John Assaraf on Unlocking Your Brain's Full Potential with Lewis Howes

welcome everyone to the school of greatness podcast very excited about our guest john ashraf in the house thank you so much for being here hey man i'm great you should be here you are one of the leading mindset experts and coaches in the world and uh you're a couple new york times bestsellers you've been doing business for a long time you've been on larry king i don't know 50 times you've been on every major media press outlet there is you've done some incredible things and i'm really glad you made it on the show you know what i i love being here i see the work that you're doing in the world and you know one of my goals is to inspire and touch the lives of a billion people but it's not directly through me right so it's through the people that i come into contact with and you're doing some kick-ass work i love it and uh it's great to just uh to share the the mic with you yeah of course i appreciate it yeah we we connected i guess we've i've known about you for a long time but we connected i don't know maybe a year ago six to 12 months ago through a meeting that you did up here and i think that was the first time we met in person right but we've been connected via email before then and uh i remember hearing about you from the secret days i think that was the first time when i think where a lot of people know about you at least in my space probably from those days but you were you've been working for a long time before that and that was what 10 years ago the secret 2008. yeah like unbelievable eight years ago right yeah yeah wow i believe my uh my son keenan you know at the time you know was still you know just in his early teens and he's you know almost graduated college now wow would you would you say that that movie and documentary was a kind of a tipping point for you or you already doing a lot and you had the reach you wanted before then and that was just kind of the icing on the cake or what did that do for you well it's interesting but i've just built companies my whole life and um and so i have been involved in the personal development you know gathering wisdom knowledge skills tools resources from people who've just done what i want to do so i i really just learned from masters yeah and so i was never really in the personal development field you know my last company or two companies ago i took took it public on nasdaq retired in um 2000 and then wrote a book in 2003 called having it all and became a new york times bestseller and i was retired so i wasn't working i just wanted to share the knowledge and share what i had learned about uh you know 20 plus years in personal development going to every seminar reading you know thousands of books buying cds courses hiring coaches consultants what's the cd that's right what's the cd back then you have the little cassettes you're thinking what's a cd that's right it's like cassette cds and now it's like just digital yeah yeah and so i just wanted to share some of the things that that i learned the good the bad the ugly the challenging the embarrassing the shameful sure you know just be real with people of um what does it really take right that's the thing i love about your work is you know you've been a professional athlete you know the sacrifice it takes yeah doesn't make a difference if you're if you're the most gifted athlete in the world if you don't have the discipline and the work ethic you're sitting on the bench you're not gonna make it yeah you're sitting on the bench and there's so many people that have so much potential and it seems like they're standing on the edge of it instead of leaping into it right so i just wanted to be a part of helping people and in 2003 people started to ask me if i do events i said no and i had more people and more people ask if i do events and so finally my wife said we want to just do one here at the house and so i remember it was like june july 2003 and i had a blog at the time that i was writing about once a week and i just said to people hey i'm thinking about doing an event in my house 33 people 3 000 for three days and within a week people said count me in wow so i did an event at my home and nobody stayed there um and then people said hey you know can we work with you you know to help us with growing our business to help us with uh with our life and i said well i don't travel if you want to work with me you have to come here or we have to get on the phones and know and talk and so i had you know three four people saying yeah great help me and so i started to help people right i was like wow this is really fun do what you want to do from your home right get paid to do it help a bunch of people it doesn't get much better get paid a lot of money yeah yeah and so that really became the beginning of of me getting into the personal development field and then seeing how can i take the the knowledge the skills the resources the tools that i have acquired over the years and then just share it with the world yeah i mean there's so many people that uh just get into personal development and build a business off of that but for years you were building businesses and selling them and then you got into personal development so you've been extremely successful and sustainable because you know how to run businesses in this and that's why you continue to grow well businesses is the fundamentals you know being healthy fundamentals you know having a great relationship fundamentals it's not rocket science but it is a science and if you understand the science then you know and you take action then you can achieve the success you want just about in anything yeah what do you think is holding people back from growing a business starting and growing a business to a certain level well initially what holds them back is fear so fear of failure fear of success and then failing fear of disappointment fear of being embarrassed fear of being ashamed fear of being guilty fear of losing money fear of feeling the bites over 50 different types of fear that holds most people back but they're unaware of it's like a silent hidden enemy that's locked deep in their non-conscious brain this is the area that you know i study this my life's work now is understanding what actually drives the perceptions that people have about themselves and what's possible for them to achieve and what's the difference between somebody says yes i you know i want it i believe i can have it i believe i could do it but then there's another voice that they listen to more that says but you're not smart enough but you're not good enough but what if you fail what if you succeed so there's there's voices in our head that most people have not learned how to really just pay attention to because the the voices that you hear the thoughts that you're having the conscious ones and even the non-conscious ones that percolate up to consciousness if you pay attention you can manage you know where they go because that's what actually fires the electrical signal and the chemical response that drives behavior and most people don't understand you know it's like a spark plug one spark plug you know turns the car on and you can push the gas and go the other spark plug basically turns the car off and your brake is on most people don't think of their body their mind as a system that they actually own and so we haven't been given the user's manual for that so fear is one uh but then it's all the non-conscious conditioning that prevents people from from taking the actions that are needed like what are the conditioning that most people have the non-conscious ones well that's from what we've learned from our parents if we think about the era that our parents lived okay um great depression yeah right um very very hard to make money very very hard to find resources very very hard to to do anything unless you're a professional so our parents said to most of us if you don't become a professional uh you're gonna struggle you're gonna struggle and suffer and even the professionals said okay so become a professional and here's your ceiling of what you have so we became conditioned to be worried of scarcity in a world that has no scarcity we became conditioned to having certain beliefs about what's possible or not possible so even now you know as we as we we were sitting here and we've got this you know amazing election time crazy you know things i've been thinking about is you know there are some people that believe that if donald trump wins they're going to make a fortune and there's other people who think they're going to lose everything and i have a friend of mine who has got about 70 million in the bank that believes that if hillary gets into office he's going to lose millions it's going to be really tough and what really is you know going on in people's heads it's it's all of their references their beliefs and their perceptions that are locked away in the implicit part of their brain that is driving those thoughts and even the behaviors they may not even be aware of it they're not even aware of it yeah they can be but there may not be and so what we really have to go back to to focus on is it really makes no difference who becomes president or who doesn't if you have the belief that regardless of what happens in your external world you can navigate towards the success that you want right that's a belief and beliefs are the lens by which we actually see the world and by which we behave and so if you want to change your results don't focus on changing your behaviors change your focus on the beliefs that drive your behaviors right powerful yeah and so the next question though is well great where what kind of beliefs do i have right so well we have two types of beliefs and this is this is where it can get a little bit you know a heady and that is you know when you start talking about my brain it's an organ it's like your heart is an organ you can speed up your heart you can slow down your heart you can you know speed up the brain waves in your brain you can slow them down you can tune in you can tune out yeah we haven't been given the user's manual for the most powerful tools we're aware of that's right and so the great news you know i know you being an athlete and a successful businessman you have discipline you cannot you can't achieve yourself achieve results without some kind of discipline and so we know that there's some fundamental truths to achieving success and every successful person will tell you you know and jim rohn is i know you you love generally so you either pay the price of discipline or you pay the price of regret discipline weighs ounces regret weighs tons that's good but the thing is can you teach discipline the answer is yes how you have to have a willing participant and if the participants reason why is big enough if they know i want to achieve x and the reason why the motive for their action motivation the motive for their action is a reason beyond just themselves chances are they will do more yeah to achieve that success than if it was just left up to their own but there are some people that are born you know with incredible drive they just have this insatiable drive and they'll just i'll do whatever it takes for the things that i want and there's other people that want things but they just don't have this insatiable drive and this is where you know i as much as i hate at school i love to use schools and analogy yeah in the game of life whether it's health wealth relationships career business spirituality fun experiences you have to decide what level of the game do i want to play at is it the great school level the kindergarten level the high school level the university level the pro level because each one of those levels requires a totally different mindset and totally different skill set they're building blocks on each other but if you are extremely talented but you're not prepared to practice and rehearse and drill and fall and fail forward to the next attempt you will never make it as a pro you will never make as a pro business person you'll never make it as a pro husband or wife or athlete or musician you just never will so just get used to that if you're not prepared to pay the price if you are prepared to pay the price and you have the aptitude and the talent now we're talking about there's some real potential here and what we don't know is you know what's in your heart like what is the fire that stirs you that that you wake up saying i will do this even when i don't feel like it i will do whatever it takes to overcome my temptation for mediocracy my temptation for excuses my temptation for um reasons and circumstances to hold me back i won't allow those to be in my way and if you have that within you you'll achieve whatever you choose right and so the question you asked before is how do you develop that start small yeah start small so if you don't have discipline show to your show yourself that you can give yourself one command in one follow through so you know what um right now i'm going to get up i'm going to do two push-ups right now not not like later now can you give yourself a simple command one sit up right now i'm gonna go get a glass of water you start with something ridiculous i i learned many years ago reduce it to the ridiculous so for reduce it to the ridiculousness i start i said can you do that great will you because that's the difference right there is that's the razor's edge the people who can will you will you yeah great when now now yeah right so if you develop that skill and specifically from a brain plasticity a neuroplasticity perspective as soon as you do that you give yourself a command and you take the action you have just created a neural pattern you can give yourself a command and take action now that may just be one time well what if you did that every hour by putting a little bell on your computer and every hour like if you were if my computer was open i'd have um every hour it would say it's twelve o'clock it's one o'clock and i take 60 seconds just to be in control of my mind 60 i don't care stop what you're doing stop take six breaths just get just get centered am i on track am i off track am i doing something i shouldn't be doing versus a high impact activity that i need to be doing every hour i've trained myself to just reset i didn't always do that so i just started with one a day right then two sure then three then it was working so well i said great let's do this every hour but more importantly is as soon as you become the person who believes in themselves you see every thing you do or don't do leaves an imprint on your self-worth and self-esteem scale and you know it absolutely you know it yeah every time you have that cake or that cookie right either believe in yourself or you don't believe in yourself right yeah every time you're you're voting with every decision you're disqualifying with every negative belief you're qualifying with every positive same with behaviors so you start to get getting aware of am i qualifying myself to move forward or am i disqualifying myself do what i say i want and what i do or don't do over and over and over again because thought patterns become emotional patterns which become behavioral patterns and our brains pick up on our thought emotional and behavioral patterns and says hey you know what you've done that one enough i'm just going to make that automatic for you so all of a sudden you know if you're a person has lots of positive thoughts but you suck at taking action your brain says let me make that a permanent pattern for you you don't have to think about anymore but i'm also going to create some neural tension and i'm going to make you pissed off at yourself now now you're going to start talking to yourself about how you don't want to not take action but you're still taking action and this is where we have this conscious non-conscious ping-pong match going on all the complex yeah it's actually complex but it's actually pretty easy too so someone's listening right now and they're thinking you know there's a lot of things i want you know i want to get out of this relationship or i want the relationship i want to have a better health i want to have more money whatever it may be and they've been saying that for years and they feel like they've been consuming all the information they need to have but they haven't been able to take action maybe because their why isn't powerful enough what would you say should be their first step well the first step is to take one thing i'm going to go back to one thing yeah and say great let me move one thing forward why because that just changes the trajectory of the same pattern repeating itself and as soon as you interrupt a pattern and then you repeatedly interrupt the pattern it's like taking a detour and as soon as you take a detour one day you're like okay that was that was okay but you intended your tendencies to want to go back to what's comfortable but if you take the detour two days six days seven days we know from a neuroscience perspective it takes about 66 days to create a solid enough neural pattern that it'll go from conscious effort and thinking about it to a non-conscious pattern that has the beginnings of automaticity happening without your involvement you're just doing yeah and so for me what i do and for myself is i whenever i want to change something whether it's a habit whether it's a thought or emotion or behavior i say i'm going to work on this for 100 days not 30 days not 21 days not 66 which is right around there i say 100 days and then i focus all of my just on that one thing for 100 days why did you give an example of something you've done sugar sugar sugar i'm a sugar me too i'm a sugar like if it was an alcoholic i'm a sugar a whole pizza right it's so bad yeah so i i go like you know a week two weeks no sugar then a month i eat dessert every night 90 days me too you know like a cake and cookie and five of them a day and then and then the same way i can be very disciplined but it's either way yeah i'm extreme i'm an extremist as well right so it's all or nothing higher off it's like no no in between right you have one you have a dead yeah i don't i i don't have one cookie if there's only one cookie i go no you're gonna have like six or seven more my cookie bills my cookie bills at hotels are twenty one dollars not three sorry keep repleting so so you take one thing just one thing that you know maybe a little challenging 100 days 100 days just 100 days so let's say you want to drink more water 100 days a glass a day conscious effort to one a day whatever you did before you'll still do but one glass a day so you know i started that with my assistant so i want to drink you know like four of these a day you know like you know 32 ounces whatever the case is and so every we got a mug and it's on my desk every time i walk in and then i have some support from her saying hey remember to drink your water so just do it so the first you know two three weeks i feel like i'm gonna drown myself with so much water um but then it's like okay now i'm used to it now i'm drinking as much water as possible because the habit is there and one of the rules that i love to follow is the habit is more important than the intensity at first so don't worry about the intensity right develop the habit so can you take one minute a day to focus on how you will achieve a goal just one minute a day can you take one minute a day to focus on your health yeah can you take one day to retrain your brain yeah can i take one day you know or one action a day right and you start off with something you know and reduce it down to just a minute or two minutes or one behavior if you can get that behavior to be a habit it's easy to stack right of course it's just like the foundation of a building once you have the foundation if you build it right you stack and so every good discipline affects another and every bad discipline affects others what do you think about when you have a bad day or when you have a bad moment where you react and you're not on your game where you're calm in a frustrating moment or someone on your team does something you don't want or traffic or whatever what how do you process that um do you have bad days yeah yeah i have um not not days i have bad moments events there's when when we're i want to separate like behaviors and emotions so usually when people say they have they're having a bad day sure certain things may have gone wrong or something that they tried to do you know didn't work out all information and experiences are processed at the non-conscious brain first and then it gives rise to something we call a feeling so emotions are processed non-consciously the electrical and chemical reaction to that is called a feeling so when i'm not feeling the way that i want to feel i don't focus on the feeling i focus on the cause the neuroelectrical charge that's occurred in my brain and in most cases it's something that you're doing to interpret an event that's causing the neuroelectrical signal causing the feeling so in meditation for example why do you meditate well obviously it's great for a whole host of of health reasons whether it's it's uh less stress less you know lower blood pressure less cortisol release etc but the one thing meditation does more than anything else is it gives you the ability to have a pause of awareness so that you sense what's happening at the non-conscious level right and what's happening outside of you so when somebody behaves a certain way it's processed at the non-conscious level gives rise to your conscious mind for you to respond and so when something happens i like to be able to check in so that i don't react and i have the ability to respond and if you do that enough through mindfulness being aware just being aware of exactly what's going on then you have fewer and fewer of those times so you know something happened last week i was in a hotel room and i spilled some water on a shirt that i needed um for a wedding that we were going to and my wife was oh she was going off deep and i was just calm yeah and she goes aren't you worried about this will it help right but no let's just figure out what to do the accident already happened why are we so wired to react in situations i'm supposed to be calm and say well this this reaction is not going to serve a solution well we have a misunderstanding of flow of information and the way information is processed and so the reaction happens again at the reptilian non-conscious level so every external stimuli if you if you get into some of the brain which again is my passion is um one of my friends is dr evian gordon kind of the great model he says you know the number one thing to understand about the brain is safety and comfort first right so in the environment that you're in whether you like it or you don't is irrelevant your brain finds that comfortable because it's the homeostasis but safety first so any loud noise any type of uh real or imagined present or future pain based on the interpretation at the non-conscious level gives rise to automatic feelings so the signal is sent from the reptilian or lizard brain to the emotional brain and it's only later logically understood if we take the time to be aware of it be aware of it i think people react so much in traffic instantly that's right instant reactions yeah but but here's something you could do quickly it's it's called a reframe so so let's say you're driving in traffic and let's say somebody cuts you off and you've been sitting at the same spot for you know 20 minutes like i did this morning and somebody you know you're you're maybe looking down at your cell phone because you have some time because you're parked right and um somebody cuts you off so you could automatically react go son of a i can't believe he just did that and just use all of this energy the cortisol epinephrine adrenaline that's flowing through your body and causing stress in your body or you can say well what if that person just found out their dog died they're really trying to get home quickly [Music] okay i guess it's okay if she or he cut in front of me right or they just got a call from their mother their mother fell yeah would you change the way you felt about it and the answer is yeah probably and the reason because you changed the frame so you can learn how to create frames for yourself how you see the world how you see failure how you see effort how you see your habits how you create frames in advance that actually serve you through awareness and response versus reactivity and that is what a lot of people who for example i'm going to go back to professional athlete what do you learn how to do respond in a variety of different ways in advance or through practice yeah so that when it's game time you're just unconsciously doing what you do especially like um you know i used to react a lot whenever i felt like anyone was attacking me physically or verbally on the on the game in the game i used to react and want to beat people up and hit people and respond if i got hit in a weird way i would always want to have the last say right the last hit and my coaches would always train me because i would always get flagged the person who just the second person is the one who gets flagged the first person who does the foul yeah and um so i started to train myself and visualize okay this is gonna happen in this game like someone's gonna punch me in the nuts someone's gonna bite me someone's gonna do this and i can either be calm and focus on the next play or i can respond and have a penalty for our team right i started to train my my mind seeing it in the future as it already is happening and that really supported me in not reacting and that's actually one of the best ways it's it's a cognitive behavior therapy process where you practice in advance anything good or anything challenging and what's really amazing some of the latest research on goal achieving is the ability you know in the past i used to teach and also do visualize my goals whether it's my body health relationships money charity whatever i used to visualize the outcome and some of the latest research now shows in addition to visualizing the outcome visualize the obstacles and in the past when we talk about this law of attraction no don't visualize the ops because you attract them to no no your brain's way smarter than that so if you have whether it's a belief that's in your way um a story that's holding you back a circumstance uh references it you know something that's holding you back from achieving x so take a look at whatever it is that you already know is holding you back i don't believe i'm worthy i'm don't believe i'm smart enough don't mean i'm good enough don't be if i'm skilled in the phone too young too old i'm i'm to this or to that or not enough of this not enough that so address that and say okay here is an obstacle i'm going to visualize that obstacle being real and i'm going to visualize just moving it aside and me moving towards my goal the very act of acknowledging that releases the neural tension around if you do that over and over and over again what your brain starts to see is yes there was a struggle and so it's worthy of me creating this neural pattern around this new effort right because most of what we're doing is you know we're being we're on autopilot we're just eeking through the day you know on autopilot and so the brain loves anything that makes it curious the brain likes anything novel the brain likes a challenge so earlier you're asking me about you know one of the brain training companies other than ours he said does it work i said yeah it's a workout for your brain and if you can strengthen the neural patterns of you seeing yourself with an obstacle and overcoming it what do you think that does to your self confidence and certainty builds it up builds it up so if you'd if you actually do the work and develop those patterns in your brain as you're doing the stuff you need to do in the physical world you just strengthen those neural patterns and that's what becomes your habits yeah and that's where it becomes really fun because you can develop the the habits and and the skills that you need that you'll actually take action on versus having knowledge and skills in your head now i feel like you've been testing things for decades now with all the research and the work you've done yeah so what does your morning routine look like now what what's you know so today was a little bit different except for one thing because i drove from san diego to la to be with you but i wake up i pee i do my meditation 20 to 30 minutes every morning i don't care where i am in the world during that time i i do a variety of different meditations so there's meditations that i can do where i'm just observing my thoughts now a lot of people think well if i'm not supposed to have thoughts when you meditate says whom there's hundreds of different ways to practice awareness see meditation is the art of awareness awareness internally awareness externally but also the various millions of layers that exist in the physical and the non-physical world so this morning i did a meditation with some ocean sounds and so it was um about five o'clock i woke up this morning sat in my little sofa you know with my feet propped up and did a 20-so minute meditation in the dark with the ocean just listening to the ocean just paying attention going into a trance-like state where after two or three minutes like i disappeared like my body was part of air in space so today was i was using sound to get into that trance-like state other days i'll do a a mantra whether it's you know a lot of people know transcendental meditation so it's the matcha so you just take a deep breath in and then as you exhale [Music] and the question is why would you do that and the answer is anytime you can give your brain a rhythm it will entrain to that rhythm that's one anytime you could pay attention to your breath inhale and exhale you turn off the parasympathetic nervous system um you could you turn on the parasympathetic nervous system which is your rest and relaxation and your calm state of flow versus your sympathetic nervous system which is the stress response system of adrenaline norepinephrine cortisol etc so when you get the serotonin oxytocin and dopamine going and you're in that state of calmness you're able to enter deeper levels of consciousness and awareness so you're able to observe a thought you're able to hear your heartbeat you're able to sense different things that are giving are being risen in your body through thoughts that you're having so you can actually start to see when i have this thought here's the sensation in my body and you start to get so attuned to what's happening what stimuli is happening within you that's producing these sensations that cause you to either take action or not retreat or move forward you can start to get a feel for how the mechanics work so so do that sometimes i'll put on some of the tibetan monks and chant with them so i use sound no sound i use breathing i use open eye close die 5 minutes 10 minutes 30 minutes so i practice the art of being in control of my breath not breathing just being one with the entire universe and feeling this other than normal state of consciousness that we're used to it's not sleep and it's not you know conscious awareness you're in an altered state of awareness and you can you can enter deeper and deeper and deeper layers of energy which everything is made up anyway everything's connected we have this obviously our physical body but the space between you and i right now there's just vibrating packets of energy right and so you're able to access different layers of all of the intelligence and information that already exists in the universe versus the memories that we have in our brains and that's magical i love this why are you so wired this way what makes you like so obsessed with this information and sharing it with a billion people when i was um five six seven years old i moved from israel to montreal i spoke hebrew but not english or french and for two and a half years i felt dumb i felt like i wasn't smart enough and i wasn't good enough and i was made fun of as a kid that led to me being involved in street gangs from the age of 12 to 16 in montreal in montreal wow uh we trafficked drugs from florida we did break in entries we we had a little street gang about 12 of us that just gone to a lot of trouble my path was either jail or the morgue one of the two and uh there's a lot of successful people that have that kind of a story for some strange reason um and at 19 i met a mentor his name is alan brown he's a real estate developer still in montreal uh no this was in i moved from montreal after years of turbulence i finally broke free and moved from montreal to toronto which is about 350 miles canada yeah and um may 1980 i took uh my real estate course june 20th 1980 became licensed as a real estate agent and the reason i did i met a man the weekend before that my brother introduced me to who was interpersonal development and he was into you know zig ziglar and dennis waitley and brian tracy's you know 35 years ago and he introduced me to this world of of you know the mind introducing me the world of changing my beliefs changing my habits changing my perceptions of first who are you and he really helped me see that you know the spiritual greatness within everybody the intelligence that's within everybody he had me start with getting in touch with that and it was very philosophical and didn't have the evidence that we have today on affirmations visualization meditation mindfulness subliminal programming uh habit creation in all of the different methodologies that we've all heard about whether it was the astronauts that went to the moon initially that trained their brains or the musicians that have or the athletes that do the science now is just so phenomenal on what is actually happening and so as i was building my own companies i built my companies by training my employees not on the skills that they needed but on how spectacular they were as human beings and the greatness was within them and if they trained their brain to have the belief that it is they may not have the skill or the know-how but if you have the belief that i can i will i must you can build a habit you can build the habit you can start to if you think about this i don't care if you if we asked any question on health wealth relationships career business spirituality we wanted to find the answer to something yeah we could google it and within minutes have everything we want to know tutorials tutorials videos audios how to step by step blueprint color coordinate whatever you want so our problem isn't how to all the how-to exists how to build a business exists how to be a great lover exists you know it all exists how to get in shape right so i wanted to focus on you know how do i help more people take more of the action they know they should be and want to and it all started in 1995 when 1992 after i you know got into real estate and i traveled the world i i ended up buying the franchising rights for re max for the state of indiana and i was 26 years old and i bought the franchising rights for india and i moved to indiana and um i remember being interviewed for the indianapolis business journal and the guy said what are your goals here in indiana 26 years old i was wearing you know i remember a brown pinstripe suit uh i had glasses on even though i didn't need glass i just wanted to look older and i said we'll do a billion dollars in sales in indiana and the gentleman said to me says are you certain of that i said well that's my goal he says well there are two largest companies have been here for a hundred years don't do a hundred million dollars a hundred or billion dollars combined and my cocky young self i said well first he's not right three weeks later in the in-app business journal and i have it at home it says sets one billion dollar goal wow may 1992 we hit a billion dollars in sales five years later wow and we were stuck which is a great place to be stuck um but it wasn't because we didn't try hard we were stuck because people started hitting the upper limits of their financial blueprint the upper limits of their beliefs the upper limits their habitual ways of doing things so regardless of how much more information we gave them they just were at their level believe they could make more that's right well and again when we talk about beliefs there's two types of beliefs there's belief that i say to you sure i could do that oh yeah man i want to do that but if there's an opposing belief at the implicit part of the brain saying but you're not smart enough you're not good if you're not worthy enough you're afraid of failure afraid of this you're afraid of that you won't do it because the non-conscious controls the entire game and so we started to retrain our agents brains after we did a we did a an event 75 agents paid i think it was two or three thousand dollars to go through a six month brain retraining program those 75 agents increased our sales by a hundred million dollars wow and we said okay we're going to teach this to the entire company yeah so we went from a billion to to 4.5 billion in sales a year in three years by working on this versus what they needed to do and so i became really um pretty well versed in understanding a little bit about the brain and then after i was retired in 2003 after building a couple companies i took bamboo.com we took public in 1999 and i wanted to just teach what i'd learned and i started getting involved with some of the top neuroscientists neuropsychologists in the world quantum physicist molecular biologist i want you to understand the mechanics of how it all worked so when i visualize in first person what's happening in my brain and where when i visualize in third person what's happened to my brain where when i repeat an affirmation that i don't believe and i hear a little voice in my head saying why does that happen that's not true and then what are the systems that get activated as soon as you believe it's not true and then can we learn to override them the answer is yeah it's it's an organ and we're just getting the user's manual now for better than ever before yeah and i'm fascinated with biology i'm fascinated with neurochemistry i'm fascinated with the mechanics of if this circuit goes on what does it do to this circuit so if the fear circuit goes on does that basically shut down a motivational circuit yeah that's exactly what happened so when the spiritual circuit lights on you believe let's say god's on your side if you happen to believe that then guess what you've just created a majority in your brain and it'll override just about any other circuit in the brain right and so so there's the mechanics of of it that i'm fascinated with but then i'm also fascinated with you know the technology and the movie the matrix it's amazing yeah i was just going to mention that yeah the movie the matrix was the beginning of okay so we can and we already know that we actually can transfer information from one cell to another so we already know that and so now it's a matter of how right not lewis house but but how and so i'm fascinated with you know where are we with augmented reality where are we with virtual oil where are we with new tropics where are we with whether it's electro stimulation into the brain where are we with accelerated visualization accelerated emotional immersions into a virtual reality or mixed reality and you see i can notice already my voice is just getting because that's where it's all going yeah right so in the next five years for sure to 10 years no question about it you'll be able to visualize an experience in your brain a thousand times in a minute or ten thousand times in a minute well because your non-conscious brain is picking up information at the rate of 400 billion bits of information per second you're only aware of 4 to 40 bits of information per second consciously so all of the information is being pummeled into the non-conscious mind anyway and then deletes distorts or sends a signal up for you to be aware of well if you can get the information in the brain and you could trigger the brain plasticity switch on which is mostly off after 10 years old then the non-conscious brain is going to do what it did as a baby that's why baby sleeps 20 plus hours a day it's creating so many neural networks for what they hear see smell taste touch experience that it starts to formulate their map of reality well we're about to go through a massive massive shift in what happens in our brains over the next 20 years and that's because of the ability to input information a lot of people are stressed right now why text phone mobile radio tv facebook twitter all this it's just non-stop stress in the brain and when the brain feels stressed then obviously cortisone cortisone cortisol epinephrine norepinephrine kick in and that's a stress hormone well it's like having you know your finger on the electricity button all day long and just not not stopping so you start to burn the fibers your nerves and and so there's a major shift that's going to happen especially with virtual reality just remember the combination of virtual reality augmented reality i've been in some scenarios recently um where it's it's unbelievable i was in israel just a few months ago and i was in a uh a lab in israel with some virtual reality goggles on some sensors on my body and they basically put me my consciousness into a baby so that when i look everywhere i i had my arms where baby's arms my legs were baby's arms but i was me and so my body basically disappeared i took on the feeling of being in a baby's body wow and and like i know on one part of my brain is going this is not happening and the other part of the brain is going yes it is no it's not yes it is no it's not yes it is no it's not and we'll be able to put ourselves into these immersive experiences directly focused on the non-conscious brain to rewire it so somebody's afraid of public speaking afraid of heights afraid of failure afraid of success the the games that are going to be coming out the experiences that will be coming out where you'll be able to have your virtual reality you know just glasses on they're not going to be as you know as big and clunky as they are now that's like the telephones you know cell phones from 1970 they're big and clunky and weighed five pounds now you you know you have a computer in your hand that's got more power than the computer we use to put a man on the moon right and so so the evolution of where that's going is any experience any time real feeling associated with it that ties into all the biometrics of your body your heartbeat your your sweat glands your your blood pressure everything will be monitored to be able to create maximal upload into your brain for you to absorb it so you want some confidence you'll be able to go into a confidence chamber in your mind and build some freaking confidence because confidence is nothing more than a series of neural patterns that have been reinforced if it's nothing more than a neural pattern that's been reinforced why not figure out how to accelerate the neural pattern creation in optimal conditions yeah are you gonna develop this oh that's what neurogym is all about yeah we're building the gym we're not we're gonna have the best programs like that in the neuro gym yeah yeah that's the whole vision so if somebody has a a fear of failure great let's create some simulations that they could play in their you know in their living room uh and let's see if they want to invite 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 friends around the world you know so that's where it's all going and so if you can get the information into the brain then the brain can code it and if it codes it at the implicit level then it will change behavior and perception amazing i'm curious i want to ask you a question in a moment uh i want to hook people about how if they're stuck i'm making a certain amount of money how they can break through that mentally in a moment sure but i'm curious first why did you get into gangs into trouble so much early on did you not have the home life you wanted it was just a part of being accepted by peers or why um had a great mom and dad even though they didn't love each other they were wonderful parents both individually great brother great sister great family home you know had food on table every day had a roof over my head every day had clothes on my back so lots of love when i was younger i just didn't feel like i fit in and so there's a group of kids that just didn't feel like they fit in and then we just hung out together and then the people that were the misfits back then i was voted most likely to fail in life by my high school team so even by then i was getting into you know just so much trouble i was hanging around with the people who just didn't have their self-confidence and i didn't feel smart enough in school um i didn't feel like i was good enough in school and um even though i was athletic i played basketball and that was my only claim to fame but i cheated to get out of high school also it's funny story but they got a kid came in from massachusetts his name is ted corollas um there's a whole other story that happened about three months ago though if we have time i'll get into it but he came to our school he liked playing basketball he wasn't very good at it so i started helping him train for basketball lifting weights in my garage and running and teaching him some basketball skills and in turn he helped me with math and on the final day of you know our math exams um i had no idea you know what the hell i was going to do and i didn't know how i was going to get out of high school because i needed to get my math uh grades and so he wrote on a piece of paper that's about two inches by two inches and rolled it up like a little snot ball 50 answers to the questions with a with a um engineer pen after he took the test he took the test he sat behind me in the gym like and he just flicked it on my desk i took it out watched where the teachers were wrote out the answers i ended up with 92 on my final math test i got out of high school wow strangely enough this was in in um in the 70s i haven't heard from him seeing him in about you know 30 years or so however long that is about three months ago my staff gets an email from a guy that says he thinks he went to high school with me and um so i call him up and i said to him about two weeks earlier i tried to reach him on facebook because i was going back to montreal no way and he's like oh my god well i saw your ads on facebook and that's why i realized there's not many people with the name assaraf so he called the office and then i've been giving him all of my programs thanking him you know for getting me out of high school he's an engineer he's making six figures a year i said well let's help you get to a million right he's like oh my gosh i said listen this is for me this is the most phenomenal gift to give you but you got me out of high school you know and um so it was a great uh that's cool yeah it's a good story that's fun and who was more influential in your life mom or dad my dad was a cab driver an extremely hard working man you know 5 30 in the morning goes out busts his ass he had incredible will and will power and so i saw some things in him that i really really resonated with but he was not he was he went to grade five wasn't really educated so didn't understand the world really well didn't understand business didn't understand he was um extremely happy his only rule every day was if he woke up he was happy that was his only rule we asked him how am i he goes what do you mean i'm alive i'm happy and never made a lot of money you know made 25 30 grand a year i always had too much month left at the end of the money uh my mother also went to grade three um but very wise very loving very into family very into friends family bonding with with people money was not that important but family was and her children the values were and so i learned a little bit from both and my mother unfortunately has been a manic depressive individual for 60 years so she takes pills she's living in an assisted living home she's you know fragile and tiptoeing through life hoping to make it safely to death my dad's 86 he's flying next month at barcelona to get on a cruise for a week so wow polar opposite so i learned a lot yeah many years ago they stayed together until the kids all left right which is very good to most parents very difficult and then um and then they um they separated you know he went his way he moved back to israel my mother stayed in montreal because that's where my sister is and so i know i talked to her five six days a week say hey how you doing talk to my dad three days a week or so okay i just stay close but i learned a lot from them you know um the one thing i remember is it's funny you say this we talked about sugar earlier i i was 12 or 13 years old i came home from school with information on cigarettes and both my parents smoked two to three packs a day oh my god a day right and my father looked at it read it picked up a cigarette smoked a cigarette i was fishing reading it he says okay i'm done he's never had a cigarette since he had the information he had the information while he was smoking a cigarette he says okay i get this he quit two packs three packs a day and they fought about how my mother continued smoking he stopped smoking that one day so one of the things i i got from him was where does this ability come from knowing what we know about nicotine and the addictive properties of it it's unbelievable so it showed me that you know i think i don't know how old he was at time but it's you know it's going back 43 years um so you know he was in his 50s or in his 40s so he was afraid so he just made a decision and stopped powerful and so he gave me a really powerful lesson of the power of decision and conviction right and um so that was a great lesson from him but my mom the biggest lesson just love yeah she was just love it's love it's just family it's all about love it's all about love is there anything missing in your life right now and if so what is that there really isn't right now yeah i um you know i uh i've just come through a really challenging time i was in business with one of my very best friends of 30 years and we started a company together in 2006 or so and he ended up with severe diabetes and had a stroke and had a heart attack and it went you know everything just went hell in a hand basket lost lots of money lots of employees we had about 70 plus employees we let them go close the company down i had friends of mine who put two million dollars into the deal i put a couple million dollars into the deal and it was you know all my intellectual property they developed over 60 years was basically held up in a legal lawsuit that i had with one of my shareholders and investors and it was a very challenging time wow there was as you know reputation ip start from scratch um assets associations yeah everything yeah a lot so it was challenging very very challenging time and fortunately because of you know my meditative practices staying staying aware of what is not buying too much into that i just you know started building a new company over the last uh four years and i've got you know 30 amazing team members now you know our company at neurogym my relationship my wife is great my kids are awesome my health has never been better i became vegan about five years ago stopped drinking alcohol seven years ago gave up sugar about three weeks ago let me know how long you keep it up yeah i made a decision now it's a year so the one year one year one year no no sweets yeah no refined sugar if it happens to be if there have to be honey on you know on something then a little bit's fine but no refined sugar no cookies no cakes no chocolate bars no soft drinks nothing well right now i don't have any cravings whatsoever zero wait till the holidays true you know what i just came back from montreal and and i was there for the holidays and the dessert table was about as big as this and i just said no in a week before actually four days before that i was in las vegas at encore at the buffet i actually took a video of everything that was there and i said now what i did beforehand is i pre-committed when i before i went to las vegas said now when i go to the buffet here's what i will do when i go to this restaurant here's what i would do i pre-committed in advance played it over in my mind 10 15 20 times put myself in the situation in my mind and then when i was there it was easy breezy because i had done it you visited 10 20 30 times so i did that and so when i went to montreal usually i go to montreal and all hell goes lose my mother you know is always getting everything not anymore my sister's taken over oh yeah so the uh you know the food that's there and um and the desserts that are there breakfast in there too i love poutine oh yeah yeah but the desserts for me is was the hardest part but it's like easy breezy that's amazing teach me that ways i don't know if i'm ready to commit for the year you've got to be ready like i think and you actually you mentioned something about the word you know commit my first mentor this was june 1982. he had me write down my goals health wealth relationships career business fun experiences charity except everything uh one year three years five years 25 years he had me a whole weekend write goals i'm like i was 19. i was like god this is a lot of work and when i came back after the weekend he said okay great are you serious about this i said yeah i've spent the whole weekend doing this i'm serious about it he says great are you interested in achieving these goals or are you committed i said alan what's the difference because if you're interested you come up with stories excuses reasons and circumstances why you can't or why you won't if you're committed those go out the window you just do whatever it takes yeah and i remember being petrified of the difference i was petrified i'm sitting there as a man he was looking at me i was sitting in chairs looking at me wonderful man and he put his hand in front of me are you interested are you committed and i was like wow like now i've got to tell him that forget if i tell myself and then i lie to myself and tomorrow i don't but here's the gentleman that's trying to help me ask me if i'm interested or committed that's i said well i'm committed he says great because if you're committed then i'll help you because if you're not committed i can't waste my time with you and he helped me my first year in real estate at 19 i made 31 35 000 my second year by starting to retrain my brain every day had me visualizing had me cognitively priming my brain to see my goals every day i would take my goals out and i would run my fingers across them then i would close my eyes like he taught me and he says now read it and then see yourself doing it or achieving it or being it then read it and see yourself doing it and then run your fingers across it and feel the electrical signal from those words coming into your body into your brain and cementing themselves there every day i would do that for 15 20 minutes for a year 35 000 first year 151 000 second year amazing 20 years old and i said nobody can take that away because i know it works and not only did i learn it for myself but then i taught it to my employees and my company had 1500 agents in indiana uh plus all the staff in the offices at bamboo we had 50 1200 employees there um and now i've taught you know these principles you know to our clients and i mean tens of thousands of clients all over the world yeah and i think um you know some people get mixed up with the law of attraction thinking that that's all they need to do you spent 10 15 hours a day executing and staying committed to it yeah when all the challenges came every day you were committed to overcoming that's right and building great habits and routines and taking massive action yeah and when when it comes to the you know the uh the problems that come up every day i mean it's it's like weather it's sunny for a little bit it's raining it's hailing it's windy it's not that's life and and that goes back to where we started a little bit earlier about the frames is if you expect things to always be great you're delusional if you expect things to always be bad that may be a little yeah that might happen and so it's a matter of learning the frames and how do you frame stuff so even when you know i was going through this challenging challenging times on a lot of fronts um the frame was still good yeah the frame was still good because i was just i know it's just a chapter and i know that's gonna pass it'll pass and i know that by taking all of my attention units and that's so actually something we didn't talk about today is every morning when you wake up you have let's say let's say it's ten attention units if you're using two or three or four or five or six of them on one an attention unit is your your ability to stay focused and your ability to stay focused um is happening at the conscious and non-conscious level so if you're processing stuff in the back of your mind of something you're angry at something you're mad at something that's stressing you out that or you don't have enough money or you don't have the right relationships or the contacts whatever if you're stressing out about that stuff and that's eating up your attention units that's like having your computer okay using up most of its energy in what's behind that you're not using and we all have a certain amount of attention units every day and so one of the things that uh you asked me before that i can come back down the rituals is using the attention units in a way that is highly highly productive versus uh wasting a lot of time and so my ritual we started earlier i just remembered that is you know wake up meditation exercise uh plant-based protein smoothie followed by reviewing my goals mm-hmm every day you remember every every day five minutes the goals for the day the month every year everything i review my overarching goals i can do that fairly quickly because that's my longer range goals i can review the emotions that i want because i'm committed to having those emotions every day and feeling a certain way every day and then i take a look at from you know you know five years out three years one year 90 days 60 days to today wow and so i just review it and whatever piece of paper laminated and on my computer really yeah and i have it in a in a booklet also so when i travel it's really easy do you have it with you no no it's it's uh it's a pretty big gotcha yeah yeah it's like a little manual you have to send me a photo yeah i'll send you it's called my exceptional live blueprint i like it and um and so the the question many people may ask is why why would you do that well because you're having 35 to 50 000 thoughts a day right and your brain isn't certain like what's really important what's not but if you instruct your brain that something is really important whether it's something you don't want or something you do it will actually pay attention to you right so by priming my brain early every day here is what i want you to focus on here are the emotions i want you to express through me here's the behaviors that i need to take then i am on a daily basis setting the course for what i want my brain to focus on i am cognitively priming the pump and if i do it one day that's great if i do it 60 days 100 days my brain goes hey i'm just going to make this freaking automatic because i want to conserve energy right right i'm just going to make it automatic so not only will you focus on it consciously i'm just going to make everything happen behind the scenes to help help you see think and feel things that are congruent with what you're trading your life for and what you want to achieve so i'm just using the system better right okay final few questions i want to go back to the question about the financial mindset because there's a lot of entrepreneurs who are listening or those who are looking to make more money maybe they're at the uh five figure months maybe at the six figure year level maybe they're at the seven figure and they they've felt stuck for a while how do we retrain our mind to break through that financial mindset limit yeah there's something in the um weight loss industry field called the fat set point and every brain has a fat set point and it basically states that you have a set point just like a thermostat that's programmed in a room to have a set point um we have fat set points we have financial set points we have relationship set points we have these set points that we become accustomed to achieving and then all of the supporting evidence the stories the themes the plot lines the perceptions and behaviors all must match the set point and so you can ask yourself two questions number one is how did that set point get there and then how do i change it right so how it got there is through all of your conditioning through what you've read what you've done what you've experienced what you've been told what you've seen all of that has created your financial set point based on your story and so the first thing to recognize is the set point can be changed and the question is how right and that's the million dollar question so number one uh what drives behavior more than anything else it's not skill it's not knowledge skill and knowledge is potential power but what does drive behavior more anything else is beliefs and so if there is a belief in the brain that says yes you know i think i'm capable of achieving double my income we'll just use double my income but there's another belief that opposes that that causes what we what we know is as neural dissonance so it creates a chaotic vibration in the brain between the conscious and non-conscious mind so the key is to get alignment between the new goal which is a conscious pattern of thought that you can choose in an instant and the non-conscious part of the brain around that goal so how do you develop a belief right so it's a pattern so if i gave you a sentence and you said that sentence one time you probably it's great it'd be a sentence like when i was like hearing a line in a song one time but if you heard a line in a song repeatedly 20 30 40 50 times and you had other associations with that to reinforce that pattern then you would start to develop a non-conscious pattern through that so we know that using let's say visualization you're actually bypassing the conscious mind and you're accessing the visual cortex of the brain it's a non-conscious process the visual processor and so if we take words and we affirm them and we feel them and we visualize and repeat them a hundred two hundred five hundred thousand times now we start to create a pattern at the non-conscious level that basically reinforces a conscious desire and so that's really why i develop neurogym that is that's the only reason why because we know that's what we can do and should do and it works and i just created the tools the technology and the tools to do it faster than anything else in a variety of different evidence-based ways so you start to see yourself at that new goal you start to impress a new belief that seems foreign unfamiliar maybe even a little stupid at first ridiculous yeah yeah it's like no i'm not earning 100 grand a year uh yes i am well no you're not and there's this battle and you have to move from ignorance to awareness so what do i mean by that if you don't understand that every brain has an error detection mechanism within it okay what is that any time you veer out of your comfort zone the fat point setting or the financials anytime you veer out of it the first line of defense is self-talk that's negative that's the first thing that pops up because your brain is going that's not true so it's detecting an error between what you said as an affirmation or even what you just visualized or even what you just did against the predominant neural patterns that exist so it's an 800 pound gorilla initially fighting the flea right dan heath's book and so what we want to do is we want to get the the conscious goal the vision aligned with the non-conscious pattern and as soon as you align that you have neural coherence and when you have neural coherence that's like hearing your most favorite band playing your favorite song and you're just like oh that's the best yeah it's just bliss if it's not bliss you're out of coherence and so the key and why we start off early with meditation is awareness of how do i tune in my vibration how do i let go of that unempowered self-talk that sentence that thought that i had or that disempowering it's an unpleasant feeling beliefs aren't good or bad they're only pleasant to unpleasant at varying degrees when we're at a coherence it's unpleasant unless our life is on the line and safety is there for the most part you know a fear of failing where is that coming from we failed our whole lives successfully but the meaning that we're giving you know uh what people will say what people think you know how i'll be embarrassed or ashamed those are all the things that you need to really get in tune with and when you do that and you start to use affirmations and you know again we we just developed a mechanism using auditory brain stimulation to to take the most powerful beliefs the guided visualization guided meditations subliminal programming to help people i love it i love it a couple final questions what are you most grateful for in your life recently to have just turned 55 in the healthiest spiritual mental emotional and physical place in my life to really have a deep connection with uh god and i'm not religious i'm just god to me is the source of all supply to everybody so just to really feel that amazing um to have an amazing partner in my life my wife i've been through two divorces been married to my wife now for 11 years been together for 17. my son's keenan and noah just 19 years old 21 years old just champions of life my mom and dad are still alive my brother sister and i are happy and healthy and i've got a thriving business doing what i love so it's a really good place of just being grateful for for you know not up my life with all the opportunities that i had right right you know um but being um ready to you know enjoy the next chapters the challenges the good the challenging you know i'm in a really good position to sail the oceans you know of life regardless of how big the the the storms are and you know you know even as i say it's like no no i don't want i don't want any more big you know big stars but but i'm well equipped to capture the ship a lot better now what's one skill you haven't mastered yet that you want to master um something that has really been on top of my mind is being somebody who loves to write and somebody who loves to teach and share there's there's a an art and a science to persuasion that i haven't mastered i'm pretty well versed in it um but that's a science of really um being able to affect the neurochemistry in somebody else's brain with what you say in hijacked i went to see a play last night and you know i'm sitting in a plane it's a musical with my wife and my eight of the other friends and all of us were crying you know because because the story is so good so the art of storytelling more you know just the art of storytelling those that can do that are humble oh yeah it's psycho yeah it's you're just going right into that that heart centeredness of people so to be able to touch people i tend to be you know a little too logical at times so i want to get more into the and i have totally comfortable you know opening up my heart and talking about anything just telling that story i want to go to the science yeah um this is a question i ask everyone at the end it's called the three truths yeah so uh if it's the last day for you many many years from now you've achieved everything you want you learned everything you want to learn uh and all your books and work has been erased for whatever reason and your your friends and family give you a piece of paper and a pen and say will you write down the three things you know to be true about everything you've experienced in life that you'd pass on to us yeah what are those three truths one love yourself so learn how to love yourself number one you can achieve anything you set your mind to achieve and be a go giver as much as you are go get her there you go i like it man uh what should we be connecting with neurogym.com obviously is something everyone should go to and sign up for but you have a brain-a-thon correct yeah for for gym the uh website is myneurogym.com if they go to neurogen they'll they'll meet somebody who has a rehab company in canada that's a rehab for brain injuries so uh it's myneurogym.com but we have a brain-a-thon that's coming up and uh this is a free event online yeah basically what happens a lot of people are fascinated with the people that i'm hanging around with the top brain researchers in the world the top you know mindset and emotional experts in the world and so i started doing this brain-a-thon a few years ago and so this is going to be our fifth annual break-a-thon and so it's myself and you know usually six or seven world-renowned brain experts so we've got you know the upcoming one we've got dr srinivasan pilay uh from harvard juan moore awards than any other student at harvard psychiatry ever brilliant he'll be on with me i've got larry king's actually going to help moderate a couple of the sections um uh with me as well i've got dr daniel friedland the former chairman of the uh integrative uh world health association brilliant neuroscience researcher dr evan gordon has got a md and phd specializing in the non-conscious brain the stuff that you know a lot of people talk about in an airy fairy way this is top five experts in the world um that's gonna be on on the show i've got sharon pearson from australia who's the ceo of the coaching institute who really helps people let go of their stories and excuses and circumstances they think are holding them back i've got mark waldman written 12 books on the brain spirituality letting go of your fears you're letting go of your doubts letting go of the negative self-talk that holds a lot of people back so we've got a whole bunch of these individuals uh plus a whole bunch of our clients that will be on four or five of our clients that we're sharing here's how they're retraining their brain here's how they're shattering their financial glass ceilings but it's so much more than that because once you understand that the power center is right within you and you learn how to just use the tools a little bit better we've got the most powerful three pound tool in the world with no user's manual and and so we teach people here's the latest research here's how you can apply to your life be healthier happier make more money get a better job get a raise start your business and do better by retraining your brain to be totally and aligned with your goals and dreams and like in learning how do i stay focused how do i stay motivated how do i stay on track how do i develop the habits that will empower me and how do i do the things that inspire me instead of the things that expire me there you go your brain-a-thon brainathon.com awesome we'll have it linked up and all that information along with the new book you have coming out we'll have that linked up so awesome make sure you guys get on the brain-a-thon get the new book what's it called again the new book is going to be called inner side exercise instead of exercised in nurse i like it yeah i like it definitely get uh on board with what john's doing at myneurogym.com your your what's it brainathon your brain-a-thon yeah your brainathon.com to sign up for our upcoming uh break-a-thon with me and the other brain experts there you go um before i ask the final question i want to acknowledge you for a moment john for your incredible ability to commit to transforming your life and inspiring others to do the same again the 19 year old and you who made that decision to commit has uh you know transformed millions of lives around the world because of that decision because of you constantly being a seeker of truth and information to support yourself and others it's an incredible um you know it's just amazing what you've been able to create for yourself and to be such an inspiring symbol everything from your health to your attitudes your energy to your intelligence to your love it's a symbol of what's possible for everyone else so i want to acknowledge you for all the gifts you bring to the world took my mess turned it into my message i like it i like it uh the final question is what is your definition of greatness hmm you know that's that's a great question i think feeling and knowing that you've used your life in a way that makes yourself proud that you're proud of you you felt like what a journey and i left it all out on the field and i just left it all in the field that's my own greatness you know it's knowing that i used my life in a way that i left it all out on the field that the the bruises the bangs you know the trials the tribulations the highs the lows that you used it you that you you used it for me and that's actually i'm gonna just back i made a commitment to myself that i will never meet my maker and feel like i should have done more so i'm willing to go through whatever to never ever feel that right i don't want to be one of my friends that i've had who've squandered 20 30 40 years of their life i don't want to be the person that says i wish i would have i wish i could have i don't want to be that person i won't so there's a part of me that you know um and this summer that will give people a good frame i'm afraid of that yeah so there's two ways to look at fear right so a lot of people when something's you know they're afraid of it's pushing them backwards and i chose to take fear and put it behind me to push me forward so that's how you could take your fear and turn it into your fuel right so i just choose to reframe it i don't want that i'm aware of that great how do i use that to move me forward so it's just a shift in how i perceive it and so i wanted i want to learn i want to grow i want to love like i don't want to feel like i could have loved more i could have given more could have become more i could have tried i don't want to ever feel that the day i die and every any day that i do i just get out of it come on nope today may be the day you die sure there you go today may be the day this moment may be the moment you die so no that that's not going to happen so it's a really wonderful motivator for me fear is a great motivator for me yeah there you go john thanks for coming on appreciate it hey guys thanks so much for watching this video i really appreciate it and if you enjoyed this video then make sure to subscribe to my youtube channel you can do that by clicking right here to subscribe because each week we come out with awesome epic and inspiring interviews and messages and videos just for you so click subscribe right here to get 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Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 398,330

Keywords: lewis howes, the school of greatness, john assaraf, john assaraf meditation

Id: dNt65yIYOgY

Length: 76min 53sec (4613 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 31 2016