In this solo episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast, host Rob Dial explores the meaning of life through personal loss, mindfulness, and a cosmic perspective. He begins by recounting the early death of his father and later his grandfather, using these experiences to illustrate how confronting mortality can sharpen awareness of what truly matters. Dial emphasizes the practice of being present—breathing exercises, sensory focus, and even the simple act of smelling a rose—as tools to anchor oneself in the current moment, arguing that the mind constantly drifts to past or future while the body remains in the now. He defines life in its simplest terms: being born, experiencing the five senses, and eventually dying, with the quality of life determined by how we interpret those experiences. The episode critiques materialism, noting that possessions and achievements do not survive death and that chasing them distracts from genuine presence. Dial expands the perspective by describing the vastness of the universe, quoting Albert Einstein’s two ways of viewing life, and suggesting that recognizing the miracle of existence can free us from societal pressures. He asserts that happiness is a choice made in the present, not a future reward tied to wealth or status, and illustrates this with examples of both affluent yet miserable individuals and content people in less affluent circumstances. Ultimately, Dial concludes that the meaning of life is simply to live—to experience, feel, and be fully present—encouraging listeners to stop searching for external meaning and instead embrace the gift of the present moment. The episode ends with a call to share the content on Instagram and a reminder to make someone else’s day better.
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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. Today we're going to be talking about the meaning of life. We're going to be talking about life. We're going to be talking about death. And I'm going to start off with actually telling you my perspective of death and life as well, and intertwine it with what we're going to go through today. So I remember the very first person that I ever knew, just so you know, that passed away, was my father. And I was lucky enough to have my father pass away early. And I say lucky. It was the worst day of my life, but it was also the best day of my life. The reason why I say lucky, and I have the opinion of that is because I was able to experience one of my parents dying when I was younger, at an early age. And I remember specifically the day before my father's funeral, they had him in the casket, and he was dressed up, and we were in a small room that was off to the side, and it was just enough room for the casket and a couch. And I remember I was on the far left of the couch, and my grandmother, which was his mom, was right next to me. My sister was next to her, and my mom was next to her. And we were in there, and we were able to, you know, have a viewing before everybody else was able to see him the next day. I remember sitting there in the room with the casket and realizing that my father was gone. And he had so much potential. He was so smart. He had so many dreams that. That he wanted. He had so many experiences that he could have, and none of those things were going to happen anymore, and all of it was gone. And it makes me think of the Les Brown quote that says, the graveyard is the richest place on Earth because it is here that you'll find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never this thing. And I have a Zoom, and I have to meet with this person. It was like I was stopping for a few minutes. I was smelling the roses, and I was going, oh, my God, these roses do smell amazing. I sat there for a while and smelled the roses, and it smelled so good. I brought one back with me so I could smell it throughout the day. And so I was on team calls on Zoom, and they would see me with a white rose up to my nose, and I was just smelling it, and I was like, this is kind of the journey is to Be present, to stop and smell the roses. And one thing that I think is really important for being present and thing that I've been trying to make myself do more and more often. If you've ever been on a zoom call with me, that I've run for Mindset, Mentor University and all, all that stuff, we always start with a breathing exercise. The reason why is because I'm trying to get myself into my body more often and to notice my senses. Because the thing that I've noticed about myself and I notice about a lot of people is that our minds are always somewhere else. They're always in the future, they're always in the past, they're always thinking about the next thing that we have to do. But my body is always here. Like my body is never somewhere else but this present moment. And I notice in myself my lack of presence 10 or 15 times a day. So I bring my awareness back to my body so that I can experience the moment in this moment. So I start to focus on what I can see. I start to try to focus on what it is that I can hear. I try to focus on what I can feel and what it feels like to be in my body and my clothes, on my skin and the temperature of the room. I try to focus on what I can smell. I try to focus on what I can taste. And that's really bringing me back to the only thing that we really truly have, which right now is this present moment. And life at its simplest form is really this. It is. You are born, you have a sensory set of experiences and you die. That is what life is. Whether you get 17 years, whether you get 117 years, you're born, you have a sensory set of experiences. You see things, you hear things, you taste things, you smell things, all of that. And then you die. But how you choose to interpret those experiences will dictate the quality of your life. But how many of us are so focused on the next thing that we miss this thing like we miss the present moment? I don't know if you've ever been in the room when somebody passes away. It is a extremely humbling experience. It is a beautiful experience. It is a heart wrenching experience, but. But it's beautiful and humbling at the same time. I was in the room when my grandfather passed away. And I remember thinking to myself, his body is still there, but my grandfather is gone. The soul that was in him, the energy that was him, was gone. And I think about that really often is I don't want to get to the end of my life. And think, damn it. Like, I wasn't really here. I was always somewhere else in my mind. I wasn't really here. And I mean, like, really here in this moment. Not focusing on the next accomplishment, not trying to work harder to buy the next thing. Because, you know, you can't take any of these things with you. I don't know if you've ever had someone close to you die, and then you need to go to their house and clean out their house. But it really puts a lot of things into perspective because all you're doing is, you know, imagine collecting toys and collecting things your whole life. And then when you die. When you die, they're just there. When you die, someone else has to clean up all of your shit. And what's the point of all of those things, right? So then it brings us back to the original question of how we started this, in the title of this. This episode, which is, what is the meaning of Life? What is the meaning of life? The meaning of life is not to. It's. It's not what you look like. It's not all the toys that you have. It's not how much money you have in your bank account. It's not how big your house is. It's not all of the accomplishments that you have. I'll give you my meaning of life. But before I do, let me tell you this. I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. I'm just another human, another flawed individual that's just trying to figure things out. I'm just another bumbling idiot trying to make sense of all of it. So if you choose to believe in something different, I fully respect that. I fully respect that you believe anything that you want to. So I'm going to give you what I think my meaning of life is. My meaning of life. The meaning of life is life. That's it. We're trying to overcomplicate this thing. The meaning of life is life. It is to experience everything. To feel. To feel happiness, to feel sadness, to feel love, joy, pain, anger. To be with your friends. To travel, to watch a sunset. To live. Like, to really fucking live. But how often do we sit there and we think that there's some other meaning or try to figure out if we can find more meaning in our work or find more meaning in buying things or find more things in having something else or finding another accomplishment? How often are we not here, like here in this moment, in our bodies, in this present moment, but we're off in our Mind somewhere else when the point is to be here now. Which is, as Ram Dass would say it. Cause it's pretty crazy if you actually think about it, right? Like, if you actually take a step back and think about life. Like, one of the things that I love to do, and it terrifies my wife sometimes, is I love to watch videos of how small we are in this universe. Because I really think it gives a lot of perspective. And the reason why it terrifies my wife is. Cause she's like, oh, my God, it's so big, I can't even comprehend it. And I was like, yeah, but that's what's so amazing. Cause it shows you that nothing actually matters. And if nothing matters, that means that we could put meaning to anything that we want to. We can do all of these things. If nothing. If we're on this huge. This huge universe and this tiny little speck of dirt in this huge universe, people judging you, doesn't matter. But there's two ways you can look at life. And this is Albert Einstein quote that I love. He says there's two ways to look at life. One, as though nothing is a miracle. And the other, as if everything is a miracle. And when you actually start to look at the universe, you start to look at the world that we live in. You start to realize that all of this around us is a miracle. Like, we live on a piece of dirt, but it is the most beautiful piece of dirt that we know of, right? If you think about other planets, like Mercury, what would it be like to live on Mercury or Venus or Mars? All of them. They don't look really as beautiful as this one with all the animals and all of the trees and all of the humans and the blue skies and the clouds. Like, we're on the best planet in our solar system. It's like the Disney World of our solar system, right? And you look at it in the Earth, this tiny little speck that we live on, and we're a tiny little speck on a tiny little speck. This Earth is spinning a thousand miles an hour, and it's orbiting the sun at 67,000 miles an hour. And we're moving through our solar system. Our solar system is moving through the universe at 448,000 miles per hour. And we're in a galaxy that has 100 billion stars and in a universe that has 2 trillion galaxies. We live in a galaxy that has 100 billion stars, and there are over 2 trillion galaxies. Like, do you fully understand this? It is insane. Our brains cannot comprehend the scale of all of this. And we're so consumed with wanting to get a raise. We're so consumed about our next post going viral. We're so consumed with wanting to make more money so we can buy the next thing, so that we can impress people that don't care about the stuff that you have because they're too busy thinking about themselves. Like, we have to wake up. Your life is here. It's not somewhere else. It's not in the future. The point of life is to experience life, to be in the present moment, to be as present as we possibly can. It's not in the future, it's now. So it's time to experience it and to be present and to let go of trying to control everything. Let go of trying to make sure that you control every little single thing around you. Let go of saying, oh, I'll be happy when I'm not happy now. I'll be happy when I get that raise. I'll be happy when I get that house. I'll be happy when I finally get into a relationship. No, you won't. Happiness is not when I get that thing. Happiness is a choice. I know people who have a ton of stuff. I know people worth billions of dollars that are fucking miserable. I've seen people in third world countries that have nothing, that are the happiest people I've ever seen. So I'll be happy when doesn't make any sense. It's a choice that you decide to make in the moment. There is nowhere else to go but here and now and to experience. And so what I really want you to understand through this episode is that when you look at life, life is the gift. Stop searching for something else, because in this moment, you already have everything that you're searching for. Stop trying to get the next thing and start trying to be here, now, in this moment, so that you can get all of the gifts of the present moment. Because the meaning of your life is to simply just experience life. And that's it. That's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor. Share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Robdial Jr R O B D I A L J R and with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission. Make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.
