Aaron Anastasi

Yes Luis. Thank you so much. It’s an honor for me to be on your show. I love you and I love what you do. So, let’s do this.

Aaron Anastasi

I grew up in poverty and during that time, I’ve taken on the scarcity mindset which doesn’t contribute to pursue your dreams. I lived that for a long time. I took that poverty and get what I can in that survival mode into my adulthood and it wasn’t serving me very well. I’d had some successes, mostly failures but some successes here and there but I wasn’t able to really find any sustainable success or anything that really lasted. I was out of point.

So several years ago, I remember sitting with my life coach and I was just at a point in my life where I just, I’d had it.  I was just really frustrated and really depressed and sad just because I felt like kept getting the same types of results over and over again that I didn’t want. It was like the carpet that was being pulled out from under me, which doesn’t serve you pursue your dreams. Like, I would have this opportunity, I would work toward it, and look like it was going to pan out, and then, the rug would be pulled out in front of me. It happens so much and so much in that pattern that I was like, “I’ve got to be complicit in this somehow. I’m doing something to create this. It’s got to be.”

Fast forward to when I was sitting with my coach that day, 6 or 7 years ago. I remember I was complaining to him about all this stuff and he said, “Who you would have to be in order to get the results that you want in life?” I was like, “What are you talking about? First of all, you mean, what do I have to do, right?” Because for me, it was about hardworking in order to pursue your dreams. I was always finding this idea of, “I won’t be poor. I won’t be poor so I’m go to fight and I’m going to work hard. I’m going to do all that.”

However, what I didn’t understand was that, our mind, my mind is like a GPS system. My thoughts and my beliefs are like a GPS system. If for me, I felt like it was broken in such a way that it kept getting me to the same place over and over again. It didn’t matter if I tried faster or new strategies. It was something in my mindset. The GPS system itself needed a recalibration to pursue your dreams.

When he asked me, “Who you would have to be in order to get the results you want?” That was the beginning of a search and a journey for me where I began recalibrating my beliefs system, my thoughts and what I thought was possible. That shift of the way of being actually included some radical results to pursue your dreams.

Within a year, I had gone from literally barely making a financially to making 6 figures, creating 7 figure business, a stagnant relationship that wasn’t really going anywhere to now being married to that same woman and having just a fun, adventurous marriage, and actually pursuing the dreams that were the most scary to me. That now, is what I’m doing more of today and you can pursue your dreams the same way.

Aaron Anastasi

It so just can be so cliché and so surface level.

Let’s say my wife want a divorce or something and Luis, or Kamala, yours is like, “Just be happy” I mean like, “What are you talking about?” Like, “Get out of my face.” It’s like that. That doesn’t help. So what is this actual shift of being?

Aaron Anastasi

So, one of the chapters of my book is called What A Racket and in that chapter, I talk about this idea of these rackets that we run on ourselves. Our rackets are basically all the beliefs systems that keep us small and keep us from living the bigger life that we would live and they’re usually based on some form of complaint that holds back to pursue your dreams.

If I go back to that time, my primary complaint was somewhere along the lines of, “I don’t have what it takes to be successful as an actor, as a musician, or as an entrepreneur,” “I don’t have what it takes.” This was my primary belief, “I don’t have what it takes.” Then I had a few other complaints surrounding that. It’s all about who you know. You need money to make money and to pursue your dreams. It was all of these cliché beliefs that I really did believe, so it kept me out of action.

The Racket structure for me is once I found out what somebody’s complaint is, then I’ve got a good idea about what their belief system is and walk them through that. “Okay, with this complaint, the next step is like, when you have this thought and this complaint, how do you feel? How do you react in your body? Like, what goes on?”

So for me, “I don’t have what it takes,” my reaction would be, it would just shut me down and just play safe and play not to lose rather than to play to win. I would not try do the hard work of what it takes to get that thing I want. There are all these things that’s producing in me. That’s the first level to pursue your dreams.

Here’s when it gets a little crazy. The third question we try and find out is, “If you were believing this on purpose, why that might be?” This is what I was talking about earlier. I was complicit somehow in creating this situation for me. The results I were getting were a perfect reflection of the belief system that I was living in. My life was perfect according to what I wanted, according to what I believe. What are the payoffs? If there are payoffs for me to believe I don’t have what it takes. I mean, first of all, I don’t have to have what it takes. I’ve got a scapegoat right out the gate. I don’t have to have what it takes. I don’t have to do the hard work of figuring it out. I don’t have to crank up my want-to level so much that the how-to becomes obvious. I don’t have to risk looking like a failure. So on and so forth. Now this is important to pursue your dreams.

Once I get an idea of what the payoffs are and how I’m complicit in this situation that helps me lock on to a little more reality.

Then the final thing I take them through is, “Okay, what is this costing you? When you choose to believe this thought, what is it costing you?” For me, it was costing me a better financial situation. It was costing me a better relationship. It was costing me a real pursuit of my dreams. It will cost you the same if you want to pursue your dreams.

Aaron Anastasi

So, in the way I perceive my world is based mostly on the language, the conversation I’m having with myself in my mind which is important to pursue your dreams. If I want to shift the conversation in my mind, the primary thing I could do is have a declaration or a vision about what I want to change and what I want to be different in my life.

The first thing that comes to mind is my wife and I. When we got married, we were $30,000 in debt and by we, I mean I was $30,000 in debt and then we got married, so we were $30,000 in debt. For about 10 years, I can’t get out of debt. Who can afford to pay off $30,000? All I could afford to pay is $139.11 which was my college tuition payment forever. That thought of, “I can’t do any more than this,” it affected my actions and what I pursued and then we decided, “Okay, we’re going to live into a new story.” Because we’re living in these stories and our actions are results of the stories we’re living in. So, I’m going to create a new story, a declaration, a vision of what I’m going to go for. So, we decided we’re going to be debt free, out of $30,000 of debt in 9 months.

At that time, we’re making hardly any money but we just made a declaration. We wrote it down which is important to pursue your dreams. We started telling our friends to be accountable, and we started moving in the direction of creating a new future. Because, we live into the future that we see coming toward us and if that future is a repackage version of the past or this jacked up GPS system, we’re just going to get that future over and over again.

Aaron Anastasi

“This is what we’re up too. This is what we’re going after,” and writing it down that’s such an important part of it. Then that creates a new future to live into and as we live into that future, we see other opportunities and possibilities that didn’t seem to previously exist because we were blind to them because of our beliefs system.

After 9 months, my wife and I got out of $30,000 in debt and it had a lot to do with just creating that vision and that commitment and really driving toward it.

Aaron Anastasi

Declaration is great to pursue your dreams. That’s what creates that new future. We live into the future we see coming towards us. That begins to paint that future.

There’s so much chaos often times in our mind or certainly in my mind. I can’t speak for you but in my mind, there’s a lot of chaos all the time. So, when I just make a declaration, that’s helpful. That gets me down the road. However, when we take something and we actually write it down and post it and look at it on a regular basis, it begins to reframe the mind. The brain starts seeing it as something that’s real to go after.

Think about even the credit card companies or anybody that’s sending you a bill. They write it down, type it out, and send it to you because they know, once it’s written down, you’re holding it in your hand, it seems real to the brains. Like, I’ve got to take care of this thing. It’s the same thing that’s essential to pursue your dreams. I’d never really did that with my own goals and dreams for a long time but when we write down, it begins to make it real.

The other thing is start telling people, “Hey, this is what I’m doing. This is what I’m going after,” and then, this is another level of using the ego against itself because we don’t want to look stupid in front of other people. We don’t want to be ashamed in front of other people. So, when I start telling people, it kicks in a whole another level of motivation of getting this thing done in order to pursue your dreams. There’s so much possible for us but we don’t employ all the resourcefulness that we have often times because of limiting voice that tells us, “Hey, don’t even try. This isn’t going to work out.” “That industry is already too oversaturated.” “Come on. You’re not smart enough for that. You’re behind.” There are all these limiting voices which keep us smaller.

Aaron Anastasi

Kamala, I understand that point of view too. I know it sounds weird like I’d get whatever I want but that’s been my experience. I love what you mentioned because this is the declaration to pursue your dreams. Before we can make a declaration or our commitment, we need to get really clear about what it is that we want and locking into what it is that we want.

I believe and what I talk a lot about my book is that success is staying on the path of progressively realizing this worthy idea to pursue your dreams. So, when we’re on the path, we’re going to reach our goals. It’s getting derailed from the path constantly by different things. I’m all about the limiting voices and our negative self-talk. I think that’s what ends up derailing us often.

Once we get really clear about what we want, we make a declaration, write it down, start telling people, and we stay focused on it. Just doing small things daily eventually, big things occur.

We think we want to take this huge leap into the future and, “Oh, I want all this huge success” but it generally doesn’t work for people that way. It’s just the steady plodding like the tortoise and the hare. When one of the tortoise and every day we just steady plod and we know we’re really clear about what we want.

My book is an Amazon bestseller now and has been on the list for 5 weeks or something. I have no idea how to that. A lot of my clients like, “I don’t know how to do this.”

Aaron Anastasi

The results are none of our business but it’s just the steady plodding. The result show up and it’s almost like magic.

Aaron Anastasi

Yes. Actually, one of the chapters of my book is called The Truth About You. It’s just this practice that I started that I never heard anybody else to talk about. Not that it’s completely new. There are other ideas around it but it’s something I started that just worked for me.

So, it’s called The Truth About You. This isn’t just a positive affirmation exercise like generic positive affirmations. They just don’t help me to pursue your dreams. Like, “Oh, I’m going to do great,” or “This is going to be awesome”. They connect with me a little bit but here’s what’s different about this Truth About You is I write things that people say about me that I respect. That’s part of it. When somebody that I respect says something to me that really connects with me, I take that and I put it in this Truth About You Is and I listen for things that are specific truth that counters specific lies that I believe.

I believe that we all know the truth and the truth will set us free. This principle to me is knowing a very specific truth to counter a very specific lie.

Let me just give you one example. I’ve got one of my buddies. He’s a really strong leader. I respect him a lot and anytime I’m thinking, “Oh, I’m a fraud”, that impostor syndrome, and “I’m a bad coach,” and “What am I doing?” “I shouldn’t be writing. Nobody cares what I have to say.”

There’s a quote that he says, “You systematically create success around you and inspire the same in others.” It’s a very specific thing that he said that can counter very specific lies that I have. Like I said, I’ve got 25 of these in my phone that count on the different lies that I tend to believe because like we’re talking on about before we hit record is that I’ve had a lot of different successes in my life and that’s great but it doesn’t it get rid of my own limiting voices and my own thoughts. I wake up in the morning often times with these flood of fearful thoughts of like you’re going to lose everything and you can’t sustain the success and you’re becoming irrelevant and all these limiting voices that come into my mind.

So I actually read this Truth About You. It’s just in the notes section of my phone. I read it every single morning when I wake up. It takes 5-8 minutes and it re-centers me on what’s more true about me than “You’re dumb. You’re going to fail. You always fail. You can’t keep this up,” All those thoughts that come in my mind. This re-centers me on what is at least as true but more true than those negative thoughts.

Aaron Anastasi

I haven’t found much success in just trying to replace it.

Here’s where I found the most success is when I take people through this Racket Structure, what I find is that when I could see what my actual thought is, like, “I don’t have what it takes,” I don’t go around thinking I don’t have what it takes but when I get clear about “Oh, this is what’s going on.” I say, “Okay.” Then I look at it and even write it down and say, “This is a thought that I believe” and then when I start doing inquiry on that thought through this Racket structure or any kind of inquiry, I begin to see what’s more true about that.

One of the questions I ask people even at the end of the racket structure is what is as true or more true than this thought to pursue your dreams? What’s as true or more true that I don’t have what it takes? “Well, I’ve got the equivalent of 3 Masters from Princeton.” “I’ve got 6-7 figure business.” So what is as true or more true? I started thinking about that and as I think of these things, I’m like, “That’s kind of an absurd thought.” It doesn’t mean I didn’t believe it and I won’t believe it again but in this moment, my mind now can see what’s more true about that thought. So it’s not like, “Oh, that thought just goes away.”

I find that when I inquire about these thoughts over the course of the next couple of days, I can’t let go of that. I don’t think it’s possible for anybody to let go or just replace a thought because these thoughts are universal on our mind. Everybody’s thought has had the thought in my mind, “I’m going to fail or everything’s going to go wrong or I don’t have what it takes or there’s something wrong with me.” These are universal thoughts that we just can’t let go but once we inquire about them, they begin to let go of us.

Then another key thing I talked about in my book is whatever that thought is and wherever that fear is, if we just get busy getting an action toward that thing, the voices begin to be silenced in my mind which helps you to pursue your dreams.

Like when I was writing my book, I thought, “Nobody’s going to read it,” “Why are you writing this book?” “You’re never going to finish it,” “Nobody will ever publish it,” like those thoughts. Then when I just said, “You know what. I’m just going to spend 3 minutes writing. I don’t care about these voices,” and after about three minutes of writing, the voices begin to be silenced.

Then two hours later, I emerged. I’m like, “Wow, I love writing.” The last thing I’ll say is Van Gogh has a quote. He says, “If you hear a voice in your head, say , You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”