Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so,

hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. If you're out there,

you love this podcast. Give me a favor. Give us a rating and review on whatever platform you're listening to us on.

It helps more than you can realize.

Today, I'm going to be talking to you about something that's extremely simple but wildly powerful.

And it's something called the self-perception theory.

And basically here's what it breaks down to.

You are not who you think you are.

You are who you have observed

yourself to be. And so let me say it again and then we'll break it down. You're not who you think

that you are. You are who you have observed yourself to be. And so most people are walking around

with beliefs and habits and truths, quote unquote,

truths, if you're not watching the video, that you never actually chose.

We just pick them up like lint on a sweater from childhood and from school and from family

and from culture.

And we never stopped to ask like, do I want to be this person? Like that's one of the most important questions you got ourselves. Do I want to be this person that have always been, this negative person, this person talks down about other people, this person is judgmental? Like, we just think, oh, this is just who I am versus taking a step back and going, do I want to be this person? And if you do, cool, keep being that person. If there's parts

of you you don't want to be, well, that's where you need to actually start to change it. And so all of

this comes from what's called the self-perception theory. It comes from a psychologist named Daryl Bem,

and he started in 1972. And the gist of it is pretty simple. We don't form beliefs of ourselves first

and then act. We often do things first and then we look back on what we've done, those actions,

and then we decide what we must believe about ourselves based off of our actions in the past.

It's kind of like this. You observe your own behavior and feelings like a outsider in some sort of way.

...