If You’re Ambitious but Lazy, Listen to This.

0:09Welcome 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 podcast episode. If you're out there and love this podcast and you wanna get some inspirational tips and tricks and motivation texts directly to your cell phone, if you live in the US or Canada, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm gonna talk about how to stop being so lazy and actually take action. Have you ever felt like you're doing everything except the things that actually matter in your life? Like you're sprinting through your day, you work all day long, and then at the end of the day, you feel like you got nowhere?

0:52Well, I want you to understand you're not lazy. You're just trapped in an old cycle that you need to understand and break out of. And so if you're tired of waking up tired, wondering why you're stuck, why you're not going further in life, why you're not as far along as you should be, this episode is for you. It's not about hacks or any of that type of stuff. It's basically about why you feel unmotivated and how to break the pattern. So what we're going to go through is just five different things that will help you take action in the direction that you need to. And one of the biggest questions or a couple of the biggest questions that I actually get from people whenever I'm at a live event or I'm doing a Zoom call is something along the lines of like, how do I become more motivated?

1:38Or can you teach me some sort of tip or trick so that I can take action? Or why do I always self-sabotage? Or why am I so lazy? And so I'm just gonna dive in and we're gonna conquer all of those as we go through today's episode. And I want you to remember this quote and burn this quote into your brain and remember it for the rest of your life. The quote is this, let action and routine drive your life, not emotion. Let me say that again. Let action and routine drive your life, not emotion. One of the reasons why I find so many people are so unmotivated is not because they're not driven, not because they don't want more, not because they're not ambitious.

2:21It's because they have no idea where they're going. They have no plan of how they get there. They have no intention of how they're going to feel for the day. And they don't know what it is that they're actually working towards. And when you don't know what it is that you're working towards or where you're going, it's really really hard to take action to get there and so they wake up they have little vision little plan trying to figure out what they're going to do for the day it's like getting into your car every single morning and going well i don't know where i should go but you know what i'm going to do i'm just going to turn my car and start driving around and i'm going to take random turns left and right and then left and right and then eight hours later you're pissed off because you're not where you want to be it's like well yeah no shit you're not where you want to be.

3:02You had no vision. You had no plan. You had no intention. Nothing. Of course, you aren't where you want to be because you don't even know where you want to be. And so, you know, the example I'm going to give you and then we're going to dive into the five different steps is this. It's basically like this. Most people live their lives and I lived my life more than half of my life this way is you basically get into a sailboat and you jump into the sailboat that's in the water and And then you just lay down and you let the tides take you where they're going to take you, let the winds take you where they're going to take you.

3:34And then you wake up one day, 10, 20 years down the road, and you're like, where the hell am I? I didn't want to be here. This isn't where I want to be. And then you're pissed off that you're not where you want to be. But you didn't do anything. Now, today, you, who you are, you're going to jump in to the sailboat. That is your life. And instead of letting the tides take you and the winds take you, you're going to take the steering wheel and you're going to go, I'm going to drive myself in the direction. that I want to go. Your brain is a goal-seeking machine. Without a target, it just burns fuel with nowhere to go.

4:06And so these are the five things that you have to have. The first thing is a vision. I feel like a broken record because I say it over and over and over and over again. And then I see people in person and they still can't answer the damn question. And the question is, what do you want? What do you want in your life? And you can ask yourself, what do I want in my life? And it can go very vague. And you can look at the broad scope of life. And then you can go deeper and say, what do I want in my relationships? What do I want in my finances? What do I want in my health? What do I want in my mindset?

4:45And you can get very clear on what it is that you want. I feel like I broke a record because I say it over and over and over again. And then I see people in person or I talk to them on Zoom and I'm like, what do you want? They're like, well, you know, like it would be nice if like I could kind of do some stuff. And it's like, there's no answer. And I'm like, no matter what you do, if you don't know what is that you want, you're never going to get it. And so you got to like think about this for a second. Where the hell are you going? What do you want with your life? Like, where do you want to be in 12 months?

5:13Where do you want to be in five years? Where do you want to be in 10 years? And you need to get so damn clear that you can create an elevator pitch for what you your vision in your life is. Like if you know what an elevator pitch is, it basically means if you're in an elevator with somebody and they ask you, what do you do for work? You can tell them in a very clear and succinct way. So they go, oh, okay, I get it. And that's the way that you pitch yourself to another person. That's your elevator pitch. So you need to have an elevator pitch, not for work, but for your vision of your life. So if someone says, what do you want in your life?

5:48You could tell them in one sentence what it is that you want in life and what your purposes. It needs to be that clear. And the reason why is because a study that was done by Locke and Latham on goal setting theory shows that having a clear specific goal leads to higher performance and more motivation. And without a vision, it's nearly impossible to direct your energy effectively. Vision gives your mind a reason to ignore distractions. Otherwise, you're just going to say yes to everything. Without it, it's just really easy to just get caught in all of the noise of life. If you don't know what it is that you want in life, you'll never be motivated to take action and you'll never actually get it.

6:28So that's the first thing. The second thing that you need to get really, really clear on is your schedule. The amount of times that I hear people say, I don't have enough time. No, 95 % of people are just terrible at scheduling their time. And there's a pretty good chance that you might be one of them. If If you're 19 out of those 20 people, you're probably not really that great with your schedule. So whenever someone says, I don't have enough time, the first thing I always tell them, show me your schedule. Oh, well, I don't really have a schedule. I'm like, okay, do you have a physical schedule?

7:03No. I kind of sometimes put on my phone and sometimes I just work off of memory. I'm like, you have to show me your schedule and you have to plan out your day. You have 24 hours a day. You will never get more than 20 hours a day. Okay, and you might have a full-time job. You might have kids. You might have all of that stuff. What I recommend is something that I was taught at 19 years old. So it's been over 20 years that I've been doing this. Get a physical planner that is every 15 minutes of your day and start planning out your day. And what you'll realize is that you probably, I can't say because I'm not in the car with you and I'm not in your life right now.

7:41You probably waste a lot more time than you need to. Look at your phone time, like your actual screen time on your phone. You spend four hours a day on your phone, two hours, three hours, five hours, six hours, you have enough time. It's just that you need to get better with your time. So what I recommend is getting a physical planner and then you get a old school pencil and you actually use it and you plan out every 15 minutes of your life. My planner goes from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. And I plan on every 15 minutes of my life every single day. And then what I do is this thing that's called look back, look forward.

8:14Look back, look forward is at the end of the week, usually on Sunday, you take 30 minutes and you look back on your last week and you say, what went well? What didn't go well? What do I need to stop doing? What do I need to start doing? What do I need to continue doing? And you basically take a few minutes just to figure out how last week went for you and what adjustments you need to make. And then you look forward. So look back and then you look forward. You look forward and you start to figure out how you can get more efficient with your day every single day for the next week. And then what you do is you take five minutes every single morning and you look at your schedule and you look at what you have going on and you can do this as something I recommend I did for years.

8:51Close your eyes and visualize your day and what it's going to look like and what you're going to do and all the actions you need to take for five minutes and then go take action on your day. There was a research that was done by Dr. Roy Balmeister that found out that willpower and decision fatigue demonstrates that managing your time wisely helps conserve your mental energy for important tasks. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. And so structure schedule actually reduces the mental load of constantly deciding what to do. And so when you actually have a schedule to follow, you have less decisions to make, which means that you don't have as much fatigue from having to make decisions throughout the day.

9:35You just go, what do I need to do today? I do this. And you just take action with those things are. That is one of the biggest reasons why you want to schedule out your day. So that's number two. Number three is that you probably don't have intention going into every single day. Do you wake up every single day with an intention of how you're going to be, who you're going to be, how you're going to act? And what you want to do and the way you want to think about intention is setting your internal GPS of what you're going to do, how you're going to feel, what you want to accomplish, what would make today an absolute success.

10:07Do you do that? Or do you just wake up and kind of do what's supposed to be done? Most people don't usually wake up and set their schedule and set their intention, which would be the equivalent of, hey, I'm going to actually be proactive with my life. Most people are just reactive in their life. Once again, it's like getting in your car, driving around and taking random turns for eight hours. Intention is about how you intend to show up. If you don't have intention, you will always default to old patterns, old habits, old thought processes, the things that you're trying to get rid of, you're going to default back to.

10:45That is why you need intention. So you got to think of who do I want to be? How do I want to act? What traits and qualities and characteristics do I want to embody today? You need to be able to say, this is how I will show up today and say it. I'm going to show up today. I'm going to follow through on everything that I say I'm going to do. I'm going to show up today with energy, with intention, and with kindness with every single meeting that I go into. Whatever it is for you. This is how I'm going to show up today. That is what I mean by the intention that you're going to be showing up with. So that's number three.

11:16Number four, action. The most consistent people are not born consistent. They build an environment where they are free from as many distractions that keep them away from taking action. So what you want to do is try to build an environment in your life that removes as many distractions as you possibly can. Your phone, your notifications, other people who are distracting. You have to figure out some sort of way to move in the right direction of what it is that you're trying to do. If you're trying to take action, you're not really doing it, get your physical body moving first. Emotion follows the body.

11:54When you don't feel good, when you feel unaccomplished, any of that, it's usually when you don't have a vision, you don't have a schedule, you don't have intention, and you haven't been moving in the right direction. So then you get caught in your emotions and you feel bad about yourself because you've been sitting on Instagram for 30 minutes and you haven't gotten anything done for the day. That's when you start to feel bad. And so your emotions will follow the body. If you've been sitting and you've been stagnant for a while, your emotions are probably going to equal that. So what do you need to do?

12:23I need to get up. I need to get my body moving. I need to 100 jumping jacks. I need to go for one mile run. Whatever it is that you need to do. Emotion follows the body. Get the body moving. Your motivation will follow your action. Most people think, oh, well, I need to get motivation and then I'll take action. No, no, no. You need to take action and then you will become motivated. It's a concept that's called behavior activation, which is used a lot of times in treating depression that shows taking action first, even in little teeny tiny small steps can change your mood and then release dopamine, release serotonin and increase your motivation.

13:00So it's all about just getting started. You have to give yourself a chance by just getting started. take the right step in the right direction, and your body will start releasing dopamine, which is the chemical of motivation. Your body will start releasing serotonin, which is the feel-good chemicals. So you have to stop waiting to feel ready because your feelings will catch up to your movement, not the other way around. So that's number four. And then number five, as you start to do this, set routines in your life. Do you have set routines in your life? And you don't have to have set routines, like morning routines, evening routines, any of that, but you need to have some sort of consistent daily action that you do over and over again that will start to turn into routines.

13:42It will start to turn into habits. Routines drive you. Routines create freedom in your life. If you're the type of person who loves freedom, your routines that you set now will create freedom in your life later on. There was actually a study that was done in 2007 by Wood and Neil that found that habits and routines reduce the need for conscious effort, which then makes it easier to stay consistent because your routines automate your success. And so you gotta look at that and say, okay, well, how can I take this action that I'm doing every single day and turn it into a routine so that it's something I only have to think about, I'm just automatic with it.

14:21So I want you to understand, you're not lazy, you're not unmotivated, you probably just don't have a vision of exactly where is it you're going. You probably don't have your schedule set up for it. You probably don't set your intention every single day. You probably don't have a plan of action. You probably don't have a set of routines that line up with that. So if you look at that, these are the five things that we need to work with because your laziness is not a character flaw. It's a system failure. All you have to do is fix the system. So if you're at home, if you're around your journal, if you have your phone next to you and you're not driving a car, Grab your journal, grab your phone, and then just write these questions down.

14:58These are the questions I want you to journal through today. Number one, where do I want to be in 12 months, five years, and in 10 years? Where do I want to be? Where do I want to be in 12 months, in five years, and 10 years? Number two, what is my daily schedule to start moving in that direction? And you actually figure out your schedule every single day. Number three, what intentions do I need to set daily? How do I want to show up? Who do I want to be? Number four, what actions do I need to accomplish today? And number five, what routines do I need to create in my life? This isn't rocket science.

15:34It's just figuring out where you want to go, creating a plan to get there, and then actually staying the course and getting it done. Because we're all going to be somewhere in 10 years. You and I, hopefully, will still be alive in 10 years. But the actions that you take from this day forward will decide where that is in 10 years. so you can either drift through life or you can design your life. Your future is going to be built either way. So I hope that you use this episode to take action in the direction of the future that you want, not the one that you're just going to get. So that's what I got for you for today's episode.

16:09If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories, tag me in at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you're out there and you want to learn more about coaching with me outside of this podcast, you can actually go to coachwithrob.com. Once again, coachwithrob.com. And with that, I'm gonna leave 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.