feel like I was just— I just am supposed to make money, pay the bills, and then just die. And then once I found this thing that is the thing that I love, I'm like, it's— you have to kind of turn me off. Like, it's hard to make me stop. And I used to hear that with Tim Grover, who is, who is Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant's trainer, he used to say the hardest part about Kobe Bryant was getting him to stop. And so it's like you, you, you want to go on this, this journey of finding out what it is. And the last thing I'll say around it that's super important is if you don't know what your purpose is, that's completely fine. But if you're now aware that you don't know what your purpose is, it's not okay to not be in constant pursuit to identify what your purpose is every single day. If you're in that category, it should be one of your main focuses every single day. Try new things. Do new things, go different places, try to connect with new people, try different sports, get on stages, whatever you have to do to do something different every single time until you find what that thing is.

I totally agree. This is, this is a, this is critically important for people to living a fulfilling life. I read a study from, from a couple of years ago that said only 25% of people are clear on what their purpose is. And so this is really something that a lot of people are missing out on. And I, I was, I was talking to, um, someone recently, and, and I, I had a, a actual health battle I went through. And so mindset to me became very, very important. In fact, one of the things that I talk about a lot, uh, on the show is, um, I've— before I talked a lot about food is medicine. Now I talk a lot more about mindset medicine because it really is so important for helping cure actually even things like depression and anxiety and sadness. And a lot of these emotions and mental health issues that people are experiencing, purpose is the remedy, right? It's the cure. And I see so many people today who lack motivation. Like, I wake up every morning, and Rob, you're probably the same. It's like, and I'd be interested to hear your daily routine, but it's like I wake up, I pray and spend time with God, I down a green drink or a superfood smoothie, I go and get my workout in, and I'm ready and excited to work. Work. But a lot of people kind of wake up, it's like, I don't want to get up in the morning, I'm tired. You know, they feel this sort of sense of almost dread for the day, where I know that I feel really motivated. And I think one of the things too, as we talk about purpose, I'd love to— and by the way, feel free to share any thoughts you have based on what I said. But in addition to that, I think once people know and discover, and as you said, try a lot of things out, do everything you can to discover your purpose, And then often we want to attach goals to those things, right? We want to say, okay, I have a goal I want to attach. My goals are really related to my purpose. What are the relationships between goals and purpose and how should people go about doing, doing goal setting most effectively?

Yeah, good question. So mine is very similar to yours. Waking up is a struggle for me because I love sleeping. Like I could sleep. I'm one of the people who could sleep like 13 hours a day. So at 8 hours my alarm goes off. So waking up is the struggle. Once I'm up, I'm good. Do the same thing. Go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, then I go and I have a drink that I make, 32 ounces of water mixed with some stuff. So I have that every single morning, do meditation immediately, and then usually I'll read for about 45 minutes, and then I do my workout, and then it's like I go in and I actually start working. So there is, uh, it's not like I, I wish I was one of the people that like hit the ground and I'm like, yes, I'm so excited to be awake, I'm so excited to be alive, but I'm like, I feel I, I, it takes me a while to get there, but I still feel like I'm excited for a sense of purpose that I have every single day. So there is that. That's definitely there. Yeah, there's an interesting thing, and this is actually one of the things that I wrote about that became really big for me because I realized that when I think goals are great, I think goals are amazing. I've been setting goals for years. I remember in 2007, I, I had a, a guy come into our company that we were in and he said, like, let's make our 10-year goals. And so I literally was able in 2017 to go back and look at how many things I'd actually knocked off the list at 100 different goals that he wanted to come up with. With. So I think goal setting is really important. Um, there's a really interesting thing though, and this is where like I started getting really into the science of the brain in my book, was because I didn't want to just say things that were anecdotal. I wanted things were like fact. Like I really wanted to go, is there scientific proof around this thing? And so one of the things that I talk about is something called the dopamine reward system. And so dopamine is what they call the chemical of motivation. So a lot of people take dopamine and serotonin, they put them together, they're the feel-good chemicals. Serotonin is more of like a feel-good gratitude. Dopamine is more of like externally focused. And so when you're, when you're, when you have high levels of motivation, they actually call it a high dopamine state. When you have low, low levels of motivation, they call it a low dopamine state. And there's these things called dopamine reward systems, which is a lot of times, and I was one of these people for years, is I will not be happy until I hit my goal. I will. I don't deserve rest. I don't deserve time off, and I will not be happy until I hit my goal. The problem with that, though, is that you're not going to allow your brain to release dopamine until you hit that goal, which could be a year, it could be 5 years, it could be 10 years. And so the way I like to think of a dopamine reward system is it's kind of giving your brain what it wants, which is dopamine, the chemical of motivation, this externally focused chemical to want to go more and more and more. What I created is, is we normally have results-based goals, which is when I get to X, I will finally be happy. And when I get there, then I'll finally release dopamine. That's basically what it is. So it could be like when I lose 10 pounds, I will finally be happy. And then I'll celebrate myself. That is what's called a results-based goal. When result happens, that goal is achieved. I will know that that goal's knocked off. What I call it, what I put in the book is something called action-based goals, which is when I take the action, I will celebrate myself. And so the good thing about dopamine is dopamine is very subjective. So you can get dopamine released, you know, 250% more when you jump into an ice bath, a cold plunge, which I love doing that as well. That's one of the best ways to get motivation is jump in one of those for 6 minutes. There's also, um, just celebrating yourself. And so if you look at like BJ Fogg, who's a psychologist at Stanford, he created, uh, something which is— it was called, uh, in his book it was called Tiny Habits, I believe is what it was called. But the— there's a step-by-step process of how to, how to actually make habits into your life. And the last part was to celebrate, because celebrate releases dopamine. So we could actually get ourselves to release dopamine just by being excited about what we're doing. And so The way we take this and make it easy, I could either say results-based goal, when I lose 10 pounds, I'll finally hit my goal, and that's my goal, which we should still have that goal. But then we take action-based goals, which is when— it could be when I show up to the gym, I celebrate myself. When I get done with my first set, I celebrate myself. When I get on my second set, I celebrate myself. When I get done leaving the gym, I celebrate myself. When I get home and I take a shower and look at myself in the mirror, it might not be the thing that I want, but I can look at myself and say, you're doing such a good job. I'm so proud of you for showing up for yourself. All of those times where we're celebrating ourselves, we're releasing dopamine, which makes us want more dopamine, which makes us more likely to do it tomorrow, which makes us more likely to do it the next day. Because what happens for a lot of people is they say, I want to lose 10 pounds, and then they, they, they go to the gym and they're like, you didn't work out as hard as you could have, you didn't do as well as you could have. They take their clothes off, take a shower, and they say, you still fat, you still don't look good. And we beat our— a lot of people just beat ourselves up all the time versus saying, if we can get on our own team and celebrate ourselves as much as possible, we're actually creating a dopamine reward system which makes us more likely to show up tomorrow, which makes us more likely to do it again, which makes it more likely to actually create a habit. So it's something long-term. And if we just do that, eventually we'll look and go, oh my God, I lost the 10 pounds! That's what I was trying to do. So instead of saying I'm only going to be happy when I do this, it's I'm going to celebrate myself every single step along the way, which then makes me more likely to show up every single day and hit the goal that we're actually trying A couple other questions I had for you.

That was a great piece of advice. Generally, though, in your life, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

The one that stands out the most for me that, like, I always go back to my very first coach that I was telling you about that I paid $500 a month for when I was 19. We worked together for 2 years and I remember almost none of our conversations. I'm not saying that they weren't good. They were great and they were exactly what I needed. But there was nothing like stood out that I can remember really hardcore. There was the one thing that that was probably the turning point of my life, where I was like, I could either go this way or I could go this way, is, you know, at the end of every call that we would have together, we would always have assignments and things I had to get done. And he was also somebody who used to be in Cutco, so we knew how to sell. He knew how to sell the products. He would give me assignments on certain things I need to get done. And I was the type of person who would test boundaries to like, if you give me an inch, let me see if I can take a little bit more than an inch. Like, I would try to test that. I'd show up a little bit late to calls. I wouldn't get my assignments done perfectly. And so I'd show up late to calls. I wouldn't get my assignments done. I wouldn't do exactly what needed to be done. I'd kind of be like 75% there. And he had this like really serious conversation with me and he goes, hey, I've got a question for you. He goes, if a business fails, like let's say it's a big corporation and this business fails, whose fault is it? And I was like, well, if it's a big corporation, it's probably the CEO's fault. He said, okay, cool. He said, if the business succeeds, if somebody is able to take the entire company, take all of the employees, give it a purpose and and move it in the right direction and they grow and they're successful, whose fault is it? And I was like, well, I guess, you know, that would also be the CEO's fault if he were to be able to take them from point A to point B and be able to kind of orchestrate the entire thing and make sure that it happens. And he says, yeah, so if the business succeeds, it's the CEO's fault. If the business fails, it's the CEO's fault, right? And I said, yeah. And he said, okay, do you want to know what your problem is? And I go, sure. And he goes, you're not acting like the CEO of your life. When things go well, you want to take all the compliments for it. When things don't go well, you blame everybody else in every outside circumstance you possibly can. He said, so if you fast forward and you get to the end of your life and it is not what you wanted it to be, and you didn't have the success and the happiness and the joy and everything that you wanted, whose fault is that? And I was like, that would be my fault. And he goes, but if you do get to the end of your life and you have all of the joy, the happiness, the peace, you took the action, you impacted lives, you did everything you wanted to do, and you feel like I did it. Whose fault is it? And I said, that would be my fault. He said, if you want to change your life, you need to act like the CEO of your life and stop blaming other people, stop blaming your circumstances, and just figure it out and get it done. And I was like, 10-4. That conversation just completely changed the trajectory of my entire life. And I think a lot of people need to hear that because a lot of people, myself included, I love to blame everything externally outside of me. But when I finally just decided that everything is my fault world, good, bad, indifferent, it's— I can always just put blame on me. It seems like, oh my God, the weight of the world is on my shoulders. It can seem that way if you think about it that way, but it can also put yourself into, oh, I'm fully in control of this thing. And so if I want something to change, I have to be the person to change it. And, um, that was the biggest piece of advice that he ever gave me, and it stuck. And I've told that to— so it's one of the most viral videos I ever created. I was like, I just was walking around one day and I decided to share it., and it seemed to hit home with people. But I think people just need to just take full ownership for everything that happens in their life.

So good. We all need to be the CEOs of our own life, take full ownership, full responsibility. And really, until we do that, it's really hard to, you know, it's, it's really hard to succeed. And so, man, that's a, that's a good one. That's one of the better ones I've heard. Last question here for you. What is your one piece of advice you have for everyone here if they want to experience growth and success life?

Yeah, I would say the biggest thing that I can think of, which is something I've been preaching a lot recently, which is actually goes back to Krishnamurti, which I was telling you, which is he says most people know themselves, but the problem with knowing yourself is knowing is based in the past. What you want to stop doing is stop knowing yourself and start learning yourself, which brings us back to like self-awareness, because knowing is based in the past, everything that's happened to me, past circumstances, ways that I acted, all of that stuff, which really doesn't do anything for me today. But if I decide to start learning myself, learning is always based in the present, which means that I'm based in the present moment, in the present moment at all points in time. And so it really goes back to what we were talking about, which is like extreme self-awareness. Like, how self-aware are you as to when you feel emotions come up? Why do you feel that way when you're triggered by somebody else? Why are you triggered? Because a lot of times we can say, oh well, I'm mad because this person did this thing to me, and we're saying it's their fault. But in reality, If that person, you know, oh, someone came up to me and they said this thing and it triggered me. Well, if they would have said the exact same thing to you in a different language you didn't understand, would it have affected you? No. So it's not what they said. It's that you're triggered by something that they said because of some past trauma or something that you're— someplace in the past where you're still stuck. And so what I think people can do is understand that when you're triggered, you're actually— that's like the biggest gift that you can get because being triggered shows where you're not free. It shows where you're still stuck in some sort of way and you don't have your freedom. And like Eleanor Roosevelt, she says, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent, which means that somebody cannot say something to you, someone cannot do something to you without you feeling something unless you consent to feeling that way. And when you give up your— when you consent to feeling a certain way, that person is now controlling your— the only thing that you have control of, which is yourself. You're giving up control to somebody else us. And it's kind of like Viktor Frankl, who wrote the book Man's Search for Meaning. He was a psychologist who went through, you know, Nazi prison camps, and he was in Auschwitz, and he was— went through the worst of the worst of the stuff that he details in his book. And one of the things he's famous for saying is he says, between stimulus and response, there's a space, and in that space is— in that space is your, your I want to say it correctly. In that space is your freedom to choose how you want to react, and in your reaction is your growth. And so some— between stimulus and response, between somebody saying something to you and you doing something, there's a space, even if it's a millisecond. But in that moment is your choice of how you want to respond, and in that response is your freedom and your growth. And so I think that for most people, we can just understand that we should stop knowing ourselves based off the past and start learning ourselves and say, who am I? Who do I want to be? What do I want to and then start noticing ourself in the moment. Oh my gosh, I feel very triggered right now. Why do I feel triggered? All right, let's go back. Let's put a pen and paper. This person did this to me. This person acted this way, or I was cut off on the road. I was triggered. Why was I triggered? I was triggered because my mom used to always get pissed off at people when she was on the road. Oh my God, I'm acting exactly like my mom. So it's like we start to notice things about ourselves and we start to learn ourselves, and that develops self-awareness. And from self-awareness, we stop being triggered as much. And when we stop being triggered that's our freedom. And so I think that's the biggest piece of advice I could give people, which is stop knowing yourself, start learning yourself, because learning is based in the present.

I love it. That's— it's a great piece of advice. It's this idea around know thyself. I mean, it, it, it's the sort of a starting point for so many things for us to be able to grow and develop. And you, you know, the thing is that with that piece of advice, it's, it's really hard to grow if you don't know where you're at right? Like, if you're trying to get somewhere, you like— you talked about goal setting and purpose, all those things. If you know where you're at now, it's hard to know where you're going to go. So, anyways, I love that. That's such a fantastic piece of advice and starting point. Hey, I want to let everybody know Rob has a new book that just came out. It's called Level Up. And so, all of these great things he's talked about with goal setting and being purpose-driven and being motivated and overcoming limiting beliefs. He covers these in depth in his new book. Again, the book is called Level Up: How to Get Focused, Stop Procrastinating, and Upgrade Your Life. And so, if you're saying to yourself, I want to upgrade my life, I want to encourage you to check out Rob's new book. It's found on amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com. It's in bookstores nationwide. Again, it just came out, brand new book. And so, Rob, I want to say thanks so much for being part of the show today. And any last words or let us know also where everybody can find you.

Yeah. So, you know, the main place where most people find me is the Mindset Mentor Podcast. That's the one where I've— I think we have over 1,300 episodes. We're approaching 300 million downloads on that. And so that's the main place where I put up episodes 3 to 4 times a week. And then the book, like you said, is the reason why I wrote the book is because I wanted something where it was like from, from start to finish, this is a step by step by step by step process for someone to follow because my podcast episodes, are about 20 minutes, 25 minutes long. So they're short, to the point, real quick, give you as much value as possible. But the book was more of like my, my place to be able to really go deep, put a whole lot of science and studies into it. And so someone wants to read the book, it's called Level Up. They could just Google it. It's Level Up and Rob Dial will pop up. And then if someone likes podcasts, they can put in The Mindset Mentor and listen to me 3 or 4 times a week, depending on how many times I post that week.

I love it, Rob. Well, Rob, again, thanks so much for coming on today. I want to say thanks, everybody, for listening.. And I wanna say thanks for tuning in here to the Growth Lab Podcast, where remember, each and every week we cover the science behind how to grow yourself, your health, and so much more. Also, if you're not subscribed, make sure to subscribe, like, and share, and also comment. I love to hear from you in the comment section. And also, hey, love your reviews on if you're loving the podcast. Hey, I'll see you next week with another episode. And again, thank you so much to Rob Dial, the Mindset Mentor, for sharing his wisdom with us today.