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December 29, 2025 67 mins

Jay sits down with Rob Dial for a powerful conversation about discipline, purpose, and why so many people stay stuck even when they know exactly what they should do. Rob reframes discipline not as punishment or pressure, but as an act of self-respect, explaining why choosing discomfort today is often the deepest form of self-love. From building consistency to reshaping identity, he reveals why real change has nothing to do with motivation or willpower, and everything to do with designing a life where doing the right thing becomes automatic.

Drawing from his own journey, Rob shares hard-earned lessons on following curiosity, embracing failure, and staying consistent long before results appear. He challenges the idea that purpose is something you “find” all at once, offering instead a more grounded path—one built through action, experimentation, and committing fully to the season you’re in. Together, Jay and Rob explore how fear, past pain, and self-judgment quietly hold people back, and how small, imperfect steps can begin healing old wounds while building confidence, competence, and momentum in the present.

In this interview, you'll learn:

How to Build Discipline When Motivation Disappears 

How to Stay Consistent Even When You Fall Off Track

How to Focus on One Habit for 100 Days

How to Design Your Environment for Better Habits

How to Turn Discipline Into Self-Love

How to Not Quit Even When You Don’t See Results 

How to Make 2026 Your Best Year by Doing Less, Not More

Focus on what you can control today. Do one thing well. Create habits that support the person you want to become, and be patient with yourself as you grow into them.

If You Listen to The Mindset Mentor with Rob Dial on your favorite podcast app.

With Love and Gratitude,

Jay Shetty

Join over 750,000 people to receive my most transformative wisdom directly in your inbox every single week with my free newsletter. Subscribe here

Check out our Apple subscription to unlock bonus content of On Purpose! https://lnk.to/JayShettyPodcast 

What We Discuss:

00:00 Intro

00:58 How Can You Actually Get Ahead in Life?

04:44 Should You Do What You Love?

11:45 What to Do When You’re Unhappy at Work

20:57 Why We Talk Ourselves Out of Our Passions

28:05 Understanding Your True Motivation

32:39 How to Build a New Skill From Scratch

38:01 How to Stay Consistent When Changing Your Life

46:26 Focus on One Thing for 100 Days 

51:25 How to Set Lasting Goals for the New Year

56:23 How to Stop Fixating on the Negative

01:00:49 How to Take Control of Your Life

01:02:50 A New Way to Think About Aging  

01:05:00 The Power of Believing It’s Already Yours 

Episode Resources:

Rob Dial | Website

Rob Dial | Instagram

Rob Dial | Facebook

Rob Dial | YouTube

Rob Dial | TikTok

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Most people are focused on the result based call, which is,
when I lose forty pounds, then I will have hit
my goal. That is a result. You still set the
result base goal. But then what you do is you
create something that's called daily action based goals. As long
as I get these things done every single day, it
is a success. Hi.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come
to become happier, healthier, and more healed today. My guest
is a dear friend, Rob Doll, leading mindset coach and
the host of the Mindset Mentor podcast. If you haven't
subscribed to his make sure you do, helping millions rewired
their thoughts and their habits. If you're feeling stuck, unmotivated,

(00:35):
or just don't know where to start, this conversation will
show you how to finally get out of your own
way and achieve the life you've always wanted. Please welcome
back to the show one of your favorites and my
good friend, Rob Dah. Rob, it's great to have you back.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Hey, I'm so excited to be here. Man. I love
being here with you. Dude.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
The last time you were here, our episode just crush
like people loved it. The comments were crazy, views were awesome.
I just love how cut you are.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
There's no bs. It's really practical, pragmatic advice. Anyone can
do it. You don't have to have a starting point
of money or followers or success, and I think that
lands really well. The first question I have for you
is what can someone today listening do to be ahead
of ninety nine percent of people?

Speaker 1 (01:21):
H I think the main thing that people can do
if they want to be ahead, depending on what a
head means to them, is I think that they can
develop their discipline within themselves. I think that one thing
that I've become really obsessed with over the past couple
of years is thinking about the idea of discipline, because
I think discipline has a very bad connotation, like if

(01:43):
if somebody does something wrong, then they're disciplined, or a
dog's supposed to be doing something wrong, you discipline a
child discipline. But I think that the connotation that we
have with discipline is actually incorrect. I think discipline, if
used correctly, is possibly the greatest form of self love,
because you don't have to have any discipline to do

(02:04):
something that's not good for you. So if you want to,
you know, sleep in every single day of your life.
You don't have to have discipline for that. If you
don't want to go to the gym, you don't have
to discipline for that. If you want to just eat
the crappiest food that's out there, you don't need discipline
for it. But if you want to wake up earlier,
you want to you know, make sales calls, grow a business,
if you want to get your body in the healthiest

(02:25):
shape you possibly can, you need discipline for it. And
discipline is always needed for something that is good for you.
And so the thing that I think people need to
do is they need to develop a different relationship with
discipline so that they don't think I'm doing this because
I hate myself, because something's wrong, or because whatever it
might be. It's I'm going to become a more disciplined

(02:45):
person because I love myself so much. And for me, like,
I wasn't a disciplined person at all before I developed,
you know, got into self development. I was, you know,
number one was I was a surfer. I was a stoner.
I did a bunch of drugs, did a bunch of partying.
I slept in, made excuses, never made any money, never
really had a whole lot of happiness. And then when

(03:08):
I was nineteen years old, I got into a sales
company and I learned, Okay, if I'm going to sit
down and make phone calls, hundreds of phone calls to
people who have no clue that I'm about to call
them every single day, I need to be disciplined. And
it was it was a thing of Okay, I know
what my life could be if I take this action,
and my life will be better if I take this action.

(03:31):
I don't want to take this action, but I know
that my life will be better if I take this action.
So I'm going to take this action because I know
future me will thank me for it. And what's really
cool about discipline, there's a whole lot of science and
neuroscience has been found there's a part of your brain
called the interior mid singulate cortex, which is basically where
they're thinking that discipline and willpower come from. And so

(03:52):
like for people who are athletes, like professional athletes, they
have a larger than average interior mid singular cortext than
the average person, not because they were born that way,
but because of the fact that they grew it. It's
like a muscle inside of you know, you want to
work your biceps. If you just do a whole bunch
of curls, your biceps are going to get bigger. It
works the exact same thing with the way with this

(04:13):
part of your brain. So they have found that people
who have very little discipline, very little willpower people who
are you know, extremely obese. That they found I have
a small mid interior singular cortex, but if they start
working out and doing things that they don't want to do,
but things that are good for them, that part of
their brain actually grows. And so I think if people
need to figure out how do I get ahead of

(04:35):
other people, the thing that I think is, well, what
is everybody else doing? And do the exact opposite. Most
people are hanging out on their phone, They're not doing
a whole lot. And so I'm looking at that and going, well,
I'm going to do the exact opposite. I'm going to
do the things I don't want to do that I
know they're good for me. I'm going to develop a
different relationship with discipline. I'm going to be more consistent
in everything that I do. And I think if people
just do that for a long enough period, of time,

(04:57):
then their entire life is going to change.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, I can agree more. And I think what you're
getting at is that discipline is the ability to choose discomfort. Yes,
when your mind and brain want to do the easy.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
Thing, we always want comfort.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
We always want comfort. And I think that's partly the
challenge where I think anyone who's listening right now will
go Rob, You're right. I know I need to wake
up early. I know my phone distracts me. I know
I want to work out. I know I want to
build my business. I know I want to get better
at sales. I know that, but I can't do it.
And I try, and maybe I do it for three days,
and then I fall off again. And I get this

(05:34):
a lot. I travel a time, I work crazy. Even
last night I was messaging a friend and I'm literally
flying to next week. I'm flying to Australia for one day.
I'll be there for twelve hours and I'm coming back
because i have something that I'm excited for, work, my friend,
and then I'll go back to work the next day
after I land here, and I'll work out and do

(05:55):
everything all over again. And my friend was like to me,
how do you do it like, how do you not
get burnt out? And there were two answers. One was
everything is dedicated to the craft, So my whole life
is structured in a way that I can do that.
That means I sleep on time, when I'm fully in control,
I work out five days a week, I eat right.
There's discipline that then allows me to do things that

(06:17):
sound crazy but then still recover because the supplements and
everything are in place. And yes, everything is dedicated to
the craft, which I love. The second part of it
is is that I'm good at also saying no to
things that maybe I even want to do that might
be fun and laid back, but because the craft is

(06:37):
the priority right now, I'm willing to forego. So when
you hear that, someone would say, well, Jay, that sounds
boring because you're just living your life in that way,
and I'm like, well, no, this is meaningful to me.
But I guess the biggest challenge people have is, Jay,
I know that I want to do that, but I
don't have to change my habits. I don't know how
to build that. What would you say to that person?

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, one of the things that I say is I
have this phrase where I just say, shrink the store
of something. So there's a couple aspects of it. The
first thing is, if you want to do something, it's
easier to make the start of it as as short
as you possibly can. So, like, let's say that I
don't want to go running in the morning, but I
know that I do want to go running in the
morning for the betterment of me, Well, then how can

(07:18):
I make it? Knowing that humans resist change as much
as possible, and if it takes more than fifteen seconds
to do it, a lot of times we won't do it.
So if it's like I'm going to shrink the start
of making myself go for a run in the morning,
so I know every morning I wake up and I
brush my teeth, you know, go to the bathroom, I
get water, I brush my teeth. That's what I do.
Then I'm going to take my running clothes and I'm

(07:38):
going to put them right next to the sink, and
if I really want to shrink the start, go to
bed with them on. You know, if you're waking up
early and you want a cup of coffee, the thing
that you want to do is make sure that you
get a coffee maker that has an automatic timer on
it so that by the time I'm done walking out
of my room and into the kitchen, my coffee's already made,

(07:58):
there's already water next to it. I just got to
throw my shoes on. So it's like, how do I
shrink the start? Because we're going to resist doing something,
how do I shrink the start? Is the first part
of it to make it easier for me to do
the other side of it as well. And I've known
you now for you know, nine years. You work like this.
You work, dude, but you are so passionate about what

(08:19):
you do. And that's the other thing I think people
need to realize is is it's really hard to force
yourself to do something that you don't want to do.
And if you think about this, I know that when
I worked jobs that I hated, that didn't feel like
it was my life purpose, it used way more energy
physical but especially mental energy to get myself up in

(08:42):
the morning, to have to take a shower, to wear
a suit, to drive thirty minutes stuck in traffic with
a bunch of other people who are pissed off, honking
at each other, to go to a job for eight
or nine hours that I didn't enjoy it all to
go back home and sit in that traffic again and
then go and eat some food and watch some TV
and know that that I'm going to have to do
that every day, work day for the next forty years

(09:05):
of my life. Do you know much physical but mental
energy that takes from a human like, it's so much?
And so if you think about it, does it require
energy for you to hop on the plane and go
there for twelve hours and then come back here and
work and then do your workout? Do this require energy? Yes?
But I would venturely say because it's something that you love,
it actually gives you energy more than it strips energy

(09:27):
from you. When you're doing something that you don't enjoy,
it steals energy from you. I saw a quote one time,
and it was something I'm changing it around a little bit,
but I can't remember exactly what it was, but it
was something like, if you do something that is out
of alignment with what your purpose is in this world,
you will have to come up with the energy for that.
If you do something that is in alignment with what

(09:48):
you're supposed to be doing in this world, the universe
will provide the energy for you. And like for me,
I know one hundred percent when we get done with
this podcast episode, I will have more energy then I
did when I first walked in this Why because this
is the thing that I think that I was made
to do, and I am so passionate about that, and
it gives me energy, and I will have more energy

(10:08):
throughout the entire day because I'm doing something that I
actually love. And so I think that for people, if
you're trying to be disciplined, number one, you can shrink
the start, But number two, it's like, if you're trying
to force yourself to do something that you don't love
and something that doesn't or just something that doesn't feel
in alignment with who you are, it's going to require
way more force than anything else.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
I think it's also important with what you're saying as well,
is that I was working this hard on what I
love around the time we met. So Rob and I
have known each other now for nine years, eight nine
years something like that, and when I met Rob, I
would say I was starting to work hard. I didn't.
I wasn't as busy as I am now and productive

(10:50):
as I am now. I was starting to work what
I thought was hard then. But I wasn't disciplined in
my personal habits beyond meditation. I wasn't disciplined my physical wellness,
so my dire my workout like that wasn't locked in.
Sleep and meditation have always been two things that I've prioritized,
and I realized at one point in my life that

(11:13):
I either had to slow down or I had to
invest in my health. So I had two choices. I
either had to slow down, because when you're not eating right,
and you're not sleeping right, and you're not working out,
and you're not meditating, you're not doing all the things,
then I can't keep up at this pace. It's actually impossible.
I'll kill myself because you're pushing yourself so hard. But
when you're doing all those things, you realize you can

(11:34):
do more. So I had that choice, and I don't
think there's a right answer to that choice. I think
investing in your health there's always a good idea and
you can still slow down. For me, it was okay, well,
let's see how high I can perform, and putting all
that time and energy to do that has helped me.
Now it does get to a certain point in the
year where I'm like all right, Yeah, I'm you know,
I think I pushed it this year, like I'm good, yeah,

(11:54):
and then I take a month off for Christmas now,
so I'm very you know, look forward to that. But
the reason I got into that was to ask you
this question of when people don't have what they love
and we've been there before. You just talked about you
as I've been there before. When you're actually doing a
job that you don't love, don't enjoy what you do,

(12:14):
is there any way to bring energy and get energy
from it?

Speaker 1 (12:18):
It can be. I mean, there's if it depends on
if somebody's like, oh, I absolutely hate my job, I
hate my boss, I hate everything about my life. I
think that's you know, that's where you just need to go.
All right. If you're thirty five years old, you say
you're forty years old, you're forty years old, and you're like,
I've built this life that I'm just not necessarily in
love with. Well, if you, you know, are lucky enough
to live to eighty years old, then life one was

(12:40):
the first forty years of your life. Life two starts
this moment, like, you have another forty years. Is it
going to be easy to make massive changes in your life. No,
are you gonna have to say no to things that
you've been saying yes to for a really long time. Yeah,
you're gonna have to say no to things. And when
you're saying no to something, you're saying yes to other things.
And so if you're in that situation, it's kind of

(13:01):
like just a whole uprooting of things. And for me,
I'd rather invest a year, two years, three years uprooting
things for another thirty seven years of happiness and joy
and fulfillment. But on the other side of that, you know,
I think that people have a kind of like a
misconception of what a purpose or passion is. Sometimes I

(13:23):
think it's really important for people to take a step
back and be like, well, if there was a reason
why I was alive and I was supposed to discover
what that reason is, what is it? And I always
tell people it's okay if you are listening to this
podcast right now and you don't know what your purpose is,
But it's not okay if you're in that situation to
wake up every single day and not try to find
what your purpose is. And your purpose does not have

(13:46):
to be your paycheck. I'm lucky enough where it is
you're lucky enough for it is. There's some people that
are lucky enough for it is. But a purpose could
be something that you do outside of your paycheck, and
you use your paycheck to invest into that purpose, whether
it's a hobby or whatever might be. And so I
think people get that wrong. And then another aspect of
purpose that people get wrong is that I think most

(14:06):
people are trying to find something that they're going to
do until the day they die. And that's that's a
lot of pressure. You know, hopefully I lived like one
hundred years old. I means they got on there sixty
one years. I'd find something I'm gonna do for sixty
one years and love every single day. That's a lot
of pressure. So what I think people need to actually
start looking at themselves as I always use an example
of like a hummingbird. Right, if you have ever watched

(14:27):
a hummingbird, they go from one flower, they're there for
a few seconds, they get the next flower, they're at
the next flower. I think people should kind of act
like a hummingbird where they say, Okay, what am I
really interested in in the next two or three years,
and I'm just gonna that's what my focus is going
to be. What's what do I love to do that
I haven't done in a while, what interests me that
I haven't spent a lot of time, or what's something

(14:49):
I really want to learn about more? And then I'll
just follow that thing. And what's really interesting is when
people kind of follow and the hummingbird thing for ten
years and they go from one thing to another thing,
and they have let's say it's undred fifteen years, they
have three or five things they've tried. The universe has
this beautiful way of working where those things eventually usually
line up to find what their purpose is, and they

(15:11):
needed every single step to get there. So like for me,
you know, if I think about when I was nineteen
years old, I got into sales. I got into sales
because I wanted to be a psychologist. And I got
into sales and went, oh my god, this is psychology
in front of me and I'm learning it. And then
I started managing people. I was like, this is even
more psychology. I need to fix myself so I can
help these people out. So it was all of this

(15:32):
psychology and I, you know, sales was just the kind
of the vehicle to make me learn psychology. Then I
started managing people and realizing like how much people hold
themselves back. They're like, I want to make phone calls,
but I'm not doing it. And I was like, oh,
this is really interesting to be at this moment and
to see this, Why are you not making Why are
you not doing something you want to do? Right? So

(15:53):
I started becoming obsessed with that, like you have so
much potential in you, why are you not doing it?
Then I got out of that and I went into
corporate sales for a little while, I started to manage people.
I got into corporate sales, and then in twenty seventeen,
I was like, I'm going to quit my job because
I don't love what I do. I'm going to travel
Europe for six months. And I traveled Europe US she
was three months. I went for three months. In twenty

(16:15):
twenty twelve is when I went and backpacked Europe by myself.
Twenty seventeen, I backpacked my wife for six months. But
and then I realized, oh my god, like I really
love traveling, and I have to figure out some sort
of way to make money so online so I'm not
stuck to a place, so I can do this and
I can go and I can do whatever I want.
Then I was like, I'm going to move to a
place because I thought I wanted to be a musician.

(16:37):
I had all the recording equipment, I had the microphone,
all this stuff. I was like, I'm going to move
to a city where there's it's a music city, I
could try to become a musician. So I moved to
Austin and I had all the record equipment. I was
there for a couple of years, tried out music. Realize
I'm not that good, Like I'm just very passionate. I
love it. I'm okay, but I'm not like, oh my god,
this guy's going to be a star. And then I
was like one day I was sitting in a place

(16:59):
called g Since Deli, this chain, and I was with
my girlfriend at the time, my now wife, and I
was like, I had this feeling of like I feel
like I have so much knowledge from books that I've
read and from working on myself for so long. Then
this is twenty fifteen, so we're talking nine years I've
been working on myself. Right, I was like, they must
start a podcast. And I had this idea and I
was like, that feels right, like that feels like the

(17:21):
right thing to do now, mind you, I had all
of the recording equipment to be able to do so.
I had been doing songwriting for a really long time,
so I had become obsessed with taking words and making
taking a line and making it as valuable as I
possibly could in that one sentence that I could come
up with. So I had music. I had all this

(17:42):
stuff to be able to set up and record a podcast.
I had the songwriting to be able to write scripts.
I had the sales in the psychology to be able
to understand the psychology the managing of people of why
they don't do what they what they want to do.
And I was like everything lined up. But it only
lined up because I started feeling doing and actually following
what felt right. And so I think, if people are

(18:03):
trying to find the purpose, don't put so much pressure
that number one, you have to make a paycheck out
of it. And number two, that's the thing that you
have to do until to the day you die. Just
do it for a little while. And if you fast
forward ten, fifteen, twenty years, I promise you there's a
pretty good chance all of those things are going to
line up. And you're going to go this is the
reason why I'm alive.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
Yeah, that's exactly why Steve Job says you can't connect
the dots looking forward, you only can looking backward. And
I love that example because I often talk about it
as collecting and connecting. That purpose is a lot more
about collecting and connecting than it is finding and discovering.
And so what you did is you collected a lot
of skills by things you were just interested in, and

(18:43):
one day all connected. And by the way my life
is exactly the same, even though totally different to yours,
is I lived as a monk, so I understood Eastern wisdom,
which at that time was just my fascination. I then
worked as a management consultant, where I understood sales, branding, communication,
all of these other skills that came business skills basically.

(19:04):
And then I started working in media, where I understood communication.
Now I had what I wanted to share. I had
understood communication through media, and I knew how to build
a business. And then it just connected. But it wasn't strategic.
It wasn't like I went I'm going to learn this,
this and this and this and this. It was oh no,
I can now just connect all these ideas. And as
I was listening to you speak, I was thinking about

(19:26):
how there's literally only four key drivers or motivators that
humans have, setting goals and beating goals. There are some
people who just love targets and goals. When you talk
to them, everything is a targeting goal. These people are
great at sales, they're great CEOs, They're great at building
businesses and sticking to numbers. Some people just naturally have

(19:49):
that skill set. Then there are people who are great
at influencing people, negotiation, persuasion, bringing energy into a remotivation,
people who know how to influence people. Then you've got
people who are great at precision. They know how to
make sure that the camera captures the perfect angle. They
know how to make sure that the iPhone actually works.

(20:10):
They know how to make sure that the bridge or
the elevator, the engineering is actually going to work and
get to that floor. And then finally you've got people
who are just good at caring for people. They're just
good at emotional intelligence, they're good at understanding. You can
bring that into your workplace. We think that as exactly
what you said. We think that your passion or your

(20:32):
pachock or your profession has to be a job you love.
Now you've done a podcast for ten years now. I've
done a podcast for nearly seven years now. But if
someone told me that that was my purpose and that
was your purpose, I think we'd say no, it's just
the current iteration of it. Your purpose is far greater
than that, and so is mine. And so I think

(20:53):
when we limit our profession and go, oh, I don't
like my job, what you're missing out on is but
where could you influence people? Meet goals, be precise, or
care for people in wherever you are, and practice that
skill set so that one day you are undeniable. And
so my question to you is why do we talk
ourselves out of the things that we're passionate about? Like

(21:17):
why do we talk ourselves out of Like when you
had that idea of I want to be a right
and a musician, you didn't talk yourself out of it.
You followed it and then took it as far as
it could and left. Same with me. I didn't talk
myself out of being a monk. I took the risk,
and then when I came back I was figuring it out.
Why do most of us have that idea. We hear
the voice in our head of you should try sales,

(21:37):
you should become a musician, you should launch a YouTube channel,
and then we go, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm
not going I can't do it. Why do we do that?

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Well? I think I think as humans were naturally lazy.
Like it's it's we want to stay in our comfort zone.
It's a protection mechanism. If you're not doing something that
you want to do, there's a pretty good chance. The
reason why, in its simplest form, is there's a part
of you inside of you is trying to protect you
from something, and so you might have a fear of
you know, I want to I want to start a
podcast too, Like these guys have their podcasts and I'm

(22:08):
gonna put myself out there and I record the podcast
and then I'm like, ah, yeah, I don't know, I
hold myself back from doing that thing. Anytime you're really
not doing something that you want to do, there's usually
some sort of fear that's behind it. And usually the
fears that we have in our future comes from pain
that we have in our past. And if you can
understand that, what my brain is doing is it is

(22:31):
projecting itself into the future and thinking of all of
the things that could go wrong as a protection mechanism
from something that I'm triggered that I haven't healed from
my past, and so like, for instance, let's go with
the podcast example. Right, I'm sitting there, I've recorded three
podcast episodes. I want to hit publish, and I'm not
doing it. If I'm sitting there and I notice myself,
we all get there, like I've there's no part of

(22:53):
me that has mastered at all. I deal with the
exact same things. It's just I've kind of, over twenty
years of working myself become more self aware of when
I'm in those moments and I'm like, okay, I'm holding
myself back from hitting published. What's going on here? Like
what's behind this? And if I'm like do I want
to do it? Yes? Why am I not doing it?
Am I afraid of something? You know? What? I am

(23:14):
afraid of something? What exactly am I afraid of? I'm
afraid that if I put this out there then people
are going to judge me. Okay, that's the fear that
lives in my future. What pain does this remind me
of in my past? And usually be able to go.
It reminds me of that one time when I was
bullied in seventh grade, and it reminds me of the
time that I was in bullied in ninth grade. It

(23:35):
reminds me of the time that my you know, I
got a bad grade and my teacher called me stupid.
And it's like, I believe that first off, I believe
that all of this is just a game. Right. So
it's like, there's so much purpose and importance in what
we do. And we talked about this last time us here.
It's so important what we do, but it is so

(23:55):
unimportant what we do in the grand scheme of the universe.
And you know, billions of years that this has all
been around. It's so important, but it's so unimportant. So
you can you can get caught up in the drama,
but you can also remove yourself from the drama and
you can look at it and say, Okay, I'm in
a situation I want to push publish. I'm really afraid.
What I believe is that when those moments pop up,

(24:17):
all of those moments that pop up our life is
a perfectly crafted curriculum for our soul to learn what
it's supposed to learn in the moment that it's here.
And so if I'm going, Okay, this is the thing
that I want to do, I'm not doing it. It's
the universe coming to me in this moment through this
predicament to show me, rob this is the thing that
you need to work on. You need to work on

(24:38):
this pain that you have in the past. You can
either heal that side of you, which I think is
something that people should do, is you'd work on healing themselves.
But at the same time, if we do take that
action that we are afraid of, it starts to heal
that past as well, because we realize we're telling our
brain this is not dangerous and you won't change yourself overnight.
But when you've posted ten thousand times on Instagram, like

(25:01):
I have them, like I don't care if people judge
me anymore because I've just seen so much of it.
Get It's kind of like exposure therapy. You're just like, yeah,
I'm publishing again. Yeah I'm cold calling people and they're
hanging up on me again. It's exposure therapy. And so
I think if people can become more aware in those
moments and be like, Okay, I want to do something,
I'm not doing it. There's something in my past that's
not healed. I need to work on healing this. But
another thing that I could also do is just push

(25:23):
publish and just be okay with it. And so it's
those little moments I think where the universe is showing us,
this is what you need to work on. Please move forward,
just even a tiny step in the right direction, to
prove to your brain the defense mechanism is trying to
protect you. You're safe, You're not going to die. Everything's
going to be okay.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
That worry that we have of what people think of us, or,
like you said, is a fear from deeper within that
we had in our past where someone said something or
someone felt something about us, and it triggers that. Again,
it's incredible how much power we give it. And what
you just said about this evaluation of what we do

(26:21):
is so important but so insignificant. I love that because
yesterday I was at an event and someone asked me
this question, and they said, Jay, what do you want
your legacy to be? What would you like your legacy
to be? And I said to them that there was
a time in my life where I thought that was
an important thing to reflect on, and over time, I've
realized it is the thing I think about the least.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
You don't care about that I don't care about it
at all.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
And I said to them, I said, it's because even
the biggest musicians in the world, if they're lucky, they'll
be relevant for fifty to one hundred years after they
pass away. There are only a few things that have
been around for a thousand years. Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, dinosaurs,

(27:07):
They somehow made it in there, and it's like, that's it,
that's it, and so each one of us is going
to be completely forgotten. And I said, that is the
most liberating thing in the world to me. And my
answer to them was, I just feel really lucky that
I got to be the modern messenger for a five
thousand year old tradition that has been there before me,

(27:31):
that will outlast me by thousands and thousands of years.
And I was just so lucky that I got to
be today's melman for this subject matter, and how fortunate
I am that I got to do that. But I
have no interest because that is the legacy that Eastern
wisdom that I get to share is going to last
for thousands and thousands more years, as will Jesus and
Buddha and dinosaurs and everything else. And it's so freeing

(27:55):
to note that, to kind of go yeah, like I
don't have to take it that seriously. Like me uploading
a video. It's like, one day YouTube will not exist
and no one will care. And giving yourself that freedom,
and then when you're making the thing, it's like, this
is the most important thing. When you're sharing the thing,
you're like, all right, let's just let it out into

(28:15):
the world. How do you then deal with that criticism
that comes in your own mind of I put it
out there. It's not getting views, it's not getting comments,
people don't like my art, people don't think, and you
just get lost now in this like Okay, well I'm
not going to do it again. Because I had a
friend who he said to me, I'm going to post

(28:38):
thirty videos in thirty days. I'm going to commit you.
I'm going to do it. Then he starts posting, and
he's not happy with the amount of likes, he's not
happy with the amount of comments. He starts doubting it,
and then eventually he stops and then doesn't do anymore.
So there's no more discipline left, no more consistency. And
I said to him, I said, realistically, you need to
post every day for two years to even even get

(29:01):
close to seeing what could happen. Yeah, but thirty days
isn't really gonna cut it. And so if you've done
thirty days and then you're not for six months, and
then you know it's not gonna make sense. But he
talked himself out of it even after getting started, right,
And I'm sure you see this all the time.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Of course. Yeah. I mean, I think the real question
behind those types of things is why are you doing it? Like? So,
you know, the thing that I love about what you
said is is like you're just excited to be the
person that's giving this message right now, which means that
you're removing yourself from all of it. It's it's unimportant.
Like on my drive up here, the only thing I
kept saying to myself, I just did a prayer and

(29:36):
I was like, God, please remove me from all of it.
I don't want it. I don't I don't want the
fame of it. I don't care about any of it.
I just want that whoever hears this message to be
the message that they needed to hear, whether it's one person,
whether it's millions of people. But I don't want to be,
you know, on some sort of pedestal for being the
person that gives it. And there's no real I mean,

(29:59):
there's no re with Buddha, with Christiana and with Jesus,
there's no real original thought. Anyways, I'm probably saying somebody
that someone else is said at some point in time
in the world, right, And so when I can remove
myself from needing to see or be important, then it
makes a lot easier for me. So if somebody's point
of if we're using posting as the example, is to

(30:20):
become famous or to make money or to get likes,
then I think you're going at it from the wrong reasons. Anyways.
The real thing is, like, why am I doing this
in the first place. When I first talked with you
in twenty seventeen, when we were talking about, hey, you
should start a podcast, I could tell from that moment
that you wanted to basically take all of this Eastern

(30:41):
wisdom that had changed your entire life and just teach
it to other people because you felt obligated to do so.
When I was sitting in Jason's Deli, and I was
sitting there and watching people yell at their kids and
all of this stuff, and it was just like this
moment of just like you know, if you watch I
Got someone in a movie when like the world starts
to get all weird. It got to like a fever
pi and I was like, I can't do this anymore.

(31:02):
Like I feel like there's something inside of me that's
helped me overcome my trauma for my past of my
father being an alcoholic and passing away when I was fifteen,
and I feel like I'm in a really good place
from all of that. I feel obligated to teach it.
It was never from the standpoint of I'm doing this
because I want to make money or I'm doing this
because I want to be famous, because nobody made money
or was famous for podcasts in twenty fifteen anyways. And

(31:24):
so I think what people should really ask themselves is like,
what is the real reason why I'm doing this in
the first place. And you know, if someone has a
really strong why how to do it will eventually reveal itself.
And so this one's like I want to make a
bunch of money. Cool that's great. You can definitely make
a bunch of money, But I also think that money
is a byproduct of the value that you give the world.
And so in my mind, I'm like, if I want

(31:45):
to make more, can I figure out a way to
give more value to people? Anyways? And so I think
it's more of like, can you go and build a
business and make a bunch of money and be famous
all my stuff? Sure? Why do you want to do it? Though? Like,
there's some actors that are that are really good at
actors because the fact that they want to be rich
and famous, and they usually burn out. And then there's
some people that want to be actors because they love

(32:07):
the craft of being an actor and becoming somebody else
and having to change themselves. Those people never burn out
because they have some sort of really strong why that's
behind what it is that they're doing.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
So I think we both believe that we've been talking
a lot about consciousness and tens knowing why you're doing something,
like caring about it, doing something you love, and we
both know that's important, But I think we both agree
that competence is equally important. The reason you didn't pursue
a music career is because you didn't feel you had
the competence to make it a career beyond it being
meaningful and thoughtful. And same with me. I love soccer,

(32:40):
It's my first love. But I'm just not competent enough
to be a professional soccer player or not have made
it into any of the needs for that matter. And
so how does someone build a new skill or competence
If someone goes, Okay, I want to be a podcaster
and I need to learn I need I want to

(33:01):
big comment musician, I need to learn songwriting. I want
to be a filmmaker, I need to learn editing. How
do you stop building a new skill? What are the
steps to building any skill?

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Well, I think it's just I think consistency is the
biggest point part of it. Like, first off, you have
to start like most people. I remember watching a video
years ago of Jared Leto being interviewed, and Jared Letto
is one of the most famous actors and also a
really famous musician. He's one the biggest, the highest awards
that you can win of both of those, right, And
he said something that was really kind of like eye

(33:31):
opening for me. He said, when I was a child,
he was homeschooled, and he saw what people were doing.
He said, when I was a child, I just realized
that most people don't start, and as long as I start,
I'll eventually be so much further ahead of anybody else.
So I thought that was a really big piece of it.
The piece that all add on is that if you
just don't stop, there's a pretty good chance that you're
gonna win whatever it might be. Now, can can I

(33:52):
go and just get a soccer ball and then become
you know, Ronaldo? No, that's not definitely not going to happen.
I can understand that. I think most people are wise
enough to know, hey, this probably isn't the route of
me trying to become a professional at thirty nine years old, right.
But the thing about it is, I'm of the belief
that when I do something, I'm not going to stop

(34:13):
doing it until I get to wherever I feel like
I want to go. I started business years ago with
my best friend and another one of our friends was
there and he's like, why are you starting a business
with rob? And he was asking us, like what is
it that you guys liked by each other? And he's
my friend in a nice way, said Rob's like a cockroach,
like he just doesn't die. And that's kind of the
way I've built myself to be is like, I don't

(34:34):
think I'm the most talented person. I don't think I
have the highest skill set, but I do know that
when I find something that I want to do, I
will at least try to play it out as long
as I possibly can. For me, when I first started
my podcast episodes, were they that great? No, Like, if
I listen to my stuff now, it's so cringe to me.

(34:55):
Ten years down the road, I have developed confidence and
comp There's a called, you know, the confidence competence loop,
which is you do I get confidence first or do
I get competence first. You don't get either one of them,
but you get both of them once you start doing
something and you push your skills a little bit more.
The thing that I love about being a human so much, though,
that I literally got it tattooed on my hand is

(35:17):
and I told my wife on our first date. She
was like, you have any tattoos? I was like, no,
but I'm going to get this one one day. Is
the Roman numeral for ten thousand, which is I love
the idea of the ten thousand hour rule, which is
if you take ten thousand hours of dedicated practice towards something,
you can eventually master it. And so for me, I
was like, I just need to try to get to
ten thousand hours of dedicated work on something and I

(35:38):
will probably master that thing. And so if people are
trying to become better at it, you have to be
okay with not being good when you first do something.
There's a quote that says you cannot be a graceful
master if you will not allow yourself to be a
foolish beginner. That's good, and you've got to allow yourself
to be a foolish beginner and screw up and be
okay with screwing up, but knowing that everything that you're

(35:59):
doing is getting you closer to being better. And so
for me, like even with the podcast, when I first
started it, I was like, I'm just going to do
it and if I like it, I'm going to keep going.
And I liked it, and then there was going back
to the question you asked a minute ago, like you're
not getting the response that you want in all of
your likes and all this stuff. I got one email
when I was getting one hundred downloads. Back in twenty fifteen,

(36:22):
I got an email two months in from a lady
that said, I love your podcast. It's the only thing
that's gotten me out of depression after my father killed
himself three years ago. And I was like, that's the
reason why I'm doing it for that person that I
had this feeling that I would be helping. And she's
the only one that's emailed me. There's probably people who
have never sent me an email that I'm helping them

(36:43):
in some sort of way, and knowing that I'm doing
that is what's driving me. And so you know, with
the podcast, for instance, we keep going back to it.
But in twenty fifteen I started the Mindset Mentor and
it stayed at the exact same like after a year,
it kind of leveled off at a certain amount of
and it was doing well, but it wasn't like one
of the biggest ones in the world. And then a

(37:03):
perfect storm happened. So I started twenty fifteen. Twenty twenty happened.
Three things happened. Number one, COVID happened. People were at
home and they started listening to podcasts. Number two Apple
Podcasts came out with the app, and so it was
a lot easier to listen to podcasts, and number three,
Spotify came out with podcasts as well. Those three things.
I went from the same number of downloads every single

(37:24):
month for about five years to seventy xing it in
literally three months, and it was like it was like
the tipping point. It was just consistency, consistency, consistency. Boom,
it exploded. And that's just what people need to focus on,
is showing up every single day and putting in the work,
and it's just compound interest and over time, you eventually

(37:45):
get to the point where the universe just clicks in
place and it's like here it is. And I see
it as a test that God or the universe or
life puts us through to say, let's see how long
you'll do this. And I'm going to challenge you every
single step of the way. And then eventually there is
a moment in time where I'm going to say this
is for you. You did it. You've got to the point

(38:06):
that you want to here's the stuff that you wanted.
And I see it as a challenge. I'm like, let's
play the game. I'm down for the challenge. Let's go
for it.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
Yeah, And consistency is so interesting because I think we
think about consistency as I worked out five days a
week every week of the year, and reality, consistency is
one week I worked out three days. The next week,
I worked out six. This week I worked out four,
then I worked out five, then I did two, and
then I did seven. Like, consistency doesn't mean the same

(38:34):
thing every week. It can shark differently, And I think
what we get caught in is when we fall off,
Like anyone ever here who's tried a diet and they
failed at a diet. Right, We're going to go into
the new year soon and people are going to be
making New Year's resolutions. And here's the thing. Most people
will probably keep it going for two weeks, maybe even

(38:54):
three weeks, and then they'll have a bad day or
a bad week, and then we'll throw it out. So
it's like, oh, I had a great I didn't eat
sugar for two weeks. I was losing two pounds a
week for two weeks. I was posting content for two weeks,
and now the third week I dropped off. Now I'm
going to throw it all away because I messed up
and I lost it because I wasn't consistent. How do

(39:15):
we get back on? Or two questions, is everyone going
to fall off? And if that's the case, you all,
if we're all guaranteed to fall off, how do you
get back on without beating yourself up and making it
feel like you're never going to get back on.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
There's a couple different aspects of it that I'll go into.
The First thing is that I see this all the
time with people, is that they will work out for
twenty one days and they'll stay on their diet and
they'll do really well, and then this twenty second day,
they don't plan correctly, they get on a flight, they
end up missing it, and then they do what do

(39:51):
they do? They guilt themselves, they themselves, They shame themselves,
They talk, trash themselves. I knew you couldn't do it.
You always do this. You always give up on something.
They take that one moment in time and they beat
themselves up for it, versus going, hey, you had a mistake.
You didn't get this thing done that you wanted to.
But I'm so proud of you for the twenty one days.
You have never worked out and kept to a dive

(40:13):
for twenty one days I'm so proud of you for
sticking to it, and instead of beating yourself up for
day twenty two, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna
look at it as a data point and see what
did I do wrong that ended up making me not
be able to stay consistent, so that on day twenty
three I can continue with the consistency. It's like and
I love. I think the perfect quote for it is
James Clear says, every action that you take is a

(40:35):
vote for the person she wish to become. So if
you're the person's like, oh, I'm gonna throw in the towel,
you've decided I'm the type of person that throws in
the towel. But if you say, hey, I'm going to
pick myself up. As if my friend calls me and says,
I worked out really hard for twenty one days, I
did really good, and today's my twenty second day and
I screwed up. What should I do? Are you gonna
be like you suck, You're stupid. I knew you wouldn't

(40:56):
follow through whatever you say to yourself. No, you're gonna
say something different to your friend than you would yourself.
And so that's the first aspect of it. The second
aspect of it is that I think people think in
two short of terms. So I saw a statistic one
time and said, in order to create a habit, it
takes between sixty to one hundred days. Most people are
focused on that timeframe. Then if you go further past that,

(41:18):
in order to change your lifestyle, it takes about twelve
to eighteen months. In order to change your identity, it
takes about three to four years. And so for me,
I realize that if I'm trying to do something, it's
the same way that I was talking to you earlier
three to four years. And I'm gonna do this thing,
and what am I going to have success every single
step of the way. No, but I'm dedicating my life

(41:39):
to this thing because of what it's going to give me,
or my family or the world if I do this thing.
And so I think if people look a little bit
more in timeframes of like three to four years, they
might be able to give themselves more grace. They can
also just goat a crap out of themself and be like,
oh my god, I can't do this, It's going to
take so long, or they could say hey, it's a marathon.
Life is a marathon. If you trip in the first

(42:01):
mile of the marathon, you don't need to throw in
the next twenty five miles after that. You just continue
to keep going and so and it's one of the
reasons why people who end up winning the lottery end
up I think it's like seventy five eighty percent of
them end up going back to where they were financially
within five years, and an average person, I think it's
ninety or ninety five percent of people who lose twenty

(42:21):
pounds will gain it back within the next two years.
Is because of the fact that either their habits changed,
maybe their lifestyle change, but their identity didn't change. I
have a friend whose weight goes up and down and
up and down and up and down, and we've had
a really deep conversation with it. He's like, I want
to be in the best physical shape that I possibly can,
and he'll be really fit, and then he'll be forty
pounds overweight, back and forth and back and forth. And

(42:43):
we came to terms of realizing the reason why is
because he still identifies as the fat kid that he
was made fun of in middle school. And I'm like,
that's the identity shift that we're trying to go for
is and identity shifts come from a couple different things,
which is like what we believe about ourselves, but also
the same time, like what action that we take. So
like if you would have asked me in twenty fourteen,

(43:04):
or you a podcast or I'd say no, But now
I've been doing it for ten years, I'm like, yes,
it's literally part of who I am. Same thing for you,
and it's only because you've taken consistent enough action then
now you identify with that thing. And that's what I
think all of this should be working towards. With consistency
and with consistency and willpower. Last thing I'll say on
this is that I think people are like, well, I

(43:24):
just don't have any willpower. The people that I've found
who are the most consistent, it's not that they have
more willpower than the average person. They might, but it
is they have designed an environment in their life that
does not test their willpower. I if you put a
bag of skittles in front of me in my house,
it's gone today me too, it's gone. But if I

(43:45):
don't have skittles in my house, I don't eat them.
So I intentionally try to design my environment to not
fall into pitfalls that I don't want to fall into,
to be as productive as I possibly can. Like, if
I'm trying to get productive work done for two hours,
my phone's going to be in the kitchen. And so
it's like, can I design an environment where discipline and
consistency and willpower are easier versus making it so hard

(44:09):
on myself?

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Yeah? That I that's to me is the biggest one,
because yeah, you can't have your refrigerator full of all
the stuff you don't want to eat. No, all of
the power. Yeah, yeah, I don't have enough willpower for
that either. If something's right here, I'm gonna have it.
That's absolutely And I think people think that people who
have this amazing willpower and like you're it's right next

(44:29):
to you, but you're not tempted by I'm like, no way,
I'm completely seduced by you know, a sugary soda or
you know a slab of chocolate. We're coming up to

(44:54):
the new year, and I want to give you my
answer what I'm thinking, and I want to hear yours.
If we could give people one mindset to approach twenty
twenty six with to make it the best year they
could possibly have. My take, and I want to hear
yours would be to do less in the sense that

(45:16):
the one mindset that will save you is instead of
thinking you want to be the best partner and the
best workout person and the best professional and the best
parent and everything, is choose one thing to be really
good at for season one. And I think about this
like nature, Nature's good at doing one thing. It's why
we have four seasons. In this season, it's good at growing.

(45:40):
In this season, it's good at shedding. In this season,
it's good at shining, and in this season it's good
at recovering. And it's like, it's not trying to imagine
you had a day where it was snowing, stormy, sunny,
and raining in the same day. You'd be like, this
is just schizophrenic, Like it's crazy, and there are a
few places in the world that happens, but it's rare

(46:02):
and it wouldn't make sense. Like we think of balance
or we think of success as I'm good at everything.
And so we go into the new year and go,
I'm going to this the year I lose weight, This
is the year I build my company. This is the
year and we, as Bill Gates said, we overestimate what
we can do in one year, and we underestimate what
we can do in ten years. I in January it
will be ten years since I started being a creator.

(46:23):
My first video launched jan third, twenty sixteen. And if
someone told me what we were going to do in
the last ten years, I would never have believed them
for sure. But if I tried to do all of
this in the first twelve months, I would have failed miserably. Yeah,
and so my advice, my biggest minds of the twenty
twenty six if anyone listening, is do less, prioritize, focus,
don't try and tick every box. It's okay to fail

(46:46):
at a bunch of stuff for four months and then
build up something else. What would be your big mindset
for twenty twenty six.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
The exact same thing Every year I tell people to
focus on one thing for one hundred days, because if
statistically it take sixty six to one hundred days on
average for someone to create a new habit, then I
want to just do one thing for one hundred days
to try to create that habit. Now, the problem is
is that most people, if they're listening to this podcast.

(47:13):
They want to be a high performer. They want to
change their life, they want to make the best life
they possibly can. So they go, you know what, I'm
going to do three things at one time. I'm gonna
do four things at one time. And I actually think
that that's a trap of the ego. The ego is
the identity that's trying to keep you in the exact
same place, and a trap of the egos to go, well,
I could do one thing, or if I do three,

(47:34):
then I'll be three times further later on down the road.
I think that's a trap of the ego going I'm
gonna throw too much on their plate. So it's going
to be too much, and eventually they're going to fail.
But if I wake up every day and I just
go I just have to check off one box, and
if I check off one box it's a success. Then
I can look at, Okay, what are my goals for
this year, and looking at my goals, what's the most
important priority for the next one hundred days, and I

(47:56):
just have to do that one thing. Now, will you
fall off in a hundred if I were a betting man,
yes you will. But how you respond to, like we
were just talking about, is the most important aspect of it.
If you say I want to, you know, post a
piece of content every single day for the next one
hundred days and you get ninety five days, that's pretty

(48:16):
dang good. I would say that's success.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Even fifty would be good, right, But it's like.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Don't build. You beat yourself up for it if you
don't get there. So I'd say, focus on one thing.
And I think in the day that we live in,
I was talking with somebody yesterday whose daughter wants to
go to Florence to learn how this very specific part
of like design of art, and I was like, man, like,
that's the thing that people really miss nowadays, is like
wanting to master something and really just get good at

(48:42):
that thing. Say to yourself, I'm just going to do
this one thing every single day for the next one
hundred days. If I fall off, I fall off, no
big deal. And then at the end of the one
hundred days, I'll put a reminder in my phone that
I can look and see. Do I feel like I
want to continue with this thing? Does it feel like
it's locked into me and it's a habit, or do
I want to change it to something else. And if
they do that, I think it's important because most people

(49:03):
are trying to do a million things. They want to
get better at this, They want to learn this and
this and this and this and this. And I heard
edsheer and say one time, you could do anything that
you want to, but you can't do it all at once.
Can only do one thing at a time that you're
trying to really get better at. And so it's like,
for the next one hundred days, this season of my life,
I'm going to focus on this thing and this thing only.
And I think if people can kind of narrow their

(49:26):
knowledge and their skill set to just a couple things
they want to get better at each year, I think
it'll help them out because most people, I always give
you example, it's like most people's knowledge and skill set
is like a mile wide but an inch deep. You're
never going to get really anything that you want with
being stuff for being able to talk to people about
many different subjects, it's like a mile wide but an
inch deep. I want my knowledge and skill set to

(49:49):
be an inch wide but a mile deep. And when
you do that, you actually can start to master something.
And when you become better at you'll find people will
ask you to consult them and they'll pay you for it.
The most successful people that I know are not the
smartest people in the world, but they're very consistent, they're
very passionate, they're very disciplined, and they usually just are
really good at like one thing and that's it.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
Yeah, And I think it's also just like you hear
people go, I'm going to read a book every week,
and I'm like, you'd be better off reading one book
a year and applying one lesson from it to your
point of one as opposed to I would rather I'd
prefer you read a page every day for one hundred days,
going off your method of one book and put it

(50:30):
into practice. Then I read twenty four books this year.
I read fifty two books this year. There's no achievement
in that number whatsoever. It's just some arbitrary it's your
point of it's an inch deep and a mile wide,
Like that's what it is. It's like, I read fifty
two books. What do you remember all this random fact
from this one? Like it doesn't prove anythy books I've

(50:51):
read in the past three years. Tell me one to
YOUO many times I've read it probably one hundred which
one Christian Murty toltal freedom.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
Oh wow, like this thick and it's underline. It's highlighted
every time because I'm exactly what you're saying. There are
the smartest people in the world of read book and
there's so many great books and all this stuff. I
used to read fifty books a year and be so
hard too too. But it's like, if you can find
one book that you feel is going to change your life,
You're like, I need this thing to be part of me.
That's what you should become obsessed with. Exactly what you're saying.

(51:21):
And so it's like, find that book and try to go,
I'm going to make this book part of me.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yeah, And that's exactly what I used to do. I
used to do. At one point, I was trying to
read a book a day and I had the time
for it, and it was great. I learned a lot,
it was amazing. But I realized living the book was
far more important than reading the book. And I couldn't
experiment or practice with three hundred and sixty five ideas
or fifty two ideas a good practice with a couple,

(51:46):
and that made all the difference. How should someone think
about setting goals for twenty twenty six?

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Yeah, good question. I love this one because I did
it wrong for a long time, like fifteen years. So
I'm the type person gets excited by goals. I'm like, yeah,
let's make it. And I get my wife does not
want to sit down and make any goals with me,
Like I'm like, let's play in our ear and she's like, no,
I don't really care to make the goals exactly. It's
like that's why Roddy Lauren get it well, yeah along
so well. And so it's like I was I was

(52:13):
thinking about. I was like, Okay, I'm gonna set my
goals for the entire year. And so what I came
to is the more that I've I've learned about neuroscience
and the way humans work and the shrinking of everything
that we do, is that most people say, Okay, well,
I'm going to try to lose forty pounds this year.
That's my number one goal. You know, I'm going to
listen to what Robin and Jaysha. I'm I'm gonna focus

(52:35):
on one thing. I'm going to lose forty pounds a year.
And this is what I need to do to get there.
The problem with that is this is most of the time,
you'll go to the gym, you'll work out, then you'll
come back, you work out for two weeks, you take
a shower, you see yourself naked in the mirror, and
you're like, oh, still not there yet, right, And people
will actually make them startself start to feel bad about

(52:56):
not being at the destination that they want to get to.
The problem with that is that our brains are addicted
to dopamine. The most addictive drugs in the entire world
are high dopaminergic drugs, and we are basically like all
dope fiends in different ways, Like some people get it
from working a whole lot, some people get it from
scrolling on Instagram, and some people get it from watching Netflix,
and some people get it from you know, being around

(53:18):
their kids. In all of this, and so, dopamine is
the chemical of motivation. Whenever we get it, we want
more of it and we will work hard to go
get more of it. And so there's a thing that's
called a dopamine reward system. And this is super important
for people to start to understand. If you want to
change your life and become addicted, you know, not a
bad way, but addicted to the things that you need
to do to make your life better. You need to

(53:38):
develop some sort of dopamine reward system. And the way
you do that is so there's results based goals, which is,
when I lose forty pounds, then I will have hit
my goal. That is a result. It is a result
based goal. I did that for fifteen years. You still
set the result based goal. But then what you do
is you create something that's called daily action based goals,
which are, as long as I get these things done

(53:59):
every single day, it is a success. Not when I
lose a forty pounds. It's this success when I do
this thing, whatever the thing is, and it can change
each day depending on your diet and whatever is you
need to do, that is a success. And when you
have that success, if you can get good at celebrating yourself,
which sounds weird but neurologically is super important, your brain

(54:19):
will released dopamine, which then says the action that I
just made, that I just did made me feel good.
It gave me dopamine. I want to do it again.
And so a better way of doing it is if
I've never been to the gym and I only lose
forty pounds. And on January first, I say, okay, I'm
going to go to the gym. Walking in the door
is a success, not looking at myself with forty pounds off.

(54:44):
And then you you got to change the way that
you speak to yourself. You got to change a way
to speak yourself. And so you sit there and you go, Okay,
you walked in the door. I'm so proud of you.
You're going to do this. I believe in you. You
go on and you say, okay, I'm going to go
on the treadmill for ten minutes. Okay, one minute down,
You're doing such a good job. Two minutes down. When
you do these little celebrations, you get this little tiny
bit of dopamine. Your brain is saying the action that

(55:04):
was just taken is something that we got dopamin for.
We want to do it again. When you do your
first set, you celebrate yourself your second set. I like,
so when I work out, look myself in the eye
after it and in my head be like, I'm so
proud of you doing such a good job. I'm so
proud of doing such a good job. Then when you
get done, you're like, man, I feel really good, You're
more likely to do it again tomorrow. And so what

(55:24):
you do You create these long term results based goals,
you shorten them to action based goals, and you be
done today. And then you develop a system to give
yourself dopamine to make it feel good, because when it
feels good and it feels rewarding, you want to show
up and do it again tomorrow. And if you do
that every single day, eventually you get semi addicted to

(55:44):
the process. Like we all know people who have been
fifty or one hundred pounds overweight, and then you see
them and they've they never worked out a day in
their life, and now they work out five days every
single week. Some of them work out seven days weeks
because they love it so much. It's because they've learned
to fall in love with the process. And the people
who are the most successful in the world are people
who have fallen in love with the process, not the

(56:05):
end result. And so if you look at like like,
for instance, Kobe Bryant, right, he used to wake up
at four o'clock in the morning every single morning to
work out, and I don't know if he knew he
was creating a dopamine award system. But he talks about
when he talks about mom mentality is his greatest thing
that he loved about himself, and what made him feel
the best was the feeling of I'm working out when

(56:26):
everyone else is sleeping. I will get into my second
workout when they're starting to get into their first workout.
I'm twice as far as they are. He created a
dopamine reward system that got him addicted to the process.
And when you're addicted to the process, the end result
is going to be way better. And I think if
people can do that, I think that the entire year
wal change for him.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
I've never heard someone explain it like that. I love
the idea of creating a dopamine reward system. That the
story he was telling himself was giving him the dopamineep Like,
that's brilliant, that's so good. And it was funny because
I was talking to Homer about this, who's you know,
my videographer just now when you were coming in. We

(57:07):
were talking about this idea of I work harder today
than ten years ago when I started, not because I
have to, not because I think I need to. I
do it because I love it. I'm engaged, I'm learning,
I feel I'm becoming better. And I was saying that
A big part of it, which gives me a lot

(57:29):
of dopamine. To your point, is I love the universe
and God knowing that I don't take the life they
gave me for granted. And so it's a form of gratitude.
My work ethic is my gratitude to God and the
universe to repay this incredible gift of life, an opportunity

(57:52):
that I've been given to live the life that I
get to live. So now I'm feeling gratitude. That's just
a story in my head, like that's how I feel
about it, and it gives me so much dopamine. And
the second part to that is, therefore, I never want
to be complacent that something I would have been willing
to do ten years ago, I'm still willing to do

(58:12):
it today because I'm not bigger or better. I'm still
back at the beginning of my journey. I still treat
it that way. Now, there are certain things you have
to change and say no to, and of course, but
overall my mindset is this is day one. We're just
at the beginning. We're starting out again. And that is
unbeatable in my mind as the dopamine reactor, but it's

(58:34):
also unbeatable as a mindset because I'm like, I'm working
as hard as I did on day one, that the
day one's got no chance. You know, it's like because
so to me, it's just but I love the way
you put it that that's just my way of convincing
myself to work hard is gratitude and payback, service and purpose.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Yeah, it's all we are doing is just having stories
in our head. And the story that you have in
your head when you're becoming aware of yourself and starting
to you know, twenty twenty five years old, you're like,
oh my god, I want to work myself. There's things
that I don't necessarily like about the life that I've built.
You're becoming aware of the stories that you have in
your head, and we can you know, it's like the

(59:13):
example that you see many times when someone's like, all right,
it's you know, the room that you're in, look around
and see how many red things you can find. You
look around for all of the red things, and you
look around for the red things. They say, close your eyes,
how many blue things did you see, and everyone's always
like zero because you weren't looking for that thing. It's
not that it wasn't there, it's just that you weren't
looking for it. And so you know, a lot of
us were We're looking for what's going wrong, what's not

(59:37):
the way that we want it to be. And that's
just the perception of the way that we look through
the world. I mean, humans have you know something that's
called the negativity bias. We are going to look for
what's negative, and it's a protection mechanism. We're going to
look for what's bad, and so we have to change
ourselves to say I'm going to see a different perspective
and to find what's positive. Another way of doing that
is going, okay, I've looked at the world this way

(59:59):
my end entire life. And with the amount of hours
that you work, you could be like, oh my god,
I'm working so freaking hard. I don't know if I
can do this, and that can be the story going
on in your head. It's gonna be a lot harder
to work hard. Or you could say I'm so blessed
I've been given this this body and this brain and
all of the challenges in life. That I've had to
get me to this moment. It would be a shame

(01:00:22):
if I didn't use it for myself, for the greater
good of people. It's the exact same circumstance, but it's
a completely different perception. And I always say, we're all
looking at the same thing, we're all seeing something different,
and that's literally how life is. And so if we
can go all right, like I don't like the way
that I feel when I look at something through this lens, Okay,

(01:00:43):
is it possible for me to see another perspective? And
if we can find another perspective, you can always find
another perspective for anything, any circumstances happening in your life,
and almost always you can find the positive or what
you can learn from a challenge. And it's not saying
that it's easy to go through those things and that
life isn't hard, but it's saying I'm going to try

(01:01:05):
to look at a different perspective of my life in
this circumstance so that I can make something from my life.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
Yeah, when Days said, when we change the way we
look at things, the things we look at change, And
I think it's so fascinating how we're always trying to
change the situation. And I can't remember who said this,
but it's a famous quote that says, we're always trying
to change the situation, not realizing we were put in
that situation so that we can change. And I think

(01:01:35):
another layer to that is what you're saying is not
only are we always trying to change the situation and
don't want to change ourself. Sometimes you don't have to
change yourself fully, you just have to change your lens pient.
And so there's three things to change your lens, yourself
or the thing. And all of our focus goes on
the thing, and life doesn't work well when we only
focus on the thing. And so when we focus on

(01:01:56):
changing ourselves and our lens, all of a sudden, you've
expanded your opportunity of what to change, because sometimes the
situation just won't change.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
Most of the time, it won't change. And that's what
stresses people, is because we want to control most things,
and we can control almost nothing. Like it's so out
of everything that happens in your life, you could control
zero point one percent, Like I would say, like you
can you think that you could control everything happening around you?
You can barely control your bowels after Taco Tuesday, Like

(01:02:23):
you can barely control that. And You're like, I'm gonna
change the universe. I'm gonna change everything around me. It's like,
maybe instead of changing the universe and changing all the circumstances,
maybe I should change my relationship to those circumstances and
see if that helps me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
Yeah, Rob, it's always great having you on the show.
I always love it so much. I feel like we
just go back and forth, and Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
Enjoy these This is like so much fun. When we
had we had a quick little break because something happened,
I was like, man, this is so much fun. I
love doing that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
I know me too, And I hope you keep coming
back on every year because this is I look forward
to it. I always feel like we're giving people a
real game plan. Everyone who's listened today, you know how
to set goals, you know how to build discipline, you
know how to not be let down by willpower. You've
got the habit setting you up for the next year.
You've got the tactics to go forward and have twenty

(01:03:08):
twenty six be the best year of your life. And
I think that's also a story. Like I've convinced myself
that every year is the best year, it is the
best year of my life, then yeah, And I don't
want to look back and think, oh, eighteen was amazing,
and twenty five was amazing and thirty was amazing. And
I think people are scared of aging because we think
it's a story. We think we're moving away from the

(01:03:29):
best year of our life. But I promise you every
year will be the best year of your life. If
you convince yourself it is, you will find ways to
make it the one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Yeah, And it's like, I'm actually you know, I think
aging is an interesting thing where it's like, you know,
you could sit there and be like, oh my god,
I don't look the same, I've got wrinkles, But you
can also be like, man, do you how much wiser
I am than I used to be? Like the stuff
I did when I was seventeen years old, Oh my god,
I don't. I would never do any of those things
now at thirty nine. But I feel like I'm wiser.
I feel like I'm happier, I feel like I'm at

(01:03:59):
more p P And those are the things that I'm
working on the most. And if I can, if I'm
getting wiser and happier and more joyful and more peace
Where am I going to be in ten years? Like
it's only going to continue to get better every single year,
which is a perception. Right. You could say this is
going to be the worst year. Oh my god, last
year socked, blah blah blah. Or you could say, no,
this is going to be the best year of my life,

(01:04:20):
and I'm going to figure out a way to make
it the best year of my life.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
I think you just added the most important part. I
think what's really crazy is when we say things like
I hope this is the best year, and what we're
saying is it's like saying I hope it's sunny today,
which you have no control of it. Whereas when you
go I'm going to make this the best year, it's
almost like we always got it. What do you want
out of this year? And it's like, well, no, the
year is not going to give you anything. Yeah, is
going to give you what you put in and what

(01:04:44):
you build and what you bring in. And I think
that switch of leading with intention and what you make
of something, it's almost like when people say I hope
today's a great day, it's like, no, I'll make today
a great day. It's a different mindset because I hope
today is a good day. Means I hope the train
is empty so there's a seat for me. I hope

(01:05:07):
the person at work is nice to me. I hope.
I mean that you just can't do anything about it.
But you can walk on the train and find a
comfortable spot. If you're early, you can go to work
and bring your best energy to the people who give
you energy. And I hope this episode helps people claim
back their control one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Yeah, there's a there's a good piece of it. The
last last thing I'll say that because we talked about
Buddha and Christian You know, when you think about like
creating the best day and manifesting the best day, I
think the best the best thing that's ever been said
on manifesting was said by Jesus, and he said, whatever
you pray for and believe that you have received it,

(01:05:43):
it will be yours. And if we can just go Okay,
if you want to pray, you can. If you want
to whatever it is, journal give gradu to whatever, but
believe that you have received it, not believe that it's
coming to you, but believe that you have received it,
it will be yours. And so if I wait and
I'm like, I'm going to make today one of the
best days of my life. I'm going to make this

(01:06:04):
year one of the best days of my life. In fact,
I'm saying it incorrectly. This is the best year of
my life. This I have received it, This is the
best your of my life. It will be yours. And
I think if people can look through that perception and go, well, really,
wise guy two thousand year set it. I'm not as
wise as him. Maybe I should just take his advice
and do what it says.

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
You know well, I said, yeah, everyone who's listening and watching,
make sure you tag us, both me and Rob on
TikTok on Instagram. I love seeing all the clips you make.
I want to see what resonates with you, what you're
experimenting with. We're both wishing you an amazing twenty twenty six.
I hope you go into the year and absolutely crush it,
and remember, don't try and do everything, do less, focus

(01:06:43):
on one. You can subscribe to the Mindset Mental podcast,
follow Rob across social media and he'll be back next year.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
Nice, I love it, Bro. Thank you, Hava. If this
year you're trying to live longer, live happier, live healthier,
go and check out my conversation with the world's biggest
longevity doctor, Peter Attia on how to slow down aging
and why your emotional health is directly impacting your physical health.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
Acknowledge that there is surprisingly little known about the relationship
between nutrition and health, and people are going to be
shocked to hear that, because I think most people think
the exact opposite.
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Jay Shetty

Jay Shetty

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