How To Step Into Your Power
3 Nov 2023 · 22 min
Rob Dial explains how fear in the amygdala drives most decisions, keeping you stuck in a comfort zone like a cave. He argues you build personal power by recognizing gut feelings as signals and deliberately pushing the edge of what feels safe, shifting from fear-based choices to empowered ones.
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We are now going from three times a week to four brand new episodes every single week so you can listen to the Mindset Mentor new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. So make sure you check in with us on those days and get a little jumpstart on your life and your mindset through this episode and through this podcast. So today what we're going to be talking about is your personal power and how to step into your own personal power. We're going to talk about how to get really good at decision making and get better at making decisions that come from a place of power. Personal power that come from a place of love and come from a place of your true, authentic self. Because almost every single decision that you make, and even the majority of the small decisions that you make come from either one of two places, they either come from A place of fear, or they come from a place of power. And when I say power, I mean personal power. I mean stepping into who you want to be, how you want to be, how you want your life to be. The problem is that most of us, when we are unaware and not intentionally living our lives, most of our decisions come from a place of fear. Most of our decisions come from a place of wanting to back away. Most of our decisions come from a place of I need to protect myself. And we actually try to run from our fears and make those decisions. And if we want to live an okay mediocre life, I guess that's fine. But if you listen to this podcast, you're not the person who wants just an okay life. You listen to this podcast because you want something better. And the problem is that if we come from fear, we're not going to create the life that we could. And I want you to think about this. If you look back on your entire life, you know, let's say you're 40 years old and you look back on your entire life, I want you to ask yourself a question. I want you to be fully transparent with yourself. Are most of your decisions made from a place of personal power, or are they made from a place of fear? What's the answer? Ask yourself the question. For a long time in my life, majority of my life, they were made from a place of fear. Until I realized decisions made from fear won't give me the life that I want. Decisions made from fear keep me in my comfort zone, and decisions made from fear keep me in the exact same place that I'm currently in. If I make all of my decisions from a place of fear, and I fast forward my life 10 years into the future, and I'm not 37 anymore, but I'm 47, I'm. My life is going to probably look almost identical to how it does today. And if you're listening to this podcast, you don't want an identical life. You want something different. You want something better. You want something more fun. You want to impact the world more in some sort of way. Decisions made from fear kept me in my comfort zone. And you know that you're going to have to get out of your comfort zone to create the life that you want. So let's take a step back then. If most of our decisions in our life, if we are unaware, come from a place of fear, why in the hell do we do that? If we want a better life, why do we take decisions and make decisions from a place of fear? Your Brain will automatically go to fear. This is something important to know. Your brain, and you've heard me say this so many times in the podcast, is designed to keep you alive. Sure, it's designed to have fun and seek out new experiences and to do things that you've never done before and make jokes and laugh and have joy. Sure, it can do all of those things, but the most important thing for your brain is to keep you alive. And there's a place in your brain that's called the amygdala. And the amygdala is where all of your fears come from. The fear of other people's opinions, the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of success, the fear of not being good enough, the fear of not being lovable, the fear of running out of money, the fear of not being able to grow a business. Your brain creates all of these fears. Why does it do that? It does it to keep you safe, because it knows. And I like to think about everything. I always go, well, if this is the case, if this is built into our brain and, you know, our species has been around, like the species of. Of us as humans has been around for about 2 million years, why would our brain do this? So let's go back to being cavemen. Let's say me and you are cavemen, right? Cavemen and cave women. And we're sitting around and we're out in the open plains, okay? In the open plains, you've got to look all around you to try to stay alive and to stay safe, because you never know when a tiger could come from behind you. But where's one really safe place for you to be? A cave. Why? Because a cave, you're fully surrounded by rock, except for just the entrance and the exit. Just that one area that is a safe place. So that's why we ended up being in caves a lot of times. Our species was in caves a lot of times, because that's where it was safe. Your comfort zone is your mental version of a cave. Nowadays, do we have to worry about it being. Being attacked by lions? Not really. You know, not. Not in the US Where I live, there's some people I know that live over in Africa and some people that I've. That I've seen, you know, even some of my team members that. That listen to the podcast they live over in. I see some pictures of them on safaris and all the animals that they see and lions and all that cool stuff. But the majority of us don't walk outside of the front door and immediately have the fear of oh my God, am I going to be attacked by something? We're pretty safe. We've built society to be a pretty safe place. The cities that we live in are pretty safe places. But does that part of our brain still exist? Absolutely. And when there's not primal fears and the fear of death and the fear of physical harm, our brain will create fears to try to keep us safe. That's what the amygdala does. It continues to create fears. But this is why it's so important for you to be self aware, for you to consciously always be thinking about what you're thinking about. Teachers are deep into new units this time of year. IXL lets kids practice the exact skills they're learning in class, helping lessons stick and boosting confidence. Heading toward the spring IXL is an award winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand what they're learning, whether they're building math confidence, strengthening reading and writing skills, or reviewing science concepts. 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What's the reasons why I feel unsafe? And then start to think about this. How many great decisions have you made in your life? Like I'm talking about amazing decisions, great decisions that you're so proud of that come from a place of fear. When you look back in your past, how many great decisions do you go, you know what? I'm so glad I made that decision. It came from fear. And I don't mean like the fear of death. I don't mean the fear of like not driving fast or any of that type of stuff. I mean the fear that makes you feel like, I need to hide. I need to stay in my comfort zone. I need to not be seen by others so that I don't get their judgment, I don't get their opinions. How many great decisions have you made that have come from fear? Probably very few, right? And I mean decisions that where you had the opportunity to change your life. But you know what? You decided to play small. Instead you decided to play small. Or maybe you took the safe route to stay in your comfort zone. Maybe you gave up on a really big goal. Maybe an example would be, you know, you wanted to start a business. I'm going to finally start a business. I don't want to work for anybody anymore. I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to be in charge of my time. I want to be in charge of how much money I make, be able to travel with my kids and not only get two weeks of time off. And you decide, I'm going to start this business. And you didn't start the business because simply you were afraid of failing. How many people out there listening are afraid of failing? And you didn't start that business five years ago? Was that a good and logical decision based from a place of power, or is that a decision that was made from a place of fear? If you're afraid of failing and that's why you didn't start the business, or that's why you gave up on the business, I would say that didn't come from a place of personal power. That decision came from a place of fear. Let's say that you. You want to invest into your personal development. You're like, you know what? I've never invested into myself. I want to invest into myself. And for me, I have found that investing into myself is 100% the best ROI of anything that I've ever done. But let's say that you're like, you know what? I want to invest myself. I want to. I want to learn about real estate investing or something like that. And you're like, I want to do it. And then you realize it's going to cost you, I don't know, a few thousand dollars to take somebody's course on real estate investing. And you're like, yeah, no, I don't know. I'm kind of afraid. What if I'm not good at real estate investing? I've never invested this money into myself. And you decide not to because you're coming from a place of fear and not a place of personal power. Where would you be if you would have started that business five years ago, if you would have followed through, if you would have invested into your real estate investing business and your knowledge five years ago? Where could you be today if you wouldn't have given up on yourself in the past? How many decisions have you made just coming from a place of, you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna play it safe and there's less risk, so I'll just take the, the less risk route. You have to realize that humans, we tend to go. We're like water. We go the path of least resistance. I mean we're about 60% water. So does it make sense? Water will always go to the path of least resistance. So we're usually, if we're not paying attention, we're not being conscious, we're usually going to go to the place of, of the least amount of risk, the easiest way for us to flow. And it's important to realize when you think about risk, there's a. One of my favorite quotes about risk is in life, if you don't risk anything, you risk everything. Think about that for a second. If you don't risk anything, you risk everything. How many people out there had, you know, how many world changing moments came from a place of fear? Probably zero. How many people do you look up to, mentors or people that you see that you, you look at them and you're like, man, they've built such an amazing life, they built such an amazing business. They're, they're in the place that I want to be and you look up to them in some sort of way. How many of them got there because the majority of their decisions were made from a place of fear? Probably none. How many great inventions or great companies were built from a place of fear? Probably zero. So what we should be focused on is making more decisions from a place of power. And what do I mean by a place of power? Means I'm going to stop being afraid, I'm going to stop coiling away from the world, I'm going to stop trying to be in my comfort zone and I'm going to actively push myself into who I could be and in fact, who you should be, who you were put on this earth to be. Is there risk in doing that? Absolutely. There's so much risk in doing it. But once again, if you don't risk anything, you risk everything. But what could your life be if you decided to stop living in so many states of fear and decided, you know what, I'm gonna get out of my comfort zone, I'm gonna push myself a little bit more. And it goes back to if you think of the brain, the brain, I mean, it's incredible. It's one of the most incredible things that we have. But if we don't pay attention to it and we don't pay attention to our thoughts, it's, you know, gonna probably run us into the ground and not the place that we wanna be in life. And so we always have our brain and we have the thoughts that come through our brain. And we also always have a gut feeling. And I want you to think about this is There's a lot of times where we have a gut feeling of, you know what? I should do this thing, I should ask that person out, I should start this business. I should decide to have children, whatever it is they might be. You have a gut feeling and then what happens? Your brain clicks in about 10 seconds later, oh no. But you can't do that because you're not good enough, you're not smart enough. What if you run out of money? What if this happens? What if this happens? What if this happens? We get this gut feeling. It's like there's two sides of us that are at battle at all points in time. There's this gut feeling that's, and I always call your gut feeling your emotional compass. It's trying to pull you into the direction of what it is you're supposed to do. And then your brain clicks and it says, no, no, no, no, no, no. Think about all the risks. Think about all the things that could happen. Think about the people that are going to judge you. Think about the failure. Think about the rejection. Think about what if you do have success and then you don't know what to do with ultra rich and famous and successful and everyone that you know decides to hate you because of your success. So what do we do? We have this gut feeling and we immediately push that gut feeling down because our brain wants to keep us safe. You need to become very self aware of when you're starting to coil back and start making fearful decisions. You will look back and have massive regret in your life. If you make your decisions out of fear and noticing the fear is a good thing, listening to the fear is the bad thing. And so there's a couple things we need to do. The first thing we need to do is become very self aware when you start to feel fear inside of your body. You're feeling your chest tighten up, you're feeling your, your shortness of breath, you're feeling your, your shoulders get a little bit tighter, maybe your brow get a little bit tighter. Become self aware. Hold on, what am I, what am I feeling right now? Oh man, I'm feeling a whole lot of stress. I'm feeling a whole lot of fear and anxiety. Why am I feeling that? Well, I'm feeling that because I'm about to do something I've never done before. I'm about to do something I've never done before. That's outside of my comfort zone. So the first thing is to become very self aware. The second thing to do is when you become self aware and it's showing you the edge of your comfort zone, you lean in. The best part about fear is that fear is the physical manifestation in your body telling you when you're getting to the edge of your comfort zone. So you know to create the life that you want, you're gonna have to get out of your comfort zone, right? You do. So when you feel fear, what do we do? Most of the time, we coil away. We back off. Oh, my gosh. Danger. Danger. Danger. Danger. Danger. So when we start feeling fear, if we know that's a physical manifestation of our comfort zone in our body, instead of backing away, what we should do is say, okay, I'm feeling fear. I'm feeling fear because I'm on the edge of my comfort zone. And I consciously know that if I wanna create the life that I want to, I'm gonna have to get out of my comfort zone. So what am I going to do? I'm going to lean in just a little bit. You don't have to blow past your comfort zone and do something that's completely crazy for you. But what if when you felt that fear, you just lean in a little bit more? You just push past that comfort zone just a tiny bit. Just test the edge of your comfort zone. Because what happens is the more that you test the edge of your comfort zone, the more the edge of your comfort zone starts to expand and you start to have more room and you start to evolve into a person who is not as afraid of the things that you're afraid of right now. If you fast forward five years from today and you continue to make decisions out of fear, you're not going to like where you are, and it's probably going to look very similar to where you are right now. And it could actually be behind where you are right now. One of my very first mentors used to always say, you're either green and growing or you're brown and dying. And so if you're in the same place that you are right now, five years from today, you're actually kind of going backwards because you're older but in the same position. We're supposed to be growing, we're supposed to be evolving. The thing that I know about nature is nature is always growing and evolving. We are part of nature. We should always be growing and evolving. So if you continue to make decisions out of fear for the next five years, you're not going to like where you are in five years. But if you continue to decide to, you know what? I'm going to push a little bit past my comfort zone. And you make your decisions out of power. Watch out. You'll create some magic. You're gonna love where you are. Your life is gonna be different and you're gonna be proud of yourself for taking action based out of personal power versus taking action out of fear, like a lot of us have done in the past. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram Stories and tag me obdialjr. R O B D I A L J R. And you know, if you have any ideas for episodes that I could do in the future, send me a message. I looked through all of my messages. I can't get back to everybody, but I've had some really great ideas of episodes that people want me to do in the future. And so if you have some ideas, maybe one day in the future you'll hear me actually do an episode specifically about what you asked me in my DM. So once again, it's Robdale Jr R O B D I A L J R and with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way. 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. Instagram Teen accounts have automatic protections for what teens see and who can contact them. Plus time management tools and Instagram will continue adding built in safety features to help create age appropriate experiences. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online@instagram.com teenaccounts. When the flu is keeping you up at night, don't try to tough it out. Knock out your flu symptoms with Nyquil Intense Flu. You got this. It provides powerful relief of your flu symptoms so you can sleep well through the night. 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