The Secret To Becoming Mentally Strong

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 you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you live in the United States or Canada and you want to receive inspirational text messages from me, text me right now. 1-512-580-9305. Once again, 1-512-580-9305. Today, I am going to give you the secret to becoming much more mentally strong than you are right now. And we're going to talk about how to grow yourself physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, to become a better person.

0:47And I want to talk to you today about how to really grow yourself in a, like substantially in a very short period of time. I'm going to talk to you about the idea of suffering and how suffering can actually help you get better. It is necessary to get what it is that you want in life. And what I'm going to be talking to you about is a concept that is called applied suffering. So the way you can look at it is like there's always pain in the world. And pain is like something happens and whatever it is that happens, you have to go through. So if somebody dies, that's pain. You get hurt, that's pain.

1:27Suffering is what you put yourself through. And so if somebody dies, yeah, that's painful. The suffering is when it's four years down the road and you still just are, you know, sitting there and beating yourself up of like, I should have done this. I should have done that. Why was it? You're suffering about something that happened four years ago. Sure, you can miss somebody, but you're suffering. But can you take suffering and use it as a way to grow? And you can. That's called applied suffering. Applied suffering is actively putting yourself in situations where pain, discomfort, or hardship is intentionally used as basically a means to grow yourself.

2:07It could be for growth. It could be resilience. It could be deeper understanding of yourself, whatever it might be. And so it's about us developing this mindset of if I'm going to get better, sure, it can be easy. It could be effortless, but also if I can use the other side of it, which is I am going to make myself suffer and I'm going to use suffering as a way to get better. Now, when we hear the word suffering, I already know some of you are like, I don't want to do that shit because suffering has a really bad connotation to it. Nobody wants to suffer, right? Nobody wants to suffer. The pain versus suffering, like I was talking about a minute ago, pain is inevitable.

2:46You're going to have pain in your life. Suffering is optional. And, you know, you can have something happen to you and it can be really suffering. Like you can have that suffering for years, like I was talking about with somebody dying. Or you can say, you know what? The universe is going to put me through circumstances to have me grow and improve. I can also just go out and seek ways for me to grow and improve. And that's what we're going to talk about today is actually how to use suffering to grow, to become better. And I want you to understand this. Let's talk about pain real quick again before we dive into the suffering side, right?

3:23Pain is the stimulus for your brain or your body to make change. So that's the simplest way you can break it down. Pain is your brain and body going, hey, something's got to change. So I'll give you an example, right? If you are cooking something on the stove and you accidentally put your hand on the hot stove and you feel that pain, that is your brain and body saying, do something different. Change, right? If you're going and walking on a hot concrete, let's say you're coming from the beach and you didn't put your shoes on, you're walking through the hot asphalt and your feet start burning, that is your brain and body saying, hey, do something different.

3:59Change what you're doing. If you are working out and you feel pain of working out, that is your body saying, hey, do something different. And it could be like the pain of like the muscle, right? Which is fine. But it could be like you tweak something and it just like the other day I literally tweaked and it felt like a stabbing pain in my shoulder when I was working out. And I was like, oh, yeah, I did something wrong. I'm going to stop using the left shoulder as much as I can. And so it's forcing you. Pain forces you to change. Pain forces you to take action. Okay, good to know. Now, I believe, if you want to go on this journey with me, I believe that the universe will give you pain throughout your lifetime if you are on the wrong path.

4:46If you're on the wrong path, the universe will come to you, and it will, universe, God, life, whatever it is that you want to call it, will come to you and be like, you know, it'll start to be a little bit of pain. It's kind of like I would say the universe speaks to you in a whisper, and then if you don't listen for a long enough time, then it's going to hit you with a brick, And then if you don't listen for a long enough time, it's going to run you over with a truck. And so it's like an example would be, you know, I'm eating really terribly. I'm eating terrible. I'm eating terrible. I'm eating terrible.

5:15And I get this thought in my head of like, hey, maybe I should take better care of myself. Yeah, maybe I should take better care of myself. And that's like the whisper that comes in. And then, you know, there's the brick that comes in. And it's like, I'm eating terribly. I'm eating terribly. And I'm gaining so much weight that my knees start to hurt. and now I have knee issues. Okay, that's kind of like the brick. Oh my gosh, I tore my ACL from something that I just did because I weigh too much and I tore my ACL. Okay, that's the universe hitting me with a brick. And then I keep going down this road and I don't listen, I don't listen, I don't listen.

5:47And then I have a heart attack. That is the universe hitting me with a fucking truck saying, are you going to listen to me? And so pain is just stimulus to take a different action. Easy to think about, right? If you think about how a muscle grows, a muscle has to go through pain in order to grow. Easy enough to know. A plant, you know, if you think about how a plant grows, a plant isn't just like this beautiful thing that grows out of the ground. It can be, but there's a lot of like, there's a lot of, a lot of breaking and stress and all of this that has to go. It's a lot of force that has to go in order for a seed to break open for the plant to start coming out and then the plant has to then force its way out of the ground and force its way down through the ground for its roots, it's not just like this beautiful thing that happens.

6:37It's something where there's a lot of actual force that has to go into it. Same thing with like a lobster. If you look at like how a lobster grows, most people think that a lobster, if you've ever held one, is like this hard animal. And it's not. It's a really soft animal that lives inside of a hard shell. And when it's starting to grow, the actual exoskeleton doesn't ever grow. And so what it does is it goes under rocks and it breaks through its exoskeleton and it completely gets its exoskeleton off, grows another one that is larger, and then regrows into that. And a lobster never stops growing over the course of its entire life.

7:14And so the reason why I say this is because the stimulus for the lobster's growth to break out of its shell is a lot of pain because it doesn't fit anymore. So it's got to actually break itself open in order to grow. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. So that's what I mean by pain is a really good thing for you to listen to, for you to be there. Okay. Do you ever speak it to me in a whisper? Do you ever speak it to me? Like, you know, it's like another example would be maybe if you don't want to use the heart attack as an example, maybe the whisper is, you know what? Like I really am not enjoying my job anymore.

7:50Maybe I should look for other jobs. And then you're not listening for a while, you're not listening for a while, and then the slap might come, hitting you with a brick, and it might be you have terrible sales performance because you don't enjoy your job, and then you get put on a performance enhancement plan, and you're like, oh man, that's a lot, and then you do a little bit better, and then you do a little bit worse again, you do a little better, and then it gets to the point where your boss just fires you, and now you have no way to pay your mortgage. Okay, well, that's getting hit by a truck, right?

8:21It's like the universe speaks to you all of these ways through different painful ways. You just gotta be listening. So here's the problem though, when you look at pain and you look at discomfort, people fear discomfort. People want to be in their comfort zone. They want to avoid it at all costs, to do anything to avoid discomfort. The word discomfort implies that it is the opposite of your comfort zone, which is where most people want to stay and most people want to die. But if you listen to this podcast, that's not what you want. I already know that, right? You know you need to get out of your comfort zone in order to get the life that you want.

8:54Because you've looked at yourself, whether it's consciously sitting down and thinking about it or subconsciously, it's looming in the back of your head. You've started to think to yourself already, if I stay where I am for the rest of my life, I am going to hate my life in 10 years, 20 years, 40 years. And do this real quick. Just do this. Look around you. at your entire life and realize what if life never got better? Would you be okay with that? What if you never got more? What if you never had more fun or more travel or more love or more money in your bank account and you just stayed in that comfort zone until the day you died?

9:31Would you feel like you had a great life? Would you feel like you fulfilled your potential? If you do, hey, turn off this podcast. I think you're good to go. You don't need this anymore. If you don't, well, then now we've got to start testing the edge of our comfort zones because most people stay in their comfort zones. They do. Why? Because it's safe to stay in your comfort zone. Your brain thinks that getting outside of your comfort zone is not safe. And your comfort zone, just so you know, is where your dreams go to die. And so if you want to get better, if you want your life to be better, discomfort actually needs to be your best friend.

10:04You need to seek discomfort. You need to actually go on a mission to be more uncomfortable. When you look at your body. In order to get the body that you want, you have to be uncomfortable. Working out is not comfortable. You have to sweat. You have to hurt. You have to be sore. But your body grows. You have to put yourself sometimes through so much stress that you just go so hard that you throw up, right? Oh, God, none of that is fun. It doesn't feel comfortable to do any of that. But your body grows. You get more muscle. You get less fat. You start to be more confident. You start to like the way that you look.

10:39You feel more accomplished. You have more confidence because you showed up and you worked out when you didn't want to work out. Your brain and your mindset work the exact same way. There's this psychological concept that's called neuroplasticity. And neuroplasticity, when you look at it in neurology, means basically, the simplest way is your brain's ability to change. So your brain, until the day you die, has abilities to change. And I wrote about this extensively. I have an entire chapter of this in my book, Level Up, where when you decide to do something and you do it and you do it and you do it, your brain is forced to change.

11:17It is forced to change. Like if you look at people who have to be, one thing I wrote about in my book is the London taxi cab drivers. In order to become a London taxi cab driver, you have to memorize the entire map of London. Memorize it in your head. And they did studies on these people's brains before they became taxi cab drivers. And they looked at them and where they were. And then they looked at them six years, I think it was, down the road. And the spatial awareness and mapping part of their brain in all of them, six years later, grew. That's crazy. That means that they changed their brain simply because they started memorizing the London map.

11:54But neuroplasticity only happens when you do something that is not comfortable for you, something that pushes you, something that is typically outside of what you do. So you have to seek this discomfort. Oh my gosh, do you think that it's easy to sit down and memorize the entire map of London? Oh my God, I bet it's hell. But these people's brains change in order for them to be able to memorize it. Your brain has the ability to change. If you want to get better at math, you can do it. If you want to get better at piano, you can do it. If you want to become better at thinking logically, you can do it.

12:27If you want to be more empathetic, you can do it. All of these things are possible. You just have to decide what you want and you have to push yourself to get it. And so ways that you can kind of seek discomfort and you can use applied suffering. The first one that's the easiest for us to think of because it's physical and we can see it is like physical training and exercise. There is – do not discount how much better your brain works, how much more emotionally secure you feel when you push yourself at the gym. It's not like, oh, hey, working out is just going to help you out. It's like there's actual studies that show that physical training that exercise make your brain and your emotions better.

13:08And so how can you push yourself physically in order to have that expand who you are and become better? So that's the first thing that I think about, which is very obvious for everybody. The second thing I think about is like mental toughness. Identify something that you don't want to do and do it every single day, whatever it might be. It might be, okay, you know what? I don't want to go for a run today. Whatever my brain says I don't want to do, I'm going to do. I'm going to develop the mental toughness of doing it. I'm going to develop the mental toughness, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to jump inside of the cold plunge today.

13:41So I went for a run yesterday. I'm going to do the cold plunge. The cold plunge, the reason why I love cold plunges, and I've been like really hardcore on cold plunges for about nine years now, and I love that it's really starting to catch up to people, is sure, it's got physical benefits, but more than anything else, I just really care about the mental benefits of it. Because when you're about to hop in like 35, 40 degree water, the part of your brain that tries to talk you out of everything comes online and it tries to talk you out of it. And it, no matter how many times I've done cold plunges hundreds and hundreds of times, it still happens exactly the same.

14:16It wants me to delay. It doesn't want me to do it. It wants me to delay. It doesn't want me to do it. And I have to go, you know what? I'm not going to listen to you. I'm going to build the muscle of not listening to the inner bitch. And I'm going to do what is outside of my comfort zone and what my little inner voice doesn't want me to do that's been holding me back. Because that little voice is the thing that's holding you back from everything that you want in this world, right? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get inside of the cold plunge. And then you get in the cold plunge and the first 45 seconds your little inner voice is going, get out, get out, get out, get out, get out.

14:46You've done enough. Okay, you did it. Get out. You just got to stay in. Nope, I'm not going to listen to you. I'm the one that's in control. I'm not going to listen to you. I'm the one that's in control. And so how can you start to seek discomfort with your mental toughness? That's something to think about, right? How can you start to seek discomfort with your spiritual growth? So with a lot of people, and I get messages all the time of people who struggle with meditating. Okay, well, if you struggle with five minutes of meditation and you want to get better at your spiritual growth and becoming more calm, well, then what I would recommend is doing an hour of meditation.

15:18You will fight yourself the entire time. But as you start doing it more and more and more, you start getting better. And so for some of you guys that struggle with five minutes, maybe you're not going to jump immediately to an hour. Can you do 15? Can you do 30? Try it out. I used to start at five minutes when I first started meditating back in 2009. Now I'll usually do about 30 to 45 minutes every single morning. I went to a 10-day silent meditation retreat. We were doing it like 8 to 10 hours a day. That was extremely discomforting. That was hard, super hard. But it was amazing to go through.

15:56And so that was my example of like, I'm going to push myself spiritually because this is way outside of my comfort zone. To do 10-day silent meditation retreat, I can't talk for 10 days. I can't look people in the eyes. I can't journal. I can't do yoga. I can't do anything else. I can't stretch. The only thing that you could do is you could either be meditating or you could go outside and stare at a tree if you wanted to. That was immense amounts of discomfort for me in order to try to grow spiritually. What else can you grow? You can grow. So we went physical. We went mental. We went spiritually.

16:29What about emotionally, right? What if you decide that I'm going to start going to therapy? I'm going to start learning myself more. I'm going to get a coach, whatever it is that you want. You know what? I want to get really good. I need to get better at connecting with people of the opposite sex. And, you know, the first one I'm going to work with is my, because, you know, maybe you have a disconnection from your father. You've never really felt really connected to your father. And so now you don't really feel as connected as you want to be with your husband. Okay. Maybe you get to the husband.

16:55You're like, Hey, honey, listen, I don't think there's anything wrong with our relationship, but I do think it could be better. What do you think about us going and doing couples therapy? Oh yeah. That'll change you emotionally. I promise you that you're going to learn stuff about them. You're going to learn stuff about yourself. You're going to learn stuff about how to connect. I've gone to a couples therapist before. One of my friends, a couples therapist and I did not know so much about myself before I went to couples therapist years ago. It's like eight years ago now. And he said things that I never knew about myself.

17:25And I was like, oh my God, this makes so much sense as to why I've screwed relationships up in the past. And so these things, none of them are comfortable. Going and working out really hard, not comfortable. Putting yourself into cold exposure, not comfortable. Meditating longer than you're comfortable with, Not comfortable. Going to therapy? Not comfortable. Going to couples therapy? Not comfortable. But then I want you to think about this. Are any of them going to kill you? No. Are they going to help you grow? Yes. Will you be absolutely safe? You will. Don't worry, honey. You're going to be great.

18:01You're going to be safe. You're not going to die from meditating for longer. You're not going to die by doing cold exposure. You're not going to... Now, don't go jump into an ice bath and then stay there for two hours. That's the first thing I'll say. That's the only thing you could die on is hypothermia if you want to stay in for longer. So don't listen to me on that one. Do whatever you want with the cold exposure. Are you going to die from going and working out? Absolutely not. Are you safe? Yes. Then go full force. Start pushing the boundaries of what you know what you can do. And here's something that I want you to do.

18:32And this is one of my favorite assignments to give people. And especially because of the fact that I always get tagged on Instagram. when I do this, okay? I want you to do something completely, incredibly uncomfortable today. I want you to go next time you're in a checkout line, next time you're at a coffee shop, you're in Walmart, wherever you are. I want you to go and I want you to lay down on the floor for two minutes. I know, it sounds weird as hell, doesn't it? But it's so fun to watch people do this. I remember the last time I said this on a podcast episode, I got tagged in so many videos of like people laying down in Starbucks.

19:09I had a lady that tagged me and she had laid down in Walmart and one of the employees came up to her and they're like, ma 'am, are you okay? And she's like, yeah. And she goes, okay. And just walked away. Like, think about that. Are you going to die from laying down in a coffee shop? No. Are you gonna be like, oh my God, germs. Yeah. Are you going to die from the germs? No. Right. But it's something that you're so uncomfortable with. It seems so silly, but why not do it? Why are people afraid of doing it? Why don't we just get more used to being uncomfortable, to seeking discomfort, for actually going out there and trying to use applied suffering as a way to grow so that we don't stay in this box that we've been in for our entire lives so that we can start to push the boundaries of who we are.

19:49And so using applied suffering is the secret to helping you become mentally strong. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please 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. And so if you would share it, you would help the podcast immensely. I want to continue to keep impacting people's lives, keep helping people. And when you guys share it, we grow through grassroots, which is the only way this grows. So if you've ever gotten anything from anything that I've ever said, please do me a favor, share this on your stories.

20:22And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day