9 Things To Stop Doing Immediately
28 Sept 2023 · 21 min
Rob Dial names nine self-limiting behaviors to quit: making excuses, playing victim, complaining, fearing failure, procrastinating, self-criticism, controlling everything, giving up, and settling for okay. He frames it as being the CEO of your life and shares a mentor's challenge to stop making excuses.
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Welcome to today's episode of the welcome to the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you love this podcast, you'll also probably love the stuff we've been putting on YouTube. You can follow this podcast on YouTube, go into YouTube, type in my name Rob Dial. Follow us on there and you can see all of these through video and a lot of the other stuff we've been posting on there as well. So once again go to YouTube, type in Rob Dial and follow me there. Today we're going to be talking about nine things that you should stop doing immediately right this second. If you want to make your life better, you need to stop doing these nine things. Ready? Let's go ahead and dive into it. The first one Number one, stop making excuses. Excuses are like buttholes. Everyone's got one and they all stink. Excuses are never, never beneficial for our life. And I can tell you, as someone who used to make a lot of excuses, I used to be like a professional excuse maker. Like I was. I'm pretty damn good at it. I remember a conversation I had with my very first mentor and I've shared this many times in the podcast before in the past and I had many conversations with my mentor, my one on one coach when I was younger over the course of two years. And I don't remember a whole lot that he said specifically. I remember he helped me out a lot and he changed my life in many different ways. But I don't remember specific advice. But I do remember one specific piece of advice I kept showing. I wouldn't hit my assignments every single week. I would show up late almost every single week. I had certain things I needed to do in the sales company I was in. I'd be like, well, I got like 75% there. I was supposed to make 100 calls, but I made, you know, 70 calls. And I would make so many excuses. And at one point in time, he just kind of got pissed at me and just told me like it is. And he said, you know, the problem with you is the way that you're living. You're making excuses for everything. You're always making excuses to why you didn't do this, why you didn't do that. And one thing that he said is, he said, and you've probably heard this story before if you've listened to me for a while, he said, if a business succeeds and a big corporation succeeds and all of the employees are heading in the same direction and they, they end up doing exactly what they wanted to do, whose fault is it to get the entire company on board and to get it to succeed? And I was like, I guess that's the CEO's fault. He's like, okay, if the business fails, whose fault is it? I said, that's the CEO's fault. He said, okay, so taking that frame, if you go to the end of your life and you didn't do what you want to do, you didn't have the love, happiness, joy, success that you wanted to, whose fault would that be? I was like, that would be my fault. He said, but if you do get to the end of your life and you have the joy, the happiness, the peace, everything that you wanted, you had success, you had money, you had happiness, love, you're surrounded by everything that you wanted to. And there's people around your deathbed that just love you. Whose fault is that? I was like, that's my fault. He said, the problem is you're not treating your life like the CEO of your life. When your life will really change, when you decide to stop making excuses, you step up to the plate, you say, everything is my fault and I'm going to get it done. And so that was a life changing piece of advice for me when I was 20 years old. And that's the biggest Thing that I can share with you on excuses. You have to step into the driver's seat. You have to be the CEO of your life. You. And you have to say, I'm not going to make any more excuses because excuses are never beneficial for my future. So that's the first one. Stop making excuses. Step number two, stop playing the victim. I see too many people playing the victim. They act like that their problems in life are because of someone else's actions. Oh, I'm not where I want to be because of my parents. I'm not where I want to be because of my boss. I'm not. I don't have as much money as I want because I went through the wrong career, because my parents told me to go for that career and get that degree. And they blame everybody else for why they're not where they were. Oh, I'm not in the shape that I want to be because of my genes. I'm not in the shape that I want to be because. Because, you know, the gym is too far away. And all too often we're playing the victim. We're trying to blame outside of us because it's easy to blame outside of us because that requires us not to step into the driver's seat of our life and to say, oh, yeah, you know what? I'm in the place that I'm in because of somebody else. And that doesn't put you into a place of control. And most people that I know and I've worked with over years have control problems. So if you want to be in a place of control, stop playing the victim. Start saying, everything that is happening in my life. This deals very similar to making excuses. Everything that is happening in my life is my fault. And if something's going to change, I. I have to be the one to change it. That takes you from being the victim of your life, in the person who's just the victim all the time, to the person who's writing the story. It takes you from victim to author. Then you get to author your story and say, I'm going from this moment on going to be the author of my story and create the life that I want. And so number two is stop playing victim. Don't pull the victim card out so much. Number three, really simple. But it's simple to say, but not simple to do is to stop complaining. Stop complaining. Instead of looking for solutions, you can use the same mental energy that you would to complain about circumstances as you could to actually find the solutions. And so if you want to get better at finding solutions. There's something I want to talk to you about called the one three one method. One three one means that one there is a problem. Three means I'm going to come up with three possible solutions. I'm going to write them down with pen and paper. I'm going to say these are the three possible solutions. And then the last one. So one three one is I'm going to find the one that I like the most. And I'm going to go, you know what? Out of all the three possible solutions, I think this one is the best one for me to go for. I'm going to take action on this one right here. And so it comes down to finding the problem, coming up with three possible solutions, and executing on the one that you feel is your absolute favorite out of all of them. And if that works, it works. If it doesn't, go to another one of the solutions. And what you do is instead of complaining about your circumstance, you say, you know what, I'm going to find a solution, I'm going to execute on solutions, and I'm going to take control of my life. That's number three. Number four, stop being afraid of failure. I did a live last night. We were live with about 1500 people and we were talking about my book. And one of the chapters in my book, level up is about fear. And I said, hey everybody, go ahead and put your biggest fear in the world down. Not like spiders, not, you know, being alone, not heights, any of that type of stuff. Like, what's the biggest thing that's holding you back? I would say like 90, 85%, 90% of them were the fear of failure. Stop being afraid of it. Failure is your greatest teacher. Avoiding failure is one of the biggest things that holds people back. The most successful people want to fail and they want to fail as fast as possible. It's like the phrase fail forward. You fail as quickly as possible so that you could see what works, what doesn't work, and fail as often as possible so that you can fail forward by using failure as an actual means to learn, to grow, to get better. Because the faster that you can fail, the more likely you are to find and the faster you are going to actually succeed. And so if you're avoiding failure, you're also avoiding success because success is a part of failure. Failure and success are not the opposite. They're one in the same. Failure is part of success because you see what doesn't work. You know, if you're playing basketball, you can't not want to miss Shots. Because missing shots is just the way that it goes. If you're a, you know, even another sport, if you're a baseball player, if you're a great baseball player, like an all Star, one of the best that's alive, you're going to strike out 70% of the time. And you could look at it and say, oh, that's, that's me failing. Or you could say, hey, that, that strikeout that I just had gets me one step closer to my next hit, gives me one step closer to my next home run. The thing that you don't want to do is not show up to the plate because you're afraid of striking out. And if you look at success and failure as two sides of the same coin, you realize you can't have one without the other. And a famous quote that the creator of Honda said is that success is 99% failure. You don't need to succeed all the time. You just need to succeed 1% of the time. And a lot of times that 1% is actually the one that really makes it a massive, massive success. So number four is stop being afraid of failure. Number five, stop putting things off. Stop procrastinating. Like, you just get better at making a decision and go. Like, just make a decision and go, knowing that you're going to screw up and quote, unquote, fail along the way. I like to live my life through the, through the idea of ready, fire, aim. A lot of times we think that it's. It's ready, aim, fire, where it's get ready, you aim and then you fire. But really what it is, is make a decision, I'm going to do this thing. And then you take action immediately, knowing that what you're looking for is the failures. And then you start to adjust. So it's ready, aim, fire. It's like if somebody was breaking out into your house and they were running at you or your children, you're. You're probably just going to start firing just because you know one of them is probably going to hit and you're going to protect your children, right? So that's probably more important. So if you think of it that way, it's like, ready, fire, aim, get ready, fire, Figure it out, make mistakes, and eventually you're gonna figure out what it is that you need to do. Stop over planning, stop. I mean, so many people are just planners, right? Some of the people that are planners out there, you plan and then you plan about planning, and you plan about planning about planning, and you plan about, plan about planning about Planning. Really, what it comes down to is stop putting things off. Stop procrastinating. Ask yourself, what am I afraid of? Because what you're afraid of is actually the real problem when you're procrastinating. Procrastination is never the problem. Procrastination is the downstream effect of a problem. It is not the cause. It is not the root symptom. It is the thing that's popping up that's right there. But you gotta ask yourself, if I'm procrastinating, what am I actually afraid of? Because there's always a fear in procrastination. And so you've gotta stop putting things off. You've gotta just get better at taking action. Number six. Hey, human, stop being so hard on yourself. Just stop being so hard on yourself. You're human. Humans are ridiculously, ridiculously imperfect. You'll never be perfect. You're going to mess things up. You're gonna mess things up a lot. Like, a lot a lot. You're gonna screw up a lot of things in your life. You're gonna screw up businesses. You're gonna screw up relationships. You're gonna screw up a lot of things. You're always doing the best that you can. Want a big key to be happier? Learn to let things go. Maybe you did screw up. Maybe you didn't do as well as you could have. Okay, roger that. Make adjustments, move on. But be kind to yourself. All too often we make quote unquote mistakes, which I don't believe there's any mistakes in this universe. But we make a mistake and then we have that mistake and then we guilt ourself, we shame ourself, we get really hard on ourself for that mistake.
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You're always doing the best that you can at every single moment and you're learning every single part of the way. You can't get mad at yourself for something that you did five years ago. You can't be so mad at yourself for messing up that relationship because you did the best that you could in that moment. And now hindsight is 20 20. You do see where you made the mistake. Can you use that mistake? Can you not be hard on yourself? And can you try to learn and get better from it? Yeah, you made a mistake in that relationship. Maybe you're not with that person anymore, but can you bring that knowledge into your next relationship to help you get better? So just give yourself some grace. I promise you, you're doing the best that you can. Number seven, stop trying to control everything. Stop trying to control everything. You can barely control anything. For me, coming from a recovering controlaholic years ago, I realized that I was trying to control everything. And I was white knuckling my way through life. I was trying to tell people what to do, make them do these things, micromanaging people, forcing people to do certain things. You can't control everything. And if you really want more peace in your life, if you really want more that feeling, I always go back to that feeling of what it feels like just to go and just be more calm. If you really want more of that in your life, stop trying to control everything. Control what you can control. Do the best that you can, but then realize there are 99% of things that are happening in your life are completely outside of your control. What can you control? Stop trying to control things outside of it. Stop trying to control other people. Stop trying to control circumstances and start paying attention. What you can control, what you can control, how you think, what you can't control, how you feel, what you can control, what you do throughout the day, you can control you and only you, everything outside of that. You just gotta learn to be able to get better at dealing with things. That's number seven. Number eight, stop giving up on yourself. You need to want to succeed for yourself. You need to want to succeed. You need to stop putting others needs in front of your own. You deserve like, just think about this for a second. You deserve to follow through for yourself. You do. You deserve to put yourself first. Because when you do better, when you work on yourself more, when you're happier, you're better for everyone else around you. You're a better parent, you're a better spouse, you're better for every single person that's in your life. You deserve to follow through, follow through on that business idea, follow through on your fitness plans, follow through on your family plans. You deserve it all. There's no reason why you, you can, you can't be this and that. Like a lot of times I coach a lot of, a lot of business owners and a lot of business owners Especially if they have children. Think, well, either I can be a great parent or I can be a great business owner. I can either be a great mother or I can be, you know, run a multimillion dollar business and or is a place of scarcity. It's either this or it's this. It's either this or it's this. That's not true, is it? Written into the laws of the universe. You can either be a great parent or you can be a great business owner. No, it's not. And so you've got to stop giving up on yourself. You deserve to have all of it. So, or is scarcity, abundance, which is a place we're all trying to step into, is. And you know what? I will be an incredible father, and I will be an incredible business owner. I will be an incredible son, and I will be an incredible husband. I will be this and I will be this and, and, and, and, and I might not be able to do it at this moment, but I will consciously expand myself and evolve myself to become the type of person where both of those realities fit into my reality. Maybe they don't at this moment, right now, but if I consciously try to expand myself and evolve myself, I will figure out a way to have both of these realities live in my reality. And so really stop giving up on yourself. You deserve better. And then, last one, everybody, number nine is to stop settling for okay. Stop settling for like an okay life. Most people listen to this, your life isn't terrible, it's okay, it's pretty good. But you get one shot at this life. Stop settling in your life. Stop settling for okay. Stop. Oh yeah, this relationship is okay. It's pretty decent. Oh yeah, my bank account, it's okay. My business, it's okay. My job is okay. Stop settling for okay and start telling yourself that you really true, deserve, truly do deserve more. And don't just tell yourself like fucking believe it, like deep to your core, this is what I deserve. I do deserve it. I'm going to stop settling for okay. I don't want anything less than great. That needs to be your mindset into everything that you do, everything that you're doing. You need to say, you know what? I'm going to. Same way I said in the, in the last one. I'm going to expand myself to make a great life. You might need to put some work into yourself. You might need to. But just stop settling for okay. You deserve more. You deserve better in everything in your life. And there's no reason why that reality can't exist for you in the future. And what you need to do is you need to grow yourself to be able to say, I'm going to make this great. I'm going to put every ounce of energy making this the best that I possibly can. And so you really, really need to stop settling for just okay. Do you really want to live a life where it's like, eh, that was pretty good. If you get to the end of your life and you go and meet God and God's like, how was it? You're like, ah, I mean God, it was alright, I guess. You really want that to happen. No, don't settle. You weren't here to be okay. You were here to be great. You need to get that into yourselves. All 40 trillion of yourselves need to know the powerful being that you are and the powerful being that you could become. Stop settling for okay, so that's what I got for you for today's quick episode. The nine things that you should stop doing immediately. With that, I'm going to leave the same way that I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission. Make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.
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