The Secret To Getting Better Every Day

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 if you're out there and you love this podcast, you'll also probably love my book that just came out last month. It is called Level Up, How to Get Focused, Stop Procrastinating and Upgrade Your Life. And it is the step-by-step process of understanding the psychology of how to take action to create the life that you want to. So it is the manual to understand your mind. There's a lot of neurology and psychology that is in it so that you can start taking action to create the life that you want.

0:41So once again, it's called Level Up and it is available wherever books are available. Today, we're going to be talking about the secret to getting better every single day. Your life is a journey. And hopefully, if you listen to this podcast, you've come to realize that you have decided, hopefully you've decided this at least, you have decided that you are going to take the path of self-improvement, self-development, and you're going to work on yourself every single day. Today, we're going to talk about that journey that you're on because hopefully you're on the journey to deciding you're going to be, you have decided you're going to be on this journey of taking action to become better every day because we're going to talk about that.

1:18And I don't see self-improvement as something that you do sometimes. I don't see it as like, oh, I read during the morning and I meditate during the morning, but then I leave my house and I'm an asshole. No, it's like I'm trying to constantly improve and use life as feedback, as a mirror all the time for where I need to improve, where I'm doing well, what I can get better at, all of that. I see it as a lifestyle, something that I literally do all of the time. The same way that if you're going to go and try to lose weight, you're going to have to, you could go on a diet if you want to for 90 days.

1:53But then if you go back to your old lifestyle, you're going to gain all the weight back. So in order to really make a change, it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle change. Self-improvement in your mind, in your success, in your bank account, in your relationships, in your joy, your happiness, your peace, all of that needs to become a lifestyle for you. And it's about becoming better every single day. Now, most people, they get on the path of self-development and then two months later, they're like, I'm not where I want to be. Okay, well, it's only been two months. You have to go on this journey and realize there's not going to be a huge difference in your life immediately.

2:30It's usually going to take years for things to be different. A year, two years, three years, five years. What it's about is becoming 1 % better every single day. My book was actually going to be called 1 % better every day before I changed it to level up. I just felt 1 % better every day was not as direct. It wasn't as short. It wasn't as sexy. Level up just sound a little bit sexier, but really what I think we need to be focusing on is being 1 % better every single day. And here's the reason why. Your current circumstances in your life are the lagging results of your habits, of your character traits, of your behaviors, all of the things that you did at one point in time in the past.

3:09So if you look at your life right now and you love your life, it's because you took actions to get you to where you are right now so that you would love this life. If you look at your life right now and you don't like your life, it's because you took actions, you took actions in the past to get you to where you currently are. And one of the first things that you have to do is stop blaming everybody else for your past and where you currently are. And you have to say, okay, I am where I am because of me, which means that if I want to be somewhere different later on down the road, a year, two years down the road, it's also comes down to me, Nobody else.

3:44And the thing about results is that the results of your life don't come right away. So where you are now is based off of what you did six months ago, what you did a year ago, two years ago. If you don't like where you are, you chose to be there. Maybe subconsciously you chose to be there and you weren't really being intentional, but you chose to be there in some sort of way based off of decisions that you made in the past, based off the decisions to take certain actions or not take certain actions in the past. And that's why trying to change can be really depressing is because your results don't come right away.

4:16You don't see results immediately. You know, you don't leave the gym and tomorrow have a six pack, right? You would never expect that to happen. That'd be ridiculous if you went to the gym for the first time today, woke up tomorrow and you're like, what the hell? I don't have a six pack. It's the same thing for your life. You're not immediately going to get results. Now, if you go to the gym, you could have a six pack in six months. You could have a six pack in a year. if you take the right actions, you could 100 % have a six pack in two years, but it's not going to happen immediately. It's the same thing with the rest of your life, with your business, with your relationships, is that the results don't come immediately.

4:51They usually come a few months down the road, six months down the road, a year down the road. And so what you have to realize is your habits come from the story that you're telling yourself about yourself.

5:09And so if you want to change your life, you have to really take a step back and ask yourself, what's the story that I'm telling myself about myself? What's the narrative that I say in my head all the time? What is the story stuck in my head? If it's something like, I am lazy, that's not going to help you create the life that you want. I procrastinate, that's not going to help you create the life that you want. Being overweight runs in my family, that's not going to help you create the body that you want. Oh, I prefer to sleep in every day. That's not going going to help you create the life that you want.

5:37Oh, I love too much. I love food too much to lose weight. That's not going to help you create the life that you want. It all comes back to your identity. What are you telling yourself about yourself? Because your actions are going to come from your identity. And so your actions and your habits will stem from what you believe about yourself. If you think that you're overweight because your entire family is, why would you ever work out? Why would you ever eat healthy? Because you're going to be overweight either way, Right? So you might as well not do those things. And so the first thing that we need to do if we want our life to change is we need to change the story that we tell ourself about ourself.

6:12You know, like there's, it's like the story. And I've said it many times in this podcast, but it's like the story of the two twins who have an alcoholic father. And later on down the road, they go to one of the twins who's an alcoholic and his life is in shambles. And they ask you, why are you an alcoholic? He says, I'm an alcoholic because my father was an alcoholic. So he decided to take the same route of his father. They go to the other twin who's a successful CEO of a company and they say, why are you not an alcoholic? And he says, I'm not an alcoholic because my father was an alcoholic. Those two children had the exact same life circumstances growing up, but what they decided was the story that they're going to tell themselves about their childhood, about who they are, who they're going to be.

6:50It's the exact same life, different story. So what's the story that you're telling yourself? If you want to change your behaviors, true behavior change is actually a change in your identity. This is something that people never really think about. True behavior change is identity changing. The thing of this is who I am will dictate what you do. Almost all of your actions will stem from what you think of yourself. There's proof of the decisions that you're making all around you. If you don't have the money that you want in your bank account, do you have a story in your head running of, oh, yeah, well, I'm terrible with money.

7:30Oh, I come from a part of town that nobody makes any money. My people don't make money. Is that what you're telling yourself? Well, your bank account is going to reflect that. Your bank account is the result of your spending habits. Your bank account is also the result of your earning habits. So what habits do you need to change? Your body is a result of your eating habits and your working out habits. Your business is a result of your hard work and dedication and work habits. So if you look at your, if you don't like your bank account, what are you telling yourself about your bank account and money?

8:06If you don't like your body, what are you telling yourself about your body? If you don't like your business and it's not where you want it to be, what are you telling yourself about your business? If you don't like your relationship with your spouse, what are you telling yourself and what are you telling yourself about your spouse? If you don't like your relationship with your children, what are you telling yourself about what type of parent you are? We're all telling ourselves a story in all these different categories of our life. And so if we're looking at a specific category of our life and we don't like where we are and we wish it were different, the first question to ask ourselves is, what am I telling myself about this thing?

8:39Because every action that you take is a vote for the person that you wish to become. One of my favorite quotes from James Clear is that every action that you take is a vote for the person that you wish to become. If you wake up early in the morning and you don't hit the snooze, you are taking the action. You're casting the vote to be the person who wakes up early in the morning, who has a morning routine, who wakes up and decides to pour into themselves before they pour into everybody else. If you decide, hey, you know what? I'm going to go ahead and hit the snooze button. Well, that is a vote for the type of person who sleeps in, who doesn't wake up, who doesn't do the morning routine.

9:15If you decide to go to the gym, that's a vote for a person who decides to put their physical fitness as a priority for them. If you decide to skip the gym, that is a vote for the type of person who ends up thinking that their physical fitness is not as important for them. If you decide that you're going to come home early from work so you can spend time with your children, that is a vote for you becoming a better parent. If you decide that you're going to work late when you were supposed to be home and maybe pick your children up at school, but you had your spouse pick them up instead, that is a vote for the type of parent who decides that they want to work instead of be around their children.

9:52And obviously there's variables in everything in life, but really you got to start asking yourself, if every action that I take is a vote for the person I wish to become, where are the majority of my votes going for? Like where are they going in my life? And the thing that I like about the way that James Clear puts it as well is in order to win an election, you don't need 100 % of the votes. You just need the majority. And so what you want to make sure is that the majority of your actions are going in the right direction because you'll never be perfect. You're going to screw up all of the time.

10:20But if you're in a really great workout routine and you're changing your lifestyle and maybe you did really good for 17 days in your eating habits, and then one day you have a moment of weakness, which happens to all of us, right? You have a moment of weakness. You end up eating a lot of candy or you end up chowing down on a pizza or whatever it might be. What most people do is then they guilt themselves. They shame themselves. They say, I'm not good enough. I knew I was going to fuck this up. And they get really down on themselves for that one moment of weakness versus the 17 days that you did really good.

10:55So you casted a vote for the person that you want to become 17 times to be a type of person who cares about their physical fitness, who wants to live longer, wants to be more mobile, who wants to be around for their children, their grandchildren, whatever it might be. And you casted one vote for the person who, you know, loves ice cream or the person who loves pizza, right? You're getting way more votes in the right direction, which is the important thing. But most of the time what we end up doing, we screw up, we guilt ourself, we shame ourself. I knew I couldn't do it. I knew I was a screw up.

11:25I knew this wasn't going to be good for me. I knew I wasn't gonna be able to do this like I wanted to, whatever it might be. And we just kick ourself in the ass. So really what it comes down to is, can we start to notice when we're taking the majority of our actions into the right direction? And it's little teeny tiny habits every single day. That's what really matters. When I say get 1 % better every single day, it's little teeny tiny habits that you don't recognize in the moment and you don't recognize tomorrow. But when you fast forward 10 years, life is completely different. You know, nobody dies from eating one hamburger.

11:57Nobody gets fit from doing one pushup. Nobody gets smarter from reading one book. It's tiny habits that you make throughout your lifetime that make you who you are. And when you fast forward, time is either your best friend or it is your worst enemy because it's showing you the decisions that you made in the past. It's showing you your identity. It's showing your decisions. It's showing your actions. It's showing you your habits. So you need to decide who are you? Not who have you been in the past, but who are you? Who do you decide to be from this moment forward? Are you the type of person who sleeps in?

12:31Or are you the type of person who ends up waking up early and doing your morning routine? Decide. Figure it out. And end up being that person. Are you the type of person who spends all of your money? Or you get really smart and you start to save your money? Decide. Stop messing around. Figure it out. Are you the type of person that puts your physical fitness as a priority in your life? Are you the type of person who decides that physical fitness isn't a priority for you? Decide. Stop just lollygagging around and be like, well, hopefully I do better. Because when we look at other people, when we look at somebody on Instagram who has the body that we want, we only see the end result, their success.

13:12we don't see all of the damn work that they put in over the past two three five seven 15 years and we're looking going well i want their body oh yeah well then put in the damn work and get their body and then we look at other people we're like well look at them they're flying first class so they have a nice car they have a nice house or they have a multi-million dollar business i want that well are you willing to put in the work because you're looking at the end result of all of their action for years and years and years and years and years and years. Are you willing to put in the work to get there?

13:45Because if you're willing to put in the work, you can get there. You can get the business that you want. You can get the body that you want. You can get the physical fitness. You can get the relationship that you want. You could be the type of parent that you want. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. When we start something brand new, we get excited. Oh, it's going to be great. And then two weeks in, we're like, why am I not at Maya 1000? Because you're only at step 14, dude. You got to give yourself a chance. These things take time. Great things take a long time. That's why the people say the phrase Rome wasn't built in a day.

14:17Because it takes time to build the body that you want, the relationship that you want, the business that you want, the finances that you want. And then we get sad and we get pissed off because I've been doing this for two weeks. Why am I not a millionaire yet? I've been working out for two weeks. Why do I not have the most perfect body ever? Why do I not look like a chiseled Roman statue after two weeks of working out? Because you're not there yet. You have to put in the work and you have to remember that every single day is a single step. You want to be at mile 1000, but you're only 14 steps in.

14:51You can't compare your chapter one as someone else's chapter 20. Comparing yourself to other people. I was on, you know, I teach coaches how to grow their coaching business and we've been doing it for four years. Now we have 1500 coaches that we've trained. And one of the ladies was asking yesterday, she was saying, I get really sad because I compare my content to other people's content on Instagram. And so I shared my screen with everybody who had like 60 people on the call and I shared my screen with everybody. And I said, okay, this is, this is what, what we tend to do. So I went onto my YouTube and I showed like, I have whatever, 250 ,000 followers on YouTube.

15:24And And all of this is shot in 4K. And we have three cameras running at one time and all of this stuff. I have a studio that I've built and all of this stuff because I've put eight years of work into it. And I said, this is what most people are comparing themselves to, which is something like this, which something I've been doing for eight years. But I went back to my very first YouTube video of me talking about something with personal development that was seven years ago, almost eight years ago. It's about next month. It'll be eight years. And it was shit. it was shot from my phone it was shot with terrible lighting it was you know the intro was terrible everything was terrible about it and I said the problem is is that most of you guys are comparing yourself to someone like me now today with 1400 podcast episodes in tons and tons and tons of videos and content I've been creating over the past eight years and 4k cameras and all that stuff don't compare yourself to me now compare yourself to Rob in 2016 that's what I want you to compare yourself with.

16:22These are two different people. I might have the same name, but I'm not the same fucking person that I was. And so don't compare yourself to me now. Compare yourself to me then. Okay. That video only had 700 views in eight years. It got 756 views. Clearly it wasn't that good. It's still up there. If you want to go back and look at it, anybody can look at it. If you really want to. So what happens is we compare ourselves to somebody. We compare our chapter one to somebody else's chapter 20. You can't compare yourself to someone else's chapter or 20. So who do you want to be in 10 years? What do you want your life to look like?

16:57You know, I had a lady come up to me, just going back to what I saw my second ago, I had her come up to me at an event like eight months ago. And she said, Hey Rob, you know, I've, I followed your podcast for a while. I know you're one of the top 100 podcasts in the world. And I want to know how can I get to be one of the top 100 podcasts in the world? And I looked her dead in the eye and I said, do 1400 episodes over the next eight years. And in eight years, there's a pretty good chance that you might be one of the top 100 podcasts. And she was like, yeah, but what's the secret hack? I was like, there's not.

17:24There is no secret hack. Work is the hack because as you do it, you realize what works, what doesn't, what you like, what you don't like, but you improve. But you've got to put in the work. Everybody wants the tips and tricks. Hey, how can I get, what pill can I take to lose 75 pounds? It doesn't exist. Work is the only thing that exists. So who do you want to be in 10 years? And do your actions, do your current actions line up with that life? Do your current actions line up with the person that you need to be? Do your current actions look like the habits and actions of the person that you need to become?

17:56Because it's never really what you need to do. It's who you need to become. And when you become that person, you automatically do the things that you need to do. You stop focusing on instant gratification. You realize that delayed gratification is what you should be working for. And it's a lot less changes than you really realize. It's just a couple small habits that you need to do for a really long time. Maybe five or ten. It's not 50 or 100 habits. It's like you got to wake up earlier. You got to have a morning routine. You got to meditate. You got to read. You got to eat healthy. You got to stop procrastinating.

18:25You got to stop making excuses. You got to take full ownership of your life. You've got to work out three to four times a week. You've got to stop watching TV and the news. It's not about being a completely different person tomorrow than you are today. It's about being 1 % better tomorrow than you were today. And that over time, over years, adds it up. So you've got to decide who you want to be in this journey. What game are you going to play? Is this a hobby or is this a lifestyle? Are you going to dedicate your life to being better, the best version of yourself? Or is this just something that you're trying out for a little while?

18:59When you change and when you decide to change is where you're going to find the most resistance. So what you should do is identify three or five small habits that you need to change. And then identify them and start putting them into your day and start becoming that person. And you're not going to be better tomorrow, but you'll be a little teeny tiny bit better. you're not going to be a completely different person, but you'll be a little bit better. Start focusing on just becoming a little bit better every single day. Fast forward years from now, you'll be a completely different person, a completely different life, and you'll be excited that you took the actions that you needed to do to change your life.

19:30So 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 at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. 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. Thank you.