5 Habits that Changed My Life

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode and join over 4 million people who have subscribed to this podcast episode. And if you love this podcast and you wanna get some inspirational text messages, mindset tips, tricks sporadically throughout the day, sent to your phone, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm going to talk about five habits that absolutely changed my life. Because you don't need more motivation. You need habits that make your life better.

0:49You need systems to improve your life. And so today, I want to give you the five habits that rebuilt me as a person. They built my focus, my peace, my self-respect, and also turned into success in the long term. I don't want to give you any fluffs or any hacks. just things that are going to work for you to show up on your worst days when you don't feel like taking action. And if you want a life that feels bigger and lighter and better, then this episode is going to be for you. So let's dive straight into it. Number one, one of the most important things that you can do is create your own morning mindset priming technique, your own morning mindset priming technique.

1:32Basically, here's the way you want to think about it. When you wake up in the morning, you have this interesting small window where your brain is really able to get into your subconscious, the stuff that you say, the stuff that you do. And most people waste that time with scrolling on their phone, looking at their emails, watching Netflix, whatever they do in the morning, right? I want you to find a 10 minute window in your day where you prime your mind for how you want to feel, how you want to be, how you're going to show up and who you're going to be throughout the day. Just a 10-minute window that is as soon as you possibly can when you wake up in the morning.

2:11I want you to think about breathwork, breathing in deeply. You can listen to breathwork as you're doing it. Go on YouTube, type in breathwork, follow something that's 10 minutes long. You're going to get yourself into a prime state by breathing. And what you're going to do is you're going to focus on two things. Number one, your beliefs, who you are, who you think you are. And I want you to speak into existence the type of person that you are, the type of person that you want to be. You know, I don't want you to say, oh, I'm becoming better. I want you to say, I am better. Don't say, you know, if you're working through health issues, don't say, I want to be healthy.

2:47Say, I am healthy. You're going to change your beliefs and you're going to use these moments to speak into existence what it is that you want in your life. If you do this over and over and over again, you will eventually start to change your beliefs about yourself, about the world, about other people. So that's the first thing, is the beliefs that you have in your brain. And the second thing is the behaviors that you're going to take today. I want you to see what you're going to do, how you're going to execute it, and I want you to see everything working exactly the way that you want it to. Reason why is because then when things actually happen in your day and you've got to go out and take action, you feel more confident because you unconsciously or maybe even consciously feel like you've done it before.

3:30Priming basically sets your emotional GPS of this is how I want to feel today in your your mental GPS of this is what I'm going to do today. Most people wake up and they just go with the default. Not you. You're not going to do that. You're not going to look at your phone for the first hour of waking up. You're not going to look at your inbox. You're not going to talk to anybody if you can. The first 10 minutes, you just want to focus on breathing, focus on your beliefs, and focus on your behaviors. Talk to yourself the way that you need to in order to brainwash yourself into believing that you are the person that you need to be in order to create the life that you want and visualize it.

4:10It's only 10 minutes. Everybody listening to this right now can do it. So it's basically today, this is how I'm going to show up. This is the identity I'm to show up with. This is the behaviors that I'm going to do. And I'm going to make sure I focus on that all day long. I teach this because it works at a very, very deep level. And so number one is you need to come up with your own morning priming technique. Number two, this is something that really changed my life. And I've shared this before, but it is radical ownership. I told you about, if you've listened to this podcast for a long time, one of the most, if not the most life changing conversation I've ever had was with my very first mentor.

4:52I was 19 years old. I was showing up late to calls. I wasn't hitting the assignments. I wasn't being who I needed to be. I was giving him excuses. And he called me out and he said, Rob, if a business succeeds and all 1000 people in this business have massive success, whose fault is it? And I was like, that would be the CEO's fault. He said, okay, if the business fails, whose fault would that be? I was like, that would be the CEO's fault. He said, okay, so if you get to the end of your life and you have everything that you want, the love, the happiness, success, joy, family, everything you've ever wanted, whose fault would that be?

5:27I was like, that would be my fault. He's like, okay, if you get to the end of your life and you don't bring out the love, the joy, the happiness, the success, you don't live up to your potential and it's not what you wanted to be, whose fault would that be? I was like, I guess that would be my fault. He said, your problem is that you are not living like you're the CEO of your own life. You've got to stop blaming other people. You've got to stop blaming other circumstances. Everything is your fault. From that moment on, it was like a switch, just switched in my head. And I was like, I got to take action.

6:00It's me. I am the CEO of my own life. And if I'm the CEO of my own life, then I am the only one to blame for when something goes well. I'm the only one to blame when something doesn't go well. Right? So I changed my excuses. I stopped acting the way that I used to. And now my brain was looking for, instead of me being a victim, my brain was looking for solutions to problems versus blaming and excuses and all of that stuff. It was like, no, I'm the one that's running the show. I need to figure out what I need to do in order to get myself where I need to go. So every decision that I made from that moment forward was, hey, you know, there's a lot of things that I cannot control in my life.

6:41There are some things that I can't control in my life. What can I control? What I'm going to do is I'm going to focus on the thing that I can control. I'm going to ignore everything else. That's it. Very simple. And so you need to start treating yourself like you're the CEO of your own life. You need to have radical, radical ownership. Anything that happens in your life is your fault. If you look through that lens, it doesn't make you a victim. It puts you into a place of power, puts you into a place of control. Okay, so that's number two. Number three is what I call the do it now rule. This is a strategy to kill all of the open loops that exist in your life.

7:18Here's what it is, it's very simple. If I think of something that needs to be done and it takes less than five minutes, I'm just gonna do it now. No negotiations. And the reason why this works is because unfinished tasks in your brain create cognitive open loops that drain your energy. If you're somebody who overthinks, if you're somebody who's got way too much going on, you have ADHD, you have all of these things, you've got to start getting better at closing all of these open loops. So closing loops frees working memory and returns your focus to the present moment. You will feel lighter because your brain isn't juggling 400 things at a time.

7:58So this is how it would work, right? I end up getting on my email real quick because I've got a few minutes and I see this email and I'm like, oh God, I don't want to reply to this email right now. Is it going to take less than five minutes? Yes. Okay, do it now. That's simple. Okay. I've got to schedule this calendar invite. I've got to send it over to somebody. It's going to take less than five minutes. Yes, do it now. I need to, you know, I didn't get all my pushups in this morning. Is it going to take less than five minutes? Yes. All right, do it now. I just finished lunch and there is one dish that I have in my hand.

8:31I could leave it in the sink, but it's going to take less than five minutes. Yes, do it now. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. It's quite simple. It's very, very simple. There's no drama behind it. If it takes less than five minutes, just do it now. Now, there is a caveat to that. If I'm in the middle of deep work and something that's very important, like if I'm in the middle of a extremely in-depth work session of me planning something out and I finish eating lunch and there's a dish sitting in front of me, I'm not gonna get up and go wash the dish in that moment. It's like, you've gotta know the moment to do it.

9:07But if I'm walking in the kitchen, I have a dirty dish in my hand and it takes less than five minutes, do it now. This will help you become the type of person that follows through. A lot of people are like, oh, I get really good at starting something, but I'm really bad at finishing something. Okay, well, the key to it is to start small. Don't start big. Don't try to change the world and lift these heavy things. It's like, no, one thing. If I wanna get better at follow through, then I need to reply to that email. If I wanna get better at follow through, I need to wash that dish. If I wanna get better at follow through, I need to make my bed as soon as I get up in the morning.

9:43If I want to get better at follow through, I need to just make sure whatever it is that's happening right in front of me that needs to be done, I'm just going to cross it off my list. Because if not, that thing lives in my brain the rest of the day. And so, very simple. I would recommend, and here's a task I'll give you real quick. Try this out today. Set a 15-minute timer, and I want you to hunt around your life and your day and find as many less than five-minute tasks as you possibly can. and then try to get all of them done, as many of them done as you possibly can in 15 minutes. So you might set a 15 minute timer, you notice, oh, you gotta do this, X, Y, Z.

10:19You get seven things done in 15 minutes. And then you're like, okay, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be. And then notice how much quieter your mind is, the mental room that you just bought for yourself. So that's number three. Number four is I have set in my life very hard boundaries with technology. I have learned no matter how, I know so much about psychology and the way the brain works and neurology, and I am completely weak to my phone if I'm not in control of it. I am, and I know what's going on. That's the crazy part about it. And so for me, I have very hard boundaries with technology.

10:58I have two separate phones. I know that people are listening to this podcast, might not be able to have two separate phones, but I have one work phone and I have one that's an actual phone that, you know, is like my actual life phone. And my work phone, to be honest with you, it's literally got text messages, phone calls, and photos. I think that's literally it. There's nothing, like I don't have email on it because I do all of my email and everything on my computer. I don't have Instagram or any of that stuff. This has actually become my favorite phone to leave the house with, believe it or not.

11:31Because when I leave the house, I've only got like my, you know, I walk away from my wife because she walks into a store. She can call me, she can text me, we can find each other. I have, oh, there's maps as well, and then maps, so I can know where I'm gonna be going to someplace. But I have set really hard boundaries. You know, my phone is on airplane mode every single night at a specific time. I have like no phone zones. I have deep work. When I sit down to do deep work, my phone, both of them are in a completely different room, right? If I have family time and I'm sitting down to have family time, it's after, you know, 7 p.m.

12:05Absolutely no phone. All of my notifications are completely off on my computer and they're completely off my phone. The only way that my phone clicks on from being black is if I get a phone call. Not a text message, not an email, nothing on Instagram, none of those things. If you do this, the fewer pings that you have, the bings that are happening in the background, the fewer cortisol spikes that you'll have throughout the day, right? Your attention, it's not like a buffet. You need to protect your attention, protect your energy at all costs. If you protect it, everything in your life will improve.

12:38Your work, your patience, your sleep, your relationships, everything will. And so have these like no tech zones. Look at your computer and say, how can I make my computer so it doesn't distract me as much? Look at your phone. Say, how can I make sure it doesn't distract me as much? When I'm going to get something done and I need to really work on something and it's important, I need to make sure that my notifications are off my computer and my phone is in a different room. You've got to have really hardcore boundaries with your phone, with your computer, with everything else that you have, or it will ruin your day.

13:12And if you do that long enough, it will ruin your life. Put a cap on social media, 30 minutes a day. That's it. And after you're done with 30 minutes, you're done. You got to go on with your life. Life is not right in front of your face looking at a screen. Life is everything that's happening outside of that. Set some hard boundaries. It might be, hey, I'm offline from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. You know, if it's urgent, call twice so that does go through. But it's like, hey, I'm offline. You just need to know that. And so, and then you figure out what your tech-free windows are. Dinners, 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., bedtime with the kids.

13:46You know, you're not anti-tech. I'm not anti-tech. I'm just really, as I get older, I'm more pro-presence than anything else. Okay, that's number four. And then number five, one of my favorite things to do is to speak my reality into existence. I use my words very clearly to aim at where I want my life to go. I speak above my current circumstances. I don't say I want this. I say I have this. I know that what I want, I am going to get. I just, and if I can be afraid, like think about this, I can be afraid of something that hasn't happened yet in the future, then I can be grateful for something that hasn't happened yet in the future as well.

14:25So I can sit there and if I'm, you know, somebody who is going through some health things, knowing that placebo effect exists and the nocebo effect exists, which is placebo effect is you heal yourself with your mind. Nocebo effect is that you make yourself sick with your mind. Then I'm going to sit there and I'm going to thank God or the universe or whatever I believe in for my health. I'm so grateful for my health. I'm speaking into existence what it is that I want. Language shapes your attention. It shapes your emotion. It shapes your identity. It shapes your beliefs. And then we act in line with what we believe and what we think about the world.

15:02And we continue to keep doing it. And you continue to keep taking action as a person you want to be, if that's the way that you're speaking. So you want to talk in line with the person that you're wanting to become. Like don't ever stick to an identity. Oh, I'm just the type of person who says X, Y, Z. Oh, I've always been this way. You know, don't even say I have anxiety. Say I've had anxiety in the past. Like a lot of people take a behavior or something that's happened to them and they'll make it their identity. They'll have anxious moments and they'll say, I'm anxious. No, no, no. That's not the way that it works here.

15:34I'm not going to put something like, I'm not going to make that a label on top of myself. Okay. You have, maybe you're, you've been anxious in the past. I've been anxious. I've had anxiety in the past. That's the way it's going to talk about it. Don't say I am anxious. If you say I am anxious, you're making a behavior an identity, right? So you got to think like, what would future, what would the perfect version of me say about this? How would they speak to themselves? How would they show up? And then what you want to do is replace your I am's, anything that starts with I am, you cannot finish that sentence with anything less than something that's empowering to you.

16:10If it's a negative label, I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good at math, whatever. I'm not lovable. I'm not good in relationships, whatever it might be. I am blank. you need to change those to a positive label. I've said this before in the past. I've had episodes on it before in the past. There's an ancient Hebrew word that is abracadabra, which most people think that's when you pull a rabbit out of a hat. But abracadabra in Hebrew means as I speak, I create. As I speak, I create. Whatever I speak out of my mouth, I am creating in my reality. You got to ask yourself, what are you speaking?

16:45What reality are you creating? And if I think something, that's speaking in my head. So I'm also got to pay attention to not only what I'm speaking, but also what I'm thinking. Because that alone will change my reality. And so when I became really clear on speaking and getting all, trying to get like, I try to imagine all 40 trillion of my cells in my body believing the thing that I'm saying. How can I wash all 40 trillion of my cells to believing and knowing that what I want in this world is possible? and so that's the five habits that really changed my life so i would recommend that you do take any of these that you like put them into your day try them for the week and see if it changes your life as well so that's what i got for you for today's episode if you love this episode please share it on your instagram stories tag me in at rob dial jr r-o-b-d-i-a-l-j-r and if you love this podcast you want to learn more about coaching with me outside of this podcast i have programs that go from 12 weeks all the way up to 12 months to work with me and help you grow and improve yourself.

17:47So if you wanna learn more about it, go to coachwithrob.com. Once again, coachwithrob.com. And with that, I'm gonna leave it the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.