How To Discover Your Authentic Self

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And for those of you guys that have been waiting for my book, I am almost able to announce it. I believe it's probably going to be next week. I'm able to announce the pre-sale to be able to buy my book before it comes out. So just letting you know, make sure that you listen so that you know when it comes out. Today, we're going to be talking about how to be authentically you, who you truly are deep down inside.

0:39and we're going to talk about how to not give your power away to other people. Because once you know who your true self is, once you know what you represent, what you stand for, what you love, what you hate, what makes you happy, what makes you sad, once you truly know who you are, it makes it really easy to step into that version of yourself and to step into that version of yourself powerfully and not give your power away to other people. And so when we first dive into it, like, what does it mean to be authentically you? Like when you think about that, I was sitting around thinking, what does it mean to be fully authentically yourself?

1:14And what I think it means is that your thoughts, your actions, and your feelings align with who your true self is. Now, a lot of times when I chat with someone who says they feel quote unquote stuck in their lives, they're like, I'm stuck in my business or I'm stuck in my relationship, or I just feel stuck in general. I feel like my wheels are spinning. Have you ever felt that way before? A lot of times I find it's because they're in a place in their life where they're not being fully authentic, whether that's in the relationship, they're not being fully authentic, in their business, not being fully authentic.

1:45But in most cases, it's usually a lot of different places where they're not being truly, fully authentically themselves. In more cases than not, they're usually not themselves more than they actually are themselves. Now you might be listening to this, you're like, but Rob, I know who I am. I live with myself every minute of every day since I've been born for 47 years. I'm here to tell you, you know who you think you are, but as you start going on a path of self-discovery, which we'll talk about in a little while, you actually start to realize that who you are right now or who you think you are right now is actually not who you truly are.

2:19There's pieces of you that are your true self, but there's definitely pieces of you that have been built and conditioned to be someone based off of what your parents wanted, based off what you thought society wanted, your spouse wanted, friends wanted, all of that. In order to be authentically you, you really got to know who the hell you are first. What you want in this world, what the real you is behind the persona, the mask that you have built for the world in order to fit in behind your name, behind your gender, behind your religion, your sexual preference, your skin color, behind all of that, behind your degree, what school you went to, behind all of that, there's a real you that's behind that.

3:00And, you know, usually when you ask somebody, who are you? Well, my name is Rob and I'm a podcaster. Okay. Who are you though? Well, you know, I'm 37 years old and I grew up in Florida and I live in Austin. Okay. But who are you? And usually what we say, when we think someone asks us who we are, we start saying who we, what we've done, what we've accomplished. And none of that is actually who you truly are, because when you were born, you had accomplished none of those things, but you at your birth was your truest self. And then you discover who you're quote-unquote supposed to be based off of the world in order for us to be fitting in with society, in order for us to be quote-unquote domesticated to fit in with the rest of the world.

3:37But there's one really big problem, and the big problem is there's a big part of you that you don't show to the world simply because you don't know that it's there. And this is where you really have to start on the path of living authentically by discovering your true self, by going on a journey of self-discovery. Who you are, what do you want, what makes you happy, what makes you sad, what are the things that you truly want to do, what are the things that you want to stop doing, and you start going and finding every single thing that you can find. And self-discovery is not a destination. It's a journey.

4:17And it's really this journey until you die. Self-discovery is not like six months from now, I will finally know who I truly am. No, it's like an onion. You peel off another layer and you find something else. You peel off another layer and you find something else. You will always be discovering more about yourself. It is an onion that just never stops until the day that you die, which can seem scary for a lot of people. But if you see it as a journey, it could actually be fun of going, I'm going to constantly be discovering who I am, that little inner child that still lives inside of me, what they like, what they want to do, what makes, what's fun with them, all of that.

4:55And so how do you really start to discover who you truly are? How do you discover more about yourself is really the question you're probably thinking, right? My biggest tip that I can give you is be quieter more often. For some reason, we live in a society where people don't like to be bored. They don't like to be quiet. We like constant stimuli. If we're sitting on the couch and it's quiet, we have to turn on the TV or we have to get our phone. Like when was the last time that you just sat on your couch in the morning and then just drank your coffee in complete silence for an hour? I did that this morning when I was actually starting to think about this podcast episode and I was starting to plan it all out.

5:34I was just sitting there and there was a part of me that wanted to go to my phone, but my phone was in the kitchen. It was in the other room and I had to get up and get it. So I was like, I'm just going to sit here. And then there was a part of me that was like, you know what? I'm going to put on some music. Like I'm about to work out in a little while. Maybe I should put on some music, upbeat music to kind of get myself ready for my workout. And I was like, no, shut the fuck up. Sit here and just think. Just allow your brain to process information and be quieter more often. Shut up more often.

6:04Meditate past the point of comfort. What do I mean by that? Most people that I speak to are like, I'm not good at meditating. My brain goes all over the place. What I say to them is just meditate longer. Because what you notice is there's a part of you that's trying to fight sitting there and doing nothing. When you really start to get the benefits of meditation is when you actually sit quieter, longer. I just got back last week from a seven day, it was actually six full days, so six and a half day meditation conference retreat that I went to. And it was about 40 hours of meditating in six days.

6:40And one of the mornings, we actually started meditating at 4 a.m. And we did not get done with meditating until 8.45 a.m. It was 4 a.m. and it was four hours and 45 minutes. And there's so much uncomfortability that comes up. I want to sleep. I want to move. My back hurts, all of this stuff. And you just let it all pass. It comes up and you just let it all pass. And so I've noticed with myself when I was meditating for 20 minutes, for 30 minutes, that the first sometimes 18 minutes of a 20 minute meditation, my brain's all over the place. I'm fighting. I'm fighting. I'm like, I got to get up. I got so much shit to do.

7:16I've got a business. I've got employees. I've got things that have to happen. What do I do? I say, shut up. You're staying here longer until you can give up. And it's just like training a dog. Just get quieter. Just get quieter. Meditate past the point of comfort. I guess past the point of discomfort is probably the better way of saying it. Past the point of discomfort until it becomes a little bit more comfortable. What happens is your brain has this heightened state and you're just trying to pacify, you're just trying to calm it down. And what happens is as you start to meditate more, as you start to get more quiet, as you start to journal more about your life, about your mindset, about your hopes, your dreams, your desires, what you hate, what you love, what brings you joy, what brings you sadness, you start to actually rediscover parts of yourself.

8:01Like one of the things that I found out years ago about myself, I guess I rediscovered about myself is that I love being outside. And I was like, man, I don't feel like I'm outside enough. Like even just walking into my porch and just sitting there for 20 minutes without my phone, just sitting there quietly, looking at the trees, listening to the birds, hanging out in nature. And the more that I actually start to give myself time to just kind of sit and simply exist, the more that things start to come into my mind that I remember. And I was like, man, I really don't spend enough time outside. Why don't I spend enough?

8:37Why do I love being outside so much? I started to realize, oh man, when I was a kid, I used to sleep outside all the time. We used to have a screened in porch. When I was younger, I didn't have a bedroom. So I slept on the couch. We had a two bedroom. My mom and dad had one bedroom. My sister, who was a teenager at the time, had another bedroom. I slept on the couch. I never had a room at that point in time, not until I was older. And so instead of sleeping on the couch, I would go outside and actually sleep on the patio where we had a couch as well. And I forgot about that. And then I asked my mom and I was like, Hey, did I used to sleep on the outside a lot?

9:06She's like all the time. You loved being outside. And I was like, shit, that's a part of myself from when I was a kid, I think I lost. And I started to just kind of go outside more. And when I go outside, I start to rediscover more about myself and I just hang out. And so I want you to start to think about that. Like, are there parts of yourself that maybe you've forgotten about, things that you love to do deep down inside that maybe you push the wayside because you're quote unquote adults, or maybe you're too busy. And I want to, I want to tell you a story as you start to think about this. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know, my style, my style is just truly who I actually am.

9:44It's short. It's to the point. It's no BS. There's no sugarcoating here. I'm going to tell you from a place of love with all the love that I possibly can, how to get your shit together, but only because I love you. And I want you to have the best life. I don't see a reason for sugarcoating it. And I'm going to tell you in ways that aren't the sweetest sometimes. And that's okay because some people will be attracted to that and some people won't. And I personally love cussing. I think it adds so much flavor to a sentence, you know, to say, Oh, like what, what I went through when I was younger was really hard.

10:17Or you could say what I went through when I was younger was really fucking hard. There's a difference between the two. And so through my podcast, I've actually, through this podcast, rediscovered myself in a lot of different ways. It's been very cathartic for me. And it's been a form of therapy to be able to do this. I always tell people when they're like, your podcast helps me so much. I'm like, it helps me so much. I'm writing it for me to remind me all the time. In my first about 650 episodes, I did very little cussing, like just very little. But if you were to come to my house and you were to see me around my friends, I cuss.

10:49I don't hold back. And I realized that how could I be this way on the podcast and not cuss, but then my true self is to express freely exactly how I do. How could I possibly think that somebody will listen to me if I'm only being 90 % of me? So I decided I was going to start cussing. If I wanted to, I'm not going to just say it just to say it. I'm not going to be obscene to be obscene. But if it adds flavor to the sentence, if it shows my true passion of the way I'm speaking, I'm going to do it. And I heard a podcast episode with Rick Rubin, who is basically the most prolific music producer that's ever existed.

11:29And he said, they were talking, someone was saying that they were really insecure that was interviewing him. And they're like, man, I wish I was more like you. Like, you don't seem like you care if someone likes you. And he said, I'll never forget. He said, why would I care if you like me? Like, I want you to like me, but I will not change myself for you to like me. I thought that was really big where he said, I want you to like me. I want everyone to like me. But there is no piece of me that will change who I am deep down inside simply for you to accept me because then you're not even accepting me.

12:01You're accepting my false self. And then so what happened was once I started cussing, something clicked and I felt like myself and I express better and I express more freely. And I could hear my tonality change. And I get emails and messages every so often, probably five or 10 a week on Instagram. People send me a message on Instagram and they say, hey, Rob, I love your show, but could you stop cussing? Hey, I love your show, but I don't like cuss words. Could you stop cussing? And that's like seeing somebody who is just having the best day. They're having fun and they're laughing with their friends and you walking up to them and saying, hey, I see you laughing.

12:40I see you having a great time. You're having so much fun. But can you stop laughing so loud? It's really interrupting my thoughts. Like, how crazy would that be to go try to make somebody stop expressing their true self so that you feel better? And the reason why I bring that up is because when you discover your true self, you don't really care if people accept you or not. Like, you care way more about people accepting you when you are someone else other than your truer self, when you're not your true self. Because you don't fully accept you because it's not you. So you're looking for other people to reflect acceptance to you so that you can accept your false self more.

13:22You see how deep that goes? Like rewind that real quick if you need to. Let me say, I'll just say it again for you one more time. You care way more about people accepting you when you are somebody else other than your truer self because you don't fully accept your false self because it's not you. So you're looking at other people to try to get other people to reflect acceptance of your false self so that you can try to accept your false self because you don't fully accept your false self. See how deep that is? And when you think of like, I always use cussing as an example because it's so stupid.

13:56It's just a word. It's not good or bad. It's just a sound coming out of somebody's face. And to think that a word is bad just shows programming. And programming is where somebody's not free. And so you have to realize that your internal environment should not be shifted by a sound that's coming out of somebody else's face. Because if it is, it's showing you where you're not free. You know, and there's a lot of programming involved. For someone to say a quote unquote bad word, who said that a word is bad and who said that a word is good? Somebody who was no smarter than you 100, 200, 300 years ago.

14:33Hell, they're probably less smart than you. And they said, oh, that's a bad word. and everyone, ooh, everybody in the world went, ooh, that's a bad word. Yeah, we're not supposed to say that. Yeah, no, nobody will like us if we say that. Oh no, this, my religion, they won't accept me there if I say that. And really what it comes down to is, I've said this quote hundreds of times on the podcast, which is Eleanor Roosevelt says, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent. Nobody can stir up your internal dialogue, your world without your consent.

15:03You are giving up your control over feeling and feeling over somebody else and what they're saying. And, you know, Viktor Frankl, who has a great book, which I've said many times, if you haven't read it, Man's Search for Meaning, you should definitely read it. And he was a psychologist who went through Nazi prison camps in Auschwitz, and he was a psychologist who was in these prison camps. And he said, the last of human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. and there will always be choices to make. So you can choose who you want to be, but you have to learn who you truly are.

15:41So take a step back out of your life, out of being reactive all the time and ask yourself, like, who is your authentic self? Are you the same person in front of everyone? Or are you different in front of your friends and different in front of your parents and different on stage and different at work? Because if you're different people, depending on the circumstance, you don't even really know who you truly are. And I believe that once you find your true self, you'll be the same person in front of everyone because it's more important for you to be that true self than it is for other people to accept you.

16:15You have to realize that you can either fit in the box of what society tells you to be or we can have the courage to step out and be ourselves. As long as we're not hurting anybody else. Like you'll never see me go out and cuss at somebody and make somebody feel bad. That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm just trying to express freely who I am. And as long as you're not hurting anybody else with who your true self is, what's the problem with stepping into that version of yourself? Now, will everybody enjoy it? Will you be every single person's cup of tea? Absolutely not. But it's not your problem if somebody doesn't like your authentic self.

16:50I knew when I first started cussing at my podcast and I made that switch that people wouldn't like it because people are programmed not to like it. I knew I would get messages. I knew I would get bad reviews. I have bad reviews. They're like, I love this podcast, but I'm going to give him one star because he cusses. I'm like, well, shit. Just listen to somebody else instead of giving me a bad review, right? Which is why I think that people really need to step into who they truly are. And if it offends somebody, so be it. If you want someone to hold your hair and brush your hand and say, oh, sweetie, it's okay, well, then I'm not your guy and that's all right.

17:28there is somebody else out there that is your cup of tea. And I'm okay with not being everyone's guy. You know, there's some other guy or some other girl that's better for somebody. And really what it comes down to is once again, when we know who we truly are, and we can step into that authentic self, it makes it easier for us to be okay with not everybody enjoying us. But when we're not everyone's cup of tea, or people don't, we don't know who we truly are. And then somebody doesn't accept us. It really is hard for us. And the reason why is because we don't know who we truly are. So we're looking for other people's acceptance, but you're not going to be everyone's cup of tea.

18:00That's okay. We want to fit in and that's programmed into us. But why would you want to, why would you really want to truly fit in? Like you were born to stand out. Like Jim Carrey says, your need for acceptance will make you invisible in this world. Embrace your individuality. How boring is it to be like someone else? You know, your fingerprint is one in billions. There's no other person who has the same fingerprints as you. Your eyes, There's no other person who has the same eyes as you. You are 100 % original. No other person in the world is built like you. Not everyone will love you. But there's actually studies that show that when you step into your true authentic self, you will be happier.

18:40There's a couple of them. I'll actually tell them to you. There's a psychological study that's called Authenticity and Subjective Well-Being that found that people who reported higher levels of authenticity, that felt they were more authentic, also reported higher levels of subjective well-being. They felt better. Another study called Authentic Living in Physical Health, so Authentic Living in Physical Health, if you want to look it up, found that people who are more authentic were more likely to engage in healthier behaviors like regular exercise and having a more balanced diet. One of the reasons why they think this is is because they didn't feel the need to numb themselves through food and alcohol because when you're not living your true self, you subconsciously know it, and so a lot of people will numb through food, through alcohol, through scrolling on Instagram all damn day, all of that.

19:27In other studies, there's been a lot of studies in authenticity and health that have found that the more authentically somebody lives, the less likely they are to have depression and anxiety. They hypothesize the reason for that is because that living authentically will actually contribute to those people living longer because they don't have this internal battle of, oh, who am I supposed to be here? Who am I supposed to be here? Who am I supposed to be here? And so overall, it promotes better well-being. And these are long studies, but they're actually hypothesizing that people who live more authentically will actually live longer.

19:57So who are you? Who is your true authentic self? What do you want in this life? What are your goals, hopes, dreams, desires? And where are you being somebody different for every single other person? Go on the journey of self-discovery, find out who you truly are, step into that authentic self, and I promise you, you will enjoy life a whole lot more. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in at Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And I'm going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission, make somebody else's day better.

20:31I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.