How To Shatter Your Limitations and Achieve ANY Goal You Want | John Assaraf | Align Podcast #532
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John Assaraf, thank you for being here. Hey, Aaron, great to be here. We're here, we're here. John, what is, I'm going to start with a light lift of a question. What is, from your perspective, the root of human suffering? Or the most prominent root, I'm sure it's a nuanced question, and there's many roots, but if you had to, what comes to you in that question? The first word that comes to me is ignorance. Say more.

Not knowing. So when we talk about suffering, obviously it's an emotion, it's a feeling, it's a state of mind and being. And the average person who hasn't been trained on awareness, on choice, on technique and tools, keeps repeating that thought.

rumination of either being the victim, being in pain and focusing on the pain, looking outside of themselves for a solution over and over and over again, whether it's blame, whether it's self-justification. And they sometimes, I've discovered, don't realize that they're the ones that may be causing the suffering.

and they don't know how to interrupt that pattern. - Why is it so attractive to look outside of the self for solutions? Is that just being logical and pragmatic? I would imagine the best approach to getting what it is you desire is a combination of an inside job and also the external work. - Well, it is, however, when we were born,

We weren't born with any beliefs. We weren't born with a self-image or an identity. We weren't born with any skills, maybe propensities, yes, but not skills. We weren't born to be self-reflective, you know, or to, you know, look outside. So we were taught that.

by mostly our parents, our teachers. Look at him, look at her, look at that. They gave us the meanings of things. And we developed these habitual ways of behaving. We developed these expectation points. We developed this map of reality.

And because of, you know, our lives for so many of our grandparents and parents and beyond was, you know, based on hear, see, smell, taste, touch, you know, senses, we weren't taught to use intuition. We weren't taught to be introspective or interspective, introspective.

So I think it's just a learned behavior, like just about everything we believe about the world is something that we learned. How we react or respond is something we learn. And so that's why I say ignorance. Ignorance doesn't mean somebody is stupid. Ignorance just means somebody doesn't know. It's not known. So I think they don't know that they can stop the suffering.

They don't know that they can stop believing that they're not good enough or worthy enough or smart enough or capable enough. Yeah. You are a person who has, uh, you're obviously a very aspirational figure to, to many people. I don't know you on like a personal level, uh, but from like your accolades and many businesses, multimillion dollar businesses and many near times best selling books and you're very prominent voice in the world. So you have a lot of reason probably to feel, um, well,

well resourced and safe and fulfilled, at least from an external perspective. I don't know about your, you know, the internal world as much. I don't know personally. How often, if ever, do you experience at this stage in your life, existential crisis, sensations of void, sensations of dissonance, sensations of who am I? What is the point of anything? You look at like Robin Williams, for example, looking from the outside in, like how could he end up where he did?

So how often, if ever, do you experience sensations of dissonance within yourself? And if and when that does happen, how do you approach that and what's that experience like? Great question. I think it might be worthwhile to go back in time a little bit, then I'll come back to the present moment.

When my parents moved from Israel where I was born to Montreal, I was five and spoke Hebrew but didn't speak English or French, which is what they spoke in Montreal. And we moved to a town where a lot of immigrants were being allowed into Montreal at the time back in the 80s.

late 60s, 70s. And I quickly fell behind by two years in school and didn't think I was smart enough or good enough. And so I got into trouble in school. Then when I was 13, 14, 15, all the way to 18, I was in either detention centers, the principal's office, at the police station because I was selling drugs, doing drugs, doing breaking and entries, and part of a small little gang that got into a lot of trouble. I

Sounds like a good time, man. It was a good time. Sounds like an exciting, you know, there's something, you know, like the excitement. I wonder what you were looking for in that moment. Were you looking for excitement? Were you looking to like run away? Like, what do you think your young self was looking for in those situations? I was looking to fit in. I was looking to belong. I was looking to make some money. My father was an alcoholic, abusive cab driver.

and beat the hell out of me because my horrific grades like F's were my best grades so I got beaten up a lot by him lots of love for my mother and by grade 11 I'd failed English failed math failed a whole much stuff and I just said the hell with it I'm leaving school and

So that was kind of like my beginning. And so the journey has been from the age of 19, I met a mentor who took a liking to me and decided to share his life lessons with me. And he put me on a spiritual path of self-reflection and understanding identity and self-image and self-worth and beliefs and habits and a lot about that. So now to your question. I never feel who am I.

I never feel like, you know, life is, is too hard. Um, I've had, um, uh, I've made money, lost money. I've been through two divorces, been happily married with my wife and together for 25 years. I've got two amazing sons. Um, I've got business success. I've got business failures. Um, and I do experience dissonance and, um, uh,

Sometimes I still feel like, God, am I still not smart enough to do this? I never feel anymore that I don't deserve it. I never feel anymore that I'm not worthy of it. But I still feel like I have big goals and dreams, stuff that I want to achieve and accomplish before I die. And some of it's really complex. And so I go, oh my God, that's like so hard.

And, but I've also had enough hard to know that I can figure it out. And if I can't figure it out, I can find people to help me figure it out. And, and now in the world we live in, I can chat GPT to figure it out. I can Gemini or I can cloud or I can deep seek, you know, and, and figure it out now faster, easier, better than ever before. So even though,

I may feel a certain way. I am no longer governed by the disempowering, destructive or negative emotions anymore because I understand what's triggering them. And this goes back to in the absence of understanding awareness, then we default back to our highest level of training.

And if we are not trained to understand that I have emotions, I'm not emotions. I have feelings, but I'm not my feelings. And just like a Hollywood actor or actress can switch how they're feeling and their state of being in a second place.

so could you and I. Yeah, there's a bit from Ram Dass that you probably have heard, I guess, or some iteration of it, but that he hasn't lost a neurosis. Of all of his collection of neuroses, he's

if that is the plural form of neurosis, they're not, they're all still there. It's just now he can kind of manage them and they sit around the table and they can have tea together and they're like, Oh, like, Hey, you know, whichever pick a neurosis, pick something that creates some type of anxiety or, you know, since dis unfavorable sensation within you. And I think that people can place themselves into a double bind because we, you know,

People have probably done this forever, but we have this pedestalized concept or conceptualization or idea of people out there. And I think it's actually some form of violence in a way to infuse a facade of perfection into culture if a person has a voice.

Because I think it can create a sensation. Obviously, it's each person's individual responsibility for what they feel. And you can't, anyone can't do anything to you. But I feel like there's like this game we're playing of trying to appear to be all put together. And I wonder, does any person get to a point where they actually feel

are resolved with all of the venerosa seas and they're just not there? Or is it just a thing of management? That's a very long non-question, I apologize. Behind me, you might see Frankie's monster up there. And you see Einstein over there. These are the Stein cousins. And the reason they're behind me is to remind me that I have this Frankie's monster.

Right, exactly. It's the freakiest monster that shows up. What if you fail? What if you don't look good? What if you don't sound good? What if you succeed in a film? What if you are embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, judged, rejected, abandoned? Like, what if?

And then I've got this other part of my brain, and we know these as the left and right prefrontal cortexes of the brain, but I have this imagination of what I want my life to be like and how many people I want to help and people loving me and caring about me and loving my books and my work and my movies and all that stuff. And there's this polarity, right? And that's the law of polarity. You cannot have one without the other. Now, you can quiet Frankie's voice down, right?

All right. By learning, you know, before we we started talking, we did a little breathing. Right. We we we got centered into ourselves. Well, I meditate every day for the last 35 years. And that is to be able to be still.

and hear the thoughts that I have. And some days I'll sit there and I can go blank like no thought. I can fly from here to Miami where you are and I can meditate the whole way there without a thought. Other days, my brain is just going and firing on all cylinders and I can quiet that sucker down and you learn to accept that moment is perfect.

And you can learn to observe the thoughts. You can learn to observe the sensations in your body. And then you can learn to shift your attention and your focus. But it's practice that most people don't want to do. It's like everybody wants to go to heaven. Nobody wants to die.

And so I happen to be willing to invest in my growth, time, energy, money, mistakes, failures for the lessons so that I could just get better at the game. And I look at life, health, wealth, relationships, career, business, finances, fun, experiences, contribution. They're all games.

And, you know, I wrote my first book called Having It All. It became a New York Times bestseller because I wanted to achieve all. Now, that doesn't mean I haven't failed. Sometimes when I've made a small fortune, I've been the unhealthiest I've been in my life.

Because I was so focused on that, I got to 243 pounds, 33% body fat, borderline diabetic, alcoholic, sugaraholic, fatty liver, like going health in the wrong direction. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm way out of integrity of my values. So I had a chance to recalibrate.

and retool and recalibrate. And for me, anyway, I've been retooling and recalibrating all the time. Now, I have some practices that have been my cornerstone or keystone practices that when I keep those, it seems like everything else works. When I don't keep those, it seems like everything else suffers too.

And one of them is my meditation and some breathing as we did before. What are the mechanics of your meditation? What's the time? What's the intention? Does it have a name?

No, does not have a name. It's my time to sit and be. So I do that on a regular basis, at least 20 minutes every morning, at least 10 minutes at the end of the day. And I group my meditation with what I call is my inner size practice.

So I have been, except when I was really out of shape, you know, somebody who stayed active most of his life, and I still do, and I'm in probably the best shape of my adult life at 63 now. I have a better physique than I've ever had at 63 with the best body fat percentage and all that. But my inner size practice is a way to prime and train my brain in

in addition to training my body and my cardiovascular system, et cetera. And so I look at what are all the different tools and techniques. So in the morning, for example, right here in front of me, I have something called my Exceptional Life Blueprint. And in my Exceptional Life Blueprint, I have every single part of my life written out

Her health, wealth, relationships, career, business finances, my story. I back everything up with things I've achieved, things I've been, things I want to achieve with my vision board to imprint what I want to trade my life for in each one of these areas. So I'm very, very deliberate.

on picking what I want to trade my life for. And then every day I invest, um, by about seven, eight minutes priming my brain with my inner sizes, whether it's doing a visualization on something, um, or doing some affirmations or some cognitive behavior techniques to, um,

wire, fire and wire those neural patterns into my brain, which then governs my behavior. What would be an example of the cognitive behavioral technique that you would do?

Yeah, so a CBT technique might be something like taking something that may be bothering me. Okay? So what might be bothering you? You know, something that's going on in my life. And using CBT, a cognitive behavior therapy technique, is called reframing it.

So I would ask myself, how can I see this thing that might be bugging me, this person that might be bugging me, this result that might be bugging me? How can I look at it from a different perspective? How could I reappraise it in a way that empowers me instead of disempowers me?

So I'm looking to change my perspective, not my perception, right? My perception is what I'm looking at. But I'm looking to use CBT cognitive behavior technique to be able to change my perspective. And you had mentioned Ram Dass earlier, but let's go to Wayne Dyer. Wayne Dyer said many, many years ago, he said, when you change the way you look at something, the thing that you look at changes.

So I can use a kind of behavior, right? My cognitive machine, looking at it a different way. And I change the perspective, which changes the emotion, which changes how I feel. We do that with people all the time.

It's called the unnecessary psychological term that's been coined for that. It's called the Pygmalion effect. The way that we perceive someone, actually, we start to highlight and draw out those characteristics within them. Yeah, so we'll always find the good or the bad or the indifferent in somebody or in ourselves. And so how can you be aware? And then how can you shift? So you're empowered instead of disempowered.

And a lot of it is around, can I manage my mental and emotional and physiological state? And if I can manage my state, then I can manage my behavior. If I can manage my behavior and I'm doing the right things, I could achieve just about everything that's possible for me to achieve. So I'm very, very big on being deliberate.

on what I do or don't do. And so I take the time to, you know, to write my blueprint and to be very, very deliberate and then to back it up with different behaviors on a daily basis to reinforce more of what I want. And so do I have negative thoughts? Of course I do. You know, the average person has 6,200 thoughts a day. 80% of the average person's thoughts are negative.

and 90% are repeated day after day after day. So how do you go from 80% automatic negative thoughts or ands to more automatic positive thoughts? How do you define, because you were in the documentary The Secret, which obviously has been viewed by a lot of people, and there's a lot of people that would roll their eyes at the concept of hearing the secret, and there's a lot of people that base their life around the secret.

How do you define the concept of manifestation? I want to take a moment and share a little bit about digestion. You know what's crazy?

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Very differently than how most people define it. So there's, The Secret was a wonderful movie that talked about, you know, a little bit of Napoleon Hill's work and, you know, think, believe, and you'll achieve. And I say, bullshit. You don't just think, you don't just believe, you don't just achieve. You have to think, yes, you've got to believe, but you've got to then take the right action in the right order at the right time.

to achieve the thing that you want to achieve. So manifestation isn't something that just pops out of thin air, you know, and lands on your lap just because you've thought it or you've willed it to be by meditating or breathing or chanting or rubbing crystals together. But if it's true that we are vibrating packets of energy called quanta,

which we are, and we are energetic beings. And if it's true that we have this intuition that picks up on the vibration of other people, animals, we can walk into a room, no word is said, and we know something's wrong or something's funny that's just been said. So we can pick up on vibration. We can pick up on energy.

Contrary to popular belief, not everything in the universe is energy, but that's a deeper discussion for another day. But I like to think of manifesting as being in resonance, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, and strategically with that which you seek, desire, want, etc. And I think our job is

is to use this $100 billion brain of ours

which is nothing more than an electromagnetic switching station. Our brain takes light in through our eyes, actually slows it down from the speed of light at 186,000 miles per second. It actually slows down light once our processor is processing it so it can decipher what it is very, very rapidly. Our job is to be able to transmit and receive light

information, energy, information,

that aligns with the vision of goals that we want. So we have to learn like a radio can tune into a specific channel. 95.2, oh, that's rock and roll in Miami. Oh, you want classical? Oh, go to 95.3. Every time we tune into one station, we distort, delete all the other stations that are already here. And so manifestation is the alignment of,

of your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, and your behaviors with that which you seek.

And if you get in alignment with those things that you want, you end up, Oh my God, she likes that. He likes that. We start to see everything that's in alignment with that. And at certain times, and I've had some just hyper mysterious things happen, like my vision board, the head of the house that I cut out from a dream homes magazine, didn't know where it was, didn't know how much it was. And I, you know, I would look at that vision board every day for a few years. Um, the, um,

We put the vision boards away when I moved to several different cities. I ended up in the house that was on my vision board that I had no idea where it was. And that was part of my story in The Secret. It wasn't a house like it. It was the house. And I was like, how in the world did that happen?

So that's a mystery that nobody knows the answers to. And I have been studying quantum physics and quantum mechanics and neuroscience and neuropsychology and law of attractional resonance and all the way back in time. And there isn't an answer of how it was that I had a picture on that magazine that I ended up buying. Now, I have a picture of a car on my blueprint that I put up like four years ago. That car is sitting in my garage.

But I deliberately said, "That's the car," worked my ass off and bought the thing that I wanted to. But the house, I still cannot explain. But I busted my ass to be able to afford a house like that. I have no intention of moving to that little town that it's in, Rancho Santa Fe, which is literally 10 minutes from where I am now.

So there's something more than what I've just explained to some unexplainable things of how that was possible. But what I can tell you in studying performance and studying manifestation and attraction and strategies and tactics to build companies or build my life, there's a lot of work that has gone into achievement. And sometimes things were like, wow, really easy?

But the majority of the time, there was a lot of effort, a lot of trial and tribulation to get to that part where things are just magically working. - Yeah, do you experience fulfillment with regularity? And what do you think about the concept of fulfillment? Is there any static state of fulfillment that exists? Is that even healthy? - I made a decision many years ago to trade my life based on my highest values

So I have five core high values. Number one, God, I'm not religious. Number two is my health, which is spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical. Number three is my family. Number four is contribution. Number five is fun and experiences. And every decision in my life is based on doing those five things first and all the time.

So I experienced an enormous amounts of fulfillment, impact, influence, purpose, and meaning because I'm very deliberate on how I get it. So yeah, I experienced an enormous amount of fulfillment. It seems like as you're speaking, a lot of it's like you get what you asked for and the analogy of a cork.

floating around the ocean compared to a ship. They both go for a trip, but the ship goes to Antarctica and then it goes to South America and then it goes to India and it's got coordinates. And ultimately at the end of the lives of both the cork and the ship, they both essentially just floated around the ocean. Just one chose the path.

And it seems like that's something that, why do you think it's so challenging for people to choose the path or trust they have the agency to choose a path? Yeah, I'm going to go back just one step and say we don't always get what we choose. Sometimes we get what we need. Do you think we always get what we need? Is there any availability for...

It depends if we're looking at it myopically, like right this second, looking at it over time, right? It's so much easier as Steve Jobs said to connect the dots backwards, um,

and go oh wow that awful horrible thing you know that i hated drove me nuts on the inside was actually one of the best things that ever happened to me but you can only see that later um so so we'll cut we'll come back to that what was the second part of that question that i that you asked uh why is it that's like the average person i don't remember the statistic exactly um but

40 plus percent of Americans can't afford a surprise, whatever it is, $500 bill. And so obviously at least for a very, you know, big chunk of this country, uh, doesn't seem like they're getting what they're asking for for the most part. And it says something, something's awry.

in that. Why is that? I teach a bunch of my students how to win the game of money. And money has several components to it. So let's, I'll just give you some examples. In the game of money, there's earning money, there's managing, there's investing, there's protecting, and then there's getting out of debt and or using debt as leverage. So those are five pillars in this game of money. And your skill is what's required to

to play the game better like any sport. And you either play at the kindergarten level, grade school level, high school level, university level, pro level, All-Star Game Hall of Fame. And so let's talk about money. And in one of the courses that I teach, one of the questions I start off with is, forget about your current situation. Is there more than enough money in the world?

right in the form of coins, Bitcoins, this coin, that coin, buildings, real estate, gold, assets. Is there more than enough money in every sense? Yeah, there's more than enough money. Okay, great. And then if there's more than enough money, what could be preventing you from having the money you want, right? And we say, okay, well, let's understand what is money. Did we always have money?

from the beginning of time? And the answer is no, right? But what happened is, you know, we had little...

pockets of people living on the banks of the river fishing and eating and foraging for some vegetables and berries and eating. And then another group came by next to them and they were really good at hunting. Another group was great at picking berries or whatever. And they started to exchange berries for this and that. And as people started coming from different parts of the world to their part of the world, they exchanged spices. So money became an idea.

And money was a tool that became a means of exchange. And then we developed this entire commerce world around, hey, I'll give you this pen for a dollar, but you also need to give me that handkerchief. You know, we started to create this value system. And the question then becomes is, are you providing the value you want in the marketplace to

in order to warn somebody wanting to trade the thing that they work hard for in the store, in the company, or in their business for that thing that you offer. And because the marketplace establishes value, right? So somebody who's a coach like me,

or you, we can get better at our craft and just like an athlete who's really good at her skills in her sport gets paid based on the skill and the value she brings in or a CEO or a worker is a graphic artist or somebody who's good with AI gets paid by the marketplace. In essence, we pay ourselves based on how good we are

with our program, product, skill, tool, resource, and bringing it to the marketplace, either to one person, 10 people, 100 people, a million people. So it's based on your knowledge and your skill applied. So if you don't understand how to earn money, your level of skill...

Is that the level of what you're earning right now? Or you have the skill, but you don't believe you're worthy of it. So you will sabotage it. Or you have the skill, but you have limiting beliefs. Or you have a skill, but you have a fear of failing or being embarrassed or shamed or ready to judge. But now we're still getting back into the domain of I'm responsible.

If I don't know how to get rid of my limiting beliefs, if I don't know how to manage my emotions called fear, if I don't feel I'm worthy of it or deserving of it because I have a story, I'm not going to earn the money that's readily available. And some 12-year-old kid who's using AI now to create an app makes a million bucks a month and you're wondering, oh, how's he doing it? Right? Well, he's taking action.

He's taking risk. He's taking action. He's not afraid of failing. And so there are four different reasons people do not achieve their goals. There's only four categories. And I've mentioned them. If you don't have the knowledge and the skill, then you have doubt and uncertainty. When you have doubt and uncertainty, the motivational center in your brain deactivates.

If you have a fear of being embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, judged, failing, disappointed, whatever fear you might have, your motivational circuit in most cases is deactivated and you either fight it, freeze, or you run away. If you have a limiting belief that because of my age or my ethnicity or because of the government or this guy's in power, this guy's not, or this is happening or that's happening, your brain basically makes that your reality.

and you behave in accordance with what you believe. And so there are the mechanisms of why we're achieving or not achieving the results we want. I'm going to go back to where we started. Most people do not understand themselves well enough. They haven't done a deeper dive than the surface.

you know, to say, well, why am I not earning two or three or four X? Like, what's the real reasons? And all of it's going to come back in most cases to me. And so then what has to happen in order for me to get better is

So that I could earn more. I could be in great shape. I can have a great relationship. I can build a company or write that book or build an app or get a promotion. What has to happen for me to change so that my outer world of result changes?

And most people are looking out there. And I say, that's like, you know, going to the mirror right now, Aaron, taking a rag and wiping the mirror off, expecting your mustache and your beard to go. The only way what changes in the mirror, the effect, get a razor blade, get some shaving cream or don't start with a razor blade, you know, get one of the electric razors and you shave off and then you finish it off with a razor.

So it comes back down to me and me being able to respond, you know, in the market, in my life, in my world, in a more empowering way. Because every effect, how much you weigh, how much body fat you have, the relationship you love or don't love, the business you have or don't have, it's an effect. All of that is an effect.

And so the question becomes, well, what's the cause of my effects? And the part of my effects... Well, what is the cause of my effects? What were you going to say? I don't want to interrupt you. The cause of my effects are the actions I take or don't take, right? Actions I take or don't take, and whether the right ones are the wrong ones. But that's also a secondary reason. The number one reason is my habits, right?

My self-image, my self-worth, my beliefs, and my ability or inability to manage my emotions. If we take a look at cause versus effect, behaviors, of course, cause what I achieve or don't achieve, what I have or don't have. Not taking action is a behavior. Taking action is a behavior. Taking the right or wrong action makes a big difference too.

So know differently than if we're going to, you know, bake a chocolate cake, flour, sugar, eggs, milk, you know, mix it up in a bowl, put it into the oven for a certain period of time, let it cool for a certain period of time, put some frosting on it. What if you put the ingredients in the wrong order in the bowl? You don't get the cake. What if you miss a few ingredients? Well, you don't get the chocolate cake.

What if you cook it too long or not long enough? You don't get the outcome you want. So we're dealing with a precision model that most people don't know the precision model. And even if they do, it's like, "Oh my God, I got to do that?" I want to take a moment and share about something I have found to be very supportive for the health and vitality and elasticity of my skin,

Because I have a secret to share, I have been aging. It's been happening pretty much every day for a long time. I haven't talked about it, but I want to share about it now. It's happening. Got some crow's feet, see some grays popping out every now and again. I partnered with a company I am a huge fan of, referred to as OneSkin. They are fantastic. One of

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slash align use code align for 15% off your first purchase. That is oneskin.co slash align use code align for 15% off your first purchase. I have full faith OneSkin will not disappoint. Yeah, it seems like that's this is a big part of why I think relationships are so challenging and also accelerating and growth is it actually provides a

well, maybe it's not always honest, but some form of reflection. And it seems like relationship, like romantic relationship or not, it seems like the writing would probably be a powerful tool and probably writing in an honest way. Because I feel like days can slip away from us and habits can perpetuate themselves and become more deeply ingrained. And there needs to be a strong pattern interrupt between

And there needs to be accountability and visibility on who the fuck we really are and who and who we say we are and who we say we would like to be and creating clear differentiation between that and then action steps forward. But to do that, you might have to be really honest. And to be really honest, it might be embarrassing and it might be uncomfortable and you might have to feel small temporarily to feel big.

Well, and what I think can help is what's more important for me, for me to really live my truth and authentic self and go through the discomfort initially to get deeper into myself so I can be the best version of myself.

And I'm going to go back to that means I have to learn how to manage these automatic emotions that are going to come up based on what did you hear about discovering that

You're really not that sensitive or discovering that you're really not that smart in figuring out this thing. Like we all have these meanings, you know, that in many cases will disempower us. So why do we want to disempower ourselves even more and affect the self image that's already part of the challenge?

What will you think of me and she think of me and he think of me? And what will I think of me if I discover I'm not that good at that? Because I'm going to look at the things I'm not good at. I'm going to look at the deficiencies, right? But what if you just came to this conclusion that I have a lot of deficiencies and I'm okay with them? Part of being human is being able to surrender and allow and accept things

without judgment, without blame, without shame, without guilt, without justification, and say, I'm really awful at that. But you know what? I'm really good at that. And understanding the human condition is you're not supposed to be good at all of it. And very, very few people, if anybody's even remotely close,

I think something that is very elusive for a lot of people is the concept of wealth creation and coming out of a place of hand-to-mouth, getting by, you know, it would be great if I had an extra, you know, whatever, 10 grand in the bank or something, to coming into a place of wealth creation and then maybe eventually coming to a place of generational wealth creation. How does a person start to change their perspective

mindset and also what are some action steps that were not taught in grade school or by most of our parents or you know folks unless we were we were lucky enough to have that that'd be important for people to know so you said earlier I wanted to add one piece to it then we're talking about the money story first and foremost as it relates to habits consistency compounds

consistently thinking negatively of yourself compounds, consistently thinking positive of yourself compounds, consistently doing the right things compounds, consistently doing the wrong thing compounds. And it has an exponential effect when we look at a year, five years, ten years. I mean, insane, because we reinforce what we reinforce. Okay, so that's one. But let's go number two.

Since we weren't born with any beliefs about money, with any expectations about money, with any goals about money, with any money skills on managing, investing, protecting, earning, we've developed something which is probably one of the most intimate relationships we have, and it's with money. We need it to eat.

For the most part, most of us, we needed to pay for our rent or homes or cars and gas and clothes. And we need money. Not everybody in the world needs money, but

Most of us in the world need money. So we have this story about money. Is it easy to make? Is it hard to make? Is it easy to keep? Is it hard to keep? Can I make it in hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars easily, but tens or hundreds or millions is hard? It becomes part of our story. I'm good enough to achieve money. I'm not good enough to achieve money. I deserve it. I don't deserve it. There's this whole cacophony of story that we have

that ties directly to our identity, right? So what if, what if, just as a fun exercise, what if we deliberately chose, since we didn't choose our money story deliberately and the associations that we have around money, because many of us got our money story from our parents, many of us, right?

And their relationship with money and how they viewed how I didn't have money. Earlier today, I did a two-hour training just on this topic. And I asked people, it was about 200 and some odd people in the audience. And I asked them, I said, what was your relationship with money growing up? Positive, negative, empowering, disempowering. What are some of the things you heard about money?

And 99% of the people that answered, it was negative, didn't have enough. You know, what were some of the things you heard? What do you think we are? The Rothschilds, money doesn't grow on trees, money's the root of all evil. Just like, I'm like, no wonder most people are broke. But what if, what if we started and we wrote out a new money story? But what if it went something like this?

I'm so happy and grateful for the fact that I am now earning, fill in the amount, X per month per year. I'm now serving people. I'm now loving my life. I now believe I deserve it. I'm smart enough. I'm good enough. I'm worthy enough. I'm now traveling to here and here and here. And I drive this car and I give this amount of time to charity. And I give this amount of money to the charities. What if I wrote out a whole new story?

of what it feels like, what the character traits are now for earning, managing, investing, protecting. What if I wrote a whole new story now? And what if I wrote a whole new story as if I was writing a present tense story for a new Hollywood script for Steven Spielberg? And Steven was going to go and get an actor to play this role of the new money story that you created.

What would be the process that the actor he chose or actress actor would become that script before filming time? Very high. It would just necessitate trust and you're getting a guarantee in that. And I think a lot of people are operating from a place of a lack of trust or a lack of faith. Okay. So let's flip this around for just a moment. What if Steven Spielberg paid you to write the story and,

And then to practice it enough so that six to 12 months from now, he could film you and this five minute segment. What would you do to take this script that's not real right now about this fictional character? What would you do to embody that script, that role? Would you like to read it once?

Yeah, I would visualize, I would rehearse, you know, acting it out. I'd rehearse internally. I would, um, I would really take on the role in my life. And so would you practice for a minute or two a day? Uh, no, I practice probably if, if I had the commitment that this was going to be the thing that, that, you know, pulls the lever for everything else, then I would just pour my entire self into it.

Right. So you would become the role and you might film it on your mobile phone. You might have friends come and watch you practice while you're reading the script and having the motion and the incantations. And then you might film yourself without the script. And over the course of one week, three weeks, you probably feel uncomfortable. Oh, my God, I'm like not good as I can't remember the roles. But then with rehearsals.

whether it's mental, emotional, whether you read the script, you filmed the script, you recorded and listened to it, wouldn't you in essence be firing brain cells and wiring brain cells in your brain as if you're learning a new language that you didn't know how to speak? And then wouldn't that new language become second nature if you practiced it enough? Yeah. Oh, so you could practice a rule and

like you would math or putting on your clothes as a toddler or learning how to eat or anything else. And then as I practice this new role, and since you said visualization, I would say visualization is a mental and emotional simulation.

Practice creates permanent patterns. - It's a physical simulation as well. - Yes. - As you're saying, yeah. - So what happens when I practice something that's new, a new story that's not real, but I add the emotions and the commitment to making it real, there's something in the brain called automaticity. And what happens is if I do something enough, remember consistency compounds, if I do anything enough,

read it, watch it, listen to it, act in ways like that, then our brain says, hey, you seem to be putting a lot of energy and attention on this and it's taking a lot of your effort. Since you're doing that,

I'm going to actually automate this and I'm going to make this the new default story. If you keep practicing this, I'm just going to reinforce it. I'm going to find ways to reinforce it. So I've been doing this for 40 some odd years and I can take you to the story of my life.

Right over here. And I could take you to the second page of that. And I could take you to my big why I'm doing it. And I could take you to my inner and outer mission, all written out. Why? Because first I create my story. And then my story creates me.

So none of this was true for me. None of it. I committed to the process. Yeah, there was something that you, I really like that, Anil. I've heard you say that before and it was something that struck me. It's like, oh yeah, like interesting. Yeah, if I had the faith that I was going to get the thing, then I would commit myself 100% to the thing.

And I think a lot of it for people, and then there's another thing you're big on, as people can notice, you're big on language and specificity within language. And one of the things that I wrote that I've heard you say as well is around motivation.

you know the foundation of motivation is motive and i think that that is something that for a lot of people myself included at times i kind of oscillate with this having a sincere enough motivation outside of just your own self-interest i think is something that probably a lot of people are not fully equipped with and that i think comes into like faith and probably comes into things that are taught in books that are thousands of years old and um

drawing your your your focus outside of yourself and having a motive that actually feels sincere and actually feels worthwhile um having a wife having kids having something like for a lot of people but suddenly they have a child like something switches like okay this matters and and gets real and we really start moving forward and we become a ship so

Yeah, some people don't. But I think that, to me, I feel like that's a really important piece of, do you have a motivation or a motive robust enough to actually create commitment? Yeah, so do you remember earlier I said there's like four things that'll stand in your way? Self-image, fears, limiting beliefs, lack of knowledge and skills. You have to create a compelling reason why

You must do something, achieve something, become something that is bigger than why you're not.

I'm afraid of failing. Great. What are you more afraid of? Failing or look at yourself at 50 years old going, oh my God, I wasted my life. Which do you, right? So I love to create contrast frames. Yeah. You have to put yourself, you have to put yourself there. Yeah. You got to feel it all the way. Because if you push it away, it'll sneak up on you and you're like, ah, shit. You don't feel it now. Yeah.

It's so easy. Our brain will actually take the path of least resistance. And there's also something else I teach called the law of secondary gain is when I stay in my comfort zone or my familiarity zone, I'm actually getting rewarded. I get rewarded for staying safe. I get rewarded for staying, okay, in my comfort zone.

I get rewarded for playing the game I'm playing because it's familiar. And even if there's pain associated with what I'm doing, mental pain, financial pain, at least I know it. So there's certainty and I love certainty. So you mentioned something about faith. And I want to just make sure that people understand faith is acting in the absence of your own facts. It's trusting faith.

And this is where I go into, you know, a little bit like, do you know what you are? Do you know what you are? Just remember, right, that faith is the absence of fact. That's why we have faith. We believe in something other than our own fact.

But that also then brings me to, do you believe that we live in an intelligent universe? Do you believe that the answers to just about whatever we want are here? The people, the tools, the resources, the path is here. I just need to find it.

And if I have faith, all right, that I can find it, if I have faith that I could figure it out, if I can have faith that somebody will have the answer, if I can have faith that I can use AI right now to help me, then I can act in spite of not having the individual visceral fact that I may need. So I have to act in the absence, okay, of everything being in place. And that's faith. Yeah.

That's probably a big lift for a lot of people to come into that place and being able to do that. What do you think the biggest, and then we have to wrap up and I want to actually ask you a few questions around actually investing in your perspective of what's happening.

So maybe since we are running out of time, what would advice, your advice be for someone? It's Trump just got elected. It's January, whatever, almost February 2025.

A lot of interesting things are happening. There's a suggestion of AI consuming everything that might put people into a really wild place of a meaning crisis. I borrowed that language from John Verbeke, past guest, where suddenly we have a lot of jobs might be gone.

So yeah, tech's blowing up, crypto, you know, that seems there's suggestions of that blowing up. It seems like there's an immense amount of opportunity right now. And there's also an immense amount of volatility simultaneously.

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I've been studying AI for five years now. Kai-Fu Lee, who is the head of DeepSeek and the investment arm for DeepSeek, somebody I interviewed five years ago, that interview is on YouTube, on AI Superpowers, his book. So he opened my eyes up to AI. I've been teaching it to my students for two and a half years now. So let's understand that the change that we have just entered

is the greatest change in the history of humanity, period. We have gone from AI being the IQ of a chimpanzee

to now AI having the IQ of Einstein in every single category with the computational abilities of quantum computers that are millions of times more powerful than the most powerful computer we have today prior to quantum computing, part one. Part two, in the next 12 months, the Einstein-level AI

will be 10 times smarter. And Einstein is going to be compared to the AI as a chimpanzee. That's the shift that we're having right now. And I'm talking about PhD level expertise in every single category ever created in written, audio, video, and every combination modality thereabouts in the history of mankind, in the fingertips of every human being that has access to a mobile phone or a computer.

Part one of that. Part two. There's expected to be 70 to 90 million jobs lost in the next, they say, five years, seven years. But they're also expecting 150 to 200 million new jobs to arise. So, okay, great. Your job is in jeopardy. Your business is in jeopardy. But

It's also a time of great opportunity. We have just moved in AI from the generative AI space where you can use the tool to generate something to what's known as agentic AI. That is a robot that'll do the darn thing for you.

Write your copy. Robots will be cleaning your home. Analyze your website. Book your airline tickets. Book your hotel. It'll do the work for you. So the question becomes is, are you going to learn how to use the tools better or will you become extinct and obsolete? Because the next generation after agentic AI is artificial general intelligence. And we're almost there.

And that is what we all have to be aware of. Our lives as we know it has changed forever. And for some people, it'll be a tool of mass destruction of your life and business. That'll be a tool of mass construction. Now, I'm going to go back to where we started earlier. You get to choose. Am I going to learn how to use the tools?

to get ahead in health and wealth and relationships, career and business, and learn how to use the tools, have the tools help me, or am I going to let somebody else use it, and I'm going to wonder what in the world happened. So in times of change,

You know, was it, what was the, Eric Hoffer says, in times of change, the learners inherit the earth while the learners or while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped in a world that no longer exists. So here's what I'm doing. Here's what my students are doing. A minimum of 30 minutes a day retooling. I'm spending 10 hours a week retooling.

on AI, learning it, using it. My whole company is moving to AI powered everything. And all my students in my business program, they're using that too. So now let's go to crypto. We'll go to investing. I don't own one piece of crypto.

And when somebody that I have invested with, Warren Buffett, says like, I don't get it. I'm not putting any money in crypto. He might be old school and I'm probably old school. And I looked at crypto up until like recently as a high risk, volatile, you know, game.

And I have made and lost small fortunes in making stupid, risky mistakes and moves in the past. So I'm risk averse at this stage of my life. I want to make sure that the money I have lasts me till the end of my life and has enough for the charities that we support. But I have investments in blockchain. I have investments in the infrastructure. I have investments in, I think, 93 different companies right now as part of a VC firm that knows how to analyze these things better.

I have clients who have made deca millions in crypto. I've had clients who made a fortune, then lost it, sold it at the bottom and lost the big rise back up. So we're in a very volatile time right now.

You know, and, you know, when, you know, you mentioned Trump and he's president now and he, you know, has his own coin and his wife, Milani, has a coin and it's, you know, worth billions of dollars and there's no valuation except he's Trump. I have a hard time understanding that there's value there. No, there's no value there. Well, yeah. Yeah. Like.

I would say, I mean, that value is 100% based off of the story. There is utility that exists based off of, you know, the experts that I talked to in something such as Bitcoin itself. And then people that I talked to, the suggestion is kind of like pretty much everything that's not

bitcoin because it's truly decentralized and all the different things is pretty much all shit coins i'm borrowing that from robert breedlove and other folks but yeah and i've followed michael saylor i think he's brilliant and he's putting his money and billions behind you know what he's doing but but i also take a look at you know um you know it it's it's a you know 70 000 that goes down to 19 000 you wait you wait you wait you wait you wait you wait that takes off

to 109 and that goes back to 102 and that's 108 and it's 97 and that's volatile.

So I think if you're going to get Bitcoin, right, I think it's a long-term play. And if you're thinking five years, 10 years, 20 years, I think that's probably a good thing to consider. I also, when I teach my students about investing, I teach them three frames to consider when they're putting money into something. Number one, are you investing? Are you speculating? Or are you gambling?

So let's define what you're actually doing.

All right. At this stage of my life, I don't have much interest in gambling. Like, I mean, we're in Vegas. I take $1,000. I play $20 this and $15 that and $15 that. But I don't have, like I've gambled before. I've lost a fucking fortune, you know, gambling. Not like in Vegas, but gambling on this business and that business and this thing and that thing. And I've rarely won, but I've made a small fortune on investing and speculating.

And I've lost money in both of those, but nowhere near at the rate of...

Gambling. I considered crypto gambling for a long, long time. Now I think it's a speculation if it's the right type of crypto. If you were to, not financial advice, create a financial portfolio for someone and be like commodities, equities, real estate, whatever, self, how would you map out a portfolio for a person? Is there anything particularly that stands out? Because I know we're probably...

we need to go like right now. So anything particular that stands out, that would be advice. Real estate over time, which is my background. I had 85 offices and 1200 salespeople. So, you know, I had a lot of real estate at one point and real estate, you know, over time is great.

Depending on your risk portfolio, the standard importers did well, or if you can afford to invest in private equities, you know, private equities, if you could put money to private equity firms, they will outperform, you know, most of the stock market portfolios, the S&P 500, etc.,

So I think it depends for each individual how old you are, whether you're playing a short game or a long game. You know, what's your risk tolerance? So I think everything has to be customized so that you feel you're getting what you need. You know, what I need at 63 is

is very, very different than somebody who's in their 20s or 30s and even 40s that might say, you know what, listen, like I happen to be in my prime earning years now.

Like, because I take the wisdom of 20, I've been in business now 44 years. And so I can take the wisdom of all the successes, the, you know, the ups, the downs of invested at 21% interest rates about real estate. You know, I've had portfolios, I've got VC fund them a part of. So I've seen, I've seen all of it.

I haven't seen crypto. So my investment portfolio is very, very different today because I am just looking to make sure that the money that I earn, I could spend all of it. The money that I have will take me to 111 years old.

I think a diversified portfolio is the way to go because crypto may be hot right now. Real estate may be low right now. Real estate and crypto are pretty good right now. So I think if you have an interest, whatever you have an interest in,

that you're willing to go deeper. If you're going to do it yourself, especially, that's where you should be investing. Or you have professional people who've got a track record of a lot of years. And we're talking about investors say, stop using emotion to invest and make a decision. Am I gambling, speculating or investing? And how am I going to come up with

how I'm going to define each one and how do I make sure that I'm not investing emotionally because the market or the bus driver said to buy this because his girlfriend said that it's going up.

It's very sage advice. Uh, thank you so much for, yeah, just taking the time to be here and also just the path of your life to be able to bring all this wisdom to us. Now, um, you guys have, I'd love to, you know, for people to point some people somewhere to be able to learn more about your stuff. I know you have a, is it actually there? You actually have like, it's a, it's a, a book or an ebook that, that people can grab. They want to go deeper into your stuff. I just finished a new, um,

uh, ebook that we can give away. I'm going to put this on Amazon. It's called the power of visualization, unleash your brain's false potential to manifest your biggest goals and dreams. So that's it right there. Awesome. And the, the link for that, do you have the link for that? Yeah, it's my neural gem. Yeah. My M Y N E U R O G Y M.com.

myneurogym.com forward slash align. And we can have that for free and follow the advice on visualization. Remember, visualization is a simulation. The more you simulate, the more you automate. I love that. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. I look forward to doing this again. Thank you all for tuning in. That's it. That's all. I'll see you next week. Hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. I want to invite you over to the Align Podcast YouTube channel if you want to see...

the quality of both of our skins IRL, or as close to IRL as you can on the internet with video and check it out, subscribe, leave comments. I love reading the comments over there. And also if you have interest in improving the quality of your skin, they did give us a discount code at OneSkin, which was kind of them. You go to oneskin.co/align. I believe you get 15% off your order, which is pretty cool.

So if you want to try it out and get yourself a discount, jump over to their one skin.co slash align. I appreciate y'all. That's it. That's all. I'll see you next week.