3 Things to STOP doing Immediately | The Mindset Mentor Podcast

Today we're gonna be talking about three things that you should stop doing immediately. Before we do, let's be real. Let's be honest with each other, shall we? Being a human is tough. Being a human is hard. Don't get me wrong. It is amazing. It is really, really amazing. But this shit can be tough, can't it? You've been through some things in your life, haven't you? You've been through some things. You're probably gonna go through more things at some point in time in your life. It can be beautiful. It can be amazing. It could. But the craziest part about it is that 99% of the time when things are tough, we are actually the ones making it tough on ourself. It doesn't have to be as tough as we make it. Often. We can get stuck in the past, we can get stuck in the future. We can worry about mistakes that we've made. We could get anxiety about what might be coming up next week. And all of those things end up making a lot harder on ourself versus actually just being in the present moment. We live in a world where everything's always changing. Something is always happening. There's always something bad that's happening in the world. We're always searching for happiness. We're always searching for fulfillment. We want some meaning in our lives, but shit, we also have to pay the bills, right? So why don't we try to make it a little bit easier on ourself with all of the stuff that can happen, all of the stuff that does happen. Wouldn't it be nicer if we just made it a little bit easier on ourselves every single day? It would. So today I'm going to be talking to you about three things that you need to stop doing immediately so that you can be a happier person. Okay? Three different things. Number one, stop regretting the past. I have coached many, many people over the past 17 years of me coaching people. And the one thing that I see that's very common, one of the things that I see that's very common is that so many people are stuck in the past. They think the past is making them who they are right now. They think the past is a. Is something that matters going into their future. Like, they can't go into their future without bringing their past with them. And it's common to look back on the past and have a lot of regrets. Things that we did, decisions that we made, you know, things that you didn't do, things that you did do, opportunities that were there that you missed mistakes that you made in relationships in the past. And we can look in the past, and we can look at it and be like, damn it, man. Like, I could have done so much better. But what it's really important to know is that in the past, whatever happened, you did the best that you could with the knowledge that you had at that time. It's easy to have more knowledge today. Like, you know, you could have really fucked something up five years ago. And it's easy to look at it five years later down the road today and be like, damn it, I wish I wouldn't have done that. I wish that would have been different. But it's easy to have more knowledge today, now, five years later, in which you would have done something different then. It's natural to feel that way. But it's important to understand you didn't have the knowledge that you have now back then. And I always bring. Whenever I think about the past or hear people that are ruminating in the past, they're stuck in the past, I always bring the phrase that I've heard so many times from Peter Crone, which is, what happened, happened and could not have happened any other way, because it didn't. Like, I truly believe that every single thing that happens to us in our life is a lesson for us to learn, to improve, to get better, all of that. And if it happened, it absolutely 100% had to happen that way. And so I can relieve myself from the past. And it's natural to feel like you wish things would have been different. But it's important to understand that dwelling on the past, dwelling on your mistakes, dwelling on your failures, dwelling on all the things you messed up holds you back from moving forward, and it takes you out of the present moment. And if you're out of the present moment, it means you're not doing the best that you possibly can be in this present moment, which means that dwelling on the past is holding you back from a better future. So what do we do? Well, instead of regretting the past, when we look at the event that we wish would have been different, that we would have done something different, we need to learn from it. So instead of looking at it being like, man, I wish I would have done this. I wish I would have done this, take that exact same event, get a pen and paper and say, what can I learn from this? If there is a God or a universe that came down and said, I'm gonna give you this life experience because there's lessons in it, what were the lessons that you Were supposed to extract and learn so that you could bring with you on the rest of your life so you could get better. Because mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Mistakes should be our greatest teachers. And then we can use them to improve ourselves. We can use them to improve our lives. But we have to be the ones to extract the lessons. No one's gonna come and give you a lesson based off of your past. And so you look at the event, you look at what you did, you look at how you screwed up or someone else screwed up, and you say, what was I supposed to learn from this? What is the lesson that I have missed from this event in my life? Because I've been too caught up in wishing that it would have been different versus looking at it as it being absolutely perfect. And it was brought to me because I'm supposed to learn something. There was a lesson, there was a teacher that was in here. Where is that lesson? Because you know, you can't change the past like we know it, but so often people get so caught up in wishing that they could change it. We can't control the past. We can't change the past, but we can control our response to the past. And we've got to stop living in it. You've got to stop thinking about it all of the time because it's stealing your present moment. If it's stealing your present moment, then it's stealing your future. The past has nothing to do with the present moment. The same way that if you're in a boat and you look backwards and you see the wake of the boat, the wake of the boat cannot steer the ship. So if the wake of the boat cannot steer the ship, it's the exact same thing. Your past cannot change your present moment unless you let it. The past should not control your current feelings. Another thing that's important about the past, the last thing I'll say about it is this is. I think most people just need to practice more self compassion. We need to be kinder to ourselves and forgive ourselves for our mistakes. We screwed up. Yeah, you fucked up, dude. You did. Sometimes really bad, but hey, it is the way that it was. Stop beating yourself up over it. It happened three years ago. Get over it. Get past it. Stop beating yourself up. Because so many people beat themselves up over something that they cannot change. What's the point of that? We need to understand that making mistakes is natural. It's a natural part of life. It's what you were supposed to have had happen in your human experience. But really, what can we learn from it. That's the matter. So that's the first thing is to stop worrying about the past. The second thing is to stop worrying about the future. The future is this great unknown and something that is unknown to the human brain, the animalistic side of us. There is an animalistic side of you that's inside of you that does not like the unknown. The unknown is very dangerous to the animalistic brain. And so your brain wants to solve the unknown. And by solving the unknown, what your brain will do is it will project into the future, and it'll project itself into the future and start thinking of all of the things that could possibly go wrong so that you can start to plan a way to protect yourself. But that's a lot of energy that your brain is using. Your brain uses more energy than any other organ in your body. It weighs only 2% of your entire body weight, but uses about 20% of your energy every single day. You've done it before. You've had a day where you're literally sitting in front of the computer, you're working, you're cranking a lot of stuff, and by the time you get done, five, six o', clock, like, you're exhausted. Your physical body barely moved, but your brain was just going, going, going. And so to worry about the future is a lot of of mental energy spent when it could be used towards something productive. And if you've listened to this podcast for a long time, you've heard me say this statistic before. But psychologists have found that about 85% of what you worry about will never happen. And out of the other 15% that will happen, they found that 12% of that 15% happens better. Way better than you thought it would, meaning that only 3% of what we worry about actually happens. One out of 33 things that we worry about happens the way that we think it's going to happen, which means 32 things that we're worrying about. We're wasting our energy worrying about it. Your energy is so precious, it is so finite. You've only got a certain amount every single day. There's only so much coffee you can drink to try to give yourself more energy. What a waste of your precious time. What a waste of your precious energy. What a. By worrying about things that may never happen, worrying about the future leads to anxiety, it leads to stress. It puts your brain and your body through way more than it needs to go through. It can also cause you to miss out on opportunities because you're too focused on what might happen. And you're not even living in the present moment. You completely miss things that are happening in the present moment. There's so many people that have anxiety nowadays, and anxiety comes from, like, 99% of the time worrying about something in the future. And most of the time, those things never actually happen. So what do we need to do? We need to start being aware of when we're projecting our thoughts in our mind into the future too much. We're having too much anxiety about the future, too much stress about the future, and we're worrying about something. Like, you know, I was having a conversation the other day, and they were worrying with someone the other day, and they were worrying about a bill that is due in a couple months. And I'm like, okay, how long have you been worrying about this? Oh, my gosh, I've been worried about this for months. Okay, so you've been spending months worrying about a bill that's still doing a couple months, when in reality, that's just stealing away your present moment, where you can literally work to make that money in the present moment so that you don't have to worry about that bill. So we need to focus more on the present moment. We need to be more present. We need to notice when we get out of our present reality and start projecting the future, we need to practice more gratitude and appreciate the things that we have in our lives that are literally in this moment. And so then you ask yourself, how do I, when I notice myself worrying too much, projecting too much in the future, what do I do? Very simple. You bring yourself back to your body. Okay. Because your brain tends to live in two different places, either the past or the future. Very rarely does the human brain live in the present moment unless we try to bring it to the present moment. What's cool about your brain and your body? Your brain likes to project forward and backwards, forward and backwards. It's all over the place. Sometimes it's here, sometimes it's another place. But your body is always in the present moment. It's always here. Your brain's all over the place. Your body is here. And so what do you do is you always come back to your body. So if you feel yourself projecting too far into the future or too far into the past, worrying or regretting or any of those things, bring yourself back to this moment. Take six deep breaths and try to be as conscious as possible in those six deep breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth. How you can bring yourself back to your body, you can notice the movement of your chest going up and Your belly going up and your belly going down. You can notice the feeling of your shirt on your skin as that happens. You can notice your heartbeat. You can notice the feeling of the breath going in the nose and the way it feels on your nose. And now it's a little bit colder. And the breath coming out of your mouth and how it feels in your lips. And you bring yourself to the feelings of the body. And so you bring yourself back to this present moment. And so that's. Number two, is you have to stop worrying so much about the future. And number three, another thing that's going to help you become happier immediately is to stop looking for happiness in other people. One of the biggest mistakes that you can have to make, but also to just assume is that other people are going to make you happy. Not just other people, but that things are going to make you happy. Happiness is a state of mind. It is not a reaction to life. It's a state of mind. It's something that you decide to be. You can decide to be happy regardless of circumstances. There's many people that have circumstances way worse than yours, but are also happier than you. Would show you that circumstances are not what make you happy or not. All too often, we take our circumstances and we go, oh, I won't be happy until I can buy this thing. Or. Or we say, oh, my. You know, I'm this way and I'm not happy because my husband's this way and I'm not the way because my children are doing this and my son is failing. You have to stop looking for happiness in other people. It is not anybody else's job to make you happy. If they married you, it's still not their job to make you happy the same way it's not your job to make them happy. It is a decision that somebody has to make to make themself happy, to find happiness in this moment, to decide to get into a state of happiness because it's important to have real, positive relationships in our lives. It's important to have connection. But our happiness and our fulfillment doesn't come from anybody else. It doesn't. There's no way of doing that, you know, no achievement. Oh, I'm gonna make a million dollars, then I'll be happy. No, when you make a million dollars, you're still gonna feel exactly the same way that you feel right now. When I get into a relationship, I'm be happy. No. Oh, when my husband starts acting this way, then I'll be happy. Oh, when my child decides to start stop acting up in school, then I'll be happy. No, there's no way to do that. If you're looking for happiness in other people, it will only deal. It will only lead to frustration, and it will lead to disappointment because people are not perfect. They'll inevitably let you down at some point in time, they'll say something wrong. Things are not going to go. You're not going to get your expectations met all of the time. So when you set yourself up, you set yourself up for failure. When you think that other people are going to make you happy because other people are going to screw up, because people are people, and that's what they're going to do. But. But when you look at your life and you wake up each morning, you say, okay, I'm going to make happiness a priority for myself. I am going to make myself happy. I had a really good friend who was one of the first employees at Facebook, and he got fired from Facebook. And when they got, you know, it was like a year later, they went public. He missed out on, like, $180 million, and he got really depressed for a little while because he missed out on $180 million. And then he said something to me that I will remember for the rest of my life, and that, Phra, he said, I decided one day when I was really depressed that I would not let my happiness or my depression be left up to chance. And what he meant by that is, he said so every morning. So what I did. He said that. What he did is he made this big, huge list of all of the things that made him happy in life and, you know, things that he did, the ways that he thought, Reading books, sitting in silence, talking positively to himself. And then he started asking himself, how can I bring as many of these things as possible into my life every single day? And so he would wake up every single morning, he would look at that list, and he would prioritize his happiness. And he brought himself out of a depression because he was prioritizing happiness, and he was taking the things that made him happy in the way of life and the state of happiness that he could bring out of himself and started prioritizing that. And so don't look for other people to make you happy. It's not other people's jobs to make you happy. It is your job to. To make you happy. And so if you want to be happier, prioritize your happiness more than anything else. And so those are the three things you want to stop doing immediately. Number one, you want to make sure that you stop regretting the past. Number two, you've got to stop worrying about the future. And number three, you've got to stop searching for happiness in other people. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Robdial Jr R O B D I A L J R I love it when I see hundreds of you guys sharing this every single day, and I greatly, greatly appreciate it. Because of you, this message spreads and more people are able to find us. So I greatly, greatly appreciate you for doing that. And I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.