How to Get Through Hard Times
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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 take my identity quiz to make sure you understand who you are as a person and also what you need to do in order to change the identity that you have into becoming the person that you want to be, go to identityunlockquiz.com. It's absolutely free. Once again, identityunlockquiz.com.

Today, we're going to be talking about how to make it through the hard times. Because as you've heard me say before on this podcast, life is beautiful. It's amazing. But also, it's really freaking hard a lot of times as well. Sometimes it can be amazing. And the next day, it can be a shit show. It's up, it's down, it's terrible. Sometimes it's pure bliss. Other times...

And I want you to realize that this duality of amazing and really freaking hard is not a flaw in the design of life. It is part of the design of life. Life was never meant to just be flatlined and just even. You have to have contrast in life. The contrast of joy only comes from having the moments where you've been in absolute pure agony.

You know, you cannot have good without having bad. You cannot understand true happiness unless you've been deeply sad at some point in time in your life. And so...

I want to talk about that first off and just really put that out there. But one thing is really for sure. If you're going to continue to do this human thing, which I hope you want to continue to keep doing this human thing with me, there's going to be hard moments in your life. Maybe you're going through hard moments right now. Maybe you've been through hard moments in the past that you haven't extracted the lessons from where you really can. And, you know, you're probably going to have some hard moments in your life in the future.

And so the sooner that you accept that life is going to be hard and not see it as like a punishment, but a part of the process, the more that you'll learn from it and the less that you'll resist it as well. You know, when I was younger,

And I went through a lot of hard times. I used to always have this unconscious, kind of conscious story in the back of my head or this question, I guess you could say, in the back of my head, which is when I would go through something hard, it was always like, why is this happening to me? Why does everybody else have luck? And why do I have such bad luck? And I would complain and I would make excuses and I would just look at the situation and the circumstance and I would want it to be different.

And basically without knowing it, I would make myself into this victim of the circumstance. And when you make yourself into the victim, that really puts you in a place with absolutely no power. And you're just kind of sitting around waiting as if someone's going to come and save you. And nobody ever came and saved me. So I was just kind of sitting there like, well, I'm a victim. Why does this always happen to me? When's my life going to be better?

And nobody ever came and saved me until I woke up and realized, oh, this is my job. This is what the universe or God or my soul or whatever it is has given me for me to get better and to improve in this life. In this victim mindset, it's really sneaky because it sounds like self-pity, but really what it is, is it's an extremely flawed mindset and it makes us stay small.

And it makes us feel safe because it's like, well, you know, I wasn't the one who did this. I'm not in control. There's nothing that I can do. And basically what we do in this situation when we go through these hard moments and we have the victim mindset is we give away our power and then we get frustrated that no one's coming to fix it for us. And as I got older and as I matured and started to see life from a different perspective and I guess...

gained more wisdom, I realized looking at some of the hardest moments of my life, those are the moments when I had the most growth in my life. When I learned the most about myself, when I learned the most about other people, when I learned the most about what the world is and how to act in it. And those are the moments where I really, really learned the most. And I

I really didn't learn a whole lot during my easy moments in life. Like, sure, there's some lessons and some books that I've read and things that have happened, but I didn't really learn all that much about life or gain wisdom when shit was going really well. You know, when I was growing up with an alcoholic father,

I learned a lot about human psychology, like a lot about human psychology. Seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 years old. You know, and I watched what was going on with my father and I connected that with his demons that he had when he was younger in life.

I learned about human psychology. And when I watched what was going on with my mother in the situation, I learned about human psychology. When I watched what was going on with my sister in the situation, I learned about human psychology. I watched how I fit into the situation. I learned a lot about human psychology as well. In all of that, even though I didn't want to go through it and I would never want to go through it again and I wouldn't put it on my worst enemies, it set me up to do what I do now.

Because, you know, I have 30 something years of knowledge of human psychology now because of how soon that started in my life.

You know, my father passed away when I was 15 years old and I got to see and understand and learn and watch what happens when you have some trauma that you don't overcome and what it can do to you and addiction and how I interacted with it and my mom did and my sister did. You know, I've had breakups in my life that were terrible heartbreaks and I had them and they were really, really hard, but I learned a lot about myself, what I liked, what I didn't like, what I wanted in a relationship, red flags in a relationship.

I learned a lot when I had, I've had multiple failed businesses since I was 19 years old. I learned a lot through those multiple failed businesses. I would say I learned more about business in my failed businesses than my business that I've had now for, you know,

six, seven, eight years, whatever it is, I guess we're at, yeah, almost 10 years actually now that I think about it. And through those multiple failed businesses, I probably learned more there than I did at this business that has been my most successful business that I've been running for almost 10 years now. Oh my God, there's so much to learn. When I decided to move to a different state, when I moved from Florida to Texas, which I've now been here for over a decade,

I learned a lot about myself and the fears and limiting beliefs that came up as well. And here's why I'm saying all of these is just so you can understand that each of these weren't just life events. They were kind of like personal rites of passage. These are places where your character gets forged, where you figure out who you are, where you start to become more resilient through these things.

And all of these things that I'm talking about were hard. And I mean, very, very hard. But I learned more about myself and life and all of that in those moments. And what I say in this podcast, and I really truly believe, is that your life is the perfectly crafted curriculum for your soul to learn whatever it needs to learn while you're here in this 3D realm inhabiting this body that you're in right now.

Like this is the perfectly crafted curriculum. I believe that my soul came down here and took this body because it knew exactly what was going to happen and it needed to extract the lessons for whatever adventure it goes on after I get rid of this body that I have. You might call me weird for thinking it that way. That's just the way that I see it. That's the way that I see my world that I live in. And if I'm sitting around and I'm complaining and I'm wanting it to be different, I'm missing the freaking magic that's right in front of me.

Think of your life as this custom-built course. No one else is in this course with you. So every challenge is tailor-made for you to go through your next breakthrough.

That relationship, that loss, that moment where you thought you'd break, they weren't detours from where your life is supposed to go. They were data to give you what you needed to get to the next level of your life. I had this conversation with a friend of mine this morning, actually, and he was talking about like, he's going through a really hard time right now. And, you know, I listened with empathy and then I started talking to him about like,

Yeah. But what I have found is that a breakdown like in the system in your life is usually coming right before a breakthrough. Cause he's like, this is the hardest moment I've had in my life with business and with this and with that. And I was like, yeah, you have to realize you're so freaking close to a massive breakthrough in your life. You've got to stop

sitting back and getting in your emotions and not taking the actions you need to because right before a huge breakthrough is usually a breakdown and you're in the middle of your biggest breakdown so far. And so one of the biggest shifts that happened in my life was me really consciously adopting and switching from why is this happening to me to what can I learn from this?

Like, why is this a gift? I'm going through this really hard moment. Why is this a gift? And we will be right back. And now back to the show. Why is the universe giving me this lesson? You know, what am I supposed to get from it? And this one switch from victim to student can literally rewire your brain.

Neuroscience actually shows that curiosity quiets your fear. So if you're in this moment of like, I don't know if I'm going to get through it and I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills or this relationship or this business, whatever it might be. If you start getting curious about it, why am I going through this? What am I supposed to learn? How am I going to get through it? Is this something that I want to continue to keep doing? Whether that be my business or whether that be a relationship. When you ask yourself better questions,

you, number one, get better answers, obviously. But number two is you access a better mindset because you actually start to see things from a different perspective. And when you can see something from a different perspective and look at it differently in some sort of way, your mindset can actually shift because you only see your life through the lens of what you're thinking. Think about that for a second. Like you only see your life through the lens of what you're thinking.

in the questions that you're asking yourself. So if you're saying something like, why is this happening to me? You're going to find the answers to that. I always say your brain's kind of like cosmic Google. Whatever you ask of it, it will find the answers. So ask yourself better answers. I always give this example because I heard about it one time and I did it and it actually popped up, is if you go to Google right now and type

Is coffee bad for your eyesight? There are studies that pop up that show that coffee is bad for your eyesight. If you go into Google and you type on, type is coffee good for your eyesight, there are studies that show that coffee's good for your eyesight. Which one's the truth? Well, I guess whichever one you believe. And so if you ask yourself questions that are victim questions, why is this happening to me?

Why am I always so unlucky? Boop, boopie doo. Your brain will find the answers for that. Well, it's happening to you because you're a bad person or it's happening to you because you're unlovable. It's happening to you because you're a failure. You'll never amount to anything. Well, that makes me feel like shit when I think that way. So maybe I should ask myself a better question because the negative thoughts, they're not just unhelpful. They're kind of hypnotic.

Like when you repeat thoughts over and over and over and over again, they become beliefs and they hypnotize you into seeing the world differently. And when you have beliefs, your beliefs will shape your behavior and you live in a world of what you believe. Even if you believe a lie that was whispered to you when you were five years old, you live in that world if you believe it.

And your beliefs, they shape your behavior and your behavior basically turns into eventually the results that you're going to get in your life. And so if you're sitting there and you ask yourself the questions that are, why is this happening to me? You will find the answers to it and you will perpetuate your own fears and own limiting beliefs while you're already going through a really hard time in your life. What if we took a step back and what if we changed our questions and

how would that shift our perspective? So instead of saying, why is this happening to me when I'm going through a really hard time? What if we sit back and we say, hey, what am I supposed to learn from this? You know, how can I not make this mistake again in my future? Maybe you get like, oh, well, there are these red flags that were in the relationship or whatever it might be. You can challenge yourself to think differently.

So instead of saying something like this shouldn't be happening, what if you ask yourself a question like, what if this is preparing me for something bigger? What if this is preparing me for what I asked for? Because sometimes the breakdown happens right before the breakthrough. And so this is what I did with my friend when we were chatting this morning is he was telling me all about it. I was like, hey, I completely understand what you're going through and it's really hard. And I was empathetic towards him. And then I said, hey, what do you think you're supposed to learn from this? And he was like, huh?

That's a really good question. I don't know. I haven't thought about it. I said, okay, what do you think you're supposed to learn from it? We were talking about his business and how his business is not going the way that he wanted to and he might have to get a job and he's really frustrated by it and he's really living in a victim mindset.

I was like, what do you think you're supposed to learn from this? And he's like, well, I've been questioning my self-worth and I've been living in fear. And he started like, as I asked him a question, it was like the question accessed a different part of his brain. And he got really curious. He's like, huh, that's interesting. And he's like, you know, he started telling me all about this and his fears and his limiting belief and self-worth and all that stuff. And I said to him, I go, is your business the only place where this lives? And he's like, no, it pops up in my relationships and it pops up in this and pops up in this.

And I said, well, what if this is just the universe trying to show you that there's this thing that's holding you back in your mindset and it's right there and this is the thing that you need to work through. So it's like, yeah, sure, you want to grow your business, but you're not going to grow your business unless you work through this mindset thing. And if you work through the mindset thing, naturally the business should fix itself because the business is not the problem. So I said to him, I was like, listen, obviously the business is not the problem. You are the problem. So what is the problem that you're bringing to the business that you need to solve and

in your own mind, that will then automatically just solve it. The business will solve itself when you fix in yourself. And really what this is, is it's giving you an opportunity to get out of your normal way of thinking and find new pathways in the brain. And when you create these types of thoughts and question yourself and you think differently, you create new neural pathways in your brain. It's called neuroplasticity.

And so, you know, when you think differently, you're going to see the world differently. When you ask yourself different questions, you're going to think differently. When you think differently, you're going to see the world differently. When you see the world differently, you're going to have different beliefs. And when you have different beliefs, you'll have different behaviors. When you have different behaviors, you'll create a different life. And so what if everything in this world, even when you're going through the really hard moments, is happening for you? I know it sounds corny and cliche and like there's always a silver lining and all of that. But what if

It is happening for you. Well, you have to get out of this victim mindset of why is this happening to me and start asking why is this happening for me? How is this happening for me? How is this something that's going to be helping me later in life? What's the lesson I need to extract from this moment? And then you actually start to get purpose from the hard moment that you're going through. Here's the kicker. When you believe that life is happening for you, you start acting like the main character in your life instead of like,

the sidekick, your energy will change. Your decisions will change. Your life will change because of it. And so what if everything is happening for you? Think about the hardest moment in your life that you went through. What if that moment was brought to you for a reason for you to learn and grow? It was like the biggest exam that you've taken so far. What if there was this unseen force that

whatever you want to call it, God, the universe, life, that was just always looking out for you. It's always looking out for your best interest and it's saying, well, hey, you need this lesson because this is what you need to work through. And maybe you've just been missing it.

You know, if you're going through hell, keep going. Like the phrase says, you know, if you're going through hell, why would you just sit down and have a victim mindset and be like, oh, woe is me. No, keep going, work through it. Like I said before, the breakthrough, there's always some sort of breakdown. Think about like a seed. A seed needs to completely destroy itself before it sprouts. A muscle tears before it strengthens. When your muscles are sore, that's tons of micro tears, microscopic tears that are inside of your muscles.

Your muscle must tear before it strengthens. You know, if you're before your heart expands and you start loving people more, you kind of got to go through a heartbreak sometimes. Start learning more. You start having more empathy after that. Breakdown is usually the precursor to growth. And so I want you to think about this. If you're going through a hard moment, I want you to get your journal out. I want you to write down the question. What am I supposed to learn from this?

If you had a hard moment, maybe you're not going through, you know, life's been pretty good right now. Think about a hard moment that happened three years ago and say, what was I supposed to learn from that? Are there any lessons that I didn't pull out of that moment? You know, how is this going to help me grow? How is it going to make me more resilient? You know, maybe there's some sort of gift that's in there. What is the gift that is hidden inside of this challenge that's in front of me? Or what is the gift that was hidden inside of that challenge?

Do I want to never forget about this? Like, what do I want to never forget about this? Like, I want to remember, oh, well, that heartbreak in that person. There were some red flags. I want to make sure I have those red flags so I could see them in the next person I get into a relationship with. Cool. There's a lesson there. You just pulled it out. And what you do is you start to ask yourself these questions and see if you can see from a different perspective. And then you integrate the lessons into your life. This is where really life is where you're supposed to grow. Like, your life is a classroom.

If you went through hell or you're going through hell, please get the lesson. At least get something good out of it. And don't forget it. Once you've identified the lesson, then you take it and you integrate that lesson into your daily life. It might mean changing certain behaviors. It might mean adopting new thought patterns. It might mean having more empathy. It might mean having more courage, taking different actions in your life that align with the lesson that you learned, whatever it might be.

And so really what I want to hopefully make you start to see differently is that the hardest moments of your life are always brought to you for your benefit. And so don't play the victim mindset. Instead, become the student and start to think differently and see differently and say, what can I get from this so that I can become stronger from this event?

And that is how you really get through the hardest moments of your life and grow from every single one of them. 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 in it. Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. So if you would share it, it's really a way to give back to help us grow to help more people. And 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.