Reprogram Your Identity

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 podcast episode. And if you're out there and you want to sign up for my brand new Mindset newsletter, all you have to do is go to mindsetemail.com. Once again, mindsetemail.com. And I send out newsletters a couple times a week just how to improve yourself, how to improve your mindset so that you can grow and get better, even when you're not listening to this podcast, but maybe just scrolling through your email. So once again, mindsetemail.com.

0:37Today, we're going to be talking about how to change and reprogram your identity and your personality. When you look at your identity and who you think you are, not who you are, but who you think you are, you think that you are a person that you are not. Now, that might sound kind of crazy, but your personality and your identity are not real. They are not set in stone. They are made up by you and your perception of yourself, your perception of yourself through other people, by other things that you've done. And when you look at the word, I've said this hundreds of times in the podcast over the past nine years now, the word personality, the root word in Greek is the word for mask.

1:21And it was the mask, it was persona. And the mask was the mask that they would wear in the Greek theaters whenever they were in theater playing a character. And so personality, the root word for it is persona, which means the character you're basically playing. And so the other example I like to give people is it's kind of like the shirt that you're wearing. It's like somebody gave you a dirty t-shirt when you were a child by telling you this is who you are, this is how you are, whatever it might be. And you put on that t-shirt, not knowing what your life is or who you are. And you said, oh my gosh, I guess this is who I am.

1:58and you need to learn to take your shirt off. You need to go topless for a little while. We all need to go topless. And let me explain what I mean. I've told this story before, but it kind of all clicked for me at this moment in time. Probably about four or five years ago, I was in my condo in downtown Austin with my girlfriend at the time, my wife now, and we were watching Queer Eye. And there was this lady and she was like 30 something years old. And they had done the full makeover and they had fixed up her house and they put makeup on her and they gave her a haircut and they give her a new wardrobe and everything.

2:31And they were having a conversation with her. And she said something along the lines of like, yeah, but I'm still ugly. And so I started talking to her and they're like, Hey, you know, like, what, where did you like, why are you so set on being so ugly? Like, why won't you even let yourself see your beauty? And she's like, it's just because I'm ugly. And they're like, who told you that? And she ended up saying that her aunt, when she was like six years old told her she was ugly. And she thought that she was ugly when she was younger, because somebody told her that she was ugly, a person that's older and quote unquote smarter.

3:02And so children just kind of sometimes take advice from older people. And I was like, and she, she's been carrying it with her for the past like 30 years. And I remember turning to my wife and I was in the kitchen at the time I was listening to. I was like, that's crazy. And she's like, what? I was like, it's basically like her aunt gave her a dirty t-shirt and said, wear this t-shirt. And that dirty t-shirt said, I'm ugly. And she got it at six years old. She's like 35 years old now. And she hasn't even looked down and realized that she's wearing somebody else's shirt. She's wearing somebody else's belief.

3:38She's wearing somebody else's words. And for the past 29 years, her life has been what she's thought of herself her identity and her personality has been built around ugly an ugly child when in reality she never looked down and said whose shirt is this like do i do i want to continue to wear this shirt and for a lot of us that are out there this is one of just so you know this is one of my favorite subjects to talk about because i think if people can learn really learn like deep in their cells and deep in their bones that their personality and their identity is a bunch of bullshit and it's not real and it never has been real and they weren't born that way but it is something that was placed upon them by somebody else or it's something that we created within ourselves based off of the way we see the world around us and based off the way that we see and perceive other people interacting with us.

4:29You know someone in your childhood could have said something to you and said hey this is your shirt and you've been wearing it ever since. And it doesn't fit anymore and it's dirty and it's torn. But every day we unconsciously wake up and we put on this dirty t-shirt that is not us, that was given to us by someone else. And we can just decide to unconsciously keep putting this t-shirt on or we can wake up and we can say to ourselves, I am going to be somebody different. I am not whatever I've built myself into be. I'm going to be who I want to build myself into being from this moment forward. And so think about that for a second.

5:08What shirt are you wearing? Are you wearing the I'm not good enough shirt? I'm not smart enough. I'm ugly. I'll always be overweight. I'm going to be poor forever. I'm not going to be a great parent. Money's hard to come by. What shirt, what belief, what systems are built into your head that were built by somebody else most likely? And by wearing that shirt, you're creating a reality for people to treat you a different way. It's like the phrase, and I love this phrase, if you wake up in the morning and you go out into the world and you meet an asshole, you just met an asshole. But if you wake up in the morning and all you do is meet assholes, well, then you're the asshole.

5:51What does that mean? It means if you are an asshole and you go out into the world, you're going to change people around you to then treat you badly because you're treating them badly. So we change the way that people interact with us. But if we wake up and we say, I'm not going to be this shy, I'm not good enough, I'm stupid. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to try on the t-shirt today of I'm confident. I know what the fuck I'm doing. I'm awesome. And I'm amazing. And if you walk into the world and you were the shy, quiet, not good enough, and you were interacting with people that way, and you go into the world and you're completely different, people will change.

6:29I'm telling you, people will change the way that they interact with you when you change who you are and who you believe your identity is. You know, if you grew up, like, have you ever seen this before? Have you ever seen somebody that is like, for instance, like a beautiful woman, right? She's grown up and she's this beautiful person, but she might have been like, maybe she like peaked really late in life. She was like a little ugly kid, whatever it might be. And she was like the ugly kid. she was made fun of in school. She could be 30 years old and incredibly beautiful, but because the fact that she was made fun of and she was called ugly when she was younger, she still thinks that she is, and she won't even allow herself to see her beauty.

7:13And so she can walk into the world. This is an example. You probably know people like this, or you've seen people like this before. She can walk into the world and people will treat her differently because of the lack of confidence. People will treat her differently and interact with her differently because of her, the way that she views herself, which then reinforces the identity that she has of herself. We will always see what we're looking for. And by the way that we interact with other people, it will always reflect back to us what we think of ourselves, what we think of the world, everything.

7:45And then so no matter how great somebody could look, they could carry themselves with not confident. And people reflect and treat them differently because of that, right? So that happens, I've seen many times before, right? And like, if you're wearing the overweight shirt, right? Oh, if I'm wearing the overweight shirt, I was a fat kid when I was growing up and I was made fun of for being the fat kid and I'll always be the fat kid. And that's just the way that I am. I have a good friend who struggles with weight loss and it goes up and down and up and down and up and down. We've had deep conversation about this before, specifically because he was always made fun of for being the fat kid and he still has that shirt being worn in his head and he because of that he has these decisions that he makes where he will do really good in his diet and his workout for like two weeks and then he just goes off the rails because it doesn't line up with the identity that he has of himself and he hasn't gone through the process of actually trying to change his identity and wake up in the morning and and specifically meditate and set his gps for who he wants to be today the fit person, the person who's working on himself, the person who's working on being healthy, that's no longer the fat kid, whatever it might be, right?

8:54And so if you're sitting there like, oh, like I've been overweight my entire life. Well, if you think that you're always going to be overweight and you've been overweight your entire life, well, then there's not really any reason for me to eat healthy because I'll always be this way. No, it's just, it's in my genes. My mom's overweight, my dad's overweight, my grandparents, right? I never worked out before, but why start? It doesn't matter. There's no point in working out because I'm always going to be this way. And so what happens is our actions reflect our identity of ourself. Our actions reflect our identity of ourself.

9:23If, oh, I'm poor, right? Like I was raised pretty poor. We didn't have any money at all. So if I continue to wear that shirt, why would I ever work hard to try to get what I want? Because I'll always be poor anyways. So it's easier not to work hard than to work hard. You know, this is one of the reasons why poverty is so hard to get out of is because it's, it's kind of, and I had a, I have a friend, Garen, uh, Garen Jones, and he's, he, uh, is incredible. Like he's incredibly successful now. And he was raised really poor and in a bad part of Houston and, you know, has a crazy life story. You can go back and it was on my podcast a few years ago, incredible life story, like nuts.

10:03Right. And, um, and he said growing up in poverty and then wanting to become rich is like trying to learn a new language. Like it's, it's, it's a completely different language. And so he had to start to learn that language. And so, you know, if you're around a bunch of people who are in poverty and you were raised that way, well, it might be hard for you to start to understand how to be wealthy, but it doesn't mean it's something that you can't learn. It's like learning a new language. There's just some differences that you have to figure out. So if you're wearing that shirt, I don't want to wear that poor shirt anymore.

10:33What's the shirt that you could wear? Maybe you're wearing like, I'm the not good math shirt. I'm stupid shirt, right? I could wear the I'm a son of an alcoholic shirt. You know, and I love the story of the two twin boys and they're born to a son of an alcoholic father. They fast forward 30 years and one of the twins is an alcoholic. And the other one is a successful business owner. And they walk up to the alcoholic son and they say, hey, why are you an alcoholic? And he says, I'm an alcoholic because my father was an alcoholic. And then they walk up to the successful one and they say, why are you not an alcoholic?

11:10And he says, I'm not an alcoholic because my father was an alcoholic. So it's all about how we view the world and how we view ourselves. None of the identities and none of the personalities that we've built ourselves are true. But if you wake up every single day and you put that shirt on, we've unconsciously put that shirt on every single day. Now I'm trying to make you more conscious of waking up and putting on the, I'm ugly, I'm poor, I'm stupid, I'll never be good enough, I'll never be loved, whatever your shirt might be, what if for just one day, just one day, you just tried on a different t-shirt?

11:47What if you stopped wearing that shirt that's not your size anymore, that's dirty, that's ripped, that doesn't look good on you? You got a little bit of a gut hanging out of that shirt because it's too small, right? You look like Winnie the Pooh. What just for, if one day you just said, you know what, I'm going to try to be as conscious as possible. I'm going to put on a new shirt, and I'm going to try to be as conscious as possible to be somebody else. Just see what happens. You know, if you look at it, if you're wearing the ugly shirt, what if you wore just for today, I love myself, and I'm beautiful shirt, and people think I'm beautiful.

12:28How do you think that maybe your external world would change if you are the one that changes in that way? Because we all know someone who might be like, we all know somebody who's not the best looking, but they just have confidence and that confidence makes them better looking. It makes them more attractive, right? What if you tried on that shirt? What if you were wearing the overweight shirt or the fat kid shirt or whatever shirt you've been wearing and you wear the shirt of healthy and I'm going to lose weight. I'm healthy and I'm losing weight. It might be harder. You know, I'm not saying that every person, it's easy for every single person to lose weight.

13:04It's going to be harder for some people to lose weight than other people. Everybody has different body types, but it's not impossible to get into the shape that you want. So what if it was the, I am going from the overweight shirt or I'm fat shirt, whatever it might be to, I am healthy and I'm working on myself and I'm going to lose weight. And I am going to walk into this world as somebody who is like that. And this is one of the reasons why people lose weight and they gain it back is because it doesn't line up with their identity. And so they can lose 50 pounds, but they still have that identity of being the overweight kid.

13:37And so that goes back eventually. It's why people win the lottery and then blow all the money because they didn't know how to make the money in the first place. So they blow it because it gets them back to where they were. They never actually take off the shirt that they've been wearing their entire life. They don't know that there is a deep identity, a deep personality that is below all of this. It is in our subconscious mind that we actually need to rework and change. You know, the poor shirt, the ugly shirt, the overweight shirt, the not good at math shirt, the alcoholism rubs in my family shirt.

14:10You know, it's interesting. There's a book I read years ago. It's called Psycho-Cybernetics. It's probably from like the 50s, 60s. And it's about this guy who is a surgeon. and he said it was really interesting to see how people would get surgery and it could be something small like like removing a mole from their face and they would come back a couple weeks after getting it done and some people were the exact same person and some people were just a completely different person like they thought that mole was the thing that made them ugly and they come back they were they have they're no they're not confident with the mole they think they're ugly they get the mole removed as if it's just magic surgery and they come back and they're confident and they're holding himself differently and they're dressed differently just because that not because of reality not because the mole all of the problems were in the mole but because of fact that their perception of themselves changed and when their perceptions of themselves changed how they interacted with the world around them changed as well and he realized that the as he's you know a surgeon realizes that the surgery wasn't actually even necessary what was necessary is the way that they view themselves.

15:16And so I want you to think about this. What shirt have you been wearing since your childhood? What identity, what personality, what belief system have you been wearing since you were a child and you need to take off? Like what shirt do you want to put on? And what's the strategy to wake up in the morning? Is it to wake up in the morning and to brush your teeth and then right after brushing your teeth, you repeat a mantra to yourself 20 times while looking at yourself in the mirror? Is it sitting down and meditating? And repeating that mantra is going for a run. And in that 10-minute run, all you're doing is just repeating to yourself over and over and over again the thing that you want to believe about yourself, right?

15:55Now, understand this won't change in one day. If you're 35 years old, you have 35 years of programming, right? So it's a complete reprogramming. It won't change in one day, but it's about waking up and saying, I don't want to believe what I have been believing. I'm ready to change my identity. I'm ready to change myself. I'm ready to change my personality and I am going to brainwash myself into being the person that I want to be. What is it? Start to figure it out. Start to journal through it. Start to become more of that person. Now, for those of you guys that are parents, think about this for a second.

16:31Not trying to get you mad or screwed up, right? What shirt are you making your children wear? What are you saying to your children that is making them think that they're a certain way? What shirt are you making those around you wear? Your employees, your husband, your wife, your parents. Because what you say to people about them, a lot of times people will take in. And so if you're trying to help people around you, be very aware of how you are changing people's identity around you as well. How you are either helping them change into the identity that they want, or you're helping reinforce an identity that might not be an identity for them.

17:07that might not be an identity that's helping them in their greatest purpose that they can step into. And really what it comes down to, you know, Buddha has a quote that says, just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again. So what skin, what shirt, what personality, what identity, what belief systems do you need to shed? Think about that, journal through it, and start to step into being the person that you want to be. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories. Tag me at Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R.

17:41The only way this podcast grows, honestly, is from you guys actually sharing it. And so if you love this podcast, if you love this episode, any of the things that we put out there, please do me a huge favor. Please share it so that more people can find it. We can impact more people in the world. If you would do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. 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.