Why You Feel Empty
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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. I put out episodes four times a week for the past 10 years to help you learn, grow, and improve yourself. So if that's something that you want to do, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Let's learn and grow together. Today, we're going to be talking about how to improve your mindset.

We're going to be talking about the reason why you suffer, the reason why we all suffer. I am not immune to this in any sort of way. Today we're going to talk about where most human suffering comes from. Before I do that, I want to talk to you about the difference really quickly between pain and suffering because pain

We kind of put the two things together, but they're two completely different things. So pain is basically life. There is pain. Pain is inevitable. And pain is not always in your control. So things happen in life. You will, you know, people get in car accidents. People you love will die. People will get sick. There's many different things that will happen throughout your life that are painful and in

Pain is inevitable, and it's not always in control, but suffering is in our control. Suffering is our decision. It's usually an unconscious decision, but it's actually our decision where we continue to suffer. And there's a couple reasons why we suffer. And the reason that we kind of suffer, I'm going to start way back in childhood, and

And I'm gonna kind of give you my idea and what I've noticed about people. I'm always thinking like, why are people this way? Why is it that so many people have this feeling deep down inside them, this paradigm, this identity of I'm not enough. I'm not good enough or smart enough or pretty enough or I'll never be successful, never make enough money. I might not be able to support my children. What if this happens? What if that happens? And so if we go back to childhood, right?

When you look at a child and you look at a young child, they're their true selves. Like if you ever see like a one-year-old, a two-year-old, a three-year-old, they are their true selves. And, you know, things happen. And, you know, if you're changing a baby's diaper and they are six months old and you have your coffee next to you and their leg kicks the coffee and knocks it off the table, you're not going to yell at the child.

They're six months old. They don't know what they're doing. Same thing might happen. Maybe they're a year old. They're starting to learn how to walk. They go and they knock coffee off the table. You're not going to yell at them because they're still not really knowing what they're doing. But at some point in time, that exact same thing or something like it, this is just an example, could happen to a three-year-old or a four-year-old. They can knock something off and the parent will yell at them.

Or, and it's like, they should know better is kind of the way that they're treated, right? Or a child is being too loud. They're screaming in a restaurant and the parent ends up, you know, hushing them. They're, they scorn them for it in some sort of way, or they're, they're running around public and they're being, they're loud and rambunctious and truest version of themselves. And they get yelled at to stop running, to be quiet. The average child is reprimanded eight times more than they're praised.

Which means that the average child thinks to themselves, I am not enough, eight times more than they think that they are enough. And the problem is, because of children's perception, they think when they're being yelled at, that it is a retraction of love from their parents. And so they want to get their parents' love. So they start thinking to themselves subconsciously, we all think this to ourselves, we've all been through this process most likely.

I need to change myself for me to not be reprimanded as much so that I can get my parents' love. Right? You following me? And so what we do is we change ourselves. We're not as loud. We're not as rambunctious. We become who we need to become in order to fit in. And so what we have done is we have, in a sense, at some point in time, all of us abandoned our true self in order to fit in.

And so we learned that our true self does not fit in with our parents at first. This is our perception of it. Even if your parents are just very loving, but they're an average parent, which is reprimand a child eight times more than their praise. And sometimes you got to reprimand children. They're crazy. They want to jump off of a wall and they could injure themselves. And so they're thinking to themselves like, I'm not smart enough. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not good enough. My parents are retracting my love. And all of this is subconscious. But we learn, first off, that our true self

does not fit in with our parents is kind of what we think. And then we get old and realize that our true self doesn't fit in with society. And we've got to change ourself and mold ourself, we think, to fit in.

And so there's a guy named Soren Kirkland. I'm hoping to say the name. Kierkegaard. I can't pronounce his last name. It's a heck of a last name. He's a Danish philosopher. And he basically broke down the way that most people kind of go through and become someone that they're not.

And so what happens is we get to this point of unconsciously we think to ourselves, I wish to be someone other than I am, right? So as children, we change ourselves from childhood to fit in. First, we change from our parents. Then we change so that we fit in with other children. And then we go into middle school. If you guys remember, middle school is really hard and you have to fit in with all the other kids and try to be part of a crew and be like them and act like them. High school is the same way.

And then we go and we go to college and we either do what our parents tell us to do, we do what we think society wants us to do, or something that we can do to make money so that we can keep up with the Joneses. All of it is some different disguise of fitting in. And fitting in basically means abandoning our true self, not being our truest self and being something that we think we need to be in order to fit in.

So we become what we think we need to become in order to fit in with other people, with society, with other children, with our parents as a child. And this is also why so many people become people pleasers as well. We are like, you know, as someone's a people pleaser, like I'm going to abandon my true self so that I can please this person.

And so when you decide, usually subconsciously, especially as a child and then as you get older, it can be actually a conscious thought, I want to be different than I am. I want to be someone different than I actually truly am. I want to be different than I am. One of two things happens. Number one, we try to become someone else. And so we become someone else and we try and we try and we try and we fail at becoming someone else. And we realize we can't become someone else.

We are the same that we've always been. And then what we do is we despise ourself for it. We get kind of mad at ourself. Why can't I change myself? Why can't I be someone else?

And this will all make sense as I pull it all together. But I fail at becoming someone else and I despise myself for not being able to do it. I despise myself for failing. I despise myself for not being who I want to be. Why can't I just be different? Why can't I be different than I am? Why can't I be more of this or more of that? Or why can't I look more like this or more like that? Or less like this or less like that? We want to change ourselves.

The foundation of this thought is I don't want to be who I am. We can either go and we can try to change ourself and we can fail at trying to be someone else, or the other route, we could succeed at becoming someone else and we abandon our true self. And so we become someone completely different than we truly are.

I lose myself in a character that I have to play. And it's kind of like, you've heard me say it over and over again. And I talk about Jim Carrey when he ends up being a method actor and he ends up playing Andy Kaufman and he loses himself in the role. And months down the road after he stops playing Andy Kaufman, he's like, I don't remember who Jim Carrey was. And that was like the awakening, his spiritual awakening of like, he realized that Jim Carrey was just a character that he was playing. It wasn't his true self.

And so we can succeed at not being ourselves and we can succeed and abandon our true selves and be someone else. And we lose ourself in a character that I have to play. But the foundation of that is exactly the same as the foundation of the other one. The foundation is I don't want to be who I am. I don't want to be who I am. Either way, I lose my true self. And this is where you really start to see

and the pieces start to come together. Either way, I lose my true self. I disconnect from who I truly am, that little boy that's inside of me that I was when I was two years old and three years old, and I would go on a walk with my mom, and I'd pick up

flowers for her, I pick up rocks and I give it to her, I disconnect from who I truly am. We lose that version of ourselves, which is our truest version of ourselves. And we disconnect from who we truly are. Either we disconnect from who we truly are and we become somebody else or pretend like we're someone else, or we try to become someone else and we fail at it. And then we despise our true selves for it. And when I disconnect from who I truly am, that's never going to make me happy.

It will never bring me true peace to not be who I truly am. It will never bring me true peace to be someone other than I truly am. Resisting your true self is the thing that causes so much turmoil inside of you. And so we get so far away from who we truly are that we don't really know who we are anymore.

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And now back to the show. And you might be listening to this podcast because you've started to become aware of that. It took me years to become aware of like, who the f*** am I? I've been playing this game to be somebody else and acting like I want to be this. And I don't want to be who I am, but I want to be my true self. And I don't know who my true self is. And I don't know who I've been pretending to be. And it can be a rude awakening. And a lot of people can have a midlife crisis of like, what did I, what is this? This life that I built isn't even a life that I truly want. It's like a life that I felt like I was supposed to build.

And so we get so far away from who we truly are that we don't really know who we truly are anymore. And maybe I have to, you know, make myself tough because the world is tough and it will beat me up. But really deep down inside, I'm just that soft, emotional being that just wants love. Like one of the things for me that I realized years ago, I kind of woke up to the fact through a rude awakening, and I've told this story many times before, but

One of my mentors took me out to lunch, to Chipotle. We had burritos. And I was like 21 years old. I was running the number one office in a company that had 700 offices. And he's like, hey, man, I don't know how to tell you this, but a lot of people don't like you. And I was like, what are you talking about? I thought it was hot shit. I was awesome. I was running the number one office in the United States in this $200 million company. I thought it was great. He's like, a lot of people don't like you.

I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, the person that you present is not who you truly are. He's like, I've known you for a couple of years now. I know your true self. I know who you truly are. And you're really not the same person that you present.

And I was like, what do you mean by that? I started to realize that I was presenting this really brash, aggressive person. And I would, you know, try to cut you first so you would never try to cut me because I was so weak and so afraid of being vulnerable that I wanted to essentially keep people at a distance so that you couldn't see my true self, right? Because I didn't know who my true self was. I was afraid of my true self.

And so deep down, it's like I would try to hurt someone first and keep them at a distance, keep them at arm's length, right? When really deep down, I was just that little boy, that soft emotional being that just picked flowers for his mom, right? And the only way that you will find true peace is to be who you truly are, to stop resisting all of the ways that you truly are, to stop trying to be someone that you're not, and to fully accept who you truly are.

Because ultimately, we all get lost. And the only way to really truly find yourself is to lose yourself. You cannot find yourself if you don't lose yourself first. So if you are the type of person where you're out there and you're listening to me and you're like, oh my God, I'm so lost. This makes sense. I don't know who the fuck I am. You're in the perfect position because you have to lose yourself to find yourself. To escape despair, anxiety, depression, all of that that we can get from it, I must accept my true self.

And, you know, Soren, the philosopher, said that despair vanishes when we stop denying who we are, who we really are, and attempt to uncover and accept our true self. Despair vanishes when we stop denying who we really are and we attempt to uncover and accept our true self. So we must go on this path of self-discovery. And it's not like an overnight thing. It's probably the rest of your life. It's a year long, years and years and years. Hopefully I'll find myself fully by 76.

But it's a journey. There is no destination to it. And so we must all go on the path of self-discovery. And now when I say to you, accept who you truly are, I mean, and I really mean who you are.

Every aspect of you and the quote unquote good and the quote unquote bad, both of those, there is no good side of you and there's no bad side of you because the title of bad makes us want to resist it, makes us want to get rid of it. But in all aspects, I mean the whole organism of who you are. The labeling of the good and bad is part of the problem. So accept that there are sides of you that are great.

Once again, I'm labeling, I understand. There's sides of you that are great though. There's sides of you that are sweet. Sides of you that are loving. There's sides of you that are great to be around. There's sides of you that are really nice. And some people get to see that, right?

you've got to accept those sides of you. But if you're going to accept those sides of you, you've also got to accept the sides of you that are just a little bit shitty sometimes, right? We're all a little bit selfish. We're all judgmental. We're all arrogant in some ways. We all can be brash and rude and, you know, thinking of ourselves, all of that stuff. So there are great parts of you. Once again, I'm labeling and I understand that the labeling is just

Not helping here, but I'm just using it as an example There's great sides of you and there's sh*tty sides of you. The path is really accepting the good sides But more than anything else is really accepting the other sides of you. The lack of acceptance in them is what's causing the internal resistance. To see the selfish side of you and be like I don't want to be that anymore is actually causing even more resistance. But when you see the selfish side of you and you say yeah,

you know what? There is a selfish side of me that exists. That's okay, because that's just part of being human. There is a judgmental side of me. That's okay. It's part of being human. There's an arrogant side of me. It's okay. That's part of being human. And it's kind of like a symphony, you know, like there's a symphony of aspects of different parts of ourself. But, you know, the selfish side doesn't have to be, you know, doing a solo in the symphony all day long. I could come up sometimes and go away sometimes. Sometimes there is benefit of being selfish.

Sometimes there's not. Sometimes there is benefit in being judgmental. Sometimes there's not. And so it's about accepting every single aspect of ourself. Now,

Really what it comes down to is when we look at the basis of the real problem, the foundation was, I don't want to be who I am. And that's what causes all of the problems. So if I don't want to be who I am is what causes all the problems, what mindset would fix all the problems? I love myself as I am. The love and acceptance that you're searching for from other people in this world is actually true. The love and acceptance that you're searching for in yourself. I love every part of me. The amazing Rob and the sh** you.

Rob, right? As Alan Watts says, the scoundrel. You have to love every single part of you. Now, I know what's coming up in some of your minds because this happened to me, is if I accept myself, if I love myself, will I lose motivation? Won't I get lazy? What, am I just going to sit around and just pure bliss? Nothing's going to become of my life? No, no, no. You won't lose motivation. If I love myself, will I get lazy? That's pretty wild to actually think about, right? As if we have to hate ourselves,

who we currently are in order to be motivated. That doesn't make any sense. It makes moving, in all honesty, the motivation doesn't change, but it makes moving through this world so much easier because you don't feel like you have a backpack that's just this weight on your back all day long. And when you just decide to love and accept yourself, every aspect of yourself, it doesn't make you less motivated, but it makes it so much easier to move through this world. So instead of feeling motivated,

Instead of feeling like life and success is like pushing a boulder up a hill and all of that, it's just kind of like, you know, it feels a little bit easier. It's like jumping in a river and letting the river just kind of take you. It's full alignment and it's picking up the great things in life that pass you along in the river. It becomes much more effortless. Life becomes much more effortless because there's not that internal resistance fighting who we are at all moments.

And we think, you know, and I've caught myself here before, we think that becoming successful will make us feel better. It won't. I promise you that. There's many successful people that end up killing themselves because it doesn't make them feel any better about themselves. Nothing changes.

depending on how much money you have in your bank account. Money in your bank account is just a thing, just like I'm wearing a white colored shirt right now. That's just a thing. It doesn't make me who I am. So the white colored shirt doesn't make me who I am just as far as the money in my bank account doesn't make me who I am. So becoming successful, we think will make us feel better, but nothing changes.

Buying the house that's all big and nice we think will make us feel better, but nothing changes. The car, the clothes, the millions of dollars in the bank account, all of those things, nothing changes. You still feel the same internally. Nothing you could ever do or achieve can make you more or less than what you currently are. Are you more of a human now or less of a human now than if you made a million dollars in a year?

No. A million dollars isn't going to make you more or less of a human. It just happens to be a thing. Right? Are you more of a human when you buy a house? No. And like there's a meditation I've brought in quite a few times. It's a gift from a guy named Mooji, M-O-O-J-I, that I've done. It's like a 20-minute guided meditation I used to do years ago. And one of the things he used to always say is you have no pockets. You have no storehouse.

And what he means by that is that you are this naked human with nothing on you. You have no pockets. You have no storehouse. When you came into this world, you were naked. When you leave this world, you're going to be naked and you will not be able to bring anything with you. You have no pockets to bring with you into the afterlife. You have no storehouse to bring with you in the afterlife. So nothing that you could do will ever make you more than what you currently are right now. If you'll die naked exactly as you came,

That means that nothing could ever add to you or take away from you, which means that as you currently are, you're already perfect. The only thing that's actually missing is your acceptance of yourself, which ultimately is what it comes down to.

acceptance of yourself as you are, all aspects of yourself, no matter what. That's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And with that, I'm gonna 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.

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