7 Mindset Habits That Changed My Life

Have you ever looked back on your life, maybe 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and realized that everything has changed? Like everything. You're not the same person. You don't think the same. Besides your face looking the same and a little bit older, there's no aspect of your old self that exists anymore. And it's not because of one big breakthrough. It's because of a few quiet, repeated decisions. I've been thinking a lot about this recently because I think about who I used to be when I think about who I am now. And even though I look the same, my life is completely unrecognizable. And every part about me, especially in my mind, is absolutely unrecognizable. And so I want to share with you the seven mindsets, that mindset of habits that just completely changed my life. And hopefully I inspire you to take on one of these or two of these or every one of these. And you know, these seven habits didn't just shift my thoughts. They changed how I showed up in the world. They rewired my brain, they built my confidence, they reminded me or actually taught me what the hell I was doing in this world. And underneath all of the shame and the fear and the not good enoughs, it was able to work through those things and start to quiet them down. Not that they're all gone, but just that they're quiet. The shame, the fear, the not good enough, they're way quieter than they used to be. And if you're anything like I used to be, which is overthinking or people pleasing or chasing perfection or not taking the action that you want to, then it's time for you to take your mind back and hopefully pick up one or two of these. So the first thing that really changed my life, number one, was taking radical responsibility. And at one point in time, I realized that no one's coming to save me. And that's good news. And that's really the first mindset shift that happened to me when I was 20 years old that just broke my identity wide open. I stopped blaming people. I stopped blaming my past, I stopped blaming my parents, I stopped blaming the economy, my exes, the weather, mercury and retrograde or the algorithms or all of those things, I realized that I have to be the person to do it. And it was through one conversation that I had with my one on one coach at the time. I was 20 years old and I was making excuses. I was showing up late to calls, I was not getting my assignments done on a weekly basis. And I've told This story before, but it was a conversation really changed the course of my life. He said, hey, man, I've got a question for you. Like, if you look at a business and a business fails, whose fault is that? And I was like, that's the CEO's fault. He said, if you look at a business and it's got, you know, thousands of employees, and one person's able to take all those thousands of employees and move the whole company in one direction and succeed, whose fault is that? I was like, well, that would be the CEO's fault. He said, okay, so let me ask you this. If you get to the end of your life and you look back with regret, you don't have the life that you want. You wish you would have done more, you wish you would have loved more, you wish you had more peace, joy, happiness, love, all of those things, and you don't have as much as you wanted, and you didn't create the life that you want, whose fault would it be? I was like, that would be my fault. He's like, and if you did have the love, the joy, the happiness, everything you've ever wanted, you create an amazing life and you're on your deathbed. Whose fault would that be? And I was like, that'd be my fault. And he said, so the problem with you, Rob, is you're blaming everybody else but yourself. You're not showing up, you're not taking your life serious seriously, and you're not acting like the CEO of your life. And I was like, 10, four, got it. From that moment on, I was like, everything is my responsibility, right? The good, the bad, the still working on it. And it's not. The thing that I want you to understand is it's not about shame and shaming myself to do it. It's about power. Because as long as something is out there that's responsible for my happiness or responsible for my money, responsible for my joy or my love, whatever it might be, as long as it's out there, I'm going to stay stuck. But when you take responsibility for everything, you're no longer the victim in your life. You're the sole person in control of your life. But once you say, like, you know, it's on me to heal, it's on me to change, it's on me to create the life that I want for myself and my family. Once you really get that clicked into your brain, everything changes completely. And so that's the first thing, and I think the most important thing is taking absolute radical responsibility for your life. So that's the first one that changed my life. The second thing that changed my life is practicing daily gratitude. Even when life sucks. And gratitude seems like this cutesy little, you know, flowery, I'm going to put on my yoga pants and I'm going to be all grateful. And that's the way I always thought about it for years. But it's not just like a cute little habit. What I have realized over the past couple years when I've really been focusing on gratitude, is that gratitude is a gateway to happier moments in your life, happier days in your life, without needing to change anything except for your perspective. And so you have this thing in your brain called the reticular activating system. And if you've never heard of it before, it's basically the filter of your brain. Your brain has approximately about 11 million bits of information that can come into your brain at any second. And your brain is filtering out, what do I need, what do I not need? And out of those 11 million bits per second, it only takes in between 30 to 80 bits per second. So it's filtering out 99.9999% of things. And your brain can be trained for what you want it to look at. And so we all have, as humans, negativity bias, which is where our brain will search for what is wrong in our life, AKA what is negative, as a safety mechanism. And so we'll see all of the negative in our life, but that's going to make you feel like shit. So you train your nervous system and your reticular activating system to stop scanning for danger and start scanning for joy, for happiness, for things that you can be grateful for. And so even when it felt hard, when I had no money, when I had no clear purpose in my life, when I had no clue what was next and what I was doing, there's always something to be grateful for. My heart always beating. Could be I have a cup of coffee that I'm drinking. Could be the feeling of the sun on my skin. I'm programming my brain from the moment that I start and wake up to stop searching for what's wrong and start searching for what I can be grateful for. And that changed the course of how I feel every single day. And I would let myself not just like journal on it, I would let myself feel what it felt like, as if there was a hole in the top of my head and someone was just pouring gratitude in through the top of my head. You know, it's not just like writing down my gratitude like a To do list. It's feeling that. And what's really weird is that once I did that, it's like everything softened. Like, my fear softened, my anxiety softened my spiraling, my overthinking. All of those things were just. I don't have to worry as much because life's pretty damn good right now. You know, it might not be where you want it to be, but it's still pretty good. And it's like that phrase, and I think about it all the time, is your mind can make heaven out of hell or hell out of heaven, but it's all just based off your perspective and what you decide to look at. Gratitude doesn't mean that you ignore the hard stuff. It just reminds you that there's more here than just the pain and the negativity around you. You're way I'm telling you this, and I promise you, you're. No matter where you are in life, you are way more blessed than you allow yourself to recognize. So every morning, just sit in silence, just think of something that you're grateful for, and just let that feeling just soak in for a few minutes. You're setting your internal GPS for how you want to feel for the day. So that's number two. Number three is I started reframing fear as a compass. And what I mean by that is fear, instead of when I felt it, I would back away. Is when I would feel it, I started leaning in. Fear isn't the enemy. Fear is just your nervous system going, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're doing something unfamiliar. We're doing something on the edge of our comfort zone. And I logically know that in order for me to change my life, I need to get out of my comfort zone. And so if my brain is showing me fear, then it's showing me I'm on the edge of my comfort zone. Not that I'm going to die if I make a cold call or if I put up an Instagram post. I'm not going to die when I feel that fear. I'm not going to die if I do it. And so instead of backing away when I felt fear, it was just leaning in a little bit and pushing just a little bit past my comfort zone. It's not a stop sign. It's just a signal. And most of the time, it's pointing to something that's important for you to push past a little bit. And so I started to notice the more I was afraid of doing something, the more that that something was tied to growth and to getting out of my comfort zone. And that fear was tied to my dreams. And so I was like, okay, so if I feel this fear, you know, if I'm looking at my dreams, I've got to get out of my comfort zone. I've got to do this. I've got to grow. And so the fear was actually a compass for what I should do, not what I shouldn't do, like starting my podcast. When I started this podcast back in 2015, I had the idea in January of 2015. I didn't start until August of 2015 because for eight months, I was scared. And then I realized, this is something that I feel is the right thing to do. I should do this. And so it was like, starting my podcast scared the hell out of me, But I did anyways. Getting on stage for the first time in front of 10 people scared the hell out of me. And then I started doing a little bit more, a little bit more. Now I am excited to get on stage in front of 3,000 people, sometimes opening up about my story. When I first started the podcast, all of these things scared me. I was scared every single time. But I did it anyways. And the shift is, instead of thinking, I'm scared, I should wait. The feeling is, I'm scared, so this probably matters, and so I should do this. And so think about that. Like, what would you do today if you weren't afraid? How is that fear attached to your dreams and what you want to create? And if you feel it, it's okay. You can feel the fear and do it anyways. So just do it anyways. So that's number three. Number four is learning to trust my intuition. It's trusting the whisper over the scream. You know, there's a quote that says your fears will scream at you. Your intuition whispers. And so you've got to think about that. Your intuition doesn't demand anything from you. It doesn't tell you what to do. It doesn't rationalize. It simply is just an internal feeling. It's an internal nudge. And most of us have been taught to ignore that whisper and to think logically instead, or to wait until we have a clear plan that we can be absolute certain for, or to keep doing what's safe, or to listen to our fears in some sort of way. The whisper, it's very, very subtle. But the whisper, in my opinion, is the wisest part of you. You're just keeping yourself too damn busy to actually listen to it. You're too busy scrolling and watching this and doing that and doing that, and Doing this and like, you're just constantly doing things all the time versus going inward and actually paying attention to you. It's there. I promise you, it's there. You've just got to get better at listening to it. My whole life changed when I started listening to that quiet voice, that quiet inspiration that was inside of me. Even if it made zero logical sense, like starting this podcast and quitting my job 10 years ago to do this podcast made no sense. There was no money to be made. People didn't listen to podcasts, they didn't know how to listen to podcasts. And a lot of times when I told people I had a podcast, they said, what is a podcast? Fast forward over 10 years now and you're like, yeah, it was a pretty good decision. But it was only because I had this internal feeling of like, this feels like the thing I'm supposed to do with my life. It didn't come from, like creating a five year plan. It didn't. I had no plan. It was just like, this feels right and I'm going to follow what feels right. So you have to understand, it's going to whisper to you. It's not going to shout, but you've got to get quiet enough to listen to it and to hear it. So that's number four. Number five is to act before you feel ready. Have you ever said something like, I just need to get more confident about it or I'm really busy right now or I'll do that later, or I need to learn more before I take any action? Me too. I've done it. But I want you to understand, confidence doesn't come from thinking about doing the thing. It comes from doing the thing scared, and then realizing, oh, you survived. It comes from showing up for yourself. It comes from taking action. When you don't feel like taking action, it comes from following through and doing what you said you were going to do. That's where confidence comes from. Being ready is a myth. You'll never be ready. Action is what makes you ready. You become ready the more that you do something. So you've got to learn to just start messy. One of my favorite phrases in the way I've really tried to live my life, especially since being a business owner, is ready, fire, aim, not ready, aim, fire, ready, fire, aim. So in my business, we'll figure out something. Boom. This is an idea that came through. Let's put a couple things down. Let's just take messy action immediately and do it and let's just see if it floats. Like, take Messy action. And as we do it, then as we fire, then we start to aim. Okay, this worked. This didn't work. And instead of, like, creating the perfect plan, it's we come up with the plan as we're doing it, because then we're going to come up with a better plan, because now we know a little bit of what works and a little bit of what doesn't work, right? So you have to start messy. You have to speak before your voice feels strong. It took me, like, 600, 650 episodes before I finally found, like, I felt my voice and found my voice in this podcast. So you have to show up and just do it anyways. You know, speak before you feel like you know what to say. You know, show up even when your inner critic is screaming at you. Start the business before you have all the details, and that's how you build momentum, and you start to learn more about what you're doing as you're doing it. So you don't need to feel ready. You just need to feel willing more than anything else. And so you have to start, because the longer that you delay it, the doubt gets louder and louder. I promise you that that's number five. Number six is speaking to myself the way that I would speak to someone that I love. That inner voice that we all have, it becomes our outer reality. And for years, mine was pretty mean. Like, savage. Like, the things I said to myself in my head, I would never say to a stranger. I wouldn't even say it to someone that I was my worst enemy, let alone someone that I actually love. And so I started shifting it. It wasn't overnight, but it was just one thought at a time. Oh, I don't like that thought. Where'd that come from? Let me change that thought. Oop, I don't like that thought either. Let me change that thought. So I've decided to become like my own inner hype team. Not because I was perfect, but because I was worth being spoken to with love. And it used to be like, if I had a speaker on the side of my head that just blasted what I was thinking to myself years ago, you'd be like, that guy's an asshole. If there's a speaker that was blasting all of the stuff that I think in my head nowadays, you'd be like, that guy's obsessed with himself, right? I'd rather be obsessed with myself and be my biggest fan and my than the biggest asshole or my worst enemy, right? So when I mess up, I'm like, you know, it's okay, we learn, we keep going. When I succeed, I'm like, damn, dude, you're fucking killing it. Like, that's just the way I speak to myself. And so I want you to, like, take a challenge of, like, for one day, just act like every single thought that you have is being broadcast and think to yourself, would I want other people to hear me say that to them? What do I want other people to hear me say that to myself? If not, then you need to change the tone in some sort of way. So that's number six. And then number seven was letting go of perfectionism. Like, let's just be real. Perfectionism isn't excellence. We're not, like, elitist and like, oh, my gosh, I'm so amazing. Cause I'm a perfectionist. Perfectionism isn't excellence at all. It's fear that's in a fancy outfit. It's fear of judgment or fear of failure or fear of not being enough or fear of being judged or other people's opinions wrapped in productivity. And to do lists and more things that need to be done before I actually do what I'm supposed to do or before I finish this thing. But really what it comes down to is done is better than perfect. And done imperfectly is what actually builds the dream life that you want. The goal isn't to be flawless. The goal is to take action. The goal is to create momentum. The goal is completing what it is I need to do so I can move on to the next thing that I need to do. And every time that I choose progress over perfection, I moved forward in some sort of way. Even if it was messy, even if I cringe later, even if it looked like shit, even if I doubted myself. And so try to release being perfect and just try to be more real. You know, say, I'm just going to try to complete things versus trying to make everything perfect. And so I want you to understand, like, this is these seven habits, they didn't just, like, make me more productive and all of that. They did in some way. But more than anything else, they absolutely changed my life. And so I stopped waiting to be ready. I stopped shrinking around fear. I stopped betraying my own voice. You don't have to be fearless. You just have to take the right action. You know, pay attention. What is your truth? What is your voice? And so let me ask you, if you think about it, out of these seven habits, which one of them can you start implementing into your life immediately? That's all I want you to do. Start doing it today. You already have what it takes. You just need to act like it. Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. YouTube thinks, for some reason, that you want to watch this video right here. The algorithm's picking this one for you specifically. 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