How to Change the World

0:06Welcome 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're out there and you love this podcast and you want to get better at setting, planning, and achieving your goals, I just created an ebook for you that is absolutely free. If you go to goals2025.com right now, you can download it for free. Once again, goals with an S, 2025.com. Today, we're going to be talking about how you and I, in our own little ways, can actually start to change the world. And today, we're going to go kind of deep.

0:38you know, for most of my life, I thought that the external reality was something that was outside of me that I just observed with my own two eyes. And when I saw something that I didn't like in the world, which was a lot and still is a lot, and I saw something that I think or thought needed to change, or I saw someone act in a way that I didn't agree with, and I thought they needed to change. And I was like, it's all on them. It's all on other people. It's all on them making a difference. Like they need to change. They need to do something different. But then I realized that all of us are basically throwing stones in a glass house.

1:18Almost everything that we see in our external world that we judge in other people, we have within ourselves in some sort of way. The world is not just this external reality that we observe. It's this reflection. It's a mirror of our own collective consciousness that we're a part of. Human consciousness is something that we are all, you are not separate. I am not separate from human consciousness. So if we're seeing stuff happen in the external reality that we live in, that means that it's part of our human consciousness that needs to shift. Every issue, every conflict, and every act of kindness and every act of cruelty, all of those things is a reflection of the collective human consciousness, which we're a part of.

2:05It's a reflection of us. All of these qualities that we see that we like and we don't like, all of them exist within ourselves. And so by confronting these and transforming our own inner world, we can start to influence the collective consciousness and contribute to the world and hopefully make meaningful and lasting changes. You know, I want to challenge each of us to stop pointing fingers at the world's problems and other people's problems, but instead examine ourselves with a little bit of honesty. And it doesn't begin with out there, It begins within us. And so let's unpack it just a little bit more and let's dive into it.

2:46So, you know, when we look at the world, human consciousness, as I said a minute ago, is just a mirror. It's reflecting itself through the world. And so the only way that we can see the state of human consciousness is to look at what's going on in the world. And so let me take a step back there before we even talk about that. A lot of times I hear people saying, oh, the world's getting worse. The world's getting worse. And, you know, humans were doomed and we're screwed. and I won't deny that there's not a lot of shit that's happening in the world and a lot of things I wish were different, but if you look at everything statistically, life has never been better for a human on planet earth than it is right now.

3:24And so things might seem like a lot of crazy stuff is happening, but it is seeming like it's getting better. So I don't want to be all doom and gloom, okay? But when we look at it, if the world seems like it's filled with anger or fear or greed. It's not just because of like, quote unquote, others. Those same energies exist within all human beings, our self-included. And so if you look out there, there's so much and much more beautiful stuff that goes on in the world than anything else. There's much more good, like a lot more good in the world than anything else. The news is just showing you the bad stuff, but there is also a lot of terrible things that do go on in the world.

4:04You know, there's acts of violence and hatred and harm towards one another. All of those things are like evil, acts of evil, you could call it. And we can go, you know what? The world needs to change that. The world needs to stop being so evil. Or we can look at ourselves and we could say, hey, am I perfect? Do I sometimes do evil things? Maybe not on the same scale as what we see in the world sometimes. But if you ask yourself, like, am I entirely free of evil? It doesn't mean like you've committed massive atrocities, but maybe you start looking at maybe more subtle forms of harm. You know, have you ever held resentment towards anybody else?

4:47Have you ever manipulated another person for your own gain? Have you ever blown up on another person in anger? Have you ever been greedy in your life? Have you ever judged another person? Have you ever lied to somebody? Have you ever gossiped about somebody behind their back? These are all small in scale compared to these massive global events, but they're all miniature forms of evil. And if we're going to change the world, we need to change ourself. And so what do you need to do? What do I need to do so that we can heal ourselves so that we don't have to feel those feelings come up anymore? We can start to heal those so they don't come up anymore.

5:27It's easy. It's very, very easy to judge other people and tell the world how it should change. It's hard for us to look at ourselves in the mirror and say where we need to change. You know, you can look at other parts of the world and say, you know, there's so many selfish people out there. Everyone seems to just be doing things for themselves and not other people. There's corporate greed and there's environmental exploitation. And every day people are just exploiting each other for their own benefit. But before we go out and we blame selfishness as an out there thing, if we pause and ask ourself, where does selfishness exist within me?

6:07Are we going to find it? Probably. Think of all of the tiny ways that you might be selfish, more selfish than you should be. You know, the small ways that you might prioritize your own benefit when other people need help as well. And so we can continue to keep looking out into the world and saying they need to change, or we can say I'm part of the they that's out there in the world, the collective consciousness. Does some selfishness live within me? If so, what do I need to do to heal it? Because I can't make other people change. It's hard enough to change yourself. To change somebody else, basically impossible.

6:44So what do I need to do to change? What do you need to do to heal yourself? Because if you heal yourself, you heal a part of the whole. And so outward change, when we see outward change happening in the world is just inward transformation. That's the result of our inward transformation. And, you know, Gandhi says the quote, be the change that you wish to see in the world. And to be honest with you, for years, I did not understand that quote. I just, it did not resonate with me. And because honestly, I think I was too immature to actually understand what it meant. And we will be right back. And now back to the show.

7:20But really what it is, it's not some lofty little thing. It's a call to action for all of us to self-reflect and find out where we need to improve because as we improve, everything else outside of us improves as well. And so what I want you to do as I'm talking about this, think about this. When you look out into the world, what bothers you the most when you look out into the world. What's the thing where you're like, that needs to change. People need to stop doing this. I hate when I see this on the news. What is it? Maybe it's like greed. People are so greedy. They're taking more than they need.

7:53Corporations are screwing people over. Have you ever been greedy before? Have you ever focused on yourself and maybe prioritized your gains over others? Maybe it's corruption. There's so much corrupt leaders. The world's full of unfair systems. Okay, well, have you ever been dishonest in your actions and maybe done things for your own? Maybe bend the rules a little bit or tell a white lie for your own personal benefit? Oh, everyone's so dishonest. You can't trust anyone these days. Am I 100 % truthful in every single thing that I say and every single thing that I do, even when it's uncomfortable?

8:34hmm oh there's so much there's so much injustice the world is full of inequality and everything's unfair and so many other people are getting screwed over do i treat every single person equally or do i have maybe some biases that influence my actions as well oh the world's so violent people are just there's so much violence in the world all over the place okay do do i maybe harbor anger or resentment or do I try to control others in some sort of ways? Think about that for a second. Everyone just looks out for themselves. Everyone is just so selfish all the time. Okay, do I prioritize my convenience over helping other people when I could make a difference?

9:19Oh, everyone's just so judgmental. People judge others so harshly. It's too much. Okay, have you ever judged somebody in your entire life? Have you judged somebody in the past week? Do you judge others for their actions, maybe for their appearance, or maybe you judge people for their beliefs in some sort of way? What you have to understand is all of these things that we see outside of us, that we hate, that we want to change, that we're looking at the world and saying, you need to get this done, you need to change this. All of those things in some sort of way live within us. And you can never talk to the world or hold a sign on the end of the street and be like, I'm changing the world by doing it.

9:59The only way to change the world is by you doing it to yourself. And then hopefully bringing it out there to the world. It's time for what I think. I think it's time for people to practice what they preach. It's really, really easy to demand change from other people. It's really hard to embody that change yourself. If you want more kindness in the world? Be more kind. You want people to respect each other more? Be more respectful. You want more peace in the world? Start looking at your own inner peace. How's that look? You want more forgiveness? Who are you not forgiving? Other people? Yourself?

10:37Do you want more positivity? Where are you being negative? Where are you playing the victim? You want more trust? Where are you not as trusting as you should be? You think people should be more generous? where should you be more generous, right? We need to learn to lead by example. The worst leaders in the world are the ones that tell people to do something. The best leaders in the world are ones that say, I will do it first. Everyone follow me. It's the idea of being the lighthouse, right? So if you look at a lighthouse, the way that a lighthouse works is that it sits in its place at night, its light turns on, it spins, and its job is to bring the boats into the harbor safely.

11:14And it does it by doing its one job very well. And it brings all of the boats into the harbor. Another boat that brings boats into the harbor is called a tugboat. And most people live their entire lives like a tugboat. And a tugboat, what does it do? It goes out to the other boats and it pulls them and uses all of its energy to get all of those boats in the harbor. Both of them do the exact same thing. One of them is a lighthouse that sits there and it does exactly what it's supposed to do and it shines its light on everybody. One of them is a towboat that goes out to the other ones and uses all of its energy to make everyone go where it wants them to go.

11:50And so many people are trying to act the same way as a towboat with their children, with the rest of the world. When in reality, what we want to be is a lighthouse. And the reason what I mean by that exactly is it changes contagious. When people see you living authentically, being who you want to be, being who you should be, aligning your actions with your principles and with your words and taking responsibility for yourself, people start to look at you and they start to be inspired to do the same. It's the same way that like, if you were to go to your friend who wants to lose weight and say, hey, here's the workout routine that you should follow.

12:27Here's the diet that you should follow. Go and do this. Your friend's going to be like, screw you. I'm not going to do this. I'm going to do what I want. They might take your advice, but most of the time they're not going to take your advice. But if you go and lose 50 pounds and the last time that that person saw you, you weighed 50 pounds more and now you weigh 50 pounds less, they're going to be like, oh my god, you look amazing. What have you been doing? Tell me your secrets. And then you tell them your secrets. Are they more likely to follow through? Yes, because you have been a prime example of exactly what needs to be done step-by-step for change to happen.

13:06That's exactly the same thing that we're talking about right here. But instead of it being, you know, physical fitness, it might be inner peace where someone's just around. You've ever been around somebody before? It's one of your friends and you just notice like, man, they seem so much happier. They seem so much more calm. They seem so much more peaceful. They used to be agitated all the time. And you go up to me like, hey, what happened? You just seem happier. And then they tell you what they did. That's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to look at the external world and ask ourselves and have a real true moment of reflection.

13:41Do any of the things that I don't like about the world live within me? And if they do, what do I need to heal those things? What do I need to change my actions? And what do I need my new actions to be? And then what we do is we start taking action from what we want the world to be. And as we do that, a little piece of us will heal. And as a little piece of us will heal, a little piece of all of the collective consciousness would heal. Now imagine, are you going to completely change the world? Probably not. That's okay. Will you maybe change a couple of people around you? Yes. It's a pretty good chance.

14:15And as they change, well, it's a ripple effect. They might start changing somebody else and then they might change as somebody else. So the whole world isn't going to change, but imagine if everybody in the entire world started looking at themselves, self-reflecting, becoming self-aware of what they need to heal, healing that, and then bringing that healed version of themselves to the world. There'd probably be no problems, right? Everything might work its way out. People might be kinder to each other. They might be nicer to each other. They might be more giving. They might be more forgiving. And so what I want you to do is I want you to start thinking to yourself, what are the aspects of myself that I want to heal?

14:53I remember seeing a quote, or it was a picture a long time ago, it was a cartoon. And it was two different pictures. One of them was a guy that was standing on stage and it was a cartoon of like a politician basically. And the whole crowd is there and he's standing from stage and he's in the bubble of what he says, says, who wants change and everybody's hand inside of the crowd is up. And then the next one is identical to it. And it says, who wants to change? And everyone's hand is down. If you're listening to this podcast, you're the type of person that wants to change. Most people are not listening to this podcast.

15:25Most people are not trying to change themselves. Most people are not trying to self-reflect, become self-aware, do the hard things to make it better. If you're listening to this podcast, you are the type of person who does want to change. The best thing you can do is start taking responsibility for what's going on outside by taking responsibility inside. The world reflects the sum total of human consciousness and every single aspect of it, the good and the bad. All of those things start with us. And so real lasting change starts within with anything else. And so by transforming our thoughts, our emotions, our actions, we do contribute to creating a world that we want to see.

16:05So next time you see something happening outside of yourself and you're frustrated with the state of the world, I get it. I feel that way as well. But I try to take a step back. I try to pause for a moment and reflect and go, yeah, that's pretty screwed up, but what part of this exists within me? And then how can I change myself to reflect the values that I hold? And if we all did that, it would all be a much better place. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, you feel everybody else in the world needs to heal, give me a favor. You know, just share it on your Instagram stories.

16:39Tag me in it. Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. That's it. And so if you guys would share it, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it so we can try to impact more people in this world. And with that, I'm going to 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.