A 3-Step Process to Reprogram Yourself
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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. And if you're out there and you want to dominate your goals for this year, go to goals2025.com. You can download my free ebook to teach you how to set, plan, and achieve all of your goals. Once again, goals with an S, 2025.com.

Today, I'm going to give you a very simple three-step process so that you can start to reprogram and repattern your mind. And I want you to understand this first. Whenever you have a thought, I always say that you can't control your first thought, but you can always control your second thought. And the reason why is because our first thought is

is the thought that comes from some sort of pattern or conditioning. And so something happens to you, you have an immediate thought that pops into your head. That is the first thought that is part of your conditioning. Something happens to you, a thought pops into your head. That is part of your conditioning. And so if you have a thought that comes in, whether that's a negative thought about somebody else, whether that's a negative thought about yourself, whether that's a negative thought about your life, whatever it is, victim mentality,

You notice the thought and then you say, is that the thought that I want to stay with or do I want to change it? And I want you to understand this. We are all just a set of patterns. We as humans are just a set of patterns, aka programs. And all of our patterns, almost all of our patterns, develop in our childhood. And some of them are good.

And it's great to have those. And then some of them are bad and some of them hold us back. And some of them are negative and some of them are judgmental and some of them are selfish and

And so we have to become aware of the thoughts that we have. Like, and it's great to have a child now because I've been saying this type of stuff for years, but now I can look at my son. I remember not long ago, I was looking at him and my wife was talking to him and he was staring at me and I took my hand and I was looking at him and he was looking at me and I pointed to the left where my wife was and I was trying to point to my wife and he was just looking at me.

wasn't looking over to my left to see my wife because he didn't even have like, he came with all of the hardware, but the software hasn't been installed. The program of when I do this with my hand and I point to the left, that means turn your head and look left has not been installed. And so when you look at that, you can see like even little teeny tiny things like that

our programs, little teeny tiny things like that are patterns that are built into us from childhood. And we can look at the patterns that we have, the good ones and the bad ones, and we can stay with the bad ones if we want.

that come from our childhood, that come from our past, that come from when we were unconsciously just downloading everything that we possibly could, or we can grow up as adults and say, I'm going to now make my own patterns. I'm gonna get rid of the patterns that I no longer want, and I'm going to repattern.

That's our decision. You can either decide that you want to keep them or you can decide that you want to get rid of them and change them. And so I'm going to teach you a very simple, very, very simple formula to repattern and reprogram yourself. And it comes in an acronym. It's very simple. It's APR. Okay. The A stands for awareness. I need to become aware now in this moment, listening to this podcast episode of the things that I want to change. And you can, so

As soon as we get done with this podcast episode, you can turn me off and then you can just journal through it. What are the things that I want to change within myself? I need to become aware now so that I can start to come up with a plan. And I'm going to talk about that in a minute. And we need to become aware now of the things that we want to change. And when the things pop up, the point of it, like if I notice that I am too...

selfish at times. And that's one of the things that I want to reprogram in myself. Then when I become aware in the moment that I am being selfish, I don't want to guilt and shame and judge myself. I want to have some sort of plan, which brings me into the P, which is practice, not plan, it's practice.

And the practice is when I become aware, A, when I become aware of myself being selfish, I am going to have this practice. I'm just going to immediately do this thing so that I don't have to sit around and think, okay, well, what should I do now? It's like, no, I've noticed when I'm selfish, I'm going to do this. If this, then that. If this happens, that's what I'm going to do.

So that's the P side of it, which is the practice. So it's awareness. I'm aware now, but I'm also aware in the moment, whenever it happens in the future. When this happens, I'm going to become, I'm going to get myself into the practice. And then the R side of it. So awareness, practice, the R is repetition.

to do it over and over and over again. And so let me give you some examples so that you can start to become aware of what you might be doing that's holding you back, right? So let's say that you have negative self-talk and you want to start improving the way that you speak to yourself. And so your awareness is you notice in the moment when you're being overly critical or you're being judgmental about yourself in some sort of way.

Okay. That's my awareness. My practice is I'm going to replace that negative thought with a supportive affirmation. And right now I'm going to come up with that supportive affirmation. So therefore, when I find myself in the moment, I don't have to figure it out. And so maybe what I, what I do instead of being critical and judgmental right now in this moment, whenever I become critical and judgmental of myself in the future, which I know I will do,

I'm going to take a step back in my practices. I'm going to say, I'm doing my best and I love myself, which might sound corny, but really what it does is it takes me out of my old pattern and starts to create another pattern, which is like, hey, I'm going to give myself a little bit of grace here. Instead of being so critical and so judgmental in the moment, when I noticed myself being critical and judgmental, I'm doing my best and I love myself and I'm doing everything that I can.

That can be my practice to say something like this. And then the repetition is every time you catch yourself engaging in this negative self-talk, you're going to want to make sure that you continue to repeat your affirmation until it becomes second nature. And what happens is, like I said, you can't control your first thought, but you can always control your second thought. If you do this long enough, eventually your second thought will become your first thought, which is what we're trying to work towards. And that takes time.

Let's give another example. Let's say that you want to start eating healthier. And so you recognize, oh my gosh, I eat out of stress or I eat out of boredom.

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And so that's my awareness. Next time I find myself up, I'm just randomly eating something in the kitchen. I read a statistic not long ago. It said like up to 80% of eating is just out of boredom and habit. And so maybe what we do is I recognize that I've been gaining weight. I don't want to gain weight. And I've been eating out of stress and boredom. And so when I find myself about to go eat something, I just take a step back and I say, am I actually hungry right now?

Or is there an alternative thing that might be happening? Is there something else I could do? So what I'll do is I'll say, you know what? Am I actually hungry right now? And if I ask myself that question, I might find out maybe I'm not as hungry as I thought. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to drink a cup of water and I'm going to wait 10 minutes. One of the things I've also read is that a lot of times when people think they're hungry, they're actually just thirsty. And so you drink some water and a lot of people are very, very under hydrated, you could say.

So I'm going to drink some water. I'm going to give myself 10 minutes and see if I'm still hungry. And so therefore I'm not just in this pattern of just eating out of boredom, eating out of stress, but I'm actually going, okay, I'm going to pause. I'm gonna drink some water. I'm going to repeat this. And I'm going to be intentional about checking in with myself before every single meal or every snack. So that I can be more mindful of my eating so that that's not so automatic.

Let's say that you are somebody who procrastinates, right? Well, in the moment when you notice that you're delaying starting a task and you're trying to distract yourself in some sort of way, what I'm going to do is I'm going to commit my practice is I'm going to commit to the two minute rule, which is where I find that task, whatever it is, no matter how big or how long it can take. And I'm just going to say, I'm going to set my timer for two minutes and I'm just going to work on it for two minutes. And then I'm going to use that momentum. And if I want to continue to carry on, I can't.

And so each time procrastination arises, implement this two minute rule so that I can begin the task and I can just start the task because ultimately it's usually not once we're in it and we're working on something, it's not that big of a deal, but it's the starting of the task that ends up being so, it seems so daunting for us. So when I noticed myself procrastinating, I'm going to say, what is the thing I need to do? I'm going to set my timer for two minutes and I'm just going to say, go, I'm going to just do this thing for two minutes and that's it.

Okay. Let's say that you want to improve your communication in your relationships. And so your awareness might be that you notice when you start to become very defensive in a conversation. So I notice I'm in a conversation. I noticed my body starting to get kind of activated. I'm starting to feel a little bit pissed off or stressed and I'm being defensive in a conversation. My practice. Okay. What's my practice going to be? My practice is I'm going to take a deep breath and

And I'm going to say, hey, can you help me understand your perspective before responding? So therefore, I don't just immediately lash out at somebody because I could just be seeing something incorrectly. But what I noticed myself starting to activate, my body activating, oh my God, I'm about to get pissed off. I'm going to take a deep breath. It's my practice. I'm going to take a deep breath. I'm just going to say, hey, can you help me understand your perspective before I respond to anybody? And over time, this approach will start to replace this defensive reaction

And it'll allow me to be a little bit more curious and connect with somebody a little bit more. Okay. Let's say that you have a big fear of public speaking and your awareness is I'm acknowledging in the moment leading up to me having to give a presentation at work that my anxiety is starting to come on. Oh, it's popping up. Okay. So what I'm going to do is my practice is I'm going to develop a grounding technique.

such as deep breathing. I'm going to do 20 deep breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to visualize what I want this talk to look like. I'm going to visualize my success and I'm going to implement my breathing and visualization before I go up and speak. And this strategy, each time that you do it, will help you prepare to speak and go up there until your confidence naturally starts to grow from doing something over and over again.

Okay, let's say I want to break the cycle of being a people pleaser. Well, okay, my awareness is I'm recognizing in the moment when I'm starting to want to please this other person out of fear of rejection. Maybe I'm at work and I'm saying yes to too many things. One of my coworkers asked me if I can do this thing and they asked me if I could do this thing and they just, I just say yes and I say yes because I'm just such a people pleaser. Okay, I'm noticing that's something that I do

So my practice is going to be next time somebody comes up to me and says, hey, can you do this for me at work? Instead of just saying yes and being a yes man to everybody, my practice is going to be to say, let me check my schedule and get back to you. Is that okay? And then you just give yourself some time to reflect. And usually that little bit of a buffer, the person will go to somebody else or they'll figure it out on their own. And so my awareness is, I'm a people pleaser. My practice is, let me pause. I'm going to say, let me check my schedule and get back to you.

And then the repetition, when I'm doing this over and over again, you use this response consistently until it feels easier to start to prioritize your own needs. Okay, let's say that you overspend. Maybe you spend too much or maybe you just get bored and you just go online or maybe you get stressed and you go online and you shop. And so you have this impulse spending.

And so your awareness is you're starting to catch yourself when you get this feeling, this urge to buy something that you don't need or something that wasn't planned. And so maybe you're noticing that you're spending too much money and you're now aware of it. Okay, well, the next time I find my, this is my practice, next time I find myself about to check out for buying a t-shirt and a pair of pants on some random website because I got hit with an Instagram ad, I'm going to implement the 24-hour rule.

And that 24-hour rule is when I buy something, when I'm about to buy something that I hadn't planned, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give myself 24 hours to wait to see if it's something that I actually need and it's intentional or if it's just impulse buying. And that 24-hour rule is now going to give me a little bit of a gap so therefore I'm not just impulse buying things. So it's very simple. What you need to do is figure out

If I see something that I want to buy online, I'm just going to wait 24 hours. And if I still want it, and if I feel like I need it, I can buy it after 24 hours. That's the awareness. That's the practice. That's the repetition. And with the repetition over time, with you using the 24 hour rule, every potential impulse buy happens.

you can actually use until you develop financial discipline to be able to say, do I need it? Do I not need it? Ah, you know, I don't really need it. I'm just going to let it go. So I'm not making decisions based off of, hey, I want to get a hit of dopamine by buying this new thing.

And then the last example I'll give you, and hopefully these are helping you and hitting home in some sort of way. Let's say that you want to develop more gratitude. You just want to be more grateful. You notice moments when you're focusing on what you don't have. You notice moments when you're focusing on how you're a victim, or you're noticing moments where you're just focusing on what's going wrong in your life. And you're like, you know what I do? When you're not in those moments, you have these moments of like, hey, I do have a lot to be grateful for. I need to be better at paying attention to what I do have versus focusing on what I don't

And so you have that awareness. Well, then the practice, when you find yourself being down on yourself or thinking about what you don't have or what's going wrong or what you lack, the practice can be when I find myself in that moment, I'm going to take myself out of it. I'm going to find a pen and paper, like really, instead of just thinking of this, find a pen and paper. It gives yourself some time to really have to get yourself out of your pattern and write down three things that you're grateful for in that moment. And you know what?

Another really good way to develop more gratitude is when I wake up in the morning and I'm sitting down and I'm drinking my cup of coffee, I'm going to write down three things that I'm grateful for. And then at the end of the day, I'm going to write down three things that I'm grateful for from that day. And so the repetition of it, by using this repetition, you're using this daily practice until your gratitude becomes more of a habitual mindset for you versus all this focusing on what you don't have.

And so I just wanted to give you these examples to understand that whatever it is that's within you that you want to kind of change, it can all be changed. It's not going to change in a moment. Everybody wants it to be changed yesterday. It's going to take time. But if you're 35 years old, you've got 35 years of programming.

Find the one thing that you feel is holding you back the most, develop the awareness around it. And when you notice that thing popping up, have a practice that you decide right now to get yourself out of that and say, I'm going to stop this programming.

And I'm going to start a new program. I'm going to stop this programming of thinking that I don't have enough in my life, or I'm going to stop this programming of impulse buying, or I'm going to stop this programming of people pleasing, or I'm going to stop this programming of not...

communicating correctly in my relationships. I'm going to stop this programming of procrastination. I'm going to stop this programming of not eating healthy. I'm going to stop this programming of negative self-talk. And you decide, I'm an adult. I'm going to start my own patterns from this moment forward and reprogram myself to be the person that I want to be. And it is through awareness,

When it's happening, it is through a practice that you decide now and you do when that awareness pops up and it's through absolute repetition because repetition is a mother of all skill. And if you do this over and over and over again, you can reprogram your mind.

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 when I see all the hundreds of you guys that share every single one of these podcast episodes. And it's what really helps this podcast grow. So if you do that, I greatly appreciate it. And once again, if you want to go ahead and download my free goals book, all you have to do is go to goals with an S2025.com. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode, making sure mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day.

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