How to Get Focused and Stop Procrastinating with Rob Dial

Rob Dial. It is so good to be with you, brother.

Hey, good to be with you too, man. Thanks for being here.

So we have a lot of history.

Yeah, we have a lot of history. A lot of history.

I want to start there. Right. So we, we coached together back in 2006.

Yep, yep. 2006. You were my. You and John Berga. My coaches.

Your coaches, man.

Yeah.

Yeah. And what were you doing back then? You weren't running one of the biggest podcasts in the world coaching program. What were you doing back then?

I was a. I was a brand new sales rep in Cutco and I couldn't figure it out. And I realized you guys seemed like you had figured it out. You seemed like you had your life together. And I didn't really have any mentors in the business. And I was like, you know what? These guys seem like they know what they're doing. They're both like hall of fame reps. I'm going to hire them.

Nice. Smart. So you were, you were, you. You understood the power.

I wanted to shorten my learning curve, and that's what I did.

Now you're the mindset mentor and you were on the other side of it, right, Being mentored.

Oh, yeah. It changed my life to just be having a call with some person every single week. And even though it was more than I spent, I spent $350 a month in rent, but I spent 500amonth for a coach. And that alone was like, I didn't have the money. I put on a credit card. I'm like, I'm going to figure it out. And that decision of just investing into myself was one of the best decisions I ever made.

And you were held in 2006.

I was 19.

19 years old.

19.

I started selling cutcoats.

Yeah.

And then let's Fast forward to 2014. You came to the first live event that I ever put on, Best year ever blueprint that John Bergoff and I. How funny. Too, right? It's your same coaches put on in 2014. And then at that event, you had an epiphany that led to the work you're doing now led to your new book, level up how to get focused, stop procrastinating and upgrade your life. Which, by the way, talk about three things that we all need to do. Get focused, stop procrastinating, upgrade my life. What was the epiphany that you had at that event and what. How did it.

Yeah, so, I mean, I was. When I was. When we first worked together in Cutco, I. I Became a great sales rep. I became a manager. I ended up running the number one office in the entire country out of 750 of them. And then I kind of burnt out, and I was over it. So then I started working for other companies and doing sales. And I made, like, great money for being in my 20s. Like, more money than all of my friends did, but I was just, like, so unhappy with life. I was like, this isn't. This isn't, like, what I want to do. And. And so the thing that I miss most, though, and the thing I loved about being manager and Cutco, is I've missed learning about myself and then teaching that to everybody else. So I missed the teaching aspect of it. Like, I just, like, craved it. And so in December 2014, when I went to the event, I was like, you know what I'm gonna do? Like, I'm gonna start helping people. I'm gonna start coaching people. I'm gonna start doing something. I don't know what it looks like, but the thing I miss most is helping people the same way they used to when I was in Cutco. And so about a month later, I was in. I was in. So that was kind of, like, in my consciousness. And I was like, I don't know what it looks like, but it's gonna come to me. And about a month later, I was in Jason's deli with my girlfriend at the time, now my wife. And it was like. It was like a movie scene where, like, things start to kind of, like, get real weird, as if they're, like, going to. You know, like, they're going to pass out or whatever. Like. And it was like. It was like my life came to, like, a fever pitch. And it was like, I saw these people in Jason's deli, and they were yelling at their kids. Then everybody seemed like they were overweight, and they seemed unhappy, and they seem pissed off. And it literally was like. I don't know if I wasn't seeing reality as she was. This is, like, all in my head. But I was. I literally was sitting across from Lauren, and I said, I'm going to start a podcast. Then she's like, okay, all right. Because I had a microphone, right? And I was like, I could start a podcast. I could do that. I was like. There was something inside of me. Which is funny, because for people who don't know, I just interviewed you for. For my podcast. And what you said about the miracle morning is that you felt obligated to teach it. I actually felt obligated to Start a podcast. Because I felt like I had all of this knowledge that had helped me go from, you know, getting over my father's death, being an alcoholic as a kid, to starting to work on myself, making my mindset better. And I was like, I feel obligated to teach this to people.

Yeah.

And there was no money in podcasting back then. They weren't big. It was really hard to find out how to listen to a podcast. I was like, I'm just going to start it. And so I started it. And that was August of 2015. So we're eight. Eight years now, I think, by the.

Way, they call that a calling. Right. When you feel like. Called like, I have a response. I have to share this with people. I have to help people. Yeah.

And it didn't make any sense logically in my head to quit my job and do podcasting and coaching and stuff. Right. It didn't make any sense logically, but it felt very right. Like, it felt like it was the thing. And. And so I followed it, and it started growing, and now it's at. You know, we're about to hit 300 million downloads of the podcast. It's the number one mindset podcast in the entire world.

Name of the podcast.

The mindset Mentor.

The mindset.

Yeah. And so.

And then 300 million downloads.

Yeah, 300 million.

Incredible. Yeah.

We do. Well, we do. At this point, in the next 12 months, we'll probably do about a hundred million a year is. Is where we're at. So I'm just thinking of, like, fast forwarding. It's going to be at a billion pretty soon. I'm like, it's just. It's crazy to think of. Of what it's become and it. Sitting in Jason's deli and being like, I feel like I have to do this thing.

Yeah. I can't tell you. Often I meet people that are like, hey, I listened to Rob Dial's podcast, and, like, he mentioned you or he.

Mentions you or I mention you pretty often. Yeah, I do. One of the things I always. I say the quote I say probably the most from you is actually, it's probably changed around a little bit. But you said it just a minute ago in the interview that I had with you, which is your stress and anxiety will be in direct proportion to how much you resist the way that the world is. And it's just like, when people get that, they're like, oh, I'm creating the stress and anxiety in my life.

Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. So your first book just came out. It's called Level Up. Again, it's Stop procrastinating. No, get focused. How to get focused? Stop procrastinating and upgrade your life. Let's just start with why the book? Why now? Because here's before. Before you answer the question. Years ago, you and I were talking about you writing a book. I'm like, you are such a wealth of knowledge. You've got such a huge community that would support this book. And I introduced you to my agent, Celeste Fine and John Moss, who are the most beautiful human beings on the planet. And. And yeah, and then, and then now your first book, Level up, is finally coming out. So how did we get from there to here?

And well, so I'm like, you were. I'm not, I'm not a really good writer. I'm a great speaker is what I like. That's my format. And you say it, you're like, man, writing's hard for me. So like, for me to sit down and write an email is like tough. For me to sit down and go, I'm going to write an entire book is like, it's such an undertaking. But I felt like for a long time people have asked me like, when are you going to write a book? When are you going to write a book? And it just didn't feel ready. And then at some point in 2020, it was the summer of 2020, I was like, I kind of feel like, I guess the best way of this is like I'm like ready to give birth to something. I'm ready to give birth to this thing. And so I remember I called you specifically and I was like, hey man, I'm thinking about writing a book. You have one of the most successful self published books that's ever existed. Should I do self published or should I do traditional? And you're like, honestly, you should do traditional. If it was anybody else, I'd probably say self published, but you should do traditional. And we started talking about the reasons why and you're like, I'll connect you with my agent, John, and you can just see how it feels. And I was like, all right, cool. And so I had a call with John and then I was like, yeah, this does seem like, you know, it's like, it was like, I didn't know. There's so much unknown. And then I had a call to him and I was like, okay, I feel like there's a little bit more known and I could, I feel like I kind of. This path is a little bit more lit. And I was like, I feel kind of comfortable going this way. And then the same day that I. That I talked with John, I. I called up Jay Shetty and I was like, hey, his book had just come out that year. And I was like, why did you go traditional instead of self published? And he started, tell me the reasons why. And I was like, okay, I feel like it's lighting up a little bit more. And. And then what happened was I. I was like, okay, I'm going to write this book. So I literally sat down and it's me writing it with my writers, and we're. We're going through and figuring out, like, with the team, what's it going to look like? And so I wrote an entire. One thing I haven't told you. I wrote an entire book. And then I was. I was on a flight from Austin to Sedona reading, like, the shell of it, the draft, you know, and I was going there for a team event. We had like 15 of our team members out there. And Lauren, my wife, is like, what's wrong? And I was like, I fucking hate it. Like, she's like, really? And I was like, it doesn't. Like, one of the things that I concentrate a lot in the podcast is the flow of, like, when you give a speech, like, you're a professional speaker, too. It has to flow. Like, it has to feel like I'm taking them on a journey. And there wasn't, like, a journey that was really there. And so I was like, I need to redo everything. I'm just going to start back at nothing. And so we have our team event. I'm like, lauren, I'm going to rent an Airbnb, and I'm just going to stay for an extra week by myself and just try to crank out as much as I can. And so Sedona is like this incredibly magical place. So I rented a place that was. I was me by myself, but I wanted the best view I could get. And I got this place. It was like 8,000 square feet. It was huge. I thought it was. Yeah, for me, by myself, like, I didn't go to one part of the house because it was so creepy. I was like, you know. You know, when you're by yourself in a huge place, like, it's got to be haunted, right? And so, so. But every morning I would wake up and I would disconnect from my phone. I would check in and I'd be done for the day. And I was like, I'm going to see what comes to me. And I was like, what do I. What Do I do? Like, what is it that I teach? And what I realized, like with the mindset mentor, it is literally, it is number one, how to understand yourself, how to understand your mind. And then once you understand yourself, how do you take action to create the life that you want? And I didn't want to write like a self help book. Like, I didn't want it to be self help and corny and all this stuff. Like, I wanted to be like actual strategies to get stuff done. And I was like, man, like, if you look at my Entire catalog of 1300 podcast episodes, a lot of it is just like tips and tricks to get yourself to like go from 0 to 10 miles an hour. Like, just get moving in the right direction. And so I was like, okay, I think most of what I do is actually taking action. And so the first title was Take action. And then we realized it's not really a sexy title, you know, but that's really what it's all about.

Generic self help is right, right, that's it.

But it's also like when you're in sales, right, you don't sell the plane flight to Hawaii, you sell the vacation. And so it's like, to level up sounds a lot better than take action, right. So people are going to look and be like, nah, fuck it, I don't wanna take action. So that was. So that was it. And then so I was like, okay, so let's think about taking action. And it was so it's three parts. Part one is why you don't take action. Part two is how to take action. And part three is, is actually a lot of neuroscience, which Richard Schuster actually helped me. He's a neurologist and he went through and literally helped me. I hired him as a consultant to go through and make sure that everything was factually, scientifically, neurologically fact in the book, which is actual strategies talking about, you know, dopamine reward systems and talking about the, the acetylcholine in your brain and how to change it neuroplastic with neuroplasticity. And so it's like very deep science and fact for the analytical mind. So it's why you don't take action. How to take action and then how to actually make action stick through, through reward systems and creating habits in neuroplasticity.

Got it. So why you don't take action? The.

You know, this is the achieve your goals podcast.

Yeah.

And obviously you gotta take action to achieve your goals. In fact, I was listening to one of your podcasts on the way down here. Yeah. And it was all about that. It's like, if you don't do anything, nothing's gonna change. Right.

I mean, nothing.

Day one stuff. Yeah. But the. Let's start there. Like, what holds people back from. And you can answer either of these. Here's two ways to answer the question. What holds people back from. Either from achieving their goals or what holds them back from taking action? Or any blend of those two. Right.

Relationships. Yeah. So there's. The first thing that I talk about in the book is actually your identity. And which I think is probably the most important thing for someone to actually start to think about. If, if I go, I want to lose weight and I'm 50 pounds overweight, but. And I have a friend whose parents are like this. I've talked to him before and they're like, yeah, well, you know, our family is just all overweight. It's in our genes. Right. And so if I have the programming that it's in my genes that I'll always be overweight. And that's part of my identity. Like, that's the basis, the foundation of who I am. Why would I ever take any action to try to achieve the goal of losing weight?

Yeah.

And so I think that for a lot of people it's like, it's actually questioning like who you actually think that you are. So identity is a huge, huge piece of it. And then the other side of it is fears. And so I started doing a whole lot of research on fears and found out that humans only have two innate fears that are built into them. The fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. Everything else is learned. Everything else is learned. So then you start thinking, well, what fears do I have? Because it's learned in some sort of way. And, and then what I do is I take fears and I actually break them down into two different types of fears. And I got this from a friend of mine who went and lived with a native Brazilian tribe in Brazil, which took two day long boat trip to get to them. Like, no roads. Like they're remote.

Remote.

And he was. Lived with them for 40 days. And he was. It was really interesting as we had this conversation. And he had to have a machete with him all the time because he's like, you never know when something's like, you see a jaguar, it's been watching you for a long time. He's like, you know, you sleep with it, you're. It's with you at all times. Like it's that remote, like tribal, right?

Yeah.

And he said, what was really interesting about it, though, he looked me down the eye and he goes, no. Like, not one person in that entire place has depression. And he. And so we started talking about why that is. And he said. He said, we. We put it in two distinctions, and they have primal fears, which is like, you know, getting attacked by a jaguar, you know, anaconda. He went anaconda hunting with him, like an anaconda killing somebody.

Right.

So those are primal fears, which is death is attached to it.

Yeah.

And then on the other side of it, what we have here is, because we don't have to worry about primal fears, is we. We create something that I created. It's called intellectual fears.

Yeah.

Every fear that we have that does. That does not have death or pain attached to it is just an intellectual fear, which means it is a. It is a complete fabrication of your mind.

Yeah.

And that's what usually guides our entire life, is these fears of, like, oh, well, I want to start a business, but, you know, if I start putting videos on Instagram, everyone's going to judge me. That's an intellectual fear. There's no pain and there's no death that could possibly be attached to it. And so what happens is, I think a lot of people don't take action because either, number one, their identity doesn't line up with the person that they want to become. And so you can't shift it if you think, like, this is who I'll be forever. Or number two, they're creating some fears that are fake, that don't actually truly exist in reality. And one of the things that's important about when your fears is we as humans are so incredible, where we can think something and immediately feel it in our body. And so we can feel as if the event is already happening. And so for a lot of people, like an example I give inside of the book is.

If you're dreaming and you're walking through a forest, and you see this tiger cross in front of you, and you freeze for a second, and you actually just sit there, and then you see that its head turns and it starts running after you, and you start running. We've all had these, like, crazy dreams, right? You start running, and you're, like, trying to get away from it. You're running and you're looking over your shoulder. You see that's getting closer because it's so much faster. And then you turn your head and you look over, and it's just about to bite you. And then, boom, you wake up and you're like, you're like, what's crazy about it is you're out of breath, your heart rate is up, you're sweating. Nothing happened except for you just imagining this thing. And so that's how we are with our fears. We imagine these futures and create the feeling in our body in the present moment. And then when you feel that feeling of this future that you don't want, of being rejected or being, you know, someone saying that she's not good enough or smart enough or pretty for your parents saying that, you know, you went to school to be an engineer. Why would you want to be a motivational speaker? Whatever it might be? We're feeling those feelings inside of us. And when you feel don't feel good, taking action is one of the hardest things to do.

Yeah. So how do you change that? How do you. I know you've talked about, like, you're big on visualization and envisioning. You mentioned if you. If you are in fear of a horrible scenario that you're making in your mind, how do you overcome that? And do you use visualization to do it?

Yeah. It's funny. I was actually listening to. And this is in the book as well, I was actually listening to.

I can't remember who it was. When I was in Sedona, what I would do is when I would write as much as I possibly could, and then I would just listen to different spiritual teachers or whatever it was that I was on at that point, or whether it was identity, it was kind of like Alan Watts and spirituality. And then when it was neurology, it was Andrew Huberman, all this stuff. And I would go for a drive and just listen. And I remember one of the things that this. This guru, the spiritual is. I remember as an Indian guru that was talking and God, I wish I could remember the name. I don't even know if I know who the person was. But he said it was how to overcome fear. And it was this whole thing. And. And it was like a light bulb moment where I had to, like, turn off the music and turn off his. Him speaking and be like, holy, this is crazy. And the whole idea of how to overcome fear is that you don't overcome fear because it doesn't actually exist. And you can't overcome something that doesn't exist.

Interesting.

And so the only problem that we have in our life are the problems that we're creating. And so the whole idea of fears don't exist, if you can remind yourself, because we're like. We almost always feel like we have to have something that we're combating as humans. Like, well, I need to have a. I need to beat this fear. I need to conquer these fears. And it's like, actually the fears aren't even really there because the only fear that actually truly exists inside of you is the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling, which means that everything else is learned, which means if it's learned, it's not actually real. I can't physically hold onto it. If it's not. If it's not going to kill me, then it doesn't actually truly exist. And so one of the things I always tell people is like, what if you just went on the journey of whenever a fear pops up, you go, is this real? No, it's not real. Okay, well, then I could keep going. I just keep moving on. And then. So what happens is when we're talking about the, the. The visualization side of it is we're usually visualizing the future that we don't want, and we're creating those feelings inside of us at all points in time. And I know for you, visualization is part of savers, so it's like, huge for you. And so for me, what the way I really got good at visualization was in January 1, 2017. My goal, and I put it everywhere, was I wanted for myself and Lauren to move to Italy for six months. And that was everywhere. That was my number one goal. If nothing else happens, that' I want it and I want to be there by July 1, 2017. Naturally, fear came from that because I was like, I just bought a house. I have a brand new business. My girlfriend at the time, who's not my wife, she was still working for somebody else, so she had to figure out a way to make money. And I was like. And so it's all the feelings of, like, this can't happen. I don't know how it's going to work. I don't know how. It's like, this is crazy. How are we going to do this in six months? I don't know if I'm going to be able to make this happen. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to visualize it. So I woke up and I was like, I'm going to start visualizing July 1, 2017, and I want to live in Rome. And so I started visualizing it and started feeling a little bit better about it. And I was like, man, how can I make this? How can I make myself more excited? So I actually went onto a Facebook group that was called Expats in Rome. And I joined it, and I started. I started reading people who lived in the United States who moved over to Rome and what their life was like. And they lived in different neighborhoods. I found out there's these different neighborhoods, so I put a post up in there, and I was like, hey, this is what my girlfriend and I are into. We don't really party anymore. We like food. We don't want to be around where it's too busy. Where should we move to? And I looked at all these different places, and the one that kept popping up was this neighborhood in Rome called Trastevere. And I was like, cool, let me look up Tristevery and see what it looks like. And it looks like. You would imagine like an old, like, Roman town would look like, right? But it's in Rome. It's actually in. Right outside the center of it. And. And so I was like, all right, let me Google it. I Googled it. I started looking. I clicked on Google Maps, and I started, like, seeing everything and, like, looking around in Google Maps. And I was like, wait, what if before I visualize, I go on Google Maps every single morning and actually see it? And so then I started doing that. I tried to visualize what I was seeing and trying to feel into it. And I was like, it started getting deeper and deeper, and I was like, what if I find a coffee shop and imagine myself walking to that coffee shop every single morning? So then I found an area like a coffee shop that was in a. In a square, and I. I saw it there, and I saw that there were tables outside. So I was like, okay, now I can. Like, I can't. I'm not making it up in my head anymore. I'm actually seeing a real thing.

Yeah. And I.

And it gave me more context. And I was like, okay, I did that for a couple weeks. And I was like, hold on. I'm visualizing myself drinking coffee. I drink coffee in the morning Anyways. What if I just close my eyes and visualize myself walking there? And then I hold onto my cup of coffee and actually drink the cup of coffee. So I'm smelling it, I'm tasting it. And I was like, oh, all right. So hold on. I've got almost all of my senses. The last one I don't have is hearing. So I actually found this thing on YouTube. It's called, like, the Sounds of Rome. So I would put this is every morning how every single morning I would wake up and I would visualize myself. I put on my headphones, so it Sounded like the streets of Rome. I'd have my cup of coffee in my hand. I would look at Google Maps first, and I would watch, you know, the road that I was going to walk down. And so what I would do is I would close my eyes and I would see myself walking there. I would feel myself sitting in the chair outside. I would feel that what I started doing was actually going outside because it was outside and sitting in the sun. So I'd feel the sun on my skin. I'd feel the cup of coffee in my hand. I would smell it, I would taste it, I would hear it. Every aspect was just in it. It wasn't just trying to visualize. It was like all five senses in it. I got so excited to get there. I was like, lauren, we gotta fucking go. We gotta. We've gotta go there soon. Like, we have to be like. And so went from fear to hardcore excitement.

Wow.

And when that hardcore excitement starts happening, we were talking about manifesting before. Before the podcast. Just, like, things started lining up very quickly. And so the goal is to be there by July 1, 2017. We were there June 1, 2017. We were there a month early. And so the visualization is in the book where of, like, how can you bring as many of your senses into making it real? Because all too often we're guided by our fears and our limiting beliefs. When I want to be guided by, like, my visualization of what is possible and what I want, and how can we bring all five senses into doing that every single morning is what I think people should focus on.

I love that, man. I wish I would have heard that story before I published the new edition morning, because that is, like, one of the best visualization stories that I've heard.

Thank you.

Yeah. And look at what it's doing, Right? Like you said, rather than waking up every day and going living in fear, you better be proactive. It's not like. It's not just closing your eyes for a second. Like, you were literally. You were hearing it, you were seeing it. And it reminds me, you know, you mentioning, like, going to Google Maps and actually looking at a real street, a real coffee shop where you want to be. When I was. When I first learned visualization, it was. I was training for the ultramarathon, and I hated running, and I had a total fear that I'm like, what am I doing? I've never run a mile. How am I going 52 miles?

Yeah.

And. But so I printed out, it wasn't quite as vivid as yours, but right now, But I, but I went. I'm like, well, I'm going to be running the Atlantic City Marathon twice in a row. And so I printed out the finish line. Right. And so then every day I would at least, you know, I'm looking at this is the actual finish line, and I would close my eyes and I would like create this mental movie of me running and crossing that. You know, of course I wasn't the first one that actually broke through there, but that's what I pictured.

Right. Like you want it like I won.

Yeah, I was.

Or they just set up a new finish for you to break.

It was my turn. Yeah.

Set me up a new video.

Right. But, but, but what that did is.

Yeah.

Is it became real, like every day. Like this is really going to happen. Right. That's what I say is the benefit of visualization is you go from being afraid that it won't happen to now you're visualizing it, you're embodying it into your example of the nightmare that you have. Your mind, your subconscious, your body doesn't know the difference between something that is real, unreal, or vividly imagined. Like that tiger chasing you.

Yeah.

And so when you imagine it, it's real now and you're excited. And then to your point, I think there are cosmic, unknown, unexplainable, woo woo forces that seem to start to line up. Yeah.

Yeah. That was going to say. And if people don't believe of like, oh, well, when I imagine something, I feel it inside of my body. Think about the last time you had a. You had a sexual thought. Your body starts changing immediately. Right. So it's like you can be guided by fear, but it's like your body reacts to what you are imagining inside of your head.

Yeah.

And so it's like, I don't want to be guided by fear. And that, that's the most important thing people decide is like, I will no longer be. My life will no longer be guided by fear.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's. I recently we were talking also before we started recording about how we're both going through book launches.

Yeah.

And it's one of the most stressful times of our lives.

Super stressful.

There's so much fear, there's so much overwhelm. And yeah. It kind of hit me the other day that, you know, when we live that way, it's like our, you know, I'm no neuroscientist. Right. But our limbic system, our subconscious, it's bombarded and it takes a, a cumulative toll on Our nervous system. Right. And so, you know, the way you're talking about visualization and the other level of practices, it's like really putting yourself deciding, do I want to live a life based on fear or be pulled forward by what could be possible? And it may or may not work out the way I want to. It might work out better, but I'm pulled by that vision versus something else. Something else you talk about in the book is you call it living in the headlights.

Yeah.

And this is somewhat contradictory to like vision, right. Like your long term vision. It's like, no, you say don't live 10 years in the future. Live in the headlights.

Right.

Live in the now. Talk about that. Unpack that concept.

Well, so one thing that I found, first off, I am really big into visualization, I'm really big into goal setting. But one thing that was really surprising to me, this came to me a couple years ago, is that I realized that most people, not most people a lot, a very large percentage of people, especially if you're a, a planner or very analytical person, will go, I'm going to make my 10 year goal. And they make their 10 year goal. And then they get paralysis by analysis because all 10 years, all 3650 days and what has to be done immediately flows into their head. And they're just like, I don't do anything because it's all of this. And so there's the goal of looking very long term of like, what's my North Star in life? Like, what is the guiding light that I'm going to be following? And so if you imagine if you're outside and you go, okay, I'm going to have a North Star and it's obviously nighttime, you can see the North Star in the distance. You don't know how you're going to get from here to that point. Exactly. And so the example I always give is like right now, if I were in Austin and I were going, okay, I'm going to drive to my friend's Mike's house in Houston and I get inside of my car, I will not see the entire route. It just won't happen. And we, we want to see the entire route for our lives. And so if I do though, I'm going to see the next hundred feet in front of my car. And everybody who's listening has probably driven a car at night or been in a car that's being driven at night. You cannot see the next mile in front of you very well, but you can see the next hundred feet that are in front of you. And once you get past those a hundred feet, what happens? Well, it starts to light itself up, and it actually goes back perfectly. What we were talking about with the book was when I didn't know the path of writing a book, but I was like, well, what's the next step? And the next step was like, let me just talk with an agent or someone who knows what they're doing. I talked to him and I was like, oh, I feel like, okay, that's like the first hundred feet. And now that I'm here and I have a little bit more knowledge, who should I call? All right, I'm gonna call my friend who just got finished with the book. So I called Jay and he's like, well, yeah, I would go traditional. I'm like, okay, here's the reasons why he went traditional. And then John's like, we're gonna go ahead and shop your book out to other people, and we're gonna get you on a calls. And the next. The hundred feet kind of built 100ft at a time. It wasn't like I saw the entire, like, me thinking, now three, this. All this started three years ago, summer of 2020, and now it's 2023. I didn't see the entire path of how to get here, how to write a book, the long roads, for sure. Yeah, how to get $300 million. I didn't see any of this stuff. All I did was I said, like, what's the best thing for me to do right now? It's like the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And so when I talk about living in the headlights, it's like, we won't see the entire path, and it will never be fully illuminated. And there's going to be detours, there's going to be changes. But, like, what's the next hundred feet? And once I get to those a hundred feet, it'll eventually illuminate the next 100ft. So that's why I always say, living in the headlights.

I love that. And it just reminded me of how. Of that that's how I live. And that people would ask, like, hey, did you know this miracle morning, like, that it was going to be this thing? I'm like, dude, I had no idea. And so my point is, I'm like, I'm not very good at thinking far ahead. I'm just good at doing the next thing, doing the next thing, and doing the next thing. And so that for me, it's always like, I just keep moving forward in a Positive direction. And then I think that I actually want to hear your opinion on this. Where does faith play into that? And I don't mean spiritual, although there's. It's one saying, but. But in terms of, like, faith, that if I keep living in the headlights and just doing the next best thing and keep moving forward, eventually, like, I'm going to be going in a positive direction and I don't know where I'm going to end up, but it's going to be somewhere awesome.

Yeah. I mean, so I'll talk about the whole faith side of it is I. It's. I've done a lot of work on myself over the past 17 years. I've done some, you know, some journeys, and I've done some other things, and I've worked with people, I've had coaches, and I've invested a lot of money into myself, and I've had many things not happen the way that I want them to.

Right.

Like, I can look back to, like, having an alcoholic father. That's not what I want when I was a kid. Having my dad pass away when I was 15 from being an alcoholic, not what I wanted as a kid. Many failures along the way, not what I wanted. But now that I'm 37 years old and I can look back, I can go, all of those worked out exactly how they were supposed to. And so for me, when we're looking at the idea of the North Star, where it's like, I at least have taken a step back and said what's important to me? Who do I want to be? How do I want to operate in this world? What do I want my life to look like? And that's my North Star. I know that I'm not going to get everything that I want, but I will get everything that I need. And so I actually really do trust in God, in the universe, that as long as I'm lined up, and I have many examples throughout my life, as long as I'm lined up with what I feel like I'm supposed to be doing, everything will work out exactly as it's supposed to. And, you know, I said this the other day yesterday on a podcast, but, like, one of my. One of my wife's fears is that I'm going to get so big because everything's been growing so fast, and it's been, like, not expected that eventually my. My safety could come in danger. Right. Because there's some crazy people out there. Yeah, I completely understand her fear, but I've. I've said if that's what happens to me. That's what happens to me. But I'm not going to not follow the path that I feel like I was made for in this world simply out of the fear that something might happen in the future, which probably won't.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's really good way to put it. The. I want to unpack the subtitle of your book because I think there's just really powerful lessons in there that you are an expert at. It's how to get focused. Okay, we can help with that.

Yes.

How to stop procrastinating one of the biggest killers of dreams. Right. And then how to upgrade your life is kind of the product of those first two. But talk about focus. You are a Matt. I was actually listening. I mentioned your podcast on the way here, and I believe the episode was about, like, getting focused, increasing your productivity. You know, you mentioned if you don't do anything, obviously. Right. You know, of course you're not going to go forward. But talk about that. How if someone feels like, I think right now. I did a podcast a couple weeks ago, or I guess a month ago, how to Overcome feeling overwhelmed.

Yeah.

And I feel like people feel overwhelmed both individually and collectively right now. And what I mean is, Collectively, ever since 2020 and this, you know, it's like I feel like the world just feels crazy, kind of. And out of control.

Yeah.

And we've. We're seeing more than we knew before. We're, you know, a lot of division between people and so on and so forth. So there's this global collective overwhelm of, like, what is the future of the world going to look like? But there's the individual overwhelm, which is like, I have so many things to do, not enough time to do them. I have dreams I want to achieve, but I'm just trying to make it through another day. So focus is the knife that cuts through all of that. Right. Cuts through the overwhelm. It's like, well, I'm overwhelmed because I'm trying to focus on 17 different things that make me feel overwhelmed. If I can learn to focus on one thing at a time, I can actually eliminate or transcend the feeling of overwhelm. And now I can actually feel good that I'm focused and making progress. How do we get there?

Yeah. So the way I. One of the things that I get compliments on is I try to make things really simple and really basic. And the way that I do it is I always take a step back. And so even in my business, we have 34 employees. If I'm at the executive team, I'm like, okay, here's the goal, but what's the 50,000 foot overview of this thing? And so the same way that I wrote the book of like, it's about taking action. The first thought in my head was, well, why don't people take action? And that's where the first part of the book came from. Part one came from, right? So then what happens is if we look at focus, my first question is, well, why aren't people focused? And immediately what comes to that is distractions. And so you can't like teach someone, I'll give you some strategy on how to focus, but I can't teach someone to focus if they're still don't have.

If they sell all these things that are stopping them from focusing.

100. So, like, I always say, like, cell phones are the most incredible piece of technology I think that might have ever existed. I think that people should stop saying the best thing since sliced bread, and they should start saying the best things since cell phones because it's revolutionized the world.

Right.

The problem though is that we weren't sure. We had no idea that they could create apps that would just make us so addicted to them. So for me, I've realized years ago that my phone was just a massive distraction. So I was like, it's either going to become my life or I'm going to figure out how to master this thing. So not everybody has the means to do this, which I completely understand. But I have two phones. I have a work phone, which I do my work on, and I have my personal phone. And on my personal phone, I don't have Instagram, I don't have Facebook, I don't have Reddit, I don't have any of this. There's no apps on my phone that could distract me.

I need to get a second phone, right? Yes.

And so, so my, my first or my second phone though, is always plugged in at my office. And so if I'm like, okay, because I post all the time on Instagram from like, I need to create a reel. I need to create. I need to respond to people, I need to put up a story, I'll pick up my phone and I will immediately do it. Or I will literally take a video. If I'm out and I have a great idea and I'm like, I want to put this on a story. I'll take the video and I'll send it to my head of social media and she'll post it for Me. So I understand that not everybody has that means, but for me, that was just the way that I did it because the fact that I wanted to distance myself from it. And so I think it's important to be like, what are my distractions? For some people it might be social media. For some people, it also might be their tv. And so one of the things I say inside a book is that every room in your house, the entire environment is going to help you do something. What that something is, you have to figure out. So like the kitchen, you know, if we were saying, what's the number one thing that people do in the kitchen? Eat. So that's what it's. It facilitates and helps you do. If I say to you, you know, what's your living room built towards? 99.9% of living rooms I've walked in. Where do the couches face a tv?

Yeah, sure.

So what is that room designed to do? To watch tv. And so if someone's watching too much tv, you either change the room or you change the room. You either change the actual physical room or you change the room that you're in. And so for me, if somebody lives at home, they're 30 years old and they're like, I, I'm trying to build my business, but I really want to figure out a way to stop watching so much tv. Take your TV off the wall, put it inside of a room inside of your closet and leave it there for 30 days. Put books on top of it. If you're trying to build a business, put business books that are on your coffee table. So the only thing that that room is designed to do is to either sit there and stare at the ceiling or you decide, you know what I'm going to do, I'm going to go have a recent business books and that'll help you out. And so what it's about is how do you design an environment that helps you take action? Because the majority of people don't realize they've designed environments to distract them in some sort of way. And so what really I think people should focus on is how do you design an environment to get free of as many distractions as possible, Whatever those distractions are. If there are other people, well, then how do you.

We've got a dog right now that is. We can cut this part. Joining the interview.

Come here.

Yeah, he needs Bear needs some love.

We got a tiny dog that's in here. So if you look at every room is designed to do something. What are all of your rooms designed to do? I was watching an interview one time, and one of the things that was best is they said the people who have the most willpower are not. And the people have the most willpower and are the most consistent are not people who are born that way, but people who have designed their environment not to test their willpower. And I was like, oh, my God, that's so true. Because I love anything with sugar in it, okay? I'm like a crackhead when it comes to sugar. Like, if I have some sugar, I have to have all of the sugar, right?

Okay?

So I can't have sugar in the house. And I just know that about myself because I'll finish an entire thing of Skittles. I'll finish everything. And so it's like, I've designed my environment to help me with the goal of not eating the sugar. And so that's the first thing is how do you design your environment to do so as far as distractions? Now, you can also design your environment to help you take action, too. There's a bunch of really cool things that happen when you actually start to look at somebody neurologically. And so what happens is your mental focus follows your visual focus. And so what happens is, for the average person, if you're going to sit down and do something, it takes about six minutes for your brain to warm up. So if you're going to go into a gym, right, it takes you. You gotta. You're not just gonna go and lift your. Your best. Every single time. You're gonna warm up, and then you're gonna go lift. And so what happens is the first six minutes for people is usually the hardest six minutes. And so when you sit down to do something, I recommend using the Pomodoro technique. I've recommended this over and over, like, hundreds of times because I've never found anything better, which is 25 minutes on of just work on one thing and one thing only and five minutes off. There's a whole lot of research behind why this works, and that's also in the book. But you take 25 minutes. You say, I'm going. If you have slides that you have to create for a presentation for work tomorrow, you sit down, you give yourself only 25 minutes to do that, free of as many distractions. Get on it. Get to a desk that has nothing on it except for your computer, an external monitor, and a light. And I'll tell you why that. Why that all of that's important in a second. So the only thing that you can do is either just stare at your screen or you can get the presentation done. You turn off all of your notifications. Those are more distractions that I talked about, right? So you turn off all of your notifications. You put your phone in another room so you can't resist. There's no urge to go pick it up. And then you go, all right, I've got six minutes that I know it's going to take for my brain to warm up. And I. When I was writing the book, it was so funny because I was doing these and I was noticing myself being the guinea pig in this book, right? Sit down and write and be like, damn, I don't want to write right now. Like, I've got so many other things to do. I've got a business, right? And so really what it takes is. I was like, but what did I say in the book? Write for six minutes. Just start writing something for six minutes. You know, Write for six minutes. It just starts coming out of me a lot easier, right? And so what happens is you sit down, you give yourself no distractions. You tell yourself it's going to take about six minutes for my brain to warm up. And mental focus follows visual focus. And so what you want to do is you want to stare at the screen for about a minute, if that's about how far it's going to be. So if you need to get work done, you stare at the screen. You watch a blinking cursor and try not to blink your eyes for as much as possible. And you sit there and you stare. Because what happens is you're trying to take your peripheral vision and actually try to imagining that you're looking through like a paper towel roll and put it to just this little area that's right in front of you. When I wrote the book, I actually wrote the book a lot of times with a hat on and a hood over, like a hoodie on, so that there was no sides that my brain could see on the other side. Because I'm actually visually telling my brain, this is the only thing that we're working on right now. And there's no distractions on the outside. There's nothing else that I could see. And this is what we're focusing on. And then what I would usually do is I'd have a cup of coffee while I was doing it, and I would get into levels of focus that I've, like, never had before in my entire life. So I'm writing the book based off of. I know happens all of this research, and I'm trying all this research as I'M actually doing it.

Yeah.

And I went from 25 minute sessions to 45 minutes straight of just hardcore focus on this thing only. And one of the things that helps with it is that your brain, it's really interesting, is so your eyes are, you know, connected to your brain, obviously. And if you're looking straight ahead, like straight ahead and imagine that there's a line when you look down, which is how most of us look at our computer, we look down at our computers or we look down at our phones. There's actually a part of your brain that it clicks on that tells your body to start being relaxed. And so we're working looking down almost all day long, which is telling us to start to relax. But what's interesting is that when you look above the center of your visual field, and so this is why I always recommend you have an external monitor. And it's just a little bit up like this. Number one, it's better for your spine to do it that way. And you're looking. It's actually telling your brain to be more alert. On top of that, the most important thing you could do, you could walk into either one of the two offices that I work at all, all the time is right above my screen of my external monitor is always a really bright light. And the reason why is because the bright light actually mimics the sun. And your brain has these things that are on the. They're these receptors on the bottom sides of, on the bottom, bottom of your eyes. They're called a basal. Basal. I don't want to screw it up, but I probably will. Basal ganglion cells that are, I think I was actually right on that. That are on the bottom side your eye, that look up, that, that search for basically the sun to tell your brain to either be alert or to be fake or to be tired. And so if you can remember light above your eyes a little bit doesn't. You don't want to be blinding or anything like that. And then a screen that you're looking at that's a little bit above your. Slightly elevated, above your normal visual field. It's actually telling your brain, wake up, get focused. And if you can try to narrow your visual field and only give yourself one thing to focus on, you can focus on it. And I always tell people, you might be terrible at it the first day, but just keep doing it and show up and keep doing it and show up and you'll get so much better at it. And you'll notice you can go 25 minute sessions like it might Be a struggle to get to 25 minutes. Do this for a month and you'll notice you're at like 30, 35, 40 minutes of just hardcore focus. And if you can get a couple of those sessions done a day.

Yeah.

You're light years ahead of the other person.

Yeah, Yeah. I call I. The pomodoro technique. The 25,5 off I use. Before I knew what that was, I created this strategy when we were in Cutco called half hours of power. And it was the idea that we, you know, I got to make phone calls for like an hour or two. Like, I don't want to. It's such a, you know, it's just. And you'd end up dilly dally. Like, you know, in one hour, you'd end up making a call and then you'd like get distracted and do something else. And what I did is I gamified it where I go, okay, half hours of power. So I have to make calls for 30 minutes, as many calls as I can possibly make. And then I earn a. And it would be a five or ten minute break.

Yeah.

And. And so it was like, yeah, it was just. It was the laser focus and, you know, head down, head up, whatever. And for the 30 minutes and then getting the calls and it was. I would set a number of, okay, I need to get this many calls done. So I was racing trying to get to that target. And I'd already measured, like, how many calls can I get done in half an hour if I'm pretty much on point the whole time? Yeah. So I was like. And I was tallying. Okay, check. Okay, I'm at eight. I'm at eight. Right. And like, the thing is your. My brain, it's like your brain, instead of focusing on all the different things, like distractions, you're like, I have to get this many calls done to earn my break. Because if I didn't get that many calls done in the 30 minutes, I didn't get to take a break. I had to keep going and almost always get it, get it done. But, but anyway, the point being, like, actually the point. And the question is When? With the 5 minute break on the. Using the Pomodoro technique. Yeah. What do you do with that?

I'm so glad you brought us because I wanted to say it, because I was like. As you were saying it, I was like, shit, I hope we don't change. Like, there's something really important here. Because here's what happens is most people, what we do is then we go to our Phones. Yeah, yeah. And the problem with that is that you're still, you're still using a narrow visual field. And so what happens is, is there's, there's. It's called vergence eye movement. So convergence means your eyes go from like. If I'm looking out in the distance, outside, across the street, my eyes are basically like this. When I'm looking at something right here, my eyes have to converge a little bit, which like they basically cross is the way it would be. And so, and then there's divergence, which is like kind of looking out towards the side. When you're looking at something that's very close, your brain is still, your, your eyes are still telling your brain it's time to focus. And so looking at your phone is one of the worst things that you could do. Here's what you do though. If you are, if you're studying or if you want, like if. I wish I would have known this in college, I didn't study in college anyways and I dropped out. So it doesn't really matter, I guess. But, but, but for people who are listening and they're in college, this is like amazing for you to do studying. If you're trying to, if you're reading a book or you're trying to get better at like a specific skill set, what you want to do is if you're, let's say you're, let's use playing guitar as an example, right? Someone's like, okay, I want to learn this, this guitar phrase. And they sit down, they play guitar. The worst thing that you could do after that 25 minute session, whatever it is, of dedicated practice, whether it's studying, whether it's playing guitar, whether it's creating slides, any of that stuff, the worst thing you could do is look at your phone because you're still telling your brain through what you're looking at that it needs to focus. What you want to do is the exact opposite. So if you imagine a hardcore workout, what do you need? You need rest. Your brain goes through something when you fall asleep through your hippocampus. It's called hippocampal replay, which is where it actually replays your entire day. That's why you can have dreams about what happened when you're asleep. It can go anywhere between 50 to 60 times faster in more replay. So it'll replay it 50 to 60 times over and over. And that's how you create the repetition to make it a long term memory. What's interesting though is when you take a five minute Break. The best thing that you could do is close your eyes and do absolutely nothing. Because your brain goes into hippocampal replay. And even though you're awake, it restores it 20 to 30 times faster. So it's not as much as when you're asleep. But imagine if you're trying to study something, whether it's a sheet music, whether it's something for school, whether it's a presentation that you have and you're trying to memorize, you're trying to memorize, you're trying to memorize and it's hardcore focus on this thing and you're trying to store it. The best thing that you can do is take 25 minutes in that five minute break, close your eyes and then just allow your brain to do whatever it's going to do, which is storing it back over again. And so just allow your brain to do it. That's the first thing you do. The second thing you do if you want to do something active, is to go for a walk or to go out and look at a landscape. So for me, a lot of times what I'll do in my breaks when I was writing the book, you know, I'd sit there and write the book is I would take five minutes and I would go outside so the sun was still out. So my brain could see the sun was still out. It would tell my brain to focus and I would look out at the trees because then my eyes go from looking at something that's real close and focused and divergence, eye movement to now I'm taking in my perimeter again. And it tells your brain to actually start to relax and replay all of that over and over again. So the worst thing someone could do is look at their phone. The best thing they could do is, is some form of relaxation, whether that's yoga, Nidra, or whether that's meditation or whether that's just staring off into the distance, allowing your brain to replay and store everything that you just did.

I'm so glad that we didn't move on and we got to cover that because you just changed my life. Because I think that I do probably unlike most people, I will go to the phone, right? And it's interesting. I never thought about like, seems like such common sense, like close your eyes for five minutes, almost go into a little midday meditation. Yeah, right. And allow, allow your. Not only for, for what's happening to start to embed itself in your subconscious. But yeah, just to reset. I mean it makes so much sense. And I will occasionally do, I will do the, you know, I'll walk out, I'll go outside for my five minutes, whatever, but I'm sure half the time I grab the phone and then go outside.

Hey, I. I used to only go to my phone.

Yeah.

I was hardcore in Pomodoro, and I would always go to my phone because I have a business and I have things I have to do. And then I realized, oh, like, yeah, I need to put another room and disconnect. If I'm going to do two Pomodoro sessions, 25 minutes each, that's going to take me an hour. Okay, I'll disconnect from my phone for an hour. I'll let my team know, and then I'll come back to it.

Yeah, yeah. It's fantastic. The. All right, so that's the. So the first part of the subtitle, the book is Level Up. It's how to Get Focused. The second part is and how to Stop procrastinating.

Yeah.

And I want to talk about that because, you know, procrastination, I mean, I've done. I've done podcasts on that. Right. And it's like the first question always is, okay, well, why do you procrastinate? Identify that.

Yeah.

And to me, the simplest answer is because it's always easier to do nothing than it is to do the thing that you need to do. No matter what the thing is, it's always easier to do it, to not do it than to do it. Right. So that's the simplest reason you're procrastinating. You could dig deeper into. Well, it's fear. It's, you know, you don't enjoy it, it's painful, it's tiring. It's what you don't feel capable of, whatever the reason is.

Yes.

But it's easier to not do it than it is to do it. So, yeah. How do you stop procrastinating?

Well, so, yeah, what you said is actually perfect because I had this. This realization a few years ago. One of my employees was, like, talking about, you know, somebody wanted to join our program. And the thing that they were. They were dealing with procrastination. And I was like, you realize that procrastination is never the actual problem. Everyone thinks procrastination is a problem, but procrastination is the symptom, it's not the cause. And so why are they procrastinating? Is what it. If. If I were to say, hey, if you do exactly this thing, I'll give you a million dollars. Would anybody procrastinate? Undoing exactly what that thing is. If I said, hey, sit down and make a hundred phone calls, 100 cold calls, you're going to read this exact script. And if you, as soon as you finish, if you finish in the next seven hours, I'm going to give you a million dollars. Would anybody procrastinate? Nobody would procrastinate ever, right? There's no way, because they know what they're going to get out of it, and they know exactly how much time they have, and they know exactly what is they need to do. And so I think what it comes down to is what we were talking about earlier, which is what fear are you imagining in the future? And so the thing that was like, I try to harp on this so much, and I don't know if people understand, like, how important it actually is, but it's the feeling of the future that you're imagining, you will feel in the present moment. And so, like, for instance, if you're a business owner, I coach a lot of business owners. That's like my main thing that I do besides the podcast. And so many of them are just afraid of the business failing. And then what's really interesting about it is the thing that they fear the most is usually what they create. And so they're so afraid of the business failing that they don't take any action. And then the business ends up starting to go down the road of failure. And so what happens is I'm sitting here, for instance, I want to build my business to, let's say, $100,000 this year. And then I sit there and I'm going, well, you know, I've run two other businesses into the ground, and I don't know what's going to work out. And I'm going to start taking this action. And what if. What if I end up taking. What if I put so much time into this next year and I don't even make enough money to pay my bills? And so they're imagining the future they don't want their. Imagine the future that they fear. And most people are imagining a future they don't want. And then they're. They're curious why they can't motivate themselves to take any action. It's because you're actually thinking about a future that you don't want. And who would ever want to take action towards a future that they don't want? It doesn't make any sense, right? And I saw a video one time on YouTube and it was amazing. It was this guy that had this this lady come up on stage. And he's like, okay, there's one chair on the left side of the stage. There's one chair on the right side of the stage. And he goes, okay, sit right there. And I want you to tell me what you don't want in your life. And so she's sitting in the don't want chair, and she's like, I don't want this, and I don't want this and this and this. He's like, okay, what else? What do you don't want in your relationship? I only want this in my relationship. Okay, what do you not want in your money? And went through every category you could go to, right? And she, like, just firing stuff off. He goes, okay, cool. Now go to the other one. And he's like, what do you want? And she's like, well, you know, I would like to be happy, and I would like this thing. And goes on for, like, 12, 15 seconds. Then she goes, but, like, I. I don't want my relationships to be this. And she immediately went to don't want. And it was like, that's how most people live their life program. We're programmed to think about what we don't want. And there was a. There was a. A really. A big moment in my life. There was a really interesting thing. Is. Is right outside of town here, my friend A.J. it was his birthday. It's like, seven years ago now. And we went to go race, Go go karts, like 50 miles an hour. We rented out the entire track. There was, like 20 of us. It was awesome. And the guy who. Who owned the track and was teaching us was an ex Le Mans driver. And so he, like, knew his stuff, and he was French, and he was funny, and he was making all these jokes. And then he got super serious, and he's like, you will crash. Somebody will crash. When your friend crashes in front of you, don't look at the crash, because you will crash into your friend.

Oh, wow.

And there's a chance you could kill him.

Okay.

And he was, like, serious. This could be right. And he goes, when somebody in front of you crashes, look at where you want to go, not the crash. And I was like, oh, my God. This is everybody's life is. We're always looking at the crash and going, why do I keep crashing? We're always looking at the crash. We're thinking, why do we keep crashing? When it's like, we're not looking at that. We're looking at. We're looking at the crash, not where it Is we want to go. When you're in. You know, I've never driven a motorcycle, but I've heard this from people who follow me, is when you're in motorcycle school, they say, look through the turn, look at where you want to go, because that is where your body will naturally drive you to. It's the same thing with your subconscious and your conscious mind, is that your body will naturally drive you to whatever it is that you're focusing on the most. And so I think the problem with procrastination is that people are just imagining what is it they don't want. And how could you ever motivate yourself to do something when the future looks like it's going to suck?

Yeah. Be hard to me. And that's why when we're talking about earlier, about why I think affirmations are my favorite of the Sabers.

Yeah.

Is because everything that you're talking about is on point, but also what you talked about. We're programmed to look for what's wrong. We're programmed to live in fear. We're programmed to think of life today the way we thought of life yesterday.

And the day before. We kept our species alive.

And that's where affirmations are. Literally, that's where you rewrite the plan, you rewrite the blueprint in writing. And doesn't have to be affirmations. You can call it whatever you want, Right. It's like, here's how I'm commit what I want in my life, what's possible here. You can even say, here's what I'm afraid of. But I'm not going to focus on that. I'm going to focus on what I want, what's possible. And every day I'm going to visualize that. I'm going to imagine that. I'm going to feel that. I'm going to think about that.

I love this. So let's go to the third and final part of the subtitle. The book is Level up, how to get focused, stop procrastinating and upgrade your life. What. What is the. If you want to leave our listeners with any wisdom to upgrade their life based on your book, Level up, what would that be?

Well, read the book. But, but besides that, I think the book and. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's. The thing about it is, is I. I was thinking about like creating a title of make your life better or better than yesterday was one of the ones that we went through or 1% better today. And the thing that I want people to understand is this Is what I. The problem with better and why I didn't go with it is because better implies worse, which means that if I'm going to make my life better in the current moment, my life is worse than it should be. And that just doesn't make people feel good. And so the whole idea of the book and why it was called level up and upgrade your life is because of this view. As I was writing it and I was talking to the publisher, they're like, why is that not in the book? And I was like, what? And they're like, this. This frame of your life being a video game and what. What I told them, and this is the way I actually see my life, is I see my life the same way I see a video game. Which is, you know, how first off, how boring would it be to play a video game where there's no challenges? How boring it'd be a video game if every day is exactly the same as it was before you'd stop playing a video game. What makes a video game fun is that you meet a challenge, you meet a new bad guy, and you meet that bad guy, and maybe you fail a couple times, but you don't give up. You just keep going, and you don't give up, and you just keep going. And what happens? You eventually beat the bad guy and you go on to another level.

Yeah.

And the next level is always harder than the level before it. Sure. But you feel more confident because you've at least conquered things in the past. And then what happens? A new challenge, A new bad guy comes up and challenges you, and you're. Instead of going, I'm not going to do this. You're like, okay, I'm going to keep going at it. Oh, man, I died again. I failed. And then you go, well, okay, I learned that, you know, this doesn't work with him, so I'm gonna try this thing out. I learned that this doesn't work, so I'm gonna try this thing out. I see life exactly the same. And, you know, you asked me a few minutes ago about, like, how do I have faith and trust in what's happening for me is exactly what's supposed to happen is I actually do view my life as a video game.

Yeah.

In this way of, like, every character that comes to me is a character that's supposed to be in my life in some sort of way. God placed them there for a reason. But then when a challenge comes to me, instead of being like, I can't do this, I go, okay, what's the point of this challenge, and how is this challenge going to help me level up? How is it going to help me upgrade my life in some sort of way? And I've realized that I've had. I would never want to go back to any of the most challenging moments of my entire life. I don't want to go back. You probably don't want to go back to trying to walk again. You probably don't want to go back to having cancer. You don't want to have any of those things, but you wouldn't change them because you've learned so much about yourself. You've gotten. You've probably gotten so much closer with your family. You appreciate them more. Your children probably appreciate you more because there was an opportunity where you might not have been there. And so it's like, the challenges are never fun, but the challenge are always necessary for us to learn something from it and then for us to be able to grow in some sort of way. Because, you know, it's like the phrase new levels, new devils. It's like more things come with. You say that, right? It's like new things come at you as things, as you start to grow. And so the phrase level up actually came, like, leveling up your life, upgrading. Your life came from, like, upgrading in a video game. Like, I think of like when you used to play Super Mario Brothers, you know, and you'd get the mushroom and it would make you bigger. It's like, that's what I want to be, is I don't want to be better, but I want to upgrade myself all the time. I don't want to think that I'm going to be better in the future, because that implies that I'm worse now. I want to think that I'm a more evolved, more expansive, more conscious being. And if I can view every challenge that comes through in my life as a way for me to upgrade myself, it makes it easier for me to be like, okay, I'm not going to give up. I'm going to push through, because on the other side of this is a better version of me.

Yeah, I love that. I love the video game analogy. I'm glad the publisher got you to put it in, because it really does make sense. And, yeah, new levels, new devils, right? The challenges get harder, but you get better, and such is life, you know? And I think that if you're dealing with challenges right now, anybody listening to this, right? Or watching this, just to realize that what you're going through now is an opportunity for you to learn for you to grow and for you to level up and become better than you've ever been before.

Absolutely.

So, Rob Dial, man, thanks for writing, finally writing your book, man. You are 37 years old and truly wise beyond your years. And for anybody watching, where's the best place to get the new book? Level up.

Wherever they want to buy it. It should be everywhere. It's on Amazon, it's on Barnes and Noble, it's inside of bookstores. So as long as they just. They could go to Google, type in Rob Dial, level up and it should pop up and they can order and have it sent directly to them and it is out. You're going to be releasing this the week that it comes out. So it is available for people to buy and have it sent directly to their house.

Yeah. And anybody listening, if you're a podcast listener, which obviously you are listening to this podcast, subscribe to the Mindset Mentor Rob, your podcast. It's one of the few that I actually listen to.

Thanks, man.

And it's one of my favorite podcasts and one of the things I've modeled after you recently, except for the separate episode, but is shorter. Yeah, a lot of your episodes, your solo episodes are usually like, you know, 17 minutes, 20. They're usually under half an hour. Not mine. I'll go on for an hour. Nobody's still listening.

What am I talking about?

So, anyway, so, man, it's amazing how the student, I will say, like to me, you and I, I really view you as a peer, as a mentor, if you will. And I feel like it's one of those where the student in many ways has become the teacher. I learn a ton from you. I am really excited to read the new book which will be arriving. Probably arrived yesterday when this thing comes out. So the book, everybody is level up how to get focused, stop procrastinating and upgrade your life by my good friend Rob Dial. Grab your copy today and may your life be blessed.

Thanks, buddy.