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The Mindset Mentor
How to Break Free From the Rat Race
00:21:10
Today, we're diving into a topic that hits close to home—breaking free from the rat race, both mentally and physically. We’ll uncover the psychology behind consumerism and the clever tactics used by advertisers to keep us hooked. Break the cycle and take back control.
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- [00:00]
Rob Dial
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Terms and conditions apply. Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast, the number one mindset podcast in the entire world. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you're out there and you're looking to improve yourself, go ahead and subscribe to this. We put out episodes four times a week to help you improve yourself so that you can constantly keep getting better and create yourself into the person that you want to be. Today I am going to be talking about how to escape the rat race. I'm going to teach you the first step to getting free from the rat race and to be creating the actual life that you want to that is much more free. And what we need to understand is that we live in a world that is dominated by consumerism. And if we're being honest, we have all. You and I have been raised in it our entire lives. So we have been, whether it was consciously or unconsciously, brainwashed to be a consumerist, to consume, to want more, to constantly be wanting more stuff and things. And it's like the idea, I think, is the Buddhist call. It's like the hungry ghost, right? You could feed a ghost, but it's just going to go through them and they're going to continue to be hungry, never going to fill up a ghost, because it's just going to fall on the floor. You know, we have been taught to constantly want more and more and more and more. And I have been caught up in this in my life as well. I came to the realization at about 32 years old that the first 32 years of my life were really focused on how can I make money. And the reason why I wanted to make money was because we didn't have money when I was a kid. My father's an alcoholic, and I saw that there was lack of what felt like safety being around him. And I thought to myself, well, money will give me safety. And so I started trying to make money and started making that like my number one focus in life. Obviously, I wanted to be happy and I wanted to be fulfilled and all those things, but really it was like, how can I make money? And I wanted to buy stuff, and I wanted. I thought that that was going to make me happy. And don't get me wrong, like, buying stuff is fun. Like, I've bought some really cool shit in my life. I bought some nice things. I like nice things. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not trying to actually say that there's anything wrong with that in this episode, because there's really not. But as much as I am talking to you in this episode, believe me, I'm also talking to myself and reaffirming these things in myself as I'm saying it. And what I want to talk to you today about is kind of the path to freedom, the path to getting to a point in your life where you don't have to work anymore. Just think about that for a second. Is it possible for you to get to a point where you don't have to work anymore? And do you believe it's possible? Because if you don't believe it's possible, then you'll never get there. You won't be able to see how it can be possible and how you can create it if you don't see the possibility of it. You'll never create it. Right. And so, mind you, all of us live in a world where the majority of our parents still work or they worked their entire lives or most of their lives. So for me, my mom, she still works. And, you know, so I've been raised by a mom who was always working. And so there's a part of me that has always thought I'm gonna have to work forever. Now, do I want to work forever? If I choose to. But I would rather be able to be free if I choose that as well. And so it's really about opening up your mindset to something different. And really that's kind of the main point. There's a couple things I'm gonna talk to you about and teach you today, but the main point is I really want you to open up a part of your brain, maybe your creative side, to seeing something that maybe you've never seen before. Because today isn't about like saving money. I'm not gonna teach you how to save money or how to get better with a budget. Like, that's not what I'm gon do. I'm going to actually try to have you see a different perspective that maybe you've never seen before. And to be able to see that perspective and hopefully by the end of the episode start to say, you know what, there's some, there's some value in this. I think that maybe I could do this. Maybe I'll start to think about this more. Maybe I'll start to plan this more. Because it's not about just saving money. That's not what I'm saying. It's really about a fundamental shift in your values, your perspectives that you have around money. That's what today's really going to be about. And that you have around things and buying stuff and brands and all of that. And that you have around really shifting a perspective that you have around being free and not having to rely on being paycheck to paycheck or not having to rely on anyone else or having to rely on a company. And the first thing that we really need to cover as someone that's obsessed with the human mind like I am, is we have to understand the real psychological appeal of consumerism. Like, why does it exist in the first place? And there's a lot of. There's a couple documentaries. There's a documentary called A Century of Self. It's really long. It's like hours and hours long. But they basically start to talk about how years ago, before Advertisements, they used to say, hey, you know, they used to sell based off of what you need. Hey, here's a tractor. You need a tractor. And then they started taking Sigmund Freud's psychology and putting it into it and make you feel like not do. You just need this. But you want this thing. And you should buy it because you want it. And without having it, you're not enough. And so there's a lot of psychological back and forth that comes about with consumerism and so of buying more things, of having more things, of other people's perception of you when you have more things, the desire to have more things than all of this. And so the first thing that we need to realize is that we have, since we were children, been seeing ads. You know, if you watch Nickelodeon like I did as a kid, we had ads and ads and ads and ads and ads of things that we, quote, unquote, needed. Oh, you need this so you can be cool, you need gak. You need all of these. You need this tool, you need this board game. So it's kind of been. Whether it was consciously or unconsciously done, we've kind of been brainwashed into being consumers. I'm not going to say there's any, like, overlord that's creating this thing, but I'm just saying we have to understand that. So we've been, since we were children, seeing, you need this, you need this, you need this, you need this. And so we've been thinking, I need more, need more, need more, need more. And when you understand the neurology of desire, you can really see that consumerism taps into the brain's reward system. Some of the best psychologists in the world work for some of the largest advertising corporations in the world. Neurologically, when we purchase something new, our brain releases dopamine. And dopamine is the chemical of motivation, the chemical of wanting more. When you get dopamine, you want more dopamine. And so when we purchase something, our brain releases dopamine. That's why you can have a little bit of a high and be excited 15 minutes after buying something. And that dopamine creates a sense of pleasure, and it creates a sense of wanting to reinforce that and do it again. And this cycle can lead to habitual spending as we unconsciously seek this dopamine rush. Some people when they don't feel good. What is it called? Retail therapy. Who the hell made that phrase up? Oh, yeah, the advertising companies, right? So it can turn into this thing of like, I don't feel good, I need to go shopping or you're just buying stuff and not even paying attention to it or seeing like do I actually really need this thing? Or I just kind of want this thing. And so breaking this cycle really understands requires us to just sit back and understand like what's actually going on in our head. Why do I actually want this thing? Is it because there's a need, there's a necessity for it? Or is it just because I want it? And it's fine to want things, but it's not fine to be addicted to purchasing things unconsciously to try to fill a void. And I'll talk about that as well. So psychologically, when you look at consumer culture, it also exploits our innate desires for status, for social belongings and self esteem. When you look at like thousands of years ago, you look back to like the ancient Egyptians, the ones that had the highest status were always the ones that were wearing the gold. And so it's like this isn't anything new. The social status. To be the king or to portray yourself as being the person who has more money or more status is something that's always kind of been done. It's kind of like the, if you look at a group of of animals, there's usually an alpha male, there's usually the one that's kind of got its status. And for us, we don't really have alpha males and alpha females and all that stuff. But it's more of like, hey, how can you show this? And it's very low key. And it's done in our psychology, it's done through advertising. And there's so many studies on social psychology that show how material possessions often serve as symbols of personal success and social status. But this pursuit of wanting more things really often leads to a perpetual state of wanting. 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- [10:47]
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- [11:09]
Rob Dial
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- [11:15]
Rob Dial
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I did a podcast episode a few months ago on desire. This desire can really cause a lot of suffering. Whenever you get something, you want another thing. Whenever you get something, you want another thing. And that desire for wanting the next thing is actually what causes so much suffering inside of us. And we'll never really truly feel fulfilled because the fact that we always feel like we need the next thing, it's really more than anything else. It's a momentary thrill. And we've all done this before. Every one of us has done this, right? You buy something and you get excited, and then an hour later you feel exactly the same way that you did yesterday. There's no difference. It's just a momentary thrill. And that momentary thrill is a dopamine rush that you get from it. I want you to understand this. People always like debate. Can money buy happiness? I can tell you absolutely, 100% the answer is no. I will debate anybody on this. I've tried it. It doesn't work. I have done so much studying on humans in coaching with people, and I've looked at all of the psychological research. There has never been any proof that buying stuff makes you happy, that having money makes you happy. Nothing you can ever buy will ever make you happy or fulfilled or worthy. And lots of times what people are doing is they're buying things to try to fill a void that we feel within ourselves. Like we a lot of times are trying to fill a void that we feel within ourselves. And we think that by Buying things, it's going to fill that. VO never will. There's nothing outside of you that can ever fill a void inside of you. And so the real work is not buying the thing. The real work is exploring within ourselves why we feel that there's a void. Hmm. Something to think about, isn't it? Why is there a void in the first place? Why do we feel like we need to buy these things? And so really, it's important. That's what I want to dive into before I start teaching. Anything else is why in our brain do we feel like we need to buy stuff? And why have psychologists and advertisement companies been able to use our own brains and what they know about them against ourselves? Cause essentially what they've been doing, they've been exploiting parts of ourselves to end up continuing to buy more things. So the first thing is we need to, mentally, before anything else, mentally get ourself free from feeling like we need to buy something. Right. Like we need to buy food and water. Sure. Like those things I get. But, like, another shirt. Maybe not. You've already got some shirts. Right. And so when you start to look at it, you start to say, well, could I live a simpler life? And mind you, I don't care what you buy and what you don't buy. I don't care how much money you have or how much money you don't have. I don't care if you have stuff everywhere or if you're a minimalist. It doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is, are you happy? Are you fulfilled? And do you feel good within yourself? And when you look at the studies, neurologically, you can see that living a simpler life actually can reduce stress and anxiety. The way that I've always thought about it is that everything that you own occupies a tiny piece of your brain. Every single thing that you own. And this is not scientific proof. This is the way that I've always personally thought about it. Everything that you own owns a tiny piece of your brain. Even if it's that thing in the back of the closet somewhere that you haven't seen in three years that you completely forgot about. Because if you see it, you're like, oh, my God, Yeah, I forgot about this thing. It's not like you completely forgot about it, or else it'd be out of your brain. So it still occupies a part of your brain somehow still occupies a part of that memory. So the more things that you own, the more things own you. The more things that you own, the more things that own you the key to getting free from the rat race is figuring out a way to not feel like you always have to buy something and to live below your means, whatever that means for you to live below your means. There's a quote that I love that talks about this, and it says, people who live below their means enjoy a freedom that people stuck in the consumerism lifestyle can't begin to imagine. I'm going to say that again for the people in the back who missed it. People who live below their means enjoy a freedom that people stuck in the consumerism lifestyle cannot begin to imagine. And so really what I want you to start thinking about is how can I remove my mind from consumerism? And then how can I make a plan to be free and not have to work? Right? So that's really what we're going to dive into now, is that. And I want you to think about this question. I was posed this question by a friend who is extremely successful and does not have to work at all and actually doesn't really work. He's like 42 years old and he just doesn't work, but he's extremely successful. And he asked me the question, what do you need to be free? And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, how much do you need to be making in order to be free? I was like, I don't know. He's like, well, you should figure it out. What do you need to be free? And when he says free, the way he described it to me is not free in the fact that you have to work to make this money, but whether it's. But you need to be able to have money to do something with in order to put into investments, to have that passively make you money so you don't have to work at all. And you're guaranteed to bring in X amount of dollars per month. And so you might say like, oh, I need $10,000 a month. Let's just put that number, right? I need $10,000 a month to support myself, my family, my four kids and my wife. Let's say that's your number. Okay, if you figured out the number, what do you need to do? How much do you need to have, what do you need to do with those investments in order to make $10,000 a month passively? I don't know what the answer is. What is it for you? It might be the stock market, it might be real estate, it might be hard money lending. What is it? I don't know. And this is the thing that's really Important is you need to figure it out, and you need to figure out how to do it, right? So how much do you need to be free and how much do you need to bring in to be free of all of it? So just not have to work again. And now, mind you, I understand this. You need to figure it out, and you need to figure out probably how to make more money and how to invest your money, and you need to figure out a budget. So all these are really important. And I'm not going to teach any of this, FYI, because I'm not the best person to teach it. There's great people out there that teach you how to make more money, how to invest your money, how to figure out a budget, all of that stuff. And right now you could live in the middle of Idaho and make $3,000 a month and be like, I don't know how the hell I'm going to do it. That's fine. But you can figure it out. The beautiful thing about it being the year that it is and the fact that we have the Internet and everything out there is that all of the knowledge in the world exists at your fingertips. So you might not know it now, but you can figure it out. If you decide not to figure it out, that's your choice. But you can't say that. There's no way for you to figure it out, right? You can use, if you're listening to this, you have the Internet in some sort of way. You can figure out how to make money on the Internet. You can figure out a way to switch jobs. If you need an education for something else, you know, figure out the stock market, be a day trader, get into cryptocurrency. I don't know what it is, but it's about figuring it out for yourself. Figure it out, figure out how to make more money, Figure out how to invest your money and figure out how to budget that money. You have to realize, and I say this all the time, money is just a giant game. And whether you decide to learn how to play the game or not, you are still in the game. It's like being on a basketball court, playing basketball your entire life and going, well, I'm not going to learn how to play. It doesn't matter. You're still on the basketball court. Money is a game. You must learn how to play it if you want to free yourself from the game. Otherwise, you will be played. And that's really what it comes down to. I realized this years ago, is like, I don't know anything about Money. I don't know anything about the psychology around money. I don't know anything about investing, I don't know anything about making money. But I better freakin figure it out because I don't want to be stuck here forever. I want to get to a point where I am free and I am playing a game. And really what it comes down to is like what do you need? What is your number, what's your freedom number that you need to be making every single month passively in order to be free so that you could say hey I'm still working because I want to and cause I'd be bored if I didn't but I don't have to, right? Because financial security significantly impacts our mental health and well being. There's so much stress in living paycheck to paycheck and it can take such a toll on your mental health. There's so many studies around money and anxiety and money and depression and how money problems causes divorces. And so when you can say okay, what do I need to make? And then can I live below my means? Can I not just buy things to buy things? Can I live below my means? Can I figure out what to do with my money? Can I figure out how to make more money? Can I figure out how to invest my money? I might say hey, I'm not going to be free in the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years but I'm going to be free in 10. Well it's much better be free in 10 years than never, isn't it? And so what it comes down to is what do you need to learn in order to get yourself to where you want to go? And I realize it's a big world to learn but really what it comes down to, as I said, what I want to do is I want to open your mind up to there being a different possibility, something different because we all, not all, most of us saw our parents work their entire lives. So we think to ourselves that we need to work our entire lives. I want you to understand we live in a beautiful world where there's amazing things happening and there is knowledge at your fingertips. You can figure out how to get yourself free of it, but you've got to decide that it's something that you're going to do and you've got to say, you know what, I don't need to buy shit all the time. I'm going to live below my means. I'm going to figure out how to take, make, you know, take a $500 a month and invest It. I'm not going to spend $500. Like, I remember when my wife and I first started dating, we were like, a year into dating, and she was only making, like, $35,000 a year. She was working for an ad agency. And she's like, I have no money. I was like, okay. I was like, well, do you want me to help you with your budget? She had never done a budget before. And she's like, yeah. I go, cool, let's go ahead and print out all of your transactions for the past three months. Because what happened was. In all honesty, actually, what happened first, I said, how much do you make every paycheck? She told me. And I was like, okay, how much is your phone bill? How much is your rent? How much is your car? How much is your insurance? And I was like, Lauren, there's, like, $400 missing. And she's like, no, there's not. And I was like, there's definitely $400 missing. And she's like, well, I don't know where it's going. And I was like, okay, do you want to do your budget with me? Like, do you want me to. Do you want some help? And she's like, yeah. And I said, all right, print out all of the last three months of transactions. And this is when she used a debit card, before she used her credit card. I told her, switch to credit cards, because there's reasons behind that. But, you know, she got points, and we can travel with them and all that stuff. But she printed out the last three months of her atm, you know, her transactions on her. Her ATM card. And we went through it, and I saw this stuff, and after three months of transactions going through, it took us a couple hours to go through. And I go, yeah, I found where your money went. And she goes, where? And I go, you're spending approximately $400 a month at Target. And she's like, what? And I was like, yeah. And she. I was like, why don't you just stop walking into Target? And she's like, okay. She literally just stopped walking into Target, and she was saving $400 a month, and she was making 35 grand a year, right? Just being a single girl working, you know, she had a roommate at the time. And so I want you to understand, like, there's ways to figure this stuff out. It just requires you to do something different than you've always done, and to live below your means, because living below your means really does create a buffer against the financial stress, the mental stress, and gives you a real sense of control and security. And so living below your means is what's gonna set you free. And I'm gonna bring you back to the quote that I said before. People who live below their means enjoy a freedom that that people stuck in consumerism lifestyle can't begin to imagine. So live below your means first and then figure out a way out of the game. And that is how you get yourself out of the rat race. 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 robdial jr r o b D I A L J R and if you love this podcast and you live in the United States or Canada and you want to receive inspirational text messages from me sporadically throughout the week and throughout the month, text me right now. 512-580-9305 once again, 512-580-9305 and with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.
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