The thermostat effect is the reason hard work alone rarely keeps you at a new level: your non-conscious brain has a setting for how much you earn, how hard you push and how good life is allowed to feel, and when you drift above or below it, it pulls you back. That’s how John Assaraf explained it to me. Willpower can lift you for a few days. If you want the change to stick, you have to change the setting itself.
This was John’s second time on the Addicted2Success podcast. After his first episode, I kept hearing from listeners that he was the standout, because he didn’t just tell people to stay motivated. He broke down what happens in the brain. So I opened with this: what’s the underlying block that stops people from having financial success and achieving greatness?
He said when you get into the science behind success, you also have to look at the science behind failure: what stops somebody from getting up one more time. I agreed. Failure is just as important as success. Everyone sees the glory, but they don’t hear the story.
What is the thermostat effect?
John used a hot day in Australia to explain it. You get in your car, turn on the air conditioner, and the car settles at 22 degrees Celsius. You feel great. Then you roll down the windows and hot air pours in. A sensor in the car picks up that it’s 20 or 30 degrees hotter than the setting, and the air conditioner cranks as hard as it can to cool it back down. Do the same thing in the middle of winter and the sensor picks up the cold and sends heat through the vents.
He called it a control and response mechanism. Whatever the setting is, the system protects it.
Now apply that to someone who wants more success. They read more, go to events and use willpower and persistence to raise their performance. John said that for three, four, five or seven days, it works. Then a mechanism in the brain notices you’re burning a lot of mental energy and starts pulling you back to your comfort zone. You get doubts about whether you can sustain it. You procrastinate. And then, in his words, “you’re going to tell yourself rational lies why you can take your foot off the gas and get back to your baseline.”
The part most people miss is that it works in reverse too. If you drop below what you’re used to, the same system kicks you out of bed early, sends you to the book, the event and the networking night, and keeps you working until you’re back at your old level. Not higher. Back.
That’s why John said “so many people try to focus on using sheer hard work to change the thermostat.” Hard work moves the temperature. It doesn’t move the setting.
Your brain runs on autopilot
He gave me a second picture that made it even clearer. You and your mates are on a 50 or 70 foot yacht off Bondi Beach with the autopilot set due north. Somebody grabs the wheel, turns it 30 or 40 degrees to the left and walks away. The autopilot turns the boat straight back to north. Somebody else swings it east and walks off happy. The boat goes right back to where it was heading.
John said human beings have an autopilot too, and it’s the non-conscious brain. Whenever there’s a deviation from what it’s used to thinking, feeling and doing, something he called the error detection mechanism kicks in and says correct course, correct course, correct course.
He listed where it shows up. People who double their income and then sabotage it. Someone who loses 20 pounds, looks great, and gains it all back. Someone who finally gets the promotion and feels so uncomfortable in the new environment that they get demotivated.
Take the anatomy as John’s way of teaching it, not a settled textbook diagram. The pattern itself, most of us have lived.
I had this upper limit
When he said it, I told him I was literally feeling it. I had this upper limit. I broke through it a few years earlier, and then all these things started coming into play, especially with my finances. I started thinking about tax more. I’d tell myself I didn’t want to make more because I’d have to pay more tax.
Looking at it now, I’d love to pay more tax. It means I’m making more money.
John jumped on it. That was the rational lie, and the freaking weirdest part, he said, is that you believe it. It’s the error detection mechanism wanting to keep you stuck and comfortable.
That’s the trap in one sentence. You don’t feel your thermostat pulling you back. You feel like you’re being smart.
Where fear slams the brakes on
So I asked him the question I really wanted answered. Where does fear come into play, and how can we punch that fear in the face?
He walked me through a scene. Say you and I decide to triple our income this year. High fives all around. In John’s telling, dopamine gets released and we feel like we’re going to conquer the world.
But underneath the hood there’s a fear. I’m not smart enough. What if I fail and embarrass myself? What if I succeed and can’t maintain it? Within moments, hours or days, you realize what it’s really going to take, and the fear circuit lights up.
John said that’s when the system floods with epinephrine, cortisol and norepinephrine, three chemicals in the stress response. Those stress hormones are real; Harvard Health’s explainer on the stress response walks through how the body releases adrenaline and cortisol when it senses a threat. John’s point was what it does to you. Real or imagined, emotional or financial, the pain works the same way. The brake on motivation slams shut and you start to procrastinate.
He said the untrained person feels fear, puts the brake on and retreats into what they’re comfortable doing. That’s the thermostat doing its job. His line that stuck with me was that ignorance is not your friend when it comes to neurochemistry.
It’s the stretch, isn’t it?
When I look back at my business, the times I really grew were when I put 20,000 down for coaching. I remember thinking, holy crap, this is a huge financial stretch for me. And something happens to you. You start absorbing more information. You get even more committed, because you know you’ve stepped outside the blueprint you had. It’s like burning the ships. You’re not going back.
John said most people can’t do that because they haven’t had a lot of practice making micro decisions around fear. Before they put the money down, the what-ifs start. What if it’s the wrong decision? What if I worked all that time for it, or borrowed it? What if I don’t apply what I learn?
Then he told me to pay close attention, because the brain’s default “goes to what could go wrong first before it goes to what could go right.”
His fix was to expect it. If we did a deal together, he said, he’d warn me upfront that a pile of negative thoughts would follow, and that it’s normal. Then he’d ask me to flip the switch and look at the other side. If we execute the plan, is it possible we hit our goals? What I took from it is that the what-ifs aren’t proof you made the wrong call. They’re the thermostat noticing you’ve moved.
Become a better observer of yourself
John said training your brain starts with being acutely aware of your own sensations. What’s my heartbeat doing right now? What’s my breathing doing? Am I anxious and stressed, or calm enough to think clearly? Can I respond instead of react? He called that a skill, which I love, because a skill can be practiced.
I told him about something Joe Dispenza said when we had him on the podcast: “Maybe we’re just poor observers. Maybe that’s our biggest problem.” John said Joe’s a friend, and that the observation starts with yourself. How do I respond when I’m uncomfortable? How do I feel when negative self-talk is going on? What am I actually afraid of when I’m procrastinating?
He also said that, in his view, procrastination usually comes from low self-esteem. If you knew how to do it and loved it, you’d do it. People put things off because they feel doubtful or worry somebody will judge them if it isn’t perfect.
If you’ve ever wondered why your energy disappears right after a big goal, the honest answer usually isn’t laziness. It’s what happens when motivation runs out and the old setting is still in charge.
How to reset the thermostat
I asked John about limiting beliefs, because I feel like they’re always kind of there from a very young age. We can improve them for sure. I don’t believe anything’s hardwired. It’s soft-wired, and we can change it.
John said a belief, from a neuroscience perspective, “is nothing more than a cluster of cells that have gotten together and connected over time repeatedly.” Your parents, school, siblings, TV and books all gave you some of yours.
Then he told me where his own setting came from. He moved from Israel to Montreal at five, spoke Hebrew and couldn’t read or write it yet, and was put in a class of 50 kids speaking French, with English as their second language. He said he sat there two years staring at the wall. Kids spat on him in the playground because he couldn’t speak English. He got into fights and stayed two years behind until he quit in grade 11.
That’s where “I’m not smart enough” came from. He carried it until he was 19, working for $2.30 an hour, when a mentor asked him why he really believed that.
What John did next is the most practical part of the whole conversation:
- He wrote a new setting. Affirmations like “I am good enough,” “I am smart enough” and “I can learn whatever I need to learn.”
- He repeated it for hours. He recorded his affirmations and goals and said he listened to them two or three hours a day in his car.
- He built proof under it. His mentor had him read, listen to audio and practice his skills one hour a day, so his confidence and certainty had something real behind them.
He said things started clicking one after another. By his account he made $31,000 at 19 and $151,000 at 20. Those are John’s own numbers, not a promise of what affirmations will do for anyone’s income. The lesson I’d take is the combination. He didn’t just chant his way to a new setting. He changed the belief and the skills at the same time.
Your business can only grow to the extent that you do
John’s biggest example wasn’t personal. It was a team. He said that at RE/MAX they hit a plateau at about $1.2 billion in sales, and he knew that wasn’t the ceiling. Instead of teaching them to sell more real estate, he said they started retraining their brains: their financial set point, their expectancy point, how they thought about prospecting and the high income, high impact activities.
Over the next four years, he said, sales grew by $3.3 billion to about $4.5 billion a year, and his agents averaged $128,000 when the typical agent was making $30,000 to $40,000. Take those as John’s figures from his own company. If you’re stuck at a plateau despite your continuous efforts, his argument is that more tactics won’t move you. Moving the expectation might.
He said the same about his coaching clients. Without mindset and emotional management training, maybe five or six percent got great results. With it, alongside the skill sets, he said it was 62%. I told him that’s an insane result.
I truly believe your business can only grow to the extent that you do. You are the starting point for everything.
Success is a pattern you can learn
John keeps Rubik’s cubes on his desk. Some people solve one in seconds, blindfolded. His point was that it’s all pattern recognition.
“Success is a pattern,” he said. So are being healthy, being wealthy and having a great relationship. In his view, learn the behavioral pattern and you get a predictable result almost every time.
That took me straight back to being seven. I watched Space Jam and ran around slam dunking the top of the door frames. My mom gave me Rare Air, the Michael Jordan book, and I remember wondering how a guy built like so many other NBA players could be so different. Later I learned Kobe Bryant used to watch replay after replay of Jordan. What he was really studying was the pattern. Success leaves clues.
John said LeBron and the greats before him all studied the patterns of great players. Then he said the line I think explains the whole thermostat effect: if he gave a hundred people the blueprint of what to do, one might do it. Train their brains and their emotions as well, and he said he could get 60 to follow through.
Here’s my take. If you keep hitting the same ceiling, stop asking how to work harder and start asking what your thermostat is set to. Notice the rational lie when it shows up. Take the stretch that scares you a little. Then change the belief and build the skill under it, every day, until the new level is the one your autopilot defends.
FAQ
What is the thermostat effect?
It’s John Assaraf’s name for the way your non-conscious brain holds you at a familiar level of income, effort and comfort. Push above it with willpower and it pulls you back. Drop below it and it pushes you back up.
Why do people slide back to their comfort zone after a breakthrough?
In John’s view, the brain notices you’re spending a lot of energy outside your normal setting and starts producing doubt, procrastination and rational-sounding excuses until you return to your baseline. Hard work changes the temperature, not the setting.
What are rational lies?
John’s term for the sensible-sounding reasons you give yourself to ease off. Mine was not wanting to earn more because I’d pay more tax. They feel like good judgment, which is exactly why they work so well at keeping you stuck.
How do you reset your success thermostat?
John’s approach was to change the belief and the skill together. He repeated recorded affirmations and goals daily, practiced his skills an hour a day and built confidence on real proof. Expecting the fear and what-ifs is part of the process.
Is willpower enough to change your life?
Not on its own, according to John. Willpower can lift your performance for a few days, but if the non-conscious setting stays the same, it pulls you back. Lasting change comes from shifting the belief and the pattern underneath.
Disclaimer: Addicted2Success content is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for personalized advice from a qualified, licensed professional. Always seek professional counsel for your specific situation before making decisions.
