Try This Japanese Secret | The Mindset Mentor Podcast

Welcome to today's episode of 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. This episode. Today, we're going to be talking about some ancient Japanese technique to help you improve yourself, push yourself, and grow yourself. Now, what we're going to be talking about is a practice that you could do once a year if it's really, really big, you do once a quarter. But I recommend just doing something like this once a month, just once every 30 days, and see what happens in your life. It will drastically, drastically improve your life. And what it's called is the misogi Challenge. And musogi is actually two words in Japanese, and hopefully I don't mess this up. If anyone speaks Japanese, I probably will. It's mizu, which stands for water, and sogi, which stands for to purify or purification. And now, the misogi is usually a process that involves cold water for purification. But this entire episode will not be just about cold water. But if you've been listening to the podcast long enough, you know that I love the benefits of having really cold water and using that to push yourself past not just your physical capacity, but more than anything else, your mental capacity. And this will be able to. This episode will be geared towards how to use your willpower to do something that's extremely hard and how to do one thing, just one thing that will massively grow you as a person. Like, just think about this for a second. All too often, we think the process of change is gradual, like, oh, I'm slowly going to make my. Oh, I'm improving myself every single day. And that can happen, sure. But there's also a chance that something could happen that just drastically changes you in just one go. And the idea behind this is to do something that is so hard that all of the rest of the things in your life that seem, quote, unquote, hard don't seem like such a big deal. And the more that we can push ourselves outside of our comfort zone, the more that we grow our willpower, the more that we get comfortable finding our edge and pushing past it and finding our edge and pushing past it, the less we focus on all of the little shit that really doesn't matter. You know, the people who think of the world is so bad and they're complaining the most in the world, the people that are. And this is a general statement, I understand this, but the people who are complaining the most right now are the people who are not wanting to do the hard things. They want things done for them. They want, instead of actually going out and changing the world and changing themself, they'd rather just sit behind their keyboard or move their thumbs around and their iPhone a little bit and complain about how the world is not what they want it to be, versus actually getting their ass up and doing something about it. Now, if you listen to this podcast, you know that you need to change. You know that you need to change. So you're not probably one of those people that just wants to sit behind a keyboard and just blame everybody else and blame the government and blame your parents and blame all those people. You know that in order to make massive change in the world and in order to make massive change in your life, that you are the one that needs to make massive change. And so the idea of misogi is, instead of taking a month or this year or this quarter to gradually change yourself, how can you just have one big, massive event that changes you and the original misogy the way that it worked, Just to kind of give you an idea before I kind of give you what tweaks have been made by other people to use, this idea is the original masogi. It could be a few days long, fast for a few days, don't eat any food, be completely away from your phone, go out into nature. You could do some meditation or prayer, whatever it is. And then the masogi was you would go to cold water. You go to a river, or you would go to a waterfall where the water is way colder than what you are comfortable with and submerging yourself and staying in there as long as you can without injuring yourself. So this is a. You know, is it a physical thing? Yeah. But even more than physical, this can be a mental, a physical, and a spiritual practice for your purification. Because the only problems that exist in the world are the problems that you're. Let me say this again. The only problems that exist in your life are the problems that you think are there, the problems that you're creating. We create all of our problems. And so if we can start to become aware of that, and we can have this big purification process once a month, once a year, once a quarter. I recommend once a month. How can we use this idea of having something massively change us in one go? And it can be cold water, we can talk about that, and we will talk about that. But I'm also going to give you some other examples of things that you could do that could be extremely challenging and be a mental physical and spiritual purification process for you. So you know, when you look at cold water, there's so many benefits to cold water. I always talk about the inner bitch. The inner bitch is that voice that's in your head that says, don't wake up, don't work out, eat that cookie instead of eating something healthy. And the thing that's holding you back more than anything else in this world is that inner bitch. It's not anyone else in the world. It's not anything else in the world. It is that voice that is inside your head. And that voice is the thing that's always pushing up against you when you're trying to use your willpower. And when you jump into cold water, like very cold water, 35, 45, 40 degree water, it's going to test your willpower and willpower. The beautiful thing about it is it is something that can grow. You're not just born with willpower, not built with willpower. But how can we bring this idea of doing, you know, a two or three day fast with prayer and with meditation and with really cold water, and bring this mental, physical and spiritual practice into our lives? Because some of you guys don't have three days to fast and to just drink water and to go on this journey. But we could do it in one day. We could do it over the course of hours, half of a day, an entire day, whatever it is. How can we develop a cadence of misogi? And we can use water and we can use other hard things, but the idea is to do something once again. Last time, I'll say it so hard that it changes you in one day. How can we do something that is so hard for us that it changes us in one day? Not the gradual process of, oh, I'm bettering myself, I'm trying to make myself, I'm slowly getting rid of all of my problems. No, what if it was just, boom, one moment, we did something and it changed us. Because there's been many things that have happened in your life, good and bad, that have been one thing that happened and that one thing completely changed your life. So why can't we create the one thing that completely changes who you are? And so what do you need to do to feel like a change person after it? And once again, I'll give you some examples. You can try these. You could come up with your own ideas. And I hope you do come up with your own ideas. I'm going to give you a couple of examples. But I will say this before I give you the examples, just A little caveat. I don't recommend any of these to you because I don't know you. I don't know your skill set, I don't know your mindset, I don't know your body. But you can take all of them and start to think of what your own could be. So I'll give you a couple of examples. One of them could be, like, a really intense hike. And I don't mean, like, you go to Sedona and find the most beautiful, easy one that you could do, and you take some selfies and you post them on Instagram, and you bring your nice little water bottle, and you're like, ooh, it's kind of hot. Let me put on some. Put on some sunblock. And it's like a little hike. Because you could do a little hike in Sedona. I've been there many times. But you can also do some really, really challenging hikes, like trying to get to the top of, like, Thunder Mountain, which is the huge mountain that's in the middle of Sedona. That is something that takes hours, and it will test your willpower, and you will want to give up over and over and over again. That's the point. You want to give up, you don't want to do it, you want to give up, you don't want to do it, you want to give up, you don't want to do it. You're going to give yourself all of the excuses, but you fight through it, and you try to find another version of yourself on the other side. It is something, though, that isn't just like, oh, this is a little bit of a challenge. It's something that is almost beyond your capacity. Now, when I say, this is the reason why I gave a caveat. I don't know your hiking abilities. I don't know your climbing abilities. I don't want you to put yourself into danger and then be like, oh, I broke my leg, because the podcaster said that I needed to go on a hike in Sedona. I'm not saying that, but what I'm saying is you know your capacity, you know your abilities, you know your. What your heart can do and what you can't do. And, you know, there's some people that are listening that are super fit. You've been on crazy, long, intense hikes. Well, then you could do something different. Maybe. What you could do, and I've heard people doing this before, is going to the Grand Canyon and hiking all the way down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and then Hiking all the way back up in one day. I've heard of people that decided to use musogi and clown Mount Everest. Do I recommend that? You can if you want to. I watched a documentary on Mount Everest two nights ago and they were talking about how there's hundreds of bodies that are still up there because they can't remove them. So there is that aspect of it where I'm not going to be like, hey, everybody here listening needs to go and hike Mount Everest. What I'm saying is find your capacity and push past it. So maybe a really long intense hike, a day long hike, maybe a couple day long hike that is just really intense for you. Where you want to give up but you don't give up on yourself is what you need. That's a pretty good example of some things you could do. What's another really, really good example? Sweat lodge is a really good example. Once again, I don't recommend any of these, but you have to know yourself. A sweat lodge is really great example. It's not like hopping into a sauna. A sweat lodge is usually with somebody who is a shaman or someone who is a facilitator. They will take you through this hours long journey of purifying and sweat and water, and purifying and sweat and water, meditation and prayer and all of these things to find what your capacity is, push past it. Because for me when I go into the auna, it's about 20 minutes but hours long. Nope, never done that before. I've never gone for 20 minutes and then taken five minutes off and 20 minutes and five minutes off, 20 minutes and five minutes off, five or six times in a row. But that would be a pretty good example of like finding your capacity, what you can and can't do. Maybe it has to do with doing some psychedelics. I don't recommend psychedelics to anybody. I have done them many times in. And this is one of the reasons why I think psychedelics actually change people so much is because it is a version of masogi. It is a extremely, extremely intense thing that can happen over six hours and you can leave that a changed person. And so there's examples of psychedelic journeys that you could go on and they could be, you know, breath work that you could do breath work over a couple hours. So there's breath work and there's wachuma and there's, you know, MDMA, there's mushrooms, there's ayahuasca, there's ibogaine which is a 12 hour up to 24 hour journey. That you can go on. There's all of these different things where you can do it. And it is an extremely intense event where you're gonna find the other side of you. And all of your demons that are inside are going to come up. All of your demons that are holding you back, that are ruining your relationships, that are keeping you from being the best version of yourself, all of those things. The point of this is to come into in contact with the quote unquote demons. I don't mean like physical, spiritual demons that are trying to take over your body. I mean the demons inside of you. The devil on your shoulder and the angel on one shoulder. All the devils that are on your shoulder that are telling you to sleep in, all of them that are saying, no, don't do that, don't work out, don't eat that healthy stuff, take a break, don't meditate. You don't have time for this. For all of those to bubble to the surface so that we could come in contact with them and say, fuck you, I'm going to keep going anyways, even though you're telling me to quit and push past it. Another example could be going on a run that is way beyond your capacity. And what I mean by like way beyond your capacity is like, maybe you've never run before, but you're like, you know what? Today I'm going to go for 20 miles. That's going to bring up some stuff inside of you, that's going to bring up your doubter, that's going to bring up the person that doesn't want to do it, that's going to bring up all of the demons that you have inside of you that you want to get rid of. I had this happen one time where I had a client. And from the very beginning, she was a successful woman. She worked with me one on one for a really long time. And in the very first month of us working together, she was just, you could tell she was what I like to call fat and happy. Not she wasn't physically fat, but it's fat and happy just basically means like, I'm comfortable, life is okay, I can pay my bills. You know, she made a few hundred thousand dollars a year, so she's good. Like, she can pay her bills, she could take some trips, she has a nice car, she does some stuff that's, that's some people are not able to do. But she wanted to find another level of herself. And I said, okay, what I want you to do is I want you to go on a run and I want you to go on a run until you can't do anymore. And then I want you to go further and I want you to go further and I want you to go further. I want you to go to the point where you can feel your, your inner bitch come up. You start crying, you start sweating, you start getting angry where you're like, fuck this, fuck Rob, fuck everybody I've ever known. And all of that comes out and it's like going to do it anyways and you keep going. And what I told her about was this idea of the law of 40%. And the law of 40% is something I've heard David Goggins talk about. David Goggins does 250 mile runs over the course of 48 hours and just insane things. And when he talks about the law of 40% is that most of us will, when we get to 40% of our capacity, we think we're at 100% of our capacity. And our brain basically has this safety switch inside of it that says, hey, you're approaching all that you can do. You need to stop, you need to stop, you need to stop. And it's a safety mechanism that our brain has to basically keep our body safe. Right? This is why I'm saying to you, I don't recommend any of this because I don't know your body, I don't know you. Then I want to make sure that you're safe, but I also want to make sure that you continue to push yourself and continue to find the capacity of your willpower into, to grow that willpower. And he says, when you feel like you're at like your last bit, this guy's run 250 miles many times he says, when you feel like you have nothing left in your body, you're only at 40% of your capacity. And if you think about that, how many times do we actually get to feeling like we have nothing left in the tank? Very rarely. And if nothing left in the tank and what that feels like is only 40% of your capacity, what could happen if we decide to push past that? What could we find on the other side of that version of ourself that is on the other side of the 40%. So I gave this idea to her and I said, you know, you could go for a run, you could tell yourself you're going to go for five miles, for 10 miles, 15, 20, whatever it is, I don't really care the distance. What I care about is meeting that version of you that's holding yourself back, meeting that voice inside of your head meeting that anger that is bubbling under the surface all the time of your entire life that might be from your childhood. And you've been carrying with it for carrying you with it, with. Carrying it with you for years and years and years and years and years. And I was like, I want you to find it. I want you to push past it, and I want you to go further than you think is even possible. And she was really hesitant. She's like, okay, I'll do it. Because she was just tired of the fat and happy feeling. So what happened? She ended up doing it. Next week we have a call. And she's like, that was the most amazing thing I've ever done. She's like, I don't know how long I was going, but I feel like I was running for hours. And I got to the point where I'm sweating. I'm pissed off at you. I'm pissed off at myself. I'm pissed off at the world. I'm angry and I'm crying at the same time. And all of it just bubbles to the surface. And I'm like, this, this. In her head, she's like, this is what he said was going to happen. I've got to push past it. And she found this version of herself where she felt like she was at her capacity. And she ran for another hour and a half after and she just kept going and her body kept going. She realized that there was a whole other side of her that she had never tapped into. This animalistic side of her that was just like, I'm going to change. I'm going to do this. There is no questioning, there is no therapy thinking. There is no something might be wrong. Was she sore? For a few days she was. But I'm telling you this, it was like a switch. It was a different person on all of the rest of our phone calls after that because she was able to go through. And I didn't know this was masogi at the time, but she was able to go through this Masogi. And a lot of times we are capable of so much, but we settle for safe because we want to be safe. That's the animalistic part of us that wants to be safe and wants to be taken care of. But there's another version of ourself that we can meet on the other side of pushing past that safe. And something like this can really open you up to believing more in yourself because you did something that was so ridiculously hard and you push past it and now you're like, if I can do that, I can make, you know, 50 cold calls. I can knock on 35 doors today. And what happens is the things that and I said this at the beginning of the podcast episode. The things that seem, quote, unquote, hard, you realize, were never hard in the first place. Mentally, in your mind, you are making them feel like they were hard, but they were never actually hard. And so the things that were quote, unquote hard before, the misogi are easy after. If I can do that thing, I can definitely do these stupid things. If I can do that thing, I can definitely do this. If I can push myself past and believe in myself, I and all of that, I can definitely do these things that I do on a daily basis. And the things that seem, quote, unquote hard, you realize are really not a big deal. You are making a mountain out of an anthill. So the idea is you can do this thing that at this moment, it can change you. You don't know if you can do it. It has to challenge you. If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you. So if you're going, like I said, on a little, nice little hike with a little bit of a slight incline and all that stuff, it's not going to change you. If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you. You have to meet you on the other end of it. You have to find another version of yourself. You have to mentally and physically push past something that was way harder and way past the capacity of what you thought was possible for you. You have to get past what you think is possible. And on the other side of that is a version of you that you've never met before that's been fricking waiting for you to come and meet it. That's what I want you to find. That's the point of this purification process, is to purify yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and meet the other version of you that is out there. 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 Also, if you love this podcast, I do also have an Instagram for this podcast where if you want some clips from it, go to themindsetmentor podcast on Instagram. Once again, the Mindset Mentor podcast. And 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.