How to Become Mentally Strong

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 if you haven't heard yet, if you want to dominate your 2025 goals and get better at setting, planning, and achieving your goals, go download my free ebook that I just put out on goal setting. It is at goals2025.com. Once again, goals with an S, 2025.com and get it for free now. Today, we're going to be talking about how to become more mentally strong, how to build our own mental toughness. And I'm going to talk about how to grow yourself through a Japanese technique.

0:45And we're going to talk about how to use this Japanese technique. And you can do it at least once. But I recommend if you really are the type of person that are trying to change your life, become mentally, mentally strong, do something like this once a month. And so the idea behind it is it is called misogi. Okay. And it's the misogi challenge. Misogi is two words in Japanese, mizu, which means water. And I could be butchering this. I've never spoken Japanese. So if you do speak Japanese, please be kind to me. Uh, misu and not like the soup. Uh, maybe it is. I don't know. Shit. But that means water and sogi, which means purification.

1:25So it means water purification And Misogi is about physical, mental, and spiritual purification. Now, in the Misogi, it's usually a process that involves cold water for purification. But in this episode, we're not just going to be talking about cold water. And so this is going to be talking about doing something that is hard to you, that is beyond your capacity, or that mentally, as of right now, you think is beyond your capacity. but you do it and it will then grow your willpower so that you can learn to start doing things that you think in your mind is might be hard, but then you start getting used to, okay, this thing seems hard.

2:10Instead of me backing down, I'm going to go at it. It's kind of like the obstacles away. Instead of this obstacle being in front of me and me trying to, oh, I'm just going to not go for it, I guess. No, it's like the obstacles in front of me. I'm going to go through the obstacle. And the idea behind this is to do something that's so hard that it makes all of the things in your life right now, the quote unquote hard things seem like not such a big deal. Right. And I'll give you a great example. Like if you're a woman listens podcast, who has given birth after being in the room where a woman has given birth with, you know, my wife, with my son, seeing all the things she went through over the nine months, you really should just remind yourself how badass you are.

2:51Like you should just remind you, like if you've given birth before, you're fucking incredible. Like no man can come close to that. You should remind yourself instead of being like, oh, I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. You should be like, I brought a fucking life into this planet, right? Like I went through nine hours of labor, whatever it is. And it's to remind yourself that you've done this really hard thing so that the things that pop up in your life where you're like, oh, well, I'm getting really nervous that people might judge me if I post on Instagram. It's like, no, man, like, do you know the type of shit that I've been through.

3:25And so like, if you've given birth, I just want to give you your flowers and just remind you, you are a badass. Like you should tell yourself that every single day about how much of a badass you are. If you've done other hard things in your life, you should tell yourself every single day how much of a badass you are. And the point of it is to do something that is so hard that it makes the quote unquote hard things that we're stepping back from in our lives not seem like a big deal at all so that we can expand who we are so that we can expand our mindset. And it's like working out when you go to the gym and you haven't been in the gym in a long time and you have a little weak muscles, you can't lift as much, but the more that you do it over and over and over again, you start getting stronger and then lifting the heavier things in the gym, just like lifting the heavier things in life become easier over time.

4:18And so I want you to, to understand that, So many people listening to me have been through way harder things in their life, like I said, like giving birth or the death of a loved one or whatever it is that it might be that you guys have been through, that when a little thing pops up in your life, like, oh, I need to put this presentation together for my boss, that's nothing compared to what you've been through and what you've done. You need to remind yourself of how badass you are. And I think the more that we can push ourself out of our comfort zones, the more that we can grow our willpower and become more mentally strong.

4:57And the less that we care about and focus on all of the little shit that's around us. Now, if you think about it, like if you really think about it, the people who, and this is a very, very, very general statement, but I think the people that complain the most are usually the people that are not wanting to do things, but they want things done for them. You know, if you listen to this podcast, you know that you are the person that needs to change in your life. You didn't click on mindset mentor because you're like, I want to fix my wife. Well, hopefully you didn't. You were thinking to yourself, I need to fix myself so that I can fix my life, right?

5:33The toughest people in the world that you find are usually the ones who have been through the worst things. And so we can let life happen to us, which it will naturally, or we can actually go and seek out these things that are really hard for us to do. And by doing these really hard things, we start to build confidence in ourself. We start to remind ourselves how amazing we are, how badass we are, how much we can accomplish. And we start developing more and more confidence within ourselves. So the original Misogi, the way that they did it in the Japanese practice would be this. They would fast for a few days.

6:10They would have some isolation. They would do meditation. They would do prayer. And then what they would do is they would submerge themselves in ice cold water. And it's a mental, physical, spiritual practice in purification. I'm not going to eat for a few days. I'm going to spend all of my time in isolation. I'm going to do meditation. I'm going to do prayer. And then I'm going to have days where I put myself in the water and do something that's really hard, take myself out of it. Don't eat for a few days. Meditation prayer, put myself back in the water. and it was a physical, mental, and spiritual purification process so that everything else outside of that misogi didn't seem so hard.

6:49And so now how can we take this idea and bring it into our lives? It could be cold water. Definitely can. I recommend doing cold water often. There's so many benefits to it. You know, I talk about the inner bitch, the voice that's inside of your head that's talking down to you and telling you you're not good enough and telling you that you need to stop, telling you that you shouldn't go and try to change your life. You shouldn't put yourself out there. You shouldn't grow that business. You shouldn't ask that person out. That little inner bitch is trying to hold you back from everything that you want.

7:18And that voice is 100 % going to come online whenever you want to get into cold water. And that is the thing that's holding you back more than anything else. So if you can start hearing that voice and doing the opposite of what it says and hearing that voice and doing the opposite of what it says and hearing that voice and the opposite of what it says, you stop listening to it. And when you stop listening to it, you start doing things that you need to do to change your life. You know, it tests your willpower and willpower is something that can be grown. So that's something that we can do. But how else can we bring this idea of doing something so hard that it actually completely changes us in one go?

7:54Something that is a physical, mental, spiritual practice in our lives. How can we develop this like cadence of Misogi so that we can use the water, but we can also use other things that we want to. And so here's what you really want to start to think about. I'll give you some examples, okay? The idea is just doing something so hard that it changes you in one day. How can you do something that is so hard? And once again, something that is, you know, obviously safe, not something that is just dangerous for you, but something that is so hard that it changes you in one day because you're like, I can't believe I did that.

8:28I cannot believe I did that thing. And we will be right back. and now back to the show and we think change is like a gradual process and it can be a gradual process but change can happen in one instant like there's many things that have happened to you good and bad in your life that have just changed you in one go you didn't need any other it wasn't gradual at all it was just a boom it was changed you are now a changed person so what would you need to do to feel like a changed person right after? Once again, I'm going to give you some examples, but I'm asking you, what do you think that you need to do in order to just change you in an instant?

9:16What is it? What pops into your head? I want you to brainstorm for yourself before I give you these examples, because there might be something that you come up with that's completely different than what I came up with. And so I'm going to give you a couple of examples. I'm just going to say this at the beginning. I don't recommend any of them because I don't know you. I don't know your skill set. I don't know your mindset. I don't know your body. But if you want to try them out, you can. But I'm not recommending any of them. Just do this on your own. I'm not a doctor trying to tell you what you do, what you should do.

9:44An example of this would be this. Let's say that you live in a very mountainous or hilly environment, right? Take a very intense hike. And I don't mean like a nice little hike where you bring a water bottle and you take your iPhone so that you can take selfies the entire time. I mean something that you are sweating and breathing profusely and you have a heavy backpack on you. Something that is beyond what you think right now is your capacity. That's an example of something you should do. Okay, maybe the furthest hike you've ever done is five miles. Maybe you should do 20. I don't know. Once again, I'm not recommending any of these.

10:26This is all for you to figure out on your own. So maybe it's something really intense like that. Maybe it's like a sweat lodge practice. Maybe there's, you live in a place where there's Native Americans around and they have sweat lodges that you can go to. Like I know there's definitely some that are out in Arizona that I've seen. There's some that are in other places. So maybe it's like a sweat lodge that you do and it's a practice that you could go through over the course of a day. Maybe it's going for a run that is way beyond your capacity. And I mean way, way beyond your capacity. You know, there's this idea that I've heard David Goggins talk about, which is the law of 40%, which is when you think you have gotten to your full capacity, you're only about 40 % of your capacity.

11:06And the reason why is because your brain tries to tell you that you're done as a protection mechanism. And so it's like, oh, we've hit our capacity, but really you're only at about 40 % of what you can do. And if you can push through that, that's really where you start to discover who you are. I remember there was one time that I had a client and she was telling me like for years, she just felt like she was stuck. For years, she just felt like she was stuck. She didn't know what to do. And she was just kind of stuck in her mindset for a really long time. And I was like, do you ever go for a run?

11:36And she's like, I mean, I'll go for walks and I go for like jogs and stuff like that. I was like, when was the last time you went for a run that was just way beyond your capacity. She's like, I don't know. And I was like, what about this idea? Like, what could happen to you? If you went to a run and you found your capacity and you just kept going until you felt not, and what I said was you felt like something broke mentally inside of you. And it was this idea and I knew her really well so I could challenge her, we could do this stuff. And I was like, I don't want you to break anything physically, but I want you to see if you can break this comfort zone mentally that you have.

12:10and you know the next week we talked about it and she was telling me that normally she runs like four miles right and that's the most that she goes and she got to like 10 miles and was like i should give up she kept going she got to 15 and she got to the point where she was she was running and crying at the same time not because of the pain that she was in but because the fact that she was she was just coming up against this voice that was inside of her head that's been holding her back for so long and so she was battling this voice and she was crying because she's like i'd feel like I'm just at battle with this voice all the time.

12:43And she's like, fuck you. I'm not going to stop. And she was like, literally speaking to herself this way. She ended up running like 22 miles. She had never got anywhere near it before. And she was like, it was in the way she described it. She's like, I was sore the next day physically, but she was like, it was like a spiritual awakening where it was like something inside of me clicked on that was like, I'm not going to lose this inner voice. There's something more inside of me. And so that might be something that you could do. There's also like silent retreats that you could do. Like for me, I know when I did a 10-day silent meditation retreat, that changed who I was at the core.

13:22Like it changed me completely. It's called Vipassana. You can Google it. They're free. They're just donation-based and they're all over the United States and actually all over the world. And it's V-I-P-A-S-S-N-A, I think is how you spell it. and it was a 10 day silent meditation retreat. And people are always like, I always say the same thing when I talk about a 10 day silent meditation retreat. Oh, I could probably do two or three days, but I don't know if I could do 10. And the reason why 10 is important is because you can't talk to people. You can't look people in the eyes because you don't realize how much you're talking with your eyes.

13:55You can't journal, you can't read, you can't do yoga. You can't do anything other than meditate or walk outside or sit in your room, which has nothing on the walls. So it's literally about just like absolute boredom, absolute peace, going inward more than you're going and doing anything else. And the reason why I say it changed me is because at about day seven, I had like this breaking point at day seven, which was insane. I was so sore from sitting for so damn long and I was in the meditation center and I got so pissed and I'm normally such like a chill person and all of that. But I got so pissed that by the time that I went to, so you had breakfast in the morning, then you had lunch, and then you didn't have dinner.

14:41There's no dinner that they have. It's just tea time. By the time I got to lunch, in my mind, I was mentally abusing every single person. I was like yelling at every single person that was in that lunch hall. The guy that sat in front of me, I was just like, once again, I'm not verbally saying anything. In my head, I'm screaming at every single person. There was just like so much rage that was coming out of me in this moment where I was like, I don't know where it's coming. It was like, this is stupid. Why am I here? This person sucks. You suck. I hate you. And it was like, I was just, I don't know where it all came from.

15:15Right. And I was like, I need to get the fuck out of here. And I was so mad. And I was like, I'm just going to go to one more meditation. I'm just going to go to one more. And I went to one more meditation and I was like, you know what? I could probably stay for another one. So then after that, I went to the next one. And I got into this flow where all of this like rage basically came out of me. And I remember instead of sitting for like an hour, I was sitting for like two and a half hours for these meditations. After this rage session happened, and I remember I was sitting there and I was doing absolutely nothing, but I was like literally crying tears of joy because I never felt so good in my entire life.

15:54And I was trying to comprehend how me doing nothing for seven days and then now sitting there for two and a half hours and my back is sore and I need to pee. And I'm like crying. And I had like five or six meditations between day eight, nine, and 10, where I was just crying that I had never felt so much joy in my entire life and I was doing nothing, right? Like that silent retreat was so damn hard. And it like literally just, just tired my, my hamster mind out to the point where I was able to find like actual true joy, right? That's an example of something that you could do. You could do fasting if you wanted to do it.

16:32You could do, you know, carrying heavy objects over long distances, maybe get an 80 pound vest. And you're like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to walk five miles today. Whatever it is that it might be, what you're trying to do is you're trying to break yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually out of something that you've, in doing something that you've never done before and you feel it is completely beyond your capacity. Because a lot of times we are capable of so much more than we settle for and we settle for safe. And something like this, whether it's done one time a year or whether it's done, you know, every single month can really open you up to believing more in yourself because you're capable of so much more.

17:18That's why I said the thing about what, you know, like my, I told my wife this, I was like, you should think you're the most badass person alive after seeing, being pregnant for nine months and all the things you had to go through and then going through labor. Like you should think like you're a God or something. Like you should be like, I can do whatever the fuck I want. That's the idea is to remind yourself of how badass you are. The idea is to do something that at this moment, you don't know if you can do. It has to challenge you. If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you. So you have to, what I like to call, meet your end, where you're at the end of the rope mentally, physically, and you push through it, and then you really see what you're truly capable of.

18:02You have to get past the point of what you think is possible, and you'll find a new version of yourself. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor. Share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in at Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. So if you would share it, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And, you know, if you want to learn how to dominate your 2025 goals, you want to learn how to set, plan, and accomplish your goals for 2025, go ahead and download my free ebook. Once again, it is goals2025.com.

18:35Goals with an S, 2025.com. And with that, I'm going to leave you 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.