Best of 2024 - Rewiring Your Brain for Success with John Assaraf

I want you to imagine the goal and I want you to see yourself already having achieved that goal. Just imagine like a Hollywood actor or actress would imagine a role. I want you to imagine in your mind's eye and just feel that you're at your ideal weight. If that's what you want. I want you to feel the energy around that. I want you to see yourself looking at yourself in the mirror and feeling proud of yourself. If it's a business goal, okay, whether it's to level up your business systems and processes or to reach a certain income level, or to build up your. Just imagine as if it already happened and you were sitting there feeling so proud of. People were sharing with you how proud they are of you. And like, wow, how did you do that?

Feel the success in advance for any goal that you want right now.

What if you could wire your brain for success and actually rewire it? So if you're feeling stuck, if you ever feel like you're unable to make your goals happen, actually achieve them, maybe you have trouble even starting. You're procrastinating. I get, I get that all the time. I mean, you know, a lot of the thinking happens, but the doing might not follow. So what if you can rewire all of that and make that brain of yours a GPS for success? I mean, that's ultimately what we are set up to do. It's what we want. So I am rerunning this episode here because it was one of the most popular episodes with everyone listening and watching and also for myself. This is my good buddy John Assaraf. He is back on the show. We're rerunning this from earlier this year and. And he has been a hit the last two times he's been on this podcast. And the guy, he's at a local mastermind of mine called Speakeasy here in San Diego. And I chat with him very often. Every single time at the events I always give a big hug because the guy is. He's so generous, he's full of knowledge. And here on this episode, he's going to break down how the brain works, specifically how, you know, you have neuroplasticity, so you have the ability to change how the wiring is actually firing in your head. So you have the choice to get unstuck right now. And John actually walks us through a life or life, but a real time exercise on the spot where you can follow along and actually practice this right now in this episode. So you will enjoy. Continue on. Before you do hit the pause button, I want to shout out my digital clone. So this was built using the Delphi AI platform. I'm an advisor of the company.

I love them.

I've been using it for two years. And I want you to try out my AI clone. I mean, you could literally talk with it. You can type with it, and you can, you know, voice chat, and you can video time FaceTime with it.

Video time.

Sure.

Video time.

And basically, it's totally free. It's trained on every episode of this podcast and way more. Hit pause, go to your browser, and type in hustleandflowchart.com.

That'S hustleandflowchart.com C, L, O, N E. It's totally free. Go try it out. Let me know what you think. We, my team and I also build these things out for a bunch of people. So reach out to me, Joe, at Hustle and Flowchart if you want to chat about that. Happy to help you out. Enjoy the episode with my buddy John. Hey, before you get into the episode, I urge you to hit pause and go check out the AI Digital Mind. It's like a digital twin of this podcast and a whole bunch of other content I've released. Go to hustleandflowchart.com AI Joe. That's hustleandflowchart.com AI Joe. You can literally chat with this podcast with me and my guests in text, audio, and video for free. If you want one of these made for yourself. If you're Interested, go to hustleandflowchart.com interest and we make these things out. So enjoy. Let's get to the episode. Marketers have never been so spread thin. You know, like, with all this stuff happening, technology is going crazy. It's really tough to really focus and get creative and create great content or connect with the customers like we used to or even prospects. So, you know, you're trying to launch a bunch of content campaigns, you're generating leads, you're trying to score the leads. You're nurturing them so much more, but you really don't have enough time to even breathe, let alone do the best marketing out there. But HubSpot's trying to fix that for you. They have a new AI. It's built into the system called Breeze. So it actually combines their marketing hub and the content hub with all these different cool features that help you automate and, you know, remix your content into a whole bunch of different types, score your leads in a better way and actually have a nice look at the analytics and everything that's going on in your business. So I would recommend to stop spreading yourself out so thin and start making some big moves with HubSpot. You can try it out for yourself. Go visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more. I want to pause for a moment and shout out another podcast on the HubSpot Podcast Network, your audio destination for business professionals. This one's called OG Mentors. It's hosted by Julie Mayer and Jimmy Edgerton. And these two, they're a pretty cool duo where one is, you know, Jimmy is a lot more on the loose side. I would say that Julie brings it in and keeps us focused on mentoring and movement. And so these folks, they. They focus on mentoring and exploring ways on how to augment and refresh, kind of like the way that mentoring is applied. And they have these principles that they weave into their episodes, and they. They give a bunch of practical tips, and they lace it with a whole bunch of humor as well. It's always cool when there's a cool duo happening there. So if you're in the mentoring space or if you have a, you know, leadership space, relationship guidance and things like that, that's what the podcast is made for. So you'll get a lot for it. It's great for entrepreneurs, marketers, sales professionals. They love the show as well. It's a great one. I've checked it out, and I recommend it. So go listen to OG Mentors wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, John, this is round two. We're back. How you doing, my friend?

So great to be back. I love it.

I know it's been a handful of years. Obviously dropped a person that used to stand or sit next to me, Matt. And yeah, I know.

We go now.

The mastermind. We see each other pretty often, so. I've been loving everything you've been putting out lately.

Thank you.

Got to shout out your inner size book. I know that's a handful of years old at this point and still obviously, test of time. You know, it has so many principles.

It was number one on Amazon in the mindset arena, and really, you know, the neuroscience of success and performance. So. Yeah, thank you.

Oh, of course. And I feel like that it's becoming more popular now, right? Like neuroscience. You hear people like, you know, Andrew Huberman talk about this. You see all these neuroscience popping up, and I love it. And you've been doing this for, I don't know how many years. I mean, you tell me.

10. 10 years of, you know, taking the behavioral neuroscience passion that I have and the psychology passion I have and talking about it. Teaching it. Over 100,000 students have been, you know, training their brain with my programs for 10 years. And so, yeah, it's great to see that it's finally, you know, making its way into more mainstream because I think people realize we all have this, you know, what I call as $100 brain, and none of us got a user's manual when we were growing up.

That's the truth. Yeah, well, and there's so many things, and you just. You're calling out something that, like the user manual. Over the last handful of years, I've noticed so many new patterns in myself. I've had some pretty high highs and pretty low lows and lost my dad, had a baby. Covid, like, all of us have our own journey though, you know, and. And what I've noticed are these patterns. And it's like I don't know what to do with these things like the user manual. We don't. We don't know ourselves really until we start diving deeper into ourselves or maybe some. Something broadsides us and forces us to do so, you know, so.

Yeah, well, it's as we say, you know, we don't dive deep. You know, most people, you know, are saying, hey, what time it is? They look at their watch or press their button on their cell phone, and they don't really have to, nor should they want to. But how does the mechanics of that work? This. This thing, all these pieces that are working together give you the time right now and for the most part, is accurate. And the same thing is with our brain. We have this. I mean, it's really even unfathomable to understand how complex it is with the three networks and the dozens of different circuits and 3,000 different types of brain cells, each required to do, you know, a different function. You know, whether it's, you know, we take it for granted that we can see and smell and taste and touch and walk and measure distance and. And think and have thoughts and have emotions. And it's like we. We take it for granted because we're born with it. And there's really no need for us to dive deeper until we say, hey, I'm having this problem. Hey, I. There's these obstacles that are in my way, or why am I limited? Or why do I believe this and not that? Why am I stuck? Why am I procrastinating? Why am I self sabotaging? And every one of us will come to a point in our lives where those questions are real. And then if you apply the latest neuroscience to understand the effect that we may be experiencing, and then we can shift the cause of it. Now we're starting to understand because we can finally, you know, with technology, we have functional magnetic resonance imaging technology. We can actually see deep inside the brain. You know, we can use telescopes to look into the cosmos, and we use electron microscopes to see down, you know, beyond the nucleus of an atom. And now we can see neural patterns and neural networks formulating or being pruned. So now we're at that scale of observation. So, you know, we can take somebody's, you know, blood when they're under a lot of stress, and we can measure the amount of cortisol that was released in their brain or the amount of adrenaline, you know, epinephrine that is in their blood, or dopamine. So all of these, you know, neurochemicals and neuromodulators affect performance, what I do and what I don't do. And so if you want to be healthier, happier, wealthier, etc. Is it possible that it begins and maybe even ends in your brain? And I think we're going to have a great discussion about that.

I do as well, man. And you named a bunch of things that I've learned about and studied, and I'm sure a lot of us have, and I would love to, I guess.

Where do we start?

Because you talk. I know a lot in inner size in general, what. There's two brains. There's that subconscious and the conscious side. So maybe that's a good place to start. And then we'll kind of take. Check it down.

Yeah. So, I mean, everybody's heard your conscious mind, the subconscious mind. What most people don't know is.

Just like you can have different software to do different things on your computer. Different parts of your brain does different things like a. Like an orchestra. That one's the piano player, that one's the trombone player. There's the vocalist, you know, there's the conductor. And our brain has, you know, these different functionalities. But the conscious brain is the brain that we can choose. I want this, not that I can imagine, you know, Albert Einstein. I've got Albert Einstein over there to remind me of the power of our imagination center, you know, and deductive reasoning this or that, why that, why that. If I do this and do that, then I can. I can calculate, you know, what might happen or not happen. So our conscious brain is actually very, very slow. It operates at very, very slow speeds, can only process, you know, very limited amounts of information at the same time. You know, four to Seven bits of information at the same time. Whereas our subconscious mind is digesting your food, is dividing your cells, is pruning cells, is creating new, new cells through neurogenesis, creating connections, operating your nervous system, endocrine system, digestive system, nine other systems in your body synergistically, using carbohydrates as fuel or fat as fuel, taking protein and making muscles out of it. You're not thinking about any of that.

It's pretty wild.

Your subconscious mind helped you get dressed without thinking of getting dressed, helped you brush your teeth without thinking about, helped you trust, choose. Your food was conscious, but digestion and usage was subconscious. So there's this huge differentiator between conscious and subconscious. And then, you know, once we learn how to walk, how to add, subtract, multiply, how to drive a car, how to eat, our brain takes anything that we repeat. Any thought pattern, emotional pattern, behavioral pattern, results we're used to getting. And it just automates the process from a conscious effort to an unconscious automatic process. And that's called automaticity. It's just the brain's way to say anything that you repeat, I'll automate to conserve energy and make it easy for you so you don't have to think about it. So that's the good news, bad news, if you practice and you repeat disempowering, destructive, maybe even negative thought patterns or emotional patterns or negative disempowering habits, you by default, okay, have automated a disempowering pattern that you become addicted to and self disciplined to continue.

Got it? Yes. So it's a two sides of the coin kind of thing.

Yeah.

Okay.

So now we say okay to the human brain, you know, the subconscious, it doesn't care about whether the pattern you have created or that was created as a result of your parents or your teachers is positive or negative, help you or disempower. It doesn't care. It just operates the software. Okay, that just makes it go. So then the question becomes, can I human, right? Can I become more aware, as you suggested before, of my thought patterns? Can I become more aware of how I feel on an ongoing basis? Can I be more aware of my energy level? Can I be more aware of my emotions, which are different than feelings? Can I be aware of my behaviors and habits that actually are the result or the cause my results? And the answer is, of course I could become more aware. So if we can become more aware, and why would we want to, then in my state of awareness, deliberate awareness, can I start to retrain, reprogram my Subconscious patterns through first conscious observation and awareness. And if we do that without what I call is blame, shame, guilt, justification, you know, without that judgment side of our personality, can I start to make the shifts deliberately so that I, in essence, reprogram my subconscious mind?

Yeah.

And the answer is unequivocally yes.

And does it matter how old we are?

It doesn't matter how old we are because the, the discovery, I think, of the, of the last, you know, decade at least, is called neuroplasticity. What's neuroplasticity? Well, when we're born, we're born with about a hundred billion brain cells. And I just think of them as like 100 billion marbles. And these marbles just connect to each other and make friends. And the networks, okay, that are created, the neural networks that are created based on, you know, that our beliefs, our habits, our perspectives, our paradigm, those get reinforced at around the age of 12, 13. This neuroplasticity switch, the switch that's 100% on when we're born, okay, turns off. And now we deliberately have to turn it on to create those neural patterns. So we're learning language, walking, talking, eating, getting dressed, television, radio, cartoon characters, Avengers. We're learning all these things, giving those things meanings, experiencing life. We now have meanings. Now we have our beliefs, we have our identity. And now we reinforce from 1213 on to 30, 40, 50, 60. And most people don't deliberately go back to that state of hyper learning and change, because change is difficult when you don't have the right process. And the only human that actually likes change is a wet baby. The rest of us resist it because of other neuromechanics. So, you know, when we're understanding every single result, your result in business, the amount of money you make, the amount of money you have, the amount of investments you have, every single result you have is an effect, right? So what we're looking at, when we look at any result is an effect. So the question is, what is it an effect of? And some people would say, well, it's an effect of my behavior. Behavior I take. And the behavior I don't take. I say, okay, great. But 95% of your behavior is automatic based on subconscious programming. What constitutes what you're going to do? So now we get into the domain of four, four key components that we. I always go to. Number one is your beliefs, what you believe is possible for you, what you believe you, you're capable of achieving what you believe you know is possible. Right now, that's going to affect Your behavior.

What you fear is going to affect your behavior. Whether you're fearful of being a failure, whether you're fearful of being embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, judged, unloved, disappointed, that affects behavior because we move away from those. Your self image affects your behavior. Right. So if you have a vision and a goal that you, at a subconscious level, secretly or knowingly, you know, don't feel you deserve it or are worthy of it, you're not going to take the action that is in alignment with that. So beliefs and fears and self image and lack of knowledge or skills creates a doubt scenario in the brain. And our brain is geared wired to avoid any pain or discomfort. So if I don't have the knowledge and skills I have doubt. If I have doubt, that doubt circuit gets activated because that's uncertain. In an uncertain emotional state, I move away from the real or imagined consequence.

Of that anxiety and all these other things start happening.

This happens in, in billionths of a second.

So now if we go back to can I become more aware of my limitations, the real obstacles that are in my way? And if the answer is yes, which I know it is, then can I deliberately plot a path to upgrading my beliefs, to managing and regulating my emotions like an astronaut, a Navy seal, a firefighter has to learn, can I upgrade my self image and identity? Yes. And of course we know we can upgrade our knowledge and skills. So all four of those things are in our control.

But there's one major thing that gets into a lot of people's way.

And.

This is not talked about a lot.

There's actually two things I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you two things. One is.

Many people don't have a reason why they must change.

Until the pain gets so great they have to.

Yeah.

But even with people that have had quadruple heart bypass surgery, when before the surgery they were on death's door, they finally get the surgery, within two years, 96% revert back to all of the behaviors that put him in the position in the first place to require heart bypass surgery. Quadruple. Wow.

Okay.

And so number one is we have to have a reason why we must either achieve the goal or must change. So everything is around, you know, activating different circuits in the brain. And we're talking about the limbic system in the brain. But the other part is this. And this is really, really, really the linchpin to all of it.

Take any goal you want to achieve, financial goal, business goal, we can keep it at that. Or health goal, it doesn't matter. And ask yourself this question.

Am I interested in achieving this goal or am I 100% fully committed to achieving the goal?

Now, if you think for just a moment, I mean, just stop and think.

What are the attributes of I'm interested.

It's, it's more of a, it seems flimsy, it seems a little wishy washy.

I'm interested. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I'm interested in that. And, but when you're interested, fear is bigger than the interest. When you're interested, limiting beliefs get in the way. When you're interested, obstacles hold you back. When you're interested, you allow limitations to control you. When you're interested, you don't upgrade your knowledge and skills like you would if you were committed. Now when you're committed, you upgrade your knowledge and skills, you upgrade your beliefs, you upgrade your habits, you ask anybody and everybody to help you and you fully are committed. And it's the difference between, if your child is in a burning building, if you're a parent that loves that child, you're running in, you're walking across a plank on the hundredth floor of 2 New York, Manhattan, you know, skylight building or skyrise building, you're walking, crawling across it to get your child out of there 100%. If you're interested, it's like, so that's bad.

So, and here's, and I'm going to top that off, that we can, we can dialogue. And here is really the question of all questions, you know, to put a frame around this. If you're committed, and I'm going to take you down a continuum just to make the point, if you're committed to making, let's say, an extra million dollars or your first million, you're committed. Are there people, books, courses, coaches that you could buy or hire to help you?

Yes. If you're committed to having a better relationship with yourself or your spouse or significant other children, are there experts, coaches, YouTube videos, forums, chatgpt, ways to say here's how you can do it? Yes. If you're committed to emotional health and well being, mental health and well being, relationship, career, business, finances, anything that you want to achieve in 2024 or so and 2025, all of the how to already exists.

So that means how to or not knowing how to is not your problem.

You're just not committed with a big enough reason why you must. And so you are interested and you do what's easy and convenient instead of whatever it takes.

Period. End of the story. End of story.

Yeah. That's commitment to Anything. And it's up to us.

Yeah.

And I go back to the patterns because these are these unconscious things that we're doing all the time. All of us have them. Great, good, horrible, whatever. We can label them however we wish. But how would you suggest, what are some strategies that you guide people on, on how to acknowledge the pattern or become aware of these patterns in themselves? Maybe the core ones that you see are pretty common that probably should get broken to elevate themselves to the next level.

Yeah. So first, one of the things that I used to do many years ago and when I work with private clients is one of the things I talk to them about. I say.

Take a sheet of paper or use your iPad or your computer or cell phone and start to observe and write down. What do you do every hour? What do you do every hour? Don't judge it, Just, just write it down from 8 to 8:30, or 6 to 6:30 or 7 to 8 o', clock, 9 o', clock, 12 o', clock, it doesn't matter. What did you do for your health? Wealth, relation, career, business? And we can keep it to, you know, to business if we want to. Like what, what's the behavior for two weeks? Let's look at the behaviors. Part one, part two, What. What's your vision for a year from now? What's your vision for three years now? What's your vision for five years from now? Do you have it like, I have an exceptional life blueprint. I have my vision for every single area of my life. I have my vision board where I have images of things that inspire me, things that I've achieved. But I have future travel, my daily rituals, my courses that I will complete, books I will study, things I'm going to do to contribute to the world, to charity. These are the milestones I've achieved. This is the story of my life.

And you've shown us a book that you made for yourself. That's a personal book to you.

That's my exceptional life group. It's one of the things I teach our students about, I don't know, 70, 65 pages. But what I, what I, what I'm trying to do is deconstruct the behavior so I can see the habits. Habits show up on our calendar, what we do and don't do, right? And so what I put in my calendar and what I follow through on, those are usually typically the same. So then I want to look at, like, what do you believe to be true about yourself? Write down what you believe to be true about yourself. I Want you to write down any limiting belief that you have right now.

And.

Every goal requires a belief, right, in order to achieve that goal. But if there is a limiting belief, you have to start working on releasing and removing those limiting beliefs. So think about this. Imagine if your computer had software on it and one part of the software says, hey, I want you to do this. But another part of the software says, you can't do this because.

You'Re never going to get the this done because you have this opposing software or programming. Well, most people's brains have got these opposing beliefs. I believe I can achieve this, but I also believe that I'm too young or too right. So we have these opposing beliefs. So first I set together a vision for what I want. Then I ask myself if I'm committed to it and why must I achieve it? Then I say, okay, in order for me to achieve it, what would I need to believe about myself and the achievement of this goal? I write those out. Then I ask myself, what would be the strategies that I would have to implement to achieve this goal? And then I'd say, what are the habits I would need to create to implement the strategies that are aligned with this new belief to achieve this goal?

Yeah.

So our brain needs, what do we want there again, there's different parts of our brain. So our brain needs, what do we want? Like, what do you want to achieve? Our brain actually has a GPS system. Okay. That'll help you achieve your goals. Any. And so we need, what do we want to achieve? We need why do we want to achieve it? Like, why must we. Then we need, how, how specifically are you going to achieve that goal? So when we know how, we reduce the, the anxiety, tension and stress. So what, why, when or what, why how then when, when are you going to do this? So now we have some structure and then we want to ask who can help us?

Yes.

So now I've activated five different parts of my brain to be able to give my brain the dopamine that it needs alongside the adrenaline and a little bit of cortisol. So when we talk about these, you know, a lot of times people will talk about flow states. People think flow state is like, that's not a flow state. Flow state is a combination of stress, cortisol, okay. And adrenaline and dopamine, the anticipatory neurochemical for reward. A lot of people think you get the release of the dopamine when you cross the finish line. No, you don't. You don't get the release of dopamine. When you cross the finish line, you get the, really, the biggest release of dopamine is, is the anticipation crossing the finish line. So why do we need to have a vision? Why do we need to have goals? Because our brain is anticipating us getting there.

Yeah, right. So on the journey, Right, it's not.

The journey, but then we have these obstacles that pop up.

Yes.

What if, like on my, on my walls, you saw, I showed you, you know, Einstein's there, but, but up there is Frankenstein's monster.

I was going to ask about him.

Right, so that's Frankenstein's monster. There's another part of our brain that is there. It's the right prefrontal cortex that's always, always on. And this part of our brain's going, what if you fail? And it's projecting the consequences of failure in advance, releasing those neurochemicals of the potential failure as the thought is happening. And that's flowing into your bloodstream. That's what we call a feeling. So your brain's going, what if you fail? What if you're embarrassed because you get up and speak and you say the wrong things? What if you're ashamed? What if you're ridiculed? What if your spouse stops to love you because you failed? What if you disappoint yourself again? Right. So these unconscious processes are working like gas and brakes in the brain to move forward, but not too fast in case you might, you might get hurt. What if you lose money? What if you lose time? What if you lose your job? What if. Negative, I call it. So first and foremost, the thing to realize is that's no different than driving your car. You're on the highway and everything's going fine. If you have one of the newer cars, it has sensors all around it and you might hear beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And you realize that you're veering over to the left lane and there's a car there. So what do you do? You get back over here. Would you ever want those sensors to be turned off? Or your sensor for gas to be turned off? Or your sensor for windshield wiper fluid or your tire pressure? No. It's a beautiful sensor to have because you can use it. Well, what if I told you that your stress circuit is a. Is a sensor, Your fear circuit is a sensor. Your sense of self doubt circuit is just a switch that just went on to warn you.

Right. What shears in my job. Aware.

A notice.

Yeah, notice. Why am I unmotivated today? Why, why am I self sabotaging? What's causing me to procrastinate? Doing the thing that I know I need to do to achieve that vision and goal that I want. See, procrastination is an effect. Self sabotage is an effect. The unmotivated feeling is an effect. Being stuck is an effect.

My job, your job, Any person who wants to become better and evolve is to be aware.

You've got a hundred billion dollar electromagnetic switching station that is giving you six signals, is, is receiving information from, you know, the outside world through your eyes, through your ears, through your tactile senses. Plus some of the, you know, your intuition that knows before you even think you know what's going on based on billions of years of evolution. And what do we do? Let's drink too much alcohol to suppress the stress. Let's take the pills, let's party late at night. Let's, you know, let's, let's suppress. Instead of learning how to express, you know, let's deflect, let's distract, you know, let's do all the things other than feel and understand. First and foremost, the feeling won't Last more than 90 seconds in your blood because the feeling is nothing more than the release of neurochemicals. And what happens if there's neurochemicals are released? It causes like this, you know, stress and anxiety. Most people, like, I don't want to feel it. Like.

Are you talking about cortisol mainly? Pump it through.

Yeah, cortisol, epinephrine. Yeah. And so what do they do? Let me have a cocktail, let me suppress that. Well, what's causing like stress? The word stress, the, the meaning that I teach people around stress is when the current or our projected future demand exceeds our current or future capacity.

Interesting.

When demand exceeds capacity, stress circuit gets activated.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Just it's too much, too much in the cup.

You know, when I'm overwhelmed, right. My conscious brain is trying to process more than seven things. And I don't have a process to organize all the things that I have. And I teach people the GOPA method, which I'll teach right now.

Please.

Gopa, when you have 100 different things to do, first get it out of your head onto your computer, into a sauna board, into a, into a software, onto a piece of paper. It doesn't matter. Get it out of your head and categorize it. So GOPA is generalize, then O is organize into health, wealth, relationships, career, family, children, whatever it is, just categorize them out of your head into categories to generalize. Then Organize into categories. Then in each category, let's say there's 10 in each category and there's 10 categories. The hundred things in category one. Out of all those things, what is the most important that you need to be focused on right now? What's number two? What's number three? Leave the other seven alone for now. Go to the next category. What's number one? What's number two? What's number three? Now we're going to have 10 categories, okay. With three different things. Now I have 30 things. Wow, that's still a lot. Now let's go back again. So we're going to generalize, organize, prioritize. Now I'm going to go to the A, the A of the gopa. Now I'm going to actualize just five things.

So simple.

Now my brain has a process for taking.

The many and reducing it to the critical few. And what if you got really good at the critical few every day?

Consistency.

Consistency. Now would you develop a habit for high performance? High. I call it high impact, high income activities?

Yes. Yes.

Oh, well, I've taught this to, you know, over a hundred thousand of my students and every one of them that uses it is like this is a game changer.

Marketers have never been so spread thin. You know, like with all this stuff happening, technology is going crazy. It's really tough to really focus and get creative and, and create great content or connect with the customers like we used to, or even prospects. So, you know, you're trying to launch a bunch of content campaigns, you're generating leads, you're trying to score the leads, you're nurturing them so much more, but you really don't have enough time to even breathe, let alone do the best marketing out there. But HubSpot is trying to fix that for you. They have a new AI. It's built into the system called Breeze. So it actually combines their marketing hub and the content hub with all these different cool features that help you automate and, you know, remix your content into a whole bunch of different types, score your leads in a better way and actually have a nice look at the analytics and everything that's going on in your business. So I would recommend to stop spreading yourself out so thin and start making some big moves with HubSpot. You can try it out for yourself. Go visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more. I want to pause for a moment and shout out another podcast on the HubSpot Podcast Network, your audio destination for business professionals. This one's called OG Mentors. It's hosted by Julie Mayer and Jimmy Edgerton. And these two, they're a pretty cool duo. Where one is, you know, Jimmy is a lot more on the loose side. I would say that Julie brings it in and keeps us focused on mentoring and movement. And so these folks, they. They focus on mentoring and exploring ways on how to augment and refresh, kind of like the way that mentoring is applied. And they have these principles that they weave into their episodes and, and they, they give a bunch of practical tips and they lace it with a whole bunch of humor as well. It's always cool when there's a cool duo happening there. So if you're in the mentoring space or if you have a, you know, leadership space, relationship guidance and things like that, that's what the podcast is made for. So you'll get a lot for it. It's great for entrepreneurs, marketers, sales professionals. They love the show as well. It's a great one. I've checked it out and I recommend it.

So.

So go listen to OG mentors wherever you get your podcasts. And I'm gonna do a quick shout out one more time for the thing I talked about at the top of the episode, which is the AI version of me and of this podcast and my YouTube videos and all these things. It all lives within this AI platform. I used Delphi AI to create it, and I want you to use mine. It's totally free. Go to hustleandflowchart.com AI Joe that's hustleandflowchart.com AI Joe Test this thing out. It's crazy. You could type with it, talk with it, you can even use video. And you can look up anything from this podcast. You can ask a question about your business life, any scenario. It kind of learns about you with the information you give it. It's rad. You will love it. And also, there's a lot of people who are asking, how do I get one of these? How do I build it out? The cool thing is my team and I have been building a ton of these every single day. I've used the platform Delphi AI for two.

I'm actually one of their advisors because.

I was one of their first users.

And just gave them a ton of feedback. I love it.

But we build these things. So if you want to use it for lead generation, for, you know, you have all this content as an expert, author, coach, type person, we can put that into this digital brain and make it interactive. You could use it for customer service, internal training for your team, for your organization, lots of uses. If you would like one of these, I can pass over an exclusive deal. There's no one else that's, that's offering this out there. I work closely with Delphi as one of their partners, agency partners, to build this out. So hit me up. Type hustleinflowchart.com interest into whatever browser. Again, that's hustleandflowchart.com interest.

And hit me up.

Hit.

Let's build this thing together. All right, back to the episode. And this is. It reminds me of, I think it's the three principles of inner size, if I'm not mistaken. But like tiny habits. BJ Fogg, I've had him on the podcast here a couple of years ago. He's awesome and he talks all about, you know, starting with, well, I guess you can give me the principles. But in short, I know it's, it's start with something that you're already doing and, you know, figure out a way to essentially habit stack that and find consistency through it all. But yeah, let me know these, these principles and how that kind of relates to where we're at.

Yeah, so, so there, there's, there's a couple things to, to remember. Our brain is an energy miser. Right. It wants to. The third priority of the brain is to conserve energy.

Yeah.

Developing a new habit requires energy. So our brain's going, you, you want me to use energy, but I want to, you know, I want to, I want to be a miser of energy in case I need to fight a saber tooth tiger. So the biological reason for it is for conservation of energy. Number one is security and safety for life. Number two is avoidance of pain or discomfort. Change is a little uncomfortable or a lot. Yeah. And then now your brain's trying to conserve energy. So, so when we are habit stacking, if I take something that I'm already doing and I add something to the beginning of it or the end of it just a little bit.

I am doing what I call is neural linking. If I already have a habit that is a constructive, positive, empowering habit, I already have the neural pattern and all of the framework, the internal neurological framework of that habit. So now if I just add something to it a little bit.

Yeah.

Now I'm creating an association. I'm linking the new neurons with all of this highway system that I already have in my brain.

So we're firing together, right? The neurons.

Yeah, the neurons that fire together, wire together. That's called Heb's law or Hebb's rule. So now if I just repeat Something simple every time. I can then add more complexity and intensity afterwards. Yeah, right. So when we're developing a habit, I often say that the habit is more important at first. Okay. Than the complexity or intensity.

Right. Establishing something healthy.

Just establish a healthy, constructive, empowering pattern. And then you can make the pattern stronger, better, more complex. Right. So you don't. Let me show you an example.

Cool. Take us with you.

Well, you don't, you know, you don't start to solve this.

That's the craziest looking Rubik's Cube I've ever seen.

Right. Until you learn two by two simple. I want you to understand two by two, and you understand the thinking. Now you can add three by three, four by four, five by five. I mean, you can start with this if you got help. Trust me, this is 18 hours worth of work.

I was going to ask.

Yeah, but. But even any habit. So if you want to, you know, be better at marketing or be better at sales, being better at leadership or being better at anything, what are some of the simple things you can do just to build a foundation for that habit? And you have BJ Fogg on. You know, he talks about if you want to floss your teeth, okay. You know, take the flosser out, stick it out on the counter, you know, just there. And just agree to floss one tooth, you know, before you brush your teeth.

It's kind of silly, but it's so true. I mean, that's how everything starts.

One everything starts. So. So I call it reduce it down to the ridiculously small. Why? Well, because if it's ridiculously small, I reduce the neural tension in the brain. Yeah. That's going to say it requires too much. Okay. Mental, emotional, physical capital. So your brain's always going, yes or no. Yes or no? Yes or no.

And that's anxiety. Right. Like, that's kind of uncertainty. But that's not what we want.

No. So, you know, do you want to achieve this vision? Yes. I'll give you a different example that everybody's going to get. If I asked everybody who's listening or watching right now, can you jog a marathon right now? Non stop. Like, I'm in really good shape at 62 and I cannot jog a marathon.

It'd be tough, but I'd try to slug it through.

Yeah. But let me ask you a question. If we, yeah, agreed that a year from now, everybody who's listening and watching, we're gonna cross the finish line of a marathon a year from now, and we know that there's Some people that are really good shape right now, some people that are in shitty, awful shape right now. But if we all committed and we had a big enough reason why, we said, Listen, if 100 of us cross that finish line holding hands, there's a $100 million donation that's going to be split amongst us 100 people to our favorite charities. We go, oh, my God, I could do it for this or that charity, or it's going to be some kind of a really big win. And we said, okay, let's create a proper exercise plan for each person. And maybe some of us would have to start walking like a minute today and a minute tomorrow, and some of us could actually run five miles today. Then we say, okay, here is the amount of food you need to eat, and here are the proportions you need. Here's the amount of sleep that you need to regulate, a whole bunch of things. Here's the rest that you need. And we said, we're going to focus on nutrition and health and support and all that stuff.

Would you agree? A year from now, a hundred people or more, if they were committed and they got the support, we could jog. Doesn't matter how fast or slow, we could jog a marathon together.

100%, yes.

And some of us would start with a one minute walk today.

And that's okay.

And that's okay. So what we want to do is start from where we are and make the first steps for the first two, three, four weeks really easy to do. So it's hard for you to say, I don't have time, I don't feel like it. I Woke up. No, one minute. You don't want to do one minute. 30 seconds. You want to do 30 seconds, 15 seconds, it doesn't matter. Any change in the pattern. That is reinforced repetition. Right. Repetition, okay, is what we're looking for. And consistency is what we're looking for. And practice makes permanent patterns. Yes, yes, practice makes permanent patterns. So what we want to do is activate, okay, those neurons around that thought and thing, and we just want to fire them off and then follow through with a little behavior towards what we want a little bit, and then do them tomorrow and the next day, next day. Here's some new research.

It takes approximately on the low end, 66 days to create a neural pattern. Okay? That becomes a habit. Simple, simple habit, easy to create, more complex habit, longer. So 66 to 365 days is how long it takes to create a new pattern.

Now, contrary to most people's beliefs, we don't get Rid of bad, negative, destructive patterns in our brain, but no differently than if you imagine a highway system in a city. And let's say we close off the highway system, all the roads are still there, all the off ramps are still there, but we build somewhere off to the right of it a whole new system that goes all around the city.

Yep.

Right. So now everybody starts going down that pathway and that becomes the norm, that becomes the habitual way of getting to where we want to go. It doesn't mean that the old highway isn't there. We just blocked it off. But as soon as that old highway would be opened up, people would start traveling down that path also. So that's how our brain works. So what we want to do is create and then reinforce the beliefs, the habits, the perspective, the self image, the identity to match the vision and goals we have. And then, just like you, exercise to strengthen your muscles and to strengthen your cardiovascular system. What I've come up with, based on my best selling book, Inner Size, and my app, is a way to Inner Size every day to fire off those neurons, to create them, fire them off and repeat them to reinforce them so they become dominant.

So is there a specific. I would love to.

Because.

Yeah, I want to shout out because you have this brand new app, Inner Size, pretty easy to find on all the app stores. Doesn't matter what phone you have. I've been obsessing over it like I've told you, and it's true, I love it. And it's a lot of what you're saying. It's these repetitions, it's establishing and I don't know if it's fair to say you're almost blocking out the noise of these other things that might be bouncing around our head. But you know, we're, we're working this muscle just like exercise would be. We're working a good muscle in patterns that work together. Can you give me a technique or maybe an example of in this. Or maybe one that comes to mind when we're talking about establishing new patterns or habits. Kind of like an example how you do that in Inner Size.

So everybody's watching or listening. Pay close attention. And if you're driving, just look ahead. If you're, if you're able to close your eyes, then close your eyes and just pay attention to my voice. And the first thing that I want you to do is to take three slow, slow, slow, deep breaths in through your nose.

And then you can hold it at the top when your lungs are full for one or two or three Seconds, whatever is comfortable for you. And then as you breathe it out through your mouth, pretend you're breathing out through a straw. So pucker your lips a little.

And just release all the air flow. And on the next one, I want you to just repeat after me. And all we're going to say is, I breathe in self confidence and certainty. Breathe in.

I release any doubt or worry or stress right now.

Calm, calm, calm. Again, I breathe in self confidence, calmness and certainty. Breathe in and hold it. Feel the confidence and certainty within you right now. And I release any doubt, doubt, fear, worry or anxiety right now.

And as you continue to stay in this calm state for just a moment, I want you to just imagine one goal. Could be a business goal, a financial goal. It doesn't matter if it's to make more or get out of debt, a financial goal or a business goal, even a health goal, more energy, better physique, releasing weight, it doesn't matter. I want you to imagine the goal and I want you to see yourself already having achieved that goal. Just imagine like a Hollywood actor or actress would imagine a role. I want you to imagine in your mind's eye and just feel that you're at your ideal weight. If that's what you want. I want you to feel the energy around that. I want you to see yourself looking at yourself in the mirror and feeling proud of yourself. If it's a business goal, okay, Whether it's to level up your business systems and processes or to reach a certain income level, or to build up your. Just imagine as if it already happened and you were sitting there feeling so proud and people were sharing with you how proud they are of you and like, wow, how did you turn do that. Feel the success in advance for any goal that you want right now, take five seconds. You can smile as you do this to release some of the positive neurochemicals as well. You can pump your fist if you'd like. And as you do this, I want you to think of your favorite color.

If you have a favorite number, think of your favorite favorite number. And if there's a. An animal, a power animal for you or an animal that is representing calmness for you, whatever that animal is, just see it in your mind's eye right now. A color, a scent that you may love, an animal that gives you power or calms you down, either one is fine. And feel how proud you are of achieving that goal right now.

And as I count up from one to three, you're going to feel more and more energized to achieve that goal than you have in a long time. One, you've developed the beliefs required to achieve those goals. Two, you feel confident and certain in your ability to let go of limitations and have the success and confidence that you want. And three, open your eyes and feel proud that you just did an inner size Using language patterns, activating emotional centers in your brain, activating the occipital lobe in your brain, Releasing a little bit of cortisol just for a little bit of stress, releasing a little bit of dopamine for the success. And you just fired off neurons in your brain to help you see and feel the success that you want in any area of your life in advance. Well, imagine doing that one time feels good for the moment. Like, oh, wow, that feels good. But what if you did that for 5 or 10 or 15 minutes every day? And what if those positive language patterns and positive emotional patterns and positive visualization patterns actually activated the motivational center in your brain, which is directly tied to the behavioral cortex or center in your brain that cause you to take the action required for the fulfillment of the goal? You just visualize. Visualization is a simulation.

Practice, makes permanent patterns, permanent patterns operate automatically.

That's inner size. So what I've been doing for 40 years is inner sizing. I was always into, like, the Olympics, and the athletes were visualizing, so I visualized I was, you know, I played basketball and swam and. And. And the athletes, the really good ones, were like, sitting there. What are you doing? I'm visualizing winning the race. How do you do it? I started to visualize and I started to write down stuff, and I started to prime my brain every day. And I. And I would listen to affirmations in. In first person and third person. And then I learned about meditation and mindfulness and. And mental contrasting and. And a variety of different techniques. And I achieved a little bit of success in every area of my life. And people say, what are you doing? I said, well, this is what I'm doing. And so that's why, you know, I built some companies, and I look to. To have success in every area of my life, not just financial business. I want to be spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, financially healthy. I want to contribute, I want to have fun. I want to have great experiences. I want to share and give. I want to receive and have an extraordinary life. And. But these are some of the mental and emotional practices that I developed. And I just developed a passion for understanding what was happening in my brain when I was reading or writing or listening to an affirmation Affirming something that wasn't true into the garden of my mind what was happening. Oh, wow. I want more of that.

Yeah, why wouldn't you? I feel great right now. And I'm sure if you followed along, I hope you do as well. And John, that's such a freaking treasure, man. I mean, like, you know, live. Done here. It's.

It was.

Almost everyone might as well do it.

Versus talk about it.

Yeah.

If you didn't do it, pause, rewind, do it again.

Yeah. And. And I could see the power in journaling. I have a journal right in front of me. But right after these things, I never thought about it. But after we're establishing these patterns, you know, all the good. All the good chemicals, everything feels great. Right down.

Here's something to really, like, think about. I just. I just taught a program. We had 42,000 people register for it, so I just taught it last weekend. And the title of it was rewire your brain for unstoppable success. And I opened up, you know, with the question, according to the latest neuroscience research, is it possible to rewire your brain?

Yes. Well, what does that actually even mean?

Right.

Because when we were born, we had these 100 billion cells, but there really wasn't a lot of wiring. There was no beliefs in our brain that we were born with. There weren't any fears that we were aware of. Right. There wasn't. There wasn't any self image. There wasn't any knowledge or skills. We couldn't even see when we were born. And we learned to see. When light travels into our eyes and we hear these sounds, we have these smells, and our. And our parent, you know, says, you know, you know, spoon, you know, ball, whatever the case is, we start to create these. Associated with those associations are the neural patterns.

But we were not the ones who created most of our neural patterns. What should I believe about myself?

You know, I went to school. I moved from the Middle east to Montreal when I was a kid, and I spoke Hebrew when I was a kid. But then I had to learn French and English and fell two years behind. And I felt I was dumb until I was in my early 20s. I felt that I was stupid because I. I failed English and failed Math in grade seven, and then I left high school in grade 11 because I just couldn't take it anymore. And I was considered a dumb jock.

Oh, okay. Well, if I didn't do well in school, that must mean I'm not smart.

That's some patterns to work through, huh?

Well, this is where I started this journey was to reprogram my own self image and beliefs around that. And this was literally. Joe, 40.

Years ago, 42 years ago.

Was there a time or thing that really switched in? Was the breaking point where you like that got you so immersed into discovering these new things or at least breaking these habits or patterns?

Well, two, two major traumas, events when I was in my, like 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, I was involved with a group of kids that did drugs, sold drugs, did breaking and entries. And I was like one step away from jail or the morgue. And there was an incident that happened where we almost got caught and we would have all gone to jail. And I was scared shitless because I came from a, you know, nice family, you know, and that would have been devastating for my, for my parents, but it would also change the trajectory of my life. So I. I had one mentor who showed me the power within me. And he helped me start on this path to creating my vision, my goals, and to start training my brain. That was part one. And I started to achieve some financial success. Success. So I didn't have to do any of the other stuff I was doing before that was like, you know, 19 years young. Part, part two was when I was 22. I ended up with severe ulcers in my colon called ulcerative colitis. And it swells up your cold so nothing can really pass through. And you don't have any bowel control. You just ship wherever you have to ship. I'm gonna go. Hold on a second. Oh, hold on a second. I gotta go to the bathroom. I'd shit in my car, I'd shit in the restaurant. I'd shit in places. And at times that you would have enough embarrassment and shame to last a lifetime. And I heard this thing called psychoneuroimmunology. It's a mind body connection. So I actually created something. You're gonna love this because I've kept it for. For 40 years.

Wow.

This is the affirmation that I used 40 years ago. I've given it to tens of thousands of people. Says my body and all its organs were created by the infinite intelligence in my subconscious mind. Its wisdom, it knows how to heal me. Its wisdom created all my organs, tissues, muscles and bones. This infinite healing presence within me is making me whole and perfect now. I give thanks for the healing that is taking place now. I am now perfectly healthy. I repeated that 50 times a day. I recorded it on my cassette tape and listened to it all day long. I exercised to reduce stress. I started to Eat better. Yes, I did all those things, too. I visualized my colon healing five times a day for five minutes. Now, prior to this, for a year and a half, I was on 25 pills a day to reduce the, the, the, the. The inflammation, the salaza pyrin. I was doing an enema, a cortisone enema in the morning, cortisone enema at night. And once a month, I was going to the hospital to do a sigmoidoscopy, where they stuck a probe in my rectum to see what's going on. And at that point, the doctor said, if this doesn't get better, we have to remove part of your colon. I started this new inner size protocol five weeks later, threw away all my pills, didn't see the doctor again except for one last appointment. And I was healed and have been healed ever since.

Wow, what a story.

That was like, even more evidence of the power within me and. And I've never looked back.

Why would you. Why would you.

I had enough evidence for myself in financial and in health.

You may know this, at a time in my life, I had a massive business partnership breakup. I was drinking way too much alcohol, and I stopped drinking alcohol 14 years ago. I was a sugar addict for most of my life. Stopped having, you know, refined sugar 99 of the time. I was 243 pounds 12 years ago. Were you 30% body fat and release the weight. And I've been in the best shape of my life at 62. Now, I had a six pack at 60. I'm gonna have an eight pack at 62.

I was gonna say you're always. You're always looking damn fit, man.

All because I start with the vision, the goals, the why. Yeah, the beliefs, the strategies, and then I develop the habits, the tiny habits first, and then I build upon those. So there's a. There's a process to all this where you're combining, of course, the inner game, which is really the power center, with the behavior, the outer game stuff. And this is part of what I call is how you create predictable transformations and results. Like, I don't want to have, you know, you know, possibility. I want to. I want to create predictability, certainty.

It starts within. Within everything, the whole system. And, man, John, I want to keep going, but.

This is incredible, and this just speaks to the power of what you're doing. And thank you for sharing this with not only here, my audience, but everyone, the hundreds of thousands of folks, because I fully believe right now we're living in a time of I don't know. You call it an awakening. It's a freak out moment. For some people, it's a lot of uncertainty, but I think it's awareness is becoming acutely aware of just, just the reality of what we're all doing, whatever scenario. I feel like the tools to manage stress and anxiety are more important than ever right now.

Absolutely, yeah. Stress does not happen outside of you. Right. It's a, it's a reaction to how you're processing, you know, what's happening outside of you or even inside of you. Right. So again, stress is a circuit, you know, and it activates what we call is the sympathetic nervous system. Our nervous system is divided into, you know, the sympathetic, the fight, flight, freeze process or reaction or the calm to respond when we're in our sympathetic nervous system activation. Then we're operating with Frankie's monster going wild when we're in the calm to respond. Einstein is running the show. The executive director, the CEO of your brain and your life, that's the one that can make the better decisions. So if that is a skill you can learn, then my invitation to everybody is when would now be a good time to start learning it?

I love that. When would now be a good time? Start it, y'. All Start with that meditation or that inner size that John shared with us here and then go get that app. So go find it in the stores and the app stores. Because genuinely, this thing is, it's so simple. Set the, set the, the reminder every day, you know, and for five minutes.

Whatever, I have my inner size app, you know, set at, you know, seven o' clock every day. You know, this thing just hops on. Boom, right there. Inner size comes on and I'm interested. Listen, I've been doing it for 42 years. I just created for the app, I created 525 inner sizes for health, wealth relations, career, business, sales, leadership. And we're creating thousands more. And right now we've got our best introductory price and we've got thousands of people using it already and loving it.

So I know you have a lot more. Yeah, you're very welcome and thank you. And we're going to do this again because I'm nerd now. I love, I love all this stuff. So appreciate you and I'll see you very soon.

Thanks, everyone. Bye, Joe. Bye.