You Need to Let Your Old Self Die

What if the only thing standing between you and the life you want is the old version of yourself you refuse to let go of? In this episode, I’ll show you why your brain keeps rebuilding your past, how to create a vivid vision of the person you’re becoming, and how to make that future version of you your filter for every decision. If you’re ready to stop going back to old habits, old beliefs, and old identities, this is your reminder to become more loyal to who you’re becoming than who you’ve been. Freedom Live is a 3-day live experience in Austin designed to help you break through what’s keeping you from your next level. Get $100 off your ticket: https://robdial.short.gy/freedomlive The Mindset Mentor™ podcast is designed for anyone desiring motivation, direction, and focus in life. Past guests of The Mindset Mentor include Tony Robbins, Matthew McConaughey, Jay Shetty, Andrew Huberman, Lewis Howes, Gregg Braden, Rich Roll, and Dr. Steven Gundry. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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• 1:50Speaker 00

  Investing involves risk. Performance not guaranteed. Betterment does not provide tax advice. TLH may not be suitable for all investors. Learn more at betterment.com/TLH-terms. Paid client ad. Views may not be representative. See App Store and Google Play reviews. Learn more at betterment.com/ambassadors.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another episode. And if you want to learn how to stop procrastinating and take real action, I created an in-depth video lesson and workbook to show you exactly how to take action when it really matters. I call it the Get Off Your Ass Masterclass. If you want to get it for free, you can go to getoffyourassclass.com. Once again, getoffyourassclass.com and you can get that lesson and workbook absolutely free. Today, I'm going to teach you why nothing in your life will change until your old self dies.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  Not improves, not changes a little bit, I mean actually dies off. And then I'm going to give you four things that you can actually do about it. So let's get into it. Here's the thing that you have to understand about your brain. Your brain does not build a future out of nothing. It builds your future out of your past. There is a Harvard researcher named Daniel Schacter, who spent decades studying this. And what he found is that when you imagine your future, your brain is not creating something new. It's pulling pieces out of your memory and reassembling them into a version of what's coming up.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  And so basically you're imagining tomorrow, but with pieces of yesterday, which means that your future is literally being built out of the raw material of your past. Like, think about what that means for a second. If the only data that your brain has of you is the version of you who quits three weeks into doing something, or the version of you that says yes when they mean no, or the version of you that's broke, or the version of you that's anxious, or the version of you that talks themselves like garbage, then that's basically the raw material that your mind has to work with to try to construct your future. If that's the case, how amazing do you think this future that it's going to create will be?

• 4:16Speaker 03

  So like when you sit down and you try to imagine an amazing future, your brain goes into your brain's archives. It pulls up who you've been and then hands you like a slightly nicer version of the same damn life. And so your brain cannot imagine a future if it has no footage of it. And so you are not creating a new life in this circumstance. What you're doing is you're recreating the old life with just like new decorations. And so almost 20 years ago, one of my very first mentors said something to me that I still do to this day. He told me that you need to have a magnificent obsession. That's what he called it. Not a goal, not a resolution, an obsession.

• 4:56Speaker 03

  A version of yourself that you think about so much, so often, in so much detail that your brain starts treating that person like a memory instead of a fantasy. That's the key. Do you get that? It treats it like a memory, not a fantasy. So therefore it can pull raw data from a memory that happens to be imagined and now construct your future. And I realized, you know, like I was already obsessed, but I was just obsessed. I was obsessed with the wrong guy. I thought about my failures all day long. Like I thought about my insecurities every day.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  I rehearsed all of my limitations and all of my limiting fears every single day. I was devoted to this old version of me. And so like, I want you to hear this because I think this might be you too. It's most people. The thing that's going on is that you're extremely disciplined at being loyal to an old version of you who is not taking you anywhere, but where you already are. You need to stop being loyal to your old self. You need to start being loyal to the person that you're building yourself into. And when I say magnificent obsession, this is how I want you to think about it. Do you remember your first love? Do you remember when you're like 17 years old?

• 6:19Speaker 03

  And like you get into your first long-term relationship and you're like obsessed with that person? Like, you know, you're driving your car and a song comes on. You're like, oh my God, this song reminds me of him. And then the next song comes on, you're like, oh my God, this song also reminds me of him. And then you drive by McDonald's, you're like, oh my God, I remember when we went on our first date and he took me through the drive-through, like whatever it is that you did, right? It's like you're obsessed. Nothing else in this world exists except for this person. That is the magnificent obsession that I want you to have. Not only do you visualize it every single day and who you're becoming, but it's all day long. You're thinking about who you're building yourself into and where you're trying to go in life.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  And so let me show you how to break out of the old version of yourself and how to stop being so damn loyal to the old version of yourself. Okay. First thing I want you to do, declare them dead, right? Declare them dead and get specific about who died. You know what dead means, right? Like dead means not coming back. Like when someone dies, you don't wonder, I wonder if they're coming by tomorrow, do you? Like you don't leave the light on just in case they stop by. Like you don't check the door to see if they're there. They're gone. It's over. It might be sad, but you will not be seeing them in this life again. That is the exact energy that you need to have around the old version of you.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  Stop being so fucking loyal to the version of you that you don't want to be anymore, right? So many people are so loyal to a version of themselves they don't want to be. And so you don't say something like, oh, I'm working on it or like, I'm trying to be better. No, dead, dead, they're gone, they're out of here. Get rid of them already, right? Like this is the thing where most people mess up. They say like, oh, well, yeah, you know, I killed off the old version of me. The old version of me is dead, but they never actually like get really clear on who that was. Like you can't kill someone that you don't know who they are. So you can't kill this version of you unless you know exactly who it was. And so what you want to do is you want to get a pen and paper. And I want you to like basically write out who is the version of you? What old versions of you need to die off?

• 8:29Speaker 03

  What did they believe? How did they treat themselves? What did they do every single day? What did they settle for? What did they believe? What were they scared of? How did they talk to other people in their lives, right? And like write out the actual sentences. The sentences like, I'm bad with money. I'm not a morning person. I always start strong and then I quit. I don't speak up. People like me or that come from the town that I come from, or that look like me, will never be successful. And we will be right back.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  I'm pro quarterback Drake May, and I got to call an audible. People say building long-term wealth is complicated, but Betterment is the trusted automated investing and savings app that makes it simple. Like me, they're focused on performance and make the long game look easy. Are you still spending time researching stocks and reinvesting your dividends? Audible. Betterment's tech and expert-built portfolios handle that for you automatically. Worried about surprise tax bills? Audible. Keep your cool and more of your potential returns with Betterment's tax-saving tech like tax loss harvesting or a tax impact preview before you trade. Think you need three different platforms for your money? Audible. No one has time for all that. Betterment is one easy and simple app where you can see your total net worth, all your accounts, and your returns. Over a million people trust Betterment to help build their wealth with confidence. And if you're not one of them, it's time you call an audible too.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Get started at betterment.com or download the app.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  Investing involves risk. Performance not guaranteed. Betterment does not provide tax advice. TLH may not be suitable for all investors. Learn more at betterment.com/TLH-terms. Paid client ad. Views may not be representative. See App Store and Google Play reviews. Learn more at betterment.com/ambassadors.

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  And now, back to the show. Write out the sentence and you say, "That version of me that believed that, that acted that way, that treated myself like that is gone forever." They're gone. Name them, name all of them. On paper, get very clear about what you're killing off. Because you cannot cut something off if you're not really exactly clear what is that you're cutting off, right? And now, let me just take a step out for a second. Let me break the fourth wall. For obvious clarification purposes, everybody, I'm not saying kill yourself, right? I hope, I hope that's very, very clear. I'm saying, kill off the old version of you, so that you can now have space in your brain for a new, updated version of you, right? Just want to make sure I'm very clear.

• 12:26Speaker 03

  Okay. Number two, you want to get obsessively detailed on who you're becoming. Now, here's the other half of it, right? Killing the old version of yourself doesn't work if there's nothing to replace it with. Because a vague, future self will lose to a vivid, past memory every single time. Your old self is like, high definition. It's 8K. He's got 30 years of footage. He's got evidence. He's got receipts. He's got stories. He's got scars. Your new self, if it's a blurry idea that you once thought about in the shower one time, who do you think is going to win in that fight? Yeah, of course.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  So you have to make the future version of you so specific, like to the point that envisioning this person becomes easy. Not like, "Oh, I want to be successful. I want to lose weight. I want to be happy." Like, that means nothing to your brain. You know, if you look at like, success, success is relative and subjective, right? So, get clear on who this person is. Like, what time do they wake up? What do they eat? How do they handle when someone disrespects them? What does he or she say, uh, no to without feeling guilty about? You know, how do they stop people pleasing? How does that person talk to their spouse when they're exhausted? What does their bank account look like? What does their, their calendar look like?

• 13:53Speaker 03

  You know, what do they do at 9:00 PM on a Tuesday when no one else is watching? Like, get granular. Because there was a researcher at UCLA named, uh, Hal Hirschfield, and he studied what he calls "future self continuity." This is super important to understand, and this is why you want to get detailed. What he found was that when most people think about their future self and studied their brains, their brain activity looked like they were looking and thinking about a stranger. So when you're thinking about your future self, you're thinking about a stranger, basically. Uh, basically, a different person entirely. Which is why it's easy to give up on your future self. Because your brain literally registers them as a stranger. Not someone you care about, just a stranger.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  And the reason why that matters is that people whose brains, like where they treated their future self, like their actual self, their brains, they work completely different than the other people. They made dramatically better decisions in the present moment. They saved more money. They worked harder. They chose long-term over short-term. They made better decisions. And the reason why is because they felt like they were doing it for someone that they know versus a stranger. Because you don't, let's be real. You're not going to sacrifice much for a stranger. But you will absolutely sacrifice for someone that you love. So you've got to make this person real. Like, they need to exist in your mind in vivid detail.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  Every single morning, before you get on your phone, before the noise of the world, give yourself five minutes to, to see that version of you, to live in that life, to store memories of your future, and to watch those memories throughout the day. Make a connection to that person, right? That's your magnificent obsession that I'm talking about. You're giving your brain new footage to build your future out of. Okay? So that's number two. Number three is to now make that person your filter. Now, this is where it like, becomes actual practical, instead of just a nice idea. Every decision that you make, from the moment that you decide exactly who that person is in detail, every decision you make goes through one question.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  What would the greatest version of me do right now? That's it. That's your life's filter from now on. All of your decisions. I'm talking about the big ones, but I'm also really talking about the small ones, too. Because that's where your old self actually lives, right? What would the greatest version of me do right now? Would the greatest version of me sleep in right now? Would the greatest version of me skip this workout? Would the greatest version of me pick this fight with my spouse over something so stupid? Would the greatest version of me talk to myself like that? Would the greatest version of me open up Instagram and start scrolling for the next 45 minutes? Like, do you understand what happens when you do this? You stop asking yourself like, "Oh, what do I feel like doing?" Because what you feel like doing is usually what the dead guy wanted.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  And you start asking yourself, "What would he do? What would she do? What would that future, perfect version of me do in this circumstance?" And you start using them to help you make your decisions. And every single time you answer that question, you're basically handing your brain another piece of evidence of who you're becoming. And so, you don't become the greatest version of yourself just today. You just need to make them the filter for how you should act going forward. Okay, so that's number three. And then, number four, everybody, do not go back to your ex. Last one, okay? You have to be more loyal to who you're becoming than who you've been.

• 17:34Speaker 03

  I want you to marry that magnificent obsession in your future that you're thinking about. I want you to marry that person, and I want you to never cheat on them with your old self. Because how the old self comes back is real sneaky. Like, the old self doesn't kick down your door. It's not a monster. Your old self comes back as comfort, right? Your old self comes back on Thursday night when you're tired and says, "Hey, like, just one night off, you've earned it." Or they'll show up when someone hurts your feelings and says like, "You know what? Like, just shrink a little. It's easier. You've done this before," right? That old version of you sounds like relief, but in reality, it's a trap.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  That old version of you is like the ex who texts you at 11:00 PM. You know what they want, right? Like, you know why they're texting you at 11:00 PM at night. You know exactly what happens if you answer. Don't become the late-night booty call for your old self. Okay? You've been there. You've done that thing. You know how the story ends, right? So, don't go back to your ex. You already played that game. And the part I really want you to think about and to hear is like, every time that you go back, even if it's just for like, one night, you're telling your brain, "He's still alive." Right? Remember that person we cut off? You're telling them, "Oh, actually, I think they might still be alive." Right?

• 19:00Speaker 03

  And it's easier if you do that and you just keep cheating on your, your, your magnificent obsession, your future self. Makes it easier to go back to your old identity and your old story. Dead is dead, or nothing changes. So you've got to actually choose what you're going to do, right? And now, like, I want to be honest with you of what this actually feels like, because I don't think anybody really tells you this part. There might be some grief for your old self. That's okay. You're killing off an old version of you. Like, that version of you, you had a relationship with that old version of you for a long time. They protected you for a long time. They got you here. They kept you safe. And letting them go might kind of feel a little bit like betrayal. It sounds kind of weird, but it, it will feel that way sometimes.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Even though it is the most loving thing that you'll ever do for yourself. So, this feeling weird is not a sign that you're doing it wrong. It's showing you that you're doing it right. The second thing on this is that people around you are going to try to bring them back to life. Their, people around you want you to stay the same because they want things to be predictable. So they're going to try to bring your old self back to life. They knew the guy. They were comfortable with that guy. And when things change, it holds up the mirror to their own life and says, "Look, well, this, I'm, I'm getting better. I'm losing weight. I'm making more money. I'm changing my life." And people have to look at, look at you and see themselves in the mirror and go, "I don't like that because it's triggering me and showing me that I'm living a mediocre life." Right?

• 20:29Speaker 03

  That, other people, other people's reactions to you, that's not your problem to manage. Okay? The last thing, this takes years. Not 30 days. It's not like a hard reset in January. This takes years. You're going to spend those years anyways. So, the only question is whether you spend them as the future version of yourself, or if you go back to your ex and be who you've always been. And what I hope that you choose is to become so obsessed and in love with this life that you're building, and you decide to have your magnificent obsession be that life and the person that you're becoming, that you become so loyal to them, the way that you should

• 21:12Speaker 03

  be in a marriage, that you don't even think about going back to your old self. Why? Because you killed off old parts of yourself that no longer are here anymore. 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 at @robdieljr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And, once again, if you want to learn how to stop procrastinating, you could get my free, in-depth video lesson and workbook called Get Off Your Ass Masterclass. It is at getoffyourassclass.com. Once again, getoffyourassclass.com. And with that, I'm going to leave you 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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