The Secret Flaw That Limits Your Success | John Assaraf DSH #1398

Trip Planner by Expedia.

You were made to outdo your holiday,

your hammocking,

and your pooling.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia made to travel.

This is Marshawn Lynch, but on Prize Picks, being right can get you paid.

So I'm here to make sure you don't miss any of the action this football season.

With Prize Picks, it's good to be right.

With millions of members and billions of dollars awarded and winning, Prize Picks is the best place to put your takes to the test.

The app is really simple to use and available in 40 plus states, including California, Texas, and Georgia.

Just pick two or more players across any sport, pick more or less on their projections, and if you're right, you can cash in.

With simple stats and fan-friendly policies, PrizePicks is the best place to make your picks.

Most importantly, they don't play about your paper.

All transactions on the apps are fast, safe, and secure.

Download the PrizePicks app today and use code Spotify to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.

That's code Spotify to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.

PrizePicks, it's good to be right.

Must be present in certain states.

Visit prizepics.com for restrictions and details.

The reality that we see based on our beliefs.

So if I believe I'm too young, if I believe I'm not smart enough, not good enough, not worthy, I'm not skilled enough.

I don't have the money.

Do you know what's happening in the world right now?

If I believe those things are impediments to my success, my brain actually creates that reality.

Okay, guys, out here in Las Vegas with John Asaraff.

Thanks for coming on today, man.

It's great to be on with you.

We've been trying to do this for a while.

For a while.

You were one of the first people I hit up.

You were on my dream hunter list.

Well, here we go.

Here we go.

The secret was a game-changing movie, right?

It was.

I think The Secret was awesome and it had some flaws to it.

And it had one major flaw that I've talked about for many, many years because it talked about the law of attraction leading people to believe that, you know, think, believe, and you'll achieve.

And that's just bullshit.

Most people that, you know, are thinking about the law of attraction were using hope and prayer as their primary strategy.

And I shared with a lot of people after the movie.

The part that we didn't talk about in the movie was the law of Goya.

And nobody talks about the law of Goya and and G-O-Y-A.

And the law of Goya is the get off your ass lock

and take action, do what you need to do.

And that was the part that bothered me the most about the movie.

It reached 500 million people.

So that was great.

Crazy.

But a lot of people, you know, created, let's say, their vision board and just waited.

And as we know, you know, the world, especially now with AI, waits for no one.

Yeah.

It's interesting because I actually do make vision boards every year, but I take action.

And by the end of the year, usually I've completed 80% of the vision board.

Yeah.

The vision board is great.

You know, a little thing that I've been doing in the last several years is I don't just have a vision board for the things I'm manifesting, creating, taking action towards.

I also take all the things I have achieved already and meld them together to remind myself, like, here's what you've already done.

So to remind myself that at one point I hadn't done those things.

And then I have my 10x

part as well.

It says, where have I 10xed since I was born?

Yeah.

So 10x from crawling or from not crawling to crawling to walking to running, et cetera.

So where have you 10x'd?

And it's a way to train your brain that you've already done this.

And now this is another level and another level, another level.

And it never ends.

I've been playing the game for

44 years,

since I was 19.

And every time I want to level up my game, it requires a new mindset.

It requires new skills.

It requires new behaviors.

And

there's a formula that you can follow that can help you achieve success.

And in today's day and age, more than ever before, how to achieve anything.

How do you get a podcast to crank?

How do you build a business to $100,000 a month or $100,000 a year, $100,000 a week?

We know how.

We already know how.

We can go to AI right now and find out how, or go to one of your events, or go to somebody's event, or find a coach or a mentor, and they'll give us the step-by-step how.

Absolutely.

That's not the problem.

I love that you said the game never ends because a lot of people are programmed with the term retirement.

Yeah,

I've retired twice.

I've retired twice, once for two years, once for three years.

The first time it was great because it was, I had worked for probably, you know, 10, 12 straight years, built a company, fairly good company, and I needed some time off.

And so I took some time off.

But the second time I retired, I was bored out of my mind.

Nobody else had been retired at my age.

And so I actually had to pay friends.

I didn't have to, but I paid friends to come on vacation with me so I could have, you know, a friend around.

But during the day, everybody was working.

So retirement,

I think can be great for a period of time, but it also makes your brain mush.

And if the biggest thing you're thinking about is where am I going to eat today?

Where am I going to work out?

You know, where am I going to go in the world?

It becomes a little bit challenging and you start to lose purpose and meaning in your life.

Yeah.

Or I did anyway.

I think everyone.

Yeah.

I mean, they've done brain scans on people that retire and how age their brain,

how quickly it ages.

Yeah.

I will never retire now.

Like in the same sense of not do anything where I'm challenged on an ongoing basis and I can contribute on an ongoing basis.

Will I work as many hours doing what I'm doing now with our neurofitness platform and all that?

No.

But I won't completely retire.

Absolutely.

Have your priorities changed?

Because I bet when you were younger, was money number one, right?

Yeah, money was number one.

I grew up in a

poor family.

My father's a cab driver.

My mother worked at a department store.

He was an alcoholic gambler.

So there was never money.

That's not a good combo.

So it wasn't a good combo.

So he would make about $25 a day.

Damn.

And he would gamble or play play cards, go to the horse races and lose, you know, 50, 100 bucks a day.

So he was always behind the eight ball.

My parents always thought about, you know, where's food going to come from?

What about clothes?

What about paying the rent this month?

And so I made it a,

I don't know,

a passion,

a relentless, no way will this happen to me, that I will make more than enough money.

so that I never have to feel this way again, less than the other kids, and that I would never have to put my kids when I would have them, you know, into this situation.

So money was, you know, my number one primary driver from the age of 19.

And there's a good news and challenging news for that.

When I was 19, I had my first mentor.

We talked a little bit earlier about your first mentor.

And he showed me how to make $10,000 a month, which was my first goal from $1.65 an hour to $10,000 a month.

And it took me six months to get the mindset right and the skill set right to start making $10,000 a month.

Within two years, two and a half years, I had severe ulcerative colitis.

So I had ulcers in my colon and I was taking 25 pills a day.

I was going to see the

internist

every month to do a sigmoidoscopy, which means they stuck a tube up my ass to see what was going on with my colon because it was bleeding ulcers and I couldn't.

have any bowel control move uh any bowel control so i was embarrassed i shit in restaurants shit in cars, shit in bed with a gal, you know,

and highly embarrassing.

And

so I got sick from working so hard on making money.

And obviously, well, I shouldn't say obviously, but I wasn't eating well.

I was partying like a rock star, sex, drugs, rock and roll,

living the life.

I was making a lot of money.

We were champagne, cocktails, buying drinks for everybody, traveling, having fun.

But I had stressed my body out so much, it was in a state of dis-ease.

And I found out that obviously there's a body-mind connection.

And I was recreating that pattern, working really hard, not taking care of myself, stressing my body and brain out and everything else.

And I found out there was this body-mind connection.

And I started to meditate.

I started to use affirmations.

I started to visualize myself being healthy.

And after a year and a half of being sick and taking 25 pills a day,

all my symptoms went away.

Wow.

Everything went away.

And my doctor thought, hey, I still want you on the medication.

And I said, I want to be on the medication.

I took care of what was causing the illness.

I took care of the cause that was causing the effect.

And that was really the beginning of me understanding the power of my own mind.

And I'd learned how to set goals.

visualize the goals and take action to achieve the goals, but I didn't do it for my own health and well-being.

So I was in a state of dis-ease.

And so I started to exercise.

I started to eat well.

I started to sleep better.

I stopped drinking as much alcohol.

I stopped doing as many drugs.

And I got better.

So I really was taught the law of cause and effect, right?

For every effect, there's a cause.

And for every cause, there's an effect.

So when my kids who are 28 and 30, you know, share, hey, dad, this isn't working.

You know, I'm not making the money I want.

I'm not achieving the goal I want.

I say, well, great, that's the effect.

Let's focus on what's causing the effect.

And if you focus on the cause, the effect takes care of itself.

And we know the patterns of success now.

Like they're uniform and they are precise.

Now, some people just don't know them.

And even if they do know them, they're not applying them.

And that's where the why am I not applying what I need to apply comes into play.

This is my area of, I think, expertise and passion and fun is why don't I do the things I know I should do and can do?

And there are

brain-based reasons why.

So we can have some fun with those.

Yeah, that's where limiting beliefs come into play, right?

Limiting beliefs is one of them.

A belief in the brain is nothing more than a pattern that's been created and reinforced, like software.

But the beliefs that we have are the lens by which we see the world and ourselves in the world.

And what nobody talks about is that we don't see the world as it is.

Our brain is constructing the world based on our beliefs, our self-image, and our identity.

Wow, that's crazy to think about.

Yeah, so the visual to put into perspective is imagine you're at a movie theater and you're looking at the screen.

And let's say you don't like what you're seeing on the screen.

You don't run up to the screen and take a marker and mark the screen.

That's not where the problem is.

If you want to change what you're seeing on the screen, you go up into the room where it's being projected and you change the film.

So our brain is projecting and predicting the reality that we see based on our beliefs.

So if I believe I'm too young, if I believe I'm not smart enough, not good enough, not worthy, I'm not skilled enough, I don't have the money, do you know what's happening in the world right now?

If I believe those things are impediments to my success, my brain actually creates that reality and sees only the things that I believe.

And it deletes and distorts anything else that doesn't match what I believe.

So we don't see the world as it is.

We see the world as we are.

Part one.

Part two

is: let's say you want to achieve a goal, $10,000 a month, $50,000 a month, $100,000 a month.

You want to build a business.

You want to be in great shape.

You want to have a great girlfriend or guyfriend, whatever the case might be.

If you don't believe you're worthy of that, if you don't believe you deserve it, if your self-image

is lacking the essence of this is my reality and this is going to happen, then our brain comes up with rationalizations of why it can't happen.

So we tell ourselves rational lies.

You know, I'll be in great shape when.

I'll earn that amount of money when, when I develop the skills, when I have more money to invest, when I leave my job, when, when, when, when.

And we future pace the when, and it just keeps getting moved over and over and over again.

But what we don't realize is you and I and everybody else that may be listening or watching will never do better than our identity will allow us to do.

So your character makes up your identity.

Your self-image, your self-worth, your self-esteem, your self-confidence makes up your identity.

And if you don't believe that you deserve it or are worthy of it or are capable of it right now,

you won't achieve it.

So we have to create that belief and that identity first.

And then the reality shows up.

And then we start to think and act and behave in ways that match the new reality.

And for me, when I was 19,

I was getting in trouble with the law, in and out of detention centers, left high school at grade 11, failed English, failed math, voted most likely to fail in life.

Wow.

And my first mentor,

which my brother introduced me to, my brother thought I was going to go to jail or or die.

I was selling drugs, doing drugs, breaking an entry, selling counterfeit money.

I was a little hoodlum as a kid.

And my brother and my sister were afraid for my well-being.

And my brother introduced me to this guy that he was teaching tennis to.

And my brother was a tennis pro when he was 19, 20, 21.

Total opposite of you.

Totally opposite.

And he had moved to Toronto, Canada.

I was in Montreal.

And he says, hey, Johnny, there's a guy that I'm teaching tennis to.

He's a real estate developer.

He has a bunch of real estate offices, 500 agents.

He's making millions and millions of dollars.

Why don't you take the train and come and meet him?

And maybe he'll offer you a job if he likes you.

And I said, fuck yeah.

Like, I'll take the train.

So I took the train and I met him in a restaurant.

And we're sitting across from each other like this.

My brother was sitting next to him over there.

And he looks at me and says,

What are your goals?

This is obviously after all the chit chat.

I said, well, I'm earning $1.65 an hour at the shipping department that I'm working in, you know, packing boxes, unpacking boxes, packing boxes, unpacking boxes.

And I fucking hate it.

I said, I'm living in my parents' house.

I'm 19.

I can't bring girls over here because my parents are pretty strict about that, or my mother was.

And I don't have a car.

You know, my friends pick me up.

I don't have a car.

I don't have money to pay them for gas.

So I'm taking the bus and the subway back and forth to work every day.

And I freaking hate it.

He says, I'm making more money on the side selling drugs.

That's why I'm doing it.

He says, well, what if you could not have to do that?

What would you like to achieve?

I said, well, I have never thought about it.

And I remember this like it was yesterday, Sean.

He gives me this.

I hope you guys are enjoying the show.

Please don't forget to like and subscribe.

It helps the show a lot with the algorithm.

Thank you.

Document reaches into his briefcase and

hands me this document.

And it was a goal setting guide.

He says, I want you to use your imagination and just fill in the answers to these questions.

Okay, I can do that.

First question, and I'm 19 at the time.

At what age do you want to retire?

I'm like, what do you mean, retire?

I want a better job.

I asked him, what am I supposed to put there?

He says,

pick a number.

I says, is 45 okay?

26 years later, he said, sure, put it down.

So I write down 45.

Second question, upon retirement, how much net worth do you want to have?

So I'm scratching my head a little bit and I'm going,

what does net worth mean?

He explains to me what net worth is.

Your assets minus your liabilities equals how much you're really worth if you were to sell everything.

I said, okay, what should I put there?

He says, pick a number, but you're going to need millions if you want to retire at age 45, because most people are living until like 75.

I said, okay, is 3 million okay?

And just so we're clear, nobody in my family had money.

Not my aunts, not my uncles, not my brothers, not my sisters.

Nobody had millions.

Nobody ever made millions.

And here I am.

So I'm going to retire before anybody ever did in my family.

With $3 million net worth, I might as well said I'm going to also live on Mars.

So no basis in reality.

Who do you want to help?

My mother and father.

I'd like to retire them.

Where do you want travel?

All over the world.

How would you like to travel?

First class.

What kind of car do you want?

Mercedes convertible.

What kind of home home do you want four bedroom uh you know a four bedroom two car garage you know a nice yard for you know for for pets so i started writing down all of these things that i wanted just making them up as i'm going along i give him the document and he looks at it and he goes um this seems like an extraordinary life if you could achieve this doesn't it i said absolutely sir he says i'm going to ask you one question And the answer to this question will determine whether you achieve every one of these things you wrote down on this document.

And I'm sitting there thinking to myself,

every goal that I want to achieve is going to be achieved if I answer this one question right?

And he leans in, he goes,

are you interested in achieving all of these things?

And he points at the stuff that I've written down, or are you committed to achieving them?

And I was sitting there, Sean, going, interested, committed, committed, like, what's the difference?

So again, feeling stupid, I said, excuse me, what's the difference?

And this is what changed my life at 19.

He says, people who are interested come up with stories and reasons and excuses why it can't be done or why they can't do it.

People who are interested

don't believe in themselves.

People who are interested don't have the knowledge.

They don't have the skills, even though the things they want to achieve are achievable.

He says, but as soon as somebody says, I am committed, and they follow through, they upgrade their identity and their beliefs to match the destiny, the vision, the goals that they have.

They upgrade their knowledge, they upgrade their skills.

They certainly upgrade what they do every day.

In other words, their habits.

And he says, and since all of these are achievable,

which are you?

Sean took me a second.

Well, in that case, I'm committed.

He reaches out his hand and he says, in that case, I will be your mentor.

And I said, wow, what's a mentor?

And he explained to me what a mentor was.

And that's how green I was.

But I had this vision.

I had this vision that I wrote down just out of my imagination with no basis in reality.

I didn't have the skills, the school, the degree, the pedigree, the knowledge, the beliefs, the self-image.

I had zero.

The only thing I had was a disempowering self-image of myself because I was a thief and I was a drug dealer, you know, at 19.

So I had the exact opposite of what I needed.

But what happened was he asked me to move from Montreal to Toronto, which I said yes to.

He asked me to get back to

go back to school, real estate school specifically.

And I went to school for real estate from nine to five for five weeks, got my real estate certificate.

And the reason I remember all this so well is because on June 20th, 1980, a long time ago, a long time before you were born, and many other people that are listening or watching are born, I passed the test without cheating.

Wow.

So I developed the first little inkling.

Maybe I'm not dumb.

Maybe I'm not stupid.

I wasn't well in school

because my parents had moved from Israel to Montreal and I had to learn English and French.

And there were 60 kids in the classroom of immigrants.

So I fell behind by two years.

So I felt I was stupid.

My test proved that I was dumb because I was getting Fs and D's if I showed up to class.

So I had all the evidence for the opposite of success.

And he started to teach me to look at my vision every day.

He also asked me to write down what would I need to believe, even though I didn't believe it, what would I need to believe in order to achieve

the financial goal, the health goal, the contribution goals?

charity goals to help my parents, whatever, what I need to believe.

And so I wrote down, you know, I would have to believe that I am smart enough to achieve these goals.

I'd have have to believe that I'm deserving enough.

I'd have to believe that I can learn what I need to learn.

I have to believe that I can change my habits.

I have to believe that I can let go of my past or my present circumstances.

I wrote down like 15 beliefs that I had to have.

And he said, every day when you come in,

not only are we going to spend one hour a day upgrading your skills for marketing to get listings and for selling, but I want you to spend 15 minutes training your brain to believe those things, training your brain to upgrade your your self-image of yourself, your identity.

And then we're going to work on the character traits every day by getting you to do the work that is necessary to make $10,000 a month.

So I had the mindset piece that he helped me with.

I had the skill set piece that he helped me with.

And then I had the daily accountability to alter my behaviors and my habits.

That combination may sound like a lot of work, but within six months, I made $31,000 to me.

He made $31,000 because we were on a 50-50 split selling homes.

And he had a development that he had me work where I sat there, waited for people to come in.

The next 12 months, I made $151,000 my end.

He made $151,000 as well.

And now he taught me some new skills.

But every single day, I was using affirmations.

I was doing five minutes of visualizing achieving those goals.

Even though my brain was going, that's bullshit.

You're not making 10 grand a month.

You're not, you're not worthy of this.

You're a hoodlum.

I would hear the voices in my head.

And he said, that's very, very normal for your old self-image, your old beliefs to want to keep you stuck because those patterns are normal and easy for your brain to automatically fire.

So he educated me on a new process, but he also educated me what was going to happen in the first 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, and how to override that

self-deprecating, right, that negative self-talk that I had.

And it wasn't easy for 100 days, but I stuck with it every day.

Consistency, he said, was more important than complexity or intensity.

So I committed to every day for 100 days.

And I started to.

feel better.

I started to think differently.

I started to behave differently.

And yes, I had a manager, you know, who managed my activities.

Did you do this?

Yes, did you do this?

Did you do this?

And I had to basically check it off.

Yeah, I did my visualization.

Yes, I did my affirmations.

I recorded them on a cassette tape so I could listen to them while I was driving.

So in essence, I started to train my brain.

And we didn't know this then, but we know this now.

Anytime I repeat a language pattern or an emotional pattern, anytime, any language pattern, positive, negative, negative, empowering, disempowering, constructive, destructive, doesn't matter.

There's obviously electrical activity going on in my brain.

That electrical activity releases neurochemicals.

Those neurochemicals create feelings.

But the electrical activity, the neurons that are firing consistently together, wire together.

And when we do something one time, five times, 10 times, it's good.

It's like, okay, I go to the gym 10 days.

It's going to be good for you, but you're not going to build muscle, you know, without long-term going to the gym and having some resistance to get to those next levels.

So he explained to me that the negative self-talk was normal, the negative emotions about myself was normal until the positive self-talk and the positive emotions and the positive behaviors became normal.

And as somebody now who's been fascinated with this field for, you know, 40 plus years,

I now understand the neuromechanics of that.

We didn't have the ability to look inside the human brain, you know, 44 years ago.

Today, we can look at a SPECT scan, you know, and actually see neurons firing.

We can see neural connections.

And the question now becomes if Based on neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to create new patterns, we can

and reinforce neural patterns just like we can activate a muscle and reinforce it and make it stronger.

What if we started looking at our self-image as a neuromuscle?

What if we started looking at our beliefs as neuromuscles?

Now, any muscle could be weak or strong, but what if my self-image is a little bit weak right now?

How do I strengthen it?

What if my beliefs in myself?

is a little weak right now.

How do I strengthen that?

What if my memory is weak right now?

Can I strengthen that?

And the answer is yes.

Wow.

The answer is yes across the board.

And this is why I started, you know, in the inner sizing, right?

I started to inner size 44 years ago.

And so I've looked for what are the different ways that I could deliberately evolve myself based on neuroscience and neuropsychology.

And so what I did 44 years ago, you know, helped me achieve a little bit of success.

And then six years after I started working with him, I decided I was going to start my own real estate company.

I'd

learned a lot about real estate.

And so I moved from Toronto to Indiana and I bought the franchising rights for RE-MAX of Indiana.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game?

Well, with the name Your Price Tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills try it at progressive.com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states

so remax had been there twice before and failed but i said just because somebody drives a mercedes-benz into a ditch doesn't mean there's a problem with the car right so i had the success you know working as a real estate agent i knew what i needed to do and over the next 10 years, I built an 85 office operation with 1,200 salespeople who were doing four and a half billion a year in sales.

Wow.

So the way we got there

is by

the first three years, we hit a billion dollars in sales a year.

It's crazy.

And then we were stuck.

And I realized that I wasn't teaching my agents what I had learned about upgrading my self-image like a thermostat, you reset a thermostat from 70 degrees to 65 or to 75, depending on the temperature you want.

We all have financial set points that we've become used to earning.

We have a body set point, how much we weigh.

If we're 10 pounds heavier or 10 pounds lighter than we normally are, you know, we do the appropriate things to get to our baselines.

So I started to do a little test with

75 of my agents.

And I asked them, who wants to train their brains to double or triple their incomes in the next 12 months?

And I had 75 people who paid $3,000 to work with me for six months.

No teaching them selling skills, marketing skills, management skills,

zero skills training.

All we did every day for six months was hold them accountable to 15 minutes of what I call today is inner size.

where they had their vision, they had to read it and review it, close their eyes and feel it.

They had their beliefs, they had to read their beliefs and run their hands across right side, left side to send an electrical signal from their fingers to their brain while they're reading it.

They had to record it and they had to listen to it at least two times a day while they were driving from home to work or from work somewhere else.

And in essence, what we did is we took their vision and their goals and the beliefs required and the habits required, and we wrote it out in perfect language patterns.

And then we use a variety of methodologies like visualization, being mindful and aware,

take the automatic negative thoughts, which we call our ants, and replace them with automatic positive thoughts.

So awareness gives you the ability to

be aware of what you're thinking and feeling.

And we help them deliberately shift their internal map of reality.

The year before, this group of agents

did a certain amount of sales.

We tracked the six months after they started training their brains compared compared to the year before.

And those 75 agents increased sales by 100 million more than the year before.

Wow.

They averaged between $50,000 to $100,000 in extra income in six months.

Our sales went through the roof just with that little group.

So over the next three years, guess what I did with my agents?

No more training them on skills.

We trained them on the identity, the beliefs, and the behaviors that they needed to be success at the level that they wanted to be.

And we went from 1.2 billion to 4.5 billion a year

in three years.

We became the Mon real estate company in the state of Indiana.

And this is why I got so fascinated with the neuroscience of change, the neuroscience of behavior.

of how do I get myself to do what I need to do to achieve what I want to achieve.

That's why I said, like, especially now,

I can go to my phone, your phone.

We could type into ChatGPT or Grok or Lama or any one of the LLMs, large language models.

Hey, I'm 25 years young.

Here's my skill level.

Here's what I'm doing right now.

Here's what I'm earning.

Here's how I weigh.

Here's all the results of my life.

What I want to achieve is blank, blank, and blank.

Help me come up with a seven day, 21 day, 30 day plan, hour by hour of what do I need to do for my mindset, my skill sets, and what actions do I need to take and help me track it and measure it.

I can have a plan literally in less than five minutes at a PhD level of expertise.

So all of my students that I work with now, we're working with AI to help them grow their businesses or help them make more money or manage their money better.

But we also have them training their brains at the same time.

so that they increase the capacity of what their brain is doing.

And most people don't know this, Sean, but every brain functionally works the same.

So if I teach you how to drive a car here in Vegas, and I take you to Antarctica or Alaska or China, you drive the cars, it may be the steering wheels on the other side in different parts of the world, but how the car runs is identical, whether it's electrical or gas.

Functionally, every brain works the same.

So your fear circuit works like my fear circuit.

Your motivational circuit works like mine does.

Your doubt circuit works like mine does.

Now, what causes you doubt or worry or stress isn't what causes me doubt, worry, or stress.

What I'm afraid of may not be what you're afraid of, but how the circuit works, what triggers it, okay?

And the mechanism of what happens is the same.

So when I release cortisol,

stress hormone, it's the same cortisol that you release, maybe in different amounts.

So for some people that are watching, if I said, hey, imagine that a snake is slithering in the room you're in right now, some people are like already squirming and others are going, let me get my phone so I can take a cell phone, right?

So what triggers your circuit or different circuits is different than what triggers mine.

So when I understand

how to self-regulate through self-talk, through emotional regulation, managing my emotions, and I learn the skills of what I need to apply, then what can I not achieve?

That's really interesting because if everyone's brain functions the same, some people are way more intelligent than others, right?

Well, some people are way more intelligent, but there's a lot of people that are intelligent.

They're not taking action.

True.

Right?

So intelligence is different than wisdom.

Wisdom is different than habits.

I cannot tell you how many people

I have from major universities in the world

that are like, I'm stuck.

I'm not taking action on what I need to take action on.

So you could be intelligent.

You can be a leader, for example, at work, but not a leader with your kids.

You can be really smart in math, but you're not really smart in marketing.

So when we talk about intelligence, there's a lot of different types of intelligences.

There's spiritual intelligence, there's IQ, there's EQ, emotional quotient, there's intellectual quotient.

Everybody has a different form of intelligence.

And what I like to suggest is this:

How come some people that are not that smart earn 10 times more than others?

You see it all the time.

All the time.

And you look at him or her, you go like, how come he's making 10 times more than me?

Well, because he's doing things that you're not doing.

Period.

And success for anything,

getting into great shape, making money, growing a business, there are things that have to be done.

And action is not the optimal word.

Everything says, he takes more action than you.

No, he takes the right action.

You know, and I often have in my home studio, I have Rubik's cubes: two by two, three by three, four by four, five by five, six by six, eight by eight.

And I said, are every one of these solvable?

Everybody says, yeah, they're solvable.

So if you were committed to learning how to solve them, you could solve them, whether it's through YouTube, whether it's through a course you take, a book you read, a coach you get.

If you're committed, you can solve any one of these Rubik's Cubes.

The two by two might take you a minute.

The eight by eight might take you two hours.

But if you're committed, you can solve it, right?

How's that any different than growing a business?

Yeah.

You want to make a million dollars a year?

Great.

How many customers do you need?

A hundred, 500, a thousand.

Great.

How many prospects do you need?

Great.

Where are you going to get your prospects?

Are you doing social media?

Are you doing ads?

Are you doing joint ventures?

All the formulas are there.

So if the knowledge and skill is there, there's only three things that hold people back.

One, we talked about your identity is not in alignment with the vision and goal you have.

Two, you have beliefs that are limiting you.

And then, three, and this is a huge one: here.

A lot of that these days.

Yeah.

What if I start this and I fail?

Then what does that say about me?

How much money will I lose?

How much time will I lose?

Will I be embarrassed?

Will I be ashamed?

Will I be ridiculed?

Will I be judged?

Will I be rejected?

Will I be disappointed?

Now, when the fear circuit in the brain is activated, because we're projecting what might happen that's negative, the neurochemicals of the fear is what's running the show.

Wow.

And so in a state of fear, the untrained person will either fight it, run away, or they'll freeze into inaction.

But the trained person feels fear and uses it as fuel.

What most people don't know is

a lot of people talked about, you know, flow states.

And a lot of people think of flow state as everything is in harmony and flow like a beautiful wave.

And in a sense, that's true.

But a flow state actually

starts with stress.

So there's tension that releases, you know, maybe, I don't know how to do this.

What if I fail?

What if I succeed and then fail?

What if I'm embarrassed?

So that tension releases a little bit of this rocket fuel, right, of hormones, cortisol, epinephrine, norepinephrine.

And then if we feel that, oh, great.

Well, what if I can succeed and I could figure this out and I could do this and I'm going to take action.

Boom.

Now we have the part of the brain that releases dopamine, right?

Activated as well.

So now you have a little bit of tension, a little bit of stress neurochemicals, and a little bit of dopamine, the reward neurochemical.

Dopamine is the anticipatory,

chemical that's released when I anticipate a win.

I anticipate

a reward.

It's not the getting of the reward and the win.

It's the anticipation of the win.

So when I know how to self-regulate, sure, feel the fear.

Okay, yeah, there's a chance I will fail, but I'm prepared.

I'm ready.

I know what to do, how to do it.

I've mitigated my risk.

Now I'm going to focus on winning, on achievement.

Now that neurococktail creates this rocket fuel.

And if I know what the first action, two, or or three, that I need to take is the process, which we practice in advance.

Athletes practice in advance.

Archers practice.

Runners practice.

Basketball players practice in advance.

What do entrepreneurs do?

When have you practiced winning in your mind?

When have you practiced mitigating risk and overcoming it?

When have you practiced like a pro?

And the answer for most entrepreneurs is never.

Yeah.

And practice creates permanent patterns.

Permanent patterns activate different circuits in the brain that cause you to think, feel, and figure out how to achieve a goal.

Practice helps you take errors that you've made and correct the errors so that you actually flip on the ghost switch instead of the stop switch.

So there's all these narrow mechanics that are going on.

And nobody's teaching this.

I mean, I've been teaching this for many, many years to my students, but I wanted to understand what is going on

inside this $100 billion brain of mine.

Because functionally, it works like Michael Jordan's.

It works like, you know, every athlete's, it works like people who are performing at their best.

All of those people have had coaches and mentors level up their game mentally, emotionally, and physically.

And, you know, I love what you do, you know, when you're having your big events and you're teaching people, showing people and your podcasts, and you're giving people the knowledge the the challenge for most people and again this is um this is

why don't people take action after they watch a show like this

like is anybody concerned like why do we read books we go to a weekend event we go oh my god that was such a phenomenal oh i'm gonna write that down i gotta do this and then it sits in the drawer right like i'm curious as to why i've done that a million times

and the answer is this

when we we are learning something new, that let's say this makes sense.

Oh, that makes sense.

I'm going to do this.

A part of our brain that controls emotions gets activated and it releases this, the dopamine, maybe the serotonin or oxytocin.

So these are neurochemicals, you know, in the brain that causes feelings.

But then we learn the stuff in another part of the brain called the hippocampus.

So it's just a

holding cell for some information, but it's short term.

The reason you don't learn a language in one 15 or 20-minute session or hour session is because you learn the first time, second time, third time, fourth time in this hippocampus, and the neurons are firing and short-term memory happens there.

But what happens when you do something 10 times, 30 times, 50 times, 100 times?

Well, it moves from this part of the brain to another part of the brain called the cerebellum.

And the cerebellum is where the habitual automatic part of you is.

And if I ask anybody this question, we are all creatures of

habits.

So the habits you have right now is what you're a creature of.

And who's taught you how to stop this habit and start a new one that resonates with two, three, five, 10X revenue or physique?

Right?

We don't do that.

We haven't been taught.

Now, athletes learn this.

If you're a basketball player, you learn free throws every day.

You're free throwing, free throwing, shooting, free throwing, free throwing, shooting, running plays.

I was, you know, Marshall Falk?

Heard of him.

Marshall Falk was one of the greatest running backs, you know, played for Indianapolis.

And

anyway, I was talking to him yesterday.

We were at an event together and he was on a panel, so was I.

How much repetition?

did you guys do?

He says, oh my God.

He says, until like my feet are bleeding, you know, of repetition and catching and repeating patterns over and over and over again.

Why do football coaches, you know, have practices or basketball coaches or music, you know,

orchestras, bands?

Why do they practice?

Because practice fires the brain cells of the pattern that you want because you're learning how to practice perfectly.

And then when you repeat the perfect pattern, your brain automates it.

That's called automaticity.

And that's called a habit.

So we're all creatures of habit because of the habits we have developed and reinforced over time.

And you don't change a habit in a weekend.

You can create the new pattern in a weekend,

in 10 minutes, but you have to strengthen the pattern so it overrides the old pattern.

So if you have a pattern of making 2,000 a month or 5,000 a month or 10,000 a month, Even if you make 100,000 one month, it's an anomaly.

Your brain quickly will sabotage sabotage the next two or three months until your baseline average is the same.

So, in sales, for example,

I don't teach anybody in anything unless they're prepared to work with me for 90 days

of repetition of different patterns that reinforce themselves so that your behavior is consistent afterwards.

90 days, because I've heard 21 days.

That's old school.

That's old school.

Old school.

66 days to 365 is the new scientifically proven research out of university in Toronto.

Wow.

That's way more than people were taught growing up.

Yeah.

Well, I was taught.

Listen,

I'm a little bit older than you are, and I was taught 21 days back then, but there's no scientific basis to it.

Now, like, I use the 100-day rule.

If you want to get in shape and create a new pattern, 100 days, you want to, you know, make more money, give yourself 100 days of doing the the right patterns.

And like, why wouldn't you do it?

Like, if you could build the neuromuscle that becomes automatic to make $10,000 or $50,000 or $100,000 a month, and you learn the mindset and the skill set and the habits, like, why wouldn't you invest 100 days creating and reinforcing a new pattern that is constructive, empowering, and positive instead of reinforcing a pattern that you no longer want?

Right.

So anything that we repeat gets stronger.

We talk negatively to ourselves every day.

It gets fucking stronger.

You feel like shit every day, it gets stronger.

You drink too much, you smoke too much, you do too much of this, too much, it just gets stronger.

And our brain will reinforce any pattern.

It doesn't care if it's constructive or destructive, it's good for you or bad for you.

It doesn't care.

So I stopped, I used to be an alcoholic and I stopped the pattern 15 years ago because it was a destructive pattern.

And all I focused on was my first 100 days, one day at a time.

And I haven't had a drink in 15 years.

Wow.

I was drinking, you know, three, four cocktails a day and a bottle of wine a day.

Jeez.

Every day.

So it was a problem.

I was 233 pounds, 243 pounds, 30% body fat, borderline diabetic, hypertensive, fatty liver.

I'm in the best shape of my life now at 63 with a six-pack at 63,

right?

Because I created a new pattern and reinforced that because that's what I I wanted.

But all of the patterns exist between your two ears.

And so if you want to know what are you conditioned or programmed to achieve, just look at your results and look at them without judging yourself or blaming yourself because results are the effect, like the movie.

Right.

And no differently, if you look in the mirror and you see a lot of hair in the mirror, you don't go to the mirror.

and wipe out the hair if you want it to be less full of a head of hair like you have right you go get a haircut Yeah.

And then the mirror reflection will change.

Most people are trying to play at the level of the mirror.

Let me just see if I can wipe out the mirror.

A quick fix, yeah.

A quick fix.

Have you seen a direct correlation with success and

confidence?

Of course.

High self-esteem.

Of course.

Well, hold on a sec.

Yes and no.

There's a very, very big problem in the world today with something called imposter syndrome.

And so, when somebody achieves a level of success that came very, very quickly that they don't feel they either did the work for, even though they did, they don't feel they deserve it because they don't think they're smart enough or good enough or worthy enough,

there's a battle that goes on in their head.

It's called imposter syndrome.

And most people that feel imposter syndrome will self-sabotage alcohol, drugs, some kind of distraction, okay, other than dealing with what's causing my imposter syndrome.

You have a lot of athletes, musicians, CEOs that have never upgraded their self-image from childhood, maybe some traumas or failures from childhood that have achieved success because they've done the right things.

Okay, because you can achieve success without having the self-image.

Okay, but if you have the self-image and the confidence, you can achieve success a lot faster.

So what we have to do in those cases is upgrade their self-image to match the success that they've achieved.

We have to deactivate their comparison frames, which means I'm comparing myself to Joe or Mary or Sally or Harry that I think is smarter than me that's achieved this success.

So when we achieve success at a very, very young age or even at an older age, but our self-image hasn't caught up to the work that we actually did, even though we did do it, we have self-sabotaging behaviors.

And we see it a lot in Hollywood, see a lot with musicians, and we see a lot.

Right now, I'm seeing it with cryptocurrency, DECA millionaires and multi-millionaires and that, where they made this pile of money.

They may have spent 10 grand, you know, buying crypto, you know, 15 years ago at 10 cents or 20 cents or whatever it was.

And now they're worth 20, 30, 40 million dollars.

And the work to achieve it isn't there.

And so a lot of them are struggling with identity because,

and they did the work.

They made the investment.

But we also have these beliefs about what it takes to make 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 million dollars.

So we'll self-sabotage, we'll procrastinate, we'll take time off, we'll buy stupid shit we don't need to get to get rid of the money.

Yeah.

to create this equilibrium.

So I've worked with a few people in that camp as well.

Yeah, you see that with lottery winners too.

90

is 92 or 95 percent of all lottery winners lose the money within five years.

Wow, that's crazy.

Well, and think about why.

Part of what our brain has to do is make sure that our outside world matches our internal map or expectations.

So it's no different if you take homeless people and you put them into a really nice building that's brand new.

They will ruin the building and leave because they feel more comfortable out on the streets.

People who win the lottery feel the same thing.

They all of a sudden feel this joy and

they buy houses and cars and stuff.

And then all of a sudden, you know, people are asking them for money and they start giving money here and giving money there or lending money here or making investments there.

And all of a sudden the money's gone.

And the majority of people who have won lotteries that have been interviewed have said winning the lottery was the worst thing that ever happened to them because it disrupted

their entire life, their identity.

People that they didn't know are all of a sudden coming after them.

People that family, friends, are all of a sudden befriending them.

So they're getting this false sense of love and care.

because of the money, not because of them.

So they want to get rid of the money because their brain is looking for their level of comfort.

It's called homeostasis.

And so, yeah, we see it all the time.

We see it with entrepreneurs who all of a sudden go from startup to two, three, four, five, 10 million.

If they don't work on the inner game stuff, a lot of times it's very, very painful mentally and emotionally for them.

You see people when they sell their company to say that it's the most depressed they've ever felt.

Athletes, athletes who win the gold medal, you know, all of a sudden, you know, when they retire, like,

my identity, my behaviors, Michael Phelps talked a lot about this after he won seven or eight gold medals.

It's like, now who am I?

Yes, I'm the guy that, you know, that won the gold medals, but like, who am I now?

Athletes,

within two years of leaving, let's say, football, a lot of them don't have any money.

A lot of them are like, what am I going to do with my life?

There's nothing that takes up that purpose and meaning and drive

that they had.

And a lot of them them are just exhausted of you know a decade or two decades you know of working so hard how many athletes you see that are in great shape now you see them you know 10 years after like oh my god like aren't you working out still

and the answer is no yeah

so so again all of this though is is happening within our own our own brain and

if if if i asked everybody what what is the most amazing car all right that that you could ever own if money was no object.

And they told me the car.

And I said, Great, the car will be in your driveway, okay, tomorrow at one o'clock.

Be ready.

What if

you got into the car and you didn't know how any of the instruments worked?

And you didn't know, you know, how to get this car to perform.

It might look beautiful, but you wouldn't get the performance out of the car unless you understood how to use this car well.

Every one of us has a hundred billion dollar bio computer that we cannot even recreate right now

with no user's manual.

Not even the fundamentals.

Not even the fundamentals.

Give me three techniques to stop fear dead in its tracks.

What, what?

Give me two techniques to

concentrate like a Zen monk.

No one knows.

Yeah, no one knows.

Very, very few people have practiced the inner game.

It's like, what do I need to do?

Do that, that, and that.

Great.

Why aren't you doing it?

I don't know.

But you want to be in great shape.

You want the girlfriend.

You want the money.

Yeah, I do.

But why aren't you doing that?

I don't know.

Well, what do you mean you don't know?

Like, what do you mean you don't know?

That's like saying, I don't know why my car

won't get out of, you know, gear one.

But it's your job to know if you're driving stick shift how to use the clutch, you know, and the stick and the brake and the gas.

Like, it's your job to know.

And we know more about the human brain now, which we all have, but because it's sitting in our skull, you know, it's kind of like an unseen part of us.

We don't realize that we're not our brain.

We have a brain.

I have a brain.

I have hands, fingers.

My job is to learn how to use my hands, my feet.

And we are not taught the stuff I'm talking about in school, unless you're in some kind of high school university class that's into neuroscience and neuropsychology and not taught this.

But even if we're taught the mechanics of it, when are we taught to practice it?

Never.

Never.

And so we fumble through life where the world can be our oyster.

And we haven't even talked about, you know, energy and vibration and frequency and the quantum field that we are all in.

Yeah, we'll have to say that for part two, I think.

We'll have to say that for part two, because I am

100 trillion cells that are vibrating and oscillating, you know, at the level of my thoughts, my emotions.

And we feel each other.

We have this intuition.

He seems like a cool guy.

He seems like an asshole, right?

We have this intuitive factor.

What is that?

Can I develop that?

Right?

Am I able to tap into the field of all knowledge and intelligence with my brain?

Give this a thought for a moment.

Do you hear music in the room right now?

No.

Is there music here right now?

Not that I can hear.

But is there music in the room?

No.

Really?

Got a hundred bucks?

You want to bet?

No.

Okay.

So let's say I take my phone, turn it on, no wires.

I turn it on.

I say, Sean, what music do you love?

Hip-hop.

Hip-hop.

Could I tune into hip-hop station right now and listen to hip-hop with you?

Yeah.

So how would that happen?

My phone has a receiver.

I can tune in to the frequency that's already in this room for hip-hop, right?

Yes or no?

Yeah.

So is there music in this room?

Yeah.

Oh, what if I say, Sean, I fucking hate hip-hop.

I want classical.

You go, oh, classical.

Could I just say, let's get off of that station and let me hop onto the classical station.

Hip-hop station tunes out.

Frequency is still here.

But until I tune in, I don't hear the music.

Wow.

That's crazy.

What do you think your brain does?

Your brain receives and transmits frequency.

Have you ever walked into a room and you know something is wrong?

And you say, hey, what's wrong, guys?

And they say, ah, nothing, nothing.

You go, no, no, come on, what's wrong?

How do you know something's wrong?

You can feel it in your gut, right?

Well, your intuition.

You're picking up the vibration.

So for everybody listening, I want you to ask yourself this question.

Are you tuning in to why you can't?

Are you tuning in to why you won't?

Are you tuning in to being afraid?

Are you tuning in to you're not enough?

Are you tuning in to you're too young?

Are you tuning in to I'm not skilled enough?

What are you tuning into?

Just check your self-talk.

Check your emotions.

Your behavior will follow.

But whenever we want to achieve goals, you're about setting goals.

That's easy.

That's like sex, right?

Easy, fun.

Oh, my God.

Raising a child takes a little bit more energy and time.

Your brain is the most powerful electromagnetic receiving and switching station known to humankind.

I can tune in to the energy that's in this room, energy information,

right?

If everything is energy, am I tuning in to the vision and goals I want and how I'm going to achieve them every second, every minute, every hour, every day?

Or am I tuning in to all the reasons, stories, excuses, beliefs of why I can't?

You get to turn the dial.

You are the master, controller, and commander.

And when you become aware that you are, and then you start to practice

your vision, your goals, the strategies you need to implement, now you're using your brain in the most powerful way possible.

And now you're doing something that we call a sympathetic resonance, where we are in resonance, thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations, and behaviors with the vision and goals we want to achieve.

And we eliminate what we call as destructive interference patterns,

which will be like if I had classical in one and you had punk rock in the other, they basically like can't, it would sound like shit.

So a destructive pattern is negative self-talk, destructive pattern,

disempowering emotions i'm not good enough i'm afraid what if i fail what if i'm embarrassed what what what if i get found out right what if i what if i'm rejected what if i'm abandoned all those negative what ifs cause a feeling that feeling is what you're putting out into the field that you're in

have you ever heard like you know if you're around you know a wild animal don't show fear because they pick it up yeah a bear right a bear a lion dogs pick it up right?

They're feeling.

Snakes pick it up.

Right.

Because they use energy, right, as a mechanism.

Elephants pick it up.

Wow.

Right.

So you and I are literally, you know, if you were to break down this physical body, if you took a look at my hand with an electron microscope.

You're going to see vibrating packets of energy.

Right?

If I have positive thoughts, I can see blood flow moving to the left prefrontal cortex of my brain.

And if I have negative, disempowering, feel for thoughts, it shifts over to the right prefrontal cortex part of the brain, changing my vibratory rate and structure.

We can see that now with curlie and photography and looking

at brain scans, but also we can take blood out while you're in a fearful state and we can see the structure.

I'm sorry, the

structure of your blood, of how much cortisol is in there, how much epinephrine epinephrine's in there uh how much dopamine's in there how much oxytocin is in there based on how you're feeling

so it's a complex tool it's like you know we have our own rocket ship but nobody's taught us how to be an astronaut but we want to fly in space

so you know the the all the work i've done to understand in literally 44 years is how do i just use my brain you know five 10 better than most

how do i just how do i just hone it, tweak it, and play the game a little bit better?

And I know there's a mental game, an emotional game, and a physical game.

And yes, there's a spiritual game, but we don't need to get into that.

But if I can get my mental game and my emotional game down pat,

it will take care of me moving into action.

Because I move into action when I have confidence and certainty and I reduce my risk.

So all of these interplay and goes back to, for anybody that's 20, 30, 35 years old watching right now, first you start off with the vision.

Get clear on the vision.

Why?

Because your brain, once you give it that vision, you lock and load on that.

It's like a GPS system, like a guidance missile system.

You lock in the coordinates of where you want the missile to go.

Brain works like that.

And then the brain has this error detection mechanism that knows when it's off track or on track.

You course correct, course correct, course correct, like a plane that leaves Las Vegas and goes to New York, it's off course 99% of the time.

But the GPS system autocorrects, autocorrects, autocorrects, autocorrects.

The pilot says, yeah, we're still going to New York.

Your job is to be the pilot and let the GPS system guide you there.

Lollah.

Right.

And so first we pick the destination, even if you don't know how to achieve it.

The how, how to achieve a goal always comes after the clarity of the goal.

You don't need to know how to climb Mount Everest until you decide I'm going to climb climb Mount Everest.

You don't need to know how to make a million dollars until you make a commitment, I'm going to make a million bucks.

And since the how is readily available, that's not your biggest concern.

But what happens when people say, well, I don't know how,

say, well, you haven't committed to.

Why would you need to know how?

What if I can show you all the how after you say I'm committed?

What happens when we say, I want to achieve the goal and I don't know how,

we're telling our brain, I don't know how, therefore I have doubt.

When I have doubt, I have uncertainty.

When I have uncertainty, I don't feel safe.

When I don't feel safe, I have fear.

When I have fear, the natural automatic reaction is fight, freeze, or flee.

That's just how the system works.

So I want to increase my confidence and certainty.

And there are specific mechanisms that our brain needs.

Give me the what, the destination, the end goal.

Give me why.

Why must you do it now?

Now that involves the limbic system in the brain.

So if I get the what, frontal cortex, limbic system, layer underneath, right now I have the motive for the action to override the fear, the doubt, the anxiety, the worry, the stress, the failure.

My why has to be bigger than all of the reasons why not.

That's emotional capital.

And then our brain needs to know how are you going to do this.

The how are you going to do this comes third in the equation, not first or second.

So I'm going to go back to there is a very specific way to use our brain better.

And when we use our brain the way it's designed to be used, then we can achieve goals a little faster.

a little smarter and a whole lot easier.

But in the absence of the sequence,

we're taking that Rubik's Cube we talked about earlier and we're just fucking trying to solve it.

And 99% of people never solve the Rubik's Cube, not because it's not solvable.

They're just randomly trying to come up with, well, should I move here?

No, put this over here, put this over here, no, this, move that, move the, and they waste all their time on that as opposed to stop.

Like, stop.

Don't take action right now.

Let's think first.

Let's plan.

Let's do.

Let's review.

And so those are some of the best lessons I've learned in 44 years of achieving goals, not just setting goals.

I love that.

I've learned so much, Sean.

This was a blast.

I know you got an app too.

We'll link it below.

Where else can people find you and see what you're up to?

Yeah, so the Intersize app, thank you.

They can find my books on Amazon.

I'm on Instagram.

I'm doing a lot of social media these days.

on YouTube.

I've got hundreds of hours of training on YouTube.

The thing that I'd like people to understand is:

I don't care how old you are.

I don't care what failures you've had.

I don't care what traumas you've had.

I don't care what your childhood was like or what your life is like now.

If you can imagine a better future right now, there's a path to achieving it.

Period.

End of story.

End stop.

I love it.

We'll end it there.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Thanks, Sean.

Yep.

Check them out, guys.

See you next time.