The Mindset Mentor: How to CONNECT to Your FUTURE & ATTRACT Your Dreams Effortlessly (It's SIMPLE!)

Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, and today we have an incredible show with Rob Dial, a master of personal development, podcasting, and building a successful brand. Rob has been consistently growing his business and podcast for over nine years, and today he's here to share his secrets. We'll dive into the six-month roadmap to success, how to uncover the three energies blocking us from achieving our dreams, and explore how passion fuels our journey. Get ready for an episode packed with insights to transform your life and achieve greatness.

He said, the problem is, Rob, you're acting like a victim and you're making all these excuses. Your life will not change until you decide to be the CEO of your life. That was the most probably life-changing moment that I've ever had in my entire life because I was like, I get it.

We have the inspiring Rob Dial from the Mindset Mentor in the house.

I think we've been taught goals incorrectly. Instead of having to like white knuckle our way to our goals, which I did for years and push and push and push and bash my head into walls and just go anyways, instead of having to push, I can actually feel pulled towards my goal. We are so incredible as humans. Our brains are so incredible that you and I right now can sit in this moment in your basement and think about a future. And no matter what that future is, our brain can actually make our body feel the feelings of it's happening right now. The problem is the universe is abundant, and I think scarcity only lives in the human mind. I would be afraid to check my bank account because there was times when I checked my bank account and it was not enough. There was negative money in my bank account many, many times.

What would you say is the number one thing you did to heal your relationship with money and start bringing in more financial abundance? What do you think are the three energies that are blocking people the most from success, love, and fulfillment in their life? I think the main thing is to...

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness.

Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Rob Diale from the Mindset Mentor in the House. My man. What's up, buddy?

Good to see you.

Good to be here. New studio. Welcome.

Yeah, with this new studio. Home studio.

Pumped about this. When your basement, this is exciting. I know. The Greatness Basement. Yeah, that's where we're doing it. and I'm excited about this because we just made an announcement recently for you joining the Greatness Network. So welcome. You're the first member of the Greatness Network. Thanks, man. Excited to see what we're going to build as the hub of inspiration. So I want everyone to check out your show. Subscribe, check it out. Amazing content you've been doing for eight years now with your podcast, right?

August will be nine. Yeah, nine years, man. There's not many of us who've done it for nine plus.

When I started, it was like you and Tim Ferriss. I don't think there's any. I know, right? Joe Rogan. That was about three of you guys. that's it. And it's been an interesting journey over the last nine years for you. And you also coach a lot of people. So you started your show, but you also have a business where you're coaching people, helping entrepreneurs grow, but also helping individuals transform their life. And the thing that I've been feeling recently in the world is a lot of people feel stuck with their life, and they don't think they have the ability to change. within a six month window. They feel like change is so far away. It's like, ah, just, I don't know how long it's gonna take me until I start making more money, how long it's gonna take me until I can start getting in shape. It's like I keep trying, but it's so hard. How long it's gonna take me until I can start feeling more loved, until I can start attracting the people I want in my life better. Friends, relationships, how long it's gonna take me. And I'm curious. If you could break down the last nine, 10 years of all this work that you've done, and if you were to give someone a roadmap on how to completely change their life in the next six months, what would they need to do? Is it a different way of thinking? Is it focusing on your fears and eliminating those fears? Is it having a step-by-step plan? What would you do to transform someone's life in six months? So they feel like they actually are seeing change.

Yeah, I mean, I think that first off, that's like probably the best question because that's majority of the mindset mentor is like steps of all of this, just different podcasts where I'm like, okay, when I wrote the book that I just got out last year, I was like, what do I do? Like, if I look at 1400 episodes of the Mindset Mentor podcast, like what is it that I do? And it's more than anything else, it's how to understand yourself so you can take action. Like the original title of the book was the Psychology of Taking Action because I find that so many people have trouble with it. And I had a lot of trouble with it. And so like, it's interesting, like we can look and say, oh yeah, like we both have successful podcasts. It must be so nice to have a successful podcast, but it's like, there's a lot of fears that come up in doing this. I'm like, we have to put ourselves out there. That's a lot of judgment that comes from it, right? I think the first thing that's probably the most important is like, what feels right? I don't know about you, but I didn't start a podcast for money. And when you started podcast, there was no money.

No, I started podcasting.

No money for the first five, six years. There's no money. There's no, I didn't even know there was a way to monetize it, right? So there was like, it wasn't a money thing. There was a part of me that was like, what feels like the thing that I want to do? And for me, like, I actually felt obligated to start the mindset mentor because I was the exact moment that it happened. I can tell you exactly what happened. I was in Jason's deli with my girlfriend at the time, now wife, and I was sitting there and it was like a movie where it was like a fever pitch, where I started getting really stressed out, really anxious. I was looking around me and there was all these people that were like yelling at their kids and they were, you know, just seemed like they were-- I don't know if it was reality or if it was just in my head. And it was like everyone looked like they were miserable around me and I was like feeling all of it. And this is like the beginning of 2015, so nine years ago, right? And I look at Lauren and I go, I think I'm gonna start a podcast. and she's like, what is a podcast? She didn't really know what it was back then. I was like, I had this microphone, this exact one that we're using, a Shure SM7B, 'cause I'm a musician, so I had to set it up. And I was like, I have things, I have traumas that I've overcome in my life that self-development helped me with. And I want to try to, I feel obligated to teach that to people. And it just felt right, which is the most important thing. And so I think the first step is, Don't ever chase money. I heard a quote, I think it was from Oprah, where she said, Follow your passion, money comes second. Money always comes second. And so I think a lot of people always go money first. How can I make money right now? And I think the thing about it is if someone follows passion, the money might not be there right away. But I think that if you fast forward five or six years, you go, oh my God, I didn't expect it to be this good.

Right? Like when you-- you might have some patience though.

That'S the problem is most people want it right now.

They want it now.

They're real about with delayed gratification. And so I think the first thing is the feeling, like what feels like the thing that you want to do. And I think a lot of people don't give themselves enough space in silence to be able to think. Like a lot of times we're keeping so busy, we're always on Instagram. Like I recently deleted Instagram completely from my phone. Everything I run through my team just because I want more silence in my life because I personally believe just from, you know, I'm not religious in any sort of way, but I believe that God, the universe, life speaks in silence. So the more silence I can have, the more clear I can be on what I'm supposed to do. And so whenever I've been in silence and I get a feeling, I trust that feeling, like really deeply. And I'm okay going into whatever darkness might be in front of me and not knowing the path. So I think the feeling is the first thing.

Interesting.

The second thing is space and time.

To be able to feel a lot of space and time. Analyze and assess your thoughts and feelings.

Yeah.

It's kind of like you felt called to do something and it was kind of either nagging you, calling you, pulling you to do this because you kept listening to the voice inside of you that said, do this thing. Do this thing. You didn't know why.

Right.

But you felt excited about it, nervous about it, but also like, this is something you're supposed to do. And maybe you fail, but it's something you're supposed to do.

Yeah. And. And the thing about it that I think is important people understand is your passion doesn't always have to be your paycheck. I think a lot of people get that misunderstood. Like, I think you and I are probably two of the luckiest people alive. We get paid for doing something that we're so passionate about. Like, it is what we love to do. And for some people, it's not always that way. And so if someone's looking, there's two different paths. Someone's looking to make money. Well, what's something that you could do that could make you money that you could at least enjoy? If someone's looking for passion, it could be something completely different. You know, like, I always tell a story how to lady was in one of my coaching programs one time, and she was, like, real depressed. And I was like, what do you love? Like, what's one? What's a moment in your life where you felt, like, so much energy? And she's like, I have horses, and we had special needs children come over to my farm and got to, like, do therapy with the horses. That's one of the most alive I've ever felt. And I was like, but she goes. And then she goes, but I can't make any money doing that. And I said, what if you just had a job that you enjoy? You spend time that it pays your bills? But it gives you more free time to be able to help these children. And she's like, that feels good. And I was like, there might be something down the road where you might figure in three or four years that it'll make you money. But really what it is is like, how can I enjoy my life more? And so for the first thing I think is the feeling. The second thing for people is you have to understand, like, you literally have to become a different person. And that's what's scary for people is that I have to be different. Like if I go back to Lewis 12 years ago, you're not the same Lewis as you were because you had to become and mold yourself into a different person. I feel like I'm a different person as well. I don't think my podcast could be where it is now because I wasn't good enough to be here. But years and years and years and years and years of work, 1400 podcast episodes allowed me to get to the point where I can speak in a way that I guess is better than the way that I used to or more concisely and more value. But it doesn't just come like that. I think that's part of the thing is that you'll see incremental changes and I truly believe the longer that time goes on, the more I believe in like the Chinese bamboo story, which is, you know, you plant the seed, you water it first year, nothing, second year, nothing, third year, nothing, fourth year, nothing, fifth year, nothing, six year, it grows 80 feet in about six months. And they say sometimes you can like literally watch it grow. Wow. I feel like it's the exact same way for success where it's like you have to find the path that you're okay with going down that you feel good about, that you are passionate about. And I feel like eventually the universe kind of comes to your side and conspires with you. If it's like, Hey, this is the thing that gives you energy. I think that's the other way that God speaks is like through energy. Like if I get energy, I'll 100% have more energy after this podcast than before because I love doing this stuff. Like this is what lights me up. And I think that's how when you look at the entire universe, it's all energy. I think that's us being like, okay, if I'm silent, I can hear the messages and I can start feeling the energy of what gives me energy. And I think that's the stuff that.

We'Re supposed to be doing with our lives. How do we know when something is.

Fueling us and giving us more energy? I mean, I think it's usually quite apparent, right? So there's some people you get around and you're like, oh, there's some people.

You can think about getting around and.

You'Re like, oh man, you're like, you already feel your energy getting drained from it, right? So it's like, I've always heard like people are like through their batteries or their vacuums, they either suck energy from you or they give you energy. I think there's also, you know, things that we do that are batteries and vacuums, you know, I think people underestimate how much energy it takes to go to a job that you hate. Like, to drive to drive to think.

About how much you hate this thing, right?

You got to wake up in the morning. And I did this for years, right? I did this for years. I had to wake up in the morning. I had to get myself ready. And the whole time I was like, I don't want to go to this job. Like, my. I remember just one of my bosses just hating this guy, right? And he was just so rude to every one of the sales reps, all of us. And I had to get myself ready. I had to get in the car. I had to drive there. I had to walk in. I had to put on a face like I wanted to be there for nine, 10 hours a day, every single day, it takes more energy to go to a job that you hate than to build something that you actually love. And I think that's what a lot of people need to actually start to understand. And, you know, Alex Romozi put up a post a little while ago and it was like most people say they want more free time to build their business, but they have a full time job. And he said, if you look at it, you have 104 days a year. If you have 52 weeks times two, you have weekends, you have 104 days a year to build the thing that you're actually passionate about.

Under four days.

Yeah. And it might take a lot of days. it's a lot of days. That's a, you know, almost a third of the year. You get a lot done. You can get a lot done in 104 days. And so it's like sometimes you do have to go out of balance to go back in balance. You know, like, if you look at, like, the beginning stage of growing your podcast, there was a lot of hours, I'm sure. Yeah. And there's probably a lot less hours now where you're able to go. You went way far this way, and now you're way far this way if you want to be that way. And you can go back and forth between it. But I think that people just need to be aware of, like, all right, Being in this, around this person, do I get more energy? Do I feel like they're sucking energy from me? Doing this task, do I get energy from it? Do I feel like it's sucking energy from me? Like one of the things, I had a podcast episode come out the other day about how ADHD is a superpower. And this is one thing I think, like I hate some of the words that are used. Like it's a deficit is what is, like as something is wrong with me if I have it. Attention deficit disorder, right? Attention deficit disorder, right? There's something wrong with my brain. When in reality, if you look at somebody who has ADHD, when they find something that they're passionate about, they have what's called hyperfocus. Like they can zone out the entire world. And obsess. Yeah, right. And so what really ADHD is, is a low meter. Like, I can't do this BS. Like, I'm not gonna do this anymore.

Or I'm just not excited or interested in it.

Right. And so it's putting that energy towards what you are excited about. Right. And most people are like, well, I'm just distracted. I'm like, actually, you just don't like what you're doing. and you have a brain that just can click it off and be like, this is not what I'm doing. If you could find something you become hyper focused at and you can zone out the world, go for that thing. That's the thing that gives you energy.

I think my entire childhood of school was ADHD because I just could not focus or pay attention the whole time. Yeah, it's interesting because I grew up very dyslexic also. I used to feel like it was, you know, the greatest I don't know, deficit for me. I used to feel very insecure because I could not read and comprehend what I was reading.

Yeah.

And in eighth grade, I had a second grade reading level when they tested me. And it was just always terrifying to read aloud in class because I would skip words and I couldn't understand it. But I think that deficit or inefficiency in me with that allowed me to focus on other areas of my life where I became very you know, proficient in. It's what allowed me to find something else and become a master in other ways. But, yeah, it was a struggle for 18 years, man.

Yeah.

I mean, I've.

I'll be honest with you, too. Like, I've. There's many times in school when I felt like I was stupid. I remember I switched. I. We lived in a bad part of town when I was younger, and then we moved from second grade into a better part of town. A little bit better. It wasn't great, but it was still a little bit better part of town. And we had these. It was a small school that we had split. Classes, which means that second graders and third graders were together. I was in third grade, and I remember sitting in the room trying to figure out how to read. It wasn't taught to me, and that was in third grade. I couldn't figure it out, and all the second graders were reading out loud. No way. These kids that are younger than me can read, and I can't read. I must be stupid. And so I think that my sister homeschools her children, and she's never forced reading on them, because she, and she's taught me a lot through this. She's never forced reading on them, and she's like, when they're ready to read, they'll read. And one of her kids didn't start reading till he was like 10, 11 years old, wasn't into it. Now he reads more than all the other kids, but it was never forced on him. And so I think it's super important for anyone who has children out there to realize, like, sometimes it just takes time for your children to catch up and their brain to change. But there's, I don't believe in using the word deficit because then we automatically think there's something wrong with me. And if there's something wrong with me.

I have that identity, and that identity can go with me the rest of my life. so I heard you say we should start with, you know, silence and our awareness first.

Right.

Should we be thinking about. Is that a mindset thing or should we be thinking about habits, Vision, goals? Like, if we're really trying to transform in the next three, six, 12 months.

Yeah.

What are the next steps then around that?

Yeah.

Do we have to change all of our habits and be extreme? Do we need to change a vision or get clear on something?

Yeah.

You know, what is the steps we need to do after that?

Yeah, I mean, first off, you kind of figure out what it is or at least feels right. And then there's a... Energetically. Right. And there's a really great book that's now a children's movie that came out. It's called the, if I remember the order, it's the Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse. There's a part of it where the little boy is in the forest and he's like, I can't see my way out of the forest. And the horse is like, Can you see the next step? And he said, Yes. He said, Just take that. And it's like, I think that people who overthink what happens is, and I tend to do this and my wife is a really big planner, so I've seen it in her, is we decide we want to do something and then we think about everything that has to be done to get there. Like, I used to sit down with people and be like, let's make your 10-year goal. And for some people that makes them excited. For someone that's a planner, they see all 3,650 days today and they all have to be done. And so they actually become like demotivated by a 10-year goal. And so I think it's important in, and I actually put this in my book, is I think we've been taught goals incorrectly. I think it's good to have a goal like this year I want to be here at the end of the year. But that's a results-based goal, which is from today I want to be here. That's a result from there. I think what we need to do is then forget about the results-based goal after we create action-based goals, which is what are the actions that I need to take every day incrementally to get me there. And if we just take the right actions, then eventually we're going to get there. And so like for instance, We've talked a lot about podcasts today, right? So it's like, I want to have a podcast doing a million downloads a year in a year. Okay, cool. You can look at that and be like, I'm at zero right now. Oh my God, that's a lot. Well, what do I need to do in order to get there? And you break it down incrementally and just take your action-based goals. And as long as you get those done every day, a checklist of two or three things. Okay, I recorded a podcast today. For me, it was like, okay, most people put out one podcast a week, I'm gonna put out three, 'cause then I will get three times better within a year. That's just the way I thought about it. I'll just be three times further in a year. And so I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna say, okay, I need to get three episodes done this week. I need to plan three episodes, I need to record three episodes, I need to get those done. Don't worry about the results, because eventually the results are gonna come. And so it's like, what's important is, are you heading in the right direction for the goal that you want to actually hit? Are you taking the right action? And then the thing that you just have to let go of, which is hard for most people, is a time. Time's going to work itself out. And so goals are super simple. There's the direction, there's the action, and then you just let go of time and eventually get there. Sometimes you get there sooner. A lot of times you get there later on down the road, but as long as you're heading the right direction.

You will eventually get to the destination that you're shooting for. Why do people obsess so much about.

Having results sooner than they, I guess, should have them? I mean, I think everybody I get I do this in my own business, right? Like, I'll sit down with my VP of operations and I'll be like, okay, here's the thing that we need to do. And then I get stressed that it's not already done yet. Like, immediately, I'm like, why did I not know this thing was already here? Like, I want it to be done. It's like, this is going to take three months. I've got to be patient with this thing. Like, nobody expects to go into the gym for the first time in a long time, wake up the next morning and have a six pack. Like, we know that things take time, but I think that we have been We have kind of, not intentionally, but we've been kind of brainwashed to want instant gratification. Like you got that smoothie delivered, right? You didn't have to leave your house and some guy came to your house and brought you a smoothie, right? And if I want, we had breakfast delivered to us this morning. We ordered it last night and immediately got to our place here. And then so we're used to it where it's like, I don't even have to pick up my phone. I could just say, Hey Siri, what is this thing? And she can give me information immediately. So we're so used to getting instant gratification. It's kind of been trained in us in 2024. But nothing takes nothing that is amazing happens fast. Like if you're, you know, you say your wife gets pregnant, right? How ridiculous would it be if you went up to her and you're like, hey, listen, I know it's supposed to take nine months, but like, I want to go on vacation by the end of the year. Like could you get it done in like four or five? Like she'd smack you if you did that, right? Because things take time. You know, the universe or God builds a baby in nine months. And so it's like I can make this decision of I'm going to do this, I'm going to take the right action, but the universe or God decides how long this thing is going to take until you actually get there. It doesn't matter how long it takes. What matters is today, am I taking the right action to get me there? One of my first mentors used to say something to me that I say to myself all the time, which is, is what I'm doing right now getting me closer to or further from my goals. If I ask myself that 20 times a day, It just helps me redirect in the moment to get back on path. And it's super simple. Is what you're doing right now gets.

You closer to or further from your goals? And I think if you think on that every single day and every single moment, is this thought helping me get closer to my goals? For sure. Is this action, is the food I'm eating helping me get closer to my goals? Is this conversation helping me get closer? Is me scrolling on social media helping me closer? Whatever that is, moment by moment you can be thinking and asking yourself, Is this part of a process that's helping me get closer to transforming my life and having the goals that I want faster? Yeah. But most people are on such autopilot that they're not willing to, I guess, brainwash their minds in a positive way to constantly get back on track. Why do you think it's so hard to stay focused on our dreams and goals today more than ever?

Well, because it's not who you are. It's not who you've ever been. It's outside of your comfort zone. Like when I see a human, I always, I love people. I love sitting with somebody and thinking to myself as I'm speaking to them, I wonder what their childhood was like. I wonder what their relationship with their parents are like. I wonder what their relationship with their wife is like. Because all we are as adults are, we're just a set of patterns that we learned from childhood. And so if you meet somebody, one of the things that I think is important is if you meet somebody and you're like, I don't agree with them, there's a pretty good chance that if you had the exact same life that they did, you would be exactly the same that they are. which means I can change myself at any moment just by changing my patterns and my thoughts. One of the hardest things that I think people really need to dive into is what is the identity that they have in themselves? Who do they think they are? And so, going back to what we were talking about, there was definitely times in my childhood, and I don't know if you heard you said it before, where we thought we were dumb. And that thought alone, especially from a child, eight, nine, 10 years old is like, I am dumb. I am like, I'm a stupid kid and I don't understand it. So then I would sit there in class and the teacher would teach something and I'm like, yeah, this isn't going through. Like this isn't, and it must not be going through because I'm dumb. And so I'm actually reinforcing that at every single moment. When does that pattern break? For a lot of people, it never does. Like, if someone's listening, the good thing is if someone's listening to this podcast, there's been a moment in their life where they've gone, Yeah, I don't like this anymore. There must be something else. Because for most people, they're still in the patterns that you meet. And that's one thing that's really important. I was driving yesterday and I was driving past a lot of homeless people and I was like, Man, that's so sad because I just wonder what happened in their childhood. I'm never judging anybody. I mean, my dad was kind of homeless for a little while and in and out of jail. And so I never look at somebody and judge them, but I look at them and I'm like, I wonder what patterns and things happen to them to get them to where they are. And I think everyone just needs to become aware of the patterns that they have. So you say autopilot. There's a study that Harvard did that found about 48% of what we do is autopilot. Like, wouldn't even think about it. 48%. 48%. So half of what we do in the day is just very, I'm just going through the actions. And so, you know, like, I love, we've talked about it before, Dr. Joe Dispenza, where he talks about this as well, where it's like, you could take yesterday and place it on tomorrow. And it will be exactly the same unless you change.

Same conversations, same thoughts, same actions.

It's like 90% of your thoughts are the same as they were yesterday. And so I think the first thing that's important for people is the awareness. Like it's simple. There's really three steps. The first thing is the awareness. Like, who am I? What are the thoughts going through my head? What do I like about myself? What do I want to change about myself? You develop that awareness. The second thing you should do is when you find the things that you want to change and you become aware of them, is you gotta have some sort of practice, right? And the practice you decide now, not in the moment. And then you've gotta have a lot of repetition around it to start to change. So like for me, one of the things I realized in myself that came from my childhood is I was, I noticed about six, seven years ago, I was very judgmental in people. I didn't like it. Like I don't, I'm like, I love people. Like why do I immediately see somebody and in my head talk trash about them? Like why, it just popped up and it wasn't, it was a, and I always say you can't change your pattern. It's a pattern. There's a pattern, right? Yeah. You can't always change your first thought, but you can always change your second thought. And so I remember there was one time I was in a grocery store and this guy had that, you know, this huge Bluetooth speaker at a grocery store ordering, you know, meat. In the meat section, he had the big one they came across in his mouth. And immediately I judged the guy. And I forced myself to sit there. That was the awareness. I noticed, I noticed, that was the awareness. I noticed I'm being judgmental. I'm aware that I don't want to be this way. My practice is I will then Take three things that I like about that person, I'll say it in my head, stop what I'm doing, and I will say it. So I sat there, I hope I didn't look like a creep, but he didn't know I was there doing it. And I'm looking at the guy, I'm like, he looks like he's really nice. I really like what he's wearing. And at the same time, he's got some, he's got like a really good physique. He looks like he works on himself. And I was like, that was a practice. And then I was like, okay, cool. Now I can go about my day. So I stopped it in the moment because I was a pattern that I want to stop and I want to change. within myself. And the practices, I was gonna do the three things that I like about 'em. I set it. And then the last part is the repetition. So every time I did it, I noticed myself start to do this. I taught this to somebody who was in one of my groups, and she was like, oh my God, I'm so judgmental as well. So when I notice myself judging somebody, I'm immediately going to say, and I love them. And that's how I'm gonna end it. And so then she, like six months later, she comes in and she's like, I was at a coffee shop the other day, And I noticed this woman, she was taller than all the guys. She was just a big boned woman. She was like six foot two. And my immediate thought was, Holy crap, that's a big woman. And she said, Without even thinking, I immediately went, and I love her. And she was like, and I noticed myself go from judgmental to the love side of it. So she could notice six months in the transition of herself. She does that for another six months. She's just gonna be able to look at people and be like, I love this person. I love this person. And that's what we're trying to do is identify the patterns we wanna change. and then have a practice that we decide of what we're going to do.

When that awareness pops up. Why do you think so many people.

Are judgmental of others? I mean, I could tell you for myself and I could tell you from a lot of people I've worked with is I think we have a low self-worth, you know? And I think that it was it was easy for me to bring somebody down because it made me feel better about myself. Right. And it's easier in the moment to be like, oh, yeah, screw this person. Oh, yeah, whatever it is that I'm jealous of or whatever it is that they have that I don't have. my low self-worth that came from. And I could tell you where it came from, from my dad not being around because I didn't feel like I got my dad's love. My dad was, was an alcoholic, and so he wasn't really around. He passed away when I was 15 for being an alcoholic. And I always felt I end up finding this out, like, years down the road when I started working on myself, that I felt like I came second to my dad's love. I came second to my dad's love to alcohol. Right. And so alcohol.

So we cared more about drinking than.

Spending quality time with you when in reality, as an adult, right now that I can look at, I was like, he had traumas that he never overcame. But I felt as a kid, he loves alcohol more than he loves me. That's why he's not showing up for me. And so that's the, the thought, the subconscious thought that I had, and I never was aware of until my, my 20s. And so what happened was I, because I felt second to him, I felt second to everybody else around me. And so how do I make myself in the moment feel better than everybody else? Judge them talk not. I wouldn't say anything bad to somebody's face, but in my head, I would judge them, I would be jealous, I would want what they had, whatever it might be, because I need to make myself in this moment feel better than the other person around me because I just never overcame that pattern at that point in time of feeling like I was second. So the way that I make myself not feel second and feel better than and feel number one was I would judge everyone that was around me.

How did they make you feel when you judged others and what is that, what do most people feel when they're in judgment of other people?

I mean, we think that it's going to make us feel better if it makes us feel worse, right? Like, I never felt like, Man, I'm so glad I judged that person. Right? Right. I never felt that way. And so it was like, I feel like what happened with me is it was it was like a momentary, like, hit of dopamine. Okay, I'm better than this person. But then in reality, it made me feel more disconnected from people, right? So I felt more disconnected. And I started pushing my feelings away for years and years and years. There was a moment where where I finally came and understood, like, I've put my walls up so much that I'm letting nobody in at all. And it was ruining all of my relationships. And so I think what I did was I would judge other people first. I would try to cut them down in some sort of way because I was so afraid of being vulnerable and being seen because in my mind I thought with what happened with my father, you can't trust being close to somebody. Someone who loves you is gonna leave you. And so you can't let somebody in because that's just, when you look at the root word of vulnerable, it's vulnerare, which means to be wounded. I didn't want to be wounded, so I would put up these walls. And there was a moment in my life where I was like, do I just have no feelings? I actually thought that at one point in time. Really? Yeah. I was like, do I not have feelings for people? And I was like, no, I'm actually, years down the road, realized I have so much feelings that I think a lot of people feel this way. I've had people, one lady specifically, I remember she's like, I have no feelings towards anybody. And I was like, actually, who I think it is, as you have so many feelings, you're afraid of what could happen if you let them out. Wow. Like, I'm like, I'm about a half a second away from crying my entire life. Like, I feel things so much. I swear to God, this is a true story. I was on the way over here and I was listening to Louis Capaldi or whatever his name was, and I started thinking about how amazing life is. And I started tearing up on the way over here because I was like, I don't believe I have this life. Like, this is so amazing. Like, I'm so grateful for everything that I have. So I think I'm so close, and I guess with my mom, my mom's very emotional too. I'm so close to emotions pouring out. And as a man, we're taught a boy, big boy's gonna cry, especially in sports. So we build up walls, build up walls. Things happen with my dad, I build up walls, I build up walls. But then I get into relationships, ruined every one of my relationships with women because of it. And so when I started working with my wife on it, I had to.

Okay, she's getting close, I need to be okay with her getting close. So how did you break the pattern with her versus ruining all the other relationships.

Yeah. Like, there is. I, I can literally look back on all my other relationships before her and be like, yeah, I screwed that up. Yeah, I screwed that up. Right. And I think that's the point of relationships. And the point of everything is to screw things up so that you can try to get better. Screw it all up so you can figure it out. And so with her, luckily, she's incredible. And the thing I love most about her is she just gives love. Right. And she's this, this space of love and for We went to a friend who is inside of, in Austin, about two years into our relationship, and he's a couples therapist. And he's like, Hey, if you and your girlfriend want to come by, just come on by. And I was like, Cool, that sounds fun. Let's see what it's like, right? And, and what he ended up talking to us about is like, we have two different love styles. Like, there's the love languages, which is important, but we have two different loving styles, which is hers is an anchor, which means like, she's good. She's in love, like she's good in love. She shows love, you know, both of her parents are still together, so there's that aspect of it. She's secure. She's secure, right? That would be, and she's very secure. Me, on the other hand, is I was what he calls an island, which is like, I'm okay with being alone. And so the one thing that he said to me that was really interesting is he's like, it's not just about how you relate to each other, like mentally and talking to each other. You also have to be very aware of your nervous systems. In Rob's nervous system, lights up whenever you come in too fast. Like with someone who's an island, you take time to warm up in someone's presence. So that was one thing that really helped us is I'd be sitting, working, trying to grow the business and stuff. She would come in with all this stuff and I'd be like, Red flag, red flag, red flag. Like, you know, someone's attacking the fort. Just loving you. Just by giving me love. That was it. 'Cause it was like, I don't know if this is safe, right? 'Cause I never felt safe with that, right? And so what happened was we started learning like, okay, it takes me a little bit longer to warm up. So there'd be a few minutes where she would come in, she'd talk to me and stuff, and then she started giving me love and it was like, oh, now I can receive this. And so for me, it was just like understanding like, okay, there's her love style, there's my love style, there's definitely five love languages that go in there. And really, I think it's more than the else is like, I think that when I look at like what love is, like we see love and as on TV is like, head over heels, and it's more lust than anything else. And you fall for each other in so much love. What I think love is, is feeling safe in the presence of somebody else where, you know, you have so much to work on and they have so much to work on. And I feel safe. I feel safe in my wife's presence to work on all of my childhood trauma with her through her and, and being able to try to rewrite that story through her. And that's, that's the way that I see it. It's like I love her. She's amazing. She's like the rock in my life. Like she's the glue of everything. But at the same time, it's like I have never felt in a moment unsafe and that she doesn't want the best for me and she wants to help me with whatever it is that I'm working towards. It's pretty sweet. It's pretty nice. But it's hard to get there. It's hard. You know, it took years of opening up. We've been together for ten years now, right?

So ten years. Ten years, yeah. We celebrated ten years last month.

When did it start to switch over for you? We felt emotionally safe.

In the relationship with your wife.

I mean, it was, it's slowly, like last month, I'm still working on that one. No, I would say probably, probably six years, man. Like, it took, it took time. And, and the, the thing that, that I'm grateful for is that she saw me working on it, me trying to get better and me opening up, that she didn't leave because, like, she wasn't getting what she wanted or something like that. And so I think that, that it was me opening up and it's, you know, it's a relationship. We both have things that we need to work on. So, you know, there's definitely times where she's working on things that I'm like the one that's solid for her. And so I think that for me, it probably took like six years. It took. It took until we went. We went and traveled about three years into our relationship. We went and traveled for six months overseas. We were completely out of the country for six months, and I didn't realize it, but that was like a make or break moment in our relationship where she was like, I don't know if this is gonna work. Really? Yeah. And then after she was like, this is definitely working. She's like, because there was no fights, there was nothing. It worked. And so she's like, okay, I think that after we came back from that is where we really were a whole lot tighter. And so probably about three years in there and then six years where I was like, I'm going to keep opening myself up. And, you know, I'm sure I'll look back in ten years to this conversation and be like, oh, yeah, there was still a lot that I wasn't open up to, you know? So it's like, I feel like I'm the most open, but I'm sure that.

Over years I'm going to keep finding.

More aspects of myself that I need to work on.

You haven't arrived yet?

No, that's an important thing, man. I think that everyone listening to this podcast needs to realize, for years of self-development, I've been working on myself now for 19 years is when I first got into self-development. When I was 19, I'm about to turn 38. 19 years. And for, I would say the first 17 years, I was working towards a destination of getting there, whatever getting there was. And now I've come to the realization of I hope I live to 100 years old. If I live to 100, I'm still going to be working on myself. And it's like cliches are cliches 'cause I think they're true. Where it's like not about the destination, it's the journey. Like it's not about getting there. It's about this process of like, you know what? I'm gonna work on myself, and I'm gonna love myself while I'm working on myself. And it's a journey. And as soon as one thing, I get better at one thing, there's probably gonna be another thing that pops up.

That I need to work on. What do you think are the three energies that are blocking people the most from success, love and fulfillment in their life?

I think the main thing is people feel like they're not good enough. We feel like we're not worthy of it. We feel like we're not smart enough, not pretty enough. When I look at people's paradigm and their identity they have of themselves, I always say it's like ice cream, but it's where it's all, all ice cream is ice cream, it's just different flavors. where it's like everybody's core, and I've worked with thousands and thousands and thousands of people on this, and I still haven't found one person whose core feeling is I'm not enough. And if I'm not enough, I won't be loved. And that's what I found with every person. The way it shows up in other ways is like, I'm not smart enough, I'm not worthy of love, I'm afraid of failure, I'm afraid of success, I'm not gonna be able to provide for my family. All of those stem back to because you feel like you're not enough. I won't be able to provide for my family because you feel like you're not enough to be able to get there. I feel like I'm gonna fail because you feel like you're not enough to succeed. And so then the next question that pops up with people is, well, why does everybody feel like they're not enough? And so this is, when I say like I spent a lot of time in silence, this one thing it took my wife a long time to get used to is my silence. Like, I'll just go outside and I'll sit for two hours. She was like, what did I do wrong? Like, that's the reason why she thought you, like, that was her thing she was working on. But I'll sit there and I'll just think and and I'll think for a long time. And the thing that drove me the craziest is like, why do we all feel like we're not enough in some sort of way? And I have a couple of theories in ways that I think that it pops up. The first thing is that, you know, if you look at a child, if a child, you know, is six months old and you have your drink next to them when you're changing them and they kick it off and they spill coffee all over the ground, You're not gonna yell at a six months old, right? If they're one year old, they're learning how to walk and they knock your coffee off onto the ground and they spill it onto the floor. You're not gonna yell at them at one years old. But at some point, a parent treats a child as if they're an adult and they think they should know it by now. And this is not me judging parents in any sort of way. That's the hardest job in the world. But at some point we all have a break where the parent goes, what are you doing? It could be three years old, it could be four years old. And the child immediately thinks, There's something wrong with me because they feel a retraction of their parents' love, which is the most safety that they can and feel. And then there's a break off and the average child is reprimanded eight times more than they're praised. And because a lot of times, a lot of times parents are trying to keep their children alive, you know, like kids are wanting to jump off of big walls. And so what we do is we, we parent the same way that our parents did, which is usually yelling at the child. And so the average child is reprimanded eight times more than their peers.

Yeah.

Fear. Which, which goes to, I'm not smart enough.

I'm not good enough.

Eight times a month. I'm not doing it right. I'm not doing it right. I don't know what I'm doing. And a lot of times we have this built into our system after a while of looking over our shoulder and being like, Mom, am I doing this right? Am I doing this right? Am I doing this right? And we develop this, I don't know what I'm doing on my own. I can't do this.

I'm not smart enough.

I need somebody else to tell me what to do. Someone else's approval. Right. All of that. And so in turn, what happens is we start to develop this like, I'm not enough. And it's all just different flavors of I'm not enough. And so what happens is, and I can speak for myself, is what made me think that I would finally be enough is achievement, right?

Success.

Success. Once I make a certain amount of money, once I have a certain amount of followers, once I get to this level of success, then I'll finally be enough. And then I got there and I realized, yeah, you're still that hurt little boy inside, right? You're still that, there's nothing that's different about you. And, you know, we spoke about this last time on the podcast where you were talking, we kind of spoke about it and you said there was a guy that was in your building that just jumped off the building, right? successful. And so we think, like, so many of us think that success and money are going to get us a point of fulfillment. You'll never get there. Nothing external will ever fulfill you. So, like, my, my path has been external, external, external. My path from now on, like, what I'm working on, and it's, it's a daily process, is can I feel like I love myself and I'm fulfilled without having to do anything? And that's a process, and that's really hard to get to. And I, I meditate on a journal on it. and I sit in silence and I just think about how far you've come. Think about all that you've done. And even though you've done all of these things and you have stuff to show the world, you still feel like you're not enough. Why is that? And so I've been working on that and just being like, you know what? There's nothing that you need to do today. I can if I want to, but there's nothing you need to do today. Nothing that you can accomplish today that can make you more of who you already are. And as you are, you deserve love. and so instead of going and seeking for that love, why don't you just actually try to do it right now in the moment that you're sitting with yourself? And so, like, there could be three energies, but I think they're all just different moldings of that one energy of I'm not enough. And so I think that if most people can realize, like, there's a meditation I used to do from a guy named Muji, and he used to always say, he said, you have, you have no pockets, you have no storehouse, which basically means, like, no matter what you do until the day you die, you cannot be more or less of what you currently are. And so why don't you just decide to give yourself love and acceptance in this moment without having to achieve anything and then go out into the world and Achieve from the feeling of already feeling like you're whole versus you feel like there's a void inside of you.

What happens when we achieve something, when we feel like we're not enough?

I mean, it's. It's usually not that. Great, like, I don't know about you. Like, I had this moment, two weeks ago, I think it was, with my, my VP of operations, and she was like, she, she was like, she's like, you ever sit back and like, think about what you've done? And I'm like, you're already laughing because you're like, yeah, I don't even do this enough either, right? And she's like, she's like, you ever like, think about like, like we were talking about coming out here to LA and like, how I'm on your podcast and all these amazing podcasts, like things that I've wanted to do for years are like, all come she's like, you, wrote a book last year. Like, very few people write books. And she's like, have you celebrated any of that? And I was like, no. And she's like, why? And I was like, I mean, all of my friends have podcasts, all of them have books. So it just seemed like, which is kind of a good thing because it's like the five that people that you spend the most time with, like, you know, I'm spending time with you. You've written three books and I can be like, oh my God, I'm not good enough. Right, right. Right. But it's like, even with all of the achievement and success, there's like, as soon as you get there, there's the next thing. before my book even came out and it was, like, about to launch. I already had the idea for the next one. I was like, this is so stupid. Right, right. Like, why don't you just sit there first and be like, yeah, you wrote a book. This is amazing. You never thought you would write a book. It was never a goal of yours, you know? And you. And then. And so that's why I started kind of, like, tearing up this morning. Morning as I was driving, listening to Louis cobaldi and whatever you play his last name. I don't even know what it is. But I was sitting there, I was driving, and I was like, I was like, man, there was a time when you were sitting in your friend's house that you were renting a room from him and you were like, I'm gonna start this podcast thing. And first it was me and my friend together, and then he ended up before he launched it, he's like, yeah, I don't wanna be a part of it. I was like, okay, I guess we'll do this alone. But they were terrible and they were horrible. And I would never, I can look back at them and be like, man, you've come so far. You've done so much. But a lot of times we're like looking out of the front windshield saying, what's next? What's next? What's next? What's next? Versus like take a moment every single day to look in the rearview mirror and go, you know what? I've done a lot and I'm proud of myself for what I've done.

Yeah, I have a photo, I'm gonna pull it up real quick, that my sister sent me recently. And it's of myself when I was probably like five or six, right?

Oh my god.

So it's like, there's a little car, you know, I'm playing with.

Yeah.

My sister sent a video of me, like, playing with his little toy car. My grandmother is filming it.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, I was watching this video, and then she sent me a screenshot of me, like, smiling at the camera as this little kid. And I showed this to my fiance, Martha. You probably won't be able to see it in the camera here, but I showed this to my fiance, Martha, the other day. She goes, wow, I would have really liked this kid. Like, this little boy. I would have. You would have been, like, a good friend of mine. Yeah. I was like, really? I just felt like I was worthless. I just felt like I was the youngest, I was stupid, everyone was better than me, and it just didn't feel like I was enough. She's like, nah, you had blonde hair, I would have been attracted to you, right? And I was like, okay. But she goes, the interesting thing is, isn't it crazy that your soul was in this little body? And you've transformed and changed over the last 35 years now. And this is a past life. She goes, Past lives doesn't have to be, you know, before you were born and thinking about like past lives. But 35 years ago was a past life. Your cells were different, the way you thought was different, you know, your environment was different, your habits were different. It was a past life.

Yeah.

And your soul has stayed inside of this body that has transformed and ascended from what it was 35 years ago, five years ago, two years ago, three months ago. We're constantly changing and evolving. whether we like it or not, we have to ask ourselves, do we want to change our thoughts and our habits and our actions? And it's crazy to think, like, I never, you know, as a kid, I'd always dreamed of having a life where I felt loved and I loved myself and felt like I was able to make an impact and fulfill dreams that I had.

Right?

And so, Martha, she'll look at me. She does this with me every week. She'll look at me. We'll just be walking down the street, and she'll just look at me, start crying. She'll be like, wow, life is so amazing. Like, we're so blessed. she starts tearing up and just like almost every week, she's like, I'm so grateful for life. I'm so grateful for the life we get to live. I'm so grateful we have each other. You know, we both get to follow and pursue things we enjoy. I'm like, yeah, it's beautiful. And I think a lot of people don't recognize even when they're in a bad situation or they're stressed out or struggling, I don't think people realize how much of a gift it is to experience life.

Yeah.

And you and I both have been in times where, you know, we've been stressed out, broke, you know, not feeling enough all these different things for years. And even then it took me a while. I remember when I started to shift my mindset and shift my energy around the situations I was in, whereas on my sister's couch, not making any money, you know, had a surgery and just feeling like, what's the point of life? And I remember when I started to shift it from a depressed state and a victim energy into more of let's experiment and let's have fun with where I'm at. everything started to change for me when I shifted that energy of victim, stress, overwhelm. And it doesn't mean it wasn't still challenging, but I made it more fun moment by moment. I made it an adventure. I think having that mindset really allowed me to take actions from a more positive state. Those positive states created more positive results day by day, which eventually led to something over time that was more positive.

Yeah.

And I think if people can start thinking that way, it will help them to attract what they want quicker. And you talk about this concept, this exercise called future pacing. And I'm curious if you can explain what future pacing is. Yeah. How we can apply this today to start manifesting what we want in a faster and better way.

Yeah. I started almost, I was like getting a little bit teary eyed when you were talking about your walks with Martha, because my wife does the same thing.

I know.

And she, she like keeps me grateful, right? Like it's, it's, it's good to, to have that where she, she's like, she'll start tearing up, too. And I'm like, what is it? Because she's like, random moments. What am I? And in my, my wounds go, what am I doing wrong?

I'm like, what did I do?

And she's like. And, and so it's like, life is just so good. It's so amazing. It's amazing. Do you ever think about how beautiful this life is? And I'm like, oh, my God. Yeah. Thank you for reminding me of this. And so, so, yes, I definitely agree with you. The thing that, that is the reason why I actually changed the name of the book from the psychology of taking action to level up is because of kind of what you're talking about, which is My view of the world is I feel like the world is a video game. And it happens to work for me because I'm real competitive. So I'm like, let me see how I can get to the next level. And so when you look at like future pacing, I'll kind of explain it and I'll explain it in the view of the video game itself. So I always look at life as if I'm in a certain level, you know, like I'm at level 37. Next month I'm gonna be a level 38 of this game, right? and at level 37, there's been many challenges that have come to me. And I used to be the same way where I was definitely a victim, and I would make excuses. And I had a conversation with my. When I was 19, I hired a one-on-one coach, and we met every single week, and he was trying to help me get better at sales and get better at, you know, taking action like I was supposed to. And I was always late for calls. I was always making excuses why I didn't take the actions. And then he. He had a legitimate conversation with me, and he goes, He goes, Hey, if a business fails, whose fault is it? And I was like, the CEOs. He said, if a business succeeds and somebody's able to get all thousand employees to go towards one mission, they succeed. Whose fault is that? And I was like, that's the CEO's fault. He said, Now, if you get to the end of your life and you are just regretting it and you don't like what it's become and you feel like you wish you would have done more and you wish that you would have had more potential that you would have brought out to light, whose fault would that have been? and I was like, that'd be my fault. He goes, But if you get to the end of your life and it's everything that you wanted it to be, and you saw every single challenge as something that was built for you to improve, and you improve with every single challenge, you get to the end of your life and you look back and you're like, Man, I'm so glad everything I did, whose fault would that be? And I was like, that would be mine. He said, the problem is, Rob, you're acting like a victim and you're making all of these excuses. Your life will not change until you decide to be the CEO of your life and blame everything on yourself, good or bad. We talked for two years. That's the only conversation I remember. All of them were good. That was the most probably life-changing moment that I've ever had in my entire life. Because I was like, I get it. It's all my fault. And so with every challenge, it went from the challenge that would come to me, and then I make excuses to why I was folding. Oh, yeah, it's because of this. And then it became, oh, this challenge is coming to me. It's my fault. I need to be the one that ends up, you know, doing something with this. And so, the way that you look at that of the whole course of life is I remember in the way I came up with future pacing is I was planning this in 2019 before stuff got real crazy, right? I was gonna do a big event in 2020, right? That didn't happen, but I didn't know at the moment. And so I felt all of these fears. Oh my God, I'm the only person on my team. I don't have a team. I'm not good with logistics. I don't know how I'm gonna do this. I gotta get people to fly in. I gotta find a hotel. And all of the reasons why not. what usually happens with us came into my head. And I said, okay, let me, this is, I don't feel good. Let me flip this. And I was at a coffee shop in Austin at Lazarus is what it's called. I remember exactly where I was doing it. And I said, okay, the moment, I'm gonna write from the moment where everyone's leaving the event. I had 300 people show up to event in Austin, Texas. This is how I did it. And I started writing from the future version of me that just accomplished that thing. And I started writing it as if it was just a journal entry. And I started writing it, and I was just like letting it flow out of me. And then what happened was, it was really interesting. I got done. It was like two pages. I went, oh my God, this is the entire plan. Like it was literally the entire plan that was hard for me to access because I was in so much fear. When I put myself into the future version of myself, it was like all.

Of the down- you- said, How did I do this?

Right. Which we ended up doing the event just a couple of years later. So it ended up working, which is what's awesome. It did, once again, time didn't work out the way I wanted it to. That's how the way the universe works. But it did eventually happen. And so what happens is a lot of times when we decide that we want to change, the immediate feelings of fear pop up because our ego wants to keep us in the exact same place because that's safe. Change is a threat to the brain, so it's all unknown. We don't know what's gonna happen if we get outside of our comfort zone. But if we can take ourself and put ourself into a future level or into a future where we accomplish this thing and say, I just, you know, someone's goal is make $100,000 a year. I just made $100,000 in 2024. This is exactly how I did it. And just let it flow out of them. One thing that I've told people many times, it's really interesting the feedback I get. Some people say the exact words of, I was still writing, but I didn't feel like I was writing it anymore. It was just kind of flowing out of me, as if I wasn't the one doing it. It was just God or the universe just flowing out of me and saying, this is what it is. And then a lot of times people look at it and they go, oh my God, this is the exact plan of how to do it. And then when you look at that, it gets so exciting to look at that plan where you're like, all right, yeah, I kind of want to take some action now. Because now I'm not thinking about the failure of it. I'm thinking about the success of it and I'm thinking about what that would be like. So it's just the flipping of looking at the future in fear versus looking at the future in excitement, which is really interesting. One thing I talk about a lot and I don't know if people truly get it in their bones, is that we are so incredible as humans. Our brains are so incredible that you and I right now can sit in this moment in your basement and think about a future. And no matter what that future is, our brain can actually make our body feel the feelings of it's happening right now. The problem is we sit here and we go, I'm gonna start this business. And then our brain immediately flips to, well, the business could fail. These are all the reasons why it could fail. And we feel the feelings right now in this present moment where there's no problems. of a business failing. It makes it really hard to take action when you feel the feelings of failure and fear and anxiety inside of you being broke, all of that. And so it's a lot harder, but we could also sit in this moment and we can, this is what the power of visualization is and visualize what it could be, what we want it to be, what it's gonna feel like when we do end up hitting that goal, and we can feel those feelings. And so instead of having to like white knuckle our way to our goals, which I did for years and push and push and push and bash my head into walls and just go anyways, Instead of having to push, I can actually feel pulled towards my goal because I'm being excited by what's about to come down, what's about to come for me because I'm feeling the feelings of the success versus feeling the feelings of the failure.

Interesting.

Yeah.

What do you think is everyone watching or listening right now, what do you think is the number one thing they need to hear in their lives?

Yeah, something that I've been working really hard on that's not the easiest. you just need to learn to accept reality. And I find that most of the time what we're doing is we're just, like I just said a second ago, we're kind of like white knuckling our way through life. And one of the things I've been really working hard on recently is accepting every aspect of myself. So for years there was like parts of myself I wanted to change, right? And now, It's me looking at those parts and saying, I love this part of me as much as I love the other parts of me.

Could you still want to change those parts of you? Sure.

Well, the thing is, when you actually accept them, they start changing. We think, okay, what's the next step? What's the next thing that I have to do? And so what's really interesting is, let's say, for instance, that I'm very selfish, right? And I'm like, okay, so I've understood this conflict inside of me of selfishness, right? and I want to change this aspect, this selfishness. So inside of me, there's a conflict, which is selfishness. When I want to change an aspect of me, I create another conflict. So now I'm fighting two demons at one time, which is the selfishness and the aspect that I want to change the selfishness inside of me. But if I look at myself and I say, like Alan Watts says this, he always says, like, you're, all of us are just rascals. Like, there's parts of you that is a rascal. Like, there's a part of me. that is amazing. There's a part of me that's loving, there's a part of me that's sweet, there's a part of me that wants to give love to every person that I meet. There's also a part of me that is selfish, there's a part of me that's judgmental, and there's a part of me that could be, you know, sometimes there's parts of me that I don't necessarily enjoy as much, and I want to change them. When I want to change them, it creates another conflict, which is now I'm fighting aspects of myself. versus saying, you know what? Yeah, there's parts of Rob that are selfish. And I can see from his childhood why those parts of him exist. And I know what that kid was going through where he said, There's no one else that's gonna be taking care of me. I'm alone at this. I need to develop this selfishness. And I can go, you, know what? I can still love that part of me. And what's interesting is when you stop resisting it and you start accepting it, it just kind of fades away a little bit more. And it's not about getting rid of it. It's about if it's at a seven out of ten, It starts getting to a 4 out of 10, a 5 out of 10. And so if I can just accept myself fully and I can go, yeah, there's parts of me that are beautiful and there's parts of me that are not beautiful. The outworld world is just a reflection of all of us in the internal. There's parts of this world that are beautiful, there's parts of us that are not beautiful. And so I can look at the world and be like, I wanna change this aspect of the world. I always go, does that aspect of me live inside of me? And I'm like, it does. Okay, so how can I love that part of me? And so the biggest tip I can give people that I am unconsciously trying to work on as much, this is what I'm spending majority of my time in silences is, is when I identify parts of myself that I want to quote unquote change, instead of trying to change, can I just accept? And what's really interesting is when you accept, it makes it way easier to love yourself, which when I said like we're all, our biggest fear is I'm not good enough. And if I'm not good enough, I won't be loved. Whatever we're searching for from the external, we're actually searching for from ourself. And so what's keeping me from loving myself is wanting to change myself.

Wow.

And so if I can go, I don't want to change myself. I want to love myself more. It's, there's so much less resistance to the world and everything just seems a lot easier. That's big.

So stop trying to change yourself. Start accepting yourself and then you'll start to change. Right.

Angels start to love yourself. Yeah. So it's not, a lot of people.

Like, I want to get better at self-love.

So I can, well, I want to.

Get change so I can love myself.

Right, exactly.

But as opposed to accepting and loving yourself, knowing you still have work to do.

Love, I believe, is if you look at a child, love is a natural state of a human, which has accidentally been programmed out of us, I think, through a lot of parents and society and all that stuff. And so a lot of people are like, I want to work on self-love how do I love myself more? The, the key to it is not trying to change yourself to love yourself. The key to it is to self-love is self-acceptance if I love, if I accept all aspects of myself and I stop resisting, the natural state that I flow back to is just a state of self-love. And it's love for myself, but it's also love for everyone else around me.

We're talking about patterns here. And your whole show, Mindset Mentor, really gets people in a framework around how to think differently to support themselves for success and more peace and abundance. We talked about money briefly the last time you were on. Yeah, I'm curious.

That video went crazy viral too. Did you see that?

Crazy, yeah.

I like that people like that.

I know. I'm curious, you know, since most of our life is about the patterns we live in and we're on autopilot, how important is our mindset around money? And what are a few things we can do every day to start cultivating a different mindset of abundance versus a pattern of scarcity that we've had our entire lives around money?

Yeah, I mean, this is one thing I've worked on a lot, which is I, and I'm still currently working on it. I'm probably working on it till the day I die. I'm accepting that, right? Is that the universe is abundant and I think scarcity only lives in the human mind. Like when you look at, when I sit outside and sit in silence, I have a backyard and a whole bunch of trees and some property and stuff. and I always look at and I go, okay, I'm a part of nature. I'm not separate from nature. And so there's aspects of me that were the same. And I look at nature and I go, what can I learn from nature? And I've started asking myself and trying to figure this out. And if you look at like an apple tree, right? The point of an apple tree is not to give a human apples to eat. A point of an apple tree is to reproduce and make more apple trees. And so the way that it does it is not by an apple tree does not make one apple. to try to make another apple tree. It makes, on average, about 800 apples a year that could fall off, go roll down, be outside of the shade of it, and it could get in the sun and they could turn into an apple tree. That's abundance. If you look at the universe that we live in, I think there's 200 trillion stars that are in this universe that's constantly expanding. There's abundance in everything all over the place. all the time. And if you look at, like, even just to go to, like, a human creating another human, I think it's like hundreds of millions of sperm that men create every single day to go to one egg. And so it's like there. There's. There's an abundance to try to make this. This reproducing thing happen. Right. So it's like there's so much abundance everywhere. What I found for myself is that I was always looking through this, like, myopic Viewpoint of scarcity everywhere. And when I look through the Viewpoint of there's so much scarcity, then it makes it a competition and it makes it, oh, well, you know, Lewis is making a bunch of money, he's stealing money from me. Is the way a lot of people feel like, if he succeeds, that means I'm not succeeding. That's what a lot of people think. Oh, this person just became successful, that means that there's less in the world for me. But in reality, it's not that way at all. There's so much abundance everywhere around you. So if you're looking through the viewpoint of scarcity, and this is just a simple challenge for people, If you notice, yeah, I have a scarcity mindset. I've been looking through, okay, I don't like when this person succeeds because I feel like they're taking away from me. I don't like when that person, when my sister succeeds because then my parents are going to love her more than love me because there's a scarcity of love. There's a scarcity of everything around. When you realize that there is no scarcity anywhere around you, the only place that scarcity exists is in your mind.

Wow.

Then you can start to say, okay, well, let me actually look and try to find abundance around me. Going back to the example, if my mom loves my sister a lot, does that mean that she has less love for me? I've never met somebody who has a bunch of kids and they go, well, I ran out of love for my children. There's no scarcity around it. But we think, oh, yeah, it's a competition between me and my sister. And we think when someone else succeeds, like, oh, they just made a million, they signed a million dollar contract. That means there's a million dollars less for me. Money's constantly being used and circulated. When you look at it, you realize that nobody, just very few people take money and just put it into their bank account. That eventually gets spent somewhere, it goes somewhere else. So it's constantly circulating all the time. And so just because somebody else succeeds doesn't mean that you can't. There is enough room for every single person in this world to succeed in whatever it is that they want to succeed at. And so what I would say is, and I think I've been saying a lot of people with a lot of people is test the validity of your thoughts. and this is what they say in cognitive behavioral therapy, test the validity of it. So if I have a thought of there's not enough to go around, okay, let's just test the validity of it. And the way that you do that, people always ask, the example I give is, imagine that you're on the debate team in high school, right? And your whole life, you've been on the viewpoint of there's not enough money to go around. Now what I want you to do, just for fun, just go ahead and try to debate the other side. and say, there's more money than to go around for every single person. And just debate it for a minute and see if you can find any proof that the other side might be true. Because what happens is our beliefs are just a set of patterns and thoughts that we've done over and over and over and over and over again. And because we've had it happen so many times, we believe that that's actually true. And true means like written into the fabric of the universe, right? Is it true that there is not enough to go around? Okay, well let's test it. Let's say, is there a possibility that there's enough money to go around for every single person? Is there enough love to go around for every single person? Is there enough happiness to go around for every single person? Is there a possibility that there's enough for every single person? And if there is, your belief is complete BS and there's never been true in the first place, which is like our beliefs are like a house of cards. You just need like one good flick and it all crumbles. And once it crumbles and you see the other side of it, you go, All right, let me start opening myself up a little bit more to it. And so, you know, I give like tips and tricks and tactics around it, but I think people just need to understand is that the most important thing is just what is your perception of life? And is it possible to just look through another viewpoint to see what it could be?

What would you say is the number one thing you did to heal your relationship with money and start bringing in more financial abundance?

Gratitude. being grateful for it. And this is, and I'll say it again, I think this is, this is what I said on the last podcast. But I think that's I, for the longest time, had this, this Viewpoint of there's not enough money to go around. And I didn't know I had it, but it was just like scarcity around money because money was scarce when I was a kid. Right. I remember hearing things like my mom saying, we don't have enough money. Right. I can't buy you that because we don't have enough money. I did a lot of, I had a lot of shame around money, too. Like, I remember the most I remember the first moment I had shame around money was I wanted, remember GAK? When we were kids, GAK, it was like that, it came in like an egg and it was kind of like a Play-Doh. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted GAK. And my mom was like, We don't have enough money for it. I was like three or four years old. I remember throwing a fit on the couch to the point where she's like, All right, fine, let's go. We went to Target to go get it. And I remember feeling so much shame at like four years old. because we didn't have money in my fit made my mom go buy money. We didn't have, like, go, go, go buy it with the money that we didn't have. So I felt shame. I was like, shame first was that feeling around money and scarcity around money because we don't have enough. There's not enough to buy these things. Right. And so, so for me, what happened was with the scarcity mindset around money was in every single time money would come in because my energy around money was scarcity. It was never enough. It was, okay, you know, I'd make whatever $2,000 and I'd be like, like, I want to make, why am I not a millionaire yet? Why don't I have $100,000? You know what? I only got 2,000. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna be able to pay my bills. I don't have anything extra. And so it was immediately because the energy of it was scarcity. When it would come in, it was scarcity. When I would spend it, it was scarcity. I would be afraid to check my bank account because there was times when I checked my bank account and it was not enough. There was negative money in my bank account many, many times, right? I went back in my like old email account a couple of years ago to like 2011. And I think in the last three months of the year 2011, I had seven overdraft fees.

Right?

So I know what it's like to not have, to not even have $0, but to have less than $0 in my account.

Right?

So the energy around money was scarcity. And then what happened was I remember hearing a podcast one time where somebody was saying your problem with, with money is that you think too scarce. Whenever you walk past a penny on the ground, do you pick it up? I was like, no, I don't. Most people don't, 'cause it's just a penny. But if you pick it up and think, oh my, this is the universe trusting me with this penny. Thank you so much for this. And I put it in my pocket. If I can be trusted with a little, well then maybe I can start to be trusted with a lot more. Interesting. And so then, you know, with having an online business, payments come in at random times. And so I would set my notifications on that every time a payment would come through, I would stop everything that I'm doing. Once again, awareness, practice, repetition. The awareness was, I have scarcity around money. I want to change this. The practice is, I'm going to feel grateful every time this money comes in. So I close my eyes and I would say, God, I would see the person's name too. So I'd say like, Joseph, thank you so much for trusting me in your transformation. God, please give me whatever guidance I need to help this person get to wherever they want to be in their life. That's good. And then I would go back into what I was doing for the day. over and over and over again. So the awareness was I had the scarcity. I wanted to change it to abundance. I want to change it to gratitude. So the practice was every time a payment would come in, I would force myself to stop anything that I would do and close my eyes and I would have cultivate the feeling of gratitude. And then the repetition, I would do it over and over and over and over again. And over years and thousands of payments, it just became a thing now where it's like, I have this feeling of so much gratitude towards it. And what I have found is that if you can be trusted with a little, you can be trusted with a lot. And that also comes with like sharing it. And I was, you know, very cheap and I don't want to give anybody anything. And I was notorious for being the cheapest person out of all of my friends 10 years ago, 100%, right? And I was like, I need to change that. I need to start seeing what I could do. And so sometimes we'll go out, I'm like, I'll pick up the bill and I'll do these things. And so it's like, you go by people. One of the things that I've done since I was probably 20 years old is I like to keep water and crackers. in $1 bills inside of my car. So when I see a homeless person, I don't go, oh yeah, I'm gonna judge them for the money that I give them. I say, Hey, this was given, I think in my mind this was given to me to give to them. And so it's just flowing through me to give them. So I'm gonna give them water, I'm gonna give them crackers, I'm gonna give you a couple dollars. And what I found is that my brain has started to realize, if I can give to this other person and I can still eat, then there must be an abundance. I have an abundance in my bank account. And so that's just been like the way that I've cultivated in myself the the change of scarcity mindset around money to abundance around it.

Wow.

And it's still something I'm working on. Like, it's not, I don't expect it to ever be gone, but I'm trying my best to work through it.

What do you think is the number one story blocking people from creating abundance, the story they tell themselves?

I don't think that, that most people feel like they are capable or worthy of success, whatever success means to them. And so I think that, first off, people need to actually describe what success is for some people. For me, what success was was making millions of dollars and stuff. For some people, success might mean being a really great father or mother. For some people, it might be something different, whatever that might be. And so I think what it is is to say, well, where is it that I want to be in life? And the thing I love about being him is you can create anything that you want to create. I don't expect that I'm going to be in the NBA. Right? I think those times have passed and I wasn't that good. I was decent, right? So like, I understand that's something I can't create, but there are other things I can say with where I am now in life. What is it that I want to create? If I live to 98, I've got 60 more years. Over the next 60 years, what is it that I want to create? And then I figure it out and then I just sit there and I say, are there any fears or limiting beliefs that are coming up while I'm thinking of this? And they'll come up and you'll feel them and then you just start to feel them. And what I like to do is journal through them. 'Cause I always tell people like, like life is complex. Like it's very complex. Like if I were to say, you know, what's three plus seven? Most people are gonna say ten. But if I say, what's 246 times 398? Most people are gonna be like, I don't know. But if I said, Hey, if I give you a pen and paper, do you think you could figure it out? Most people can go back to like fourth, fifth grade and start to do long, long, long multiplication. I can see the fear coming out.

As soon as I said it. I'm an idiot.

I'm dumb. I can't do this. so it's like, I know I saw, I saw a click in your head, but I don't know if I could do that. Right? But if I gave most people a pen and paper and they started writing it out, they could start to go back and figure it out. Our life is a million times more complex than that math problem. There's thoughts, there's feelings, there's emotions, there's programs, there's patterns, there's things that we have to do. There's other people in our life. I always say for most people, like, just go to a pen and paper. Where is it that I want to be? Where, what do, one of the most important people One of the most important questions people can ask themselves is, what do I want? And to get really clear on it, just write it out and journal it out and then say, ask yourself another question. Are there any fears or limiting beliefs coming in the way of that? And you write out those fears and you're limiting beliefs and then go, like I said, try to play the other side for a second. Is there a chance that this fear is completely false? And one of the things I found that works with people is to do something like called, it's called pre-mortem in a business where you, when you start a business, plan the failure of the business and ask yourself how the business is going to fail. Right? I did this one, I brought in my VP of operations. She goes, before we do anything, I want to do a pre-mortem, which is how does this business fail? And I was like, okay, this is cool. So we planned out how my business could fail. And then what we did is we had a game plan of everything that we needed to make sure that we worked through so we wouldn't fail. And so it's the exact same thing where it's like, where do I want to be? I figure it out. I figured all my fears, my limiting beliefs, how could, and then what you do is you go, what's the worst that could happen if I take this path? What happens is, there was a study that found that psychologists did that 85% of what we worry about never happens at all. The remaining 15%, only 12% of it, I'm sorry, 12% of that doesn't happen as bad as you think it's going to, which means the remaining 3%, 3% of what we worry about happens as bad as we think that it's going to. So 32 out of 33 times it doesn't happen as bad as you think that it's going to. And so let's just plan out the absolute worst that could happen if I decide to change my life and take it on a new path. and plan out the whole thing and say, what's the worst that could happen? Now, if I'm gonna ask myself that question, what's the next question I need to ask myself? What's the best thing that could happen? And then I say, is it worth it for me to go and try to make a change and try to create my life into what I want it to be? Usually you find your fears and the worst that could happen is not really that bad. And the best that could happen is.

Beyond what you could possibly conceive. It's good stuff, man. I want to ask you one final question.

Okay.

You know, in the previous interview we did, we talked about your three truths and your definition of greatness. So people will link that up so people can go watch that. You've got the mindset Mentor, which I want people to go check out, subscribe, follow, listen to four times a week now.

Is that right? What are you doing?

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Amazing content. I told a friend of mine that I was having you on today. He goes, man, I listen to his show almost every single day. Really?

Yeah.

20 minute episodes.

Great mindset, inspiration.

So make sure you His name is humble. Humble. Humble the poet.

Humble the poet? Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah.

Humble?

What's up, man? Yeah, exactly.

I need to get a conversation. That's my morning conversation is like listening to your show. Oh, that's awesome, man. So make sure you guys check out Rob's show, Mindset Mentor. He's a part of the Greatness Network now. First show within the Greatness Network. We're assembling the Avengers of inspiration.

That's right.

Rob was the one we wanted first on the network. So you can check it out. Part of the Greatness Network. Gotta figure out what Avenger I am. the Avenger of mindset. I don't know. The Avenger of gratitude. Yeah, we got time.

Self love, you know, all these things.

Abundance.

Yeah.

But here's a question I want to ask you about. You're also all over social media. Rob dial everywhere on social media. What's your main platform right now? Is it Facebook?

Is that where your biggest is? My biggest is Facebook. But the one that I'm growing the most on and that seems to be the best is Instagram. Instagram. Yeah. It's. Instagram's going crazy.

We're growing like 50, 000 a month.

There you go, man. Keep going.

So how's that strategy? Reels, videos?

Reels, videos. Just trying to put the best content out. I sit down and I plan it. I mean, to make a 15-30 second reel, I might spend 20 minutes scripting the entire thing. Wow, really?

Yeah.

Spend a lot of time just trying.

It's not just random. You're actually strategizing. 100%.

Okay. Yeah. There's a whole lot of strategy.

What's in these little things, you know? It's great, man. Yeah, it's great. Okay. So check them out everywhere. This question I ask you, is, well, actually first before I ask you this, if you guys are enjoying this, feel free to leave a comment below. If you're on YouTube, leave a comment below. Subscribe and share your biggest takeaway from this episode with Rob. What was the thing that stuck out with you the most? Leave that below. You can also timestamp that in the comments so other people can see what you enjoyed the most. So, share that below. We'll have Rob's channel linked up as well. My question for you is this. If you could step into the future 10 years, you know, you're 38.

Yep. About to be next month.

There's going to be a lot of changes and transformations that happen in the next couple of years, but also over a decade. You know, if you think back almost 10 years ago, right before you launched this show, you were a completely different person.

For sure.

And if you could step into the future and think 10 years out.

And.

You'Re there right now, you're 48. Imagine your life, everything you've created, failures have overcome, the life you've lived, all these different things. And if you could give your current self one piece of advice from that future self, 10 years out, what is it that you need to hear from the future you right now?

48 year old Rob, what do you would say to 38? He would say, make more space for yourself. Make more space for your family. Focus on loving yourself. Focus on loving your family. I think if I do that, I think the next 10 years are just going to be amazing for me.

I think.

I think just. I think when you just come from that state, just. It flows out of you. Inspiration, creativity, which I think is our natural state. I mean, I've never met a non-creative child. you know, I think it's kind of programmed out of us. I think that when you come from that state of, hey, no matter what happens, I love myself and no matter what happens, I'm loved by the people around me, then I'd have no fear of going out and failing because I've already won. Right. Right. Like, there's a, there's a line of a, there's a line of a guy that I listen to that his name's, he used to be lead singer of surfaces, and he's, his name is, uh, Forrest Frank and he's got this line and it says, I just turned a Millie down to be home with my son. Y'all don't get it. I can't gain a thing if I've already won.

Ooh, strong.

He's like 27 years old and I was like, this dude's got it. I think if I just have that viewpoint of like, I've already won, like what? Why don't I just enjoy the fruits of it? Not saying that I'm going to sit back and do nothing. I don't have that built inside of it. But it's like, I've already won.

Like, why don't I just have fun with it? That's great, man. Rob, I'm in. Thanks, brother. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcast as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

Thank you.