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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome 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. If you're out there and you love this podcast, you'll probably love the live event that I'm doing later on this year.
If you want to join the waitlist to be the first to learn about it and to get massive discounts for my in-person event in Austin, Texas later on this year, go to freedomwaitlist.com. Once again, freedomwaitlist.com. Today, I'm gonna be talking about how I actually learned to trick my brain to like doing hard things. If I go back to the first half of my life,
I would say that I was a very lazy person who made a whole lot of excuses, who very rarely ever did anything hard and put themselves out of their comfort zone. And if I would have fast forwarded my life and not made any changes, my life would be vastly different than it is today.
And so what I decided to do was try to figure out, and this is why I became so obsessed with neurology and psychology, is I was like, if I can understand the psychology of why I think the way that I think and the neurology of how my brain actually works, I can figure out a way to get myself to take action, to do the hard things to grow myself. And so that's where we're going to dive in today.
We're going to go over four different steps of how to actually trick your brain into liking to do hard things. So step number one, the thing that I did was I stopped fighting my resistance and I started to get curious about why the resistance existed in the first place. You might think that you're lazy. I thought I was lazy. but you're not. You're actually afraid. You're afraid of something.
And you might not know what it is at this moment right now. It's usually subconscious. But what we want to do is try to identify what it is that you're afraid of. Neuroscience teaches us that resistance is not laziness. It's protection. And so the brain, its number one job is to keep you safe, not to make you successful.
And it knows that in this moment, inside of your comfort zone, you're safe and you're alive. And even though you consciously know that if you go and build your business, you're not going to die and there's no danger in building your business, your brain, the amygdala, the fear part of the fear center of your brain is going, no, no, no, we don't know what exists out there.
Don't get out of your comfort zone. So it's not to make you successful, it's to make you safe. So anytime you approach something, that is unfamiliar to you, that's going to require a lot of effort or involve some sort of risk, even though it's usually not a pain or death type of risk. It's like, I have to risk putting myself out there and maybe get rejected or judged.
Anytime you put yourself out there like that, your amygdala lights up, which is one of the oldest parts of your brain. And it's like danger, danger, danger.
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Chapter 2: How did the host overcome his past laziness?
Do not do it. And so it might look like you're just laying on the couch or just scrolling on Instagram. And you're like, oh my God, I'm so lazy. It's like, no, no, no. There is a fear that is preceding all of that. You can consciously know that there is no physical danger in, say, making a cold call if you're new in sales.
You can know that there's no real physical danger in picking up a piece of plastic, hitting a couple numbers, and talking to another person on the other line. But you still feel terrified to do it. Why do you feel terrified? Well, there's no actual threat there. You will not die, but you still feel the same physical fear inside of your body. So you don't do it.
You can consciously know that there's no real physical danger from starting a new business, but you still feel terrified of starting that business, even though you consciously want to do it. Why? Once again, there's no actual threat. You will not die from starting the business, but you still feel the fear. So you don't do it. In turn, you do something else.
You have some form of procrastination, and I like to use the phrase avoidant behavior. Avoidant behavior means you're doing something else instead of doing the thing that you need to do. And then you call that doing something else being lazy. When in reality, You're afraid. So what do you do? You delay. And once again, you delay not because you're lazy.
You delay because you're afraid of something. There is some sort of fear. And so the first shift that I made was this. Instead of judging my fear and judging my resistance, I started getting really curious. And I started like questioning it and listening to it. So I started thinking about like, okay, I want to grow my business, but I'm not doing it. I'm scrolling on Instagram instead.
I was like, hey, what are you afraid will happen if you grow this business? Like, what's your biggest fear? What's the story that you're trying to protect yourself from? What are you afraid of? And I started to get really curious. I started to find pieces of myself that I never really knew were running the show unconsciously behind the scenes.
And so you need to make the unconscious and bring it to the conscious. And then you need to write it down with pen and paper and work through it as if it's a math problem. Ask yourself questions around it. Try to poke holes in it. I always say, try to ask yourself as many questions and poke holes into your fears and poke holes into your beliefs.
Am I really going to die if I pick up the phone and call somebody? No. Is it really that big of a deal?
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Chapter 3: What are the four steps to trick your brain into doing hard things?
Not really. They might say no. They might hang up on me. Am I blowing this out of proportion? Actually, yeah, I am. So for me, what I discovered was really profound.
Chapter 4: How can curiosity help in overcoming resistance?
Most of the resistance wasn't about the task at all. It was about some sort of fear that I had behind what I thought would happen. And I realized that the fear, once I brought it to the surface, was completely ridiculous. And once I saw the fear for what it was and I named the fear, the emotional charge that was behind it kind of loosened.
It wasn't like it just completely went away, but it was like instead of fighting somebody in the dark, I just flipped the light on and I was like, oh, there he is. And so then I started questioning it and poking holes in. I found out that all of my fears were just complete bullshit. And the control over me was weakened as I started questioning and poking holes in it.
So you have to learn to question yourself more often. And I realized throughout this process, I wasn't lazy. I was just scared of something. And when I brought the thing that was the fear to the surface, I was able to work through it. So that's step number one is I stopped fighting my resistance and I got really curious with myself.
The second thing is that I rewired my identity around what difficulty meant. and what difficulty meant to me. And so the root of all sustained behavior change is identity shift. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. Because if I don't shift my identity, it's the reason why 80 to 95% of people who lose 20 pounds gain all of it back within two years.
It's the reason why 70% of people who win the lottery go broke within five years is because actions shifted and reality shifted, but identity didn't shift. You don't consistently do something. You don't consistently do hard things. because you should, you do them because you believe that's who you are. I am somebody who does hard things. Now, believe me, for the longest time, that wasn't me.
I backed away from doing anything hard. And I would just throw excuses at everything as to why I wasn't having the life that I want. So I started looking at myself differently and speaking to myself differently. And no joke, I'm not kidding you. I, as a child, was obsessed with basketball. like obsessed with it. I wanted to be in the NBA more than anything else.
And even though I wanted it more than anything else, I was the type of person where every time I would shoot, I would think to myself, I hope I don't miss. That's the type of person that I was throughout my entire life though. I hope I don't miss. I hope I don't miss.
And I started saying to myself as I got older and as I started learning this into my 20s, as I started changing the way I spoke to myself and I stopped saying, I hope I don't miss. And I started saying to myself, it's going in. And I get it, this sounds dumb. It's not a huge difference, but it actually worked. And of course I still miss shots.
But what happened was I became more confident when I was taking shots. And in turn, I actually kind of made more shots. And I took more shots because I felt more confident and it helped me get better. Now I realize that's just about basketball. And that is a true story about basketball with me. But I'm talking about my entire life was the same as that analogy I just gave you.
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