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INNERCISE

INNERCISE

The New Science to Unlock Your Brain’s Hidden Power
by John Assaraf 2018 244 pages
4.07
500+ ratings
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Key Takeaways

1. Unlock Your Brain's Hidden Potential Through Innercise

With Innercise, you’ll learn to change your habitual patterns, and eliminate dis-empowering emotions.

Complete the fitness revolution. Just as physical exercise strengthens the body, Innercise strengthens the mind. It's a comprehensive guide to science-based mental and emotional techniques designed to unleash the hidden power of your brain. By targeting mindset, emotional blocks, and ingrained habits, Innercise helps you clear the path to your greatest victories and successes.

Eliminate limiting emotions. Innercise provides tools to overcome common obstacles such as fear of failure or success, shame, low self-worth, negativity, and lack of confidence. These limiting beliefs are nothing more than reinforced subconscious patterns that cause you to think, feel, and behave in ways that produce the same undesirable results.

Achieve goals faster and easier. Innercise offers brain-based techniques used by elite athletes, Navy SEALs, CEOs, and astronauts to upgrade their awareness and skills. It's your key to greater mental toughness, more confidence, and increased emotional fortitude, enabling you to achieve your health, wealth, career, relationship, and business goals more efficiently.

2. Understand Your Two Brains to Overcome Self-Sabotage

John accurately points out that it is our unconscious processes that often dictate the results in our lives, and he demonstrates how you can access and change your brain to feel better, while getting tangible results too.

Conscious vs. Subconscious. You have two "brains": the rational, logical conscious mind, and the deeper emotional, habitual subconscious mind. The subconscious, operating at lightning speed, controls the vast majority of your thoughts, feelings, and actions, often without your awareness. This divide explains why change is difficult, as conscious goals may conflict with hidden emotions and instincts.

The 800-Pound Gorilla. Your subconscious brain is like an 800-pound gorilla, demanding coherence between your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. When you try to change, you introduce dissonance, which the brain resists to maintain safety and efficiency. This resistance can manifest as self-sabotage, procrastination, and a return to familiar, comfortable patterns.

Tame the Gorilla. To achieve your highest potential, you must align your conscious and subconscious brains. Innercise provides science-based techniques to retrain your subconscious mind, rescript your self-image, and reset unproductive perceptions. By mastering your emotions and behaviors, you can escape habit-hell and achieve tangible results.

3. Neuroplasticity: Rewire Your Brain for Success

Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.

Brain's ability to change. Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. This means you can modify old patterns, beliefs, and habits that keep you from achieving your goals. Innercise leverages this principle to reshape your brain and align your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors with your desired outcomes.

Three ways to alter your mind map:

  • Neurogenesis: Creating more neurons, or brain cells.
  • Hebb's Rule: Strengthening connections between neurons that fire together.
  • Myelin: Improving the efficiency of neural connections.

Flip the Neuroplasticity Switch. As adults, some of our neuroplasticity is turned off, but we can turn it back on. Novelty, curiosity, pleasure, purpose, focus, exercise, and discomfort can all help flip the switch and create new patterns in your brain. By engaging in these activities, you can upgrade your brain's software and unlock your full potential.

4. Strengthen Your Core Neuro-Muscles: Awareness, Intention, Action

Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.

Three core neuro-muscles. Brain fitness is achieved by strengthening three core neuro-muscles: Awareness, Intention, and Action. Awareness allows you to observe your habitual patterns and make changes. Intention involves deciding how you want to think, feel, and act. Action is about executing new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Awareness is key. Awareness is the mental ability to observe your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors without judgment. It allows you to catch your "gorilla" at work and interrupt negative or disempowering patterns. By observing yourself in the moment, you increase your ability to control negative conditioning and proclivities.

Choice is the magic ingredient. As you build awareness, you build choices. And as you build choices, you build the power of intention. By combining awareness, intention, and action, you can create a powerful combination for achieving your goals and living a more fulfilling life.

5. Transform Fear into Fuel for Achievement

The cave you most fear to enter contains the greatest treasure.

Fear's evolutionary role. Fear is a valuable survival mechanism, but in modern life, it often manifests as irrational anxieties that hold you back. Your brain's threat-detection system, designed to keep you safe, can be triggered by imagined risks and old memories, leading to self-sabotage and missed opportunities.

Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Faint. When faced with a perceived threat, your brain activates one of these four responses. These responses can cripple your optimism and desire to take action, keeping you stuck in your comfort zone.

Turn fear into fuel. By recognizing the ways fear holds you back, you can begin to release its grip and break through to the next level of success. Innercise techniques, such as "Take 6: Calm the Circuits" and "Beach Time," can help you manage your fear response and turn it into a source of motivation and strength.

6. Rewrite Limiting Beliefs into Empowering Stories

Man often becomes what he believes himself to be…if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.

Beliefs shape reality. Beliefs are the lenses through which you interpret the world and your experiences. They are reinforced patterns in your brain, based on memories, personal experiences, and old models of reality. Limiting beliefs can cause you to act habitually and interfere with your ability to see yourself, other people, and the world in new, more empowering ways.

Explicit vs. Implicit Beliefs. Explicit beliefs are conscious and easily articulated, while implicit beliefs are largely subconscious. When your explicit and implicit beliefs don't align, you experience cognitive dissonance, which can undermine your ability to achieve your goals.

Change your story, change your life. By identifying and challenging your limiting beliefs, you can rewrite your story and create a new, more empowering self-image. Innercise techniques, such as "Open Window" and "Back to the Future," can help you tap into your creative brain, take baby steps, and visualize a new, more fulfilling future.

7. Master Stress and Anxiety to Enhance Performance

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

Stress as a double-edged sword. Stress can be either a crushing force or a source of energy and initiative. The key is to shift from a threat response, characterized by fear and helplessness, to a challenge response, marked by inspiration and courage.

Surf the wave, don't suffer. By learning to recognize and manage your stress response, you can turn overwhelm into focused control. Innercise techniques, such as "Surf the Wave" and "Adult Chill Out Time," can help you calm your neurology, increase your awareness, and choose a more empowering response.

Tame the monkey mind. Anxiety, often manifested as chronic worry, can be managed by quieting the "monkey mind." Mindfulness and meditation can help you increase your awareness, reduce activity in the default mode network, and cultivate a more positive and focused mindset.

8. Cultivate a Positive Mindset for Lasting Happiness

Ninety percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world.

The power of positivity. A positive mindset, encompassing optimism, happiness, and creativity, is strongly linked to success. While negativity has its place, cultivating a positive outlook can significantly enhance your well-being and ability to achieve your goals.

Overcome the negativity bias. Your brain is naturally wired to pay more attention to potential risks and negative experiences. By consciously feeding your "inner Einstein" and quieting your "inner Frankenstein," you can shift your focus from limitations to possibilities.

Activate your inner Einstein. Innercise techniques, such as "Kill the ANTS" and "The Flip-Flop," can help you challenge negative thoughts, reframe your perspective, and cultivate a more empowering mindset. By choosing to feed the positive wolf within, you can create a life filled with greater happiness and fulfillment.

9. Create Brain-Friendly Goals for Optimal Motivation

Whatever we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

Goals as a neurological trigger. Your brain loves goals, and setting them activates key areas associated with motivation, planning, and action. However, not all goals are created equal. To maximize their impact, you need to create brain-friendly goals that align with your natural tendencies and preferences.

The problem with goals. Setting goals is the simple part. Taking the necessary action and following through, persevering even when things look bleak, and being consistent about this all is when you come to see that the answers you seek are already within you.

Brain-friendly goals. To create goals that truly resonate with your brain, make them precise, vivid, and emotionally valuable. Tie your goals to a meaningful purpose, and break them down into manageable steps. By setting goals that leverage the power of your brain, you can unlock your full potential and achieve lasting success.

10. Design a Daily Innercise Ritual for Consistent Progress

Don’t judge each day by the harvest that you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

The power of ritual. Consistent practice is key to transforming your brain and achieving lasting change. By creating a daily Innercise ritual, you can reinforce new neural patterns and make positive habits automatic.

Roots and Shoots. Just as plants take time to grow, so too do new habits and beliefs. Be patient and persistent, trusting that the roots are growing beneath the surface, even when you don't see immediate results.

The Hollywood Express. To accelerate your transformation, immerse yourself in the role of the person you want to become. By visualizing your success, upgrading your skills, and embracing new behaviors, you can create a powerful feedback loop that propels you toward your goals.

Last updated:

Review Summary

4.07 out of 5
Average of 500+ ratings from Goodreads and Amazon.

INNERCISE receives mixed reviews, with an average rating of 4.07/5. Readers appreciate the neuroscience insights and practical exercises for self-improvement. Many find the content valuable for personal growth and goal achievement. However, frequent criticism targets the book's perceived advertising for the author's programs. Some readers feel it lacks depth or originality compared to similar works. Despite these drawbacks, many still recommend it as a useful guide for understanding brain function and implementing positive changes in one's life.

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About the Author

John Assaraf is a renowned entrepreneur, business growth expert, and bestselling author. With over 25 years of experience, he has built multiple successful companies and helped thousands of small business owners increase their revenues and profits. Assaraf is a frequent guest on major TV shows and appeared in "The Secret" movie. He has authored two New York Times bestsellers, "Having it All" and "The Answer." His current focus is OneCoach, a company dedicated to assisting entrepreneurs in growing their businesses. Assaraf's expertise lies in combining business strategies with personal development techniques to achieve success in both professional and personal spheres.

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