Welcome to today's episode of the Mind Set Mentor podcast, I'm your host, Rob Dial, and if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button since you never miss another episode. And if you want to join in on my motivational text message group, go ahead and send me a text message right now to one five one two five eight zero nine three zero five. Once again, one five one two five eight zero nine three zero five.

Today, we're going to talk about how you unconsciously hold yourself back from everything that you want in this world and you won't truly get past it until no.

One, you're aware of it. And number two, you figure out a way to work past it. And I'll give you a couple stories today that'll kind of help you lock this into your brain so that we can, you know, kind of make this cemented. And where this came from is, I suppose, somebody put up on Instagram and it was of a horse that had, you know, is tied up, but it was tied to a plastic chair, but it stayed in place all day long because it was tied to a plastic chair.

And I saw this and it reminded me of a story. And the story is there's a man that's walking down the street and he sees over to his left. He sees that there's a whole bunch of elephants and he walks up and he notices that all of these elephants are tied and these are full size elephants are tied by little teeny tiny rope to just just a small little tree.

And so there's these huge elephants with small ropes tied to one of their legs and they're tied to a little tiny tree.

And he looks and he's like these elephants could easily break this tree in half.

And if they didn't break the tree, that is to be able to break the rope. So he goes up to the trainer and he says to him, you know, why are all of these elephants just standing around like they could easily break that tree and break that rope?

Why are they just standing there when the rope is just tied to their leg and he starts to tell them because when they're really, really young, what they do? And even though I hate that this is an actual tree thing, but I'm telling this because it's going to make sense to you just a minute. But this is true. This is actually how they train them not to leave. Anybody says to them, though, is that that when they were younger and real small elephants, they had the exact same rope that was tied to their leg, tied to the exact same tree.

And as they grew, they didn't realize that they could break through it. And so what happened was they never had to put a bigger rope on them because they were conditioned to believe that they could not break away.

So they never had to tie big a rope because they not because they physically couldn't do it anymore, but because mentally they didn't think that they could do it. And so one day in their lives, the elephants realized that they're powerless and they gave away their power.

Now, I hate that story because it seems like animal cruelty. But also on the other side, this relates perfectly to the way that we hold ourselves back subconsciously.

You know, why do I share the story is because was there one day or one moment in your life where you just gave up and you just gave your power away to somebody else's beliefs or somebody else who they said to you or the fact that you'll never be enough or because the fact that you failed in the past, you're definitely going to fail again. You know, is there a day that you just gave up?

Think about that for a second, and the next question I have to follow up with that is if you stayed there forever and died in the place that you're in, would you be excited about it? Would you feel like there was wasted potential? Because ultimately, how many of us are holding ourselves back because of something that we failed at in the past? How many of us are holding ourselves back because of where we came from and the fact that everyone that I know when I was younger was poor, so therefore I'm going to be poor and I grew up because I'm just the same as everyone else that I was raised around.

How many of us are holding ourselves back because of a belief that was programmed into us at a young age?

And when I say programmed, I don't mean that it was like some evil persons like, oh, I'm going to program Rob into not believing that he's worth it. What I mean is that sometimes you're just around people and people say things directly to you or they say things to each other and you hear it and it locks into your brain and says, yeah, you know, I will be in the same position because this is how everybody else or I will be in the same position, because my uncle, when I was younger, told me that I was dumb and I never be good enough.

Right. Some people just hear something at one point in time and it just locks into place. And how many of us are holding ourself back because of a what, a teacher or a parent or a family member or a friend or a brother or sister said to us when we were younger and much more impressionable than we currently are right now, you know, it's bad enough that we hold ourselves back from what we truly want because of limiting beliefs.

But it's even worse when you realize that you're holding yourself back, not because of your own beliefs, but because of somebody else's beliefs that were around you when you were young and impressionable and it just locked into your brain and you decided to keep it.

And it's the example I always give is it's like somebody giving you a dirty shirt and you're younger and you put the shirt on and they just say, hey, this is your shirt and you put the shirt on and then you wear it your entire life and not even realize that you're wearing the shirt. Somebody gives you a programming, if not good enough or smart enough or pretty enough, are never going to make money, are never going to be happy and never be successful.

Whatever it is, they give you that quote unquote shirt, you put it on and then you wear it your entire life until hopefully one day you wake up and you go, whose fucking shirt is this that I'm wearing? Right. Like most people don't wake up and realize that they're wearing an old dirty shirt that isn't even theirs in the first place that was given to them when they were younger. And so you have to ask yourself, am I holding on to unconscious programs that I'm not even aware of?

And when I say unconscious, it also means subconscious. So you have your conscious mind and then you have subconscious, which is below your conscious. And they say about 95 percent of our things that we do every single day are subconscious actions. Our brain just does. It's also called a reflexive action. Our brain just does it because it's what we've always done. But how many of us are holding ourselves back not because of our own beliefs, but because somebody gave us their beliefs at one point in time?

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And then I would clean all the fish tanks.

And the biggest tank that we had was filled with thousands and thousands and thousands of goldfish.

And one thing I knew from a very young age is that goldfish will only grow to the size of the actual bullet they're put in. And so a goldfish that's in captivity will only grow to about one to two inches in a standard sized tank. Right. But if you go and you find a goldfish in the wild, goldfish will grow to 12 to 14 inches. So let me say that again.

A goldfish in captivity in a small little tank will only grow to an inch to two inches.

But a goldfish out in the wild, in a stream, in a river, in a pond will grow to 12 to 14 inches. So it will grow six to seven times larger when it's inside of a larger body of water. Why in the hell do I say that, because think about how sometimes you are around people that think small, think about how they're thinking small, restricts your thinking to think small.

Sometimes you're around people that give you they're limiting beliefs and those limiting beliefs restrict you when in reality, if you were to be able to just completely let your mind go in your imagination, go and go for what is it you want, you'd be that 14 inch goldfish.

But you have all of these little programs in these restrictions and people that are still around you that need to be released, that are keeping you to be a one to two inch goldfish. You have so much potential to grow in to that massive goldfish. But because of the things that are going on in your mind and the people that you surround yourself with, you're not growing. And so sometimes when a fish isn't growing, you don't blame the fish, you blame the actual surroundings that it's in in the tank that it's in.

So maybe if you're not growing, it's not 100 percent your fault at this moment.

It might be the fact that you need to hang out with some new people, need to release some people because they're actually restricting your growth from being who you could be.

And so maybe there's people around you once again that are talking about how broke they are all the time. And you're subconsciously letting those programs go into your mind. Maybe there's people that are around you that are just consistently negative all of the time and they're just leaking that negativity into your brain.

And it's hard for you to figure out how to be positive because you have all of these little subconscious programmings, 95 percent of it's running in the background of your head is just negative, negative, negative.

It's really hard to grow outside of the ball that you're in. And so what I think you should think of is how many people around me are keeping me restricted? How many people around me are giving me their programmings? How many people around me are making me more negative, are making me more broke, are making me less happy, are bringing the joy and the peace out of my life? Because if someone's taking that into restricting you. Maybe you should spend some less time with them, maybe you should find some people that want you to succeed, that make you think bigger, that make you happier, that are always positive and find the good in things even when bad things happen so that their programming start to leak into your mind.

You know, it's like it'll slowly leak in and you don't even notice it. But things people say will click into your brain and things people say to each other and you over here will click into your brain. So maybe you should be more cognizant of the people that you surround yourself with as well as the programmings that you have.

And that's the thing that's really hard about programming, is that if you're not looking for it, it's really hard to find. And so that's why I always say one of my favorite phrases is when you're inside of the jar, it's hard to read the label.

What that means is then when you're inside of the jar of your life, inside of your own head, it's hard to see all of the little places where you're hung up. It's hard to see all the little programs that are holding you back. It's hard to see all of those little limiting beliefs and where they came from and how to get rid of them.

So sometimes that you have to do is you have to actually take yourself out of the jar, out of your own head and look at yourself as if you're somebody else and start to actually break down.

Hmm. What do I need to change about this person? What do I need to change about their mindset? What do I need to change about their surroundings? What do I need to change about the way that they think? What do I need to change about their programming? Because that's what's so hard about the programming, is that if you're not looking for it, it's really hard to find.

And so the first step of almost anything in life is to become self aware of it. And when you can become self aware of it, you can start to see all the place that you're hung up in, all the places where you're holding yourself back. But once again, it's subconscious, it's under the conscious mind and it goes so deep. And I've been working for 14 years to uncover my programming's and I've released some of them and I released some of them.

And then one day something happens and I'm like, shit, I didn't even realize that I was still hung up right there. And that's something that I need to work through. And that's the beautiful thing about self development, is I see us as just like a flower that just continues to have new petals that come off and then they fall off and you get new ones and the other ones fall off. You get new ones and they fall off. That's kind of how it is with personal.

It is that, you know, eventually you work through something, you work through something, you work through something and it can go and you can really sense like a dead pedal that falls off of the rose.

But what happens? Another one grows and you start to become aware of another one and another one and another one. And you realize that this journey of life that you're on is not about becoming perfect. It's about just working through the little hang ups that we have realizing. You might get to the end your life and not get through all of them. And for some people, just that thought can make you really anxious or you can look at it and go, you know what?

That's the journey that I can't I can't change this journey, I'm on this life, so I need to figure out a way to work through these things and work through these programs to make myself happier, because ultimately your happiness comes down to you. Your success comes down to you. Your peace comes down to you. Your joy comes down to you. The amount of money you're making, it comes down to you, the amount of people that you impact this world comes down to you.

And so if you're going to be one of the people that changes, you're going to have to actually start to change.

You're going to have to wake up one day like the elephant. If they could look back at your foot and go, oh, my God, I can break this.

I don't even realize how powerful I was. I can break this right now and I could run off and I could be free because I've been conditioned to think that I'm not good enough. I've been conditioned to think that I'm not able to succeed. I've been conditioned to think that where I come from, everybody ends up going to jail. I've been conditioned to think that I'm never going to get past the set of people that I'm in.

And what happens is you wake up one day, you look back at your leg and you go, I'm going to break this damn thing, like I'm going to get past this. I don't see any reason why I need to be here anymore. And I'm going to go past this that I'm in.

And just like the goldfish, what happens? You go from one inch to two inches.

And here's a beautiful thing about growth, is that growth is exciting to people. One of the things that Tony Robbins says that progress equals happiness.

So if you are a little one inch goldfish right now and you start releasing some of your programs, they're releasing some of your beliefs and stop hanging out with negative people and start being around people that make you think bigger and people that want to see you be successful and you go from a one inch goldfish to a two inch goldfish. And then you look in your rearview mirror, you're like, man, look at how far I've come already.

That little bit of progress makes you happy and we want more happiness. So what do we do? We go, well, if with I grew that much in six months, imagine how much I can grow in the next six months. And then so what happens? You get excited about growth. You start working harder towards being more successful, towards growing more being happier and more joyful and more peaceful.

And then you go from a two inch goldfish to a three inch goldfish and you're like, holy crap, look at how much I've grown since I started on this journey.

And then to four and five inch goldfish. And then one day wake up and you're a ten inch goldfish. You're like, Man, I'm so glad that I started on as person on the journey. I'm so glad that I've put in all of the work. I'm so glad that I, instead of going out and partying, sometimes decided to read because look at myself, look at how far I've come. And just that little bit of growth and seeing the way that you've grown makes you happy because progress equals equals happiness.

But the main thing that you have to do in order to start working through this is develop your self-awareness, realize that there's a lot of subconscious programmings that are holding you back. You've been conditioned not on purpose most of the time. You've just been conditioned by the things that you've heard and the people that you've been around to keep you inside of a smaller cage and smaller, smaller tank. It's time for you to break out of the tank. It's time for you to break the rope that's around your foot, becomes self-aware, whether there, get rid of the things that are holding you back and start throwing yourself into the person that you want to become because no one's going to come and save you.

The only one that can save you is you. But you have to step into the driver's seat and say, I'm going to do this. One of the best things that I think of that really puts it in perspective is the analogy of your life is like being on a sailboat and you're the only one that's on the sailboat. And if you're just letting life happen, that's why they say it's like drifting through life.

It's like hopping on a sailboat and just letting the winds take you to where you're going to go. And then one day you wake up and you're in one place. Another day you wake up and you're in another place.

And then one day you actually not physically wake up, but mentally wake up and go, oh, my God. This entire time I've been on this ship, I didn't even realize that there was a steering wheel. I can actually jump into the front of the steering wheel and I can direct the ship to where I want it to go.

When you finally wake up mentally and you start to do that, you realize that with just a little bit of work and dedication into yourself, you can get yourself anywhere that you want to go, the same way that you can get that sailboats can't go anywhere that you want to go. But you're the only one that can hop in. The captain's in the captain's chair.

So that's the way that life works. That's the journey of life that we're on. Realize you're programmings, realize your limiting beliefs and realize that this journey that we're on is supposed to be fun.

And so notice your nose. You're a little bit of hiccups and that's OK. But also make sure to look in the rearview mirror every once in a while and look at how far you've come, because that little bit of seeing how far you've come will make you happy by seeing that progression, which will give you the dopamine and the serotonin kick that you need to want to keep doing it over and over again.

So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share with someone that you know and love. And I believe the same way I leave you every single episode, make it your mission, make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

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