Making It – Episode 168
Interested or Committed? The Big Mindset Shift (John Assaraf)
John Assaraf: Hey, I’m New York Times best selling author John Assaraf and you’re listening to Making It. I run a company called Neurogym, which helps people strengthen their mindset and get rid of limitations like fear, doubt, lack of self confidence so they achieve their life’s biggest goals and fullest potential of little faster and a little easier.
When I was in my teens, specifically 13 to 19, I hated school. I failed English, failed math, left high school at grade 11. I got involved with a group of kids that sold drugs, did drugs, did breaking and entries into companies stealing stuff. I was in junior detention halls, kicked out of school, I was considered a derelict and voted most likely to fail by the kids in my high school class. My brother who was eight years old was really concerned for my well being and he was a tennis pro that traveled around the world and he was teaching this guy tennis who was a very successful entrepreneur who was developing real estate. My brother said, hey, this guy, Mr. Allen Brown, might be able to give you a job. Would you come to Toronto to meet him? We lived in Montreal at the time.
I said, sure I would. So I took the train. We met this guy for lunch and he asked me if I would take a few moments and write the answers to some questions that he had in this document. I said, sure, I’ll answer whatever questions you want. And so he gave me this document and the first question was, at what age do you want to retire? And I’m like, I’m 19, my father’s not retired, my aunts and uncles have not retired. I asked him what should I write? He said, just pick a number. I wrote 45, which was 26 years later.
The second question was, upon retiring, how much net worth do you want to have? I looked at this gentleman, I said, excuse me sir, what does net worth mean? And he explained to me what net worth means? Then the next question was where do you want to travel? What kind of car do you want? Who do you want to help? What kind of home do you want? What kind of life do you want? I just wrote down four bedroom house, Mercedes Benz, traveled the world, retire my parents, nice wardrobe. And I wrote down all of this stuff that was just made up stuff.
And he looked at this, he says now if you could achieve this life, would you be proud of yourself? Oh my God, are you kidding? Of course I would be. He said, well, I’m going to ask you one question and the answer to this one question will determine whether you achieve and have all of these things in the back of my head. The only word that I could come up with was bullshit.
My father was a cab driver making $25,000 a year. My mother works as a seamstress. We never had enough money. We always wore secondhand clothes. Our life wasn’t great. Loving family, yes. But an abundant family? No way. So, anyway, he asked me if I would love to have it. I said, yes. I’m going to ask you one more question. The answer will determine whether you achieve everything that’s required to live. And I remember him leaning, leaning into me, and he says, are you interested in achieving this lifestyle, or are you committed to achieving it?
I remember thinking, interested, committed, what’s the difference? I asked him. He said, when you’re interested, you do what’s easy and convenient. When you’re interested, you let your old stories, reasons and excuses determine what you do next. When you’re interested, you don’t upgrade your knowledge and skills and your identity to achieve the goals you want. You keep repeating the same patterns over and over again, wondering what in the world is wrong with you. He says, but when committed, you upgrade your identity to match that destiny. You will upgrade your beliefs, your habits. You’ll upgrade your knowledge, your skills, and you will show up and every day figuring out how you can instead of why you can’t.
So now that you know which are you, are you interested or are you committed? And it took me a second. I just said, well, in that case, sir, I’m committed. And he reached out his hand and he goes, great, then I will be your mentor. That began my shift in my mindset. He says, first thing, I need to move from Montreal to Toronto. And I go, well, where am I going to live? I don’t have a car. I don’t have a job. He says, you’ll figure it out. People who are committed figure things out. They figure out how they can because they must. So I’m giving him excuses, and he’s saying, stop it already. We’re just beginning on this journey, and you’re already going to all the excuses.
I said, but it’s true. He said, create a new truth. I said, fine, I’ll move to Toronto. Part three says, great, I need you to enroll in the real estate class that starts May 5, 1980. I’m 63 now. I said, school. I said, I failed in English. I failed. I don’t know anything about real estate. He goes, stop. I said, but it’s true. He says, It’s 500 bucks. It starts May 5th. Are you interested? You committed? I said, fine, I’m committed. Long story short, I moved to Toronto from Montreal three weeks later, enrolled in real estate class, passed the test, got hired to work on commission only, and then he started to upgrade my skills as a real estate agent. He started to help me upgrade my identity and my beliefs and habits.
And over the next six months I made $62,000 and he made 31 of that, more than my father made in a whole year. In the next 12 months, by upgrading my identity and beliefs and mindset, I earned $302,000 and he made half of that. Was this my easy destiny path? No, it came out of a lot of pain. But then I said yes to the right opportunities. I remember him sharing with me, if I’m going to mentor you, will you promise you will mentor others when you can? I worked with him for two years. I went away for a year and a half, came back, went to work for somebody else. I built my own real estate company six years after I met him.
I built a company with 85 offices, 1200 salespeople doing four and a half billion a year. I didn’t talk to him for like 30 years. During COVID my office got a call and somebody had heard me share this story about this guy Alan Brown in Toronto in real estate. And the person on the phone says, hey, I think John Assaraf, I heard him on this radio show or TV show and I think he’s talking about my father. Okay. We got on Zoom and I had a chance to thank him. Alan, do you know you changed my life that morning when I came from Montreal to Toronto, you asked me one question and I’ve asked that same question. Are you interested or are you committed to over a million people now?
And he started to cry. He was in his 80s. This is just a few years ago. I told him I write books now. I’m a New York Times best selling author, I’ve been to 15 movies. I’m helping people. And you were the spark that lit something within me. We do whatever it takes, when we must. And when we say we’re committed, it elevates the motivation within us to overcome obstacles, to overcome limiting beliefs, to override fears, to stop thinking we’re not good enough or smart enough. Because we say, I’ll figure out how to be good enough and smart enough. I’ll figure out how to turn this fear into my fuel. I’ll figure out how to get rid of this limiting belief. I’ll figure out how to get the self confidence.
When we’re interested, the motive is too low and we understand a little bit about the neuroscience of behavior. We understand the psychology of behavior, and I consider not taking an action a behavior. But I also, you know, have gone deep into neuroscience and neuropsychology for the last 40 years to understand a couple other pieces of the puzzle. There’s these neuromechanical things that could be in the way even when we have the knowledge and the skill. And so what I have learned through research is in addition to helping people know what to do, why to do it, when to do it, how to do it, which we need, because in the absence of that, we have uncertainty and doubt.
And a brain that has uncertainty and doubt is a brain that doesn’t feel safe. And when we don’t feel safe, we move back into safety and comfort is really upgrading my identity to feel that I deserve it and that I can do it, and to learn how to manage the emotion we call fear. And there’s 50 different ones that could be affecting you or me at any time, which is just a protective mechanism within me for safety, security, and survival to avoid any pain or discomfort or damage to you or your finances. So there are these parts to us that we’ve just never learned about in school or through our parents. It’s like somebody gives you the car of your dreams, but you never learn how to drive. Every brain functionally works the same, and most people have no idea how to use their brain properly.
What making it means to me is having a life of purpose, a life of meaning, a life of contribution, a life where I feel like I’m not squandering my life, reaping the rewards of the effort that I’m putting in so that I don’t ever feel like I’m wasting this precious, incredible gift of time and that I’m making decisions that make me proud that I’m alive. And I take that very, very seriously. So making it to me isn’t necessarily about money, but it’s the holistic feeling. My life has the purpose and meaning with impact and positive influence in the world. And what scares me the most is coming to the end of my life feeling that I should have, could have, and didn’t.
And because that scares me, I move away from that every single day by being deliberate that if I happen to be in that day today, my last gesture will be a smile before I die. The spark 44 years ago with my mentor helping me shift my perspective was the beginning part of the flame. And as I achieved success in wealth, then I had health challenges. I had ulcerative colitis at 22. I didn’t have control of going to the bathroom because I was so stressed out. So I had to apply the mindset, shift, the beliefs, the reprogramming my brain to remove ulcerative colitis. After a year of pills, potions, doctor’s appointments, hospital visits, I got divorced twice over the next 20 years and had to apply it in relationships.
And I’ve been with my wife, Maria, now for 25 years and proud father of two kids. And then I’ve been an alcoholic and I stopped drinking 15 years ago. And I’ve been a sugar addict. I’ve made, lost a lot of money and made it back in every area of my life. Health, wealth, relationship, career, business. I’ve succeeded and failed and have used the tools in my life. And then I’ve shared the process, the frameworks with literally millions of people that have had over a hundred thousand students. And it’s duplicatable.
I’m the guinea pig. I learn, I share. My students learn, they share back. I see their struggles and successes. We all have stuff that we’re maybe not proud of that we’ve been embarrassed by or ashamed by. I used to steal as a kid to make myself feel good, to have money in my pocket. I’ve given away millions to make up for it to give. So I want people to understand that the journey is real. We all share the same pains and fears and frustrations, irritations, embarrassments, things we’re proud of, things we’re so embarrassed of.
It’s okay to be human and you have a choice of what to do next, a choice of how to make things right. That’s the power we all have. I’m using my life in a way that doesn’t just help me and my kids and my wife and friends, but I may be that little spark for that one person, like Allen Brown was for me. And maybe they could be that little spark for two or three or ten or a hundred people down the road. And that makes me feel good.
Hey, this John Assaraf and you’ve been listening to Making It. If you’d like to find me and more of my work, go to my website myneurogym.com. That’s myneurogym.com and read some of our articles, take a look at some of the free training that we have and find links in the show notes for that and my Inner Size app. And that is a way to strengthen your mind and train your brain. And I’ll give you one more thing. My newest 25 page book called the Power of Visualization and I’ll show you how to use visualization to be able to help train your brain to achieve your biggest goals and dreams and your fullest potential.
Melinda Cohan: Making it as part of the Mirasee FM Podcast Network, which also includes such shows as Just Between Coaches and Once Upon a Business. To catch the great episodes that are coming up on Making it, please follow us on Mirasee FM’s YouTube channel or your favorite podcast player. And if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a comment or a starred review. It is the best way to help us get these ideas to more people. Thank you and we’ll see you next time.