John Assaraf explains why people don't act on their goals: unconscious fear triggers the amygdala, which blocks the motor cortex and makes the brain fixate on worst-case scenarios. He walks through four steps to retrain your brain, starting with recognizing the fear and reframing it as a possibility, not a certainty.
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New York Times best selling author of Having it all in the Answer. And a couple days ago, I was having a conversation with one of our clients and I was asking her, how come you're not implementing the content and the materials and the strategies and tactics that we've laid out for you? And she looked at me while we were on Skype and she says, I really don't know. It's sitting right there in front of me. I know what I should do. I. I know that I've put on my calendar to do it, and I don't know why I'm not doing it. And I said to her, I said, what I'd like you to do is take some time just to stop and think about what's really preventing you from taking action towards your goals, that you already have the blueprint for achieving them. And let me share something with you. I've got my little laptop over here and I just got this email probably about 10 minutes ago. And she said to me, the thing that's holding me back is fear of making the same mistakes and losing everything. Says, we're scared of leaving my husband's job and ending up having to start from scratch since we're 51 and 58 years old, while we have mortgages on both of our home and a little bit of business debt. I'm scared of losing the houses, and I've been wanting to keep them, and that's prevented me from really going full out just in case I fail. Fear of losing what we have, fear of losing my husband's income and fear of having to start all over again is causing a neurological firing in the brain that's shutting down. What us neuroscientists realize and know is the motor cortex of the brain. Simply put, whenever you have a fear, whether you know it or you don't, it sends a signal from a place in the brain called the amygdala to the motor cortex of the brain, which is like sending a signal to your engine when you put your foot on the brake to go forward. But it says, no, I don't want to, because I'm afraid of hitting another car. And so what she's experiencing, what her husband is experiencing, is a classic example of, of having goals, having dreams, and knowing what to do. But fear that she wasn't even aware, up until I asked her this question, was stopping her from taking action. And the more important part of this is that once the motor cortex in the brain, the action center of the brain, starts to have fear, a signal is sent to the right prefrontal cortex of the brain, and you start to take things that have happened negatively from the past, bring it into the future, and then project that possible negative consequence of losing your house, losing your money, starting over. And as soon as you start to have that as a possibility in the brain, you create the emotions that goes with those thoughts and feelings, and then you feel more of those negative possibilities. And so why am I sharing this with you? I'm sharing this with you because until you learn how to master your mindset by recognizing what's holding you back, the real reasons that you're not taking the actions that you need to take, and learn how to reframe them in the right part of your brain so you can override the messaging signal from the amygdala, the fear center, emotional center of the brain, to the part of the brain that's responsible for taking action. You're never going to achieve your goals. So whether you have doubts or fears or anxieties, fear of success, fear of failure, fear of losing your job, fear of losing your home, fear of losing your money, you have to understand that just like a car has a light that pops up on the dashboard when something's wrong in the engine, you have an emotion that is your signal to let you know whether you're feeling good or not, whether you're comfortable or not, whether you have certainty or not, whether you have confidence or not. And if you're lacking the confidence and the certainty, it's going to cause doubt. If you're going to have doubt, it may cause anxiety. And as soon as that sets into the brain in a nanosecond, your ability to take action and is like having one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. There's going to be a lot of movement going on the tires, but you're really not going to get anywhere. So the first thing I want you to do is write down what's really holding you back. Why aren't you really get clear, get deep. Why aren't you really taking action towards any of your goals? Health goals, financial goals, business goals, whatever goals you have, write that down and ask yourself, is this real, Is this imagined? Is it a probability, or is it a possibility? What you'll find, for the most part, is the negative consequence is a possibility. And as soon as you buy into that possibility, you're going to do everything possible to run away, to fight, freeze, or fight that feeling. But when you learn how to switch your brain from recognizing what's holding you back to reframing the possibility, from the probability to just a normal possibility. You start to activate different parts of your brain that start showing you the solutions to how to overcome the fear, how to overcome the risk, how to overcome the, the possible negative consequence. And then what happens is the amygdala, the part of your brain that's responsible to protect you and keep you safe. The firing threshold of that signal gets lowered. The message to the motor cortex doesn't get sent, so you start taking action. And third, what is happening is that your left prefrontal cortex, the CEO, the genius part of your brain, starts to think about ways that you can actually take action and do it faster and easier and better. It starts to change what you see. It starts to change your vibration. And now you start to have a lot more control over not just having goals and having strategies and plans, but getting yourself to take action. So first, recognize what they are. Second, learn how to reframe them in your brain. Third, release them as just possibilities, not probabilities. And fourth, as you keep doing this over and over and again, you'll start to retrain your brain and learn the beginning parts of mastering your mindset and your emotions. And that will help you start to achieve your goals. Instead of being a goal setter, you will become wealthy in every area of your life and you'll become a goal achiever.
