Evolve Your Brain w/ John Assaraf

This is the end of my life show. All right. Welcome back to Max out, everybody. What an honor it is to be with this gentleman here today and to share him with all of you.

I guess probably the thing I admire most about him is that he came to the space, I think, similarly to how I get, which is that almost reluctantly, he was a person building businesses and becoming successful in the real world, applying the things he was learning from personal development and making those things a reality in his life. And then after he had business success, being sought after enough, he decided to start to teach the things that had helped him become successful. And I love that there's a track record behind the incredible things we're going to cover today. I know you're talking about a new year of time's bestseller company called NeuroGin that you're going to fall in love with everybody.

A bunch of different books. It's a recent one I read in two days called InnerSides. I highly recommend you all get this. Most of you are probably familiar from him for the first time from the secret.

He's one of the stars, if not the star of the secret. A bunch of different books. The answer, so many great things. And it's an honor to have him today because I consider him on Earth, one of, if not the greatest expert on the brain, on the inner mechanics of the brain, mindset and peak performance.

So I know it's what all of you want to talk about. So I have John Aseraf here with me today. John, thanks for being here, brother. And it's so good to be here.

And thank you for giving me the honor to be here with me. Pleasure is mine, as you know. We're going to go right into the good stuff here with this man. There's too much gold there to kind of go to generalities.

Well, we're doing this during the COVID pandemic and people will watch this any time. It could be two or three years from now. But I want to talk about fear to start. A lot of people are afraid right now.

And whether they've lost a job and they're afraid it's not coming back, they've lost money, their business is going potentially backwards. Maybe they've lost the fitness they achieved and some of the weight they have lost is returned possibly. And in the inner size, you teach these first two exercises. And if you could talk about take six comms, if you would start, we're going right to the good stuff.

Plus everyone's going to want to get the book after we do this. So could you talk about fear and some help that you could provide people in that regard? Sure. If everybody can imagine from when you're driving a car and everything's going great.

And all of a sudden a light pops up on your dash. Now the average person won't take a hammer and hit the light to turn it off. An average person will take a look at what is that light. Am I low on windshield wife with fluid and my low on air and my tires is my back trunk open.

What's going on? So just like the signal in a car is meant to make you aware, fear is a trigger in our subconscious mind that real or imagined danger has percolated in our brain. And so fear, there's nothing wrong with fear. We can actually use fear as fuel.

Now I'd like to give people visual. So imagine if you have two parts of your brain. There's many more. But imagine these two.

We have the Einstein brain and we have the Frankenstein brain. And when fear gets activated, let's assume that that's our Frankenstein brain going, what if, what if you get hurt? What if you lose money? What if you die?

What if you get embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed or judged? And so why does Frankenstein even get activated? Because we're not born with those fears. And so if we're not born with those fears, that means that something in our brain is triggering this reaction automatically without our thought.

And that is what we call the fear response. And we also know that fear response causes something called the sympathetic nervous system to activate, which causes us to want to fight, freeze or run away. That's just the absolute reaction of the biological level of what is happening. Now, when we want to deactivate that sympathetic nervous system, there's several of what I call our inner sizes that we can do that actually gives us more control, more power and the ability to reactivate the Einstein part of the brain.

So inner size number one is really, really simple. It's called take six, calm the circuits. So as soon as you catch yourself in a state of doubt, fear, worry, anxiety, stress, that means that Frankenstein is activated. If you just took six deep breaths in through your nose as slowly as you could.

And then you exhaled as if you're exhaling through a straw in your mouth. If you just did that six times, that very simple inner size would deactivate the Frankenstein brain and allow you to reactivate your thinking imagination Einstein part of your brain. And then you can do the second inner size, which puts you right back in control. And that one I call is AIA, which is now a matter of awareness, awareness of my thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations or the behaviors that I've just taken or the one I'm afraid to take.

And then a pure state of awareness without judgment blame, shame, guilt or justification. Let me repeat without any judgment blame, shame, guilt or justification of the feeling or the thought of the behavior. Now I'm empowered again because now I can observe. And now in this observational mode, I could say, okay, what's my intention?

Let's say for the next 10 minutes. Well, my intention is to be happy. My intention is to be productive. Great.

My intention is to take action on this. One thing that's going to help me towards my goal and dream. So in the awareness and in the intention, then if I say what's one small action step I could take towards what I want instead of what I don't want. So all of a sudden I've interrupted a fear pattern.

I've created this state of awareness, I've set an intention and now I'm taking action towards what I want versus being paralyzed by what I don't want and a fear that may or may not be real. So awareness is what actually gives us choice and choice is what actually gives us freedom if we make the right choices. So good. So guys, the reason I want to John on was because these are actionable steps that you can take.

You can go get into size because these are actual exercises that will change your life. And I love how John arrived at this space. I want to go back to, we just got pretty heavy there. And now I want to go to a little bit of a lighter space, but both of you and I have had mentors that have entered our life.

We didn't come from perfect families, loving families, both of us, but not perfect families. And by the way, I don't know what that exists. Yeah, I think that, you know, a dysfunction is normal. That's normal.

If you had a functional family, that's not normal. That's not normal. Right. And I guess to the extent that the dysfunction you experience is probably part of these things we have to undo.

And we'll talk about beliefs in that regard in a minute, but you're this guy, Mr. Brown. I've heard about Mr. Brown for years, but hard to imagine a man has become a multi-million.

Just so you know, John's built five, six different multi-million dollar companies. One of them is on four billion in revenue. He's taken a company called the company called Nasdaq. He's from a very accomplished man here.

But Mr. Brown was one of the catalysts for that. John was kind of a screwed up youth there for a while, making some bad choices. And you have this moment where you're talking about goals with him.

And he asked this incredibly powerful question. And I mean, honestly, I've been in the space 30 years. I've worked on myself a great deal. I understand the mechanics of the mind, but sometimes the most basic things have the most deep impact on us in our lives.

When I read this story, I must have told this story probably 35 times the last two weeks to people. So if you share that, I'd really appreciate it. So if a person watching a person can imagine a 19 year old kid working in a shipping department of a warehouse, hating my job at $1.65 an hour back in 1980, this is April of 1980, on the side I'm selling drugs, on the side I'm doing breaking an entry, on the side I'm part of a small little group of kids who got adept at shoplifting and doing all these stupid things as a kid. And I knew that my life was either going to go to jail or the morgue at that time.

One of the two was going to happen because we're doing some pretty heavy stuff at the time. I was just getting more and more advanced and more riskier. So my brother, who was a tennis pro and a coach at the time, asked me to come from Montreal to Toronto to meet one of his clients and his clients named Mr. Albras.

I picked a train 350 miles for lunch with this guy to see my brother for the weekend. And as I went right from the train station to lunch, my brother's using a Mr. Brown, he scored a very, very nice man, very kind. He asked me, so what are some of your goals?

I said, I'd love to buy a car, I'd like to move out of my parents' house, I'd like get a better job because I'm not making enough money doing that. And he says, well I understand you're also getting yourself into a lot of trouble. I was like, yeah, yeah, go on Paris now and my brother told him all the time. And he said, listen, what are some of your bigger goals and dreams?

I said, what, I don't know what you mean. I said, listen, you know, having food on the table and why buy a car and all that stuff, that's all nice and dandy, but what do you want to do with your life? And I have no idea. I said, so he gave me this document as she was the 1980 goal setting guide.

And on it said, what age do you want to retire? How much net worth do you want to have? How much money do you want to make a year? What kind of life style do you want?

What kind of charitable things do you want to go? I'm like, what the F is this? I'm 19 years old. When do I want to retire?

I want to get a damn good job. Forget about retire. Just listen, take a few minutes and go and write this stuff out. So I sat there and I wrote that one retired age 45.

My net worth, I want to be $3 million. I want to make $250,000 a year. I want to Mercedes Benz. I want to house the beach.

I just started rifling off this stuff. And I gave him back the document. And he was these really good ideas. You had over here.

So what do you get these ideas? I said, well, I like watching the TV show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And Robin Leach shows all these nice homes kind of like your lifestyle, Ed. And I said, I want that kind of a lifestyle.

And he says, listen son, he says, all of this is possible. I'm going to ask you one question. And the answer to this one question will determine whether you have it or you don't. And the back of my mind, I'm going, come on, give me a break.

One question. I said, sure, Mr. Brown. Fire away.

So he says, are you interested in having this kind of life down the cheating these things? Or are you permitted? And I said, Mr. Brown, what's the difference?

And he said to me, he said, son, he says, if you're interested, you'll do what's easy and convenient. If you're interested, you'll allow your stories and your excuses and the fact that with a grade 11 and the left school and the fact that your father's a cab driver and your mother's a seamstress at a store, you'll come up with all of the stories and reasons and excuses why you can't. He says, if you're interested, all of the obstacles will be bigger than your vision and your goals. He said, but if you are committed, you will do whatever it takes.

You will upgrade your knowledge. You will upgrade your skills. You'll develop the beliefs and the habits to match the vision and the goals. He said, so son, which are you?

And I said, I'm a little scared. I said, Mr. Brown, I'm committed. And he just smiled.

He reached out his hand to me and he says, in that case, son, I will be your mentor. Oh boy, so good. And I was like, wow, that's great. What does that mean?

Because, well, I will teach you because I've made all of these goals that you want to have already done those ten times over. He said, the first thing I need you to do, I need you to move from Montreal where you live now to Toronto. And I said, move from Montreal to Toronto. I don't have a job to talk.

I get him all these pieces. Stop. He says, there you go already giving me excuses. I know, but this is the truth.

He says, son, he says, here's your first lesson. First, you set the goal. You make a commitment to achieve the goal. Then you figure out how you're going to do it.

So I said, fine, fine. I'll move to Toronto. And he says to me, great. The second thing I want you to do is on May the 5th, there's a new real estate class that starts.

It's a five-week course, nine to five. I want you to enroll in it. It's 500 bucks. I said, excuse me?

I said, 500 bucks. And you want me to go back to school? I failed English. I failed math.

They kicked me out. I was happy. They were happier. I don't have the money.

He says, there you go again. Look how fast you go back to your story. I said, I like Mr. Brown.

I'm not very smart in school. I didn't do well in school. I started to give him the story again. You know, stop it.

Are you interested or are you committed? I said, I already sat on committee. He says, good. Then make the decision.

We'll figure out all the rest afterwards. Long story short, Ed. I made a commitment. I said, fine.

I'll do it. My brother said, I'll lend you $100. I had $60 in the bank. My father lent me some money.

My father lent me some money. May the 5th, 1980. Okay, 40 years ago. I got my first day in real estate school.

Five weeks later, I passed the test. Some of you may want to have you remember these dates so clearly 40 years ago. The answer was, on June 20th, 1980, I passed the test on my own. You remember that?

Ed, I cheated to get out of high school. One of my friends gave me the answers to all 50 questions on multiple choices. I could get out of high school. Amazing.

Amazing. The first test I passed on my own. Here it is 40 years later. It affects you right now.

I'm telling that story. It was the first time I felt proud. Wow. You guys, 40 years later, millions of people helped and it still affects this man to this day.

You should be asking yourself right now, what a great story. You guys, are you interested or you committed? I made a video today. It's not going to be out for a couple of days.

I made a video about dreams. I think people sometimes think, I don't have a plan, so it disqualifies me from the dream. That's not the case. My biggest dreams.

We always want planning a strategy. My biggest dreams, I had no flipping clue how I was going to get to them. No clue. What happened was, if I got committed to them instead of interested in them, the people placed this thing, situation, circumstances begin to reveal themselves.

You find that you attract them. That I learned many years ago from some guy. I forget his name. He's in front of me.

You're 100% right, guys. You're interested or committed to what your dreams and your goals are. There's this thing you touched on there about beliefs. It's another place where I consider you a guru.

It's about the beliefs, the subconscious brain to the subconscious mind. There's a difference between those two things too, everybody. You have this great thing where you took your real estate agents that were doing a certain level of production and you worked on their subconscious. Tell them a little bit about that.

Talk to us about beliefs. How powerful are they? What are they? Why do they matter?

I'll start with the story first and then I'll share beliefs and then what to do. We have some practical things that you can start doing today. Back in 1987, when I bought the franchise for Remax of Indiana, I had no idea how to build a company. I was 26 years old.

But I had another mentor who I invested $75,000 to become his partner to have the opportunity to learn from this man who at the time was probably $100 million. I was very keen on learning. I didn't know how to build a business. I didn't know anything other than how to sell real estate.

I set a goal to generate $1 billion a year in sales. I set the goal for five years in the future, not knowing a billion-dollar goal is mind-boggling big for me. There was an interview the second week I was in Indiana, I was in Toronto for this opportunity. I was interviewed by the Indianapolis Business Journal and I said in the interview, I was in the interview, I was in the interview.

I was in the interview for $1 billion. I said, are you aware that there's two companies that have been in the state of Indiana for 80 years, one, 100 years, they haven't hit up billion in real estate sales in all of these years? I said, I know it's great. I'm a Tucker and you can let them know that I'll be the first.

As I said, I almost felt like I put my foot right in my mouth because I didn't know how I was going to do it. One story short, five years later, we sold enough franchise, we created enough agents. We did $1.2 billion. We were stuck, which is a great place to be stuck.

I was asking, how is it possible that I'm training these agents with strategies, with tactics, with selling skills, marketing skills, we were like the gurus of the books, here's the trangers, here's like out of the deep end, and the agents who, for example, would make $30,000 a year, kept making $30,000 a year. The agents who made $50,000, they just made $100,000, kept making $100. I realized that they weren't missing the skills or the knowledge. There was something else at play.

What helped me from the age of 19 to 27, 28, 30, was every single day. I'll share this with you in just a little bit. Every single day, I was priming my brain with the beliefs and the self image required to achieve the goals that I wanted. I got 75 agents together who agreed to pay $3,000 each to be part of an in-game training.

Forget the other game, the in-game training, we worked on affirmations, visualization, mindfulness, meditation, listening to our affirmations on our vision on our cassette recorders. We had, look at sets, we put in our cars. I had the work on their self image and self-worth and self-esteem and to develop the beliefs that we were going to imprint or impregnate into their subconscious mind by listening to these audios every single day, twice a day, while they were driving. And those 75 agents, over six months, increased sales by $100 million.

We didn't teach them one thing about selling more. We thought about changing their identity and their belief structure so that it matched the goals they wanted to achieve. And then I said, holy shit, this works even for other people, not just me. So we started to teach that to all of our agents.

And we created these cassettes with these recordings on them of the beliefs that we needed them to believe, the self image that they deserved, that they were good enough. They were smart enough. And we went from 1.2 billion to 4.5 billion a year within four years. Wow.

And that's my belief. And so that's a belief. A belief in a new self image and identity and a new story. Gosh, so good.

You're going to tell us about beliefs, what they are. So when you were born, were you born with any beliefs? No. Were you born with any habits?

No. Were you born with any fears? No. No.

So from a neuroscience and neuropsychology perspective, a belief is nothing more than this. Imagine that you're born and your brain's made up of about 100 billion markets. And every time you have an experience or somebody says something to you, you read something or you watch something, these marbles make these connections. And the connections that are reinforced go from conscious connections to subconscious connections.

And once these subconscious connections are made and reinforced, they run the show 98% of the time. So a belief is nothing more than a reinforced pattern in the brain. And our conscious brain can choose what we want when we're in that part of our brain. But our subconscious mind can't choose its program from the age of zero or three in the imprinting years, three to about seven or eight in modeling years and then eight on its the experiential years.

And so if you have these powerful beliefs that you're good enough, you're smart enough, you're worthy to achieve the goals that you have. If you have these powerful beliefs, you are able to achieve any amount of income you choose no matter what the amount is you just need to learn how. So if you have these empowering beliefs, you have brain coherence between conscious and subconscious. What if you said, okay, I want to make, let's just say $100,000 a year or a million, it doesn't make a difference.

And I asked you, what do you need to believe about yourself to achieve it? So I need to believe I'm smart enough. Good. Right now, I am smart enough.

What else do you believe? I need to believe that I am worthy. I need to believe that I deserve this. I need to believe that it's possible.

I need to be, you write down five or six or seven beliefs. They're just words on a sheet of paper. Now, let me stop for just a moment. I'm going to tell a story and come back to this.

I want you to imagine that somebody tapped you on the shoulder sometime today and say, Hey, I work with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks in Hollywood. And we have this new script, okay, that if you get really good at this script where you could read it in front of a camera without the script, we'll pay you $10 million bucks. Now, I want to imagine you never seen the script. You don't know how to act, but they said to you, we're going to give you an acting coach.

We're going to give you everything you need to memorize the script. We're going to do everything you need to act perfectly. What would you do to take that script, the thought of a piece of paper that you've never seen before? What would you do to take that script to make it yours for you to own it?

And the answer is you probably read it like what once? Would you read it maybe a hundred times, two hundred times, five hundred times? You think you might role play with somebody while you're holding the script in your hand? Do you think you might research the world?

Do you think you might take a camera and practice it? And do you think that if you practice it one time, fifty times, a hundred times, five hundred times, you can find it at the script down and you can get in front of the camera and go, boom, here is the script. Do you think you could do that? Well, guess what?

A script that's on a piece of paper that you don't believe with practice, you start to believe. So what happens if you take a belief system and you start to imprint it into your subconscious mind initially through conscious repetition, but there are ways to access the subconscious mind that we know today that are faster and easier than just doing it consciously. And so you take a vision of you achieving your goals and dreams. You take the beliefs and you learn how to manage your emotions a little bit better, and then you develop the habits which again are nothing more than neural patterns in the brain that have been reinforced.

When you learn how to deactivate the destructive ones and activate constructive ones through space repetition and reinforcement, now you are resetting your default way of being. So a belief is nothing more than a reinforced pattern that if you learn how to deactivate and create a new one, it's like a software upgrade for your brain. Wow, so guys, what he didn't say, so good, John, thank you. Guys, this is stuff that you pay thousands of dollars for, but you can buy away and get in his book and you get here because I know him for free.

Guys, what he didn't say is beliefs are necessarily true. No, this is important. I've told you many times everybody that your thoughts aren't necessarily true, your beliefs are not necessarily true. They're patterns, reinforced over time.

And so if you could create this new script that's reinforcing these patterns over time, that's a conscious way of doing it. Give us one key. You said we know now there's subconscious ways to do it that are faster and more powerful. Give us one that is a new hack to do this.

So one that everybody's heard of and very few people doing less your professional athlete, astronaut or Navy SEAL is visualization. Thank you. Simple, simple. I know you had Phil Mickelson on in the past and I watched him.

And if you think about visualization is simulation. Now, here is the. Whoa, that's good. Okay, go ahead.

So visualization is simulation. So when we close our eyes or even if our eyes are open and we start to use our Einstein brain, the imagination, we now have just activated one of the biggest centers of our brain. The occipital lobe that's connected to the motor cortex. It's connected to the motivational circuit.

The nucleus comes up and releases that dopamine that makes you feel good. That makes you want to take action. If you visualize yourself achieving the goal, if you visualize yourself behaving in ways that match the new belief, if you visualize the words or you take the words on a sheet of paper and you read them, run your right finger across it, run your left finger across it, close your eyes, see it and feel it. Your brain is creating a mental movie with the words and as it creates a mental movie with the words that's happening in your subconscious mind.

So when you give the subconscious these instructions, a couple things happen because of the way the brain hierarchy works. Number one is survival, but then number two is safety. And then number three is energy conservation. When you do something 20, 30, 40, 50 times, it takes about 66 days to 365 days of repetition to override an old habitual circuit, not 10 days, not 21 days, 66 to 365.

So if you visualize yourself achieving the goal, feeling the success that you want to feel, seeing the belief on the screen of your mind, you are actually creating a neural network through the science of neural and the networks that you reinforce become the most dominant networks. And since your brain wants a conserved energy, if you do this on a consistent basis, your brain says, okay, you're doing this so often, let me just make this automatic, let me set aside the old beliefs, let me replace it with a new beliefs, and now you've deliberately and consciously evolved yourself. Oh my gosh, so guys, it's patterns. John, thank you.

John used the word earlier, which was coherence and it can fly by. But when you've done this hard work, and I say fun work, by the way, on your subconscious brain, your subconscious mind, what happens is now when you set that ambitious goal, there's a coherence between what's lying underneath you and what's on the surface. That's why you know people, you all have someone you know that when they point their mind at something, it's almost like a weapon. When they point themselves in a dream, they draw towards them.

Part of that energy, part of that vibration. But a big part of that is coherence in your brain. And so you've got to do this difficult work that you might think is difficult, which by the way is fun is easy and it's really just a matter of patterns and taking control of your life, taking control of the things you do. You can literally everybody change your life.

You can change the external parts of your life by changing the internal or the inner sizes that he teaches part of your life. That's why I do this show. I was thinking back on something, please essentially picked up on the word coherence and you mentioned the law of attraction earlier. For the people who think that the law of attraction is, you know, think believe in your chief, first I'm going to tell you that's bullshit.

So let's call it bad. I love it. But I want you to think of your brain a little bit quickly and think of it this way. Let's say you love rock and roll.

And let's say rock and rolls on station 95.5. If you're on station 92.1, that might be classical. If you're on station 98.7, that might be punk rock, but a 92.5. That's rock and roll.

So imagine coherence just means locking your electromagnetic spectrum of your brain, lock it and load it on exactly what you want. So what's the vision? What's the beliefs? What are the emotions that create coherence?

So you're locked and loaded to the frequency of the universe that is matching that goal part one part two is when you get locked and loaded. You've actually activated the Einstein brain connected to the motor cortex connected to the dopamine release in your body. And when that happens, okay, now you're in coherence. But there's another part that happens in this Einstein part of the brain.

That's actually what the latest neuroscientists psychologists are thinking is connected to this GPS part of our brain to the frequency of where all of the tools resources people are that resonate with that frequency. So we've been evolving for about two and a half million years since Homo rectus to now 108 billion humans on earth with a brain that's been changing and growing. And my belief is we're just scratching the proverbial surface. We talk about little quantum mechanics or quantum physics with entanglement.

We're all connected. We're all tuning into the frequencies that are us and within us and all around us. Now when we learn to use our brain better, it's just mind-boggling how we can achieve goals and dreams that we thought were impossible to achieve before. This is the fun part now.

That to me, this is the fun part. And by the way, when you see two people better vibrating it frequency like this, you get an interview like with your experiencing right now, everybody. Like we both have done lots of areas and we know when we're in the midst of a great one. And everyone, I just want to be clear.

Please follow John. Please. And if you're listening to the show or watching it, share my show. My gosh, people need to know this.

You know somebody who care about or believe in or love. This should be hearing these things. A couple more tips. And then I want to talk about something pretty serious at the end, if you don't mind.

Because you're just a few guys here. But one of the ways you can do some of this work, many of you know about vision boards. And we can have a confident person talk about it. John, I can maybe touch on that a little bit.

But John goes even deeper into these accomplished boards. Which I've never flipping heard of in my life. And again, guys, you're just not going to get this anywhere else. So these are strategies that are real, that work that we both do.

So there's two prolific entrepreneurs who are now in this phase. They're saying these are the things we do. And isn't it ironic that we both do them? And we're both addicted to them.

And we're both addicted to them. And we're both intrigued to our success. So please talk about that, brother. So I have my vision boards and I actually have my exceptional life blueprint that I created.

It's about 50 pages of my prayers, my rituals, for my spiritual growth, health, wealth, my money story, my intermission, my outer mission. Some of the stuff that I have or that I'm creating. And so I create these visual representations to trigger the biggest part of my brain called the Exceptital Load and Activate My Memory Center. So I have vision boards for what I want to create.

So I'm getting my brain the exact instructions so that not only it focuses helping me achieve that, but most people don't understand about vision boards are creating goals and writing that are specific. Is that your brain is a deletion and distortion tool as well. So if you give your brain the instruction of this is the stuff that's important to me for health, God, spirituality, charity, fun experiences, my children, my mother, my father, my son, whatever it is. And you say, this is what I want to trade my life for.

Delete them to store everything else. Now all of a sudden you're using your brain as a deletion and distortion organism in order to be able to help you hyper focus on what you want. So part one is get absolute clarity on what you want. So your brain helps you eliminate what you don't want.

Part one. Part two, right? Part two is I tend to be a goal seeking guy, right? And I used to not celebrate the small stuff.

And I just was like, you know, five bigger goals, bigger goals, bigger goals, bigger, bigger. And so I said, you know, like slow down just enjoy some of the stuff that you actually have done for yourself and for people and your family. And I was like, well, let me create an accomplished board. So good.

So accomplished board. You passed that test on your own 40 years ago. Celebrate that. You helped this person who was challenged and celebrate that.

You know, you did this for him or for her or for yourself. Celebrate that stuff to remind yourself. I'm tough on myself. Like, I'm, let's come on.

Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. And sometimes I forget the stuff that I have done, the stuff that I do do that I need to remember.

So I created an accomplishes board and a list. So I can just go to it when I feel like, holy shit, am I smart enough to achieve that next thing? Am I good enough? But a lot of people don't know it is when I was a kid, I used to feel like I wasn't smart enough.

And when I was a kid, it helped me back. And today I still feel like I'm not smart enough and that fuels me to get smarter. So I use it. I said big goals.

I go, God, I don't have the skills. I don't have the knowledge. But I can figure it out. I've got contacts.

I've got friends. There's books. There's Google. There's YouTube.

There's holy Mac. I don't need to have all the specialized knowledge anymore. So I have accomplished board. But also, you know, a crap board is what conflicts are happening right now.

I often say that there's only four things that are holding you back as a human being. Only four. There's not 25. There's four that are the core.

One is if your vision and goal is bigger than yourself image. Okay. So if you deserve it, you can have this vision and goal and be excited about it, motivate about it. You will not do what it takes to achieve one too.

If you have limiting beliefs, if you have a vision goal, if you have a limited belief that you're too young to hold whatever the case is, your limited beliefs will drive your behavior. Three, fear, fear of being a bad to shame, ridicule to judge, fear of failure, fear of disappointment, and we'll talk about discipline over fear succeeding and failing again. Disappointment. Most, and then the fourth one, by the way, is your lack of the knowledge and skill required.

So that actually sets up a self doubt trigger, which activates the up frankenstein brain, which caused you to lose motivation. But most people prefer to master disappointment and comfort zones instead of mastering change. So if I master disappointment, I know what I got. I just have to deal with, well, this is what I got.

And if I master my comfort zone, then at least this is the devil I know. Yes. Versus mastering change. And we know what's going on in our brain.

We know what's happening neurologically, biologically, emotionally, physically. And all of that is a skill. It's just a skill. So why not just master change?

Why not become an adaptationist right now in the time that you meet at the most in the world? Because if you don't, then you're just going to keep repeating the same patterns that are going to get reinforced and it makes it harder in three months, six months, and six years. So master change now and make that one of your core competencies and then you master your life. Oh my gosh.

You guys, anybody familiar with my work? No, how much I love this man and how much we line up on these things. Similarly, I love the way that you phrase things. And guys, one thing about change, one of the reasons we have to take a change is it's an energy depletion too.

Humans kind of want to conserve energy. You have to realize one thing. We're going to go to one more part and then I'm going to ask you about grief. But yeah, guys, we love to gravitate towards what we're most familiar with.

We create these patterns in our life and we repeat them over and over and over again. And if you're not conscious of what they are, if you don't create new ones, you're just repeating the same life in a different year over and over. And that script that John talked about, your script is the same as it was five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, with slightly different characters and slightly different dressings in the room. One of the things that I read with you just took my breath away because I struggled with what you said.

I think most achievers struggle with celebrating the small wins. They cheat themselves and these dopamine hits. Eventually, that's part of what burnout is. You just finally go winning.

Is it fun? I don't get anything out of it. And I no longer seek to do it because there's no pleasure center being activated by doing it. The other part I do is I'm really hard on myself, like you said.

And I think if I were splitting hairs with me now, to this day, it would still be my language. Like, I always try to find what's the millimeter I can fight for. You know, I think the thing that I regress on from time to time because I try to remain humble and have some humility is I think I take some time self-deprecation too far. I've caught myself recently.

I said it in this interview. I'm old. I'm old. I'll say phrases like that in friends of mine and leave and say stop, please stop saying that.

You're the guru of personal development and you keep using these words. And then I was watching you when it came to wait. Guys, John does not say lose weight. I'm so far from the same.

I want to lose weight. Please talk about words and specifically when it comes to just wait for a second because it's going to set up its people's minds. So you may or may not know this story yet, but 10 years ago, I was 238 pounds, 33% body fat, borderline hypertensive, almost full on diabetes, severe sleep apnea, not in good shape. So I said, listen, don't okay in business.

You've done okay with your relationship. You're happily married. Great. Listen to that.

Look at you. You're a physical mess. And so words are really, really, really critical because there's something really important listening. And so if you're using words that you're reinforcing, if they're self-deprecating words, you're reinforcing a self-deprecating self-image, which means Frankenstein brain is going to be triggered by those words.

So if you think about, wait, what is it? Every pound is 3,500 calories of energy. Right? And so when you think about what do you do when you lose something?

What have we been taught to do when we lose something? Try finding it. Go get it back. So if weight is energy, I said to myself, what do I need to do to release this energy back into the universe, back in the form of hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, whatever it is, so that somebody else who needs it right now can use it.

It served me long enough. I'm ready to release it and to change my physique, to change how I feel, to change how I look. And my goal back then for my 50th birthday was to get into the best shape of my out of life for 50, which I did. And then my goal was to have a six-pack at 60, which I'm already there.

So I'm actually almost there. But the whole idea was the words that I use are really important because they're the words that I listen to and reinforce. So he releases weight, everybody. He doesn't lose weight.

And I'm going to tell you something. Of all the breakthroughs I've heard, we've learned so much more about macros and fat intake and caloric intake. And we know the chemistry of how to lose weight from all body types. This right here is a huge thing to be considering, guys.

And it comes through the truth with money, relationships, every area. Start to be aware. Start to be cognizant of the words you use to describe yourself, circumstances, situations, even the words you use to describe your goals and dreams. Yeah.

So, can I just do one thing? Yeah. Just do it with the book. So in my health section, okay, I script every word for health, wealth, relationships, career, business.

So it says, I have an abundance of physical and mental energy. I feel and look great. I'm the healthiest I have ever been, being spiritually grounded, emotionally, mentally focused and totally healthy and happier in my highest priorities. I now wait 195 to 198 pounds with less than 12% body fat.

I'm consisting of performance, day of flow creativity, productivity. My blood work is perfect. I now have an abundance of empty focus and peace of mind. I sleep deeply in sound.

I feel well rested and energized every day. Now, I read this every day. I have that on my mobile phone of my recording that I listen to every single day. I look at my document every day and run my fingers across it.

Why? I want to enforce exactly the words and the patterns that I choose into my subconscious mind. So I choose consciously, very carefully. Like an artist writes a song.

I write my life song for health, wealth, and extrovers with very specific words. I imprint those into my subconscious mind. They formulate my conscious dialogue. I love this.

So guys, subtle thing. Got to point it out. Two things. You don't just read with your finger.

That's a different visual stimulus for your body. The reason that's not that I'm going to phone is you're not getting yourself the auditory feedback as well. So there's science behind what John's teaching you. I got to tell you right now.

This is a literal flipping masterclass on how to change your life. It's a masterclass. Like, you guys, I'm so excited. And if you're not sharing this man, you're cheating people out loud.

You know why John's so good? This. Because there's one level and you can just tell if you're watching the video version of this. There's a goodness about his spirit when you're in his presence, even when it's just a zoom presence.

Everyone that knows it was mutually. I love to hear how brilliant and smart and successful people are. But what I really listen for is do I hear repeatedly he's such a good man. And this comes out of you.

It's natural. Both of us really worked on ourselves to build our businesses and our lives. Something is overtaken both of us. We're now working on behalf of you as well.

And I know John's so great at this. Not only because it changed his own life, but because he's learning to teach now. He wants to reach a billion people in the world. And there's a difference.

And I admire that about you, brother. I just want to acknowledge that in you. Because I know that's why you're so great at this. I've improved my ability to articulate and have breakthroughs.

Not just on my own behalf because I only do so much for myself. But when I think I can elevate other people, that's why you're such a gift. And it leaves me the best work on moral purpose than us. Yeah.

And you're doing it, John. Like you're doing it. Like lives changed today. And at the end, I want to talk about life.

And I know this is a sensitive topic for you. But I want to talk about grief last. We could talk about so many other things. But there are people right now grieving that are listening to this.

They're grieving the loss of their business. They're grieving the loss of their job. Maybe it's the loss of a home or money could be the loss of their health or that of a loved one. Maybe their relationships in a little stress right now because of all what's going on.

And without being too personal, John's gone through a very, very recent moment of grief. You can be personal. I'm getting so upset. I said, I'm John's recently lost his mother and I'm talking about in the last days, this has happened.

And it's been just really a couple weeks. And I'd like you to talk just for a second about coping or dealing with grief. Probably coping is not a strong enough word. Maybe persevering, thriving through grief and your own experience with it.

If you would, you said I could ask you anything today so you knew that that myth is topic was going to come up. So could you share that with us, please? Sure. So I think what I wanted to start with philosophy first, right?

So as opposed to the experience first philosophy first, I personally don't believe we die. So if we go backwards in time to, you know, mother's egg, father's sperm, that was just energy that combined and through the transmutation of energy and energy multiplying 26 times, you know, the DNA of my mother and father and ex and Y chromosome created this sentient being called, you know, my body and John. So I believe that we are spiritual and that whatever you believe about what spirituality is and the creator, there's something created us. You want to call God, I honor that.

I want to call it as irrelevant. So if we came from that, then is it possible that's what we return to. And right now we have a physical experience for X number of days moments and years. So about two weeks ago, my mother was diagnosed with coronavirus and she was pretty healthy, walked in her retirement home, went to physiotherapy three days a week, ate on her own and talked her every single day.

And she was diagnosed with coronavirus six days later. She's dead. As you and I discussed, we had a virtual goodbye when my brother and sister and I said, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. I'm a million times, you know, 25 minutes that we had with her.

And then we got my children, my brother's children, my sister's children, and a couple grandkids say goodbye to their mother and, you know, eight hours later, my mother was dead. And the first thing that I, you know, that I felt was gratitude. And people asked me how to feel gratitude, your mother died. I said, listen, my mother was 87.

She could have died and suffered with Alzheimer, with a stroke, with a heart attack. You know, she could have, you know, suffered in the hospital coronavirus. She died peacefully. I'm grateful for that.

I'm grateful that I spoke to her every day for the last 20 years. I'm grateful that every 100 days I got to see her because I flew to see her. I'm grateful that I have a brother and sister that are close, that we can appreciate our mother. I'm grateful for the lessons she taught me.

I'm grateful for the wisdom. I took my heart and I went right to gratitude of all the things I was grateful for, for the doctors, the nurses that took care of her. Now, I want you to just understand, I was extremely sad, but I could hold both emotions at the same time. Right, oh my God, I just lost my mother.

I couldn't fly to see her. Like, I would have gotten on a jet and done that five minutes later. Jet, let's go. You know, I couldn't do that.

I couldn't hold her hand. I couldn't caress her hair. I couldn't, I couldn't look into her eyes and tell her mom, I love you. Thanks for your wonderful amazing mom.

Couldn't do that. So what I could do, I could choose what to focus on. I could choose to focus on what I had control over. So we arranged for a virtual funeral for my mother, virtual goodbye, virtual funeral.

My nephew was taking a video of my mother being put in the casa, she was already in the casa into the ground, you know, and that was on zoom. And I was grateful that I was able to do that versus nothing. So grief. A lot of times when we are focusing on what we've lost or what we're losing, we're not focusing on what we've gained.

A lot of times we're focusing on what's possible as a result of this. We tend to monofocus, right? On either good or bad. I like it.

I don't like it. It tastes good. It doesn't. It's hurting me.

It's not. But what if you could learn how to observe both? What if you could observe the law of polarity in its entirety that says you cannot have an electron without a proton and in without an out and up with that. Now you cannot have that on this planet in this universe.

So is it possible that it was just a little bit of training, whether it's mindfulness or meditation or awareness, you can be sad. You can grieve and be joyful and happy at the same time. See, it's when we are afraid that we're losing something that we've got that Frankenstein brain of our saying, what if what if what if what if oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, when we are in that state, we can't be focused on what are we going to do about it. Now, in a grieving state like with my mother, the only I want to do about is make sure that we respect and honor her life and my brothers and sisters and my dad excited.

So I need to focus on that. And when we're talking about, you know, a business going under a relationship, you know, that's unraveling right now. If you're focusing on all of the disempowering emotions and circumstances, you cannot be focusing on the solution to that possible problem. So you have to learn how to manage the emotions.

And for those who don't know what that's like, I want you to fucking imagine, I'm just not really mad. That's so funny. A Hollywood actor or actress learns that they are not their emotions. They have emotions.

Now, everybody's going to grieve differently. But I want people to understand that you don't have to be disempowered in grief. You can be empowered in grief. And everybody's going to do it differently.

And some people are going to go inside, some will go outside. But we have the ability to frame things in ways that empower us and gives us the best chance to move forward instead of being a victim of it. And all I'm saying is consider, consider that you have way more power than you are displaying in your emotional management, in your focus, in your awareness, and in your behavior. And you can feel the entire spectrum of emotions, quote it, quote it, quote it, quote it.

But are you being constructive versus destructive in your behaviors? Unbelievable, John. I, your mother must be so proud of you. I mean, my gosh, what a remarkable son she has.

I love you brother. Oh, mutual friends said you guys have got to meet. I'm going to tell you, it's so obvious right now. I mean, I'm just going to keep my, I'm just going to let the audience tell you, okay, because it's not fair to other people that are on my show.

But this has been unbelievable. And everyone has told both of us to get together. And we talked for a very long time, John and I have. It's just, I actually reached out to John to do this.

I run within a couple days of this situation. He said, can you give me a little bit of handling the situation with my mother? And I have not, I cannot tell you number one, I'm so grateful that we get it, but I got to be honest with you, I'm even extra grateful that it was right now. This is when it was supposed to happen.