5 Steps to Designing the Life You Want
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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 you never miss another podcast episode. If you love this podcast, you want to get some inspirational texts from me, some mindset texts sporadically throughout the week, and you live in the United States or Canada, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305.

Today, I'm going to be going through a five-step process to design the life that you want. Have you ever just woken up and thought to yourself, like, how the hell did I get here? Like, you were actively participating in your life, but you didn't really build exactly what you wanted.

I don't know if you've ever felt this way. I've definitely felt this way. And I remember waking up and I was like, luckily still younger. I was about 28 years old. I remember being like, if I fast forward my life five years and I get, I do really well and I make more money and I get my manager's job, I'm not going to like the life that I have. Like, what the hell am I doing with myself? I need a full reset.

And I have many people that come to me and they're like, hey, I need to redesign my life. I need to start it over. I need to change something at least. How do I do it?

The first thing that we need to talk about, and this is not one of the tips, but I just want to say before we dive into it, is this is the truth. No one's coming to save you. No one's going to come in and design the life that you want. No one's going to come in and then create the life that you want. And as children, we don't really have a transition from children into adult like they used to five, ten years ago.

20,000 years ago, maybe even more, right? There was always like a rite of passage. Like, you know, certain tribes, you'd go off into a cave for five days and eat, you know, five handfuls of mushrooms or something like that. And then you come out and you're like, now you're a man or now you're a woman. Now it's like, oh, you just go to college and we still have this feeling kind of lingering in the back of like...

is someone coming to help me? Like our parents were there, our parents were always telling us what to do and now they're not telling us what to do. And so it's like, we never really get this full like cutoff of like, hey, you're an adult now. This is your decision. There's no one coming to save you. But I do want to tell you that before we dive in. And if you want a life that excites you, that fulfills you, that gives you a sense of purpose, you have to be the one to create it. I'm going to go through this simple five-step process to design your life.

your life, not the life that someone else expects of you, not the life that your parents told you that you needed to be or else you were a loser, not the life that just kind of happened to land on your lap, but the life that you want to actually create.

And this is the way that I think of today's episode. Confucius had a quote that was very famous and says, we have two lives. And the second one begins when we realize we only have one. And so we kind of live this life unconsciously. And then we wake up one day, we're like, oh my God, I've only got one life. And I'm already 40 years into it. I need to do something about it.

So hopefully this is the start of your second one is when you realize that you only have one. And from this moment until the day you die, you're going to do what you want to do. So let's go through the five-step process. Number one, you've heard me say this before if you listen to podcasts for a while, but you have to get crystal clear on what you actually want in your life. If you don't know what you want, you will always feel lost. If you don't know what you want, you'll never quite feel like you got what you were looking for in this life.

Because you never got really clear and said, this is what I want. This is what I'm shooting for. This is something that I see so many people struggle with. I have people that come up to me after talks or in the streets or send me emails or I'm on Zoom calls in some of my coaching sessions in Mindset University. And they're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I want to create the life I want to create. And then I say, okay, well, what do you want?

I've never gotten a really good answer. It's always this vague, nebulous idea that they explain to me. And I'm like, listen, it doesn't sound like you've gotten very clear on what you want. And if you're not clear, you're not going to get it.

And I always say, like, one of my first mentors used to give this example on why you need to get so clear on what it is that you want. He used to say, if you were to take the number one archer in the world and you were to give him a bow and arrow, he's going to beat you every single time because he has way more practice. But if you blindfold him and spin him around, who has a better chance of hitting that target?

You. Why? Just because of the fact that you can clearly see where it is and he has no idea where it is. Most people are blindfolded throughout their entire life. And what I'm trying to do is make you say, hey, I'm going to get really clear on what it is that I want. And so too many people chase success, quote unquote success, without ever stopping and asking themselves what is their definition of success.

If I were to ask every person listening to this episode right now, what's your definition of success? All of you will have completely different answers. And if you don't know what success is, your version of success, you'll never really truly be fulfilled. And as Tony Robbins says, success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.

Maybe you've been conditioned to believe that success means money or success means titles or achievements or approval from certain people or becoming famous. But real success is living a life that it feels deeply fulfilling to you.

regardless of the money in your bank account, regardless of all of the achievements, or what other people might define as success. So what makes you the happiest? What makes you say, that would be a successful life for me? That's what you need to figure out. You might be a doctor right now and be worth a million dollars a year because that's what your parents told you to go do.

But you might just be the happiest living in a country, in a small house with your children and your spouse, working on a family farm, making enough money doing side jobs just to pay the bills and save a little, even though you went to school for years. You'd be better just spending the majority of your time raising your children into good humans. And that's what you want to do. Good. Go do that. Let's say you're not a doctor. Let's say you're struggling to pay the rent.

Okay, well, what do you need to do in order to, if that exact same life is what you want, in order to get a small family farm, whether it's something to rent or to save up enough money to buy it to eventually get there? What does success mean to you? For some people, success will mean something completely different than living on a small family farm and raising little tiny humans.

But without clarity, you just keep drifting and reacting to life instead of actually sitting down and designing it. So you need to intentionally design every aspect of your life with clarity, not with vagueness, so that you know what you're shooting for and what you're working towards every single day.

This is really the biggest first step and probably the most important. So you've got to ask yourself the right questions. What does my ideal day look like from start to finish? How do I want to feel every morning when I wake up? What kind of work excites me? How do I want to spend my time? Who do I want to spend my time with? What kind of lifestyle would make me feel the most alive? What are things that matter most to me in my life? Whether it's freedom or creativity or family or impact or adventure, whatever it is for you.

And so write it all down. Don't just think about it. Document it. Write it down. The act of writing helps you turn these vague desires into a clear vision. Then when you see it in front of you, it becomes more real. And I always say when it's on paper, it can be planned. It's really hard to plan things in your head. And so I challenge you to spend 10 minutes every single morning journaling about the life that you want. Not the life that you have, the life that you want and getting more and more clear and just bringing a little bit more clarity to that vision.

And then you'll start to see patterns emerge. And you'll go, you know what? I do actually love doing that. It'll give you more clarity over time. So that's the first step. The second step...

is to then start to take action towards that by building a life around your strengths and your passions. Too many people try to force themselves into careers or lifestyles that aren't really a good fit. As I'm, you know, getting older, I'm seeing this. I'm seeing so many people that are in jobs that I'm like, why do you have that job? That doesn't make sense with your personality. It doesn't make sense with the way that your brain works. And those jobs just drain them because they have to use so much energy to do those jobs.

So they pick jobs because they're safe or they pick jobs because they decided when they were 18 years old to go for a major and now they're 50 years old and it's completely different than what they thought. At 18 years old, I didn't know how, I didn't know who I was. I didn't know how my brain worked. I didn't know what my personality type was like. And that's why so many people wake up and they feel unfulfilled is they don't build a life around their strengths and their passions. And we will be right back.

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And now back to the show. So you need to build a life that plays into your natural strengths. When you operate from your strengths, the work feels pretty effortless. It's really interesting. You get into a flow state where everything can kind of disappear and you feel fully engaged. You know, what would look like work to other people but feel like fun to you?

For me, I've told you this before on the podcast, I love researching human neurology and psychology and early childhood development. Those things are so interesting, and I love learning them and putting them all together and then teaching them into lessons. That's fun for me. For a lot of people, they'd be like, screw that. I would never want to do that.

I get that. I have things that I hate doing as well. Do you know what I hate? I hate building and fixing stuff around my house. I don't, I just hate doing it. My friend Alan loves to do it. Remodel his entire house by himself. When I need something hung up, I'm like, hey, can you come hang something up with me? And then we'll hang up a TV together because I don't want my TV to fall on my kid. So I'm just like, please, Alan, come over so I don't screw this thing up. So he loves doing that type of building.

He also loves cooking. I hate cooking. So like him, his natural inclination is to go towards building something as far as like a meal or building and fixing something inside of a house. If I was in construction, I just wouldn't fit. But that could have been a job I picked up when I was 20 years old. I'm like, well, I've been doing it for so long, I might as well keep doing it. We're different people. We all have different brains. We have different interests as well.

So many people are doing the wrong thing for them because they just decided to do it one day and they're like, well, I've been doing it for so long, I might as well keep going, but it never really fit. And so it feels like they're struggling in some way. It feels kind of like you're trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. It doesn't make sense. You know, like another good example of this that really changed my mind of the way that brains work, there's a great book on business, it's called Rocket Fuel, and it talks about how people can be visionaries or they can be integrators.

So like a visionary is a big picture thinker. There are usually entrepreneurs with big ideas. They're very, very creative. They love to drive and innovate. They often struggle with execution and managing details and processes. That's me. I can force myself to do like the processes and the managing of the details, but I just hate doing it, to be honest with you.

That is more for what's called an integrator. An integrator is much more of a structured, detail-orientated leader who will take the visionary's ideas and turn them into managing teams, systems, growing a business with them, the processes, ensuring the business runs smoothly and efficiently. So for me, I have the visionary brain and I'm constantly coming up with ideas and you could throw me on a stage and I could just talk the entire time and all these ideas come through and I'm very visual-oriented.

I can force myself to integrate, but it's not really my thing. On the other hand, I have Brittany on my team, who's my VP of operations. She is a hardcore integrator brain. She's very structured. She's very detail-orientated. She's very into managing teams and systems and processes and ensuring that things run smoothly. We work really well together because we can bounce ideas and the visionary and the integrator both need each other. And so she just has a way different brain than me.

And so we are both in a position that best fits us, but also makes me the most excited about what I'm doing. It makes her the most excited about what she's doing. That's a good example of fitting into the right position. And so you've got to find out like what your zone of genius is. You know, what do people come to you for advice on? What do you lose track of time when you're doing? Like what feels fine and effortless, but can be hard for other people? What type of skills come naturally for you?

that's what i would recommend trying to try to start doing is finding something that actually feels like a passion and feels like a strength which is number two number three once you start to get clear on what you want how you want it what you want your life to look like and what your strengths and your passions are create a transition plan not just like a dream board or a vision board i'm talking about a transition plan so you might be

50 years old right now and working in a job, you know, in HR for the past 30 years. And you're like, I'm over this. I don't expect you to just quit your job today. And I don't think that you should quit your job today. But what I would recommend is if you know that you're done and you want to do something different, create some sort of transition plan, 12 months, 24 months, whatever it is. Listen, dreaming is great, but without a clear strategy, nothing's going to change.

And so you need to turn your vision into an actual plan of action. Because if you're not careful, years are just going to pass you by. And some people listening, years have just passed by. Some of you, decades have passed by. And your dream is just going to still be a dream. And so what I would recommend is breaking it down into an actual, whatever feels right for you, a 12-month plan, a 24-month plan, a 36-month plan, a six-month plan.

What is it for you? Make a six-month plan, a goal. What's one major step that you can take towards your dream life in the next six months and work towards that thing? And then once you figure out that six months, well, then what are your daily habits? Like what small habits can start to move you in the right direction? You know, and then you can come up with a financial strategy so that you can start to move and feel safer to transition. So, you know, you can save, you can invest, you can build some side income, you

Something like that so that when you transition out of what you've been doing for 20 or 30 years into this new thing, you have much more of a longer runway because you've been planning ahead financially, which allows you more time and more of a runway for this thing to take off. And so you just want to start doing some small steps, but do them consistently every single day because small steps lead to massive changes over time. So write down like three small steps that you can take this week to start moving towards your dream life that you want to create.

Okay, so that's number three. Make a transition plan. Number four, take action already, even when it's scary. Fear is not a stop sign. It's a sign that you're on the right track. If you're not a little scared all the time, you're not growing. You should feel scared. You should feel fear because you're getting out of your comfort zone every single day. Most people let fear paralyze them. But the secret is to feel the fear and decide to do it anyways.

Because fear is just really the physical feeling of your comfort zone. When you feel fear, that's the physical feeling of, oh my God, I've hit the edge of my comfort zone. So instead of backing away, I'm going to lean a little bit forward. It's the body's way of saying danger, but that's a good thing because you're not actually in any physical danger. What you are is you're in the danger to your brain and your body is, no, no, no, we're on the edge of our comfort zone. We've never done this before. You got to remind yourself, that's okay. No big deal. It's a good thing.

So we've probably, and a lot of us have, created the habit of when you feel that fear, you just shut down or you back down. You need to feel it, remind yourself this is okay, I'm not in any danger right now, and then lean into that fear. Push past that little bit of physical discomfort because you're on the edge of your comfort zone. So do something when you don't feel like you're ready.

Don't wait till you're ready. Do it before you're ready. You know, apply for that job before you feel like you're quote unquote qualified. Publish the podcast or YouTube video before it's quote unquote perfect. Reach out to a mentor or someone that you want to work with before you feel like you're worthy in some sort of way. And so your comfort zone is where your dreams go to die.

Every time you stay in it, you just push your dreams a little bit further down the road. Every time you step out of it, that's where you expand and possibility can come in. The more scary things that you do, the less they become scary. You just get used to doing things out of your comfort zone. So feel your fears. Do it anyway. You need to take action. And number five, this is the thing I used to do with all of my one-on-one clients.

Whenever we would come up with our goals for the week and the assignments and things they need to do, I used to always ask them this question. How can you make it easier on yourself? And so number five is to ask yourself, how can I make this easier on myself? Success, whatever that looks like for you, doesn't have to be a struggle. You don't have to white knuckle your way through life. And so you can ask yourself, how can I make this easier on myself? How can I make this feel more effortless? It can become more effortless because you're more in line and you're excited and

It's really easy to work hard when you're doing something that you love. It's really easy to lose yourself when you're doing something that you love. And so how can you make it easier for you to take the right action, for you to build the life that you've been looking for? And how can you make it feel more effortless versus so much of a struggle? And so you have to understand that you have one life. Now that we've gone through the Confucius quote, you've got two lives, but you're on the back end, which means you're on the second life, which is realizing that you only have one.

So don't waste it by living in default or just staying in patterns. Design it from this moment forward with intention. Get really clear on what you want. Build a life that's around your strengths. Make some sort of transition plan. Take action despite your fears and then try to make it feel more effortless as well. Because the biggest regret on people's deathbed, according to statistics and to a book that's called The Five Regrets of the Dying,

The biggest regret of people who are dying is that I wish I lived a life that was true to myself and not what others expected of me. So live a life that's true to yourself.

So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. I love seeing when you guys share it. The only way this podcast grows is when you guys share it. So if you do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm gonna leave the same way I leave you every single episode, making sure mission makes somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day. Spread the love for Black Founded Brands, yeah. Found here at one.

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At Capella University, our game-changing FlexPath learning format lets you set your own deadlines so you can learn at a time and pace that works for you. It's an education you can tailor to your schedule. That means you don't have to put your life on hold to pursue your professional goals. Instead, enjoy learning your way and earn your degree without missing a beat. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.