Why You’re Lazy

Summary

Podcast Title: The Mindset Mentor
Host: Rob Dial
Episode: Why You’re Lazy
Release Date: May 23, 2025

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Introduction: Redefining Laziness

In the episode titled “Why You’re Lazy,” Rob Dial challenges the traditional notion of laziness, presenting it as a symptom of deeper issues related to energy and purpose. Rather than viewing laziness as a lack of willpower, Rob posits that it often stems from feeling misaligned with one’s true purpose, leading to persistent fatigue and lack of motivation.

Laziness as a Lack of Energy ([02:06])

Rob Dial opens the discussion by reframing laziness as a lack of energy:

“If you're lazy, it's because you don't have energy. And maybe the reason why you don't have energy is because you're not doing something in your life that feels like it's your purpose.”
– Rob Dial [02:06]

This perspective shifts the focus from self-blame to exploring underlying reasons for low energy levels.

Types of Exhaustion: Good vs. Bad ([03:26])

Rob differentiates between two types of exhaustion:

1. Good Exhaustion – Resulting from fulfilling activities, such as a productive workout:

   “You feel fulfilled. Like, after a really good workout, you're like, oh, man, that was really tough. But I'm glad that I did it.”
   – Rob Dial [03:26]

2. Bad Exhaustion – Stemming from unfulfilling tasks, leading to mental and physical drain:

   “You come home exhausted, dragging, tired, thinking about having to go back to work again tomorrow.”
   – Rob Dial [03:45]

Understanding this distinction helps listeners recognize whether their tiredness is motivating or debilitating.

The Power of Alignment ([05:00])

Rob delves into the concept of alignment, emphasizing that being in sync with one’s purpose naturally enhances energy levels:

“When you’re in sync with your purpose, your actions feel more effortless and you’re invigorated by the tasks you have to do.”
– Rob Dial [04:45]

He explains that alignment with one’s life mission allows the universe to provide the necessary energy, contrasting with the energy depletion experienced when out of alignment.

Personal Anecdote: Writing with Ease ([07:27])

Sharing a personal story, Rob recounts his experience writing a book. Initially dreading the process, he shifted his mindset to embrace alignment:

“It’s going to be easy and it’s going to be effortless. It's not coming from you, Rob, it's coming through me.”
– Rob Dial [07:38]

This affirmation led to a surge of energy and productivity, allowing him to complete over half of his book within a week.

Discovering Purpose Through Experimentation ([14:30])

Rob emphasizes the importance of stepping out of one’s comfort zone to discover true passions. He shares the story of a friend who found his passion for pickleball by trying new activities:

“Maybe you fall in love with pickleball. Maybe you find your soulmate at pickleball like he did.”
– Rob Dial [14:30]

This narrative illustrates how experimenting with new experiences can lead to unexpected and fulfilling discoveries.

Practical Steps: Happiness Blueprint and Ikigai ([17:05])

Rob introduces actionable strategies to help listeners align with their purpose:

1. Happiness Blueprint:
   Create a list of activities that currently bring you joy and add to it as you discover new passions.

2. Ikigai Journaling Questions:
   Based on the Japanese concept of ikigai, Rob provides four key questions to guide self-discovery:

   • What do you love?
   • What are you good at?
   • What can you be paid for?
   • What does the world need?
   • (Additional Question) What are you interested in learning more about?

“Prioritizing your happiness isn't like a luxury. It's a necessity for a fulfilling life.”
– Rob Dial [17:08]

These tools serve as a compass to navigate towards activities and careers that resonate with one’s inner self.

The Role of Happiness in Replenishing Energy ([16:00])

Rob underscores that happiness acts as a “power-up button,” replenishing energy and making actions feel effortless:

“Happiness is like hitting a power up button in a video game. You should be trying to put as many happy things into your day as you possibly can.”
– Rob Dial [17:08]

By integrating joyful activities into daily life, individuals can sustain higher energy levels and reduce feelings of laziness.

Conclusion: Overcoming Laziness by Finding Purpose ([20:46])

In wrapping up, Rob reinforces the idea that overcoming laziness involves aligning with one’s purpose and engaging in activities that bring genuine joy:

“Maybe the reason why you feel drained all the time isn't because you need more coffee or because of the fact that you need another time management strategy. Maybe it's a sign that you are out of alignment with the reason why you're alive.”
– Rob Dial [12:24]

He encourages listeners to explore new experiences, prioritize happiness, and use the provided tools to rediscover their purpose, ultimately transforming laziness into motivated action.

Notable Quotes

• “If you're lazy, it's because you don't have energy. And maybe the reason why you don't have energy is because you're not doing something in your life that feels like it's your purpose.”
  – Rob Dial [02:06]

• “There’s like good exhaustion where you're tired, but your heart’s so full... And a bad exhaustion where you come home exhausted, dragging, thinking about work again.”
  – Rob Dial [03:27]

• “When you’re in sync with your purpose, your actions feel more effortless and you’re invigorated by the tasks you have to do.”
  – Rob Dial [04:45]

• “It’s going to be easy and it’s going to be effortless. It's not coming from you, Rob, it's coming through me.”
  – Rob Dial [07:38]

• “Prioritizing your happiness isn't like a luxury. It's a necessity for a fulfilling life.”
  – Rob Dial [17:08]

Final Thoughts

Rob Dial’s “Why You’re Lazy” episode offers a transformative perspective on laziness, linking it to energy levels and life alignment. By encouraging self-exploration, embracing new experiences, and prioritizing happiness, Rob provides listeners with the tools to overcome feelings of laziness and cultivate a purpose-driven, energized life. Whether you’re struggling with motivation or seeking deeper fulfillment, this episode serves as a compelling guide to mastering your mindset and, consequently, your life.

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Connect with Rob Dial:
Follow Rob on Instagram @RobDialJr for more insights and updates.

Transcript

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[Unknown Speaker 2]

And give us a rating and Review.

[Rob Dial]

For just 5 seconds. Reason why is because the more positive ratings and reviews that we get, the more that those platforms present this podcast to people who have never listened to.

[Unknown Speaker 2]

It before, which allows us to grow.

[Rob Dial]

And really impact more people's lives. So if you would do that, I would appreciate it. Today I'm going to be talking about why you're so lazy, and I'm going to take a different route about laziness. Probably a route you've never heard somebody talk about with laziness. If you're lazy, it's because you don't have energy. And maybe the reason why you don't have energy is because you're not doing something in your life that feels like it's your purpose. Maybe you are completely out of alignment with your purpose in your life, and you have to wake up every single day and force yourself to do something that you don't want to freaking do. And so maybe in some sort of way, you're out of alignment with the universe. You're living a life that is not in line with your soul's purpose. The reason why you were put here. Now, I don't know why you were put here, and you might not know why you were put here. Why don't we try to figure it out then? See, things should give you energy, not take energy away from you. So if you come back at the end of the day from work and you're exhausted, it's not for you. And there's two different types of exhaustion, right? There's, like, good exhaustion and there's bad exhaustion. There's like, good exhaustion where it's like, man, you're tired, but your heart's so full. You're like, that was amazing.

[Unknown Speaker 2]

Today was great.

[Rob Dial]

And you feel fulfilled. Like, after a really good workout, you're like, oh, man, that was really tough. But I'm glad that I did it. A bad exhaustion would be like, you come home exhausted, you're dragging, you're tired, and you're thinking about having to go back to work again tomorrow, and you don't want to do it.

[Unknown Speaker 2]

And so it's a physical exhaustion.

[Rob Dial]

But more than anything else, it's like actual mental exhaustion. I want you to understand that is taking energy from you. I said this recently on the podcast, but I really want to hammer this home with people. You know, I teach a lot of people how to grow their businesses. I consult with a lot of business owners, and a lot of people want to build a business, but they're like, oh, but it just takes so much energy to build a business. I'm like, yeah, that is true. It takes hard work to build a business. It takes energy to build a business, but it takes a lot of energy to do something that you don't love for the rest of your life. Like, it takes. I've worked jobs that I hate before, and it takes a lot more energy to wake up in the morning when you hear your alarm go off and get up out of your comfortable, warm bed to start getting ready for a job that you don't enjoy, and then to take a shower and get dressed and have to look a certain way to go to the job that you don't enjoy, and then drive and get stuck in traffic for 30 minutes. And the whole time you're on the way to a job that you don't enjoy. And then you get to work and you have to be there for eight or nine hours and you don't enjoy it. And then you have to get in your car and drive home and be stuck in the same traffic again with all of the same people who also don't enjoy their job. And then you get to your house and you have what, three, four, five hours before you have to go back to bed. Then those whole three, four, five hours, you're thinking, oh my God, I gotta go to bed and I gotta eat and I gotta do this because I've gotta go back to work again tomorrow. And then every one of those steps that I'm talking about takes so much. Not just physical energy, more so mental energy, because you're thinking to yourself, oh my God, I've gotta do this for another 30 years. That takes way more energy versus putting energy into something that you actually love. And so what I found is that there's like an intersection of energy and purpose. I believe that the universe operates on the principle of alignment. If you look at everything in the universe, everything is like perfectly aligned. It's crazy how like intricately aligned everything is, from the stars in the sky to every single cell, all 40 trillion cells in your body function optimally. When it is in harmony in its, in its purpose, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do. And everything in this universe is made of energy. It's the most important thing in this universe is energy. And so similarly, our energy levels are directly influenced by how aligned we are with what is our life mission or what brings us joy or what we feel like we should be doing. So the way that I have seen and I've gotten from being around other really successful people that are fully in alignment with what it is they want to do. And also being myself, years ago when I worked somewhere where I didn't want to and I felt completely out of alignment, and I started feeling anxious and depressed and sad. The longer that I stayed out of alignment, I realized, like, when we're in sync with our purpose, our actions feel more effortless and we're invigorated by the tasks that we have to do. Like, even for me, last night, I was running a workshop last night for two and a half hours straight from 7pm to 9:30pm and I did that the day before. And when I got done at 9:30. What was crazy about it, I wasn't tired. I was actually kind of wired. Like it took me longer to fall asleep because I felt, and it might sound kind of weird, it almost felt like I didn't have to come up with the energy. It's like the energy was provided for me. And so, like, I started thinking about this too when I was writing my.

[Unknown Speaker 2]

Book a couple years ago.

[Rob Dial]

And I started thinking about, like, I've heard so many people say, like, oh, when you write a book, it takes years off of your life. And I started dreading the fact that I had to write the book.

[Unknown Speaker 2]

So I was.

[Rob Dial]

I took a team trip and we brought my team members out to Sedona and we spent like three or four days in Sedona. And then I decided to stay an extra week by myself. And I'm in a house in Sedona that was looking at the mountains and I could go outside and I could write the book. And the night before, I started dreading, oh my God, like, this is going to be so hard. This is going to be so hard. And I had this moment of realization and it was like, no, it's not like this is what you were made to do. Like, this will be. And I came up with this phrase, it's going to be easy and it's going to be effortless. It's going to be easy. It's going to be effortless. And I kept repeating myself, it's going to be what you're made to do.

[Unknown Speaker 2]

It's going to be easy to be effortless.

[Rob Dial]

It's going to flow through you.

[Unknown Speaker 2]

Right?

[Rob Dial]

It's not coming from you, Rob, it's coming through me. I just got to make sure that I stay aligned and not get in the way of the message. So I kept thinking that the first day I had the entire outline for the book done. Like every, like part one, part two, part three, every single chapter done. Like the outline of it. I was like, this is crazy. And by the time I was done, within a week, more than half of.

[Unknown Speaker 2]

The book was done.

[Rob Dial]

Obviously, I spent a lot of time editing and changing and researching and hiring a, you know, a neuroscientist to go through and make sure the stuff I said was correct. But I felt so in align with what I was doing and that this is the thing I was supposed to be doing that it lit me up and I had so much energy to do it. On the other side of that, when you are misaligned, when you're not in alignment, it's almost like when you're aligned, the universe provides energy for you because this is a thing you're here to do. And when you are not aligned, you have to come up with the energy yourself. And that's why you feel tired and you feel unmotivated. It's like swimming upstream in a river. Like, no matter how hard you try, you barely get anywhere and you feel exhausted and you feel demoralized. And it's like this feeling of like, we're barely moving. We're just, we're just wasting a lot of energy spinning our, spinning our wheels. And I've been there before. And we will be right back.

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[Rob Dial]

That's K I N S T a dot com mindset. And now back to the show. I want you to think about this for a second. Maybe the reason why you feel drained all the time isn't because, like, you need more coffee or because of the fact that you need another time management strategy. Maybe it's a sign that you are out of alignment with the reason why you're alive. Maybe it's the universe's way of, like, nudging you towards introspection and realignment. Maybe it's the universe's way of like, being like, how hard do I have to push you down for you to finally listen to me? And so for you, you might be in the place where you're like, man, this kind of makes sense. But Rob, I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do with my life. That's a great place to be. That's a beautiful place to be because now you can discover what that is. You have to find what it is that you love. And so people always ask like, well, how do I do that? How do I find my purpose? And you know, discovering your purpose isn't really a straightforward answer. And more often than not, what it really requires you to do is go, okay, think about this for a second. In the life that I currently have right now, I'm. Maybe you're 45 years old. I'm 45 years old and I am completely out of align with my life purpose. I don't know what my purpose in life is. Well, what that shows you is that everything that you've done in your entire life for the past 45 years has shown you what is not your purpose. So if you continue doing the same stuff you've always done, you will never find your purpose. So maybe what it's doing is. It's requiring you and asking of you to step out of your comfort zone, to embrace the unknown and start doing something different. Do things that you've never done before until you find what you're passionate about. If you're unsure of what your passion is, doing the same things repeatedly over and over and over again, it's not going to bring you any more clarity. You're not going to discover something new. You're not like. It's like. It's like you're not an explorer. You're just following the same path you've always done. You've got to kind of step in and put your hat of the explorer on and go, well, I'm going to do new things. There's something out there that I love. What is it? And so what you really need to make sure that you do is start becoming the experiment. Experiment with new experiences, right? Try new things. You know, try to try a new thing every single week. Make a pact with yourself. Every Sunday, I'm going to take up a new hobby and just see if there's anything that I like for the next year, 52 new hobbies. I'm not going to keep all of them. Some of them would be like, okay, that was cool. Some of them would be like, oh, that was pretty amazing. And then start using them to find something that you like, you might like. One of my friends, super successful guy, he sold his business, and he was, like, sitting there, and he's like, I don't know what I want to do with my life. He's like, but, you know, like, I'm going to start doing new things. So he sold his business. He's kind of hanging out, he's bored. He feels like he's lost his purpose because he's got no business anymore. He's like, I'm going to start doing new things. So he started, you know, going on boats and doing skiing, and he started doing other stuff. And then one day he played pickleball, and he's like, this is actually pretty fun. Like, I really enjoyed what I did today. So he's like, pickleball is actually really fun. So he got a pickleball court built at his house. And then he just started having friends come over. Pickleball friends come over, right? And he had recently just gotten a divorce as well. Friends come over, play pickleball. Nobody's really good, but everyone's starting to Get a little bit better. They're improving their skills. They're getting a little bit better. He ends up getting really obsessed with pickleball. He meets a woman who a really good pickleball player. They end up getting married, and they are now in the process of opening up a huge place in Austin where they're going to have pickleball courts all in Austin. He is obsessed with pickleball. He would have never found it if he didn't go, well, I want to try some new stuff. That's what I'm trying to say to you. Maybe you fall in love with pickleball. Maybe you find your soulmate at pickleball like he did. Maybe you try pickleball and you're like, this is stupid. I'm going to try something else. Doesn't matter. The point is just to try new things and see if you can find something that you love doing. You know, when you expose yourself to different experiences, you start to find little teeny, tiny things that start to resonate with your soul. And so then what I want you to do is, is make what I call a happiness blueprint, which is make a list of activities that bring you genuine joy right now before you go and find new things. And after you start finding things, just add it to a list. And this happiness is basically like your life compass.

[Unknown Speaker 2]

If it feels good, if it gives.

[Rob Dial]

You energy, maybe there's something behind it. Maybe it's guiding you towards some sort of experience that lines you with your inner self. And you have to realize prioritizing your happiness isn't like a luxury. It's a necessity for fulfilling life. It really is. And so doing things that make you happy is like hitting a power up button in a video game. You should be trying to put as much happy things into your day as you possibly can. So you might not have energy right now. If you look back on the past couple years of your life, you might be like, yeah, I'm just kind of forcing myself to do something in this life. Maybe the reason why is because you just don't have any purpose right now. That's okay. It's. It's easier to take action when you know your purpose. And so, you know, a really good thing is I can give you four journaling questions that will help you start to rediscover, maybe what your purpose is and what your passion is, is something that you might want to do. It's a thing called ikigai.

[Unknown Speaker 2]

You.

[Rob Dial]

If you've listened to the podcast for a long time, you probably heard me Speak about it. It's basically just four questions. The question is, what do you love? So just write that down and just make a massive list of everything that you love. It could be from ice cream to puppies to pickleball, Public speaking, whatever it might be. Self development. So what do you love? Next one is what are you good at? The third one is what can you be paid for? And the fourth one is what does the world need? And then I always like to add a fifth one in there because I think it's not in there, but it's really interesting is what are you really interested in learning more about or trying to do? I think that if you find something that you've kind of done, but you don't really have a whole lot of experience, you're like, man, I'm really interested in learning more about this thing that might be a little bit of a pull into the direction of where you should go. And so I want you to understand because then you start doing these things and time flies whenever you're doing them. You get lost in these activities. You know the reason why you get lost in those activities is because the energy is there. You don't have to come up with the energy. The universe is giving you that energy because this is what you were here to do. But it's also the reason why time moves really slow. When you're doing something that you hate and you're dragging your feet and you've got to force yourself to do the next thing, you have no energy. It's the universe communicating to you through the thing that the universe is made out of, which is energy. It's taking your energy down. So it's like, do something different. How many times do I have to tell you? It's the universe telling you, hey, this ain't at man. Universe is always speaking to you. The question is, are you listening? This is the reason why you can see two people who are 50 years old and one person can look 40 and the other person can look 70. Because one person is just doing something that lights them up and makes them happy and the other person has just been forcing himself to do something for the past 30 years that they hate. Doing something that you hate, something that's soul sucking, is exhausting. What a waste of life. So what I hope you do is I hope you start to, you know, hopefully this kind of perked up your ears a little bit to think, you know what, maybe I should start finding something I love. Maybe there is more things that I could be passionate about. Maybe there is something that I could do and I could enjoy much more. That's all I wanted to do. Try to find something that brings you joy. And what you'll find is that you're not as lazy anymore. It's easy to take action. 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 at robdial Junior. R O B D I A L J R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. So if you would share it, I would greatly appreciate it. And last but not least, 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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