John Assaraf: Innercise – Your Brain’s Inner Power
John Assaraf is one of the leading mindset and behavior experts in the world. He is founder and CEO of NeuroGym, a company dedicated to using the most advanced technologies and evidence based brain training methods to help individuals unleash their fullest potential and maximize their results.John Assaraf has built 5 multimillion dollar companies, written 2 New York Times Bestselling books and featured in 8 movies. His latest book is “Innercise – the New Science to Unlock your Brain’s Inner Power”.
An Interview with John Assaraf: Innercise – Your Brain’s Inner Power
Interview by Sandie Sedgbeer
For many years, scientists believed that our brains are forming new connections and growing new cells every day. What’s more, research suggests that when you practice a variety of specific brain-related activities, you can not only change your brain, but you can transform every area of your life, including your health, finances, relationships, and your career.
To share the science behind changing your brain is New York Times best-selling author and Behavioral and Mindset Expert, John Assaraf, whose latest book “Innercise – the New Science to Unlock your Brain’s Inner Power” shows you how to release the mental and emotional obstacles that sabotage success and prevent you from achieving your full potential in life.
Sandra Sedgbeer: John Assaraf, your bio describes you as a serial entrepreneur, a brain researcher, CEO of NeuroGym, and in the last 25 years you’ve grown five multi-million-dollar companies. You’re the author of two New York Times best-selling books, you were feted in the movie The Secret, and now you’ve just released your third book, Innercise: The New Science to Unlock Your Brain’s Hidden Power. That’s not bad for a kid who left high-school after 11th grade and was still wondering at the age of 19 what he wanted to be when he grew up. So, before we talk about Innercise, tell us what happened to change your brain and your life.
John Assaraf: I got into a lot of trouble from the age of 12 to 17/18 with the law and at school. I left school after Grade 11. I was getting into so much trouble than before. By chance, my brother introduced me to a gentleman named Alan Brown, who was a wonderful philanthropist, father, and business owner, and he agreed to meet me for lunch one day to find out if he could set me on the right path instead of on the way to the morgue or jail. He asked me why I thought I wasn`t doing well in life and why was I getting into so much trouble, and I said to him: “I don’t know, I’m just hanging around with a group of kids trying to make some money and fit in.” He said, “Why don’t you use your brain differently and fit in doing things legally and ethically and become the man you are meant to become?”
So, I listened to him with much chagrin. Then he pulled out these sheets of paper that had goals for 1980 written on them (this was 38 years ago), and he said: “What are your goals for health and wealth and relationships and career and business and fun and experiences and charity?” I had no idea. I was 19 years old. So, he sent me off for a few hours, saying, “I want you to go off and write some goals down. Don’t worry about how to achieve them, just write down what you would like if you had no mental or emotional or strategic obstacles”.
I went, and I wrote out these goals for probably about three or four hours, and when I came back, he read them and said, “Where did you get most of these ideas”? I said, “Most are from the TV show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. I want a nice house and \a nice car, and to travel the world first class, etc.” He said, “All that’s possible, but it’s only possible if you answer this one question: Are you interested in achieving those goals, or are you committed?” To be honest with you, at 19 I had no idea what the difference was, so I asked: “What’s the difference, Mr. Brown?”
He said to me, “If you’re interested, you’ll come up with stories and excuses why you can’t. You’ll come up with reasons and with all the beliefs in your past and your present of why you can’t achieve these goals, but if you’re committed, you’ll upgrade your knowledge, you’ll upgrade your skills, and you’ll develop the beliefs and the habits that are required to keep these goals.” Then he said: Every one of these goals is easy to achieve. You just don’t know how, and the how is the easiest part of the equation.” That moment changed my life because I said to Mr. Brown “I’m committed.” Then he mentored me for a few years, and my life transformed, and I went on to do a few pretty neat things because of one man, one question, one lunch. I’ve taken everything that he’s taught me, and a lot of what I’ve put in several of my other books, and I wrote Innercise. I took what Jack LaLanne did in the ’70s and ’80s for Exercise, and I said, what about the User’s Manual for the Brain? And what about Innercises for the Brain for self-confidence, for certainty, for letting go of disempowering beliefs, or low self-image or fears that hold us back? All of these are happening in our brain, and yet, for the most part, we’ve exercised – I like to call it Innercised – our neural muscles. Now we know through the latest brain research that you can strengthen your mind, and you can upgrade your emotional skills, and I’ve created the User’s Manual for exactly how to do that so people can achieve whatever goals in health, wealth, relationships or career faster and easier. Not fast and easy, but faster and easier by eliminating the obstacles.
SANDRA SEDGBEER: Alan Brown introduced you to the importance of mindset. You became a successful Entrepreneur. You made a lot of money. You achieved all the things you said you wanted to. You could have stopped there, but you didn’t. What motivated you to become an expert in brain research?
JOHN ASSARAF: I wanted to understand what happened to me. I was voted most likely to fail in life when I was in Grade 11 High School, and they had trophies for who’s going to do the best, and who’s most likely to fail in life and I was the kid who got that trophy. So, when I changed, I wanted to know what happened to me? How was that possible? It just didn’t make any sense to me, and then about 20 years ago the first batch of research started to come out that our brain is mouldable, pliable, that we have these things called neural networks that we’re not born with, but we develop.
For example, I was taught that a belief is nothing more than a group of cells or neurons in your brain that has formed a connection that has been reinforced. The same is true of your habits, perspectives, and paradigms. So, the idea that we’re not hardwired and that we’re not going to be just like our mother, father or grandparents was the first Ah-Hah! That I had, that maybe I changed because of some of the things I was doing – and, in essence, was rewiring my brain to a higher level of performance. Then, the research started getting clearer that we are, in fact, able deliberately and consciously to create new patterns; that when we create them and reinforce them, they become the new habit or the new thought habit or emotional habit or behavioral habit, but there are a few other things I discovered that happen. Like resetting the thermostat in your home to a different temperature by turning a knob, we can reset how much we weigh and what our weight’s best point is in our brain, or our income’s best point, or our relationship’s best point which our brain developed.
So, when I started to understand, that’s what I did. I started to dive deep into the research with some of the top neuroscientists and neuro-psychologists in the world, and I have this knack to take complex stuff and make it simple so people like me could understand it. So, I started to teach it, and hundreds and thousands of my students around the world started to achieve amazing results in weight loss and earning more income and growing their businesses and getting their relationships to work better than they ever worked before. So I felt compelled to do for as many people I can what Mr. Alan Brown did for me. That was to give me hope and also to give me the how.
SANDRA SEDGBEER: Many people believe they are dominated by their right or left brain. We often hear that women are more right-brained than men. Men are more left-brained than women. You talk about the hemispheres differently. You even nick-named them, Einstein and Frankenstein. Why?
JOHN ASSARAF: To help people understand that we have two brains, not one. There’s a part of our brain called the left prefrontal cortex which is just above your left eye behind your skull, that we now know through brain scan imaging is the executive director part of your brain. So, if you think about an orchestra or band leader that creates the pace and harmony, the tonality, vision, and behavior for the band or the orchestra, our left prefrontal cortex does that for us; it’s the executive director of our life. We call that Einstein.
Now, right across on the other side above your right eye behind your skull is the right prefrontal cortex and we call that Frankenstein. Why? Well, Einstein wants to imagine and to look at all possibilities, and create all these amazing plans, and directions and directives, and Frankenstein is there to say: “Hey, what about the last time you tried that and failed? You got hurt emotionally, or you got hurt financially.” Frankenstein has to go into the memory bank to pull out all the things that could create danger or hurt you, whether it’s spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally or financially. Frankenstein acts almost like a safety mechanism just in case. So, Einstein wants to put a foot on the gas and Frankenstein wants to put a foot on the brake, and that’s why most people are stuck making a lot of noise and a lot of movement but not getting on. They don’t understand that both Einstein and Frankenstein are there to help and guide you, and you have to know how to activate Einstein.
Continue to Page 2 of the Interview with John Assaraf on Innercise
