The Secret of Taking Action: How to Build Lasting Habits

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. Today I'm going to talk about how to fall in love with the process of taking the action that you need to in order to hit your goals. You're here, I'm assuming, listening to this podcast. You clicked on this, you clicked play, because you are in a place in your life where you want to get better, you want to improve, and you have some sort of goals that you want to hit. Now, I don't like being called a motivational speaker. And the reason why is because I'm not trying to motivate you in any sort of way. What I really want you to do is understand yourself, understand your body, understand your brain, and understand how you normally hold yourself back, how to get past it, and then how to actually fall in love with the process of taking action. Because if you're going to create the life that you want to, you're gonna need to figure out some sort of way to take action you want to accomplish. And I found that there's two ways that you can accomplish, and I've done both of them. And I'll tell you about it. The first way is you can struggle your way to success, which is most people. This is me for the first 30ish years of my life is I thought to myself, in order for me to succeed, I'm gonna have to put my head down, I'm gonna have to bash through some walls. I'm not really big into the stars and paying attention to where the planets are and all that stuff. I do know that I am an Aries. And when you look at Aries, they're, you know, the symbol is a ram, and they're known to put their heads down and just bash through walls. So that is kind way of operating. This is my typical operating system. And for the first 30ish years of my life, 30, probably two years of my life, it was, here's the goal I want. I'm going to put my head down, I'm going to struggle my way to success. I'm going to force myself to get there no matter what, which is fine. But when you struggle your way to success, eventually get to the point where you're like, I can't do this anymore. That's usually where burnout comes from. And I have gotten to quote, unquote, success by doing that. But then I've massively burnt out and just been tired of what I was doing. That's the first way that you can hit your goals the second way is that you can learn to fall in love with the process. Fall in love with the process of who you need to become and what you need to do in order to achieve whatever it is you're looking to achieve. And it really goes back to the phrase, the man who loves walking will go further than the man who's running for the goal. And so for me, the first part of my life was very much like, I want to make X amount of dollars this year. And that means that I need to do a this many sales calls, I need to knock on this many doors, I need to do this many cold calls. And whether I love it, whether I hate it, no matter what, I'm gonna force myself to do it. And that was me just running towards a goal. What I ended up finding out is that the man who loves walking will go further than the man who is running for the goal. I ended up going, you know what? I have these goals that I have in life. How do I get myself to actually love the process of taking action, to actually start to fall in love with it? And so today we're gonna talk about something that's called the dopamine reward system. And this is huge. There's actually an entire section in my book where I go really, really deep. So in my book, level up, the very last section of part three, which is towards the end, I talk about the dopamine reward system because I think it's so important for people to understand how they can actually, no bs, rewire their brain to fall in love with the action that they need to take. So when you look at the dopamine reward system, what is dopamine? People think that dopamine is a feel good chemical in the brain, and it kind of is. But dopamine is really more than anything else, the chemical of motivation. It's the chemical that makes you motivated when you are not motivated to do something. That is actually called in neurobiology a low dopamine state. So when you're sitting on the couch, you're like, man, I don't want to do anything. You're actually in what neurobiologists call a low dopamine state. Now when you're in a very excited hell, yeah, this is amazing. I can't wait to go for this thing that's called a high dopamine state and dopamine. The thing about it is it is a very external chemical. It's not really internally based. A lot of times people put dopamine and serotonin in the same Sentence. But serotonin is a chemical of here, of now. It's an internal chemical. It's gratitude. It's being grateful for what you have. Dopamine is the chemical of more. And if you look at, like, the most addicting drugs that somebody can do, they're always high dopamine chemicals. And so I'm not saying that you need to do drugs. That's not what I'm saying at all. But if you look at cocaine, for instance, cocaine is a high dopamine chemical. And so you start to look at and you see, well, someone who doesn't have cocaine but really wants cocaine, they're in a really high dopamine state. They're like, I need to get it, I need to get. I need to get it. And they get very motivated towards getting that chemical. But dopamine itself is the chemical of more. And the chemical is released whenever you want it to be released. That's the craziest part about it, is dopamine in the chemical can be released whenever you want it to be, which is awesome. You can celebrate yourself along the way, along the process of trying to build the life that you want. When you hit different milestones, when you take different actions, and your brain will release a little bit of dopamine. And what's cool about that is that when your brain releases a little bit of dopamine, guess what it wants more of? It wants more dopamine. And so it wants to keep going, it wants to keep pushing. It wants to keep going, it wants to keep pushing. And when you celebrate yourself, even if it's just a small little mini celebration, the cool thing about that is not only do you want more, but more than anything else, you're going to be driven to actually take the action that you need to in your life. And so what we're really going to dive into is how to use this chemical to take action when you need to and to create the life that you want. And the best part about dopamine and releasing the dopamine is that this right here is very subjective, which means that you can decide when you want to feel good, when you want to release dopamine, and when you want to start motivating yourself to take more action. One of the things that I found of the most, most common trait among the highest achievers, like the greatest achievers in our lifetime. If you look at, for instance, Michael Jordan, if you look at Kobe Bryant, if you look at the greatest CEOs, some might say that their number one key to success is is hard work. It's dedication. It's obsession. And I would say that they are definitely hard workers. They are definitely obsessed. They are definitely dedicated. But most of them fell in love with the process of taking the action that they need to. They fell in love with what it is that they're doing. This is why you could see someone become worth $100 million. And people are always like, man, they've got all the money in the world. Why don't they stop? Like, they could just sit back and enjoy their life. It's because doing what got them to that end result is actually what they love. They love the feeling of waking up and building themself to be the greatest athlete alive. Or they love the feeling of waking up and building the business that changes the world or making their perfecting the process of their sales system like, they actually truly enjoy it. Most people, when they think about work and putting in hard work, it's immediate resistance of like, I don't want to do that. That doesn't sound fun. These people, though, fell in love with the process. And so I'm sure they probably didn't do it on purpose, but most of them probably set up a dopamine reward system that they attach to the process. And so when you look at a dopamine reward system, what exactly is that? It is a way for your brain to release some dopamine after you accomplish something that's part of your process. Now, let me give you some examples, okay? When I was first in my sales company, When I was 19, 20 years old, I didn't know it, and I'm not even sure if my manager knew it, but he set up a dopamine reward system process for me. And so we would sit down and we would make a lot of cold calls. And if you've ever done cold calls before, it's one of the worst things to do. It sucks to sit down and make cold calls. And so we would have these things called phone jams, and we would make 100 phone calls in, like, three or four hours. We'd sit down at a table with a phone, a bunch of numbers, and we would just call through all of them. And that is not fun. It's not motivating. And so the thing that my manager actually had me do was he's like, hey, man, do you like candy? And I was like, yes. I'm basically like a crackhead when it comes to sugar. And that's why I keep it out of my house. He said, what's your favorite candy? I said, Skittles. And he said, okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go, and before you come in to make your phone calls, I want you to get a bag of Skittles. And what I want you to do is I want you to allow yourself to have three Skittles after every 10 calls. And so I would go, okay. And so I'd put the Skittles out on the table in front of me, and I would have three of them right there. And I'd say, okay, when I get my first 10 phone calls done, I get three Skittles. So I'd make my phone calls because I was like, crackhead, wanting to get those Skittles, right? And so I'd make those 10 phone calls, and then I get three Skittles. And then I would make another 10 phone calls, and I would get three Skittles. And I would make another 10 phone callsS, and I would get three SkITTles. And by the time I finished and. And I was done with my 100 calls, I could finish the rest of the bag. And it wasn't the finishing of the 100 phone calls that I could have them. It was all along the way, the process of actually making the phone calls. And so this is what's really important about this is where most people mess up and I did this for years, is we thought. We think to ourself. I will not be happy until I achieve XYZ. I will not be happy until I make $100,000 this year. Yeah, you can do that, but you're talking about not releasing dopamine until you achieve the goal. And so even if I were to sit there and say, okay, I've got Skittles right here, and I could have them, but I can only have my bag of Skittles after I finish the 100 phone calls, well, what happens is I'm taking my goals, and I'm only releasing dopamine in my brain and getting myself excited and more excited to want more after I finish the 100 phone calls, which could be four hours from now, or you could. If you remember ET for those of you guys that are older and remember E.T. when they were trying to get E.T. out and they. They put like, a Reese's Pieces and then another one, like three feet later and another three feet later, and it was like the. It was like the breadcrumbs that they were basically trying to get him to follow, but he's following Reese's Pieces, and he would come out and he would eat one of them. And then he'd go a little bit further and he eat another one. He'd go a little bit further and eat another one. That's what you're basically trying to do for yourself. You're trying to pull yourself to where you want to go and. And giving yourself a little bit of the reward along the way, a little bit of the reward along the way, a little bit of the reward along the way until you have completed the task that you want to. And so that's one way that you could use it. Another way you could use it as well is visual progress bars and trackers. And so you could create a progress bar or a tracker for tasks or habits that you're trying to establish. And what happens is this is actually something that Jerry Seinfeld's really famous for doing is years ago, it was like, in the 1990s, when he was just starting to become a really big comic. Another comic who's brand new and up to him, and he's like, hey, man, I'm trying to get to your level. I'm trying to become better. I'm a new comic. What's the best tip that you can give me? And he said, what I do is I write jokes every single day, no matter what. And sometimes they're good jokes. Majority of time they're terrible jokes. But I'm trying to get myself into the habit of writing all day, every day, as many times I can. And so what he would do is he actually set this exact same thing up, a visual progress, to track what he was doing. And so it became known as the Seinfeld calendar. And so what he did was he had a month that was printed out, and he put it up on his wall. So he had, like, those old school calendars up on his wall. And when he would accomplish his task of writing for, say, 20 minutes for the day, and let's say he just did 20 minutes every single day, if that's what it was, then what he would do is he would walk up to that calendar and. And he would put a big red X over that calendar. That one day that he got done, that alone made him feel good. That is a dopamine reward system for checking off the day and getting that thing accomplished. And then the next day, he'd sit down, he'd do 20 minutes, and he would put another red X. Next day, he'd sit down 20 minutes, put another red X. And what happens is he started to make a chain of red X's. And once you start to see that Chain, Guess what you don't wanna do. You don't wanna break the chain. You wanna continue the chain. You wanna keep it going. And so you could use visual things like this to help yourself do it. Another thing that you could do as well is to set up social accountability and praise. And so let's say that you want to. Let's say that you wanna go to the gym every day for the next 30 days. You're gonna call up your best friend and you're gonna say, hey, listen, I'm really trying to get in this habit of just going to the gym. I. No matter what, I would like for you to hold me accountable to it. Is that cool? They're like, yeah, of course. Okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to let you know, every single time I get done at the gym, I'm either going to call you or I'm going to text you just to make sure that I. That I get my, my day done and I get my workout done for the day. I don't need you to do anything else except for say, great job or I'm proud of you or hell yes, or whatever it might be. I just need some mini form of celebration. Then what happens? You go to the gym the next day, you send them a text message. Maybe you at the gym, all sweaty, and I just got my workout done. And they send you a text message back and they're like, I'm so proud of you. Amazing. Find that one friend that's like the friend that's just. We all have those friends where it's just like every time you're around them, you feel good because they're like, oh, my God, I love your shirt. Oh, my God, you look amazing today. Go for that friend. Find the very positive affirmation friend that you have. And what's good about it is then you send the picture to them and they send you the thing back. And guess what? They say, hey, great job. I'm so proud of you. And you're like, shit, I feel good about myself. Guess what that does a little bit of dopamine. You could also do this exact same thing at the gym for yourself. So maybe you go to the gym and instead of celebrating yourself, and this is the thing, you don't want to celebrate yourself when you lose £20. You want to celebrate yourself for showing up at the gym, because that makes you more likely to want to show up at the gym tomorrow. But what if you were to make it even smaller increments? What if not only do you celebrate yourself when you walk into the gym of like, hell yeah, you did it today. I'm so proud of you. What if you also did? After every single set, you look yourself in the eye at the gym, in the mirror, because obviously all gyms are surrounded by mirrors. You look yourself in the eye and in your head you say, you're doing fucking amazing. I'm so proud of you. You're doing amazing at this. After every single set, you start to feel good. And guess what? You want, you want to do more. You want to do more. You want to do more. Because all too often we set up what's called results based goals instead of action based goals, which I'll talk about in just a minute, where we say, oh, well, I'm only going to be happy when I accomplish xyz. That's not the way to get successful. The way to do it is to say, I'm going to celebrate myself every single time I do what I'm supposed to do. And if you go back and you look at, I mentioned a minute ago, Kobe Bryant, Kobe Bryant's a perfect example. He was known for being like hardcore obsessed with playing basketball. And he would wake up and be at the gym at almost every single morning at 4am and what he did was he would celebrate himself. He was proud of himself knowing that he was at the gym when all of his competition was sleeping. And so he would be excited about himself being there when everyone else was sleeping. And so throughout the entire two or three hour workout, he's thinking to himself, this is amazing. I'm going to beat everybody. I'm going to be the best basketball player that ever existed. And so what happened was he set up a dopamine reward system about showing up at 4 o' clock in the morning. And guess what? He did. Showed up the next day at 4 o' clock in the morning and the next day. And research shows that celebrating yourself will make you more motivated to do it again. Research also shows that having a small piece of chocolate, everybody, small piece of chocolate, not an entire Snickers bar, but a small piece of chocolate after a workout made somebody more likely to show up and do it again the next day. So start to think about this. How can you start to celebrate yourself more often? Because all too often we're our own worst critic. And that's going to actually demotivate you from taking the action that you need to. How can you celebrate yourself for taking action? How can you celebrate yourself after every single set? It doesn't have to be candy. It can be candy, but it can just be literally a mini celebration inside of your head. And the best part about it, like I said earlier, is that a dopamine reward system is fully subjective, which means that you can decide, you know, after I finish recording an episode, I change my shirt, and then I do a mini celebration. And it's like I try to fill myself up with the excitement and the accomplishment of creating an amazing episode. And instead of going, oh, man, well, you should have said this, but you said. You said this, which is what most of us do, right? Oh, damn, that was a good episode. But you did. You should have said this. And you. Oh, shit, you forgot this one part. But it's like I try to fill myself up with. That was amazing. Great job. I'm so proud of you. So many people, this is going to change their life. And it makes me want to come back and do the next one. And notice what I did was I attached it to the process of finishing a podcast episode. Not the end result of getting 5 million downloads. It's the process of just getting it done, which is what matters. This is why you hear about Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan winning championships and then waking up the next day and going to work out. When you listen to. I actually heard an interview with the guy who was Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant's trainer, Tim Grover, and he said the hardest thing about Kobe Bryant was trying to get him to stop. Like, he was that obsessed, but because he just loved the process of building himself into the best basketball player he could become. It wasn't about winning championships. It was about being the best that they could be living up to their full potential. And what happened was winning the championship was just a byproduct of them falling in love with the process. It was the byproduct of them putting in the work and falling in love with becoming the best they could possibly be. And this is why people who are wildly successful, like I said earlier, just don't stop. Because it was never about the money. Most people attach. They think of their goals as the money to be made. Oh, I want to accomplish this. I'll be happy when I make this amount of money. I'll be happy when I get this house. I'll be happy when I can buy myself this car. Money should just be a byproduct of your actions, not the actual goal that you're searching for. And so what you want to learn to do is you want to learn to attach reward systems to the effort, not the end result so attach it to the effort, not the end result. So that would be the difference between an action based goal versus a results based goal. The action based goal is getting it done. The results based goal is like, I'll be happy when I make 100 grand. So you want to attach it to getting the things done that need to be done. And then the byproduct will be hitting the goals that you would want to hit. So you would attach, for instance, a reward system to the action based goal of making the calls, not making the sale. You would attach a reward system to the action based goal of finishing a workout, not losing 50 pounds. You would attach a reward system to the action based goal of reading five pages every single morning, not finishing the book. You would attach a reward system to the action based goal of eating a healthy meal, not the way that you look in the mirror. You would attach a reward system to the action based goal of practicing for an hour at your sport, not winning the championship. You would attach a reward system to the action based goal of learning one difficult bar of music, not playing the entire piece. And that's what you want to focus on, is focus on the action based goals, not the results based goals. And so really, what it comes down to as you're listening to this podcast episode is you need to ask yourself, what do I want? What do I want to accomplish? And you find out that destination that you're searching for. And then from that, you ask yourself, what actions do I need to take? What are the daily actions I need to take? What does the process look like that I need to take in order to achieve that goal? And then how can you set up a dopamine reward system to attach to that process? So let's say you want to make $100,000 a year, because I've said that a couple times, you want to make $100,000 this year. Okay, cool. What actions do I need to take in order to get there? Well, I need to make 75 phone calls every single day. Well, then you don't reward yourself when you make $100,000. You reward yourself every seven phone calls that you make. And then what you do is you go, seven phone calls. Seven. Seven. Eventually gets to 75 throughout the day. And then you reward yourself again. And you really start to ask yourself, how can I set up a dopamine reward system to attach to the process? Not the end result to the action based goals, not the results based goals. Because if you just focus on the action and celebrate yourself for it, you're more likely to show up, which then makes you more likely to achieve whatever it is that you want in the future. Success is a byproduct of the action based goals. So how can you set up your dopamine reward system and fall in love with the process? 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 in it. Robdial Jr R O B D I A L J R Once again, this is a part that is actually in my book. My new book that's coming out October 3rd called Level up how to get focused, Stop procrastinating and upgrade your life. If you want to pre order it, you can go to robdial.com book right now and when you pre order it, you'll actually get it delivered to your house the day that it comes out. And you'll also get entered into $25,000 in cash and prizes that we're going to be giving out. That is just for pre orders. And also you will get a free class on how to actually stop procrastinating. So once again, if you want to go ahead and preorder it, get that free class and get entered into a pool of over $25,000 in cash and prizes, go to robdial.combook and with that I'm going to leave the same way I 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.