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 and 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.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and, and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy.

2024 is here. It's wild. And now's the time to hit the road running with your business. So hopefully 2023 closed out great. You closed a lot of killer deals. Well, let's, let's start off here. Start fresh with the new HubSpot Sales Hub. It's going to be the platform and easy to use. One stop platform that basically supercharges your whole sales process. So all the way from finding, tracking and closing deals all in one spot. So the sales hub basically unifies your data, your tools, your team all into one spot. Powered by AI, they have a thing called chat spot that helps talk with your CRM. It streamlines all the admin work, it breaks down your data into a separate bench. It's the place you gotta be. So now's the time to make the switch to the HubSpot sales hub. Go to HubSpot.com sales. 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. 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, you know, now the mastermind. We see each other pretty often. So I. I've been so. I've been loving everything you've been putting out lately.

Thank you.

Gotta 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, has so many principles.

Number 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 years.

Of 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 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 billion brain, and none of us got a user's manual when we were growing up.

That's the truth. Yeah. 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, you know, lost my dad, had a baby. Covet. 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 just me saying, 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 gonna 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 like that subconscious and the conscious side. So maybe that's a good place to start. And then we'll kind of tack it down. Yeah.

So, I mean, everybody's heard you have a 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, 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, 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 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 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, and 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 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, 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 of 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 12, 13 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 belief, 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 them 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, 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, you ask anybody and everybody to help you. And you, 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 in 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 then I'm going to top that off and then we can we can dialogue. And here is really the, 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 your self or your spouse or significant other children. Are there experts, coaches, YouTube videos, forums, chat, GPT 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 the 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 like 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, 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, to do many years ago and when I work with private clients is one of the things I, I, I talk to them.

Take a sheet of paper or use or 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's the behavior for two weeks? Look at the behaviors. Part one, part two.

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 and things 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 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, 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, you know, have got these opposing beliefs. You know, 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 asked 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. 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 talk 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. The biggest release of dopamine 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.

On the journey. Right.

It's not the destination, 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 up there is Frankenstein's.

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 pot 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 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 the 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 self doubt circuit is just a switch that just went on to warn you.

Right? What? Shares 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, the. The unmotivated feeling is an effect. Being stuck is an effect. Yeah, 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 signals, is, is receiving information from, you know, the outside world through your eyes, through yours, 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 that causes like this, you know, stress and anxiety mostly. Like I don't want to feel it. Like.

Are you talking about cortisol? Mainly? Yeah. Pump it through. Yeah.

Corn solid. And effort.

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. Gopa, when you have a hundred different things to do, first get it out of your head onto your computer, into the sauna board, into a, into a software, onto a piece of paper. It doesn't matter. Get out of your head and categorize it. So gopas generalize then O is organize into health, wealth, relationships, career, family, children, whatever it is, just categorize them out of your head into categories. So 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, the the the many and reducing it to the critical few. And what if you got really good at the critical few every day?

Consistency.

Now would you develop a habit or 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 game changer.

Thank you so much for kicking off the new year 2024. Listening to this podcast, Hustle and Flowchart means a ton to me and I have a lot in store for you. As you probably know, I'm one of the newest podcast of the HubSpot Podcast Network. It's the audio destination for business professionals where you can find content, where you're listening, learning and growing with the best. I have a bunch planned this year for you. A lot of awesome guests. Actually have a few guests from the network coming out very soon. One is one of my favorite podcasts lately. It's called the Nudge. That's with Phil Agnew. And I have another one coming out with inclusion and marketing host Sonia Thompson, and then also another one with the host of Marketing made simple, Dr. J.J. peterson. So these are all great episodes coming up. You're gonna catch a lot of it here on Hustle and Flowchart. Make sure you are listening to this show and more like mine over at the HubSpot Podcast Network. You can go find them@HubSpot.com podcastnetwork are you tired of the hassle of building online sales funnels? You know, I get it. And you started your business for freedom and not to be chained to your laptop all day long. And thankfully there is an all in one platform that makes this process super easy so you can start attracting customers online. It's a tool called Kartra and it has every tool you need to grow. So every Kartra account comes stocked with a bunch of done for you campaigns that are designed, connected and written for you. All you got to do is customize them to your liking and you can launch a fully built sales funnel in minutes. So make marketing easy on yourself. Visit www.hustleandflowchart.com Kartra and snag a free 30 day trial of Kartra. And again, that's hustleandflowchart.com K A R T R A. 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, 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 Hebb'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.

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, it's simple. But once you 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 had 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 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. 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 practice 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 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 a brand new app, innersize, 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 is 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 airflow. 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, 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, or even a health goal. You know, 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 job, 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 do that?

Feeling 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 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.

Go.

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 pressure. 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. It's 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 by the fulfillment of the goal? You just visualize. Visualization is a simulation.

Yes.

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 visualize those. You know, I played basketball and swam, 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 start to prime my brain every day. And I would listen to affirmations 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 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 have 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, and 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, 40 years ago, 42 years.

Ago, was there a time or thing that, that really switched in and like, 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 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 colon so nothing can really pass through. And you don't have any bowel control. You just ship wherever you have to ship. I'm going to go. Hold on a second. Oh, oh. Hold on a second. To 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 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 listen 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 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. 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, you know, refined sugar. 99 of the time I was 243 pounds. 12 years ago, were you 30% body fat and released 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 starts within. Within everything, the whole system. And, man, John, I want to keep going, but.

This is. 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 what you call it. An awakening. It's a freakout moment. For some people, it's a lot of uncertainty, but I think it's awareness is becoming acutely aware of 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, 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, and 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. That inner size that John shared with us here. And then go get that app. So go find it in the, in the stores, in the app stores. Because genuinely, this thing is. It's so simple. Set the, set the, the reminder every day, you know, you know, and, 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.

All right, all right, that's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living a world work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But, you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is, is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.