7 Simple Habits That Transformed My Life

(upbeat music) - Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. If you're out there and you love this podcast, do me a favor, give us a rating and review however you listen to us. The more positive ratings and reviews that we get on all those platforms, the more likely they are to show this podcast to people who have never listened to it before, which has allowed us to grow and transform more people's lives. So if you would do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Today, I'm gonna be talking about seven simple habits that transformed my life because some of the biggest changes that I've had in my life didn't come from big decisions. They came from simple, almost invisible habits that I started doing at one point in my life. And then over time, they compounded and I didn't even really realize the impact of them. And I'm not talking about trends or hacks or get rich quick type stuff. I'm talking about these subtle daily actions that reprogrammed the way that I think, the way that I feel and the way that I act in my life. So if you've ever felt stuck or overwhelmed or like you're just surviving in some sort of way, these habits will change your daily life completely. And it might just be the shift that you've been needing. So let's dive into them. Number one is I check my screen time on my phone every single day. Now I've actually taken it one step further and I actually have it on my iPhone as a widget. So it is the very first thing that I see when I open my phone. So immediately when I open my phone, I see the widget that says exactly how much time I have spent on my phone today and I have to swipe left to get past it to see anything. And I want you to understand I'm not anti-phone, I'm not anti-entertainment, I'm not anti-technology. As I get older and I realize that my life is getting shorter and shorter and shorter, I am more pro-presence than anything else. I know that I will not get to the end of my life and wish that I spent more time on my phone, than wish I spent more time on Instagram or on TikTok. And so I am trying to give myself tricks so that when I see my phone, when I use my phone, I'm like, I need to get off this thing as soon as possible and I need to go experience my life. Because when I get to the end of my life, I am going to wish that I spent more time with my wife. I'm gonna wish that I spent more time with my son. When I'm in my death bed, I'm going to be thinking about the shit that I do today in wishing that I was back here. And so the worst thing that I could do is spend my fucking time on my phone when at the end of my life, I'm gonna wish that I was right back in the day that I'm in today. And so one of the things that's really changed me and reprogrammed the way that I interact with my phone is by checking my screen time every single day. And then for those of you guys that have iPhones, and you can do this, you might be able to do it on other phones, androids as well, make it a widget so that you are consciously aware and presented with how much time you spent on your phone today. And you watch that number go down, go down, go down, go down, go down. And I watch it go from five hours a day, 'cause I work on my phone a lot too. Five hours to four hours to three hours to two and a half hours, which means I'm getting a whole lot more of my life back. So that's the first thing. First habit that's very important to me. The second thing is this thing that I call never miss two days. A successful life, whatever you think success means. It could be happiness, joy, money, success, accomplishments, whatever it might be. It's not usually built on these big, massive, life-changing events. It's built. A successful life is built from being consistent with whatever it is. Working out or getting some form of movement every single day is going to figure, you're gonna figure out in some sort of way how to actually start to lose weight and get into the shape that you want to, or how to gain muscle and get into the shape that you want to. To be consistent and decide to do the hard thing every single day. To be consistent and to make sure that you take time to be with your children every single day without your phone or without distractions and to give them your time and your presence. To make sure that you take time and you're consistent with taking time with your spouse every single day and giving them your time and your attention and your love. In some days, I understand a wrench can just be thrown in our plans and you don't get the workout. You don't do the work that you need to. You don't spend as much time with your children as you want you don't spend as much time with your spouse as you want to. But the key to this is never miss two days. If I screwed up yesterday, then I'm not going to screw up today and I'm going to plan to make sure that what I need to get accomplished in order to make my life better and to be more consistent happens today. You know, you're gonna miss days. That's just the way that it goes, but never miss two days. If you start missing two days, what you're doing is you're building a new habit. And so if you wanna be successful in anything in life, it requires consistency. So what that means is that I can miss a day, but I will never miss two days and that's it. So that's number two. Number three is I have over the past few years bookmarked my day with gratitude. I used to be really big on having a morning routine. To be honest with you, I think morning routines are great, but I'm not that big on morning routines anymore. They're great, but you know, if I have to wake up and check off 14 things in my to-do list to feel good in the morning, if I have to rely on a morning routine to have a good day, then I'm building fragility. I'm making myself fragile. If I'm going, well, I'm not gonna have a good day today because I didn't get my meditation in or I'm not having a good day today 'cause I didn't get my journaling session in. Like meditation, working out, journaling, all of those things, they're great. They change your life. They're all amazing things. But the one thing that is the most important to me that has had the biggest shift in my life and my mentality is focusing on gratitude. And so what I do is I spend five minutes. That's it. Five minutes every single day, no phone and silence by myself, thinking of the things that I am grateful for in my life. Because all too often with our negativity bias that is built into the human circuitry of our brain, we will find the things to be wrong in our life, the things that are not going the way that we want to. And so that in turn will make us very negative if we don't. And so in order for me to overcome my own personal negativity bias, I spend five minutes every single day, at least for the past few years, thinking about what I'm grateful for. It can be little teeny tiny things. It can be really big things. It's all over the board. I do it every single morning and it's kind of like you can call it a meditation, you can call it a prayer, you can call it whatever it is that you want. Five minutes focusing on what I'm grateful for. And then the very last thing that I do before I go to bed is focus on the things that I'm grateful for and say thank you for everything that I have to be grateful for as well. Sometimes it's the same thing in the morning and it's the same thing at night. Sometimes there's some different things in there. But here's what I have found in the way that it's actually changed me. When I wake up and I focus on gratitude, I switch my negativity bias off just a little bit in my brain instead of finding things throughout my entire day that aren't going the way that I want to, that aren't, that the ways that I'm behind are the things that I want that I don't have. I'm actually starting my day focusing on what I do have and what I'm grateful for. And then I go through the rest of my day and I just start noticing more things that I'm grateful for that I have versus things that I don't have in my lack and my loss and my desires. And then when I go to bed, I'm basically programming my subconscious mind 'cause I'm about to go into sleep, the unconscious mind, to think about the things that I'm grateful for and remind myself how great my life actually is. And so the thing that I do every single day, no matter what, is I bookend in the beginning, in the evening, gratitude. That's it, very simple. And it completely changed the way that I look at my life. So that's number three. Number four is something that I call the five minute rule. The five minute rule is something that was taught to me when I was 20 years old by my very first coach that I was working with. And basically, the five minute rule is this. It is when something goes wrong or doesn't go the way that you want to, you have five minutes. You set a timer on your phone to yell, to scream, to kick, to throw an adult temper tantrum, to get a pillow and to beat the bed as hard as you possibly can. And when that timer goes off, you're done. You go on with the next thing. And the reason why this is good is because number one, a lot of times what we do if we have a victim mentality is we will find something that pisses us off and will be pissed off for the entire day and for the entire week and for the entire month. This is basically saying you have five minutes to throw an adult temper tantrum, do whatever it is that you want, don't hurt other people, obviously, but throw your adult temper tantrum if you want to. And then move on with your life. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. On the other side of that, for the people who don't express their emotions, we have learned to push our emotions down. And when you push something down, it's actually called depressing. When you depress something, that is you pushing something down. And we wonder why so many people have so much depression nowadays because we have been taught to push our emotions down, to push them down, to act like they're not there, to brush it under the rug, as if it's just gonna go away. Emotions need to be expressed. And if they're not expressed, they will be depressed. And that will help us become depressed as well. And so the idea of this is with the five minutes is you get to express the emotion, get it out of your body, and then get on with your life. And so the five minute rule, you have five minutes when something doesn't go right, to cry, cry, kick, scream, yell, curse, throw your adult temper tantrum. When your alarm goes off, get on with your life. That's number four. Number five is this rule that I've created that is called be bored for three minutes. When I find myself being bored, which happens multiple times a day, where I'm sitting there and I'm like, I need to entertain myself. I need to get my phone. I need to go do this. I need to go do some more work. What I will do is instead of just immediately going to my phone or to work, is I will take three minutes, and if I don't have my phone next to me, I'll just guess three minutes, three minutes to sit in boredom and do nothing. Because I want you to understand, if I am noticing that I don't want to be bored, and I immediately go and entertain myself, what I am doing is I am building the muscle of being reactive. And so many of us are so reactive to other people, to other people's emotions, to other things that happen to us, that we're constantly just, we're just like squirrels running around. Whereas we don't really have any place to go. We're just here when they're left or right. We're left or right. We're all over the place. So when I find myself wanting to entertain myself, or I need to make sure that I go do something for work, whatever it is, and I'm like, oh my God, I go do this. Oh my God, I go do this. I'm like three minutes. Stop trying to be entertained. If I'm sitting there, sometimes I'll go, you know what? I'm just gonna sit here and do absolutely nothing. Sometimes I go, you know what? I'm gonna go for a walk for 15 minutes. And I'm not gonna bring my phone. I'm not gonna listen to a podcast. I'm not gonna have my headphones in. I'm gonna listen to nothing. And I am going to build up the muscle of being okay with being bored. And so be bored for three minutes is my habit around that. The sixth thing that's a habit that's really changed my life a lot is to actually create phone hours. We all have like work hours. Okay, yeah, I work from nine o'clock until five o'clock. But very rarely have I found people set phone hours. They have boundaries with other people in their life. They have boundaries with work. They have no boundaries with their phone. And so what I recommend is that you actually have a time where you're, okay, you know, if I work from nine to five, then I can use my phone between eight a.m. and eight p.m. And then I have 12 hours where I don't. And it might be, you know, different for you 'cause you might not want to have your phone once soon as you get home from work and be present with your family, whatever it is, create your phone hours. Another thing that's really important for me as far as my phone hours go is I do not look at my phone for an hour after waking up. My phone, when I go to sleep, it's next to me, but it's on airplane mode. And I do not take it off airplane mode for at least, at least one hour after I wake up. Another thing that I've built into my schedule and I've started to do over the past probably six months is one day a week, absolutely no phone. So it's usually Sunday for myself and my wife. We usually go to the same place for breakfast or one of the same three places for breakfast. I know how to drive there. I don't really need to look at my phone for it. So I'm like, hey, let's just leave our phones at home. It's me, it's you, it's the baby. We're gonna go have some fun. And we're just gonna be present. And then after that, guess what we're gonna do? We're gonna go to a farmer's market. And guess what? I can pay with my credit card. I don't have to pay with my phone. And so create some sort of phone hours so that you start to distance yourself from this thing that everybody else is getting addicted to. So that's number six. And then number seven is every day, I close out my work day. I have realized that I have very crappy boundaries when it comes to work. And it's been that way 'cause I created my first business 20 years ago. And I just learned that work pours into everything. I don't want to bring work into my family time and I don't want to bring it into my free time. And so what I do is I mentally and physically close out my work day as if we're shutting it down and we're done for the day. So what I will do, takes literally three minutes to do this, is I will write down everything that I accomplished for the day so that I can look back and see my wins for the day. Okay, I did this, I did this, I did this. Wow, that was amazing. I did get a lot further than I thought I did today. The next thing that I'll do is I will write down my biggest priorities for tomorrow. So there's definitely almost all, like I've never gotten a to-do list done in my entire life, just so you guys know. There's always something from today that carries into tomorrow. And so I'm gonna write down what are my three biggest priorities for tomorrow and the things that I really need to concentrate on. And then what I do is I do this. I close my computer and out loud, I say, and I say this out loud on purpose because it's like a switch inside of my brain 'cause I'm saying it, but I'm also hearing myself say it. As I say, you know, I write down all the stuff. This is what I accomplished. These are the things I need to do tomorrow. I close my computer and I say, I'm done with work for the day. That's it. And it's a mental way to be like, hey, work is done. I have boundaries. I'm not gonna answer emails. I'm not gonna answer text messages. I'm going to enjoy this thing that's outside of work and my phone and those things that we could caught up in and emails and text messages and all. I'm gonna go enjoy this thing that we call life. And so I am done with work for the day. And so those are the seven things that I've been focusing on, these little tiny habits that I've been doing for six months to years now that have completely transformed my life. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories, tag me @robdialjr. Also, if you're out there and you wanna learn more about coaching with me outside of the podcast, I have multiple programs that can help you learn and grow and improve yourself. If you would like to learn more about them, go to coachwithrob.com. Once again, coachwithrob.com. And with that, I'm gonna 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.