John Assaraf explains how your brain's automatic protective responses trigger self-sabotage and procrastination. He teaches two practices to interrupt the pattern: take six slow breaths to calm your nervous system, then use AYA (Awareness, Intention, Action) to write down what's blocking you and reset.
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When we're feeling stressed, uncertain, doubtful, we're procrastinating, we're self sabotaging, it's time to stop, breathe, take six, calm the circuits, then take a sheet of paper and do the ayah. Inner size aya is awareness, intention, action.
Einstein brain says, I want to share. I've got so many life experiences. I really care about people. I can make a difference in their lives. I can learn, I can network, I can give. And maybe I can make another business out of this, which I really would love to do. It's like, yeah, that would be awesome. And I talked to friends about it and they're like high fiving me and go, michael, you should do this. You're so much help. You're such a great guy.
Anybody know what I'm talking about? Right?
So whatever it is you want to do, but then that, by the way, left prefrontal cortex, right? Tied to imagination, deductive reasoning, desires, wants, needs, and leading the orchestra. But then right prefrontal cortex, as soon as you do that, there's another part of your brain that right prefrontal cortex connected to the implicit memory center and the hippocampus. And that part of your brain is working on what you have been habitually used to doing and expecting and feeling. But it's also trying to keep you safe. So if there's any possibility that you might be embarrassed with what you say.
And people are going to go to.
You, what the hell you doing, Mike? You look so stupid on that camera. Like you fumbled and you were drooling and your left eye looked a little bit off and you were like leaning this way. You're looking like you shouldn't be on camera.
Our brain is doing that automatically as.
A protective mechanism, right?
And so what we have to understand is, number one, there's nothing wrong with that trigger being said or being had. There's nothing wrong with the trigger lighting up. Now the question is, which part of you will win? The part of you that wants to share, grow, learn, do, be, become more, or the part of you that is comfortable in your current zone of comfort, right? So our brains are going to go into our memory system, memory bank in order to pull up any information in there, real or imagined, one that we've experienced or one that we have seen. And it's going to percolate up that warning signal in the form of negative self talk, in the form of a disempowering feeling, because it's going to release that cortisol or epinephrine or norepinephrine. As a warning signal that there might be danger here. Okay, so the mechanics of what's happening is working beautifully for all of us. The system is working beautifully. It's calibrated perfectly. Now the challenge is that as humans, we do more to avoid pain than we do to gain pleasure. Let me repeat, we do more to avoid pain than we do to gain pleasure. Now, in our brain, we're processing billions of bits of information per second. And so it's making these automatic decisions up to half a second before you're even aware of. If there's a remote chance, real or imagined, that you might fall flat on your face, you might be embarrassed, you might be ridiculed, you might be taken to task, then your brain is automatically going to put on the brakes. Does that make sense, mechanically everybody, of what's happening, what holds most people back. So first, understand the mechanics. Kind of like when you drive a car, you need to understand, put it into drive, put it into, put into reverse, put into park, put your foot on the gas, put your foot on the brake. If you hear beep, beep, beep, beep, maybe there's something behind you you should be aware of. These are just some of the signals you have to get good at recognizing. There's a couple things I want you to do. Number one, thank your brain for being so perfect. Thank your brain for. Thank you for protecting me. Right. Many of you know there's two inner size that I consistently teach. There's many, many more. But the foundational ones, right, is take six, calm the circuits first. Then aya, take six deep breaths in as slow as you can through your nose, out as slowly as you can through your mouth as if you're breathing out through a straw. That's deactivate Frankenstein brain, otherwise known as part of your sympathetic nervous system, the fight flight or freeze reaction. Fight flight, freeze is an automatic reaction that has been evolving for millions of years, right? But so is the calm to response system. Fight, flight, freeze. Reactive. Calm to respond is a responsive system. Most people trust that part of their brain more than they do this part of their brain, because they've just gotten used to being in a state of fear and anxiety and stress all the time. So we have to deliberately override that. So when we're feeling stressed, uncertain, doubtful, we're procrastinating, we're self sabotaging, it's time to stop, breathe, take six, calm the circuits, then take a sheet of paper and do the ayah. Inner size ayah is awareness, intention, action, awareness of what? Well, I want to be aware of. What have I been thinking the last hour or day? What have I been feeling? What have I been doing? What have I been experiencing? Now we write this down to get it out of our head, just to observe it. Wow. I'm thinking negative thoughts. I'm thinking about being embarrassed. I'm thinking about feeling ashamed. I'm thinking, what if they laugh at me? I'm thinking I might mess up. Oh, wow, it's great. Get it out of your head.
Put on a piece of paper. Right?
So the awareness of thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations, behaviors is what gives us observation. To then set an intention. Ayah is awareness, intention, action. Then I say, well, what's my intention? My intention is to actually do this. I really, really want to do this. I'm going to go back to this part of my brain now. I'm going to be aware of both. Going to use this part of my brain. Hey, this is John. And if you like that video, watch the next video because it is packed with things that you can do right now to achieve success way faster than ever before.
