Mastering the Mindset
Mastering the Mindset
Your Comfort Zone Is Cute; Your Goals Are Sexy
In this episode of Mastering the Mindset with Darius Dotch, we break down a powerful shift that can change how you approach discipline, motivation, and personal growth: focusing on opportunity instead of obligation. Too often, we fixate on what’s difficult — waking up early, working out, eating healthy, going back to school — and our brains naturally try to avoid it.
But what happens when you focus on the reward instead of the resistance?
This episode explores how redirecting your mindset toward the life you want can help you push through discomfort, stay consistent, and finally move the needle toward real change. Because at the end of the day, you either do the work… or you don’t — and your future is built on the actions you choose today.
If you’ve been struggling with discipline, procrastination, or staying focused on your goals, this episode will give you the mental reset you need.
Losing myself and finding my strength came to the conclusion that I want it all. Feeling that pressure of tryna do better. I wanna reach heights, but too scared to fall. Too scared of failure, way more scared of feeling regret. I'm not even trying, that's terrifying. I understand that chasing my goals, I bury my clocks because it takes time. I gotta go. I already know if I wanna grow, you reap what you sow. That be the case. Planting my seeds and water my base. Yeah, I make mistakes. Yeah, I know you grow in your garden, but watch for the snakes. The people that act like you're crazy, but trying this, they far away. They don't think it's possible, I think it's possible. That is just hate. If they hate themselves, cause they on the shelf. While you create a life that you love. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A life that you love. Loving the fact to improving yourself. Decided that you would not settle. Decided that you got the drive to do it. The road got bumping your foot on the pedal. You go up a level, you turn up whenever. It's time for you to go put in that work. I know my worth, huh? I know it ain't gonna be easy, yeah. I know it hurt, but thing is for sure. Yeah. Until it put me in this earth. Before I ride in that hearse, I'm chasing my goals. I'm chasing my goals. Loving the fact to improving yourself. Alright, and welcome back to another episode. Thank y'all so much for being here. If you are on YouTube, go ahead and like and subscribe to the channel. Like right now, go ahead, it's gonna take one second. I thank you in advance. And if you are listening on a podcast platform, go ahead and uh leave me a review. These things help me out a whole lot. Also, become a monthly supporter of the show. You can choose the monthly amount. It can either be three, five, eight, or ten dollars, and you can cancel at any time. Why would you ever do that? But let's go ahead and get into it. So, this one is gonna be pretty quick. Like the preacher say, I won't hold you too long. Before you know it, I'm gonna be done. I'm gonna be gonna close this sermon and I'm gonna send you on your way. Hopefully, better than you came. But I feel like I need to do one of these episodes every once in a while because sometimes we just need a little reminder, a little fire under our butt, a nudge, a push to get that needle going, to get that momentum back. So today we're gonna be talking about how to focus on putting in that work that needs to be put in in order to move the needle to actually make things change in your life. So, two quick things. One, as humans, we tend to be attracted to going for the easy route in almost everything we do. Unless we make a conscious effort to really push ourselves to do the opposite, we want things to be as smooth and easy as possible. We just do. And two, we tend to focus on things that we don't want over the things we do want. That's just human nature. We all been guilty of that. So today, uh we're gonna talk about opportunity versus obligation. So first let me say, whenever we doing something or working on something, we have the privilege to think about anything we want to. We can literally think about whatever the hell we want to. But the problem is, most people tend to think about the things they don't want. For example, let's use the gym for the gym example and working out and all that. So most people, when they want to lose weight or gain muscle or get stronger, it's a struggle for most people because they focus on the obligation. Having to go to the gym, having to take time out of your day, having to push yourself. And a lot of times working out is just hard, right? It hurts. And it's even harder because you don't see results right away. You don't just go to the gym, bush your butt working out, and then step on the scale after a workout and see a difference. You won't see a difference the second time, the tenth time. You don't really know when you'll see a difference, but you put in that effort and you don't see any results in the beginning. And people keep focusing on those obligations, having to push yourself, having to sweat, having to do things that most people don't want to do, having a diet, having to go out in the cold to go to the gym, especially this winter. Jesus has been cold. The obligation, right? And by focusing on that, your brain is gonna want to avoid that and go towards the easy route. The easy route is attractive to your brain. The easy route is sexy as hell, it's seductive. That easy route gonna whisper your panties right on off you every time. So what if you focus on the opportunity instead? And what's the opportunity? How about the opportunity to lose weight and get in the best shape you've been in years? The opportunity of you looking better in that swimsuit this summer. That's the opportunity. To be on the beach or at the pool, way more confident than you had a year ago. Way more confident than you were a year ago. Or for men, putting on that muscle is the opportunity. Getting that six-pack, bulking up your chest, getting those biceps right. And yes, there is the obligation. You can't get around that. You do have to hit the gym, you do have to sweat, you do have to break your muscles down to be able to build them back stronger. You do have to push yourself. But the opportunity is the way you're gonna feel, the way you're gonna look, the way you're gonna think about yourself or think of yourself in the future. And which one of those would you rather focus on in anyway, right? Let that opportunity make it easier for you to go ahead and crank out that obligation. Another common one, to use as an example, and I said it already, but eating healthy. Eating healthy is hard. And people always assume that I eat healthy all the time. Man, let me tell you, all that good tasting, unhealthy food, it tastes just as good to me too. And I have my moments. Eating healthy can feel like a chore. Sometimes you just want a damn burger. You want the pizza. We see that ice cream and say, I wish I could just have this ice cream instead of this fruit. That's the obligation. The opportunity, how about you losing weight? Or your body having more energy, or the fact that if you do eat healthy, you'll stay alive longer than longer for your children or your family, right? Being able to walk your daughter down the aisle. Obligation versus opportunity. We can focus on the hard stuff or the opportunity. Use that to help you push through. It'll make you more likely to be excited to get up and go do that hard stuff. And this applies to so many things, right? Oh, you're taking night classes. Night school is hard. You already have a life during the day, and then you have to have a job or do schoolwork on top of that, that's hard. And yeah, you can choose to focus on that, to focus on that, or you could choose to focus on the life you want, the better job and opportunities you'll have, the money you'll make in the future, the feeling of accomplishment when you can finally say you graduated. What if you focus on all what if you focused on all that? Being able to buy your mama a car, to be able to afford that house, all the future benefits of doing what's hard now, right? How does that feel? How would that look as well as what would that feel like? What would it feel like to be on that beach? To be able to take a trip out of the country to a place you've been wanting to go. How proud of yourself you would feel if you were able to do all these things. And what's another obligation? And this one applies to everybody, especially me this morning. But waking up early. We all wish we had a luxury to be able to just sleep in as long as we want to, to be able to wake up whenever we want to without any consequences. And it's easy as hell to be in bed and look at that clock and feel like, man, I'm tired as hell right now. I do not want to get up and get out of this bed right now. Especially if you make the mistake and you wake up five minutes before your alarm goes off, that's the worst. Or you could focus on the obligation of not wanting to go to bed so early, of dreading having to get up early in the next morning, right? Thinking about how tired you're gonna be in the morning. You can focus on all those obligations, or you can think about how much better you're gonna feel after your morning routine, or how good you're gonna feel after you have a great start to your day at home and walking to work with more energy because you already been up for two hours and you had your coffee, you had your breakfast, right? And you're not rushing in traffic, spilling coffee on your shirt, cussing at bad drivers on the way, because road rage is real. The other day I got cut off by a semi, and if you've ever been cut off by a semi, it's scary. Like that's scary as hell. And you know when you merging on the highway, right, and then the semi don't let you over into the lane, and now you try not to crash and run your damn car off the road. Yeah. It happened to me the other day, and it was so uncalled for, and it was in the construction zone, and this asshole sped up as I was trying to get over, right in front of the end lane, where it where the lane ends, right? And I almost wrecked. And I was pissed off and I caught up to him, I cussed him out, flipped him off, and he had the audacity to be mad at me when I caught up to him. Like, what what what the hell are you mad at? You almost made me crash. Anyway, waking up early, right? You can focus on how good it feels to get up and have that peace and quietness in the morning, right? We can focus on the obligation of having to wake up, or we can focus on the opportunity, how much better we're gonna feel, right? The energy. How better emotionally we could be, how we won't be dragging in the beginning of the work day. Which one would you want would you rather focus on? Hey, which one sounds more motivating? The opportunity sounds way better. And again, you still do the obligation because you have to, but you focus on the opportunity to help you get through it because the work still needs to be done. And like I said in the beginning, you have the privilege to focus on whatever the hell you want to. And most people focus on what they don't want over what they do want. They focus on things they don't want. Almost everybody does this. It's like going to target practice or to the gun range and pointing your gun five feet to the left of the target. How often do you go through your day focusing on the target that you don't want to hit? Focusing on what you don't want to happen. Your life is gonna start to change once you begin to notice this for yourself and become aware of it, that a lot of your thoughts are thinking about things you don't want. Like aiming your gun away from the target. And when you become aware of it, you start to say, Oh, okay, I'm doing it again. Damn, I just did it again. I'm thinking about this thing, and I don't even want this thing. And you start to make these tiny shifts in your brain. These shifts are very important. Shifts in the right direction for you to start focusing on the things you do want. And you'll start to focus on the end result, the reward from the work that you gotta put in. Because look, the fact of the matter is, of everything I ever talk about on here, the truth is you either will get what you want in life or you won't. It's that simple. There's only two options you either get what you want or you don't. And you have steps and actions that you take or don't take in the middle, that's gonna lead to the inevitability of those two options of your life. Don't make the mistake of believing that your journey towards the things in your life that you truly want are gonna come easier if you spend all your time focusing on what you don't want. Like I said on here many, many times, we spend so much time worrying about all the things we don't want or don't want to happen. When the reality is, research shows that only about 10% of what we worry about actually comes true. 10%. That's all. And I can guarantee you, you do more than 10% worth of worrying. We all do it. But that don't mean we can't change that. So that's what I got for you today. Like I said, short and sweet. Uh so the door of the church is open, like pastor says. But uh, thank y'all for being here, man. Uh, if you like this episode, please share this on your social media or share this with a friend or family member who you think would benefit from hearing this. Also become a supporter of the show. You can choose the amount. It can be three, five, eight, or ten dollars. Think of it as like buying me a cup of coffee. I love coffee. But let's go ahead and get to this music. The song I got for y'all today is called I Ain't Proud of That. Let's ride out. Yeah. You know, we all make mistakes from time to time. But I ain't proud of that. But life goes on. I ain't proud of that. Life goes on. Oh, my resume should be heartbreakin'. No, I ain't proud of it, but honestly, I'm tired of partying, man. I might have to call y'all later. I put my haters on call waiting. Cause I'm tryna eat, you think it's sweet. No wonder why niggas throwin' salt like a soft shaker. Cause her heart breaking, my heart racing. Like nigga, that's what you try to do. Looking in the mirror, like nigga, really. Would your mama be proud of you? Damn, I'ma kinda hurt right now. What's in my mind right now? Make up on my shirt right now. Same old nigga. But since day one, you always keep it real with me. If I need the vent, you would still listen. It's been years and you still miss me. Ever yeah, tell you happy birthday on your Facebook, and I feel different. Like real titties and fake ones. You a real one. Shot the real women. Uh I said I'm scared of commitment. You was like telling who isn't. Like who in the hell are you getting? All you do is show love. I guess I was scared of the feeling. I got history with a few women who missin' me. And it's messing with them mentally. Like it's they foul when it was really me. Cause I didn't deserve you. Yeah. I ain't proud of that. But life goes on. Yeah. I ain't proud of that. My life goes on. I guess we just friends now. Cause that's better, right? These days we hard to speak. I've been grinding all week. And when I got time, I tell my niggas it's shot time. Cause I done finna got free. Tell them shots on me. So call back, nigga. I feel like a dog ass nigga. Damn. Sometimes I feel like a dog ass nigga. Cause she was saying plus. I was tryna go and get brain. Tryna get these hoes in D. I fail like a dumb ass nigga. Yeah, I failed that class. Hell no, I did not pass. She wanna be the one, but I could not act. Never been good at man. Like goddamn, I'd never subtract that. When I'm on backtrack, I'll be embarrassed if it seems my snapchat. Hopefully that won't leak, that's ass mad. Hopefully, hopefully she will get over me. Hopefully the next man she meets will express it, vote just openly. Physically and vocally, cause I got history with a few women who missin' me. And it's messing with them mentally. Like it stayed fine. It was really me, cause I didn't deserve you. Yeah. I'm proud of that. My life goes on. Yeah. I ain't proud of that. My life goes on. You know, I could sit here and wish I could turn back the hands of time. But honestly, honestly, I believe that everything happens for beast. And what might I never make a mistake? But life goes on. And even though I may not be proud of everything I did, I know I damn sure was made perfect. Yeah, that's real. Ah, my life goes on.