Finish 2024 Strong: How to Get a Head Start on 2025!
8 Nov 2024 · 12 min
Rob Dial explains how to finish 2024 strong by committing to one daily habit using Jerry Seinfeld's calendar method. It takes an average of 66 days to form a habit, and consistent action beats willpower. Pick one high-impact action and do it every day until January 1, 2025.
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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am 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 and you want to get inspirational text messages from me and you live in the US or Canada, text me right now. 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today I'm going to share a secret to success with you about how to finish this year strong. But make sure that you have a head start going into next year. And it is extremely, extremely simple. But it's very, very important, especially to kind of rewire yourself to be the type of person that you want to be. I'm going to teach you something of how Jerry Seinfeld used to use this technique to become one of the greatest and probably the wealthiest comedian in the world. And it's very simple. Right now, at my time of recording this episode, there are 63 days left of this year. 63. What I want you to do is I want you to write down all of the things that you need to do to create the best 2025 habits that you need to create actions that you need to take. Whatever it might be, I want you to figure out what is the one action that I need to take in order to better my life in order to better myself before 2025 gets here. So that when 2025 gets here, I am the best version of myself. And I want you to figure out what that one action is that is above all actions, above all habits, the one that would change your life the most if it was ingrained into your brain on January 1st of 2025. And here's what I want you to do. I want you to do that thing every single day. I know it sounds simple, but Rob, I should have been doing that thing every single day. Well, no shit. But you just eventually have to get to the point where you're going, I'm fed up with myself, I'm going to be different. And here's the reason why. According to psychologists, it takes anywhere between about on average for most people, 21 to 100 days to create a new habit. About 21 to 100 days, the average person, it usually takes about 66 days at the time of recording this. Right now, there's 63 days left of this year. And so if you listen to this, you have about 60 ish 55 ish days, most likely maybe 50 if you're listening to it, a couple weeks late to change yourself and to start to hardwire one action, one habit into your brain before 2025 gets here. And so what I want you to do, it's very, very simple. Decide the action or habit and do it every single day. So it's very simple. Step one, decide what the action is that you need to do. Step two, do it every single day until January 1, 2025. Don't allow yourself to make some BS excuse because all of those BS excuse are going to come up. Don't self sabotage, don't talk to yourself about how, oh, maybe I should take today off. I want you to do that thing every single day until the beginning of next year. And let me tell you a few reasons why this is really, really important. Okay? Number one, the thing that I have found is successful people, whatever success means to you, are not the people who have the best willpower. It's not the people who are born different. It's the people who are the most consistent. That's it. Someone who has a really good relationship, if that's what success means to you, has been consistent at showing up for their partner every single day, at working on the relationship every single day. Someone who is extremely wealthy, that's someone who has worked hard consistently every single day and they didn't give up. Someone who is in incredible shape. That is Somebody who worked out as much as they possibly could. Someone who is a calm and centered as someone who has meditated many times. So like, if you just look at it, the most successful people are the ones that are just the most consistent. Success comes from consistency. Consistency compounds over time. Failure comes from giving up. How many times have you given up on yourself? Just think about that. You said you were going to do something and you started it and you gave up. You said you were going to go on that diet. You started it, you gave up. You said you're going to start working out. You, you started it, you gave up. You said you're gonna start that business. You started it and then you gave up. What I want you to do is decide what the action is and then do it every single day until the end of the year. It's quite simple. And let me explain why this is important, how it works in your brain. Your brain is basically like a forest. Let me give you an example. Right? And the way that you want to think about it is if you're walking through a forest and there's a well worn path to the forest that is like a habit. That's something that you do every single day. That just walking that path is super simple for you, it's very easy for you to do. To create a new habit is like taking out a machete and hacking away at the forest. And it's going to take time, it's going to take energy. But if you just hack away at the forest every single day, eventually 60 days from today, you're going to have a new path in the forest and that is a new pathway in your brain. Once you hack that, that pathway down, it's much easier to do it. And so maybe for you it's like, hey, you know what, I really want to get myself into better shape. And so you say, okay, for every single day until the end of the year, I'm going to get some form of movement in. Like you don't have to do hardcore weightlifting practices or anything like that, but what you're going to do is you're just basically going to get some form of movement. Maybe one, one day you do really hardcore heavy weightlifting. Maybe another day you go for a run, maybe another day you go for a hike. Maybe another day you do yoga. And it's like, I'm just going to get my body used to moving every single day. If you do this by the end of the year, you're going to be in much better shape by the time next year gets here. Because You've already got that habit of consistent movement. It's going to make losing those £20 for all of 20, 25 so much easier. And so what you have to understand is what is foreign and not comfortable now will become easy as time goes on, which is what we're trying to do. And so when you're trying to turn it into a habit through neuroplasticity, what you have to do is just do it over and over and over again. It's funny because there's entire books written on habits. I have chapters in my book that are written on habits. Really what it comes down to, you can read about it. You can read about neuroplasticity and how the brain changes and all of these things to make sure that you do the habits. Just do the fucking thing every single day. That's all it comes down to. How do you create a habit? Just do it every single day. And if you miss a day, don't miss another day. So if you miss, if you said, oh my God, I'm going to work out every single day for the end of the year and you miss today, don't miss tomorrow. You have to make sure that you hold yourself accountable to this type of stuff. And we will be right back.
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dial and now back to the show. And so how does this relate to Seinfeld? As I said in the beginning, Seinfeld used this thing that's now been called the Seinfeld calendar. And Seinfeld knew that if he wanted to become a great and this one he's like brand new and just like really starting out as a comedian, he knew if he wanted to become world class at it, that he would have to develop the habit of writing jokes every single day. And so he developed the habit of writing jokes every single day, every single day, every single day, knowing that most of his jokes, according to him, were complete trash. But every once in a while, he'd write a joke that was really good and he would put that in a set and then he'd write again for another few Weeks, and they wouldn't be that good, but then there'd be another diamond in the rough. And he'd put that in a set. And it's called the Seinfeld calendar. Because what he would do is that every day that he would get one of them done, like write jokes, which was every single day he would have a calendar up on his wall and he would have a red marker and he would just cross off that day. He cross off today showing, hey, I got my habit done that I wanted today. And then the next day he'd do it again. And then once you get three or four days in with this Seinfeld calendar thing, if you have it up on your wall, if this is something that you want to do, once you see that chain start of a few, three, four, five days in a row, you don't want to break the chain. And so you're like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to find some time, I'm going to make some time to make sure I get this done. And over time, he ended up saying that he went thousands and thousands of days without missing a day of writing jokes. And so he's one of the most successful, if not the wealthiest, because of his, you know, his standup, but then also his show. How did he get there? Because he just was one of the most consistent that's ever lived. And so success is not hard. It's so simple. But really what it is that we make it hard, it's to wake up and do the things that we said we were going to do, to just stay consistent. If you want to change your life like I talk about, you could definitely do cold plunges, and you could definitely do morning routines, and you could definitely do all of that stuff, and you could definitely meditate. All those things are important. But if you really want to just change your life, just follow through on what you said you were going to do. Just be consistent. Just wake up today and do what you said you were going to do yesterday. The most successful people I know, they're not the smartest, but they are the absolute most committed people. You know, most of the people that I know, they're successful weren't born rich. In fact, 80% of millionaires in America were born middle class or lower class families. And so it shows you anybody can do it. It just takes hard work and dedication. You could have like, just think about this for a second. No matter where your life is right now, you could have a completely different life in three years. Completely different. Like your life could be Drastically different. This past weekend, my. My wife and I, we went to a coffee shop that was right by our old house that we lived at just under four years ago. And we were talking about how different our life is now than it was four years ago. But it all became. All came because of the fact that it was just hard work and dedication and sticking and doing the boring things over and over again every single day and doing what needed to be done in order to get ourself to where we want to be. You know, if I told you that if you worked really hard at something for the next three years, you'd make $10 million, would you do it? Like, if you were guaranteed $10 million and all you had to do is work really hard and do something every single day, whatever that thing was, would you do it? Would you go for it and not give up? If you were 100% guaranteed? Of course you would. So maybe the reason why you're not consistent is you don't believe in yourself. You don't think that it's possible. Maybe you need to brainwash yourself into believing that it's possible. Maybe you need to brainwash yourself into not believing your fears, but believing that you can create the life that you want. You know, what. What would your life be like if you didn't give up on so many things in the past, if you just stayed consistent? And the thing that I found, and I wrote about this in my book, is the people who are the most consistent are not the people who have the best willpower. It's the people that create environments that doesn't test their willpower. So, like, for instance, if somebody. An example, what I mean by that is, like, if you're trying to lose weight, well, then how can you change your environment to not, you know, test your willpower? How can you get rid of all of the crappy food, all of the sugar, all of the extra carbs, all of the processed food inside of your house? So therefore, your willpower isn't even tested. Like, think about all of the times that you've given up on something in your life. Where would your life be if you didn't give up on yourself a year ago, two years ago, five years ago? And I don't think people realize how close they are to a breakthrough in their life when they give up. You know, usually a breakthrough comes after a breakdown. And most people give up after a breakdown. They think, oh, this isn't for me. This is a sign from the universe. I'm not supposed to do this. What if it was just the universe testing you to see if you would keep going, testing you to see if you really wanted it. And so, like, you've given up on yourself so many times. What if you just didn't give up? What would it look like? Like, what would your life look like in three years if you just stayed consistent with doing what you know you needed to do? Like, I really am 100% honest with you when I tell you, like, your life could be completely different three years from this very moment. It doesn't happen overnight. You know, becoming an overnight success takes three to five years. And it's like the Chinese bamboo. I like. I love the story of the Chinese bamboo because it's. The longer that I go in life, like, I remember hearing the story of the Chinese bamboo, like, 10 years ago. The longer that I go in life, the more that the story of the Chinese bamboo is exactly what success looks like in a human life. So the story of the Chinese bamboo, if you don't know it, is. If you want to grow Chinese bamboo, you've got to take a seed, you've got to put it in the soil, and you've got to water it, and you've got to make sure it gets sun and all of that. And after the first year, the Chinese bamboo does not break through the surface of the ground. After the second year of taking care of it, watering it, giving it exactly what it needs, two years, doesn't break through the surface. Three years, doesn't break through the Surface. Four years, doesn't break through the surfaces. Five years, doesn't break through theSpace. Six years on average, the Chinese bamboo will eventually break through the surface about five to six years before it breaks through the surface. Then what's crazy about is that Chinese bamboo will grow up to 80ft in six months. So nothing. Well, it looks like from the outside looking in, nothing was happening for. For five or six years, but it was developing its root system as it was going down. It was going down deep enough so that it could explode and grow 80ft in six months. And so to us as humans, we look at it, we're looking at it, we're going, that's still not there. It's still not there. It's not there. And then, boom, five or six years later, it grows 80ft in six months. That's how success is for most people, is that you've got to keep going and keep going and keep going and keep doing the boring stuff over and over and over again, doing the fundamentals over and over and over. Again for long enough time and eventually, boom, it happens. Whatever that thing that happens that you wanted to happen happens. And I always tell people, success, that thing that you want will almost never happen as fast as you want it to. But I promise you this, when it does happen, it's way better than you thought it could have been. And so to get a head start on what your life could be to making 2025 the best year of your life, decide one thing and one thing only that you need to do to completely change your life. Like the one habit, the one action, and do it every single day until January 1st. And I promise you, that is the quickest way to get a massive head start into the year. But here's a tip I'm going to give you. Don't do two things, don't do three things, do one thing and one thing only to the end of the year. And I promise you, it'll give you a massive head start in a 2025. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me at Robdial Jr Rob D I A L J R the only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. So I'd greatly, greatly appreciate it if you would share it right now. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way. Leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.
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