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 want to learn and grow and improve yourself so that your life can become better, I put out episodes four times a week for over 10 years now. So hit that subscribe button. Join us on this journey. Today, I'm going to be talking about the mindset that I adopted that completely changed my life. Because there was a moment where I realized something uncomfortable. Nothing was really wrong in my life, but nothing was really changing either. And if I didn't do something drastically different, I would end up with a life that I did not want in my future. And that's when it really, really hit me hard. If something was going to change in my life, I had to do something different. If I stayed comfortable, if I stayed the same, I could predict exactly where I would be in five years with the same habits, with the same problems, with the same excuses, with the same life, and ultimately a not fulfilled life in the one life that I have here. I would just be older and probably grumpier, and that scared the shit out of me. And I realized that being comfortable wasn't a sign that I was doing life well. It was a sign that I had stopped challenging myself. And my very first mentor gave me this mindset, this phrase that really changed the way that I thought about the world. And he used to always say, you're either green and growing or you're brown and dying. You're green and growing or you're brown and dying. And when I looked at my life and where I was, to be honest, I was brown and dying. And if my life was going to change from that moment forward, I would have to get uncomfortable. And the more uncomfortable that I could get, the better. See, because comfort creates a very predictable life. When you're comfortable, your future is already written for you. If nothing changes, nothing changes. Makes sense, right? I would be in the same place 5, 10, 15 years down the road that I am today, and that's not what I wanted. Comfort creates a predictable life. And predictability is the enemy of growth. And that's when I realized like I have to change. Something deep within me has to change in order for my life to be different. I noticed that I was comfortable and I wasn't like miserable. I wasn't in a crisis, but I wasn't expanding either. Like there was no, there was no edge. There was no stretch to my life. There was no urgency to make something better. And that scared me when I looked into my future more than failure ever could. And so I adopted this new mindset. I used to always say this phrase to myself, and the phrase was seek discomfort. I needed to seek discomfort as often as I possibly could. And I made a rule with myself. And this is the rule that I had to make. Whenever my mind says don't, I have to do it anyways. And from that moment forward, I started noticing like 50 to 100 times a day where my mind would say don't. and it would want me to stay small and it would want me to stay comfortable. And once I became aware of it, it drove me crazy. It was almost too much because it was like, don't do this, don't do this. No, no, no, don't do this, don't do this. And so I had to start doing what I didn't want to do. And at first, when I started, I was 20 years old when I was in sales, when I first really adopted this mindset. And I would be sitting on the couch and watching TV and I think to myself, you know what, I should make some calls. And then my brain would come in and say, no, don't do that. And my little spidey sense would go off. My awareness would come in and I'd be like, huh, all right. I'm starting to notice a pattern within myself. My brain wants me to stay comfortable right now. And if I stay comfortable, if I don't get up and make calls and I continue to waste the next two hours of my day watching TV, what becomes of my life in the future What becomes of my life if I don make those calls And so I realized what I was paying attention to this is what most people pay attention to that really holds them back, is the cost of action. I have to get off of the couch and I have to make these phone calls and these are cold calls. People don't know that I'm gonna be calling and people might hang up on me or they might cuss me out or I might get rejected in some sort of way. That was the cost of action. and that's what holds most people back from taking action. But on the other side of that, what I had to start focusing on was what I call the cost of inaction. What becomes of my life in the future if I don't do this? So it really turned into, well, what becomes of my life if I listen? Well, I can see that. What becomes of my life if I don't listen? Like what becomes of my life if I decide to go against what my brain says? And so what I started doing was I started taking myself in the present moment and projecting myself into the future. and starting to think about what would my life be if I stayed on the couch? And I started thinking about what would my life be if I did get off the couch and make the calls, if I did start doing the things I didn't want to do. And so I started noticing all of these little no's that my brain would say, all of these little don't do it's my brain would say. Like I would notice my brain say something like, you know what, I should probably wake up early tomorrow morning and do a morning routine. And then my brain would be like, no, you should just sleep in. And I was like, bing, bing, bing. Okay, a little signal would go off in my brain. and be like, oh shit, that means I need to wake up early tomorrow. And I would force myself. And then my alarm would go off and my brain would say, hey, just hit the snooze button. Go back to sleep. There's nothing you have to do right now. You don't have to go to school because I was in school at the time. You don't have to go to school for another two hours. Just sleep for the next two hours. And I'd be like, okay, that's what my brain wants me to do. But what becomes of my life if I do that? Well, I don't like what the cost of inaction looks like. So I'm going to have to take some action right now. Or, you know, my brain would say something like, I should go to the gym today. And they'd be like, no, you don't need to go to the gym today. You went to the gym yesterday. And I was like, okay. And I just started noticing all of these no's that my brain was giving me. And it was just trying to keep me in my comfort zone and trying to keep me in my comfort zone. It was trying to get me to stay comfortable. And I had to start turning them into yeses. Was it easy? Hell no. It was so freaking hard to start uprooting my entire life. It was a battle with myself for a long time. It was a battle between myself, like my true self that knows my true north and what I need to do in my life, and the little voice in my head that I call my little inner bitch. That's like, don't do this. Stay comfortable. Sleep in. Don't go to the Jim. Don't make the calls. Don't worry about it. Watch TV, scroll on your phone, right? So it was like my true self versus my inner bitch. And I had to decide which one was going to win. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. And that little inner bitch was the one that wants me to stay comfortable. The one that wants me to stay the same. The one that wants me to listen to it. But if I listen to it, I will have a comfortable, nice life. But none of my potential will really come out if I listen to it. And so I needed to learn to challenge myself. I needed to learn to push myself when I didn't want to. And at this point in time, when I was younger, I had never pushed myself. I was always an excuse giver and I was always late and I always blamed everybody else. But I realized that I was at a fork in the road in my life. And if I went one direction, my life would be very predictable and I would not be satisfied with it. If I went the hard route, I would grow and my life would become exponentially better. And I realized I only grow and I challenge myself. So I'm going to have to challenge myself. You have to understand though, your brain is going to fight you. It's going to fight growth. Your brain is not designed to help you grow. Your brain is designed to keep you safe and safety ultimately looks like comfort. And so then it'll give you all of these different fears, these logical fears, right? Oh yeah, but What if you fail? What if people judge you? What if other people's opinions? It always sounds reasonable It sounds protective but it also sounds like not today And it is the enemy of a great life There a quote that I love and it says good is the enemy of great Lots of people settle for a good life, but settling for a good life is the enemy of a great life. And so I stopped negotiating with my mind. When my mind said don't, I said do it. When my mind said no, I said yes. When my mind said stop, I said go. I had a complete, it was like a complete rewiring of myself from the inside out. And it was so hard in the beginning, especially at first it was like hard, hard. Then it became a little bit easier. But to this day, 20 something years later, it's still hard. And so I started learning like, okay, what's the next challenge? What if I do a cold plunge? What if I do cold showers? It's the reason why I hate and love cold plunges at the same time. Not because I enjoy them. I do not enjoy them. I don't like the suffering of them. I've been doing them for over a decade now. And still to this day, I'm never excited before I go in one. Because my body and my brain will scream no. And it's that, there it is. That's that little inner bitch that I'm trying to conquer. And my mind tries to bargain. And it says, hey, do it tomorrow. You did it yesterday. You don't need to do it today. And I have to notice it and not listen to that voice. And I have to do it anyways. That voice to this day. I don't know how many hundreds and hundreds of cold plunges I've done is still so loud before jumping into the cold plunge It says don't do it. It says do it tomorrow And then I just have to say Shut up go and I just have to jump in The problem with that is then when you get in and then you're freezing and you're trying to catch your breath The voice gets even louder and it's screaming even more. You did it get out get out get out get out get out Get out you did it. You did it. Okay. You've been in it for 30 seconds get out But I know the real benefits come after five, six minutes, but I have to remind myself, I am in control, not my mind. And it'll freak out. But after about two minutes, it kind of settles. It knows it's not going to win. And so what's really interesting is after the brain settles from freaking out and that little inner bitch just like turns off, I can find a place of inner peace that I have not been able to found, like have not been able to find anywhere else in my day, except for when I'm in freezing cold water and I'm about four to five minutes in. It's like the mind knows that it lost its battle and it calms down. Like I feel like Cesar Millan for my mind. It's like, it's crazy at first. It wants to bite me. It's the dog that's going crazy, but I tame it and it learns, okay, I'm not in control anymore. This guy's in control. And so a cold shower or a plunge, if you've never done it before, if you've done it before and you're trying, you're still holding yourself back from doing it. It's not about the cold. It's not about the shower. It's not about the plunge. It's about proving to yourself that your mind does not run your life. That was the biggest piece of seeking discomfort that I learned is that my mind is not the one that is in control. Most people have thoughts and they identify with their thoughts and they think they're their thoughts and they hold themselves in the exact same position. It made me realize my thoughts just come into my head, but there's some wisdom, awareness that's behind all of my thoughts that's my true self. And so it's about proving to yourself that your mind does not run your life. Every time I step into a cold shower or a cold plunge, I'm training something deeper within myself, deeper than discipline, deeper than just getting into cold water. I'm training self-trust. I'm teaching myself that discomfort won't kill me. I'm teaching myself that resistance is temporary. I'm teaching myself that I can do hard things. And nothing builds more confidence than doing something like that day in, day out. And you know, this changes everything else in your life. Like that carries into everything else throughout your day. Difficult conversations become easier. Hard decisions feel less intimidating. Fear loses its grip. And everything hard in your life becomes easier. And it's not just like me saying it. Like science proves it. Science proves that deliberate exposure to discomfort can improve your resilience in your life Research in psychology shows that exposure to manageable discomfort can enhance psychological resilience It can enhance cognitive flexibility and your emotional regulation. And it happens through adaptive changes in the brain in the response to stress. Meaning that you get better at coping with stress over time by facing stress on purpose. And some research specifically actually links, just speaking about cold, links cold exposure to improved stress response and resilience as well. And that's in terms of like your nervous system adaptation. So your body learns to manage the stress the more that you seek discomfort, which translates into better stress handling in other areas of your life. So you become stronger mentally as you push yourself in other areas of your life. Life doesn't get easier. You become stronger. And so what happened when I had developed this mindset and started adopting it, once again, it was hard, like really, really hard. But discomfort kind of stopped being my enemy. And I really started noticing discomfort as a signal for growth. Like discomfort means that I'm growing. Discomfort means that I am expanding. Discomfort means that I am in the, I'm on the edge of my comfort zone. And I know that my comfort zone is where my dreams go to die. And so if I want my dreams to come true, I need to get just a little bit outside of my comfort zone every day. Nothing new is born in comfort. Nothing new is created inside of your comfort zone. Like no confidence is built in your comfort zone. No growth happens inside of your comfort zone. No next level version of yourself lives in your comfort zone. The person that you want to become to create the life that you want doesn't exist where you're comfortable. They exist just outside of where you're comfortable. Fear is just the edge of your comfort zone. And that edge is where expansion happens. If you wait until something feels easy, you'll be waiting forever. If you're waiting until you feel ready, you'll be waiting forever because ready is not a feeling. Ready is a decision that you need to make. And so I want you to listen to this and I don't want you to blow up your entire life. I don't want you to quit your job and divorce your husband and, you know, go off on a backpacking road trip because you're uncomfortable doing it. I'm just telling you to start noticing when your brain says no, or your brain says don't, and you have to say, oh, I'm going to choose the exact opposite. I'm telling you to practice discomfort on purpose, to wake up earlier, to go to the gym, to make the cold calls, to take the cold shower, to have the hard conversation that you've been avoiding. You know, going to the gym when you don't feel like it, saying no when you would normally say yes or saying yes when you would normally say no. Like start the thing that you keep avoiding because ultimately one small uncomfortable action each day changes who you believe that you are. You start to get more confidence in yourself. You start to get more self-trust within yourself. And I understand like comfort feels good today, but comfort doesn't feel good a year from today. Growth feels better later, but the life that you want, it lives outside of the comfort zone that you're in. And so you've got to learn to seek discomfort, not because you hate yourself, not because you want to be sadistic or anything like that, but because of the fact that you refuse to stay the same. And if you refuse to stay the same, then you need to make different choices than what is currently inside of your comfort zone. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories, tag me in at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. If you wanna learn more about coaching with me outside of this podcast, you can go to coachwithrob.com. Once again, coachwithrob.com. And with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.
