Reprogram Your Brain for Success with John Assaraf

In this Episode

• [02:21]John describes his recent experience with spiritual awareness and consciousness.
• [06:04]Our minds and expectations are our views of reality. How to discard the scarcity mindset and develop the pattern of an abundance mindset?
• [11:18]Stephan and John discuss objective reality and tuning in the reticular activating system.
• [20:00]John explains how the brain functions by tuning into different frequencies.
• [30:10]While Stephan mentions the willing suspension of disbelief, John talks further about positive cognitive bias and disappointment avoidance.
• [34:41]Considering what we pay attention to, how does it affect our perspective and experience?
• [38:38]How does meditation help John tap into the field of possibilities—tapping into his own subconscious or the creative power within him?
• [41:01]How can John transcend his physical state?
• [48:47]Is it possible to change your universe’s variables and your experience of what reality is?
• [50:34]What does the law of polarity state? How does John describe the spiritual world?
• [55:25]John offers free articles and videos on neuroscience and neuropsychology. Visit his company’s website, myneurogym.com and his website, johnassaraf.com.

Jump to Links and Resources

John, it’s so great to have you on the show.

It’s so great to be with you finally. I know I had to cancel the last time, so this is great to be with you today.

What a pleasure and honor. I’m sure we will reveal lots of light in this episode. You could start by sharing something that might have happened in the last week or two that gave you a new distinction or insight into reality, creation, and the Creator into your purpose. Something new and fresh because what many people take for granted is with somebody of your stature who has figured it all out, but it’s a journey. It’s always a journey for everyone, even somebody who’s made it as far as you.

I can relate to something this morning that I don’t know if it’s about the Creator, but maybe the creative force and intelligence within us. I was at the gym earlier this morning with a good friend I’ve known since the mid-90s.

This morning around 6, we texted back and forth, “hey, you’re going to the gym?” “Yeah, I’m going.” “Okay, I’ll see you there in an hour.” So we get to the gym, and he says, “Hey, do you want to just do my routine with me today?” So I go, “well, I was looking forward to doing my routine because today’s my chest and my triceps day.”

But then I caught myself wanting to do the same thing, the same pattern I’m used to. So I said, “you know what, let’s do your routine today.” He was working on the core and doing some other types of exercises. I was going through his routine, noticing how much resistance I had to do something different and something new.

Innercising the right neuro muscles will strengthen your brain. It’s like filling the grooves with soil and planting something beautiful to grow above it. Click To Tweet

The spiritual side of it was the awareness of my thoughts, the awareness of my bodily sensations, and my absolute rationalizations. I was telling myself the rational lies in my head and how much I wanted to stay with what was familiar. Then, lo and behold, I surrendered. I allowed, and I said, “let’s let Jim lead.” And he took me through some of his exercises.

It wasn’t easy at first, and then it became easier. But at that moment, I realized we are such creatures of habit. We develop these habits and patterns that become comfortable for us. We prefer to stay in our comfort zone. So that was a good aha moment of allowing something else to enter your consciousness and go with that flow.

We had a great workout. I worked on some muscles that I don’t normally train in that way. It reminded me to be open to what presents itself. Stop resisting so much to do what is familiar.

Yeah, I remember hearing this. It was probably from Jaiya, the sexologist. She was my first guest on this podcast back in 2015. She explained that patterns become grooves in the brain. Grooves become ruts; ruts become graves. Mixing it up was basically the bottom line of that.

It reminded me to be open to what presents itself. Stop resisting so much to do what is familiar.

Yeah. Those will be a negative pattern, but we can also say muscles. The muscles are exercised or what I call innercised. I’ve got that thing right there called innercise. They become strengthened. If you’re innercising the right neuro muscles, you can fill those graves with soil and plant something beautiful above it.

Yeah. I know you’re well-known for many things in personal development, but one is how to generate wealth. It has to do with our minds and mindset, expectations, and view of reality. Anaïs Nin said, “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.”

How does that show up for you and for the people you’re inspiring and teaching in the area of wealth?

You asked a question earlier at the beginning about spiritual awarenesses. The first question I always like to think about is, “is there an abundance of everything right here right now? Is there an abundance of wealth, money, minerals, food, or innovation?” If there is an abundance, and some people believe and behave in ways of abundance, why do some people believe there’s scarcity? Or why are they experiencing scarcity when there’s so much abundance?

If we go back to when we were born, were you born with a scarcity or an abundance mindset? Were you born with any beliefs? Were you born with any fears? Were you born with an “I’m not good enough self-image” or “I don’t deserve the success that he, she, or they have?” Were you born with any of those ideas? And the answer’s no.

The question then becomes, what is a belief in the brain? What is a self-image in the brain? Why do some fears cause some people to fight, freeze, or run away from it while others run towards it? What are the mechanics if it’s true that every brain functionally works the same?

If every brain functionally works the same, every car functionally works the same. Some people can drive cars like the Indy 500 at 260 miles an hour. Some people are petrified and don’t drive well at 70 miles an hour. Are these skill sets that we can learn?

If there is an awareness and a match in our brain, then our brain pays attention to it, especially if it’s important to us.

An abundance mindset is a pattern that we can develop. But the question becomes, “how did I become conditioned to believe and expect certain things?” Whether money, your physique, relationship, business, or career? Again, it goes back to what we started out with earlier: we’re conditioned to believe, expect, feel, do, and have certain things.

Can I retrain my brain to move from A-B, scarcity or security, to success and significance? Can we go from “I’m afraid of failing” to “I can turn my fear into my fuel for success?” “I’m worried that I might be embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, judged, or rejected if I do this and it doesn’t work out or look as good as I’d like to because of what he, she, or they will think of me or say about me.” Is it possible to shift that in our brains? Of course, the answer is possible because we now know we’ve only been doing science for, give or take, 500-600 years or so.

In the last 20 years, we’re starting to understand that when you say, “I don’t see the world as it is, I see the world as I am,” or as the patterns of recognition that I’ve learned, or I’ve been conditioned to see the world, we’re basically sitting in a movie theater projecting onto the screen what our interpretation is of the outside world. It’s our interpretation of the outside world. We might be looking at the screen, but we only see the same movie if we’re aligned, in residence, and share some of the same beliefs or perspectives.

The question is, can I teach my brain to see more? Because it’s not your eyes that see, right? It’s our brain that sees—the very mechanics of how the brain sees what it’s conditioned to see. So I have a map of reality, of what’s possible for me. Why? Because I have the history of how many years, months, and moments I’ve been alive, and the experiences and the meanings that I gave or learned to give things.

Can I change what it is that I see? Because if it’s true that there’s an abundance of how-to for health, wealth, relationships, and career, is it possible for me to train my brain to see what’s already here? And the answer is a resounding yes.

There are so many things to unpack here. One thing that popped into my mind was I recently saw a YouTube video. I forget which neuroscientist or scientist said it, but it was backed up by hardcore science. What he said stuck with me was the brain’s ability to observe objective reality. The likelihood that it is doing so is 0%.

If you think of which video that was, I’d love to see it. In objective reality, as I said, our brain allows light through it. There’s a part of our brain called the thalamus. Whether it’s light or sound, it’s light energy or sound energy information. If we read something off a page, it’s going through our eyes, going through this place called the thalamus. Then the thalamus sends it to different parts of our brain for processing.

If there is an awareness and a match in our brain, then our brain pays attention to it, especially if it’s important to us. That’s why if you just bought a red car, you tend to see a lot of red cars. Likewise, if your spouse or a friend is pregnant, you tend to see more pregnant women because it rises to the level of importance for us.

The reticular activating system is tuned in.

Yeah, the cells, the reticular cells specifically. We see the world based on what’s important to us and what’s familiar to us. There are 400 billion bits of information per second coming into our consciousness. We delete or distort 99.999% of that on a second-by-second basis. That means I’m seeing only some of what there is to see. I see what I have trained my brain to see or what I expect to see.

When I work with clients, everything that I do starts with a vision of what they would like their life to be sometime in the future, whether it’s financial, business, health, relationships, career, fun, experiences, contributions, et cetera. What would it be like if you could wave a magic wand? So why do I do that?

If we start with, “is this true?” And I’ll ask you, is it true that if you want to, let’s say, lose 20 pounds of fat, keep it off, and be 50% or 25% healthier than you are right now, is it true that how to do that is readily available? Is it true that somebody knows how you can do that if you want to make five times more money right now?

Is it true that if you want to start a business from scratch and grow it to a million dollars, How-To exist? Is it true that a How-To is done if you want to write a book, even though you’ve never written a word? Either by yourself or through a ghostwriter, the How To exist. If you want a better relationship with your significant other, is it true that somebody knows how to? Is it true that you can figure out if you want to travel the world with a low or no budget? And the answer is yes to everything for health, wealth, relations, career, business, et cetera.

An abundance mindset is a pattern that we can develop. We’re conditioned to believe, expect, feel, do, and have certain things; thus, we can cut out any limitation that causes a scarcity mindset. Click To Tweet

That means that it’s possible for you, but there may be some obstacles. When we release those obstacles, we can achieve the vision that we have. We set the vision, set some goals on our way to that vision, create some strategies of how to do it and achieve that goal, and then we ask, “well, what body of knowledge do I need?”

What skills do I need to upgrade or borrow from somebody else to help me achieve this, and what tools and resources may exist right now to help me achieve that? This means that the achievement of goals is based on one thing and one thing alone initially. And that is, are you committed to achieving that goal?

Because if you’re not committed, by default, that means you’re just interested. And if you’re interested, you will do what’s easy, convenient, or familiar. But if you’re committed, you will do whatever it takes. Ethically and professionally, you will do whatever it takes because the How-To already exists.

If the How-To exists, that means we live in an abundant universe and world where everything we need is right here, right now. So unless you’re trying to colonize Mars, you can be more innovative for most goals.

Yeah, but if everything under the sun has existed and been created from Ecclesiastes—

No, that’s not the case. That’s different from what the creative force says.

Okay.

The ability to think and connect with possible options to achieve goals is greater than we ever thought possible. We realize we each have a brain with at least $100 billion, the greatest bio-computer.

We have yet to develop cures for many cancers, but somebody will because that’s what they’re focusing on. We didn’t know how to put humans on the moon back in ‘68. We develop the technologies and the methodologies after we make the decision. When John F. Kennedy said, “put a man on the moon and bring him safely back to Earth before the decade is out.” We did not know how to do that at the time.

When we run short of resources, let’s say it’s agricultural resources, and we say we’re killing all the earth, we learn how to create more per acre than we ever knew how to do. So we were forced to innovate when we run out of or shouldn’t be, in my opinion, using fossil fuels because we’re killing our ozone layer. So we’re now looking at alternative technologies and harnessing the sun’s power that’s been here since the beginning of time to create an energy source or even use alternative energy in the air.

The ability to think and connect with possible options to achieve goals is greater than we ever thought possible. We realize we each have a brain with at least $100 billion, the greatest bio-computer.

And yet we’re not just pulling this stuff out of our consciousness. We’re accessing what some people call the unified field, the collective unconscious, and so forth. So we’re a receiver or a radio antenna. There’s a quote from Nikola Tesla about this that we’re essentially a radio antenna.

Suppose you extrapolate that out to the analogy of even a dumb terminal connecting up to a supercomputer. Where do you get your insights, areas of focus, the different epiphanies, and so forth? What’s your thought on where this comes from, how to tap it, and amplify the receiving of information? Not just sitting back on the couch and thinking the law of attraction like, “money’s coming to me,” and then binge-watch Netflix.

Yeah, that’s baloney bull*** and airy fairy metaphysical nonsense. Let’s have a little bit of fun. I’m going to get a prop. But before that, we’ll have a little bit of fun. Is there music here right now?

In this room? No.

Do you want to bet?

Okay, is this a trick question? It must be.

It’s a question that will challenge you and everybody else to think beyond the obvious.

Okay. Yes, there’s music in here.

Right now?

Yeah.

I don’t hear any through my ears, though.

When you asked me that, it was like, don’t think of a pink elephant. Okay, now I’ve got a pink elephant.

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Let’s go to higher cortical thinking, which I know you love. First and foremost, is it a fact that everything is made up of energy?

Yes.

Yeah. My body comprises hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, sodium, and phosphorus. This sequence coalesced the six core elements of this sentient being called a human. How that was created, we’ll leave for another discussion. But I am a molecular, atomic structure that’s vibrating and oscillating in this quantum field that I am in. I am part of the quantum field like a fish is part of water; the water is part of the tank, and the tank is part of the air or the room in which the tank is. It may be in a different state of vibrational frequency, but everything is made up of energy.

Let’s understand. I love that you quoted Tesla because I love his words. If you want to understand the universe’s creative force, understand energy. That’s how he came up with some ideas that came through. But if you think about this, if I brought a radio right here, right now that you could see, no wires, but there’s a battery, and I turned the radio on, and I said to you, “Stephan, what music do you want to hear?” And you said, “rock and roll, baby.”

I said, “hold on a second. That’s 95.6.” I tuned in to 95.6 with the tuner and a receiver that’s on the radio. I can tune into rock and roll music right now. You and I and everybody else could hear it right now. What if you said, “John, rock and roll? Skip that. That’s like old-time music. I want some beautiful jazz.” “Oh, that’s 98.5.”

I turn to 98.5, and boom, rock and roll are gone. We moved off of that station and tuned in to another frequency in this room right now. If I didn’t want classical and I wanted jazz, and I didn’t want jazz, and I wanted punk rock, or I didn’t want punk rock, I wanted a comedy station; I could use this little receiver and tuner to receive a message that I tune into. Let’s talk about this. What do you think this is?

Okay, for those listening without video, you have to narrate a little.

I’m holding a brain right now, a plastic brain. I’m keeping both of my hands cupped together like a little melon. Billions of years of evolution created this body, these 11 systems that make this body work together synergistically, all controlled by a brain and a nervous system attached to the brain. So if you took my hair and skin away and removed my skull, all you would see is this human brain that allows the light in through the eyes, which are a part of the brain, allowing sound in through the ears for processing.

Now, if our brain can see through our eyes, hear through our ears, and feel through our tactile and olfactory senses, our nose, can I use my brain to receive or send out information? Have you ever walked into a room, and not a word has been said, and you know something is wrong? Or you’ve got on the phone with a friend or a family member. Do you know something’s wrong as soon as they say, “hi”?

Or my pet knows I’m going to take it to the vet before I even do anything different.

That’s right. Specifically, with pets, there’s some research that Rupert Sheldrake did that pets know when their owners leave, let’s say, their place of business when many people work at an office. So they start anticipating their owners coming home.

 

There’s been a lot of work around entanglement and what Albert Einstein called a spooky action at a distance. When we’re talking about this ability to tap into the field that I’m in and tap into different frequencies when somebody is in a meditative state, where they move conscious states, let’s say from a beta brainwave frequency, which most of us are in right now, as I’m speaking. You’re listening or vice versa, and we move into an alpha, delta, theta, or gamma brainwave frequency. So we can tune into different frequencies and energy fields that are already here right now.

If we are driving a stick shift car, and we’re always in first gear, we put our panels on, and then we’re going to burn out the engine. But what happens when we pop the clutch and move into second gear? The engines are working less, and the car’s going faster. Pop the clutch again, and shift into third gear, the car’s going faster, but the engine is working less hard.

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When you say, I want to go faster, great. Pop the fourth, fifth, and sixth gear. Sixth gear, you’re going on at 150 miles an hour; you don’t need the torque to get started. You want to be cruising. What if I shared with you that we can use our electromagnetic switching station called our brain to tune in and focus on different layers of consciousness?

What if we could activate different networks in our brains better than we do now? Since we usually are dominant with either the salience, the interactive network between the executive and the default mode network, the imagination network and the executive decision-making part of our brain. What if I shared with you that not only can you get the networks working better, you could control more of the circuits that determine what you tune into or tune out of what’s already here right now? Now we’re talking about some deeper levels of awareness.

Meditation may be one of the ways to tap into the field of possibilities.

Suppose it’s true that Einstein used a lot of his imagination and the executive functioning part of the brain to think of different scenarios and invested many hours tuning into possibilities. Can each of us let go for a brief moment? The station or stations we’re tuning into and locked and loaded naturally because we like comfort zones and sameness; we want to repeat patterns because it’s easy and conserves energy. But can we tune into a whole other set of frequencies?

Can we activate our imagination center? Our ideas may be partly due to being alive for 30-70 years. But can we tap into the image nation, where every idea comes from anyway, is the field of all possibilities? Can we practice that and get better at it? Not only is it possible, but that’s what many people do.

Meditation may be one of the ways to tap in. Psychedelics can be another way. Different medicines, and different psychedelics, can tap into fields of possibilities. There are so many people, whether it was Edison sitting in a chair, holding a couple of balls in his hand, so he would get into this hypnagogic state and almost that sleep-like state, and he dropped the balls, which would wake him up, and he’d write down the ideas right there. He had a slew of ideas that were percolating when he wasn’t thinking about all these ideas.

The same thing happened with Tesla. The Beatles, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, came up with that song while they were on psychedelics. It is purported. We are discovering many things now because we can better study the human brain, this electromagnetic switching station that tunes in, tunes out or gets locked into these ideas, beliefs, convictions, politics, and vaccinations. We lock in, and then we sometimes defend those positions with our lives because we don’t know how to hold opposing thoughts simultaneously and observe instead of reacting automatically based on what we believe is true.

What if what we believe is not true? I’ve gone on a tangent there, but soon as we get into consciousness and the spiritual side of our being. The spiritual side of our being is the most intelligent side of all. So how do we tap into that using the tools that we’ve been given as a human?

When talking, we dig into our positions and tend to defend them instead of holding opposing views or being willing to hold them. I call it the willing suspension of disbelief, to be open enough to try new things, hold different perspectives, and so forth.

Or the willing suspension of belief or disbelief.

Being open is ideally getting into the space of being nobody. No thing, no time, like Dr. Joe Dispenza describes. The phrase that came to my mind was “sunk costs“. You put all this money in and don’t want to lose it. So you throw good money after bad because you’re bummed out about the sunk costs, and you can’t disconnect from that emotion of loss and grief over that loss. So you can continue to dig even deeper down that hole.

I have this Frankenstein’s monster over my left shoulder and the Einstein image over my right because there’s a part of our brain that likes to focus on our positive cognitive biases.

There’s another reason for that, though. I have this Frankenstein’s monster over my left shoulder and the Einstein image over my right because there’s a part of our brain that likes to focus on our positive cognitive biases. The reason things can be better and hopeful is that we will succeed. But another part of our brain is geared towards what we call disappointment avoidance.

We avoid being disappointed or avoid disappointing others because of what we feel it may do to ourselves, our self-image, or the relationship. We avoid disappointment. In avoiding disappointment, we prolong, in many cases, the inevitable disappointment. We stick our heads in the sand and listen.

There’s a lot of research around cognitive biases, whether it’s positivity bias, negativity bias, confirmation bias, et cetera. That’s our brain’s way of just conserving energy but moving away from any pain or discomfort and keeping us safe and secure in our comfort zone, even though we may be in the most dangerous spot in our lives in that comfort zone. We may be that proverbial frog in the water that’s warming up gently, and then boiling the frog can’t jump out because it’s too late, which is not a true story, but it’s a good visual for us to look back at.

The real question is if every brain would come back to, if every brain functionally works the same, then my learning about how my brain works so that I could use it better, maybe than the average, is an advantage. It’s an edge. If it’s hard to entertain two things at once, the question is, why? “Why can’t I play this part without having any emotional attachment?” And the answer to “why I can’t” is just because you haven’t trained yourself.

It’s not that you can’t; you don’t have the skill yet. Are you prepared to learn the skill to be smarter and have more options and choices than being locked and loaded to your position? For example, can you take a superposition? Now we’re getting into the world of quantum mechanics and superposition, where you can simultaneously be in more than one place, but that’s for another discussion.

Yeah. Speaking of being in two places at once, how about just holding two perspectives? You said earlier in this conversation that we’re watching a movie, and others are not watching that same movie unless we’re in the collective unconscious. I’m paraphrasing here, but we are watching a different film. We’re getting views.

As I’m watching a movie, I’m giving it meaning. You may be giving it a different meaning. While I’m watching the right corner of the film, the top right corner, you might be watching the bottom left corner. While watching a guy or a girl riding a bicycle, I may be watching their feet. You might be watching the cigarette in their mouth. You see the smoke, and it’s caused by an imagination of the smoke that looks just like the cloud you saw just before you came into the movie theater.

We may see the general movie screen simultaneously, but the experience is different based on where our attention goes.

While you’re doing that, another person notices the dog and the bird in the back of the cage. We may see the general movie screen simultaneously, but the experience is different based on where our attention goes.

Now listen, if I say to you, “hey, I want you to pay attention to this pen,” even while I hold a pen right here, you may be looking at the tip, somebody may be looking at my finger. Somebody may look at how scratched this is, but generally, there’s a pen. Generally, there’s a movie.

We agree there’s a pen and a movie, but somebody says, “yeah, but the pen is being held by your hand; it got to be included in the scene.” Well, does it? How long can you focus just on the tip without losing your focus? So talking about the nature of reality, reality exists in the confines of most people’s minds and this box.

Even as I’m standing here, you see me in a little box inside your head, in your skull with zero light. I’m not even out here. I am an electrical activity in your skull that’s creating this image of me inside your dark skull. 

What is reality? Reality is, in essence, what we make it. We tie that back into “is the success and health that I’m achieving or not achieving, the experience that I’m having more in my control, but more in my ability to mold and shape it, and be a participant with a little bit more directive abilities?

We also know that there’s randomness in the universe. As much as we want to think that everything happens by law, not by luck, that’s not true. There is randomness in the universe, and shit does happen. As much as I say, “here are the plans, the goals, and the dreams that I want,” sometimes, shit happens. So you must surrender, allow, and go with that flow.

Do you tap into the collective unconscious or the Creator, angels or guides, the unseen spiritual support team to get information, guidance, and so forth? Are you receiving what you believe to be, for example, information from loved ones who have passed and channeling that kind of information? Or is it just you’re tapping into your subconscious and the creative power that is within you? Or is it both?

Reality is what we make it.

Yeah, it’s both. Einstein is one of my favorite characters in my exceptional life blueprint, but you see Nikola Tesla. You’ll see Newton, Stephen Hawking, Hitler, Genghis Khan, and any creator or destroyer that’s ever lived on this planet or multiverse (if you believe in the multiverse theory) as a reminder to me that intelligence and all of that energy is available to all of us.

I’m going back to, “can I tune into and or can I allow myself to receive energy that’s in a formation that shows up in the form of an idea?” There is a receiver and a transponder. “Can I open up my mind to receive? Can I focus my mind on seeing and sending out?” The answer is yes.

I meditate every day, sometimes twice a day. Every morning when I wake up, meditation is a state of consciousness that’s different from an awake state or a sleep state. It is its state of consciousness. Meditation is my way of doing that.

I have explored psychedelics and medicines for 20 years. It’s another way that I have tapped into the field of wisdom and knowledge, whether guided by this quantum field that’s not in physical form. I look at it in the context of H2O. We use the word ice in its solid state, water in its liquid state, and steam in its gas state. Air, ether, or gas is another term we use for the exact same thing being in a different vibrational state. Would you agree with that?

Yeah.

I can transcend my physical state by changing the vibrational state that my brain can control. If I want to get into a gamma brainwave frequency or dominant state, there are physical things that I could do. We’re never in only one brainwave frequency or delta, sub-delta, theta, alpha, beta, or beyond gamma, which is the cosmic frequency. Then there are enhancers that I can use.

For example, we use microscopes to look deep into the nature of something. On the atomic scale, we can use electron microscopes. We now have the James Webb telescope looking to be like 300 billion years after the beginning of this universe. We’re using technologies to see deeper in and further out. That means there are millions, millions, and millions of layers of frequencies.

I can transcend my physical state by changing the vibrational state that my brain can control.

The question for me has been for many years, and I will put this in quotes, “How do I see more?” 

“How do I become more aware of the layers already here?” 

I can practice mindfulness. I can practice different types of meditation. I can practice, whether prayer, sound, or whatever it is, to resonate with different frequencies already here. I can use medicines if that’s what I choose to really leave this physical body or set this physical body aside to experience other layers of consciousness.

To everybody, they do what’s right for them and what they feel comfortable doing and safe doing. I always preface, whatever you do, be safe. Make sure that you have guidance and people that are experts that guide you. You wouldn’t go out on a journey into big waves in the ocean without a captain seasoned in big wave surfing, big wave riding, or big wave navigating. You wouldn’t go to the moon without astronauts who know what to do.

This possibility of exploration of self, an exploration of consciousness, an exploration of information, and an exploration of abundance or scarcity are both here. What are you tuning into? What are you tuning into? But isn’t it also worthwhile to ask yourself, “what am I here to experience? What am I here on this beautiful blue planet to do, be, have, give, and explore? What’s the purpose of this journey that’s short?” Suppose we’re lucky, 100 years, maybe it’s a lot of time.

“What do I want to trade my life for? What kind of experience do I want to have? Could the choices that I make have consequences?” And by the same token, “are the choices I don’t make have consequences?” Is it possible that the human species, and sometimes I question this, “is one of the most intelligent species on planet earth, one of the gifts we have, and to empower ourselves?”

“What if I needed to ask better questions? What if I can achieve more, have more, be happier, be more purposeful, have more meaning in my life, and feel like what a phenomenal gift I have called life?” Let’s start with you waking up. A bunch of people didn’t.

What if, in that state of gratitude, I just activated one of the key networks in my brain that causes me to feel good and causes me to be motivated? It’s called the brain’s reward center, the nucleus accumbens and insula part of the brain when I am grateful for what I have, what I’ve experienced, the good and the challenging. I’m activating my brain’s motivational center because I want more of that. My motivational center is my motive for action. It’s the center of my brain.

There are a lot of wonderful things that we can learn and do. Part of what we have to do is be open to being wrong, be open to being right, and be open to hold two opposing ideas and beliefs. First, ask yourself, “how does he believe that?” Now, “why does he think that or how does he believe that?”

“What experience does she have when she believes that? What has happened? What does she read? Where are her references to believe that at the level of conviction?” 

By observing and believing, you can change some of the starting variables of your universe, your experience of reality, that is, your shard or slice of the multiverse.

For example, you hear opposing positions or views on, let’s say, how many guardian angels you get. It’s like, okay, well, this person says one, this person says two, and both are very credible. They’re both very psychic, trustworthy, and so forth. Which one is true? Your decision on which one is true influences the starting variables that become true in that reality for you.

Yeah, including the belief that might say, “because I have only one, I’m luckier.” The other person says, “well, you only have one, I have two, I’m luckier.” Your belief makes it true. Not that it’s true; it’s true for you. And this is where we create our realities. Here’s another question, right?

If it’s true for me, it could be true for the entire universe. I could believe that I live in a friendly universe, and the universe is friendlier, not just to me. But if I had an opposing view that the universe is a dark universe or evil is allowed to thrive, World War III happens.

Duality exists all the time. Based on my focus, choice, and observation, I can collapse the wave of possibility into probability.

All this terrible stuff happens in one universe, one slice of the multiverse, and the other; it doesn’t because I’m the observer. I’m the pilot of my reality, not just the local but the global reality of that universe. What is your position on that?

There are a lot of talks, research, and discussions on parallel universes or multi-universes. The Big Bang wasn’t the big bang. Last week, I was just at a lecture with Professor Brian Fox in San Diego. We’re talking about cosmology, multiverses, and parallel universes. Those possibilities exist, but some people would tell you that World War III has already started.

People are in the middle of a war right now, while we may be sitting here on the beach in San Diego, taking on a fun summer day. For some people, World War III has already started. They’re living, experiencing, and feeling that now.

There’s some truth to that for their experience because of their physical location. But, even when there is a war, let’s say World War I, or World War II, are there people who thrive because of the war?

Sure.

Yeah. Now, okay, for some people, the war or war is a time where they thrive the most. So they welcome it because they’re doing great. It’s a complex topic, of course. We can talk about freedom versus oppression. We can talk about choice and the meaning we give anything and dark and evil.

The law of polarity states that for every up, there’s a down; for every good, there’s a bad; for every inside, there’s an outside. You can’t have one without the other. So as good as things may be for me right now and maybe equally bad for somebody else, that duality always has existed and always will exist. Of course, it exists in varying degrees at varying times. But the truth is, it’s happening all the time.

That duality exists all the time. Based on my focus, choice, and observation, I can collapse the wave of possibility into probability. If everything at the wave function works as both a wave or a particle, and my observation and choice determine what collapses and what is observed rather than the observer, it’s called the observer effect. As you know, the observer effect has meaning.

We can experience spiritual order through our higher cortical function abilities, meditation, and other ways to tap into different levels of consciousness and intelligence.

Here’s the question. Is it possible for me to get a little bit better at remembering, being aware of the duality that exists at all times, and then to focus on what it is that I want that’s good for me, good for you, good for us, good for humanity if that’s what I care about? The answer is yes. When more of us focus on the good we want, we don’t have to fight for what we don’t want. We can collapse the waves of possibilities.

John Hagelin has mathematically shown—and he was in the movie, What the Bleep with Joe Dispenza that you’ve discussed. He has mathematically shown that when 10,000 people meditate simultaneously, they positively affect the energy field of the entire world.

There’s the physical world, there’s the emotional world, there’s the mental world, and then there’s the spiritual world. That spiritual order is the world we cannot see with our eyes or hear with our ears. We can feel it through our intuition. We can experience it through our higher cortical function abilities, meditation, and other ways to tap into different levels of consciousness and intelligence.

It also relies on the desire, the intention, and the request. You can get visions, prophetic dreams, or other stimuli coming into your senses from that unseen world, but it’s less likely to happen if you’re not requesting it or believing it to be true.

I totally agree. We can block out stuff just as much as we can allow stuff in. I’ll give you a perfect example. Have you ever read a book and you get lost in the book? Maybe somebody is talking to you, and you don’t even hear them, and they’re two feet away from you?

When you’re watching TV, and you’re watching whether it’s a Netflix movie, a music show, or some sports event, and your partner or friend is screaming for you, you don’t hear them. So they go, “don’t you listen to me?” And you go, “I know. I’m sorry I didn’t hear you; I’ve tuned you out.” But that’s exactly where that tune-in, tune-out phrase comes from. So what are you tuning in to? What are you tuning out? And are you being deliberate?

You can practice these techniques that allow you to bring more of the good stuff in, block more of the bad stuff, and manifest a better reality for yourself by doing the innercises you’ve come up with.

Absolutely. Also, if we’re talking about energy, energy isn’t good or bad. 

I know we got to wrap up.

Yeah, we have to save it. So I can go down that rabbit hole deeply into some of the laws of nature, which are interesting.

We could keep talking for more hours. You’re a fascinating guy and full of wisdom, but we do you have to wrap. So if our listener or viewer is interested in learning more from you, working with you, doing some of those innercises you’ve created, and strengthening their mindset with myneurogym.com, what’s the next step for them?

Go to myneurogym.com. That’s my company. You can always go to johnassaraf.com and take a look at it. I’ve got a bunch of free videos and articles they could read. I focus a lot on the neuroscience and neuropsychology of success.

If you want to understand a little bit deeper why visualization works, why you should meditate, cognitive biases, or neurotechnology to enhance some of the experience, go to johnassaraf.com. Read the blogs; they’re free. We have a lot of free events. We have programs that people could look into when they’re ready. I’m all over social media, Instagram, Facebook, et cetera.

All right, awesome. Thank you so much, John. I appreciate you. You’re a real light in the world.

Thanks, my friend. So are you. I appreciate you. Have a great day.

Thank you.

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About John Assaraf

John Assaraf is one of the leading high performance, success coaches in the world. He is a behavioral neuroscience researcher who has appeared numerous times on Larry King live, Anderson Cooper and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. He grew Re/Max of Indiana from startup to 85 offices and 1200 sales associates who sold over $4 Billion a year. John was also one of the founders of Bamboo.com that went public on NASDAQ with a market cap of $2.5 Billion.

John has written 4 books including 2 New York Times best sellers that have been translated to 35 languages. He is the creator of the “Innercise” movement and has been featured in 11 movies, including the blockbuster hit “The Secret” and “Quest For Success” with Richard Branson and the Dalai Lama.

He lives in San Diego with his wife and 2 sons. In addition to being a vegan, meditator, an avid skier, and ocean lover, he loves traveling the world and making some of the tastiest hot sauces using some of the hottest peppers on the planet.

Today, he is CEO of MyNeuroGym.com, a neuroscience based company, dedicated to helping individuals strengthen their mindset, so they achieve their goals and dreams faster and easier than ever before.

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