How to leave average behind with Michael Bernoff
SNIPPET #124
“This is going to be the best interview you’ve ever had.”
That’s what Michael Bernoff promised just moments before we started recording this podcast episode. To some, such a statement may seem arrogant. But to anyone who has met Michael or heard him speak, it is a classic example of the power of words and how words impact mindsets, which impacts outcomes.
We’ve interviewed over 120 people to date for American Snippets, and Michael is the only one who ever started off with a proclamation like that. That’s not to say we have not interviewed confident, successful, impactful people before Michael, it is just that his unique blend of confidence and humility led from the gate, and the interview took off at a gallop.
Michael doesn’t only study and teach the science and art of communication to his clients and audiences all over the world, he leads by example in work and in life.
“Average sucks,” is one of Michael Bernoff’s mantras.
He loves to help people all over the world step out of their average mindsets and rewire their brains for success beyond what they once believed to be attainable. People as young as 14 and as old as 96 have worked with Michael to learn how to reframe pretty much everything they believe about themselves and the art of communication. Corporations and privately-owned companies hire Michael to speak at events and meetings, and Michael Bernoff teaches audiences everywhere the fundamentals of communication with themselves and others that create pathways to massive growth.
Starting an interview off by declaring it will be the best one ever immediately sets a tone for success within his own mind, as well as the interviewer. It is one of the simple but effective tweaks Michael not only teaches people he works with but which he himself employs to approach every task at hand with a mindset of predetermined success.
“I’ve spent 20 years understanding the unconscious mind is where all the power is,” explains Michael. It’s where success and resilience is won or lost, and he’s learned how to train and harness that power to achieve his own massive success.
He may speak on stages all over the world, but Michael is not a motivational speaker, he says. “I’m not even motivated all the time. I just get myself to do things that I know I need to do.”
Motivation, says Michael, is nothing more than the ability to get yourself to take action when you need to.
Taking action is precisely what Michael did back in college. When his roommate’s father, who was a successful CEO, encouraged Michael to go into business for himself, that idea lit Michael up, and he went straight to the business school at the University of Arizona to follow up on it.
Instead of admitting the young man brimming with enthusiasm, they laughed at him. Michael then went to junior college for a year and began down the path he was told was more appropriate for a person like him.
That could have been the summation of his venture into life beyond average, but Michael never fully doused the flame of inspiration that had been lit with the idea of going into business for himself. While he plodded through junior college, the idea smoldered in his mind. Then came the day a reading assignment led him to Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” and the smoldering idea swept back up into a flame of inspiration.
That book, says Michael, was the first book he’d ever read that made him realize he was not stuck with who he was at the moment. Until that moment he’d believed there was no way to escape the confines of the mold he was shaped in. He’d had no idea there was education outside of college and its cookie-cutter approach to learning.
He was hooked and began educating himself by learning from people outside the standard educational system. For over 20 years now, Michael has continued studying the nuances of communication and the power of the unconscious mind. He’s trained himself to push far beyond the expectations of others – expectations he once believed to be unbreakable.
Today, Michael understands how to help people free themselves from the hold of traumatic memories and self-limiting beliefs. He knows how to rewire his brain to influence his behavior for desired outcomes, and he continually sharpens these skills by challenging himself on a regular basis.
Whether it’s expanding his company, The Human Communications Institute, speaking at new events, hosting his own events, or running a marathon, Michael believes that a life devoid of challenge creates stagnation, which leads to an average existence – and average sucks.
Anyone who works in his company quickly learns that this mindset is more than a selling point. It’s a policy. So it’s not unusual to see people doing burpees in the office, right along with his wife Debra Bernoff, who is his partner in work as well as life. She’s an accomplished speaker, health enthusiast, and businesswoman in her own right.
Michael Bernoff calls himself “psychologically unemployable.”
His own personality, coupled with his ADD, makes him a poor candidate to conform to structured hours and someone else’s rules. Rather than accept the belief that he should simply suck it up and live a life he is not suited for, restricting his natural tendencies rather than nurturing them all to work a steady job with a fixed paycheck and rigid hours, Michael swerved off that path, leaped out of that rut, and created a life for himself in which he finds true fulfillment.
He genuinely enjoys unlocking human potential and seeing his clients flourish. Whether it is a company struggling to overcome communication hurdles within its ranks, or individuals seeking to unleash their own potential, Michael swears by the power of communication and is driven to help it become the first go-to in challenging times. Instead of drugs, or alcohol, or violence, says Michael, understanding how to communicate with ourselves and others can resolve challenges and impasses.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Communication is the most underdeveloped and underutilized asset that we have as human beings to getting anything we want in this world. – Michael Bernoff” quote=”Communication is the most underdeveloped and underutilized asset that we have as human beings to getting anything we want in this world. – Michael Bernoff” theme=”style5″]
And it’s hard to argue the point when you see what it’s done for him and allowed him to do for people all over the world.
America is a country packed with opportunities for those willing to work hard and fortunate enough to have the insight necessary to realize those opportunities exist. For Michael Bernoff, the American Dream is about the ability to be himself, which has allowed him to have a major impact on other people’s ability to achieve their own dream.
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