Happiness is All in Your Mind
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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 love this podcast and you want to dominate your 2025 goals, and you want to download my free ebook on exactly how to set, plan, and accomplish your goals, go to goals2025.com. Once again, goals with an S, 2025.com.

Today, we're going to talk about how to be happier. And I actually got a message, an email from somebody asking this question. So I'm going to read the email to you and we'll dive into it. So I get an email that says, Rob, I love your show. I have a question for you. I recently noticed that I'm not very happy

I remember when I was a kid, I used to be so happy. When I look back at home videos of me, I was always smiling. I was always laughing. I was always having fun. But it seems somehow I lost it along the way. How do I make myself be happy again? What can I do to get back to happiness? Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated.

So let me answer this question. Once again, if you guys want to send in video questions, so this was an email I sent to me, but if you want to send video questions for me to answer on the podcast, if you go to mindsetmentorpodcast.com, you can actually send in videos under two minutes to be able to hopefully have me answer you guys' questions. So let's talk about how to be happier. Wouldn't it be amazing if we just woke up every single day and just immediately we were just happy every day?

That would basically be heaven on earth, wouldn't it? It would. And...

I want you to think about this and start to think about happiness just in general. We search for pleasure. We search for things that we want to get. And when we look at, okay, I want to make my life more pleasurable, we think that pleasurable means that we're going to be happy. And it doesn't. It doesn't mean that at all. When I get more things that are pleasurable to me, more food or more sex or more cars or clothes or happiness, it's just going to bring in the happiness, right?

Well, it won't. Will Smith actually has a quote that says, happiness is not pleasure. Happiness is peace. And so we think that when we get more things, we get more of other people's approval, we get more money, we get a nice car so that people think we're awesome. Then we'll start to feel better about ourselves. And so people drink and they do drugs and some people have sex thinking that will make you feel better about yourself and that will make you happier. And then they realize that none of those things actually make them happy.

And so one of the things that I think is a great question that people always ask is, does money buy happiness? And some people think that it doesn't. Some people think that it doesn't. The richest person that I know is one of the most miserable people that I know. And he can buy almost anything in the world, has more planes and cars and houses than you can imagine, but he is not happy. So he is a perfect example to me in my life.

of money cannot buy happiness. And it's not the money that's causing him his unhappiness, just so you know. It's just money did not buy him his happiness. The only problems that money solves is money problems. That's it. It doesn't solve any other problems. Money cannot buy peace. It can buy things.

And so you could do anything that you want and have success and make all the money, all those things, but realize that you're still not happy. Many people do that as well. And if you become extremely wealthy and extremely successful, but you're still not happy, now you're just a rich, pissed off person.

And so when we go back to the question, if you look at the question, it's what do I need to do to make myself happy? Any tips or tricks to get myself back to happiness? And I think the biggest part is that the question is actually worded incorrectly. If you want to be happier, stop trying to do stuff. Try to start doing less. And so we say, well, what will make me happier though?

I want more things and I want these things I desire and I want success and I want other people's approval. None of those things are going to make you happy. You have to understand it's not that how do I get myself to be happier? It's how do I remove the things that are making me unhappy? Because happiness is a natural state that you have.

And so your natural state, just go on a journey with me. And I've had this kind of like this hypothesis for a while. And now that I have a baby at my house and I'm able to see him every single morning, I'm able to see his natural state. I feel like my hypothesis, at least to me, by being around him has been proven true. And so your natural state is peace and happiness. When this morning, when my son woke up,

We, we, you know, had him with us and he was asleep and he immediately woke up. He looked me in the eyes and then within a second, he was smiling and laughing. And I was like, man, he's just so happy when he's not hungry or he isn't dirty and hasn't peed or pooped and needs to be cleaned. He is the happiest person I've ever met.

And it's not just him. I have come from a huge family, many babies. Babies are always happy unless there's something wrong or they need to be changed or they're tired or whatever it might be. And so when you say to yourself, what do I need to do to be happy or what do we need to try or what tips or tricks do you have to being happy? It's the wrong approach. I gave this example the other day to somebody. It's like if you had a diamond ring and the diamond was covered in shit.

And you came up to me and you showed me this diamond that was covered in shit. And you say, hey, Rob, how do I make this shine more? You don't polish the shit. You remove it. And then the natural shine of the diamond is what is behind all of the shit.

So if happiness is our natural state, you don't try to do more. You don't try to achieve more. What you need to do is figure out what you need to stop doing, what you need to stop doing, and what you need to remove from your life that is in the way of your happiness, which is your natural state.

And so as I was making today's episode, I was like, let's just try to come up with a laundry list of things that people should stop doing, right? So here's a few things that I came up with. There's definitely a whole lot more, but number one, stop comparing yourself to other people. Two, stop seeking validation from others. Three, stop thinking that you should be further along in your life. Stop holding grudges. Stop trying to please every single person. Stop living in the past.

Stop worrying about the future. Stop focusing on only the negatives. Stop trying to be perfect. Stop being busy all the time. Stop people pleasing so much. And the list goes on and on and on and on and on.

So what we need to do and what I want you to think about is if you want to be happier, what I want you to think about is what is in the way of your peace and happiness. And peace and happiness are kind of, in my mind, interchangeable. I think the way I've heard it said is that happiness is peace in motion and peace is happiness at rest.

And we will be right back.

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And that's what I want you to think about. And I want you to figure out what it is and get laser-like focused to avoid or get rid of anything that steals your peace and happiness. And so what is stealing your peace? So there might be other people around you that are stealing your peace. Maybe if your natural state is peace and happiness and you get around somebody who is a complainer or a time vampire and they just try to bring you down or they suck your energy from you,

then they're probably going to be stealing your peace and happiness. Maybe you spend less time with them. That's the first thing that you should quote unquote do. Spend less time with them. That is a removal, right? What about how you speak to yourself in your head? Are you the one that's stealing your own peace? Are your thoughts the things that are stealing your own peace? Your worry? Your overthinking? Your stressing? What are you stressing about? Your shame? Your guilt?

I was on a call last week and I was talking with people that kind of had the same idea of like, but like, I'm stressing out about this. I'm stressing out about this. And I said, hey, just take a step back for a second. Like we're on a Zoom call, but just sit for a second. And I want you to kind of like mentally take yourself out of your body and just like as if you're looking at yourself sitting at your computer desk. And I want you to just be quiet for a second and just think about how in this moment, nothing is wrong.

Like your life is pretty good, but you keep telling yourself that it's not. You keep telling yourself that there's something that you're missing, something that you're lacking, something that you need that you don't have. But if you just take a step back in your mind right now and just pause for a second, things are pretty good. Like, are there other things that could change? Are there things that you want to be different? Sure. But right now in this moment, things are pretty good. That's the first thing I want you to realize. And as I said this, the woman that I was speaking to started smiling because she's like,

Yeah, you're right. Things are pretty good. My life isn't terrible. You know, if you listen to this podcast right now, your life probably is pretty okay. Can you start recognizing the things that are pretty okay? Can you start paying attention more though to like the way that you speak to yourself? Can you start paying attention to the way that you think inside of your head? Can you start paying attention to maybe I'm spending too much time watching the news? The news is definitely a stealer of peace. Maybe you're spending too much time on your phone.

Maybe you're getting caught up with all of the bad news that comes in from your phone. I remember reading a quote not too long ago that said, some poor phone-less fool is probably sitting next to a waterfall somewhere, completely unaware of how angry, scared, and mad he's supposed to be. Ignorance is bliss, right? So it's like the news gives you all of the things you're supposed to be so mad at. And this guy that doesn't have a phone, that's sitting over by a waterfall,

That poor man, he's just so unaware of how angry and scared he's supposed to be all the time. So what else is stealing your peace and happiness? Maybe social media, maybe TikTok, maybe Instagram, maybe Facebook. For me, I'll be honest with you. I realized a couple of years ago, I woke up one morning and I realized that about two hours after I woke up, I was having a great day, but for some reason I felt like crap.

I felt like kind of sad and I felt kind of anxious and I felt kind of worried. And I was like tracing back to like, what was going, what was I just doing? How did I get myself here? And I realized that I had like a few free moments in between calls. And I went onto my phone, I went onto Instagram and I saw some stories and I was immediately, it was, you know, when things were kind of crazy a few years ago.

I immediately started feeling worse. And there were certain people that I realized were actually making me feel worse about myself and the world based off of the things that they were putting in their stories and the us versus them type of stuff that they were saying. So I had to start unfollowing people, people that I actually know, people that I network with and have been to events with and spent time with and had dinners with. I was like, I got to unfollow this dude. And so Instagram, I have over the past few years unfollowed hundreds of people

There was a month when all of this happened where I've unfollowed on Facebook over 3,000 people, just unfriended all of those people. Because I was like, I don't want someone else to be stealing my peace and happiness. And if I'm noticing myself getting anxious and worried in the middle of the day because I happen to spend two minutes on my phone and seeing what other people are posting, that's not worth it to me. So maybe that's stealing your peace and happiness.

Maybe working an unfulfilling job is stealing your peace and happiness. Maybe not enough downtime where you're away from people and you're out in nature and you're just away from your phone. Maybe you don't have enough time like that. Maybe you have different social and societal and cultural pressures that you have in your head of the way that things should be that are making you steal your peace and happiness. You have to have

a really low tolerance for things that steal your peace. And you have to get good at removing the things that are stealing your peace and happiness. It's not easy at first because you're starting to make a lot of changes. You're starting to say no to things that you've been saying yes to for your entire life. But as you do it over and over again, it starts to become easier and easier. And I want you to understand that happiness is not a goal. For years, I really screwed this up.

where I was like working to be happier. I was trying to get to happiness. Like it was a destination to get to. Happiness and peace is not a destination that you get to. Happiness and peace is a state while you're on your journey. It's your birthright to be happy and to be peaceful. And so for me,

When I first found out that Lauren was pregnant, I was already starting to work at trying to be happier. But I remember once I found that, I started waking up every single morning. And if you want to call it a meditation, if you want to call it prayer, whatever it was, it was I would meditate and I would say, help me remove anything that I no longer need that I don't want to pass on to my son. I kept saying that every single day.

I started realizing that I needed to prioritize my peace and happiness because whatever I have inside of me, I'm going to pass on to him. And so I started prioritizing my peace and happiness. And the way that I started prioritizing it was not by working towards it, which was counterintuitive to what I thought in my entire life. It was, how can I start removing the things that are stealing it from me? Because this is my natural state. And so it's like, when I say it's not a destination, it's a state that you're in. It's like, I live in Austin, Texas. If I want to drive to Dallas,

Dallas is the destination. So if I want to be getting somewhere in my life, that can be the destination. But my state is how I travel. If I enjoy my ride to Dallas, if I put on my favorite music, if I do some karaoke with a friend in the car, that's the state that I'm traveling and how I feel along the way on my destination is what the state is.

I always thought like the destination was trying to get to happiness. And if I get this thing, if I buy this thing, if I achieve this thing, if I get people's approval, then I will get to my state of happiness. Now I have achieved my state of happiness as if it's something to achieve. No, it's just something that naturally lives inside of you. It's just stuff is covering it and you have to figure out what exactly it is. And so happiness is not the goal or happiness is not a goal. It's not a destination. It's a state. It is your natural state. One of your most natural states.

One of the questions that I always hear from people is, and I thought this for years, but if I'm happy, won't I lose all of my motivation? It's like, no, you won't. And I have found this with myself is I have not lost any of my motivation. I have not lost any of my ambition.

when I have become happier. I used to think that I had to struggle my way to success. And the great part about that I found is that I will still work towards everything that I want and try to achieve and try to have fun and try to build my business and build this podcast and build social media following and do events and run courses. I'll still do all of those things, but I don't have to be struggling and forcing myself or worrying the entire way or overthinking the entire time

Because if I have a destination of, okay, I want to write this book, for instance, I want to write book number two, right? That's my destination that I'm trying to get to. I don't have to hate every single day and struggle every single day in order to get to that destination. I can say, you know what? I'm still going to be happy and I'm going to be at peace while I am on my way to writing this book. And that's what I'm trying to get across here is that happiness is not something that you work towards.

Happiness is something that you have internally inside of you. It's just like the ring and the shit example. You just got to get rid of all the shit and you'll notice that your natural state under all of it is happiness. So

That's what I really want you to work on. Work on removing anything that is stealing your peace and your happiness from you. So that's all I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you're out there, once again, you want to download my free ebook on how to

achieve your goals for next year. Go to goals2025.com. Once again, goals with an S, 2025.com. Also, once again, if you do want to be able to submit a question for the podcast, go to mindsetmentorpodcast.com and you can submit your video questions there. With that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day. Is it time to reimagine your future?

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