#117: Innercise: Unlocking Your Brain’s Hidden Power with John Assaraf

Welcome to The Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, bestselling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markel. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your conscious pivot.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I am actually podcasting from a little different location today. I'm in our Pivot Dojo, and it's funny to be in here actually, just to be alone in this space because normally we've got 12 people in here. And we're working on a variety of crazy things. We do some pretty nutty exercises, all to help people to become more fully expressed. So to be in here alone and have to feel like I'm filling this space is an interesting feeling. But I've got an incredible guest with me today that I'm going to share a little bit about in just a minute. But much more than a guest, he's a dear friend. So I feel blessed in this moment in ways that I— I can express, certainly I've got the words for it, but it's more of a feeling at the moment just to spend some time with somebody that I really care about and I respect. And the beauty of that is that we get to have a conversation and it's just us chatting, but everybody else gets to both, I think, experience the energy of a good relationship, of a longstanding friendship, as well as to learn some things about business because the gentleman that I'm going to introduce has just this ridiculously long history of success in business and— He's got wisdom in a way that I think is— he's consciously aware of some of the things and probably there's a whole bunch of stuff that's just sort of unconsciously competent behaviors and habits and ways of doing things that he's not even necessarily fully apprised of himself. But I notice it and then a lot of people in the world notice it too. So his name is John Assaraf and he's a serial entrepreneur, brain researcher, and the CEO of NeuroGym. In the last 25 years, John has grown 5 multimillion-dollar companies in real estate, internet software, brain research, and life and business coaching and consulting. He's also the author of 2 New York Times bestselling books, Have It All and The Answer. His brand-new book is called Innercise. We'll talk a little bit about that today, the new science to unlock your brain's hidden power. John has made frequent appearances on Larry King Live. And has been featured in 8 films, including the blockbuster smash hit, The Secret, and Quest for Success with Richard Branson and the Dalai Lama. He's one of the leading behavioral and mindset experts in the world with a unique ability to help people release the mental and emotional obstacles that prevent them from achieving their very best in life and in business. Jon is a vegan who cares a great deal about what he eats. He eats his own hot sauces and he He actually makes them. He meditates daily. He exercises 6 days a week. I'm gonna really find out if that's true today, but 6 days a week, that's what it says here. And he loves skiing, traveling, taking cooking classes, listening to the Bee Gees and Enigma, and being a dad, a husband, a mentor, and I'll add, a friend. Jon, welcome to the show today.

Hey, buddy. I'm so happy that my mom sent you that bio.

It's a pretty good bio. And man, it's a mouthful. I need to put my—

Come on.

I did my own vocal warm-ups before I got to that. But, I want to ask you, so what's not written in this introduction that you would love for people to know about you?

You know, it's interesting, as you were reading about, you know, building 5 multimillion-dollar companies, what it doesn't say in that is, I've bankrupted one other company. I've invested in dozens that haven't worked out. And so, what it didn't say, it showed me in a really wonderful light, but said, Didn't show any of my skeletons in the closet.

Right. Mom always leaves out the adversity when she's creating a bio for us. So funny.

Yeah.

I was reading this and thinking to myself, God, man, you must be exhausted. I'm thinking, this is a lot. This is a lot in a lifetime. And you managed to do it. I think this is one of those great things. It's a quality that I'm not sure if you see this about yourself, but you do it with grace. You do it with a certain ease. Thank you. Resilience. It's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And in times of massive change and disruption, the kind of rapid change that we're all experiencing as leaders, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we have to learn how to not only increase our own resilience, but that of our teams. So right now, we have a powerful opportunity for you to find out just how resilient you are. Some years ago, my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across the globe have taken. And all you have to do to get your own free resilience leader assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are. Because you can see with a lot of people that they may be successful, they may have created business success or money success or some other success, and often they wear it. You can see it on their face. They're just sort of worn. It's the experience that I once heard this analogy of taking a train, and it's an old analogy, goes back a ways when I think Air travel was much less the thing. And so basically, it's looking at people that get off the train and looking at the people who were working on the train, the porters and conductors and people like that. And the difference is that the people who work on the train, they don't take the trip. They don't take the trip in the same way that the passengers do. And I think that's a part of it.

Well, I think it's also really important to know if you would have seen me, let's say, 12 years ago, I was wearing it. I was 45 pounds heavier. I was stressed out, drinking too much alcohol, eating shit, you know? And so you're seeing the effects of my pivot, right, in your language. And so I reprioritized what was really important to me. Now, of I've always been really good about family and my connection to what I believe is God. And I've exercised most of my life, but I always didn't take as good care about myself with stress management, meditation, relaxation, vacation, time off, reflection time, consistent health-related stuff. And I quickly realized as I was approaching my 50th birthday, That maybe I had some of the other things in life that are important to me, but I was unhealthy. And so, I made a very, very concentrated effort to shift my focus, to pivot from not taking care of that to taking care of that and saying, listen, so if I achieve what I want to achieve in business a year or 2 or 3 later, big deal. There was just no rush to it. I wanted to achieve it. And still have a great relationship with my wife, with my kids, with my mother and father and sister and brother, the people and friends that I want to invest quality time with. So, so it's a much more balanced, harmonious life now than it used to be as I was building a lot of the things that I wanted to build in businesses for, for the most part at that time was just to make money.

Yeah. You know, Jon, this is interesting because I think there's a lot that people are seeing from influencers today that would suggest that you have to be a workaholic, that workaholism is actually an aspirational lifestyle. For many millennials, they're being driven in this way. I read somewhere that Elon Musk talks about working 120-hour weeks, 110-hour weeks, and things like that. Yeah. And so there's a part of me That goes, well, that would be interesting. What if I have twice as much time? What if I was twice as productive? That kind of thing. And so, is there a hack to that? Is there some way to be able to squeeze more juice out of the vessel, so to speak? And then, there's another part of me that really resists, just, I guess, from after 40-plus years, I suppose, in an entrepreneurial space because I started young like you did. Yeah. I think to myself, exhaustion is not a model that you can scale and burnout is not a model that you can scale. And there's so much burnout and so much exhaustion. Yeah. So when I see or hear other people who are influencers, who I won't name at the moment, who say, you know what? The key to success is to be able to add those 7, 8 hours. When you get home from your day job, you first start your night, your entrepreneurial pursuits and things of that sort. I want to ask you the question. that success requires that you be out of harmony or out of balance the way you were in order to get that, to achieve that? Is that a requirement of the, you know, in the equation?

It depends on the outcome. So if you are being efficient with time, there's no such thing as time management. All you can do is manage what you do in time. So if you are being efficient with what you're doing in time, the only reason to put in more time is because you want to get things done And so, at that point, it becomes a question of if what you value is to achieve your— whether it's financial or business goals or making a difference in the world goals faster, then you can add more time. But if you have other things that are important to you, then you have to allocate a portion of your time for those things. And I think what happens with a lot of entrepreneurs especially is we're looking to get as much as we can done in the shortest amount of time. And a lot of people forget that it comes at the expense of other things. And so if—

Such as?

You pay that price, you know, if you're prepared to pay that price, okay, do it deliberately, do it consciously. And know that chances are if you overdo it, you're going to end up with burnout, which is now considered a very serious medical condition. And burnout means that the hard stuff is nearly impossible and the easy stuff is really hard. And when we get into understanding the body and the brain a little bit better, the reason humans need sleep is there's a lot of stuff that happens You know, in those 6 or 7 or 8 hours of sleep. And if you don't take care of allowing your brain and your body to do those things, then you're putting stress on it. And stress for a short period of time is okay, but for longer periods of time, stress breaks down systems. And there's 11 systems in the human body. And so it's just a matter of time before your systems break down. till you cannot take care of yourself. One of my friends once said, he said, if you don't make time for your health, your illness will make time for you.

Indeed. You know, it's interesting. I have my phone sitting on my desk. And one of the things you inspired me actually to do was to get an autonomous desk, which I have right here. And I love the ability to stand up because I remember coming to your office some years ago.

Right there.

Yeah. I saw you standing at your desk. How cool. So I've got this thing plugged in on my desk, which is our lifeline or what feels like for so many of us, I think, that we couldn't live without this device, this cell phone. And yet we remember a time when this thing wasn't a part of our lives. So I read recently that many of us are addicted to this, let's put it that way, but there's this continuous cognitive arousal that Yeah. Has us sort of endlessly on. There's almost no off switch. And on average, people are looking at this and interacting on their phones more than 150 times a day, 2.5 minutes on average. You know, we're talking about a lot of time. But here's the thing about this. If I don't have it plugged in, so I just unplugged it, if I leave this thing alone for whether it's 10 hours or 2 days or maybe, it depends on the phone you've got, At some point, it's going to read a signal that shows that the battery is depleted. Eventually, if ignored completely, the battery goes out in the phone and this wonderful computer, this device will not work. Isn't it the same with us?

Right.

If we're not— and I think the difference is that we don't have a gauge that tells us that our energy or that the gas tank is low, so to speak. Resilience is the conversation I want to ultimately have with you today. Yeah. And I want to talk about the kinds of resilience that help us to recharge, to be able to plug back in. And I really want to focus on the brain. But before we get there, I want to just circle back because it is a show about conscious pivoting. And you did a great job of seeding that at the very beginning and transparently saying that what's missing in your bio or your intro are the moments of failure or the moments of learning or whatever those things are, the challenges. I'd love you to pick one and one sort of more macro pivot because the book I wrote was more about those extreme points of inflection in our lives when we change a career or we leave a relationship or when we're left or we're fired or those moments.

Right.

And then the book that we're currently incubating is more about the micro pivots, the smaller moment-to-moment, even in sort of second-by-second increments that we pivot in our lives. So, I'd love for you to start with the macro one and then we'll transition into something that's more of a micro pivot for you.

Do you prefer a business one or do you prefer a health one?

You know what? You choose, Jon. I mean, look, the audience of folks are people pivoting in so many different areas and obviously, business is relevant for a lot of people as well.

Sure. So, I mean, for me, I've been an entrepreneur for my whole life. I got I got involved selling real estate when I was 19 years old. So, 40 years ago almost. And then I built my own real estate company and I've had several different ventures that I've built. And so, I keep reinventing myself based on what is it that I want to do in the world. I have been in a really fortunate place that when I was 19, my mentors put a lot of personal development in front of me, whether it was books or cassette sets or events that I went to. And one of the events I went to, literally 40 years ago or so, was there was something that was said at that event that really helped me a lot in how I make decisions in my life. And the idea of setting goals for yourself came up. And the seminar leader said, don't set goals wondering if you are worthy of them. Set goals asking, are they worthy of trading your life for? Right. And so I've never done anything that I didn't want to trade my life for. And so when I get tired of doing something where it's just not worth the trade, I just stopped doing it and I figure out, you know, what is it that I want to do? And so I went from, you know, being in real estate to being, you know, in the online world of virtual tours and virtual seeing homes and inside of cars, on computer, and bringing virtual tours to the world. And so I've been involved in a lot of different things. So my pivots have been extremely deliberate.

Meaning you've planned those pivots for the most part, is that what you're saying?

Yeah, they were not hard. They took some time to plan, but they were very, very, very deliberate. And so I haven't been put in the position too often, and I was with one of my businesses. I had a partnership that was With my best friend, and he got sick, and there were some psychological issues, shall we say. And we ended up having to close our company down with 72 employees and thousands and thousands of clients and millions of dollars in revenue. And I lost a lot of time, a lot of money, very painful in the friendship, very painful financially, very painful from an ego perspective and from a reputation perspective. the guy on the front and he was more of the operator in the back. And then I was forced into a pivot where I had to basically start from zero, no database, no employees, none of that.

So it was a public pivot, if we can call it that.

It was a very public pivot. And so I had to start from scratch, you know, learning a bunch of stuff that I didn't know. But the foundation that I've built, you know, just being into personal development is really what gave me the, I guess, the sea legs to be able to weather the storms. And that's the one thing that I keep coming back to. I'm still a voracious reader and learner. I still go to events. I still have consultants that work with me and coaches that work with me and mentors that work with me. And so, I've kept myself in this environment that facilitates change, an environment that helps me navigate through change. The 2 hardest things I think I've ever done have been around not eating. I'm an addict to— I was an addict to alcohol where I drank a bottle of wine a day after a couple of cocktails. Yeah. And I was a functioning, I guess, alcoholic where I could drink in the evenings and then go to work all day long. I didn't have to drink during the day. And then I stopped drinking alcohol 12 years ago for 18 months and drank— I had one glass of wine with a friend of mine and drank for 18 months. And then I haven't had a drink in about 10 years. Giving that up was probably one of the hardest things to do. And then sugar as well. Giving up sugar was one of the hardest things to do just because of the addiction in the brain to sugar.

Right.

And so, I've had to make some pivots out of, you know, for those 2 things, but it was all health-related. So, my reason why was bigger than, you know, the addiction, it was bigger than the challenge. So, I had a much bigger reason why I must and why I wanted to. And it really had nothing to do with not being functional or getting into any trouble. It was just who I wanted to be at the time, especially my kids were right around 10 and 12 years old. As like, this is just not something that I want them to not see me beat. And so that worked out.

So you're a serial pivoter and also a serial teacher. I mean, you've been teaching for a very long time. I want to put you to the task of taking the lessons and the wisdom of the pivots you've made and chunking it into 3 things that you could say were common, are common denominators or common elements. Yeah. That successful, serial successful pivoting which you've done. So what would you say are those 3 things? Because you've already said a few things and I'd love to just unpack it.

Sure. So everything that I teach my students right now evolve around 3 things. One is mindset. So attitude, perspective, beliefs, habits. Number 2 is skill set. What are the skills? What's the knowledge and the skills that I need to have in order to understand the pivot, to understand what it is I'm trying to achieve? What's the real, real, real stuff? The neurological stuff, the biological stuff, the emotional stuff, the physical stuff, that all falls into mindset and skill set. And then what are the specific behaviors Specifically, when I talk about behaviors, I'm not talking about one-time behaviors. I'm talking about specific behaviors that must become my habits.

Exactly. So I remember you being fascinated with this idea of unbelieving. Where does beliefs fall into that category? Is it purely in the mindset area?

Oh yeah. Well, yes, the answer is beliefs are nothing more than neural patterns in the brain. So, the more we believe, the more evidence and repetition we have and experience we have. But what if you can get to the point where you don't believe your beliefs?

What a great question. I want to understand, do you believe— I'm going to put the belief question to you, and I have a sense of what you're going to say here. Can an old dog really learn new tricks? Because there are a lot of people who are

Oh.

If they have self-awareness, they understand that there's patterns to their behavior. They've existed since— it depends on how much work you've done on yourself, but initially, it's the stuff you did last week, but when you dig deeper, it's the stuff you've been doing your entire life, probably since the age where you first experienced some form of trauma, whether it's 6 or 7 or 8 years old. And now you make meaning out of things and you do certain things repetitively. Can the old, the proverbial old dog learn new tricks, Jon?

Well, the unequivocal answer is yes. And let me unpack it a little bit and explain. So, you said a word just before, you said patterns. Well, those patterns at one point when you were born did not exist. What is a pattern? So, a belief is nothing more than a cluster of cells that have connected and have been reinforced. Habits are nothing more than thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations, and behaviors that have created a cluster of neural networks that have been reinforced, that have moved from a time where you did them consciously with effort to a subconscious pattern that requires zero effort. It's automatic, and that's what a habit is. So when a dog is comfortable and just repeating the same things that He or she does, that just means that they are really good at using something called their automatic self to do the things that don't require any thought or energy. And so if we want to teach that new dog a trick, a new trick, we have to first figure out what's the trick we want them to learn. And then we have to do spaced repetition and experiential behaviors in order to teach that little dog new tricks. I keep Rubik's Cubes next to me all the time. I have 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 8x8s, 10x10s. And can you teach, you know, somebody who's never done a Rubik's Cube to solve this Rubik's Cube in less than 10 minutes? And the answer is yes, even though there's billions of patterns or algorithms that you can follow. Now, if you don't know how to do it, then it's nearly impossible. But when you understand that in order to develop a new belief or habit or perspective or behavior, there are things that you can do algorithmically that when you repeat these patterns, they actually take the place of the old patterns. It's all based on neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to rewire itself. And so a belief is nothing more than a pattern that is active at times and not active at other times. But if you know how to take a new belief and impregnate your brain with that new belief and then allow it to become the new default pattern, part of the new operating system, um, then that pattern overrides a new pattern no differently than if there's an issue with software on a computer. You got a computer programmer to recode the software and the new software could be run on the computer. Our brains operate pretty much in alignment with that. They don't operate exactly like a computer, but our brain is a living, thriving, changing organism versus an organ.

Yes. Are you a fan of Og Mandino's work? You ever check out

some of his work? Many, many years ago. Yeah.

Yeah. So, there's an old book called The Greatest Salesman in the World, which absolutely love. And in that book, Og Mandino says something along the lines of, weak is the person who allows his thoughts to control his actions. Strong is the person who allows or forces her actions to control her thoughts. And so, I want to get a sense from you of which do you find— because you've done so much work in this area, in the arena of how the brain not just functions but but how it is that you leverage what you can learn about the brain to create new patterns, I suppose, create new behaviors. So, do you find that it's— is that a true statement that it's a stronger— there's a strength in being able to force yourself to do something and that your actions will then follow? So, when you talked about attitude earlier, it could be that your attitude or your mindset is 6:00 AM alarm rings and I need more sleep and so your habit, your pattern is to Hit the snooze bar 2, 3 times, and then conveniently, you can't get to the gym and also get to work on time. So, you just don't go to the gym. There's a lot of people who do that, right? Yeah. So, rather, somebody who the alarm rings and what they've trained themselves to do is simply act. They get up. They put their clothes on. They get to the gym even though they may be one eye open, one eye closed. So, what is stronger in your experience? Is it the thoughts that control the actions or is it the actions that control the thoughts?

Well, I think first we have to understand that thoughts are automatic. Thinking is part of your conscious brain. Thoughts are automatic from your subconscious brain. It's percolating up random thoughts and patterns of thought that you have consistently had over and over and over again. So there's a variety of different parts of our brain. And what most people just don't understand is when that snooze button is Or when that alarm comes up, not a lot of people want to be awakened from sleep. You're in a groggy, hypnagogic state where you just want to stay in bed. And if you're not getting enough sleep, then you don't want to

wake

up.

You're in the middle of a great dream. I mean, come on.

Well, if you're really sleeping properly because your circadian rhythms are set properly and you're not Causing any challenges in your brain cycles to happen because of computers, for example, or your cell phones before bed and getting too much blue light from your computer screen, then you should have actually a good night's sleep where you wake up after your deepest REM sleep. And then you're fine because you're out of that deep sleep. But if your sleep cycle is not something that you manage and you really take seriously, then of course you're not going to get out of bed because you're just going to be in the wrong brain state to want to go and work out. But given that, anytime that you can challenge any of the systems that are going on in your body, there's something— there's an entire body of work called hormesis. H-O-R-M-E-S-I-S. So I'll give you an example. When I go and shower now, and I started this in January earlier in the year, after I take my nice soothing hot shower, I do about 3 minutes of as cold of a shower as I can. Now, why do you do that? Well, based on a lot of the research, number one, me overriding my, I don't want to do a cold shower, It gives me emotional, mental resiliency to override a comfort zone and a pattern that I've gotten used to for 58 years. A nice hot shower, warm shower, and then finishing off with a cold shower is not fun or easy initially. It taxes your cells. It taxes the telomeres. It taxes a whole bunch of the different systems in your body. And when you can become good at overriding your desire to stay in your comfort zone, now you have emotional resiliency. You know, this morning when I did my cold shower and last night, I'm like, this actually feels good now. And I was actually just thinking to myself this morning, I need to get some colder water now. Maybe now it's time to go into some bathtubs with ice cubes in it. So any time that you fast when you're hungry and you train yourself to override that, I don't want to, I'm hungry, I need to eat. Anytime you override your brains and your emotional desire to do what's easy and convenient, you succumb to your comfort zones. And anytime that you stretch yourself and say, you know, I don't feel like it, but I'm going to get up and do it anyway. You know, I don't really not want to eat that. But you know what? Even though I love desserts, I'm not going to have it right now just so I can show myself that I could be in control of these automatic processes that I've had for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years, whatever the amount is. So, whenever you do something like that, including taking your toilet paper that maybe the roll, the paper's coming down, flip it around to the paper coming the other way and see how your brain wants you to flip it right back within hours or days. So, anytime you take, whether it's a mundane or a more sophisticated routine and you interrupt it and you override the natural propensity to want to do what is comfortable, you are developing mental and emotional and possibly even physical resiliency. And so, I love to challenge myself in as many ways as I can to do that. Not only is it good for your brain because of brain plasticity and keeping your brain young and creating new neural connections, but it's really good. To put you back in a state of I'm in control versus my environment or my habits or my beliefs control me.

Yes. And resiliency, as you said earlier, is so important today, especially whether you're running a company. You've got to become a resilient leader. You've got to model resilient leadership, whether it's in your family or even as an entrepreneur. Resiliency is key. So I want to, I want to understand a little bit Can you talk a little bit more about what you would say contributes to resiliency and how much of it is situated in the brain, if you can?

Well, I think it's all situated in the brain. So that's number one. For me, resiliency also comes with another word that I absolutely love, especially now. And I talk to my children about this all the time. And I said to my children, I became an adaptationist. And

that's what the human species is. That's the

heart

of it is adaptation, right?

But deliberate, you know, in the past when we've taken a look at the human species, we say, okay, listen, you know, genetic traits don't change for 10,000 years. But what about deliberate conscious evolution? In research studies with mice in the last several years, if you take a very, very smart let's say female mouse, and you put her through a maze that takes 6, 7, 8 hours to get through in order for her to get some food and water, she will pass on the genetic code to that maze so that her offspring can actually go through that maze like that upon birth.

Wow! The pace of change over the last couple of years has been rapid, and if you're a leader, a business owner, an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Every day it's something different and something new. But the one thing that I've learned in performing at the height of all of those roles has been that we must be resilient. In fact, it's the unsung hero in every success story that you will ever hear about. And it's the reason why my team and I created the resilience assessment that more than 5,000 business leaders across across the globe have taken, and all you have to do to get your own free Resilient Leader Assessment is go to resiliencerank.com. It takes less than 3 minutes, and it's our gift to you for being the leader that you already are. Other free resources and tools will accompany your score instantly. So go to resiliencerank.com and find out just how resilient you are.

In a fraction of the time. So as she goes through the maze and her neural networks are changing, she's passing that genetic predisposition to her offspring in one generation, not 10 or 20 or 30. So survival of, you know, the smartest, maybe survival of the most able to adapt, the most resilient. Yes. Absolutely.

Survival of the pivoter, the pivotist.

Survival of the pivotist. Yeah. Survival of the fittest. Survival of the smartest. Survival of the most resilient. That is more true today. If you think about when have we experienced more change than right now? We've had the Renaissance Age. We've had the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution. We're right in the midst of a psychological revolution, a neurological revolution, where our brains are starting what I believe is the beginning of a massive adaptation for the next 10,000 years.

Yes.

And whether we will be in spaceships like Star Wars traveling between planets at crazy dizzying speeds with our joysticks and our feet doing stuff or just Brain-to-computer interfaces. We are at the precipice of a massive, massive shift with augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality.

I've been looking forward to living into the cartoon of the Jetsons forever. Yeah, absolutely. And we're here.

And we're here.

Autonomous vehicles and things like that.

Artificial intelligence, all that is coming to a head. And so the individual who is resilient, who could who can adapt, who can deliberately put herself or himself through it and go, I'm actually enjoying this process because I'm developing a sense of greater control.

So, let's be mad scientists for a second together, right? So, if we know that that's the toolkit that we'd want that's most relevant now and probably if I was going to give my kids or give anybody's kids something at the earliest stage, it would be that they could do the things you're talking about. They could adapt quickly, make new decisions quickly, pivot quickly, reinvent quickly, you know, not get bogged down in what was because change is the normal and it's always been the normal, but the pace of change, the pace of disruption is exponentially greater every day now. So, let's just talk about how the brain might function in that area and what we could do, what kind of training is available even, John? To help people to establish those new skill sets for a world that is changing so rapidly that to try to even pinpoint it in a moment is sort of foolish.

So, since we're talking about the brain and we'll talk about the Brainathon in just a minute, but when we understand our human brain, I've got a few brains here in my home office.

You got a couple of brains sitting around? I got a couple of

brains sitting around. So why do people get stuck in these comfort zones? Why don't we like to adapt? Why don't we practice resiliency? And there's really a very, very simple answer. Our brain is wired for safety first, right? So when we think about safety, what kind of safety? Survival, number one, physical, emotional, spiritual, financial safety. So anytime our brain processes information, It has to analyze whether there's real or potential danger involved in that, and it balances that out against how much energy is it going to take to do this. And so energy conservation and survival are paramount in the brain, and right with that is avoidance of any kind of pain or discomfort. So adaptation is uncomfortable, right? Doing something that I don't really want to do is uncomfortable. It requires energy. So now I'm doing something that I don't want to do, you know, or I'm being asked to or forced to. It requires energy. There might be danger involved in it, and I don't know whether there is a payoff of pleasure that's possible. So our brain processes information from the perspective of energy conservation, Pain, move away from it as fast as possible, and survival. And so how do you manage to feel this discomfort? Because what happens is when our brain is in a state of discomfort or possible fear or danger, we're releasing the neurochemicals of cortisol or epinephrine. And that happens at a subconscious level. The feeling that it causes is actually what makes people stop.

And those— and just for folks at home, cortisol and epinephrine are—

Stress hormones.

Are fight, flight, freeze. Those are the hormones that are released in those times.

Stress hormones. And a little bit is good. Too much is— Too much is not a good thing. Is not a good thing. And so, when we have these feelings that we haven't learned what to do with, So, for example, when people feel vulnerable, what do they do? They do anything but go into the vulnerability. And the answer actually is in order to release the vulnerability, you have to actually step into it.

Same with fear, right? Fear is a bluff. It's a bully. The moment you go into it, it sort of falls away.

So, it falls away and there's obviously, there's some logic that you have to go through in order to say, is this real danger or imagined? And how do I minimize the risk? And that's, you know, that's part of getting logical brain, you know, working with the emotional brain, working with the instinctual brain. It's, you know, head, heart, gut, getting all those 3 in alignment. But strictly from an organism perspective, not wanting to is normal.

Yes.

And when people don't understand, here's what I'm feeling, here's why I'm feeling it, if I just override that feeling or step into it or use some of the tools that are available to manage emotions and feelings better, then they're ill-equipped to deal with a world that is changing in front of them and demanding for them to adapt. And, you know, a couple of years ago, my wife and I were with some friends in the Galápagos Islands. And you quickly learn there that it's adapt or die. I have a hat, right, that says, you know, adapt or die.

Yes.

And that's our species. And we're in the beginning stages of massive adaptations and changes. You know, jobs that are secure now won't be in the next 5, 10 years. There's so much disruption that is about to happen that most people are going to get blindsided. in a monstrous way. And if they don't know how to foresee it, accept it, challenge themselves to adapt to it—

Foresee it, accept it, challenge themselves to adapt to it. In our corporate consulting and even in the work we do sometimes speaking to companies, we talk about self-disruption because as you said, the disruption, that's a wave. It's a tidal wave. It's coming. It's

coming. It's here.

It's here. People feel it every day and it's only getting bigger all the time. But to be able to self-destruct was a skill set that I first learned or became aware of when I was working as a lifeguard at this place called Jones Beach many, many years ago. Because on that beach, we had, on a Saturday or a Sunday, we'd have 100,000 patrons. I mean, that's a lot of people on not a thin stretch of beach. It was actually a very wide area of beach. and rip currents and things that were happening, we could never have made all the rescues needed if we'd have allowed the environment to dictate the game.

Right.

And I think, you know, you mentioned environment earlier and I want to circle back as soon as I'm done with this one little story here. I want to circle back to what we can do to work with our brains to be able to create more of a, I don't know whether the word is a state I want to talk about the state of adaptation, but you used the term brain state earlier. So, I want to come back to brain state. But I'll tell you, when I was 19 years old and I was sitting on that lifeguard stand and we had so many people in the water, literally, it was like the watering hole.

Yeah.

And there were 8, 10 guards up at one time. We could never make all those saves if we didn't change the environment to make it possible. So, where we could see people were getting in trouble, we would blow our whistles. We would move them. A variety of different means to just disrupt the environment as it was so that we could not lose anybody. And what triggered this for me was earlier when you said that you've lived your life working in positions or at least in businesses where you would trade your life for it. At our beach, we had a mantra that our captain shared with us very early on after we had lost somebody and we, you know, through a search and rescue, they drowned and we didn't find them. And for 7 summers after that, We never lost anybody in our field because he said, you either make the save or you die trying. That was a very serious life-or-death context there, but it was something that we were willing to trade for, meaning that the ability to protect, to serve, to do what we were doing, to be in comradeship with other people who would put their lives on the line meant that if that happened, it happened. It wasn't what anybody wanted, but we were willing to put ourselves out there for it.

And you were prepared to practice to ensure that it didn't happen. So your level of commitment to being so damn good to self-preserve, but also to preserve others, you know, that was the benchmark.

Exactly. And that self-preservation in many ways was self-disruption. So we—

Deliberate conscious evolution, I call it.

Perfect. So let's talk about brain state because I want to get into the discussion of how it is that you do train people because you don't train People one-on-one. I know years ago you used to mentor people by the, you know, maybe by the dozens, but now your time is not allowing for that. So you work with people in a bit of a different way that gives them the access to not just your wisdom, but the wisdom of people who've mentored you in this space. So I'd love to talk about that, but let's just— the brain state is the thing that— the area that you work with people to create new patterns. Is that correct? I want— Yeah. To just get a better understanding of—

My specialty is helping people develop the mental and emotional strength to, A, become aware of the obstacles that are really holding them back. So whether it's the knowledge or skills they're missing, the limiting beliefs they have, the fears that they have, or the self-image or self-esteem issues they have that's really preventing them to take action to fulfill their biggest goals and dreams. I personally don't believe that knowledge and skills is the problem because we can Google anything or buy a book or CD or course or program and find out exactly what to do. That's not people's problems, either not being able to find out what to do or having the skill. It's—

As to that tidal wave of disruption that we've been talking about, I want you to speak to that specifically if you could, Jon. So, where do these things help people to adapt Adaptationist. That's what we want people to be able to do, right?

First is belief in self. Belief that no matter what happens, I can make it through and I can achieve the goals, the dreams, the lifestyle, the desires that I have. So belief in self first.

Okay. That's a check for me. I'm just going to put myself in the lifeguard stand now.

Yeah.

We had total belief that we would be okay. I always believed that. Okay. So, absolutely.

So, that's number one. Number 2 goes a little bit deeper than that. And that is, do you really believe that you deserve to have that?

Do

you really believe that you deserve? So, you have this goal and this dream and you might have this belief that, yeah, I believe I can have that. But do you really deep down inside that you As a soul, as a human being, do you actually deserve that?

Yes.

Are you— do you feel worthy of that?

Worthiness. Exactly. Perfect.

Then number 3 is the silent killer, and this is fears. Fears of failing, succeeding and then failing, being embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, judged, disappointing yourself or others if you try your best and fail.

Yes.

So, when we think about fear, fear is directly tied to the oldest part of our brain that's been evolving for millions of years, the instinctual part of our brain, the reptilian or lizard brain or brainstem. And that is directly tied to motivational centers, to thinking centers, to creativity centers, to the motor cortex in our brain. So, it is directly tied to behavior. So, if we go back to what I was talking about earlier, survival first, avoidance of any kind of pain right there with survival, if we think that there's any type of emotional, mental, physical, financial, spiritual pain associated with what we need to do, then chances are if we don't know how to manage our emotions, if we don't have any skills on what do I do when I feel afraid? What do I do when I have self-doubt, which is a precursor to fear? What do I do when I'm feeling stressed and anxious and uncertain? Most people don't have any tools or techniques of what do I do with this feeling? There's nothing wrong with the The issue is in ignorance, and it's a lack of skill of what to do when I feel that. A firefighter feels fear and does it anyway. A Navy SEAL goes, you know, 30, 40, 50 meters underwater into enemy territory knowing that they may be killed and feels that fear and learns how to do it anyway. An astronaut leaves or space station to go, you know, with a robotic arm to fix something in the middle of space and time and has those fears, but has learned how to manage the emotion and the feelings because they practice techniques. And so the average person— I was actually just getting ready. I haven't done an event in years. I'm doing one this weekend for about 35 people, and I took some pictures. Yeah. One of a beautiful car, and then another slide I have is all of the components of a car. I took another one of a picture of a beautiful Franck Muller watch, and then all of the pieces inside the watch. And what I want to portray to people is you see the surface of who you are, but do you really understand how everything is working? Mm-hmm. Are you your own mechanic that could fix the stuff that isn't working? And most people are like, no, I've never been taught how to be my own brain mechanic or heart mechanic or lung mechanic or digestive system mechanic. Well, you have 11 systems. You own them. It's the most powerful system in the entire universe in your brain, but you don't have the tools of how do you use it more effectively. And you don't need 100 of them. Like Microsoft Word has 4,000 features. The average person uses 7.

Yes.

And you don't have to be a mechanic to drive your car, but you surely need to know how to drive, how to park, how to You know, how to do some of the fundamentals and the basics. Most people don't have the fundamentals and the basics of using their brain.

Well, you came up with a name some years ago for an event, a virtual event that is all about what we're talking about. So it's just the topic is the brain and how it works and how to get leverage over it and how to change it and all that. So I love the name of it. It's called the Brainathon. John, just take a minute and share what is this thing called the Brainathon? Because it is such a great name for something. So what is it?

I've spent the last, you know, 25, 30 years studying the human brain and why we do the things we do and why don't we do the things we know we should do and what are beliefs and habits and how do we get rid of the disempowering ones and create new ones. And in my travels, I've worked with people from Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale. I mean, all the major universities, brain researchers. And so I decided to do something called the Brainathon, where I would bring some of the top brain researchers in the world with me to teach the public more about their brain, how to focus more, how to be less stressed, how to utilize your brain to help you achieve your goals, how to manage emotions, fears, disempowering thoughts about yourself, the little inner critic that everybody has. Everybody's brain is the same. This is what most people, you know, maybe don't understand is all of our brains are the same. Sure, there's some anomalies on the fringes, but our brains operate the same way. So the fear center in my brain works like the fear center in your brain. The focus center in my brain works just like the focus center in your brain. What if we learned how to use our brains better? What if we took the latest evidence-based, scientifically challenged methods and said, here's what works, here's what doesn't, and share it with the world? And so, that's what I did. I put together the Brainathon. I do a full 1-day, 8-hour with me and about 6 other brain experts sessions on here's the different parts of your brain. We don't get into the technical parts of the brain as much as, you know, if you want to make more money, how do you reset your brain's financial thermostat? If you have self-image or self-esteem issues, how do you reset that part of your brain so that you have more confidence and certainty? If you have limiting beliefs like I'm too young or too old or I'm not smart enough or not good enough, how do you disrupt that neural network in your brain and how do you create a new pattern that causes you to feel, well, maybe I am smart enough, maybe I can do this, maybe I am worthy enough? And, you know, how do I get rid of, you know, I can't because, and how do I say, you know, maybe in the past I could, but now I'm learning how to? That simple little shift in what I just did, I can't because versus maybe in the past I couldn't, but now I'm learning how to, that opens up an entire circuitry in the brain of possibility. And so we do this Brainathon to give people tools and techniques and ways to use their brains better. To get rid of the obstacles and to start achieving more of their potential.

I love it. Beautiful, beautiful. So, more on the Brainathon will be included in the show notes, folks. So, definitely click, find out, as well as you've got this new book out. Well, free is good. I think free. I like when people pay for stuff, so personally, a little more invested, but free is cool. In fact, look, this podcast is free. And actually, what's lovely about it is that it gives us all access to things that we There's no downside. There's only an upside that we might learn something and do something differently as a result of that, which is way better.

Yeah. And listen, anybody who feels comfortable with who they are and what they have to offer will give a lot of free stuff. And if people like what they hear and what they see, then maybe they'll go deeper in my work and my books and my programs and yours.

There's more access now. People, Jon, you know this better than me because you've been involved in this space I've been in the space longer than I have been— in the last 2 years alone, there's been more content created than in the prior 2,000 years. So, I mean, and much of it, probably 95% of that content is free. It's available on YouTube. It's available in so many ways. So, I couldn't agree with you more.

I just want to make people aware of something. Sometimes free is extremely expensive, though. So, just—

Go into that, John. What do you mean by that?

Well, sometimes, part of the challenge with all of the, you know, the channels, whether it's podcasts, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook. Part of the challenge is you have a lot of people who are offering opinions.

Hmm.

And opinions are great. And there is so much hype and bullshit out there that's produced. And so sometimes free is extremely expensive because It doesn't come with real evidence. And one of the reasons, I know you do, I know I do, the people that we hang with, we're looking for the stuff that's evidence-based.

Yes.

This is proven to work. We know this combination works because, and there's empirical evidence. And one of the things I decided to do many years ago for myself was I want to separate myself from everybody else in the personal development industry. I took one of the hardest So, the human brain, if you want to compete with me on the human brain, you better do some serious studying, put yourself in the environment of being drilled and grilled. Before I published my newest book—

I think you've been a researcher as well. I mean, it's a way to— and I know you don't typically describe yourself that way, but—

I research 2, 3, 4 hours every day, every single day.

The new book, Innercise, is that the result of a lot of that research as well? Because I'd love for people— I mean, I don't need you I'll be the one to promote it, but please, please go out and buy the book on Amazon, or if there's some other way that people can get it, we'll put it in the show notes as well, John. But tell us about Innercise for a moment.

So it's called Innercise, like exercise for the physical body, Innercise for your neuromuscles, and the new science to unlock your brain's hidden power. There's a website, if you put up ignitemybrain.com, ignitemybrain.com, they can find out about the book. free gifts for people who buy the book. It's already a bestseller. And I've got some brain training audios that I give people when they buy the $11 book on Amazon. I give them a couple hundred dollars worth of brain training audios.

That's cool.

And it's all around giving them actual tools and techniques to strengthen their mental and emotional capabilities and their resilience, and more importantly, how to achieve every one of their goals and dreams. So, we've discovered that there are different parts of the brain, for example, that are responsible for setting goals and other parts of the brain that are responsible for helping you achieve goals. Now, most people get the setting goals part really well. Here's what I want. And that's great because now you're using a little bit of your logical deductive reasoning part of your brain, maybe even some emotions, maybe even some instinctual parts of your brain. But in order to really achieve your goals, you've got to really create coherence. or harmony between a few different players in the brain like you would if you were in a band. If one of the band members is not playing well, chances are you're not going to have really good harmony. You're not going to have harmony. Excuse me. And so getting your brain in coherence and harmony makes your ability to achieve your goals a lot less stressful. Stressful is when there's too much going on that you don't know how to handle. Yeah. And so, if you want to make or achieve your goals with a lot less effort, effortless, not effortless, but effortless, get harmony and coherence in your brain. That's what I talk about and teach people how to do in the book, Innercise. So, pick that up. That would be great. Thank you.

No, it's beautiful. Jon, we're going to wrap up. I always— I'm intrigued by other people's rituals, and this is a show called— The Conscious Pivot podcast, so hopefully this isn't just the implication, but we're overtly stating that there's a difference between your conscious way of being and your unconscious way of being. And habits, I'm not making this distinction to downplay the importance of habits. And a book like Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits is famous for the fact that there are habits that people do unconsciously. Yeah. And they've created unconscious competence. That's fantastic. I just look at habits like you described them earlier as patterns, like the way I brush my teeth with the same hand or drive home in the same way. And what I think is really important is when we want to change something in our life, whatever that might be, we've got to create some new way of doing things. And those are consciously created rituals. These are—

Sure.

The distinction being that we choose to do it versus something we're doing by default. So, Jon, what's something that's not a default mode? And you said earlier that you've been doing some things for many years like going to the gym 6 times a week or what have you. What's something that you do consciously that's sort of a ritual that you do it at a certain time of the day every day or almost every day for a particular reason? What's a ritual that you've got?

January 7th of this year, and you just said something that sparked this, I started brushing my teeth with my electric toothbrush with my left hand instead.

Ah!

I started putting face cream on with my left hand instead of my right hand after I shave.

Yes.

Which I didn't this morning. And so what's interesting is every, I don't know, 3, 4, or 5 days, I catch myself holding the toothbrush in my right hand. I'm going, no, get it, get it, put it in this hand. Now, why am I doing that? Well, now it's really starting to become a habit already. Yes. We know from some of the research that came out the University of London last year, it takes between 66 days and 365 days to create a strong enough neural pattern that overrides an old pattern or habit. So, one of the things that I will share with people that you can take, if there's anything you want to change or create, whether it's a new habit, a new belief, a new way of being, all of my students and clients must Agree to at least 100 days. If you're not prepared to work for 100 days on changing a pattern that'll lead to the result that you want, I don't want you as a client. And the reason is because most people have had this idea of 21 days changes a habit, and that's just false. It's just, you know, it's an old, you know, old number from back in the '70s and '80s. 66 to 365 days, but I've discovered through tens of thousands of clients, somewhere around the 3-week mark, the really hard conscious effort goes away. And over the next 3 weeks, they're doing it probably 50/50 conscious effort and 50% habitual. By day 90 or 100, the habit's actually driving their behaviors. Hmm. So, that's— I just wanted to do a sidebar on that. But a lot of what I do, my morning rituals of waking up, my gratitude, my meditation, my exercise, my smoothie, my planning, my reviewing my day from what I did the night before, that's locked and loaded. And then my pre-bed rituals of what am I grateful for today? What am I happy and proud of? What worked? What didn't work? What would I like to make better for tomorrow? And then giving my subconscious mind some instructions before I go to bed on something I might be trying to figure out. Those are locked and loaded for many, many, many years now.

That's beautiful, Jon. Well, you and I can keep talking after we hit the record button off, but we're going to close out this session for the moment for everybody else. We'll have full show notes. If you have never read one of John's books, please go out and do that. Get a book, but find out about the Brainathon. It has been a very impactful event for a lot of people. I venture to say hundreds of thousands of people at this point for many, many years.

Over a million now.

Over a million now. Wow.

On Saturday is the next one, so they can sign up below for the one on Saturday. Yeah.

Beautiful. I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. Beautiful. I'll end as I do every time with the same ritual. So this is my ritual ending, but it's also such a blessing. I find it so important that I remind myself of what I'm grateful for. And at the beginning, I was grateful to have a conversation with a friend and to be able to share that with many, many people in this community that just have sent such loving messages to us about how these conversations impact them. Yeah. And so, we just want that to continue to grow. So, if you're somebody that is new to this, please subscribe. Please leave us feedback. We'd love for you to add a comment, adammarkel.com/podcast, and I answer all those comments personally, as well as you can leave a review on iTunes, although iTunes is going away, so leave it on Stitcher or something. But in any event, we got to do something really remarkable this morning, something Miraculous, actually. So, John, I'm going to ask you this question. Did you wake up today?

Oh, absolutely, brother. And thanks to you, you know, you gave me a little ritual, you know, that every time I put my feet on the floor, I'm grateful that I got to put my feet on the floor because other people—

It's such an incredible, uh, sometimes the most profound things are really the simplest. And, uh, it's a simple practice, but You got to wake up and I got to wake up and there was no guarantee when we went to sleep for either of us last night. There was no guarantee we'd wake up today and just the same tonight. So as we take that next, the first conscious breath of the day, so for everyone that's watching and listening to this, my prayer, my hope, my expectation, my intention is that you will get to wake up again tomorrow. And by that I mean just more than even just waking up physically, although that is a blessing all by itself, that you wake yourself up consciously, that you wake up your being, whatever that means to you, that you're just a little bit more alive tomorrow than you even were today. And you can also realize in that moment that you are awake, that there are people who are in that very same moment taking their last breath. And that's— that makes that moment holy and sacred, special, and certainly something to be grateful for regardless of the circumstances that you're waking up into. And then lastly, in this very simple waking ritual, the words are written on my shirt. They're 4 magical words. And I'm going to ask you, John, do you love your life?

Oh, I love my life. Those are the words. I love my wife and I love my life.

That's it, man. It's Jerry Maguire. There's this great scene in Jerry Maguire with Dickie Fox, who is Tom Cruise's mentor in that movie. And he says, and this is where this all came from me. In 1993, I think, is when that movie came out, something like that. He said, he says, I love my wife, I love my life, and I wish you the kind of success that I've enjoyed. And I wish that for everybody right now. I wish you all the kind of success where you love your life, and if you don't, that you find reasons to. And if you do, that you find more and more reasons to just know that that's a foundational place. So, Jon, again, thank you so much for being a guest.

Tremendous. Thank you, my brother. Always appreciate being with you.

Wonderful. Ciao for now, everybody. Have a great rest of your day, your evening, or wherever it is that we're finding you. We'll see you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at adammarkel.com/podcasts. For more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love, join our Pivot Community on Facebook at pivotfb.com.