The Resilient Mind - Are You Interested or Are You Committed? - John Assaraf

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

John Assaraf is a renowned expert featured in the influential film and book The Secret, contributing significantly to its global success. He is the founder of NeuroGym, a company dedicated to using the latest in brain science to help individuals improve their mental fitness and achieve personal excellence.Upcoming Event: How to Manage Feat and Uncertainty in Tough Times (Register Today)Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠This episode was created in partnership with Tom Bilyeu. Subscribe to Tom Bilyeu’s channel for more inspiring speeches:https://www.youtube.com/c/TomBilyeu Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to, are you interested, or are you committed, with John Asarraf. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. What happened for me personally when I was a teen between age of 13 to 17, I got into enormous amount of trouble with the law. I did a lot of unethical things, and I was getting myself in so much trouble. And I had one mentor that my brother introduced me to. His name was Alan Brown. He was a very successful philanthropist, entrepreneur, and he agreed to me with me for lunch one day.

And he asked me, like, why are you doing these things? You seem like a nice young kid. And I said, I don't know. I just want to make some money, and I just want to fit in. He goes, but you seem like you're intelligent. Why don't you just use your brain's natural abilities? I go, well, listen, based on my education, and based on my education, and based on what the teachers have told me,

I'm not going to do very well in life. And I left high school in grade 11 thinking that I'm not worthy enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough. And this one man in one minute, in one meeting, changed my life because he asked me, what goals do you have? And I said, what do you mean, what goals do I have?

I said, I want to go out this weekend to the bar, I want to have some good food, I want to find a nice young lady to maybe hook up with, And he says, no, no, but what are your bigger goals? And I didn't have any. So he actually sent me home. And he said, fill out these pieces of paper.

And on the pieces of paper, it said, like, what age do you want to retire by? I was 19. This was May of 1980. I wasn't even started yet. They said, but just fill out these papers. So I said, I want to retire by the time of $45 with $3 million. I want to have a Mercedes. I want to have a house.

I want to travel the world. I want to have a great lifestyle. And so I came back on Monday and he looked at it and he asked me one question and that question transformed my life. And he said, are you interested in achieving these goals or are you committed? And I stopped and I looked at it and he was standing up. I was sitting at my desk there at his office and I asked him, Mr. Brown and said, what's the difference? And he said, if you're interested, you'll do what's convenient. You'll come up with stories and excuses and reasons why you can't and you'll use your education.

is an excuse, you'll use your stories an excuse, you'll use the fact your father was a cab driver and was a gambler and never had any money. You'll use all of that as your reasons why you can't. He says, but if you're committed, you will do whatever it takes. You'll let go of your stories. You'll let go of your excuses. You'll let go of all the reasons you currently have that are formulating your identity of yourself. And you'll learn how to let that go and become who you are destined to become. I had been in So many situations where I was so embarrassed and ashamed for myself and for my mother and father. And here was a man who was kind, generous, caring, empathetic.

He didn't talk down to me. He lifted me up. But then he also said, I can show you how. If you are committed, I can show you how. And I had nothing to lose at that point. You've become this really extraordinary example of rewriting. writing your story. How did you get out from under the story that you would have had to have been forming if your father was abusive? Because now I know that you guys, you're in very

regular communication. Oh, yeah. Just turned 88 and where we, yeah. It's amazing. I forgave him 50 years ago. What did that process look like? I know a lot of people are watching this right now. They are stuck in a story man, like something happened to them as kids or whatever's happening them now, they don't know how to get out from under that story and could never conceive of having a beautiful relationship that they've re-explored and reimagined. When I was in my 20s, one of the things that Alan put me on a path to was personal development. Read a book a month, go to events, listen to cassette tapes back then of motivational stuff for motivation, for inspiration, for strategies, for tactics of what to do to lift, raise your

your level of skill and knowledge. So I went to this event and I brought up this, this challenge that I had with my father. And the instructor said, like, when are you going to forgive him? I said, never. I'm never going to forgive him. Fuck that, forgive him. There was so much pain. And the instructor said, well, if you're never going to forgive him, then you're the one taking the poison pill hoping he's going to die or he's going to be affected. He says, you don't forgive him for him. You forgive him so you can move on. I was like, aha, number one. And then he said, why don't you ask your father why he did it? Whoa. Like, why was he like that? And so when I mustered up enough courage on the phone with my father, I said, Dad, like, how come you ever said I love you? He says, well, my father never said he loved me.

That's not what a man says. But you say to my sister. sister, says, well, that's okay to say to a girl or to a woman. He said, why did you hit me so much? Why did you? He says, because you were being a bad boy. I said, but why didn't you talk to me? Like, why didn't you just talk? And he says, well, because my father hit me too.

I had to put you in your place. I had to teach you the right way to stop the behavior. And it was at that moment that I realized he just didn't know better. That's what he learned was the process to try and help me. So he's not a malicious human being. He's a kind, loving, caring man. But he was taught to get compliance hit so the pain will cause you not to do it again. And in theory, understand the brain signs today, it does work in some cases, but especially

with children, even adults. the physical and mental and emotional trauma that's created, when somebody who loves you also inflicts so much pain to you, there's confusion, the neural network in the brain says, I love this person, my mother, my father, my best friend, whatever, and then there's so much pain associated. Now we have these patterns in our brains of this love and fucking hate. Love and pain, and it's very, very confusing. But after this dialogue with him, I started to tell him, I love you.

And it took three years. I used to call him every week. I started telling him, I love you, Dad. Hang up. I love you, Dad. Hang up. I love you, Dad. Hang up.

Then one day he says to me, I love you too, boy. And then he has never not said I love you to me, my brother, or my sister since then. Let me come back to the Alan Brown story. When I came back that following couple of days with my goals, and he asked me committed or interested, I said I'm committed, shook my hand, he then put me through real estate school for five weeks. I graduated from real estate school, May 20th, 1980, and the only reason those dates are ingrained in my brain, I passed the real estate test on my own without cheating.

So that was step one. When I came back to the office, he had the forms that I had filled out. He says, great, sit down. So I want you to read every one of them, every morning that you come in the office at 7.30, and I want you to run your fingers across them. Were these the goals of the balloons? Those are the goals, the goals that I had. So he had me write my vision for health, wealth, relationships, career, business, finances, charity, fun, experiences, everything, every area of my life.

He had these documents. He said, I want you to read them every day. And you're going to do it while you come into the office so that I know that you've done them. and I want you to run your fingers across them as you're reading them. And then when you're finished one paragraph, close your eyes, and I want you to feel, what would it be like if that was true? So you got me to see it, to touch it, to close my eyes, and visualize it, and to feel it. So at the time he didn't understand what he was really doing,

but he was causing me to create new neural patterns in my brain that did not exist, before. The only success that I'd ever really seen was on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. And I said one day, I want a life like that. And so every single day for a year, I had to do that. And it only took 10 or 15 minutes. And there was also beliefs. You talked about what else was in there. He also asked me to write down, what would you have to believe about yourself in order to achieve those goals? I said, well, I'd have to believe I don't know what you don't. He goes, I don't want to know what you don't. He says, what would you have to believe? Well, I have to believe I'm smart enough. I'd have to believe

I'm deserving enough. I'd have to believe I'm worthy enough. I'd have to believe I'm capable of doing this. I'd have to believe these things. I wrote out a bunch of things and he added a few more. He says, great, now I want you to record those things. And on your way to work and on your drive to look at real estate homes, because 19 getting to real estate, you listen to those over and over and over and over again. until you can recite every single one of them. So he taught me the power of repetition. He taught me the power of looking at stuff, touching stuff,

feeling stuff, seeing stuff, hearing stuff, memorizing stuff. And at the time I was 19, I said, I mean, I felt this was fucking ludicrous to me, right? This is like, what the hell am I doing here? It was like, it was nuts. But that first year, at 19, I made like $30 some odd thousand dollars, which was five grand more than my dad made. made as a cab driver. So I said, something's working. I just kept doing it. I was too afraid not to. So I kept doing it. In the second year, I made $151,000. Wow. Five times. Now, in the second year,

he started upgrading my knowledge and skills more. So he started to say, okay, instead of doing this now, now you've graduated to doing this. And he taught me some upgraded skills. And so the combination of training my brain at a young age with beliefs that I wanted to have, He taught me the right habits to have, daily rituals, you know, for goal achievement versus goal setting. That's interesting. Right? So he said, everybody sets goals. Either they write him down or they don't, they have them in their head.

I'm going to teach you how to achieve goals. It's really interesting coming from the guy that was in the secret. And I love what you've talked about, the difference between the law of attraction and the law of goya. Oh, yeah, yeah. So talk to us about that. So the law of Goya is simply get off your ass. So if you think and you believe and you emotionalize, you visualize, and you create your plan for how am I actually going to achieve this?

So what do I need to do? When am I going to do it? How specifically? How am I going to tweak it, measure it, and iterate it so that I'm consistently making progress? I learned the value of progress versus perfection. None of my mentors ever had me focus on perfection. They had me focus on progress to just keep getting better.

Little incremental gains every day, every week, every month, every quarter. And even when you move backwards a couple of steps, what's the progress that you made and what you learned? So I was taught that failure is an opportunity to learn. and I was also taught to disassociate me being a failure from failing. For sure. I want to go back to what you're talking about with beliefs. And you said, this was so cool.

You were talking about how you wrote down these beliefs and you were reading them over and you were doing what you're told and you were running your finger across it, you really allowing yourself to feel it, imagine it, and your brain was screaming something at you. My brain was screaming, that's bullshit. That's not true. You're not successful.

You're not earning that amount of money. You're not smart. you're not this, but I was also taught at the same time that when that happens, first and foremost, that's normal. That's the old self and the old patterns trying to fight for their life. And he said, with repetition and emotion and consistency, initially it's hard. And you have to use conscious effort to create the new beliefs. He says, but over 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 180 days. that new pattern that you're focusing on and paying attention to, your brain basically says,

well, I guess you really don't need those old patterns. You keep activating these new ones. Let's just make these ones work and let's make these real. But I wanted to understand what happened. And with even the law of attraction, I was taught the law of attraction. I was 23, 24 years old. Also at a real estate conference, they were talking about this law of attraction thing, that there's this energy, everything's made up of energy, I am energy, you are energy, and my thoughts create this resonance between what I attract and what I don't. I'm like, oh good, I like that shit. I want to attract more of the good stuff, right?

And so I bought in, like I bought into stuff that just made sense to me, but then I was a voracious student. I wanted to understand how. Explain to me how it works. If somebody tells me visualize, I go, why? Like, how does it work? Like, you ask me to visualize, like, why does it work? Like, why should I invest my time on that versus something else?

If you're asking me to use affirmations, like, how specifically, why, how does it work? If you're asking me to emotionalize, well, what's happening in me to tell me I need to create these false senses of feelings? I want to know why it works. It has to do with circuits in the brain and neurochemics. that are released. And so when we feel something, chances are that we're going to release dopamine in the brain, the feel-good neurochemical, that activates the reward center of the brain. And chance are if we feel that and we have this positive emotion around it and that neurochemistry

is flooding our brain and our body with feel-good chemicals, we're actually activating the motivational center of the brain. And so when we visualize, when we set a goal, when we take an action step, when we emotionalize, when we read our goals, the initial flood of neurochemicals, dopamine, serotonin, feel-good chemicals, and then if we share it with a friend, oxytocin, those three neurochemicals, those are the neurochemicals of goal achievement. But then there's the other side of it, the other circuits of fear, of stress, where epinephrine, cortisol, or epinephrine, the stress hormones can be released as well. And so I'm fascinated and I want to teach people the stuff that we've learned about

beliefs, self-esteem, self-worth, fears, and the stuff that really holds people back. Because all the how-to, how to get healthy and stay healthy, we know. How do I build a business and sustain it? We know. How do I get into a relationship and make it success? We know. We know most of the how-to for anything that anybody wants to do. do in this time frame that we live in. So the how to is the easiest part of the equation. So the harder part of the equation is, why am I not doing the things that I know I should be doing? And why am I not doing the things that I could find out easily how to do? Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.