The Question That Will Change Your Life with John Assaraf | #Perspectives with Sharon Pearson
I first met behavioural mindset expert John Assaraf around ten years ago when I cornered him at one of his events in Australia. I'd read his New York Times bestseller The Answer, and was intrigued by the mind behind it.
We had lunch, and I loved how open and curious John was. Super successful, he's built five multi-million dollar companies, is the founder of NeuroGym and has sat next to Ellen DeGeneres on the set of her TV show. We brainstormed about a ton of things and we parted that day as friends. Since then, we've worked together in the US and have stayed in touch, so as COVID and lockdown rolled into their seventh month he was on my mind because I knew he'd have a smart, informed take on the world.
And of course he did, when he joined me on #Perspectives podcast 'The question that will change your life'.
We spoke for over an hour, in a conversation that ranged from both losing a parent during the pandemic—John's mum died in May at age 87 of coronavirus and my dad passed away in September three days after Father's Day—to business strategies, procrastination, neural networks and authenticity.
Generosity also came up, because it's something we both value. “I seek to be a go getter but also a go giver," says John. "I’ve discovered I can’t out-give the universe.”
The great thing I always find about talking to John is how he's not just smart and measured, he's informed. It was natural to spend a lot of time discussing the human brain: his passion is "the neuroscience and neuropsychology of stuff" and that's the prism through which he looks at everything.
We talked our ability to deliberately manipulate our brains to evolve faster than normal, and procrastination. For John, putting things off is an effect of one of three causes: an arousal mechanism in the brain of about one per cent of the population, self image, self worth and self esteem, and fear.
“So we have all these unconscious patterns that are activating the brakes of our lives and that’s what causes procrastination. So if you work on understanding which