Grow Through The Hard Times | The Mindset Mentor Podcast

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. Today we're going to be talking about how to grow through the hard times and how to grow through suffering. And I'm also going to teach you why I think it's important to use something called applied suffering. We're going to talk about how to use suffering, as you would say, to get what you want in life. And so what is applied suffering? So when you hear the word suffering, so suffering sounds like a bad connotation, doesn't it? Like, nobody really wants to suffer. But there's a difference between pain and suffering. So let's talk about that for a second. So pain is inevitable in life. You will have pain. You know, if you're gonna live, hopefully to a hundred years old or older, right, you're going to have some sort of pain in your life. It could be trauma, it could be death of people that, you know, it could be really hard times, it could be car accidents, all of these different things. There's gonn. Some sort of pain, something that just happens in your life. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is an option. Suffering is optional. So, like, you could have somebody really close to you that does pass away from natural causes, and that is painful, but the suffering after they die is optional. That is, you know, I'm not saying don't grieve, so please don't get it that way. What I'm saying is if you're resisting the way that the world is and that that person has passed away, that is optional. I remember years ago, somebody actually sent me a picture of them getting a tattoo. And it literally said from the podcast, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. And kind of crazy, because I've had people send me pictures of tattoos before, of things that I say, and I think that it's pretty flattering, but also pretty awesome as well. But when you look at pain versus suffering, just remember that pain is inevitable. You're gonna have pain throughout your life. But. But suffering is optional, right? But is it possible that we could use applied suffering to grow? Right. When you look at pain, pain is a stimulus for your brain or body to make a change. And so let me give you an example. Let's say that you're inside of the kitchen, you're cooking up some tacos, right? You're inside the kitchen, you got the burners on, and you accidentally forget what you're doing, and you put your hand on the hot stove, you're going to feel a lot of pain very quickly. Won't you? You will. That pain is a stimulus from your brain and your body saying, do something different than what you're currently doing. If you're at the beach and you decide to go to the beach, you have a great day with your friends and you're walking back to your car, but you don't put your sandals or your shoes on because your feet are so sandy. And you start walking into the middle of the concrete, and the concrete has been as 120 degrees because the sun's been beating down on it all day. That pain at the bottom of your feet is your body and brain saying, hey, stupid, do something different. Whatever that means. Run faster, run back onto the sand, run to your car, put on some shoes, stand on top of a towel, do something different. That's usually what pain is. And so when you feel pain, something that happens to you, it's usually the. The way that your brain, your body, the universe, is speaking through you to say, hey, do something different, right? Do something different. It's forcing you to move, it's forcing you to change, it's forcing you to take action. If you look at a muscle, how does a muscle grow? It's gotta be put through some pain, right? When you look at a plant, how does a plant grow? A plant grows from a seed, right? Like, there's a quote that I love that's from Honeyboy, which is a movie that Shia LaBeouf is in, and I think it's his dad that says to him, in order for a flower to grow from a seed into a flower, it has to completely destroy itself first, right? So in order for a seed to become a flower, it has to first completely destroy itself. When you look at a lobster, how does a lobster grow? Well, let me tell you real quick, in case you don't know about lobsters, Lobsters, if I were to say, hey, is a lobster a soft animal or a hard animal? Most people would say hard animal, right? Like I've been lobstering before. I pick them up, they're hard. But what's interesting is that their shell is hard, but inside the shell, there's a really soft animal. And what's interesting is that lobsters never stop growing. Lobsters grow until the day that they die. But what happens is that soft animal that's inside of the shell, the shell doesn't grow. And so what happens is they eventually get to the point where it's so painful inside of their shell that they have to go into a rock and they have to stay in that rock and Break themself out of the shell into a new shell, grows, and then they can get out of the rock and actually be safe. And so what is the stimulus for growth for a lobster? Pain. Pain is a stimulus for growth. And so we can look at our lives and we can say, oh, my gosh, there's so much pain around me. There's so many things I've been through. I've been through so much shit in my life. It's so painful right now. And that is the way that the universe comes through you and says, hey, do something different. Pain is the stimulus for growth. It's saying, hey, you need to grow. That's really what it's coming through and telling you, right? And, you know, I say this all the time, but the universe usually comes and speaks to you in a whisper. And if you don't listen long enough, it's gonna slap you, right? So sometimes you can feel like, man, maybe I should do something different. Maybe I should change my life. Maybe I should quit my job. Maybe I should follow my passion. And you kind of hear that whisper, and then eventually it's going to slap the hell out of you if you don't make a change. But here's the problem with pain and discomfort. People feel fear. Discomfort, right? They try to get away. They try to stay away from discomfort. They try to build a box and stay in that box, and nobody hurt me, nobody touched me. I want to stay exactly the same. Don't trigger me in any sort of way. I don't want to be triggered. And they try to avoid discomfort at all costs. They try to build a life that is completely away from all of their fears. They'll do anything to avoid discomfort. But the word discomfort implies that it's the opposite of your comfort zone. And when you look around you, you've already gotten the maximum of what you can achieve in your comfort zone. Think about that for a second. You've already gotten the maximum of what you can achieve in your current comfort zone. So in order for you to get out of your comfort zone, which, if you listen to this podcast, you already know that you can't stay in your comfort zone if you're going to create the life that you want, right, you've got to get out of your comfort zone. So if you look at your comfort zone, if you want to get out of your comfort zone, you need to seek discomfort. So you might be trying to avoid, or maybe for a while, you've been trying to avoid discomfort, but you actually need to seek that discomfort. You've got to get out of your comfort zone. Gotta get out of it now. It's hard for us to do and it's really triggering a lot of times for us to get out of our comfort zone. Why is that? Well, because we still kind of have the brains, you know, a little bit more advanced, but still kind of have the brains of cavemen. And so when you look back a million years ago, 2 million years ago, whatever it was when our ancestors were cavemen and cave women, why were they cavemen and cave women? Why did they go into the cave? They went into the cave for protection. It was actually a smart idea because when you're in the cave, you don't have to worry about 360 degrees. You've just got to worry about the entrance. Right? That's all that you have to protect yourself with, just the entrance. Super smart. But basically our comfort zone is a modern day cave. We stay in there to protect ourselves because we're afraid of anything that's outside of it. And when we step out of our comfort zone, it feels the same as when a caveman would walk out of the cave in the middle of the night. There's those feelings of, I'm scared something might happen, maybe I need to protect myself, maybe I should go back in my comfort zone. But you can at least consciously now, today, in the advanced brain that you have go, I'm safe. If I go ahead and I do this or people judge me or any of that type of stuff, I will be safe if I follow my dreams. Right? So discomfort is your friend. Discovery. Discomfort is something that you should be seeking, right? So for your body, in order to get the body that you want, you're gonna have to be uncomfortable. You might sweat really hard, your body might hurt, you might be sore, you might do such a hard workout that you throw up. But your body grows and it gets better. Your body grows and it gets better. Your brain and your mindset work the exact same way. Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change itself. And neuroplasticity only happens when you do something that pushes you that is outside of what you typically do. You have to seek discomfort. This is what applied suffering looks like. You actually seek things that hurt, seek things that are uncomfortable, seek things that are out of your comfort zone, because that is the only way that you're going to grow. The life that you want is on the other side of discomfort, on the other side of applied suffering. When you look at, like the thing that I love, like I Remember, it was about seven years ago now, maybe even eight years ago, I started doing ice baths and everybody thought I was crazy at the time. Like now it's like everybody does ice baths and everyone's got one in their house and all of this stuff. But I remember like eight years ago, people were like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. There's probably no benefits to doing it. And I was like, listen, at that point in time I was like, Wim Hof was just starting to become popular. And I was like, this guy Wim Hof is showing all of these benefits, but really what I like the most about it is I am coming in contact with my little inner bitch that's holding me back all the time. And to this day, seven, eight years later, I still hate getting into ice baths. But I love the mental benefits of it because it's me seeking discomfort as much as I possibly can. If I can wake up in the morning and do something that is extremely hard to get myself to do, like really outside of my can you go from a warm bed where I could just sleep in all day and immediately get into an ice bath? Screw that. That sounds like it sucks. And guess what? It does. But if I can do the very first thing I do in the morning is a really, really hard thing, the entire rest of day is easy. I'm setting myself up for success. Oh, I've got to, you know, do this thing. It's not that big of a deal. I did a friggin ice bath this morning. I'm constantly trying to push my boundaries. And so that's the thing that I love about constantly trying to push your boundaries. The great thing about it is now that eight years later, back in the day I used to Google, what are the benefits of ice baths? There were like no benefits that they knew of. Now there's like study after study after study after study of showing that it helps with inflammation, it helps with, you know, thyroid, it helps with gut issues, it helps with all kinds of these different things, sore muscles and it's like, it's awesome. That has all those physical benefits. But I never wanted to do them for the physical benefits. I wanted to do them because I wanted to focus, find my edge and push a little bit past it. And so when you're noticing that you're pushing yourself past the point of what you're comfortable with, when you're getting outside of your comfort zone, when you're applying suffering, when you're seeking discomfort, then you start to notice yourself being really fearful. Fear is basically what usually stops us in our tracks. So if normally you feel fear and you stop, how do you decide to keep going? How can you get yourself to keep going? Hmm, let's think about that one for a second. Well, if you're fearing, what are you fearing? Really, what it comes down to is the animalistic side of us that is afraid of being hurt, like pain or death. It's afraid of pain or it's afraid of death. And so sometimes when we're like, okay, well, I'm about to create a presentation for my company, or I'm about to put up a video on YouTube, or I'm about to do anything that's outside of my comfort zone and we feel fear. The first question we need to ask ourself to kind of get our brain to click into being present and really thinking about this realistically. Oh, my gosh. I'm about to create this YouTube video. Oh, my gosh. Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear. Fear. Take a step back. Is this going to kill me? No, it's not going to kill me. That's immediately showing my brain. Dude, you're safe. It's not a big deal. This YouTube video that you're going to put on is not going to kill you. Is it going to kill me? Absolutely not. Could this help me grow? Yes. You know, I'm really uncomfortable putting myself out there. Could it help me grow? Yes. Okay, then, like Rob said, I'm really uncomfortable doing this. I should probably seek discomfort because it will help me grow. Okay, next question. Am I safe? Am I safe? All too often, I find that when we're stuck in fear, when we're stuck in not wanting to do something, when we're stuck in anxiety, when we're stuck in sadness, a lot of times we're fearing something. And one of the things that's just really important for us to do is just remind your conscious subconscious and also your nervous system that you're safe. And so you can sit there and I remember a true story. Let me just tell you a true story. A couple months ago, my wife and I went to Mexico. And we went to Mexico, and we went to this place that's a park, and it's called Senses. And it's this park that it's got all of these optical illusions and physical illusions and all of this stuff. And there's this one thing that I had seen online, and everyone's like, you gotta do this. It's so interesting. It's so cool. It's unlike anything I've ever done. And. And it's this dark room is what it's called, where it's a dark room. And that's all that I knew about it. And I was like, cool, let's go do it. So we go. And they're like, before you go in, you have to watch this video. And I'm watching this video and it says, if you are claustrophobic, you should absolutely not go through this. And I looked at Lord, and I was like, oh, fuck. And I felt, like, a rush of fear because I'm super claustrophobic. I don't know where it came from. I don't know why I am, but I saw this huge rush of fear. And then it said, you can only. There's seven different lanes. You have to walk by yourself. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, I can't walk with Lauren in through here. I've gotta walk by myself into a room where I can't see anything. It's completely dark. And it's actually like a. It's not just a room. Like, it's. You literally walk hundreds of yards. And the whole experience is it takes your sight out. And it uses sight, it takes sight out. It uses smell, it uses touch, it uses sound. And it makes you feel like you're in a desert, and it makes you feel like you're at a beach, and it makes you feel like you're, you know, and all of these different places. And I first walk in, I'm like, okay, I'll try it. I guess, like, I'll try it. And I walk in and I. It goes in and it does, like an S turn. And when it does the S turn, I can see nothing. I'm like, the. I'm talking, like, the blackest black I've ever, ever seen. There was nothing. And immediately my brain freaks out. You're going to die. You're going to die. You're going to die. You're going to die. You're going to die. And I'm like, okay, let me. What's the. What's the thing that I always do? What's the thing I always teach people? Got to breathe. Okay, I'm going to breathe into it. I'm going to breathe. Start getting into breathing. I'm literally standing there in the middle of this thing, this really extremely dark room. And, you know, the walls are all, like, itchy, and they feel like a desert, and there's sand on my feet and all this stuff. And I can feel, like, absolute terror in my body. And I started breathing, and I Said, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe. And so I'm like, let me take a couple more steps. I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe. And I kept taking a little bit more steps, a little bit more steps. And then I stopped saying I'm safe. And I noticed that the little fear part of me came up again. You're going to die, you're going to die, you're going to die. And I said, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe. And really, what it came down to, I was able to walk through this whole thing, and I got through it. And I saw Lauren at the other end after it, and she's like, I didn't think you were going to make it because that freaked me out. And I'm not claustrophobic. I was like, yeah, it took, like, every ounce of energy to say, I am terrified of this, but I have to practice what I preach, which is find your fear and go past it. And so what happened, though, is I kept telling myself, reminding my brain, reminding my subconscious, reminding my nervous system, I'm safe, I'm safe, man. Like, I'm not going to die inside of this, this amusement park because I'm walking through a dark room. So I kept doing it. I got through it. But really, it comes down to is reason why I say that is because your nervous system wants to know you're safe. So if you can repeat to yourself when you're getting outside of your comfort zone that you're safe, it makes it easier to go through it, right? So I'm going to give you an assignment. I want you to do something today that makes you uncomfortable. Like, completely uncomfortable. There's two things I want you to try out. Number one, I want you to lay down at a coffee shop or a store or something like that. One of my favor things is when I talk about this. I've talked about this before in the past. And I'll get videos and tagged in Instagram stories like people laying down in Walmart. There's one where a lady was laying down in the middle of Walmart and the lady who worked at Walmart was like, ma', am, are you okay? And she's like, oh, yeah, I'm good. I'm just laying down. And she's like, oh, okay. And then walks away. Ask. Either. Either lay down, you could do one of these, or both these. Ask. I'm sorry, excuse me. I'll get to that one a second. Lay down in the middle of the store. 30, 45 seconds. Just try it out. Or. And. Or ask for a 20% discount somewhere. Ask for a 20% discount at the coffee shop. Whatever it might be, right? It seems silly and it's going to strike some fear inside of you, but why? Right? Oh, my God. I'm going to get dirty from laying on the floor. Okay. Wash your clothes. Not really a big deal. You'll be fine, right? Why are you afraid of doing it? Get used to being uncomfortable. Get used to pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Why are you afraid of asking for a discount? Because it's not what people do. Why are you afraid of laying on the floor? Because it's outside of what society does. We're trying to push the boundaries. If you want to be different than everybody else, you have to start doing things differently than everybody else. That is how you grow outside of your comfort zone, by seeking discomfort and using applied suffering. 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 at robdial Junior. R O B D I A L J R. And I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission. Make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.