If You’re Ambitious But Stuck, Please Watch This – John Assaraf Explains

If you want to change your results, don't focus on changing your behaviors. Change your focus on the beliefs that drive your behaviors.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel. So if you want to be healthy, there's already a blueprint. If you want to make more money, there's already a blueprint.

I learned the value of progress versus perfection. And even when you move backwards a couple of steps, what's the progress that you made in what you learned?

Need motivation?

Catch a top 10 with Believe Nation.

What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. I believe in you, and this channel is designed to be a part of your daily success routine. So let's get your motivation to a 10 and get you believing in you. Grab a snack and chew on today's lessons from a man who went from often getting into trouble with the law when he was a teenager to writing 2 best-selling books, being featured in 8 movies including the runaway blockbuster The Secret, and building 5 multimillion-dollar businesses. He's John Assaraf, and here's my take on his top 10 rules of success. Enjoy. Okay, let's kick it off with rule number 1: Follow the blueprint.

I was really fortunate when I was 19 years old. I met a wonderful gentleman who was very successful with his family, was very successful giving to charities. He was very healthy. He was very gentle and kind. And when he started to share with me, to teach me that my entire reality was based on what I believed was real and what I believed was true about myself, about what's possible, and that I could change that, that's when my life started to change. And he said, if you start to change the way you think and you start to learn every day for 1 hour to upgrade your knowledge and your skills, and then you take action every day on the things that are the most important instead of all the different things that you can do. He says if you focus on doing 3 to 5 things every day towards your goals, he says in 1 year you'll be at a totally different destination. 3 years, Big distinction. 5, 10 years, your life won't be the same. And I was tired of living a mediocre to less than mediocre life. And so I said, listen, you seem to have a good plan and a good path. You're making millions of dollars. You're giving a lot of money to charity.

You're happy. You're healthy.

You've got a great family.

I want that.

And he said, if you want that, follow the blueprint. Don't try to figure it out, just follow the blueprint. And that was another lesson that he shared with me is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Yes. Like if you want to fly right now, you don't have to figure out how to fly. You know, there's already a blueprint for how to generate or create an airplane. Yeah. So if you want to be healthy, there's already a blueprint. If you want to make more money, there's already a blueprint. If you want to buy real estate or the stock market or start a business and grow a business, there's people before us that have already got the blueprint.

And all you have to do is paint the numbers inside the box.

And then you can use your creativity. So I just became a very good follower for a long time of things that worked. And when you follow things that work, it's like having the combination to a safe. If somebody gives you the combination to a safe and they tell you, turn this way a little bit, turn this way a little bit, turn this way a little bit, turn this way a little bit. Then open it, you can have access to it. But most people don't look for the combination. And then even when they get the combination, they try it in the wrong order.

Rule number 2: Value progress over perfection.

The Law of Goya is simply get off your ass. So if you, if you, if you, if you think and you believe and you emotionalize, you visualize and you create your plan, for how am I actually going to achieve this. So what do I need to do? When am I going to do it?

How specifically?

How am I going to tweak it, measure it, and iterate it so that I'm consistently making progress? I learned the value of progress versus perfection. None of my mentors ever had me focus on perfection. They had me focus on progress to just keep getting better. Little incremental gains every day, every week, every month, every quarter. And even when you move backwards, backwards a couple of steps. What's the progress that you made in what you learned? So I was taught that failure is an opportunity to learn, and I was also taught to disassociate me being a failure from failing.

Rule number 3: Develop discipline.

When you start talking about my brain, it's an organ. It's like your heart is an organ. You can speed up your heart, you can slow down your heart. You can, you know, speed up the brain waves in your brain, you can slow them down. You can tune in, you can tune out.

Yeah.

We haven't been given the user's manual for the most powerful tool that we're aware of. That's right. And so the great news, you know, I know you being an athlete and a successful businessman, you have discipline. You cannot achieve results without some kind of discipline. And so we know that there's some fundamental truths to achieving success. And every successful person will tell you, you know, and Jim Rohn is, I know you, you love Jim Rohn. So you either pay the price of discipline or you pay the price of regret. Discipline weighs ounces, regret weighs tons. That's good. But the thing is, can you teach discipline? The answer is yes.

How?

You have to have a willing participant. And if the participant's reason why is big enough, if they know I want to achieve X, and the reason why, the motive for their action, motivation, the motive for their action is a reason beyond just themselves, chances are they will do more to achieve that success than if it was just left up to their own. But there are some people that are born, you know, with incredible drive. They just have this insatiable drive, and they'll just— I'll do whatever it takes for the things that I want. And there's other people that want things, but they just don't have this insatiable drive. And this is where, you know, I— as much as I hated school, I love to use school as an analogy. In the game of life, whether it's health, wealth, relationships, career, business, spirituality, fun experiences, you have to decide what level of game do I want to play at? Is it the grade school level, the kindergarten level, the high school level, the university level, the pro level? Because each one of those levels requires a totally different mindset and totally different skill set. They're building blocks on each other. But if you are extremely talented but you're not prepared to practice and rehearse and drill and fall and fail forward to the next attempt you will never make it as a pro. You will never make it as a pro business person. You'll never make it as a pro husband or wife or athlete or musician. You just never will. So just get used to that if you're not prepared to pay the price. If you are prepared to pay the price and you have the aptitude and the talent, now we're talking about there's some real potential here. And what we don't know is, you know, what's in your heart? Like, what is the fire that stirs you that that you wake up saying, "I will do this even when I don't feel like it. I will do whatever it takes to overcome my temptation for mediocrity, my temptation for excuses, my temptation for reasons and circumstances to hold me back. I won't allow those to be in my way." And if you have that within you, you'll achieve whatever you choose. And so the question you asked before is how do you develop that? Start small. Yeah, start small. So if you don't have discipline, show to your— show yourself that you can give yourself one command and one follow-through. So you know what, um, right now I'm gonna get up, I'm gonna do two push-ups right now. Not, not like later, now. Can you give yourself a simple command? One sit-up right now. I'm gonna go get a glass of water. You start with something ridiculous. I, I learned many years ago, reduce it to the ridiculous. So for reduce it to the ridiculous, and I start that, I said, can you do that? Great.

Will you?

Because that's the difference right there, is that's the razor's edge. The people who can—

will you?

Will you? Yeah. Great. When?

Now.

Now.

Yeah.

Right. So if you develop that skill, and specifically from a brain plasticity, a neuroplasticity perspective, as soon as you do that, you give yourself a command and you take the action, you have just created a neural pattern that you can give yourself a command and take action. Now, that may just be one time. Well, what if you did that every hour by putting a little bell on your computer? And every hour, like if my computer was open, I'd have every hour it would say, "It's 12 o'clock, it's 1 o'clock." And I take 60 seconds just to be in control of my mind. 60 seconds. I don't care where I am. Stop, take 6 breaths, just get centered. Am I on track? Am I off track? Am I doing something I shouldn't be doing versus a high-impact activity that I need to be doing? Every hour I've trained myself to just reset. I didn't always do that, so I just started with one a day, right? Then two, sure, then three. Then it was working so well, I said, great, let's do this every hour.

Rule number 4: Focus on your highest values.

The first thing that you have to ask is, what are your highest values? So for me, for example, my number one highest value is God. My number 2 value is my health. My number 3 value is my family. My number 4 value is contribution to the lives of others. My number 5th value is fun. So every day when I wake up, I think about what am I doing today to connect with God? For me, just for me, it doesn't have to be, you know, it's not religious. It's just for me. Then what do I need to do every day to make sure that I'm healthy? What I need to do every day to make sure that my family and my dear close friends who are part of my family, that I have the relationship that's rich. Then contribution. How do I use my, my passion, my gifts, my, my stories, my things I've not done well, things I have done well. How do I share that with the world? And in doing that, I feel good. And then I have to have fun. And so if I do those 5 things every day, then at the end of every day, I've had a great day. And if you have a lot of great days, then you end up with a really great life. And that doesn't mean that you don't have ups and downs and things that don't work and trouble that happens and things that come up. But if you keep your focus on what's important, then the rest of the stuff is really inconsequential. And there isn't 100 different things you have to do. There's 2 or 3 things in each one of the areas that's important to you that when you do those every day, you're so far ahead of the curve.

Rule number 5: Be a voracious student.

I was taught the law of attraction, you know, I was 23, 24 years old. Also at a real estate conference, they're talking about this law of attraction thing, that there's this energy, everything's made up of energy. I am energy, you are energy, and my thoughts create this resonance between what I attract and what I don't. I'm like, oh good, I like that shit. I want to attract more of the good stuff, right? And so I bought in. I bought into stuff that just made sense to me. But then I was a voracious student. I want to understand how. Explain to me how it works. If somebody tells me visualize, I go, why? How does it work? You ask me to visualize, like, why does it work? Like, why should I invest my time on that versus something else? If you're asking me to use affirmations, like, how specifically?

Why?

How does it work? If you're asking me to emotionalize, well, what's happening in me that tell me I need to create these false senses of feelings? I want to know why it works.

Rule number 6: Change your beliefs.

If you think about the era that our parents lived, Okay, Great Depression. Yeah, right. Um, very, very hard to make money, very, very hard to find resources, very, very hard to, to do anything unless you're a professional. So our parents said to most of us, if you don't become a professional, uh, you're going to struggle, you're going to struggle and suffer. And even the professionals said, okay, so become a professional and here's your ceiling of what you have. So we became conditioned to be worried of scarcity and in a world that has no scarcity, we became conditioned to having certain beliefs about what's possible or not possible. So even now, you know, as we're sitting here and we've got this, you know, amazing election time.

Crazy.

You know, one of the things I've been thinking about is, you know, there are some people that believe that if Donald Trump wins, they're gonna make a fortune. And there's other people that think they're gonna lose everything. And I have a friend of mine who has got about $70 million in the bank believes that if Hillary gets into office, he's going to lose millions. It's going to be really tough. And what really is going on in people's heads, it's all of their references, their beliefs, and their perceptions that are locked away in the implicit part of their brain that is driving those thoughts and even the behaviors.

They may not even be aware of it.

They're not even aware of it, yeah. They can be, but they may not be. And so what we really have to go back to, to focus on is it really makes no difference who becomes president or who doesn't. If you have the belief that regardless of what happens in your external world, you can navigate towards the success that you want, right? That's a belief. And beliefs are the lens by which we actually see the world and by which we behave. And so if you want to change your results, don't focus on changing your behaviors. Change your focus on on the beliefs that drive your behaviors.

Rule number 7: Have a good morning routine.

So when I wake up in the morning, um, the first thing I do is I do a gratitude exercise where I ask myself, usually in bed, what am I most grateful for today? And usually, you know, I'm grateful for my health, I'm grateful for my wife, I'm grateful for my children, I'm grateful to be alive, I'm grateful, you know, for my family, I'm grateful to, to have experiences.

And do you do that Eyes closed?

Yeah, I do that eyes closed. And while I think about that, I feel it. And so the feeling starts every day with a great feeling. I start every day with a great feeling.

Do you visualize some things like your children, or do you talk to yourself? How do you do that?

Yeah, I have an internal dialogue. I see images of the things that I'm thinking about. And that just takes me 2 minutes, just 2 minutes when I wake up. And then I go to exercise to take care of my body.

How long?

Usually 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes every day. And so I do a variety of different things. I hike, I bike, I work on aerobics, I work on strength, I work with weights.

I do whatever it is.

I just do it to give my body the physical exercise. Then as soon as I finish my exercise, So 1 hour and a half? 1 hour, 1 hour and 15 minutes at the most. So then in my gym I have 2 things. I have a vision board, which is my dream board for my—

You are known for that.

Yes.

So I have my vision board for my physique and my body and my health. But then I also have in my gym something called an achieved board.

Okay.

So I achieved some of the things that I achieved.

Past and future.

No, achieved in the past.

Yes. So past, you have the past and the future. Correct.

So I have in my, in my gym, in my home gym, I have a like a place where I sit and before I start my meditation, I look at my vision board from the past.

Okay.

So I get connected to the different things that I've been able to achieve. And I remember every day When I set my mind and my focus to achieving goals, I can achieve all of my goals. But what I also do is I reinforce. Most people focus on what's not working. This isn't going well.

This didn't work.

I want to remind myself every day of look how many things I was able to accomplish by being clear, by being passionate, by using these rituals. So before I go into my meditation, which is with my eyes closed, I look at my achieved board. I get emotionally associated with it to remind myself that when I set my mind to achieve something, I can do it. And then I look across because I have a mirror in the gym and I look across and I say, I love you just the way you are. And I said, I accept you. I accept you just the way you are with all of your skills and passion and faults and insecurities and doubts and fears. I accept you just the way you are. And I smile and then I close my eyes and I do about a 15-minute meditation. And in my meditation, sometimes I have no thoughts where I'm just one with the universe and everything. Other times I'll just follow my thoughts and I'll just pay attention, be mindful of where are they going this morning? Where are they going today? So I'll follow my thoughts and I'll just follow them. Other times I'll follow a thought and say, release that one, and follow another thought and say, release that one. So I am teaching my brain that I'm in control of my brain.

Rule number 8: Be committed.

What happened for me personally when I was a teen between the age of 13 to 17, I got into enormous amount of trouble with the law. I did a lot of unethical things and I was getting myself in so much trouble. And I had one mentor that my brother introduced me to. His name was Alan Brown. He was a very successful philanthropist, entrepreneur. And he agreed to meet with me for lunch one day. And he asked me, like, why are you doing these things? You seem like a nice young kid. And I said, I don't know. I just want to make some money and I just want to fit in. He goes, but you seem like you're intelligent. Why don't you just use your brain's natural abilities? I go, well, listen, based on my education and based on what the teachers have told me, I'm not going to do very well in life. And I left high school in grade 11 thinking that I'm not worth it. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good enough. And this one man in one minute in one meeting changed my life because he asked me, what goals do you have? And I said, what do you mean, what goals do I have? I said, I want to go out this weekend to the bar. I want to have some good food. I want to find a nice young lady to maybe hook up with.

And he says, no, no, but what are your bigger goals?

And I didn't have any. So he actually sent me home.

He said, fill out these pieces of paper.

And on the piece of paper it said like, what age do you want to retire by? Like, I was 19. This was May of 1980. I wasn't even started yet.

I said, but just fill out, fill out these papers.

So I said, I want to retire by the time I'm 45 with $3 million.

I want to have a Mercedes. I want to have a house.

I want to travel the world.

I want to have a great lifestyle.

And so I came back.

On Monday and he looked at it and he asked me one question and that question transformed my life. And he said, are you interested in achieving these goals or are you committed? And I stopped and I looked at him, he was standing up, I was sitting at my desk there at his office. And I asked him, Mr. Brown, I said, what's the difference? And he said, if you're interested, you'll do what's convenient. You'll come up with stories and excuses excuses and reasons why you can't, and you'll use your education as an excuse. You'll use your stories as an excuse. You'll use the fact your father was a cab driver and was a gambler and never had any money. You'll use all of that as your reasons why you can't. He says, but if you're committed, you will do whatever it takes. You'll let go of your stories. You'll let go of your excuses. You'll let go of all the reasons you currently have that are formulating your identity of yourself. And you learn how to let that go and become who you are destined to become.

Rule number 9: Create good habits.

So someone's listening right now and they're thinking, you know, there's a lot of things I want. You know, I want to get out of this relationship, or I want the relationship. I want to have better health. I want to have more money, whatever it may be. And they've been saying that for years, and they feel like they've been consuming all the information they need to have, but they haven't been able to take action. Maybe because their why isn't powerful enough. What would you say should be their first step?

Well, the first step is to take one thing. I'm going to go back to one thing.

Yeah.

And say, great, let me move one thing forward.

Why?

Because that just changes the trajectory of the same pattern repeating itself. And as soon as you interrupt a pattern and then you repeatedly interrupt the pattern, it's like taking a detour. And as soon as you take a detour, one day, you're like, okay, that was, that was okay. But you tended— your tendency is to want to go back to what's comfortable. But if you take the detour 2 days, 6 days, 7 days, we know from a neuroscience perspective it takes about 66 days to create a solid enough neural pattern that it'll go from conscious effort and thinking about it to a non-conscious pattern that has the beginnings of automaticity happening without your involvement.

You're just doing them.

Yeah. And so for me, what I do, and for myself, is I, uh, whenever I want to change something, whether it's a habit, whether it's a thought or emotion or behavior, I say I'm going to work on this for 100 days. Not 30 days, not 21 days, not 66, which is right around there. I say 100 days. And then I focus all of my energy just on that one thing for 100 100 days.

Why?

Give an example of something you've done.

Sugar.

Sugar.

Sugar. I'm a sugar—

me too.

I'm a sugar— like if he was an alcoholic, I'm a sugaraholic, right?

It's so bad.

So, so you take one thing, just one thing that you know may be a little challenging.

100 days.

100 days. Just 100 days. So let's say you want to drink more water. 100 days, a glass a day. Conscious effort to one a day. Whatever you did before, you'll still do, but one glass a day. So, you know, I started that with my assistant. I said, I want to drink, you know, like 4 of these a day, you know, like, you know, 32 ounces, whatever the case is. And so every— we got a mug and it's on my desk every time I walk in. And then I have some support from her saying, hey, remember to drink your water. So just do it. So the first, you know, 2-3 weeks, I feel like I'm going to drown myself with so much water. Um, but then it's like, okay, now I'm used to it. Now I'm drinking as much water as possible because The habit is there. And one of the rules that I love to follow is the habit is more important than the intensity at first. So don't worry about the intensity, develop the habit. So can you take 1 minute a day to focus on how you will achieve a goal? Just 1 minute a day. Can you take 1 minute a day to focus on your health? Yeah. Can you take 1 day to retrain your brain?

Yeah.

Can I take one day, you know, or one action a day? And you start off with something, you know, and reduce it down to just a minute or 2 minutes or one behavior. If you can get that behavior to be a habit, it's easy to stack.

Right.

Of course.

It's just like the foundation of a building. Once you have the foundation, if you build it right, you stack. And so every good discipline affects another, and every bad discipline affects others.

And rule number 10, the last one before a very special bonus clip, is overcome fear.

Let's say you have a fear of public speaking. Is it really a fear of public speaking that you have, or is it a fear of getting up on stage and being embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, or judged?

Hmm.

Let me take you to another type of fear: being buried alive. Can you imagine for just a moment if there was an earthquake or there was a natural disaster and somehow you were buried alive? Wouldn't that trigger this crazy amount of fear of dying while you were buried alive? Now, why am I taking you there? I'm taking you there Because fear is a subconscious trigger whenever we feel threatened, and the threat could be a threat for our very lives. And when that happens, we move into one of four modalities. And modality number one is we try to fight this feeling. Number two is we freeze because because we're in such shock. Number 3, we may faint because of the neurochemistry that the fear causes, or we might run away if we can run away. Now, these neurological reactions are our brain's way of keeping us safe, which is the highest need and desire of the brain— safety above all else. So when we are looking to achieve a goal that we want to achieve, and it doesn't matter if it's, you know, to start a business or grow your business or leave a relationship that you're not happy in or a job that you're miserable in. Whenever we think about the actual behavior that is required to achieve that goal, once we get motivated in doing that, That's part one of how our brain works. But right after that, our brain has to analyze if there's any real or imagined danger associated with taking that action step. So if you are going to leave a relationship that you're not happy in, your brain is going to activate the memory circuits and discover what's in there that may have caused you pain and suffering suffering in the past. And when that happens, whether it's a relationship you want to leave, a job that you want to leave, a goal you want to achieve, your brain is always analyzing, is there any danger here? And when there is real or imagined danger, the amygdala part of the brain, the emotional response center in the brain, is going to fire off an amount of neurochemicals like cortisol, epinephrine, or norepinephrine. And it's that rush of those neurochemicals that causes this emotion— energy in motion— we label as fear. Now, once you have that rush of neurochemicals in your bloodstream, that actually gives you an enormous amount of energy. But what most people never have learned how to do is how to take that energy and channel it to action versus to fighting it, freezing, or running away. When you recognize a fear, I want you to do this. It's called Innercise number 1. It's called Take 6, Calm the Circuits. When fear neurochemicals are released in your brain, you've activated the fear or stress response center in the brain. When you just observe the emotion called fear through being quiet and breathing 6 times in through your nose and out through your mouth like this, you take a deep breath in for 5 seconds. You blow out like you're blowing out through a straw. And if you do this, 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out, 5 seconds in, 5 seconds out, with 6 to 10 breaths, you're going to deactivate the fear response center. And that actually is going to reactivate your thinking center in your brain so that you can move on to inner size number 2. Inner size number 1 is Take 6 Calm the Circuits. Inner size number 2 is called AIA, A-I-A, and that stands for Awareness, Intention, Action. So here's how you do this. After you do the first inner size, then you move to inner size number 2, and then you ask yourself in a calm, relaxed state, what am I thinking? Right now? What am I feeling right now? Am I calm or am I tense? Am I breathing deeply or shallow? Is my heartbeat fast or slow? And in this state of calm awareness, as you deactivate the brain's fear or stress response, you can observe what you are feeling and what you are thinking and what you were doing. And then you can ask self the next question, that is the I. What is my intention right now? Is my intention to move forward, or is my intention to stay in this fearful state? And chances are you say, well, I really want to move forward. And then you ask ask yourself, what is one action step that I can take to move forward towards my goal and dream? So this is how it works. After you do the inner size number 1 to calm the circuits and to deactivate the reactive state that fear causes, and then you move into the second inner size called AYA to move into the responsive state— awareness, intention, Action now puts you in control of being aware of the fear, being aware of what you've been thinking, and then being at choice of what you want to do. So when you combine these two inner sizes, you are now reconfiguring the neural network in your brain around the goal that you want to achieve. And instead of allowing the real or imagined danger to control you, to stop you dead in your tracks, you take one action step in a calm state, and that rewires your brain so that the same reaction doesn't hold you back anymore, and that you are now able to use fear as your fuel for success.

Now I've got a special bonus clip from John on how to forgive that I think you're really gonna enjoy. But before that, it's time for the 3-point landing questions. Time to move from just watching another video to taking action in your life or business. And if you're feeling bold, leave your answers in the comments below. Here we go. Question number 1, what fear do you need to overcome? Number 2, what good habit can you start creating today? And number 3, what belief do you need to change?

When I was 5, I moved from Israel where I was born to Montreal, and I had just started kindergarten in Israel. And then I was thrown into a class with 50 kids in Montreal in grade 1. I didn't speak English or French. And so I felt stupid. I felt like I sat there, you know, looking up at the ceilings, bugging the other kids, and was consistently reprimanded, consistently put in the principal's office. And then I was consistently brought to my knees with my parents. My father was physically abusive, which is a challenge in itself. His words weren't a way that he communicated. Hands and feet were his way of communicating. And so when I did the wrong things, that was the punishment. And so I felt embarrassed that I wasn't smart enough, that I wasn't good enough, that I wasn't going to amount to much. In my 20s, one of the things that Alan put me on a path to was personal development. Read a book a month, go to events, listen to cassette tapes back then of motivational stuff for motivation, for inspiration, for strategies, for tactics of what to do to lift, raise your level of skill and knowledge. So I went to this event and I brought up this challenge that I had with my father. And the instructor said, like, when are you gonna forgive him? I said, never, I'm never gonna forgive him.

Fuck that, forgive him.

There's so much pain. And the instructor said, well, if you're never gonna forgive him, then you're the one taking the poison pill hoping he's gonna die or he's gonna be affected. He says, you don't forgive him for him, You forgive him so you can move on. I was like, aha number one.

If you like this video, check out the one I did on Bob Proctor and his 10 rules. I think you'll enjoy it. The link is right there next to me. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

All things are possible if you believe. What we've got to understand is we're trading our life for our goals. Literally trading our life.