none of my mentors ever had me focus on
perfection
they had me focus on progress to just
keep getting better little incremental
gains every day every week every month
every quarter and even when you move
backwards a couple of steps what's the
progress that you made in what you
learned
so i was taught that failure is an
opportunity to learn
and i was also taught to disassociate
me being a failure from family
[Music]
hey everybody welcome to impact theory
our goal with this show and company is
to introduce you to the people and ideas
that will help you actually execute on
your dreams all right today's guest is a
wildly successful serial entrepreneur
who has built five multi-million dollar
companies including one that generated
over four billion dollars in revenue
he's also the multiple-time new york
times best-selling author of the answer
and having it all and he is widely
considered one of the leading behavioral
and mindset experts in the world and
part of what makes him so extraordinary
is that he has had a just crazy string
of successes in multiple industries
across absurdly divergent product lines
his areas of expertise range all the way
from real estate and internet software
to brain research and business
consulting this broad spectrum acumen
has seen him featured in eight movies
including quest for success with richard
branson and the dalai lama and the
global phenomenon the secret he is also
a much sought-after coach and speaker
who's been featured in the new york
times the wall street journal and on cnn
and additionally he's been interviewed
and mined for his priceless insights by
such high-profile interviewers as larry
king ellen and anderson cooper he's not
one to sit back on his laurels and
retire however so despite the kind of
repeated success that eludes all but
even the most die-hard entrepreneurs
he's launched yet another new company
this one called neurogym that aims to
use the most advanced technologies and
evidence-based brain training methods to
help people unleash their fullest
potential so please help me in welcoming
the man whose latest book innersize is
poised to unlock your brain's hidden
power the brain whisperer himself john
assaraf
thank you absolutely it's good to have
you on oh it's so good to be here dude i
want to dive right into the brain
training so it's makes total sense to me
now as an entrepreneur why you would be
so into like brain research and brain
science and all that but i don't know
that it's the most self-evident thing to
the outside world why did you start
there
well i didn't start there
what happened for me personally when i
was a a teen between ages 13 to 17
i got into enormous amounts of trouble
with the law
i did
a lot of unethical things and i was
getting myself into so much trouble
and i had one mentor
that my brother introduced me to his
name was alan brown he was a very
successful philanthropist entrepreneur
and he agreed to meet with me for lunch
one day and he asked me like why are you
doing these things you seem like a nice
young kid and i said i don't know i just
want to make some money and i just want
to fit in
he goes but you seem like you're
intelligent why don't you just use your
brain's natural abilities i go listen
based on my education and based on what
the teachers have told me
i'm not going to do very well in life
and i left high school in grade 11
thinking that i'm not worthy enough i'm
not smart enough i'm not good enough and
this one man in one minute in one
meeting changed my life
because he asked me what what goals do
you have and i said what do you mean
what goals do i have i said i want to go
out this weekend to the bar i want to
have some good food i want to find a
nice young lady maybe hook up with and
he says no what are your bigger goals
and i didn't have any so he actually
sent me home
he said fill out these pieces of paper
and on the pieces of paper it said like
what age do you want to retire by like i
was 19. this was may of 1980.
i wasn't even started yet
i said but just fill out fill out these
papers so i said i want to retire by a
time of 45 with 3 million dollars i want
to have a mercedes i want to have a
house i want to travel the world i want
to have a great lifestyle and so i came
back on monday and he looked at it and
he asked me one question
and that question transformed my life
and he said are you interested in
achieving these goals
or are you committed
and i stopped and i and i looked at him
he was standing up i was sitting at my
desk there at his office and i asked him
mr brown i said what's the difference
and he said if you're interested you'll
do what's convenient you'll come up with
stories and excuses and reasons why you
can't and you'll use your education as
an excuse you'll use your stories and
excuse you'll use the fact your father
was a cab driver and was a gambler and
never had any money you'll use all of
that as your reasons why you can't he
says but if you're committed you will do
whatever it takes you'll let go of your
stories you'll let go of your excuses
you'll let go of all the reasons you
currently have that are formulating your
identity of yourself
and you learn how to let that go and
become who you are destined to become
why'd you listen to him like that's such
extraordinary advice which i would have
promptly ignored well i had been in in
so many situations where i was so
embarrassed and ashamed for myself and
for my mother and father
and here was a man who was kind
generous
caring
empathetic he didn't talk down to me he
lifted me up but then he also said i can
show you how
if you are committed i can show you how
and i had nothing to lose at that point
talk to me about that shame that's
really interesting and you've talked
about growing into being able to talk
about stuff very openly so what was the
source of the shame how did it play out
for you so the first source of shame
when i was five i moved from israel
where i was born to montreal and i just
started kindergarten in israel and then
i was thrown into a class with 50 kids
in montreal
in grade 1.
i didn't speak english or french
and so i felt stupid i felt like i sat
there you know looking up at the
ceilings bugging the other kids and was
consistently reprimanded consistently
put in the principal's office
and then i was consistently
you know brought you know to my knees
with my parents my father was physically
abusive
uh which you know is a challenge in
itself his words weren't a way you know
that he communicated hands and feet were
his way of communicating and so when i
did the wrong things
um that's was the punishment and so i
felt embarrassed that i wasn't smart
enough that i wasn't good enough that i
wasn't going to amount to much and back
then school was you know my parents were
trying to say go to school do well
that's your your way out of you know
where we were living that's your way out
of this life that we're having which
wasn't a bad life we had food on the
table we had a roof over our heads
but there was always a struggle
and mr brown offered me some hope
it really amounted to that he i offered
me gentle kind
love and hope
without
embarrassing me shaming me or making me
feel guilty what was it that he said
that read to you as hope at that point
um it was his demeanor of how kind he
was he was extremely successful
real estate offices real estate
buildings
a wife lori children
just kindness you know just raw kindness
there was nothing for him to gain
from helping me he didn't know me
but he just
was kind
and and it was one of the first times
that there wasn't a hidden agenda or
somebody just you know putting me down
for being a degrading human being or
degraded human being
and
he made me promise
if i took what he taught me i teach it
to others
i think that you've become this really
extraordinary example of rewriting your
story
yeah how did you get out from under the
story that
you would have had to have been forming
if your father was abusive because now i
know that you guys you're in in very
regular communication oh yeah um so it
just turned 88 where we yeah it's
amazing so i forgave him 50 years ago
what did that process look like i know a
lot of people are watching this right
now they are stuck in a story man like
something happened to them as kids or
whatever's happening to them now they
don't know how to get out from under
that story and could never conceive of
having a beautiful relationship
you know that that they've re sort of
re-explored and reimagined
when i was in my 20s one of the things
that alan put me on a path to was
personal development you know read a
book a month go to events listen to
cassette tapes back then of motivational
stuff for motivation for inspiration for
strategies for tactics of what to do to
lift raise your your level of skill and
knowledge
um so i went to this event and i brought
up this uh this uh challenge that i had
with my father
and
the instructor said like when are you
gonna forgive him
i said never i'm never gonna forgive him
[ __ ] that forgive him there's so much
pain
and the instructor said well
if you're never gonna forgive him
then you're the one taking the poison
pill hoping he's gonna die or he's gonna
be affected
he says you don't forgive him for him
you forgive him so you can move on
i was like aha number one
and then he said why don't you ask your
father why he did it
whoa
like why why was he like that and so
when i mustered up enough courage
on the phone with my father i said dad
like how come you've never said i love
you
he says well my father never said he
loved me that's not what a man says
but you say to my sister
says well that's okay to say to a girl
or to a woman
i said why did you hit me so much why
did you it says because you were being a
bad boy
i said but why didn't you talk to me
like why didn't you just talk
and he says well because my father hit
me too i had to put you in your place i
had to teach you the right way to stop
the behavior
and it was at that moment that i
realized he just didn't know better he
that's what he learned
was the process
to try and help me
so
he's not a malicious human being he's a
kind loving caring man
but he was taught
to get compliance
hit
so the pain will cause you not to do it
again
and in theory okay understand the brain
signs today it does work in some cases
but especially with with children even
adults
the physical and mental and emotional
trauma that's created when somebody who
loves you also inflicts so much pain to
you there's confusion the neural network
in the brain says i love this person my
mother my father my best friend whatever
and then there's so much pain associated
now we have these patterns in our brains
of this love and [ __ ] hate
love and pain
and it's very very confusing
but after
this dialogue with him
i started telling him i love you
and it took three years i used to call
him every week
i started telling him i love you dad
hang up i love you dad i hang up i love
you dad hang up
then once one day he says to me i love
you too boy
and then he has never not said i love
you to me my brother or my sister since
then wow
that's really extraordinary what what
was the mechanism you're so good at like
getting to the
just raw how i pull this off i know you
use vision boards which i definitely
want to talk about accomplish boards
which i think is really extraordinary
and i've never heard that before and i
think that's really really awesome
too what board crap crap board to get to
the crap board we definitely have to
hear about that were you using the crap
board to like reframe the story like how
did um i did the crap board didn't come
until last couple of years
let me come back to the alan brown story
when i came back
that following couple of days with my
goals and he asked me committed or
interested i said i'm committed shook my
hand
he then put me through real estate
school for five weeks i graduated from
real estate school may 20th 1980 and the
only reason those dates are ingrained in
my brain i passed the real estate test
on my own without cheating wow so that
was step one when i came back to the
office he had the forms that i had
filled out he says great sit down
so i want you to read every one of them
every morning that you come in the
office at 7 30 and i want you to run
your fingers across them were these the
goals of the those are the goals the
goals that i had
so you had me write my vision for health
wealth relationships career business
finances charity fun experiences
everything every year of my life you had
these documents he said i want you to
read them every day
and you're going to do it while you come
into the office so that i know that
you've done them and i want to i want
you to run your fingers across them as
you're reading them and then when you're
finished one paragraph close your eyes
and i want you to feel
what would it be like if that was true
so he got me to see it
to touch it
to close my eyes and visualize it and to
feel it
so at the time he didn't understand what
he was really doing
but he was causing me to create new
neural patterns in my brain that did not
exist before
the only
success that i'd ever really seen was on
lifestyles of the rich and famous i said
one day i want a life like that
and and so every single day for a year
i had to do that and it only took 10 or
15 minutes
and there was also beliefs you talked
about what else was in there he also
asked me to write down what would you
have to believe about yourself in order
to achieve those goals
he said well i'd have to believe i'm
smart enough but i don't he goes i don't
want to know what you don't he says what
would you have to believe it well i have
to believe i'm smart enough i'd have to
believe i'm deserving enough i'd have to
believe i'm worthy enough i'd have to
believe i'm capable of doing this i'd
have to believe these things i wrote
wrote out a bunch of things and he added
a few more he says great now i want you
to record those things
and on your way to work and on your
drive to look at real estate homes
because 19 getting to real estate you
listen to those over and over and over
and over and over again until you can
recite every single one of them
so he taught me the power of repetition
he taught me the power of looking at
stuff touching stuff feeling stuff
seeing stuff hearing stuff memorizing
stuff
and at the time i was 19 i said i mean i
felt this was [ __ ] ludicrous to me
right this is like what the hell am i
doing here it's like there's like it was
nuts
but that first year at 19 i made like 30
some odd thousand dollars which was five
grand more than my dad made as a cab
driver so i said something's working
i just kept doing it i was too afraid
not to
so i kept doing it in the second year i
made 151 thousand dollars
five times
now in the second year he started
upgrading my knowledge and skills more
so he started to say okay instead of
doing this now now you're you've
graduated to doing this and he taught me
some upgraded skills and so the
combination of training my brain at a
young age with beliefs that i wanted to
have he taught me the right habits to
have daily rituals you know for goal
achievement versus goal setting
that's interesting right so he said
everybody sets goals either they write
them down or they don't they have them
in their head i'm going to teach you how
to achieve goals
it's really interesting coming from the
guy that was in the secret and i love
what you've talked about the difference
between the law of attraction and the
law of goya oh yeah yeah so what talk to
us about that
so
the law of goya is is simply get off
your ass so if you if you
if you if you think and you believe and
you emotionalize you visualize
and you create your plan
for how am i actually going to achieve
this so what do i need to do when am i
going to do it how specifically how am i
going to
tweak it measure it and iterate it so
that i'm consistently making progress i
learned the value of progress versus
perfection
none of my mentors ever had me focus on
perfection
they had me focus on progress to just
keep getting better little incremental
gains every day every week every month
every quarter and even when you move
backwards a couple of steps what's the
progress that you made in what you
learned
so i was taught that failure is an
opportunity to learn
and i was also taught to disassociate
me being a failure from failing
for sure i want to go back to what
you're talking about with beliefs
and you said this is so cool you were
talking about how you wrote down these
beliefs and you were reading them over
and you were doing what you're told and
you're running your finger across you
really allowing yourself to feel it
imagine it and your brain was screaming
something at you my brain was screaming
that's [ __ ]
that's not true you're not successful
you're not earning that amount of money
you're not smart you're not this
but i was also taught at the same time
that when that happens first and
foremost that's normal that's the old
self and the old patterns
trying to fight for their life
and he said with repetition and emotion
and consistency
initially it's hard and you have to use
conscious effort
to create the new beliefs he says but
over 30 days 60 days 90 days 180 days
that new pattern that you're focusing on
and paying attention to
your brain basically says well i guess
you really don't need those old patterns
you keep activating these new ones let's
just make these ones work and let's make
these real yeah but i want to understand
what happened and and with the even the
law of attraction you know the i was
taught the law of attraction you know i
was 23 24 years old
also at a real estate conference they're
talking about this law of attraction
thing that there's this energy
everything's made up of energy i am
energy you are energy and my thoughts
you know create this resonance between
what i attract and what i don't i'm like
oh god i like that [ __ ] you know like i
want to attract more of the good stuff
right
um
and so i i i bought in like i bought
into stuff that just made sense to me
but then i was a voracious student i
want to understand how
like explain to me how it works like if
somebody tells me visualize i go why
like how does it work like if you ask me
to visualize like
why does it work like why should i
invest my time on that versus something
else if you're asking me to
use affirmations like how specifically
why how does it work
if you're asking me to emotionalize well
what's happening in me that tell me i
need to create these false senses of
feelings i want to know why it works and
why does it work especially
emotionalizing i think that's something
that people hear a lot i talk a lot
about
embodying something really feeling it
yeah but why does it work right great
question it has to do with circuits in
the brain and neurochemicals that are
released
and so when we feel something
chances are that we're going to release
dopamine in the brain the feel good
neurochemical that activates the reward
center of the brain and chancellor if we
feel that
and we have this positive emotion around
it and that neurochemistry is flooding
our brain and our body with feel-good
chemicals we're actually activating the
motivational center of the brain
and so when we visualize when we set a
goal when we take an action step when we
emotionalize when we read our goals the
initial flood of neurochemicals dopamine
serotonin feel good chemicals and then
if we share it with a friend oxytocin
those three neuro chemicals those are
the neurochemicals of goal achievement
but then there's the other side of it
the other circuits of fear of stress
where norepinephrine cortisol or
epinephrine the stress hormones can be
released as well and so i'm fascinated
and i want to teach people the stuff
that we've learned about
beliefs
self-esteem self-worth
fears
and the stuff that really holds people
back because all the how to how to get
healthy and stay healthy we know how do
i build a business and sustain it we
know how do i get into a relationship
and make it successful we know we we
know most of the how-to for anything
that anybody wants to do in this time
frame that we live in so the how to is
the easiest part of the equation
so the harder part of the equation is
why am i not doing the things that i
know i should be doing
and why am i not doing the things that i
could find out easily how to do
let's talk about that so in your real
estate company
you said i'm giving everyone the same
training they're reading all of the same
books and yet they're not getting the
same results and it wasn't like oh well
the smart people are doing better than
the dumb people you said sometimes it
was people that you were like god in
real life this guy's not that bright but
he's crushing
so what ended up being the difference
between the people who didn't do
anything with the information and those
that did
so in this is going back sometimes i
think in 1992 we were stuck um but i
knew there was more possibility there
was there was room for growth
and
i wanted to figure out if the stuff that
i did in the 80s when i was a kid you
know that broke free
would it work with some of my agents and
so we took 75 agents randomly agents
said hey do you want to get into a
six-month program to like retrain your
brain your subconscious brain around
your beliefs about what is possible for
you to achieve around your habits of
what you have to do in order to achieve
that
and we focused on retraining their
subconscious mind
and so for six months they had to go
through a process of listening to
certain audio tapes reading reading
certain materials every day and
following the process of training their
brain specifically their subconscious
brain which controls 95 to 98 of all of
our thoughts emotions and behaviors
today and within six months that group
increased sales by 100 million dollars
jesus 100 million dollars i said holy
[ __ ] right this is working
and so we started to teach some of what
we teach now in neurogym actually now we
have the technologies we have the
systems that are far better than what we
did back in the 90s and we went from 1.2
billion to 4.5 billion a year
and it wasn't because we taught them any
more skills to be real estate agents we
taught them how to change the way they
thought about themselves we taught them
how to change their habits
our agents who made 750 000 or more were
in front of a client 75 of the time
and we asked all the agents that weren't
in front of more clients like why are
you doing that like why aren't you in
front of people that are going to help
you earn more income oh well we're busy
doing this and doing this and doing this
and they had stories and excuses and
reasons why
and so part of the work that i love to
do now is is really help people
understand what is your story
like what's the story you're telling us
because we all have a story we have a
money story a relationship story a
health story we have a story for
everything and then that story keeps
recreating our lives over and over and
over again and we have beliefs that
support the story we have habits that
support the story we have people that
support the store we have systems that
support our story
and so my question i always ask people
who would you be with a different story
talk to me about set points that was
something really interesting in what you
talk about around the stories and things
that we carry that i found really
interesting sure so
maxwell maltz wrote a great book many
many years ago in the probably the 70s
called psycho cybernetics right and
maxwell moss was a surgeon who performed
surgery on people and what he noticed is
even after plastic surgery that he
performed on people some people didn't
see any change in their faces and it was
visible to everybody else but not to
them because they had a map of what they
thought they look like yes so we all
have
a map of reality we have a map of what
we think we look like
and any deviation on the physical level
to that map to that visual
representation we have in our brains
that doesn't match the map your brain
deletes or distorts it
so
when we were working with real estate or
when i worked with business owners in
addition to upgrading knowledge and
skills
if you think about how let's say income
we have set points for how much income
we earn so whether it's 10 000 a year or
20 or 50 or 100 or a million it doesn't
matter we get this set point and then we
behave the way we need to behave and we
feel what we need to feel to earn that
income
and over a period of time it becomes
part of the brain's default mode network
so we develop set points for everything
and so if the set points in the brain
and there's a psycho-cybernetic
mechanism in the brain a control and
response mechanism in the brain
and it's our brain
why not learn how to reset the set point
and so now we're looking at what
technologies are available to help help
reset that what
evidence-based methods are there to set
that or to reset that
and so when we take let's say
visualization right and you start to see
yourself even if the picture is not
clear in your mind of achieving the next
level of your success whether it's
releasing weight and keeping it off
getting into a relationship that you
love and are happy and whether it's to
make two or three or five times more
money and live a certain type of
lifestyle that allows you to do the
things that freedom
with having money allows you to do if
you start in your mind first and you
impress
that through conscious efforts into the
subconscious mind
it then causes thoughts and emotions and
behaviors
so i like to work from the outside in
and from the inside out so use both
i want every advantage
it's interesting so i've heard you now a
few times and the first few times it
didn't really make my radar but you
always say release weight you never say
lose weight yeah what do you do when you
lose something
look for it yeah i don't want to look
for weight that i've lost
i want to release it i like to use
language patterns
as well that are gonna empower me versus
disempower me
uh self-talk is so critical
and so i'm consistently paying attention
to how am i speaking to myself
am i speaking to myself in the kind
motivating
empathetic compassionate way
or am i consistently self-deprecating
and putting myself down i used to think
a lot like when i was younger i'm not
good enough i'm not smart enough i'm not
worthy
um those thoughts uh and you know lots
of fear fear of being embarrassed fear
of failure fear of being ashamed and i
still have the thoughts every once in a
while especially when i'm setting new
goals those come up holy mackerel they
come up so freaking fast
are you smart enough to achieve that are
you good enough to achieve that even
when i got into really diving deep into
the brain science and even my new book i
had i was petrified to release my book
it took me two years to write it because
now i'm entering another whole domain of
neuroscience and neuropsychology with
world-renowned experts that i've worked
with for years
but now here i am putting myself out
there with hey this is
neuroscientifically correct so i had to
make sure that it was
and but there's a lot of fear
but i understand what the emotion of
fear is it's a subconscious trigger that
causes this feeling that i don't like
and it's a ghost signal for me not a
stop signal for me that's interesting
what do you mean by that
well fear is an emotion emotions are all
triggered at the subconscious level
they release neurochemicals that causes
a feeling we are consciously aware of
feelings
that are triggered at the subconscious
level the feeling is the end point
of the human experience in the physical
body and so when you have something in
your brain that that a neural network
says well
what if this book comes out and you fail
what if it's not good enough what is
scientifically not correct what if what
if what if my brain is going to process
that the same way as your brain and
everybody else because that's
everybody's brain is the same the
mechanism of how the brain works it's
einstein's brain hitler's brain genghis
khan's brain
tom bilyeu's brain john acetate all the
same functionality
so if you understand the mechanics of
what's supposed to happen
then you say okay great when i feel this
then what am i going to do
so i like to use an analogy of a car
you're driving a car
and you're talking to a friend of yours
and a light pops up on the dash you
don't take a hammer and hit a light
it's a signal something's happening
in the in the in the engine in the trunk
in the in the tires something's
happening emotions and feelings aren't
uh positive or negative
they're
empowering or disempowering to varying
degrees if you don't understand them
and so if you think about fear right
how does a firefighter
go into a burning building
when there's this enormous adrenaline
and an epinephrine you know that could
stop most people dead in their tracks
they learn here's the feeling
it's normal
do you have the knowledge and the skills
and the preparation to deal with this in
a safe way
go
if you don't now you retreat so we have
this phenomenal brain right it's it's
genius abilities we can't figure out how
to
replicate it anywhere with billions of
dollars
but we are getting some of the user's
manual now
so when you feel fear what should you do
i teach the first two inner sizes that i
teach every one of our students number
one is called take six calm the circuits
so if you have this unpleasant anxious
fearful emotion energy in motion
right and it's unpleasant and the breaks
have gone on
if you just take six deep breaths in
through your nose
out through your mouth like you're
breathing through a straw you will
deactivate the stress response center
which means blood is going to go back to
the left prefrontal cortex the einstein
part of the brain can actually think
through this problem
because what happens when the stress
response center is activated blood goes
away from that into the fear response so
you have epinephrine cortisol adrenaline
to be able to get you out of the
situation it's part of our instinctual
brain part of the reptilian brain the
first part of the brain that was
developed was that then the mammalian
brain the limbic system then the
neocortex the thinking brain
so when our brain has this signal of oh
my god you might get hurt you might lose
this you might get in trouble you might
be embarrassed ashamed ridiculed judged
et cetera
that part of the brain is going to get
activated so if you take six deep
breaths first calm down calm the
circuits first
then do inner size number twos called
aya aia
the first day is for awareness
what am i thinking right now what am i
feeling right now what am i sensing
right now
what is my behavior right now
to you thoughts feelings sensations
awareness of behavior
what's my intention right now that's the
i
well my intention is to move forward i
want to do this
great what's one
very small action step that you can take
now the reason you want to take one
small action step
is one small action step
your brain can handle
if it's one small step towards it the
threat response goes away
but if you focus on the end game right
away
you're going to get that rush and that
instant trigger of the fear response
stress response so the first thing you
want to do is learn how to manage your
mindset
and what you focus on learn how to
manage your emotions because they drive
your behavior more than anything else
because we move away from pain and we
move towards pleasure but we move away
from pain a thousand times faster
and pain wires in the brain faster for
survival mechanisms
so purely from a neuroscience
perspective just understanding self
once you understand okay this feeling is
normal okay what should i do
take six con the circuits
ayah
and now you can start being progressive
and make progress towards what you want
now while you're in the you know in the
uh what am i thinking feeling it's a
chance to be aware and the biggest gift
we have as human beings
is our awareness
because awareness is what gives you
choice
and choice is what gives you freedom
most people are living their lives in a
reactive state automatic reactive state
because of these set points that we
talked started talking about so we're in
this repetitive cycle over and over and
over and over we react to the same
things we behave the same way we eat the
same foods we dress the same way
just to maintain that homeostasis and
comfort zones and we've never been
taught like when were we taught as kids
like here are your six core emotions
here's the way you deactivate you know
your stress center or fear so here's how
you activate your imagination center
here's how you have more focus here's
how you develop a new belief here's how
you develop a new habit here's how you
release one we haven't been taught that
we've been told they're important things
but we haven't been given the tools
and then we haven't practiced the tools
enough to be able to make them part of
our unconscious competence brain
so how do you do some of those things i
mean that was a pretty extraordinary
list and i'll say
beliefs
releasing beliefs habits releasing
habits like that is really interesting
so what is a belief i mean think about
what is a belief
and let's go to again i just like to go
to the neuroscience fields because just
my passion now is a belief is nothing
more than a group of cells
that have been connected and then
reinforced and we have two types of
beliefs we have beliefs that whatever
i'm going to stop you there because
that's so important yeah and so
different than i would have expected i
think when people hear belief it is
believing something that is true
which did not enter into your definition
no we believe
whatever we believe is truth for us but
it's not the truth
that's really interesting right but we
have been conditioned
uh if we go back a little bit to um
what we talked about earlier about you
know when you were a baby when you were
born what belief did you have
zero goose egg zero not one
and so you learned what to believe and
how to even formulate your beliefs
chances are from parents
teachers brother sisters television
maybe when you read some books
right and we behave based on what we
believe
so we might be behaving our lives away
based on false or inaccurate or
disempowering beliefs
so if a belief is a neural pattern in
the brain
then we probably have some good ones
empowering ones useful ones and chances
are we have some that are not useful not
empowering and not worthy of the
geniuses that we all are
so the question is
is it possible for me to develop
new beliefs that i don't believe right
now
the answer is yeah
yes what does that process look like
so
the process is you can read new beliefs
to life
and so if you listen
to beliefs that are empowering
over and over and over again and you
emotionalize them
and you visualize yourself actually
acting out those beliefs and you learn
how to pay attention to that little
inner critic that says that's [ __ ]
that's not true that'll never come true
that's not you if you learn and you
remember that that little voice is there
to consistently keep you in this
homeostatic
place and it's there to protect the
beliefs that are there now
the latest research shows that to
develop you know a new pattern takes
between 66 days and 365 days
how do you help people
be consistent long enough to form that
like when people talk about oh it takes
28 days to form a new habit it's like
okay i can get my head around that but
when you start talking about 100 days
365 days it gets
pretty daunting for adults yeah it does
um so you have to use intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation so you have to
start everybody off well why is it
important for you to be able to develop
these new beliefs like what will your
life be like if you had them right now
what would your family life be like you
have to give them a benefit that's
greater than the switch cost
that's interesting right so the switch
cost
is something that our brain resists the
only human that likes change is a wet
baby
every other human being is resistant to
it because
safety first and homeostasis and energy
conservation so we are biologically
wired
not to want to change so we have to
deliberately coax the brain
into
motivational reasons emotional reasons
you have to have intrinsic reason why
must you do this
and so you can use pain as a frame as
well so if you don't then are you okay
with your life being like this at this
age in five years and 10 years and 20
years
and if you're okay with that then you're
you're not a candidate for change
but if you're committed to letting go of
the old so you can create the new
and you create
motivations every day that's where the
power is remember earlier progress not
perfection so anybody can do
one minute or or 10 seconds so if you
can start to formulate a habit a daily
habit a weekly habit
it doesn't matter how long it is
if you can create that space in your
brain that on this day at this time this
is what i do and you do that repeatedly
that becomes a habit and it takes those
66 days or so for a simple habit
that you have to consciously do
to then the habit doing you
and that's why they say we are all
creatures of
habit because habits run themselves
their subconscious programs just run
themselves most people don't take the
time to become aware what are my
empowering habits what are my
disempowering habits
and then the next question is well how
do i release this one and how do i
strengthen this one or create a whole
new one
and what we're looking to do is build
empowering habits that then
run run their course i love that
all right one thing i'd be remiss not to
ask you about before we go are the three
boards so vision boards accomplished
boards and the one i don't know about
the crap boards
so crap board so
vision board for seeing what you want
the accomplish board for reminding
yourself that you've got a lot to that
you've accomplished so you feel good and
the crap do you actually put up images
of things you've accomplished uh-huh
yeah yeah i have them in my closet in my
home
uh encased uh on the floor
like on the floor so that you don't look
at them no i look at no so i look at
them just because i i i sit down and put
on my shoes i want to look at them every
day interesting yeah on my um i have i
have this ritual as well i do something
called brush and prime so on my
bathroom
mirror i have my goals that are on my
mirror so that as i'm brushing my teeth
i'm priming my brain to see my goals in
front of me every morning and every
night i love that right so that's
priming your brain which is a whole
other topic we can have and then the
accomplishment boards reminds me
whenever i look at the stuff that have
accomplished i go
that wasn't easy there was a lot of ups
downs highs lows failures you know times
i thought i'd quit and i didn't so it's
to remind me to go through the times
that i don't think i'm going to be able
to achieve those things and then the
crap board stands for conflict
resistance
accomplishments and procrastination so
what conflicts are are happening right
now that i need to resolve
um what resistance is in my way is what
are my resistance what in front of me is
it resisting right now
and then accomplishment as well is to
remind you that you can get through
stuff
and then procrastination is what's
causing me to procrastinate
so if you create a crap board as well
you have that in front of you and then
you can create a game plan for what am i
going to do about it what am i going to
do about the conflicts what would you
put on a board for conflicts is it a
picture of a person oh it could be a
person that you're having conflict with
it could be uh something you're trying
to figure out that's conflicting uh
whether it's in your company a
department uh whether you're having
conflicting thoughts of should you do it
shouldn't you and there's uncertainty
any conflicts that you are experiencing
is going to create neural dissonance in
your brain it's just going to create
chaos in your brain
and so if you take it out of your head
and you put it on a sheet of paper you
can look at it and now you're one step
removed from what's happening in your
brain
and so um the more you can be in
coherence
it's the equivalent of being part of a
band that's in harmony that every player
is just like oh man this just sounds so
good well the more you can be in
coherence the more you're going to be in
flow and the more you're going to take
action the more chaos there is in the
brain neural chaos whether it's because
of emotions you're lacking something
there's conflict as resistance the more
you can get it out into the
in front of you and open and say well
what's causing this
the easier it is for that einstein brain
to say okay maybe i could do this maybe
i can do that but i can also call a
friend or a mentor or a coach or i can
research it
makes total sense
all right
before i ask my last question yeah tell
these guys where they can find you
online
you can find me online at myneurogym.com
johnasaraf.com
on my facebook fan page on instagram on
twitter
those are nice those are the main ones
all right and then my final question
what's the impact that you want to have
on the world oh
um
on my my epitaphs he lived he loved he
gave he had fun
i always thought that if there's a way
that i could somehow use my life in a
way that i can make somebody else's life
a little bit easier to live either
through knowledge or understanding or
love or a process
then my life has been worthwhile
and so i just want to make i just want
to make a difference and i'm one of the
people that doesn't believe that there's
anything wrong
in the world everything's unfolding
exactly as it should uh there are many
things not to my taste
uh that i don't understand
but i just want to make the journey as
good as i can for as many people as i
can
that's beautiful yeah john thank you so
much for being on the show it was really
incredible guys done
guys when i say dive in i mean dive in
somebody that really takes the kind of
time and care that he takes to
understand how the brain works and be
able to make it digestible for people so
that you can put it to use in your own
life i think it's really extraordinary
that so much of this was born from a
moment of kindness between him and
somebody who'd been there who then made
him promise that he would do the same in
kind and the fact that he's given so
much of his life to doing that to
understanding how things work how habits
work how beliefs work and there's even
more that you'll find on him talking
about those beliefs which i think is
really extraordinary i think is one of
the most foundational things about the
human experience in terms of trying to
be successful is understanding what the
beliefs are that operate in your brain
and the fact at first when i heard that
he was in the secret i was like oh god
the law of attraction freaks me out
so the fact that he has the law of goya
and that you at the end of the day have
to get off your ass and do something
that's when i knew that we were
spiritual twins and that i was going to
be really into this guy so i'm telling
you there's so much power in what he
talks about
it's a no bs approach to how the brain
works how you can rewire it how you can
prime yourself to do really
extraordinary things so dive in i think
you're going to find some amazing
takeaways that you'll be able to put
into use in your life immediately to
extraordinary effect all right if you
haven't already be sure to subscribe and
until next time my friends be legendary
take care
my friend awesome thank you that was
incredible
everybody thank you so much for watching
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