Rewire Your Brain in the Morning

What if the way you talk to yourself every morning could completely change how you show up in your life? In this episode, I break down five powerful things you can tell yourself each morning to build mental resilience, quiet self-doubt, focus on what you can control, practice gratitude, and live with more intention. I’ll show you how to use these five Stoic principles as a simple seven-day morning practice to start rewiring your mindset and becoming the person you want to be. 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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• 1:47Speaker 01

  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 love this podcast, you'll probably love the text messages I send throughout the week. If you're in the United States or Canada, text me right now. 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm going to give you five things to tell yourself every single morning to brainwash yourself to be who you want to be. Every morning, your brain gives you this rare window to rewire who you are. But most people waste it by scrolling, or stressing out, or hitting the snooze button on their potential.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  But these five different thoughts, repeated every single morning, could anchor your mindset, can shut down your self-doubt, and can guide you, kind of like a compass would, through the chaos of your day. And what I'm going to teach you isn't toxic positivity or woo-woo fluff. What I'm going to teach you is ancient Stoic philosophy and wisdom, backed by modern neuroscience. So if you've been feeling overwhelmed, or lost, or like you're just living on autopilot, this episode is designed to be your wake-up call, because the way that you start your morning is the way that you shape your entire life. Now, why do you want to do this in the morning versus the afternoon or before you go to bed?

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Well, neurologically, the morning is the best time to access your subconscious, because your brain is in a more suggestible state. Right after you wake up, your mind moves through alpha and theta brainwaves. And this is the same relaxed receptive frequencies that are used in hypnosis and also deep meditation. So in this state, the critical analytical part of your brain, which is called the prefrontal cortex, hasn't even really fully kicked in yet. And so suggestions and affirmations, the way that you speak to yourself, bypass the resistance of your prefrontal cortex and go straight into your subconscious.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Think of it like this, your subconscious door is just slightly open a little bit more in the morning. So what you feed into your subconscious will sink deeper and stick longer. Which is why repeating these phrases and repeating empowering beliefs and visualizing your goals and doing mindset priming first thing can actually rewire your thought patterns much faster than doing it any other time of the day. Also, the important part of this is that neurologically, your cortisol levels, which are your stress hormones, naturally spike in the morning, which sounds like it'd be a bad thing, but neurologically, it's not.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  It makes it more natural of a window for your focus and neuroplasticity. And neuroplasticity is your brain actually changing itself. So combine all of that with intention, and you're literally reprogramming your brain before you go out into the world every single day. The bottom line is if you want to shape your inner narrative, your morning is absolutely your golden hour. So make sure you use your morning to prime your brain into who you want to be and what you want to believe. Okay? So what we're going to take is Stoic philosophy. And what is Stoicism? What I'm going to teach you today is based in, like I said, Stoic philosophy, but also neurology.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Stoicism is an ancient philosophy that teaches you how to stay grounded, how to stay calm, and how to stay clear, no matter what life throws at you. And it's not about suppressing emotions or pretending like everything's okay when your house is on fire. It's about mastering your inner world so that you can live and lead your life with purpose. Think of it as building your mental armor for a chaotic world. Okay? So these are the five different things you want to tell yourself, and this is the reason why each one of them is important. Okay? Number one is, "Today, I will meet resistance, and that's not a problem. I welcome it." "Today, I will meet resistance, and that is not a problem. I welcome it." This came from Marcus Aurelius in his book Meditations,

• 6:03Speaker 01

  which is his actual personal journal to himself. And what he says, he says, "When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself, I will meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, and jealous, and that is okay." What Marcus Aurelius was doing here, he wasn't trying to be a buzzkill and be like, "Oh, I'm going to meet shitty people all day." What he was doing was he was basically giving us a shield by expecting that today would be difficult in some sort of way. We don't need to spiral and life gets messy. I know that when I go out into my day, when I leave my bed, there will be some sort of resistance. Things will get hard. That's okay. I'm not going to fight it. I'm going to welcome it, and I'm going to work through it.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  So the reason why this is important is because things are going to happen in your life. Like, the rude email, it's going to come through. It's not a personal attack, it's just a part of the game. You know, if your kid is losing it at breakfast, that's not about you. If you're jumping on the scale right after you get out of bed and it's still not moving, it's not a verdict of your self-worth or any of that. And science backs this viewpoint up. In 2003, there was a study by a psychologist named Shelley Taylor, who introduced the idea of what's called stress inoculation. When we anticipate stress, or we anticipate something being harder, our brains regulate better under pressure versus being like caught off guard.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  And so what happens is it actually reduces cortisol spikes, which is your stress hormone, and keeps your amygdala, which is your panic center of your brain, from hijacking your thinking. And so you're understanding that, hey, I might go into my day. There might be resistance, there might be obstacles. That's okay. I expected it was going to be this way, and I welcome it. Versus like, "Oh my God, shit's hitting the fan, now I'm going crazy. The kids are going crazy, I'm completely knocked off from my day." It's like, no, I might leave my bedroom and stuff might happen that might be crazy today. I'm okay with it. Okay? So that's the first one. Number two is, "I can't control everything, but I can control how I show up." So this comes from the quote from Epictetus, who was a Stoic philosopher.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  And he says, "Some things are in our control, but most things are not." And so when you look at Stoicism, they divided the world into basically two different buckets. Number one, which is what I control, which is my actions, my choices, my attitude.

• 8:32Speaker 01

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• 12:13Speaker 01

  And so, what really this comes down to is, I'm gonna focus on what I can control, and only what I can control. And so, when you look at psychology and how psychology actually backs this up, this is actually called the locus of control, which comes from Julian Roder. And so, studies show when you actually look at people who have a good internal locus of control, which is people who focus on what they can influence, those people have higher well-being in their life, they have lower anxiety, and they have more motivation and grit. And so, anytime you start to feel stress coming on, like, look at the circumstance and say, is this in my control? And if it's not in your control, release it.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Because why would you stress out over something you can't control anyways? If it is in your control, act with intention. Now, you might have something come to you, which is, you see something coming up and you're like, is this in my control? You're like, part of it. Like, what can I control? Okay, let me take action on what I can control and release the things that I cannot control. And so, that's the second thing to start your day with. Number three is, I am not my thoughts, I am the thinker of them. So, when psychologists look at Stoic philosophy, they call this Stoic cognitive distancing. Your brain is a thought factory. Just understand that. It turns out wild stories, it turns out worst-case scenarios, it turns out self-doubt, not good enough, all of that.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Why does it do that? Because that is its job. Its job is to scare you. Why? Because it wants to keep you safe. And if you're scared, you won't get out of your comfort zone. And if you don't get out of your comfort zone, then you're going to be quote-unquote "safe." You won't risk anything if you stay in your comfort zone. But if you don't risk anything in your life, you risk everything in your life because you will not become what you can become. So, you need to learn through this, and knowing that that's what your brain does, that you cannot identify with your thoughts. You are not the machine, you're the operator. The machine is your brain, the operator is you. And so, you've got to tell yourself, that's just a thought.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  That's not prophecy, it's not fact, it's just a thought. And when you feel that, that wave of "I'm not good enough," or "the day's already ruined," or "why even try, because I always fail anyways," like, just pause for a second. Just try to see yourself, like I always say, you can't read the label when you're inside the jar. Take yourself out of the jar, out of your own brain, and look at the situation. You, as a human, dealing with a certain situation. So, you pause. You observe as if you're somebody else watching yourself, and you don't merge with the drama of your mind. And so, you look at it and you say, okay, that thought that just came in, that's pretty interesting, that's not the thought that I want, that's not the thought that I believe, I don't want to believe that. And you distance yourself from it and start talking, what I recommend, you actually start

• 15:12Speaker 01

  talking out loud to yourself. So, in neuroscience, this is called mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. And so, what you're trying to do is you're trying to become the observer of your thoughts. You want to look at them and just say, I am not my thoughts, I am the thinker of my thoughts. Just distancing yourself from your thoughts, especially in the morning, and setting yourself up that way throughout your day, will relieve so much stress throughout your day. So, that's number three. Number four, say this to yourself every morning. I am grateful for all that I have. So, Seneca, another one of the most famous Stoic philosophers, says, "Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart." Gratitude, I used to think it was this weird woo-woo-ee, oh my God, I'm gonna be so grateful. Gratitude isn't soft.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Gratitude is life-changing. In a world that is addicted to more and consuming and more and more, choosing to see the enoughness, choosing to be grateful for what you have, is like revolutionary, because everybody wants more and more and more. So, if you can see the places where you're enough and you have enough, and you can be grateful for those, you're way different than everybody else. I was at a restaurant this past week and my wife pointed at something on the wall, and there was a sign on the wall, and it said, "Happy people aren't grateful, grateful people are happy." And I was like, yeah, that's so true. Like, people who just decide, I'm going to be grateful for all that I have, even if it's not as much as other people, are so much happier than the people who feel like they don't have enough.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  And I don't mean like you need to like fake a smile or any of that type of stuff. Being grateful just means I'm gonna look at what I have and realize that I have enough right now, and I can still work towards more if I want to. Gratitude doesn't mean that you don't feel grief or struggle or work for more. Like, gratitude can coexist with grief and with struggle and with striving to be even more. And so, a morning practice that you can bring in with this is to just write down a few things that you're grateful for and be weirdly specific. Like, I am grateful for the way the sun comes in through my windows and hits the counter. I am grateful for that one friend who texts me all of those dumb memes.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  I am grateful for the fact that I'm fucking breathing today. 150,000 people die every single day. That means 150,000 people did not wake up today that were alive yesterday. Oh my God, I'm still here. If nothing else, that's something I can be grateful for. And so, neurologically speaking, gratitude actually boosts levels of dopamine and serotonin in your brain. Those are your brain's feel-good chemicals. So, if you just want to feel better, you want more dopamine, you want more serotonin. So, neurologically speaking, just be more grateful. Research at UC Davis and UC Berkeley shows that regular gratitude practices increases optimism by 25%, improves sleep and immune function, oddly enough, and then reduces

• 18:12Speaker 01

  inflammatory biomarkers linked to stress and disease. Just by finding things that you're grateful for. And so, it literally rewires your brain for resilience and what you want to focus Because what you focus on will grow. So that's number four. And then number five, life is short. I'm not guaranteed another sunrise. I want to live today like it's my last. This is the idea of memento mori, which is one of the most famous concepts of Stoicism. And that means remember that you're gonna die. And so Marcus Aurelius has a famous quote that says, it's in his journal that says, you could leave your life right now, let that determine what you do and what you think. And so let's not dance around it. You're gonna die. We all are. But instead of

• 18:56Speaker 01

  fearing that, Stoicism just basically asks, what if you use that to wake up and make something amazing with your life? This isn't morbid. It's more of like a compass than anything else. And so you want to ask yourself, if today was my last day, would I be proud of how I showed up? If today was my last day, would I be doing what I'm doing right now? Am I putting off my joy or my peace or my purpose? Like I've got an infinite amount of time? You're like, what am I tolerating today? That my soul is like secretly begging me to change?

• 19:30Speaker 01

  In in psychology, when you look at this, in 2017, there was a study done at the University of Missouri that found out that what's called mortality salience, which is contemplating your death, increase life satisfaction and pro-social behavior. Why? Because it jolts you into being present into actually what matters in your life. And people who reflect on death regularly have greater clarity around their goals and their values and are more likely to live according to those goals and those values as well. And so here's my challenge to you is to write down these five different things that I've covered today and to take the next seven days, as soon as you wake up in the morning, you go to the bathroom, you brush your teeth, you do some, you know, 60

• 20:14Speaker 01

  seconds of breath where just breathe in, breathe out, and then look at the piece of paper where you wrote all this down and say these five things to yourself 10 times each. Number one, say it 10 times. Number two, say it 10 times. Number three, say it 10 times. And that is how you actually start to rewire your brain and your subconscious for mental resilience. This is really what it comes down to. So if this is important to you, to have better perspective and be able to take your action towards your life more seriously, repeat these five things to yourself every single morning. 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 it, rob dial Jr., R B D I A L J R. And with that, I'm gonna 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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