TRAIN YOUR BRAIN To Achieve Anything You Want TODAY! | John Assaraf

What is a belief from a neuroscience perspective? It's nothing more than a group of brain cells that created connections that got reinforced.

Look, I want to jump right in. Your thought leadership on the brain is simply incredible. And you know, one of the ways in which I want to pivot it first off the bat, if it's cool with you, is, is to better understand how understanding your brain can actually help someone else really understand their ultimate success or even get to that ultimate next level.

Sure. I mean, it's a loaded question right off that, which is great. And so fundamentally, if we just think through this for just a moment, we have this brain. I always have one on my desk.

Right.

Just to remind me. We have this organism that's been evolving for, you know, millions of years and it's consistently, you know, learning and updating its networks and its circuitry and its understanding, but we really don't have a user's manual for our day to day lives. And like, what really causes us to do what we do? What causes us to not do the things we know we should do? What caused us to believe certain things that we later find out are not true? Or how do we develop habits? And some are constructive and some are destructive and it's hard to change them. I've been fascinated by this biocomputer and this organism that's in my opinion worth a hundred billion or a trillion dollars. And we all own it, there's no mortgage on it, and yet we don't have the user's manual for it. So for the last 40 years, I have been an explorer, a psychonaut, you know, in, in some regards of understanding a little bit more about my own brain, the brain of other human beings. Because every brain works the same.

Yeah.

And so the fundamental aspects of every human brain is that it operates the same way. And I just want to be a better driver, a better pilot.

Yeah, I know. It's funny, when I was talking to some friends of mine recently about kind of my own journey, and so much of where I've been able to get through in my own life has come down to the way in which I think. How do thoughts ultimately shape or change forces of habits, whether they're good for you or bad for you? What are you seeing in your research?

Great. Well, the first thing I'll share with you is I just noticed two different words that you used. You know, the way I think versus thoughts. So thinking would mean I just noticed that I have some thoughts or that I had some thoughts. I wonder why I had this thought of Blank, blank, blank, which caused me to feel a certain way, which caused me to procrastinate. I wonder why that's happened. Let me actually go deeper into this to understand that that's thinking. Thoughts are just random, percolating ideas that are percolating from our subconscious memory bank. And we have 35 to 50,000 of those. I don't remember who said this, Stephen, but one of the great philosophers many years ago said if most people said what they were thinking, they would be speechless.

Yeah, that's true. Right.

So. So when we contemplate, when we reflect, when we are not afraid of going deeper than the surface.

And we're able to seek to understand the nature of thoughts, beliefs, perspectives, paradigms, habits, behaviors, results, and we come at it from an inquisitive perspective. That's thinking.

Yeah, right.

And so I'm fascinated with.

This organism which really is, you know, creating our entire experience. You know, as I am speaking right now, right, this. This energetic being that I'm. One trillion cells that are vibrating packets of energy called quanta is sending a light beam of me through this camera, across the Internet to your camera, so that the light from your camera is coming in through your eyes, creating cells of recognition in the back of your head through electrical and chemical activities. And we're communicating through this language, you know, that we learned when we were children called English.

Holy shit. That's unbelievable that you, you know, you're sitting in North Carolina somewhere, I'm in San Diego, and you are actually beaming inside the back of my head, in my skull, in this dark little chamber as a function of electrical activity, creating this image of you now. Holy shit. That's.

Being. That.

That's. Without thinking about it. That's. That's the magic of what's happening that we don't give a lot of thought to. So I'm just fascinated with.

What else is it that our brain can do that if we just learned how to use it better, we can achieve, whether it's financial or health or relationship success, faster and easier than ever before.

Yeah, I mean, you do a lot of fantastic work in neurogyms. How are, like, what are. You know, one of the things I've heard you say before is being, like, super focused on why does it work and how does it work? Are those. Are those, you know, two successful techniques and trying to better understand how you're. How you're thinking in general. Like, if you're, you know, if I think about the person I used to be. Right, so the homeless high school dropout all that garbage that I went through early on in my life, if I'm stuck in that mindset, how do I actually shape that tactically in the theology of how does it work tactically to open myself up to new opportunities, per se?

Sure. So you wouldn't be who you are without that chapter in your life, for sure. So you can look at it and go, this is a negative part of. Of my past and say, oh, my God. Because of that, look at what I became and reframe it so that it is what lifted you up.

So we have this ability to take any past experience and have it put us down because of the meaning we give it. Or we can say, let me tell you about how how powerful being homeless was and leaving high school at grade 11 and what that caused me to realize and become. Am I ever thankful for being homeless? Because this is what I saw, this is what I experienced, this is what I learned, and this is what I decided to do as a result of that. Oh, my God, like, wow, it is kind of like, I want to be homeless.

So we have this innate ability, and this is what I call is the razor's edge. We can take a knife and kill somebody, or we can take a knife and slice some tomatoes and enjoy a great lunch. We can take microwave and cook our pasta, or we could take a microwave and cook a human. So nuclear.

Abilities. We can nuke an entire city or country, you know, or we can create nuclear energy, clean energy. So everything in, you know, in our lives just about has both this, you know, potentially constructive or destructive, empowering or disempowering, positive or negative, because of the law of duality. And our brain also has the ability to look at something and find what's wrong with it and look at something and find what's right with it. And so when we start to say, my brain has this ability, and since I'm not my brain, I have a brain. Since I'm not my thoughts, I have thoughts. Since I'm not my feelings or my emotions, I'm not even my behaviors. Is it possible for me to use higher cortical functioning and use. Use my brain better to empower me, to make things easier to not be in a constant state of reactiveness, to deliberately focus my attention and awareness on how I can versus why I can't? And the answer is, yeah, that's a skill that you can learn. That I can learn, that you learned through some of the traumas that you may have had, that I learned through some of mine, that every human being Learns. But what is it that separates those who actually learn and, and take the things that happen to them and switch it to something that happened for them?

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe it's a technique or two or three that we can learn.

Yeah, yeah.

The answer is it's a technique or two or three that we can learn. And I call, you know those mental and emotional techniques Inner sizes.

I love it.

It's based on my newest best selling book, the New Science to unlock your brain's hidden power. So we exercise to strengthen our muscles and to strengthen our organs and tissues and ligaments. Well, what if we looked at our brain and said, okay, my brain has these, let's say, neuro muscles. Let's say self esteem was a neuromuscle I could develop. Let's say self confidence was a neuro muscle I could develop. Let's say focus and awareness was a neuromuscle I could develop. Let's say my beliefs are neuromuscles I can develop. I can get rid of the disempowering weak ones and create deliberately empowering powerful ones. And what if we said that our habits are a combination of these neuro muscles that like to work automatically together? And what if I can let go of the weak ones and create some more powerful ones? Is that within our realm? Yes. That is what I call deliberate evolution of oneself. And in order to do that, maybe I need to upgrade my understanding of one of the greatest tools ever created by our creator. Whatever you believe to be true about that, that I just need to be.

A better driver of, I love it. I love it. And I love the inner sizing. I love that a lot. You know, it's funny, the reason I wanted to ask you that question is because I have some selfish reasons. I've worked with a handful of folks who have convinced themselves that they're untrainable. In other words, they have zero control over their compulsions or forces of habits, their beliefs, their shaping. And I found that not to be true. And I'm glad you took the time to break that down because I want every audience member to see and listen and understand that inevitably your decision of how you use your brain is ultimately going to determine kind of your ultimate outcome.

Right.

I want to pivot just a little bit, if I can, from kind of the mind to the body a little bit if I can.

I just stop you for just a second?

Absolutely.

What you just said is really, really important. And you have people, there are people who believe that they can't. Yeah, right. So the very nature of Beliefs like what is a belief in the brain? If I was a neuroanatomist and I've actually worked with neuroanatoms to see thin slices of a human brain, like micro millimeters, what is a belief? From a neuroscience perspective, it's nothing more than a group of brain cells that created connections that got reinforced. So imagine marbles making connections. Every brain cell that we have in our brain has approx. 10,000 connections approximately. So 100 billion brain cells times 10,000 connections, that's a lot of connections. Now connections that got reinforced through childhood, the imprinting years, the modeling years, the experiential years, the experiences that we had, the meanings that we gave things, the references that we have, formulate our beliefs. Now how do you get somebody to join a cult?

Right. They find in most cases somebody that may be vulnerable, open minded, that then starts to hear and experience and believe something that somebody else is filling their heads with and creating the experience around that belief.

Yeah.

So if a belief is nothing more than a feeling of certainty with references, is it possible to show somebody some other references in a way that creates receptivity to counter what it is that they believe, so that the window of possibility for something else may exist? And the answer is yes. And so, but when somebody is at the level of conviction, they will kill another human being at the level of conviction when somebody will do things that seem unfathomable to most of us, the level of conviction and belief is so strong that the behavior must follow. So when people have a belief, a belief is nothing more than a feeling of certainty. Well, our job, if we want to help shift their feelings of certainty, is to give them other reasons to believe something else.

Yeah, right.

And so in the absence of them being in the environment of learning of other options that are possible, they reinforce their beliefs as part of something called the default mode network of the brain. So part of our default mode network is to revert back to whatever the conditioning is and says with all of its beliefs to conserve energy and to stay safe in homeostasis and in our comfort zones. So we just don't have to understand that people behave and think and feel and see the world based on their beliefs.

Yeah, yeah, no, it makes, makes total sense. You know, that's, it's one thing to kind of have that the thinking and the thought process. It's another thing if the person has maybe taken and, or abused some form of narcotic from time to time, or even for any length of time, specifically. Like take something like Adderall for example. When somebody's taking Adderall for extended periods of time, maybe even overindulged in it, is the brain permanently damaged from something like that, or is it a matter of time before the brain begins to heal itself once it's been off that drug for any length of time?

Yeah, cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin, Adderall, Xanax. Any one of these drugs taking in excess, can damage parts of the brain. But we also know that this brain of ours is unbelievable in its ability to rewire itself and create reroute systems, almost like a detour system on a highway when they're fixing the roads. And so our brains can heal. I've seen enough brain scans where you can see divots inside the brain because of drug use or alcohol use. And so one of my friends, Dr. Daniel Amen, probably has more brain scans at his Amen clinics than any other doctor in the world. And I've had a brain scan done. It was funny because when I was doing the brain scan years and years ago in my intake form, said, any injuries, et cetera? No, no injuries, nothing like that. And when he saw my brain scan, he said to me, he said, hey, John, did you ever have a brain injury? I said, no. He says, well, there's a. There's like a big divot in, like, the back of your head.

Wow.

Oh, you know, when I was like four years old, I fell off a tree in Israel as a voice as well. Okay. And you said, you didn't have a, you know, he could divot in my brain. And maybe that's why I'm a little crazy. But the answer to your question is, yeah, prolonged consistent use can damage our brains and we can recover. But there's always. There's sometimes a point of no return where you've done so much damage that you can't, you know, come back from some of the damage. But our brain is just an incredible organism that can rewire itself.

Yeah, it's. You know, as I've kind of studied my own brain, trying to figure out kind of my own way of doing things, one of the things I've discovered is the brain, you know, has this tendency to repair certain areas of itself, especially in regards to thought and belief and stuff like that. I know that, you know, my on and off ramp was very, very colorful growing up and managed to kind of get there. It's all right with you. I want to switch the food and how important food is. You know, I was watching some. Some probably older documentaries, but they just hit my eyeballs the other day for the first time, and I was absorbed into it with the power, the negative forces of what has become gmo. What have you seen in your research and everything that you've done with GMO and how it relates to our overall health?

Listen, I haven't done a lot of research on gmo except, you know, the only research I have done is reading papers from friends of mine who study it and, you know, are experts in the field. And every one of them says, you know, anytime you have, you know, genetically modified food, you can have some ramifications. If you think about when you're ingesting anything.

Processed, genetically modified.

If food is what is giving us air, when we take a breath of air, it's hydrogen oxide, nitrogen, carbon is the major component of air. The quality of that air is going to affect your lungs, is going to affect the oxygenation of your blood, it's going to affect your heart, it's going to affect your brain. Well, if you think about, you know, we're eating food that is genetically modified, that our.

Digestive system breaks down into the finest molecular structure, meaning tiny. If it's genetically modified, what is it doing to our mitochondria, to our cell struct? Now, once in a while, maybe it's not that bad. I mean, we can eat just about anything in our brain, our body will create energy from that and repair bones and tissues and muscles, etc. But over time, some of this genetically modified food is toxic to us.

Right? So if something is toxic to us, so even if you eat too much of certain fish that have too much mercury in it, the mercury is toxic to us. That's why we don't.

Eat mercury.

So we know that it can kill us in larger doses. So is it possible that some of these elements within this food is toxic to us? So a little bit of toxicity, okay, we could probably handle that. A little bit of pollution we can handle. It's in our water, in our air. But we eat two or three or four meals a day and if we keep eating genetically modified foods and breathe, you know, some of the chemicals that are out there that's genetically altering our own, maybe DNA, then there could be a detrimental effects to it.

Yeah, I mean, some of the research that I've, I say research like you research that means I've read or watched documentaries. It seems like it's connected to a lot of various health problems is part of the reason why I began doing intermittent fasting and things of that myself, to kind of try to clean up kind of some of the damage and then trying to focus as much as I can on organic foods. Now, I know intermittent fasting is another sweet spot for you specifically. Let's break down some of the benefits because I feel like a lot of the audience historically is probably still engaging in poor eating habits and things of that nature. And as a result, they're sluggish, they're not feeling their best. And then that kind of almost gets into a behavior of apathy over time.

What is intermittent fasting and how does it work for us?

Sure. So, you know, I started doing juice fasts 25 years ago.

Just because I heard it was good to do juice fast. So there wasn't a lot of evidence around it. You know, read books and watched all the, you know, all the videos, you know, from California. I live in California, but back then I lived in Canada. And California seemed to be like on the cutting edge of all of this trendy stuff for health. Right. And, you know, the initial idea was depending on the type of juicing juice fast that you would do. You know, one would be kind of like to eliminate toxins, to eliminate, you know, waste in the, in the colon and, you know, three to five pounds of undigested meat and the average American's colon. And so I would do these juice fasts just to feel healthy. I didn't do them to lose weight. Some people do them to lose weight. I just don't feel healthy. And I used to do them probably three times a year for three to seven days. And it would just be juices, different types of juice, fruit juice in the morning, vegetables in the afternoons, etc. So liquid diets and felt great. But over the last probably seven years or so, there's been a lot of research on the blue zones and what they are eating for longevity. And Victor Longo, Dr. Victor Longo wrote a really good book several years ago called the Longevity Diet. And he did research specifically on the diets, but also on intermittent fasting, not just for healthy people, but also for people that maybe were sick with cancer and what fasting did. And he created something called the fast mimicking diet. And what he discovered was that when people went into intermittent fasting, whether it was a 16 hours off food, eight hours eat or 18, six, or for two or three days, reduced caloric intake, stem cells started to get activated and grow. Telomeres, the part of our gene that.

Tells us how old we are, started to lengthen. So telomere growth, the markers for aging, started to grow as well. There's this huge.

I guess.

Following now of intermittent fasting. And so I've been using intermittent fasting.

For.

I don't know, four or five years, where three days a week, maybe two, maybe five. There isn't like a set regimen. I won't have breakfast and I'll just have lunch and usually an afternoon snack and dinner. And so reduce the calories, eat in the shorter period of time, and it gives your body a break, number one, it allows you to regenerate, number two. And so there's been a lot of research on the benefits of intermittent fasting. And I think you just have to be careful, you know, make sure that if you are going to do any intermittent fasting, if you have any conditions like diabetes and you need to make sure that your blood sugar is controlled, then make sure you're doing it under a watchful eye of a physician or somebody knows what they're doing. But all of the research that I have read and my own experience is that it is great for me.

Yeah, I mean, I kind of feel the same way. You know, it's not just the physical benefit of, you know, being able to kind of stay a little bit more physically fit. I actually find because of the intermittent fasting that I'm actually sharper and more conscious, if you will, less brain fog and things of that nature as a good benefit as well. Is that something that's kind of like a normal side. Not a side effect, but a normal benefit of intermittent fasting?

It is. And again, as long as when you are eating, you're eating the foods that don't create brain fog. Like, if you think about brain fog, brain fog is an effect.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brain fog, you know, doesn't just happen. So it's an effect. So the question is, effect of what? So if you're intermittent fasting, I'll give you, I'll give you an example, like a real world example of something that's happening in my family right now.

Please.

One of my sons has got some sinus issues. And he said, like, every time he's been coming over, it's like he's got sinus issues to the point I said, no, are you doing cocaine? He goes, no, Dad, I don't touch cocaine. I said, like, why are you always like, hey, dad, how are you? You know, he's talking nasally. Will you do me a favor? And he's like, he's in great shape. I said, would you do me a favor? Can you go see my, my, what you call my functional medicine? Dr. Chad, I want him to do a blood work on you. He says, sure, papa. And so he goes, he does the blood work. Last Friday, he says, got the results? He says, I'm gluten intolerant.

All of these. Like, for two years, this kid has been. Like, I said, what's wrong? Like, what's wrong? Like, do you have allergies or something? Like, what's going on? Well, he's gluten intolerant, and so most of the food he's been eating is creating this fog and this feeling of something's wrong with his head. So if he was to intermittent fast but still eat gluten in his case, then he would still have the symptoms even though he was intermittent fasting. So I think it's really important that if there's any effect, that may not be to our taste. And I don't mean to our taste taste, but to our liking. The question then becomes, what's the cause? Right. People aren't. And again, some people are overweight because of genetic predispositions and maybe some hormonal stuff. But most people, for example, don't have brain fog because nothing's happening. There's nothing that's causing it. In a lot of cases, it's what they're doing or not doing as a result of their habits or their ignorance.

Yeah.

And so this is where thinking comes in, and this is where cause and effect comes in. Right. So we know the quality of food that you put in, as long as you're not allergic to it, is digestible. You can get, you know, really great energy if you exercise and sleep well and make sure that, you know, you are using up the energy that you're putting in versus storing it as fat for some future date, then you can be healthy. You can have energy. All we are is energy. Now, some people are consuming foods that require more energy to consume it than the food gives them. And so they're feeling tired and sluggish and they're unhealthy and they can't sleep well and they can't poop well, and they. Well, those are effects. We know what is required to sleep well. We know what's required to have proper elimination. We know what's required to have an abundance of energy instead of to feel sluggish. But the next part of the equation is, am I going to do what I know? Now we get into the domain of mastering change. Because if you don't master change, then you're going to have to master disappointment.

Man, that was good. That was good. No, I totally get it, you know, just in the, in the, in the realm of the brain, what are types of things that we should stay away from that inhibit the brain from maximum use?

For example, with foods and things of that nature, what should we kind of keep out of. Keep out of our system for the average person?

Well, listen, we know that too much sugar, okay, our brain becomes addicted to it, and we become addicted to sugar. That's going to affect our.

Blood sugar levels and it's going to create addictions for more sugar. We know that too much saturated fats.

Can affect our brain in the form of brain fog and in the form of gaining too much fat on our bodies. And so when we're talking about foods that are good for the brain, if we think about blueberries, we think about turmeric, we think about ginger, we think about salmon with the omega 3 sixes and 9 fatty acids. Our brain is made up of water and fat mostly. So the good types of fat are good for our brain. My expertise is not in nutrition for the brain as much as it is around making better decisions.

That allow us to be healthy. There are many amazing experts around brain health, specifically of what kind of foods and nutrients to have. I became, for me, a vegan almost nine years ago. I eliminated alcohol from drinking. I stopped eating refined sugar because of the ill effects that it has long term for me because I was eating too much sugar and drinking too much alcohol. So I knew that long term and even short term, those weren't healthy for me. And so the key for, I think for everybody is.

What is it that makes you feel really good and healthy and vibrant and sharp?

Yeah.

And.

I know we're going to have some decline as we get older. I get that. But it doesn't have to be as rapid as most people are experiencing. So the question becomes not only about food, but what about sleep? What about exercise? What about food? What about breathing? What about reducing stress? What about environment of friends? Now we're at, looking, looking at this in a much more holistic way. Okay. If you look at any of the blue zones, you know, one of the things that.

Is showing up in all of the blue zones is the environment. You know, as people get older, they have a sense of belonging and friendship and love and camaraderie. Extends life if they also happen to be getting a little bit of exercise every day. Extends life if they happen to be getting outside to get a little bit of fresh. Sharon Son extends life if they happen to be, you know, doing the things that inspire and give you life versus expire and cause you to maybe die sooner than you need to. We're in a beautiful position now. You know where so much research is being done that if we are committed to being happier and healthier, more vibrant and energetic and more successful, not just financially, but more successful in life, all the how to that we could ever want is available now. And it is like one little Google search away, one book away, one course away, one coach away, one decision away. 107 or 8 billion humans have walked on earth up until now, since the beginning of time on this blue planet. And never has there been an easier time for us to get the blueprint. Never. Never. You know, you are 100 pounds overweight. You want to lose it in a healthy way and keep it off. We know how you want to get more energy so that you can play with your grandkids or your kids. We know how you want. I mean it, it's almost unfathomable how easy it is to find out how to anything right now. But that's not the problem. The problem is people are interested, they're not committed.

Yeah.

And if you're interested, you do. It's easy and convenient. But if you're committed, you do whatever it takes.

Yes, so true. That is so true.

All of my students, you know, that I work with around the world, I let them know, listen, I don't need to work with you if you're not committed because then you're going to blame me or my programs for them not working. No, if you're committed, these work. How do I know? Well, the same way I know that if I leave here and I go up the street a mile and a half, I'm going to end up at this coffee shop that's always there because it's predictable. If you follow the path.

Yeah, well, I mean, and that's what a roadmap supposed to do. I mean, but you can't make somebody actually get in their car, turn the car on, put push down the gas pedal and drive down the street. So I totally understand that with a couple minutes we got left, you know, you recently let out, or let out, released a video on anti aging that I just thought was really super interesting because you know that the older I get, the more crinkles I get. I'm like, you know, it'd be nice to kind of have a little less, you know, here, there and all that kind of stuff. And you briefly touched on some of the aspects of it. But what is at the core of the anti aging theology?

I was a guest on the Advanced Anti Aging Summit. And part of the reason I was on it is 12 years ago, I was 243 pounds, 33% body fat, borderline diabetic, fatty liver, borderline hypertensive. And I was going down, down, down, physically not sleeping well, severe sleep apnea. And I was swollen all the time. And I made a decision that for my 50th birthday I was going to get into really good shape and lose the weight. And so I did a whole bunch of research on sleep and diet and leptin and hormones and exercise and what, you know, why is it that, you know, I was able to lose 10, 20 pounds, 25 pounds, but then why did I gain it all back enough? But, you know, I often said I've lost 250 pounds. It was just like 25 here, 25 back, 25 here, 10 back. And so what was the cause of that? So I figured that out and I got into really good shape for my 50th birthday and then for my 60th birthday, which is coming up in 76 or so days. And I am tracking this because I asked myself this question. Can I reverse my aging even more so that I can actually have a six packet, so 60 without any drugs?

Yeah, there you go.

And so I've been working on this six pack at 60, which I, I achieved early at 60. And all of my blood work, my biomarkers, my, my aging markers, I mean, reversed so significantly. You know, my doctor's like, what are you doing?

Yeah.

And, and so not only did I start meditating on a regular basis and being mindful and making sure my diet was great and my exercise was great and my sleep was great, but in doing those things, I really started to reverse my aging. But what started it was.

Could I do this? It was an idea. I didn't have a six pack at 16. 26, 36, 46, never. I was in good shape when I was younger, but never did I have a six pack. So I said, well, is it possible to have a six pack at 60 and a. I found some pictures of guys that are in their 60s and 70s with six packs that were just average guys that said, I want to do this. And so I said, well, can I set a goal? Can I get into the best shape of my adult life in a healthy way without rushing it? And the answer is yes. So Can I at 60 be really healthy? Can I at 70 be really healthy? I love to ski. And we have a home in Colorado. And there is this one guy in his 80s that skis better than some of the guys in their 20s. And I'm like, that's what I want to be like in my 60s and 70s and 80s. And so the question if that's what I want to be like, is it possible, based on what we know now.

To reverse aging? Right. And to not speed it up through poor habits? And the answer is yes, yes, and yes. Now I really don't care whether I live till 70 or 100. What I care about is whatever age I live to, I want to live and enjoy life versus being a victim of poor or ill health. So the quality, as I get into my 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, hopefully, is that the quality of my life is very, very high versus deteriorating. And so I then ask myself, okay, if that's what I'm committed to, then what's the thought that I need to have? What are the dominant thoughts I need to have? What are the behaviors I need to implement? What's. What's the food? What's the sleep? What's the rest? What's the vacations? What's the, you know, like, what is the formula for that? And if I'm committed, then that's what I'm going to do, and that's what I'm committed to. So that's what I do. So, you know, the behavior follows the decisions.

Yeah, yeah.

Versus the decisions coming because of circumstances. I'll share one little story with you that my mother, who passed away last year from COVID.

Thank you, Ann. There's A story about four years ago, I used to go visit her every 90 days in Montreal, where she lived. And four years ago, she. She was. She's been manic depressive or manic depressive for 60 years of her life. So I used to go visit her. She used to live alone, and we had a caregiver for her full time, seven days a week. And so I went to visit her. She was in one of her depressions, and when she was in her depression, she'd want to sleep like 19, 20 hours a day. When I would come into Montreal, she'd be in a wheelchair, and she'd be sitting there and she'd have her head down, talk to her, and half the time her eyes were closed. Even when she looked at me, she was a little bit dazed. And I knew that I needed to get her out of this. I said, hey, mom, will you do a little exercise on me? No, I don't feel like it. Come on, just a little bit.

Don't feel like it. Don't feel like It. So I said, do me a favor, you love me? She goes, yes. I said, will you just do one thing for me? Can you just take your finger and do this.

Four times? Okay.

Can you do the other finger?

Can you do. Let's just do one hand. She was left handed, so. So she did one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. 1, 2, 3, 4. One, 2, 3, 4. Okay, I'm done. I said, okay, but you gotta do the right hand now because you can't. So she didn't want to do. I said, great, mom, can you just move your toes a little bit? Ah, now you're bugging me. I said, I know, just. Just move your toes a little bit. I started her. This is true story started her. I was there for a week. In the morning and at night, the hands and feet just move a little bit. By the time the week was done, her hands were going up and her hands was going like this. And her legs in the wheelchair, okay, were being lifted a little bit up and down. Three months later, my mother was walking the halls again. Okay. Three months later, she was going outside again. And for four years before she died, she would exercise every day in her retirement home, walking in her walker through the halls. And she was working out a couple times a week on the bike downstairs. Now, why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this because it doesn't matter at what age.

You are, it doesn't matter. What matters is if you make different decisions and you start getting a little momentum, you can go from being depressed to maybe even walking. So the key though, Stephen, is decisions trump circumstances.

I love it. I love it. And that's such an amazing story. I think it's a good reminder for all of us the name of the show is Stuck to Unstoppable. Right? I intentionally named it that direction because I'm a firm believer that Stuck is nothing more than not making progress consistently and Unstoppable is consistently making progress. It's literally that it didn't have to be like a super gargantuan, super sexy. At the end of the day, every person I come in contact with, all of them, once they make that commitment, once they actually make that decision, once they actually make the real choice, start small and begin to win big because they chose to start small rather than being so scared of how large the thing is. And your work has been instrumental in helping so many people. And everybody should obviously learn more about you. Most people already know who you are and obviously a lot of things that you've done, but for those who don't, where can they find more about you?

Sure. So if anybody wants to really take advantage of some of the.

Inner sizes for their brain, my newest book, the new science to unlock your brain's hidden power not only will teach you, in simple layman's terms, how to train your brain to achieve success faster, but it also comes with nine brain training audios where I will guide you how to have more focus, more awareness, how to visualize your success, how to activate the key components of your brain that will help you let go of what is keeping you stuck and maybe holding you hostage. And how you can achieve your goals and dreams faster. I am on Instagram onassaraf. I am on TikTok onassaraf. I am on Facebook, I am on YouTube, I am on LinkedIn. So I am on every one of the social media channels and I share a lot of free stuff with people and then I have brain training programs@myneurogym.com MyNeuroJim.com is my company that is helping create some great brain training programs for people to use their, you know, hundred billion dollar brain better.

I love it.

I love it.

Well, it's been a joy having you, dude. It's clear that everything that you've been working on has been amazing, helping a lot of folks and for the listeners, for those of you listening on Apple right now and or Google Play or watching on YouTube, I've actually purchased 10 of John's books that I'm happy to give away in the comments section. I've been holding that little secret back all day long just because, because I believe in your work. I've seen your work do amazing things for a lot of people and I think the more, the more we can change the way people think, the more we can change the way they behave and the more behavior we can change, the better the world will be in the end the game. Right? So John, thank you so much for coming on dude. I can't wait to do see more of you and even have you back on in a future podcast.

Thank you my friend. Appreciate you very much.

All right, take care, buddy. See you. If you love that interview, go ahead and check out this next one right here.

I have had a saying that a lot of people quote and that is God's opinion of you makes man's opinion irrelevant.