How much better would your life be if you could achieve everything you wanted faster than ever before? What is usually keeping the majority of people from having the life of their dreams?
Our special guest and best-selling author, John Assaraf, has spent years studying and applying success principles that have helped millions worldwide. Find out why John regrets doing the movie “The Secret” and what REALLY needs to change for you to achieve new highs.
You can access John’s free gift for you here – https://www.myneurogym.com/moneyripples
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Watch the episode here
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Achieve ANYTHING You Want In Record Time With John Assaraf
I’m bringing on a special guest today that I know many of you have probably heard of. If you guys know John Assaraf or have been around the personal development world for any time, you’ve probably run across this stuff. I know I first got introduced to him from The Secret and saw him off the things that came from that, not just from that but also afterwards as he kept the education going and growing.
Now, one of the things you might not know about him is he’s one of the highest-performing coaches out there today. He’s focused on getting you to be higher performing as well. He’s a behavioral science researcher. He is the CEO of NeuroGym, which we’re going to talk about today. He’s also been helping people towards their mindset to not only get them to their goals but, most importantly, like the focus of the show, how to get them to their goals easier and faster. That is the true mark of success right there.
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John, welcome to our show today.
Chris, it’s great to be with you.
Give us a little background. For those that maybe don’t know who you are, what’s your story?
Like many people, I struggled in school. I left high school in grade 11, failed English and Math in grade 7, and didn’t think I was smart enough. At nineteen, I decided to go into the real world and go and work. I got into real estate. Real estate was big on training you for your mindset. As much as they were training you for a skillset of how to list homes, sell homes, and do marketing, the bigger of the training was to get you to do what they were teaching you to do. The skillset was easy. A lot of people wouldn’t make cold calls, go door-knocking, or spend their own money to advertise. They waited for all those things to happen.
I got into personal development, of developing my own mindset, literally 42 years ago. That led me to achieve a little bit of success. I got fascinated with, “Why don’t people do the things that they know they should do?” Especially in today’s day and age, where 108 billion humans have walked on planet Earth, we know how to solve the most complex Rubik’s cubes. We know how to make cold calls, market better, and sell better. We know how to, so why don’t most people do it? That became a lifelong fascination for me.
To solve those answers, I’ve written some books. I’ve been to twelve movies now. I’ve been on every major TV and radio show in the United States and Canada, for that matter. Now I teach it. I share with people what we’ve discovered based on neuroscience and neuropsychology at the deepest levels so that they can get rid of obstacles quicker, shatter limitations faster, and achieve goals quicker.
I noticed the book right there called Innercise™. I know that’s part of the NeuroGym that you guys have been doing. It’s based on that.
I built MyNeuroGym.com specifically to give people a brain gym. We have gyms for our bodies. What about a brain gym? What about a way for me to upgrade or make my self-image and self-worth stronger? What about making my beliefs stronger on the things that should be stronger and getting rid of the limiting beliefs that hold me back? What about managing my emotions better and becoming stronger than the emotions that hold me back, like fear of failure, being embarrassed, being ashamed, being ridiculed, being judged, losing money, disappointing myself, or fill in the blank?
Fear is an emotion. It’s an emotion within me, and either it controls me or I control it. All highly successful Navy SEALs, astronauts, firefighters, police person, and entrepreneur learns how to manage the emotion of fear because we all have it. We don’t, as a society, teach that to kindergartners and grade schools. We don’t teach it to high schoolers and university students.
My self-talk or my inner critic, can’t we consider that those are neuro muscles, and some of my neuro muscles are strong and some are weak? Of course, we can because they’re nothing more than reinforced patterns like reinforced muscles. I’ve taken a different approach to neuroscience. My goal is to really give the owner of the brain, you, me, and everybody else, a better user’s manual so that we can use this hundred-billion dollar bio-computer that we all own better.
If I were to play devil’s advocate, there’s probably somebody that’s going to do that at some point here because there’s always somebody questioning things. I was a Sociology major in college with a triple minor in Psychology, Ballroom Dancing, and Japanese. Everything I did, everybody would consider a soft science. People might even point to neuroscience, even though there are plenty of studies. It might say, “This is more of a soft science because you’re dealing with humans. Humans, there are always outliers and exceptions.” Is this real, or do I want something more concrete? What would be your answer to that?
It’s a valid question. First, let’s understand that every brain functionally works the same. It’s like saying there are anomalies with cars because some are electric and some are gas. Some are 6-wheels, some are 4 and 18, but functionally, they work the same. Let’s start with that as the first premise of truth. I would say, “Is the Science of Neuroplasticity or Neurogenesis real or imagined? Can we and have we proven that our brain can create new connections and reinforce them?” Of course, we can. Want to learn a new language? You have to apply the Laws of Neuroplasticity to create and reinforce a new language pattern in the brain. The science is very solid.
Are we learning more ways to do it more efficiently, better, faster, and easier? Of course, we are. The fundamentals of how we develop what we believe we’ve known for about 25 years, how we develop a habit, how we reinforce a habit, and how we let go of a disempowering habit, we fundamentally understand that. The neurochemicals of motivation and fear, we know what those are. We know what triggers those circuits. The foundational information, and more than just a foundation, is solid science with always room for improvement and advancement.
My question would be, Were you born Mr. and Mrs. Human with any belief about what you’re capable of achieving? The answer is zero. Were you born with a self-image, self-worth, or self-esteem when you were born? Were you born with any fear as a baby? Zero. Were you also born without any knowledge or skills? Were you born with some genetic propensities? Yes, we know that. If you weren’t born with beliefs, habits, fears, self-image, and self-worth, what is that in the human brain? The answer is that it’s nothing more than a reinforced pattern of neurons that have connected and wired together no differently than a highway system we build.
If we travel along that highway, it becomes nice and smooth. It’s easy to travel along that highway. If all of a sudden, we create a detour and travel along the detour, reinforce that. All the cars go where the detour is going. That’s very similar to how neuroplasticity works. The neurons, the brain cells that fire together, wire together and get reinforced, become the easy path to take. That’s why change is so hard for most adults. It’s not that change is not possible. They just don’t understand the process of change.
You can actually teach a dog a new trick.
Yes, absolutely. If you teach a dog, the dog doesn’t want to, but humans have a hierarchy of what our brain’s priorities are. Our brain’s priority is safety and security first, avoidance of pain or discomfort, of which change is considered pain or discomfort to the brain. The third priority is the conservation of energy. I want to do numbers 1 and 2 with the least amount of energy, and then the fourth priority of the brain is gain and pleasure. I will do more to avoid pain and discomfort before I make any of the gain and pleasure. That’s why we self-sabotage and procrastinate. That’s why we keep doing the same things even though we should be doing something else.
It’s interesting you say that because I had somebody email me recently. They said, “I saw what you talked about with how to leverage my financial situation. I’m going to go and do the path I was already on but noted.”
That’s a perfect example of rationalization. The definition of rationalization is, “I’m going to tell myself a rational lie.”
How’s that look? What’s a rational lie?
It’s in the form of an excuse, a story, a reason, and then followed by behavior of comfort.
In his example, he said, “Yes, I know I could probably become financially independent about half the time, but I’m going to go back to this old path and stay there. I tried to talk to my spouse about it, and they really weren’t on board. I figured, but I like what you teach, and I’m going to keep learning.” Is that what you’re referring to? Is going back to that comfort zone again?
Most people are brilliant at information gathering. They’ll listen to your show like, “That was so good. High five. Kumbaya,” and then they go right back to what they were doing before without making any effort to change. Why? Change requires glucose, meaning the brain is required to do something called think, and most people would rather die than think.
Think about this. Is there a way for anybody who’s tuning in to get in a way better shape than they are in right now? Is there a way for them to 5X their revenue if they were committed to it right down the next 6 to 12 months or 18 months? Is there a way for the relationship to be better? Is there a way for whatever result that they might dream of to become a reality? The answer is yes.
Let me show you something. We can solve this Rubik’s cube in less than 60 seconds by going on YouTube. We can solve this other Rubik’s cube, that’s the granddad of Rubik’s cube, in probably about seven hours by going onto YouTube and learning how to do it. Now, you have to be committed to going and learning how to change because it requires energy. For about every goal that we want to achieve, we could do it faster, easier, better, cheaper than the way we’re doing it right now, but we get so locked into our process because that’s considered a habit. Our brain doesn’t have to think about it.
A lot of the work that I do is to educate people on why change is so hard and why most people prefer to master disappointment instead of mastering change. That is because they don’t have a process to make change easier. In the absence of a process that requires a little bit of understanding of how the human brain works, gets rewarded and moves away from pain or discomfort, they’re left to hard work. Using willpower and persistence is the worst way to change a habit.
I agree. Before I get to a good first step for them, let me ask you this really quickly. First off, your NeuroGym. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
I created a bunch of programs to educate people on how to strengthen their mindset and develop more empowering belief patterns, habits, and behaviors. Skill happens to be one of those, but it’s not the only way to do it. It’s the hardest way to do it. I created NeuroGym and programs to win the game of business, money, fear, weight loss, or anything by understanding how to reprogram your subconscious mind as you’re upgrading the knowledge and skills of what you need to do in order to achieve that next level of success. When you combine the subconscious conditioning plus the conscious skill building, you’re able to achieve goals way faster.
I would hope everybody would want that, but I’m sure there are some people who are more comfortable going to the status quo. That’s not what we’re about here. We’re all about throwing out the status quo and going for something extraordinary instead of just ordinary.
In order to have extraordinary, you’ve got to do a little bit extra.
That’s right. You offered a free gift for those that are tuning into this today, correct?
I did. One of my team members thought of giving you a good gift, especially for anybody who wants to grow their business faster and easier. I’ve studied neuromarketing and neuroselling for many years, understanding what motivates somebody to pay attention to you. Number one, because we are living in a distraction-laden world.
Why would they continue listening to you? How do you get and keep their attention again to buy from you instead of your competition? How do you get more leads and sales if you have a business? We created a little book. It’s a neuromarketing eBook. It’s about 40 pages, I believe. It’s MyNeuroGym.com/MoneyRipples. People can download that. They can become better at marketing and selling their programs, products, or services.
That’s wonderful. I definitely recommend those. Everybody check that out, especially if you’re in business. Even if you don’t have a business, there are a lot of other resources you have, as you said, around money and physical fitness. There are so many things that people can go on to overcome these obstacles, which is our own brains. Certainly, our brain is our resolve.
The only thing, for the most part, that’s standing in your way that you need to focus on is getting you out of your own way. All the how-to already exists for what you want to achieve. If all the how-to already exists for what you want to achieve, why aren’t you doing it? It’s going to come down to only four things.
The only thing, for the most part, that's standing in your way is your brain. Click To TweetWhat are those four things?
Of course, you may not have the knowledge and skill of how to do it. In the absence of knowledge and skill, you have doubt. When you have doubt, you trigger your fear center because your brain is trying to avoid any ramifications of your ignorance, your lack of knowledge or skill. That’s number one. Number two is your self-image. You may have a hidden self-image that says, “I don’t deserve to achieve that thing that I want to achieve.” You may not feel worthy or deserving enough. You’ll have one foot on the gas and one foot on the brakes.
The other is beliefs that are limiting you. You may have a belief that you’re not smart enough, not good enough, too young, too old, not enough of this, too much of that, this color or that color, this ethnicity or this part of the world I live in, or markets this or markets that. A belief is a lens by which your brain processes information and also projects into the canvas of the universe what is possible or not for you.
We have the ones I talked about before, and that’s fear. In the absence of certainty, we have fear. If you fear failing, your brain is in a protective mechanism not to fail. If you fear being embarrassed, ashamed, or ridiculed and judged, your brain is hindering and hedging its bet on taking full-on action. It’s a protective mechanism. It’s a switch that goes on that most people don’t know how to turn off, like a light switch.
There actually is nothing wrong with fear. You could turn fear into fuel for success because the neurochemistry of fear is phenomenal in creating the beginning of what we call a flow state. A lot of people think a flow state is the calm and relaxed state. It isn’t. The beginning of a flow state is adrenaline and epinephrine. We quickly want to revert into a flow state of dopamine and serotonin, which are the reward-basin, feel-good neurochemicals. In the absence of knowing how to do this, we get left back to doing what we know how to do and go back to my comfort zone because I’m safe there. That’s what humans and animals do. We go into homeostasis and safety.
This is an issue of ignorance more than potential. The ignorance is, “I don’t know that I can do this. I don’t know how to do this. I didn’t know that this was even possible.” In the absence of awareness and then the skill, we keep repeating patterns over and over again. The term is we are all creatures of habit. We can all learn how to deactivate a disempowering habit.
I want to get your opinion on something. This question has popped into my head. I noticed there’s a bigger shift in how people are thinking now, post-2020, than ever before. I don’t think it’s from health scares. It seems like it’s almost permitting everything. There’s more fear rampant. In fact, people are literally selling fear to help people live in fear more. What the heck happened? What’s your opinion? What happened to us? I know this has been happening before, but it felt like something accelerated post-2020, where there are a lot of headwinds happening with people. It’s almost like people have created a bigger barrier and hedges against them to be able to have more growth.
I think there are marketers of fear in the news. They understand the neuromarketing side. When you activate the survival and instinctual part of the brain or the fear circuit in the brain, it captures people’s attention more. We know that. That’s number one. Our brain is consistently focused 24/7 on survival, safety, and avoidance of this pain. If there’s real, imagined pain, danger, or loss, we pay attention to it.
Think about what just happened. I’m sure you know of somebody that died because of COVID or somebody that knows somebody. I had seven people in my immediate circle die of COVID. Life, all of a sudden, is like, “At any moment and any time, something that came from, whether it was a bat or a lab, can kill me. I really can’t do much to protect myself. I certainly don’t trust the government.”
Now, we’re divided into, “Do this. Don’t do that. Take the vaccine. Don’t take the vaccine. Drink this potion. Drink that potion. She died from that potion. He died from that vaccine. No, but you got to take this.” It’s confusion. That’s part of what created this very high alert state. Couple that with, “We’re going to have a recession. No, we’re not. There’s a war in Russia. Maybe they’ll go through Europe. There’s this AI stuff that’s going to kill us. No, it’s going to help us live. It’s worse than nuclear.” Now, I have confusion. Information changes, and the average person has no idea what to do with overwhelm.
They don’t have any idea how to prioritize. They don’t have a lot of critical thinking skills, and even for people who have critical thinking skills, there are so many people on both sides all over the world of, “This is what’s happening that is making total sense and people over here that also make total sense of it.” “No, this is what’s happening.” “Who do I trust? Who do I believe? I don’t trust her. I don’t trust him. I don’t trust them. I’m confused.” Whenever that happens, it creates a state, in some cases, of high anxiety, high stress, and panic.
Now, the average person doesn’t understand, but they will, as of right this moment. Stress only happens when current demand exceeds current capacity. Let me repeat that. The stress circuit only gets activated when the current demand exceeds my current capacity, whether it’s emotionally, mentally, physically, or financially. That stress can only happen if I’m projecting what might happen in the future that I can’t deal with in the current moment. It’s ignorance again that we’re running back into. It’s my lack of skill and understanding that is causing my own situation.
That’s why we got to build that muscle.
There you go. I’m going to come back to at the tip of the spear. You’re still there. You are the tip of your spear. If we can sharpen the tip of your spear, then you can get through just about anything. We have to sharpen the tip of our spear cognitively, emotionally, physically, and of course, financially. It’s the things that you and I teach. That is, “I take the responsibility for me to get better in order for things to get better.”
That’s the only way to freedom. You can’t have freedom without personal responsibility and accountability. That’s stewardship. I love it, John. This has been great. I appreciate your time today.
Thanks, Chris.
This is awesome. Everybody, check out his stuff. I’d definitely recommend it. If you’re in business, download that book. Get that free gift. Even if you got a side hustle or are working for a job, I can guarantee you’ll probably get something from this that you could apply in your career or at home right now. John, thank you again for your time.
Thank you, Chris. It’s been great.
Everybody, you learn from him. Make it a wonderful and prosperous week. We’ll see you later.
Important Links
- NeuroGym
- Innercise™
- John’s Free Gift – MyNeuroGym.com/MoneyRipples
About John Assaraf
John Assaraf is one of the leading high performance coaches in the world. He is a behavioral neuroscience researcher. Today, he is CEO of NeuroGym, a neuroscience based company, dedicated to helping individuals strengthen their mindset, so they achieve their goals and dreams… faster and easier than ever before.