#39 – Jim Kwik: Superpower Your Brain, Part 1

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Episode Summary

Welcome to the Wealthy Wellthy Life with Krisstina Wise. Jim Kwik is the CEO of Kwik Learning and Founder of SuperheroYou. He is also a memory & speed-reading expert, social entrepreneur, and international speaker who discusses subjects such as memory improvement, brain performance, and accelerated learning. People assume Jim was born with this uncanny ability to memorize things, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Jim’s brain power was developed after struggling for years and years with a traumatic brain injury.

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You can also click on the time stamps below to jump to those specific points in the conversation.


What We Covered

  • [02:40] – Jim has made a huge impact on Krisstina’s life.
  • [05:55] – No matter who you are, everybody can have a better brain.
  • [07:15] – Jim grew up with learning challenges after a bad head trauma at the age of five.
  • [08:20] – Remember how many phone numbers we used to remember back before smartphones? We’re losing that ability and it’s affecting our brains, too.
  • [09:35] – We grossly underestimate what our brains are capable of.
  • [14:15] – We will grow and live the most by being lifelong learners.
  • [15:10] – Until the day you die, you are creating more brain cells.
  • [17:00] – We don’t live in a one-size fits all world anymore, which makes schools’ current model a bit ineffective.
  • [18:30] – If you want your business to grow, you have to grow.
  • [19:30] – When teaching others, Jim doesn’t tell people it’s going to be easy. Instead, he tells them it’s going to be worth it.
  • [26:15] – Jim knew he had to work so much harder than the rest due to his brain injury and this thinking lead him to be hospitalized at age 18 because he wasn’t eating or taking care of himself.
  • [28:40] – Don’t look at it as a problem, look at it as a puzzle.
  • [31:05] – We all have the same capability to learn, so why is it that some of us don’t try?
  • [39:55] – If you want to make things easier for yourself, break things down in tiny pieces.

Tweetables

[Tweet “It’s hard for us to move forward if our brain is holding us back.”]
[Tweet “No matter your age or your background, everyone can have a better brain.”]
[Tweet “Our brain strives on two things: Nutrition and novelty.”]

Links Mentioned

Jim’s Website
Jim’s Programs

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You are at the intersection of wealth, health, and happiness. Welcome to the Wealthy Wellthy Life.

Hello, and welcome to the Wealthy Wellthy Life, the show about becoming wealthy without sacrificing your healthy. Each week, I interview a countercultural thought leader to bring you a unique millionaire mindset. I’m Krisstina Wise, bestselling author, millionaire coach, and your personal guide to money, health, and happiness.

Today, I tackle money wealth with Jim Kwik. Jim, the CEO of Kwik Learning is widely recognized around the world as an expert in speed reading, memory improvement, brain performance, and accelerated learning. He is the founder of SuperheroYou, an annual conference featuring top experts, i.e. superheroes in various film. For two decades, Jim has served as a mental coach to students of all disciplines, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and CEOs, and leaders across the world. Some of his clients include companies like Nike, Virgin, GE, and Fox Studios, as well as top universities like Harvard, NYU, just to name a few. As if that wasn’t enough, he’s also the author of the New York Times bestselling book, “Use Your Brain to Change Your Age”. I like that one. Jim and I go way back. If you’re ready to hear some mind-blowing – haha, get the pun? – millionaire secrets, you’ll absolutely want to listen to this episode. This is part 1 of a 2-part interview. If you like this episode, be sure to come back next week for part 2. Enjoy.

Jim, it is so much fun to see you. It’s been a while. How are you?

Krisstina, I’m fantastic. Thank you so much for having me, and hi everybody who’s joining us for this conversation.

Well, you and I have known each other for several years now. We met back in 2012, I think, in Turks and Caicos through our mutual friend, Brendon Burchard.

Fantastic. Good times.

Yeah, that was a really great trip, and obviously, I really enjoyed getting to know you down there, and learning about you and your work. We meet people, we don’t ever really think about, many times, in those sorts of situations, that was a Mastermind Event that we may ever circle back around and what the future may hold with meeting somebody.

But, you know, you’ve had such a huge impact on my life, and so first of all, I want to say thank you. You may or may not know how much of an impact you’ve had on my life and a lot of my recovery. But, I think we met for a reason even back then. I, at least, met you, and part of my story, and I think you know this, but we met in December of 2012, and I got really sick in January of 2013. So, where I looked really healthy and I think we all had a great time down there, I didn’t know I was sick, nobody else knew I was sick, and within 30 days of meeting you down in Turks and Caicos, I was bedridden and couldn’t think, couldn’t eat, couldn’t — I mean, I just lost my ability to really live outside of being in bed and I lost my ability to eat, I lost my ability to sleep, I lost my ability to think. As performers, we rely on our mind. I mean, you know that more than anyone, being really a memory and brain coach.

So, I was devastated because, all of a sudden, here I was, a performer, a doer, a creator, a thinker, and now I couldn’t think anymore. So, circle back around, obviously, I was able to recover. I’ve had a breakdown at all different levels: physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically. But, heavy metal poisoning is what actually physically took me down, among other things. And I had such high levels of mercury poisoning that the toxicologist didn’t know how I was still alive, and they were afraid, at that point, that maybe they couldn’t even get my brain back. Because, what mercury does – you probably know this – but mercury really lodges in the brain and affects the brain and hurts the brain, ultimately, and that’s why I just lost my ability to think and my brain was so inflamed. So, when I went through that, physically, I was able to reverse that, I went through a lot of collation, detoxification, took a year, was able to recover, my kidneys were breaking down, my organs were shutting down, my brain was gone.

So, coming out of that though, I had to get my brain back, and that’s when I remembered at least one thing of thinking, “You know, there was this man named Jim Kwik down in Turks and Caicos that had something to do with brain and memory. Let me check into who this guy is,” and then I started following you again, and not too much longer I’d reached out. But, I had went through all your programs, I’ve gone to every single of your events since then.

So, you’ve helped me get my brain back, and so I wanted to introduce you to my audience, because now, 1, I need to get my brain back, and I’m still working on that. But, I think we all can improve our brains a little bit, and I wanted to introduce you to everyone so that you can share with people how to do that.

Absolutely. How you feeling? I mean, congratulations, by the way. A lot of people, we all have setbacks in some area, and the two of the biggest ones you’re helping people. It’s one of those wealthies, whether it’s their physical vitality or it’s their personal treasure, and it’s amazing, the work that you’re doing. It’s really hard for us, sometimes, to move forward and be the kind of person we’re supposed to be if our brain is holding us back. And sometimes it’s no fault to our own.

So, whoever’s watching this, I can tell people it’s no matter your age, your background, your career, your level of education, your financial situation, your gender, your IQ, everybody can have a better brain. And I know this because the people who see me on stage, I do these demonstrations where I’ll memorize a room full of people’s names, or they’ll give me 100 words, or 100 numbers, and I’ll memorize them forwards and backwards, and I always tell people I don’t do this to impress you.

I really do this more to express to you what’s really possible because everyone who’s listening to our voice now, you can do the same things, and far more. It’s just we weren’t taught. And if anything, we were taught a lie. We had this conversation before about our education system and how it’s a great place to learn what to learn – math, and history, and science – but not necessarily how to learn.

So, if anything, I think we’re taught a lie that our memory, our intelligence, our learning, our potential is somehow fixed, like our shoe size, or something like that. And I can tell you, after doing for over 25 years and seeing everyone from children with severe learning challenges to seniors that are struggling with age-related challenges with their mind that everyone can improve, and that’s not static. We just need to be dedicated, committed, and find resources that can help us along the way.

I know this, and this is a very sensitive topic for me because I grew up with learning challenges. At a very early age, at the age of 5, I had an accident, had trauma, had some brain damage, had me with these learning problems all through school. I mean, I’m talking about elementary school, middle school, and junior high, and high school, I was the kid that just would work so much harder than everybody else and it wouldn’t show that I would. Because I wasn’t lazy. It’s just I didn’t know if there was a better way.

So, I know what it’s like when you’re losing this battle. Right now, this age that we live in right now, and the age of this [unintelligible [7:50] of the mind. It’s like your brain controls everything, and it influences everything, and the challenges we’re struggling with: information overload, digital distraction everywhere, and not just digital distraction, but even there’s a new thing called “digital dementia”, where we’re outsourcing our brains all the time to our smart devices.

If you think about how many, for example, phone numbers we used to know 15 or 20 years ago, and people knew 100 of them at the tip of their tongue. It’s just like right there at their fingertips. But, how many phone numbers do we know now, right? Like, maybe one, maybe two. And not that we want to memorize 300, or 400, or 500 phone numbers.

But, the challenge is that it’s convenient, but it also cripples us mentally sometimes, because our brain, these mental muscles that we need, it strives on two things. It strives on nutrition and novelty. Just like with your physical body, right? If you want somebody to grow stronger and more fit, they need nutrition and they need novelty or stimulus, right? Some kind of movement or exercise that gets them to build their physical muscles. Same thing with your mental muscles, that we all could be mentally sharper, mentally fitter, mentally more agile, mentally faster, mentally stronger just by doing these mental works, and the other things that you and I have done together.

So, everybody can do that, and I know that they think people who struggle with this are concerned because it’s just they’re not as focused as they used to be. Their memory is not as strong as it was when they were in their 20’s maybe. And I could tell you, if you get all of that back, that only one-third — people think that it’s just predetermined by genetics and biology, all the lead is science, and we’ve discovered more about the human brain the past 20 years as good as 2,000 years. And what we know is grossly underestimating what it’s capable of.

And people watching this, whether you’re an entrepreneur, you’re an educator, you’re a parent, whatever stage you are in your life, you’re a student. This is the biggest lever that we have, and it’s the thing that can help us to move faster. We could learn a bit faster, we could earn, and I don’t just mean money. I mean all the treasures of our life. It’s our wealth, and it’s our health, and it’s our relationships. It’s our purpose for being here. And so that’s really what lights me up is when I see people light up. That way, when they flip that switch on, and they have this level of ability and this leads to a level of confidence also. So, whatever you people are facing right now, I can tell you you’re not alone.

Well, in seeing you perform and memorize 100 names in a room or numbers, the first thought is, “This is some sort of savant,” that you were just born with this gift and the normal person could never do this, and that’s why I’m really happy that you shared your story. Like, you weren’t just born with this ability, this unbelievable recall ability, correct?

Correct. Yeah, I wasn’t born reading as fast as I do, or the focus that I have with learning. I think if there’s one skill to master in the 21st century in this age of information, I think it’s the ability to learn faster. It’s not like it was at the turn of the previous century where the education system, we talk about it as it hasn’t changed as much as the world has changed. We live in an age of autonomous electric cars that just drive themselves, or spaceships that are going to Mars. Like, how we learn the vehicle is like a horse and a carriage, and it hasn’t been updated a lot. We may be talking future about education and such.

But I really do believe that the responsibility relies on us. You know, us for ourselves, us for your parents, for your children also as well, and that’s the greatest gift you can give yourself, and it’s not even that you’re struggling in a certain area, or your children are struggling in a certain area. It’s not how smart are they, but it’s really how are they smart. You know what I mean? It’s not how smart someone is, but how are they smart. And so it’s typically in Western education we’re really reinforced to value verbal linguistic, mathematical, which are very important intelligences, right?

But, what we discovered in the past few decades is there’s not just one or two kinds of intelligence. There’s multiple kinds of intelligence, because musical intelligence is phenomenal. You think about people with a concert pianist, physical intelligence, the kind of people who are performing on basketball courts, or through ballet. That’s the certain level of physical intelligence there’s an interpersonal connection like interpersonal intelligence where some people are just really good with other people, or they’re really good with themselves. Like, interpersonal is one to somebody else. Intrapersonal is like you to yourself, and I think self-awareness is a superpower that could help everybody no matter where you are.

But, we know, when it comes to your memory, about one-third of your memory is predetermined by genetics and biology. That leaves two-thirds completely in our control, and that really comes down to your daily lifestyle, your routines that you have, your beliefs, the food that you’re eating, and so on. But, that’s a big lever. And so, everybody has room for improvement, all of us.

So, let’s talk about learning. And you just mentioned that a little bit, but in your experience, do people stop learning? I mean, are you seeing, especially after formal education, there’s just this belief like, “I don’t need to learn anymore?” What do you notice?

I think people, they associate learning to traditional education. And so, the two, if there are two times when we have a kind of a regression, it’s usually after people graduate school, and when they retire. Because, sometimes, when people are retired, they retire their mind also. And it’s so funny — not funny “ha-ha”, but it’s interesting that when some people retire their mind that their body is not far behind.

And there’s all the kinds of studies right now that are coming out talking about longevity, and they did this study with super nuns, these remarkable women who are living healthy into their 80s, 90s, and above, and they found that they wanted to find out why this community do so well in terms of the years of their life, but also the life to their years also. Half of that had to do with their faith and their gratitude, emotional fulfillment. But, the other half had to do with, completely, they were lifelong learners. They were so committed every single day learning something.

And again, that’s where we’re going to grow. It’s through nutrition and novelty. Because, that’s what really helps with neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. Neurogenesis is a fancy word, but it basically says that genesis is like the birth of something, right? So, neuro, talking about your brain, so you could create new brain cells until the day you die. It’s get remarkable. People didn’t believe that was possible. But, until the day you die, you can create new brain cells, right? And neuroplasticity is saying your brain is like plastic in a good way that it’s malleable.

So, what happens is, for example, Einstein’s brain, when they looked at it and they analyzed it, it wasn’t larger than anybody else’s. In fact, it was smaller. Most brains are about three pounds. It was smaller than most people’s brains, but there were parts of his brains that was incredibly dense, and that density came from neuroplasticity, and there were genesis where there was just a lot of activity in certain parts of his brain, because he would do these things he called bot experiments where he would use his imagination.

He was the one that said that, “Imagination is more powerful than knowledge,” because knowledge is what is, and imagination is what could be. But, he did do these imagination experiments, and every time he thought, he’d create a neuroplasticity, and so he would create a new web, if you will, and every time you reinforce it, you have strength there, and you have more stronger memories and such. So, we allow this capability, all of us.

And I’ve heard you say that masters love repetition and that they have a love of excellence. Is this part of the learning, just the constant learning of the craft? Or, does the novelty mean learn something new all over the place? Like, “Oh, that’s interesting, or that’s interesting.”

I think curiosity, that childhood curiosity, the more people could take — because what happens is this one perspective is as people go through an education system that was built for more of an industrial age. It was assembly line. So, back then, people were working in factories, and so they had this factory-like education that prepared them for that, to be able to follow simple orders and so it’s one size fits all and so on.

But, that’s not the world we live in now. I mean, this conversation we’re having right now is proof that learning is not limited to a classroom of four walls, right? Because, age that we have. There are no limitations like that. So, what I would say is that the most successful people that I’ve noticed, they are always learning. Because, also, when it comes to your wealth, however you defined it, the faster you could learn, the faster you could earn, right? The faster you could learn, the faster you could earn. Because, today, knowledge is not only power. Right now, knowledge is profit. It’s divine. Not just to have and to have not. It’s those who know and those who just don’t know.

Like, when I was a child and I was going through school, I wanted to be able to help myself, but I didn’t have access back then, especially before the internet with the resources that I didn’t know these resources and this research existed to be able to help me. So, some people who are working really, really hard, that’s important to be able to work hard, but as we know, it’s not just working hard. It’s working intelligently also, right?

So, I would say that when I’m working with leaders, and I have an opportunity to work with some interesting individuals who are high achievers, and I notice they have this mindset of three things: they have this growth mindset. So, that’s where you and I were talking about, always learning. Because, when you’re growing, you stay green, and where you’re brown, you tend to rot. And so if you want your business to grow or you want your bank account to grow, we have to grow in all these different areas.

So, I think a growth mindset is really important, and Mindset is a fantastic book for anyone who hasn’t read it yet. Mindset by Carol Dweck. The power of the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, and positive psychology, it’s very worthwhile. So, a growth mindset, I think, is important for people who want to be unstoppable, a real-life superhero, if you will.

 

The second one, I would say, is grit. This mindset of perseverance or grit where I find the most successful people, they go through and are able to endure a level of uncomfort, or discomfort, if you will, and the more comfortable you could be with being uncomfortable, I find, and having difficult conversations, or doing the difficult thing, because if it was easy, everyone would do it, and everyone would have the life of their dreams. But, I always tell people, when I take them through this programs, either online, or in-person, if you will, that I don’t tell people it’s going to be easy, but I really tell people it’s going to be worth it.

Again, because learning how to learn is like the grandfather or grandmother of all personal growth and development. The faster you can learn, the faster you can learn anything that you put your mind into. It’s kind of like sharpening the saw. So, growth mindset, grit or perseverance, I know — recently, I posted a photo on Instagram, and I get a call from a friend and he’s like, “Hey, you want to come over to watch a boxing match,” and I have mixed feeling, because I know the damage that happens when people get concussions and repeated blows whether it’s through sports or athletics.

But, it was a big boxing match and the person who called me was Sylvester Stallone. I was like, “Wow, to watch a boxing match at his home,” and I’m sitting there and I’m sitting on the catch. It’s me, Sylvester Stallone, and it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger,” and I swear, if somebody took a picture of that couch, it would be like, “Who photoshopped that Asian guy in that photo?”

But, I asked them afterwards, because I do believe genius leaves clues, and when I talk about these patterns of power that people have, I think that people happen to achieve a certain level of success because they are in a certain environment, they have a certain level of identity, they have certain teams, certain habits that they have, certain beliefs around those things.

And so, I asked Arnold. I was like — obviously, guys, it’s about two champions battling it out. What does it take to get to that level in any field, and Arnold said to me, he’s like, “Jim, it takes some — for people to get to that level, they oppose the champions, the superheroes, as you call them, those are the people that push through the pain period. And just like molding your body, if you’re doing reps, it’s usually the last ones that you don’t want to really do, but those are the ones that are the most painful and most uncomfortable.

But, the universe and nature has a funny way of teaching us things that that’s where all the growth comes from also. It’s never the first few that’s where you’re kind of warming up, and I think the level of success people have if they go through struggle, the struggles that you went through for all that time. At some level, it’s made you sharper. Because, when you have a certain level, and I know this from personal experience — when you have a finite amount of energy, you’re only sleeping a couple hours a night, you have to be laser focused on the things that matter to you. When you’re on your deathbed and you’re so concerned about things, you don’t commit.

I think one of the things that people are used to nowadays is we have this — we celebrate people who are just busy people. We tend to brag about how busy we are, and because we’re busy, we must be important and such, and I think every reinforced gets repeated over and over again, and we tend to put ourselves in situations where we’re stressed all the time, and I don’t think that’s a natural state for us to be in.

But, when you’re depleted all the time, it forces you to say no, and it’s so liberating. It gets you so clear on what’s the most important to you, and I think everyone should have a to-do list, that I think it’s just as important nowadays in the 21st century to be successful is to have a not to-do list. You know, the picture that you just will not do, like checking your phone first thing in the morning. I still don’t get why people do that.

As our friend, Brendon, talks about and a lot of high-performers talk about, yourself included, it’s just how you — if you want to win your day, just win that first hour of the day. You don’t want to be reacting, as Brendon talks about, being a convenient filing system for other people’s agenda. You don’t want to just open this up and see all the people, all the fires you need to fight, and be able to respond. Because then, we just wake up reacting to everything. I think part of your happiness, all of our happiness in terms of fulfillment is knowing that the locus  of control, the location of control comes from our self, and that we are ultimately responsible for what we’re focusing on and what we feel on a regular basis.

So, I think that grit, knowing that this is ready to grow in a place where it’s comfortable. It’s not necessarily easy, but that’s where we’re developing the strength, the vitality, the purpose. Also, I know going through struggles leads to strength, and I’m not just talking about skill-based strengths – that’s important – but your condition. Like, how you come out after going through that kind of experience that you go through this tragedy that going through challenge leads to pain, and you speak differently when you fought through it personally, right?

And people can sense, I think, nothing — cells like sincere interest with people because you can’t fake that, and going through the trials, you come out authentically, like people could feel that you went through it, and I think that’s really important. For a long time, I never talked to people about my brain injuries that I’ve had and such, and you’re right. I think I lost the connection to some people because they’d feel like some people are either born with it or not. And I can tell you that it’s not a naturally-born talent. It’s talent that’s made, and it’s created in what you’re practicing in private, you’re profiting from in public. You know what I mean?

But, people rarely see that level of commitment. When we talk about mastery, I think that’s important, because even if people have heard your stuff, or my stuff, or anything anyone else’s material before, if they’re not doing it on a regular basis, I don’t feel like they could say that they understand it unless they’re doing it. So, I think there’s magic that happens when it goes through your head to your heart to your hands, and you’re actually doing it, but those three things have to be in alignment.

Though, you have your growth mindset, you have your grit mindset, and then the third chi that I put there for the mindset of superheroes, if you will: growth mindset, grit mindset, and the last one, I would say, is a giving mindset. Just like yourself, your business is a reflection of your art, right? But, it’s not something intellectually you sat down and came with. It’s something that you went through personal experience. You don’t want people to suffer the way you suffered in those areas.

Because, that’s my drive. I don’t get excited about one billion dollars. I mean, for the finances, as people know, we put a lot of it towards building schools and doing all this other stuff, but one billion dollars versus one billion brains, I get really excited about turning them on, and I never want people to suffer the way I did. When I was 18 years old, I ended up hospitalized because I was living in the library, I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping, and it’s not very sustainable. I ended up passing out in the library, I fell down a flight of stairs, I woke up in the hospital and was 117 pounds, and I thought I died. It was a very dark place, especially when you’re not sleeping. Your mind goes into places you never want your mind to go.

When I woke up, another part of me woke up outside of the possibility of saying, “I just can’t do this anymore,” and the nurse came in. I don’t know if this is — I don’t believe a lot in coincidence. Like, I think that we met for a reason. I also believe that whoever is tuning into this conversation that there’s a reason why you’re tuned into this, that you’re listening to this, because — and I also do believe we also have free will to be able to move things forward or not also as well. But, that’s my personal belief.

So, what had happened was the nurse came in with a mug of tea and it had a picture of the person that was the opposite of me: a genius, Albert Einstein had this quote that says, “The same level of thinking that’s created your problem won’t solve your problem.” Think about it. The same level of thinking that’s created our problem: our financial problem, our health problem, whatever it is, is not going to take us to a place we want to go. So, we’re going to be able to change it and change for the better. It’s this step, even if it’s a little bit uncomfortable.

So, it made me think in the question like, “What’s my problem?” and I thought my problem was I’m a very slow learner. I was like, “Well, how do I think differently about it?” Well, maybe I could learn how to learn. And I struggled with the same belief issues most people come up with, like, “Oh, I’m not smart enough. I never did well in school,” and this is just — I’m not supposed to be this successful at this.

But, I started studying, and for like 30 to 60 days, I started studying, but my work, my schoolwork aside, because a mentor looked at me and he says, “Jim,” because he gave me all these books to read and I was like, “I can’t read all these. I have midterms.” He said, “Jim, don’t let school get in the way of your education.” And this was 25 years ago, and I realized it was a Mark Twain book.

But, I just started, I put my traditional education aside. I started studying the subjects of personal development, and learning, and neuroscience. I wanted to understand this riddle. I wanted to solve this riddle. We recently did an event, and at this event, we had Quincy Jones come by and we asked — see, he has this thing where he doesn’t look at problems as problems. He doesn’t even call problems problems. He calls problems puzzles. Because, if they’re a puzzle, a puzzle, you could solve it, and it’s fun, and it’s a game.

So, I had this puzzle I wanted to solve, this riddle. I wanted to understand how does my brain work so I could work my brain. How does memory work so I could work my memory? And I just started studying. Then, the light switch went on like two months into it and I just started to understand things. Because, I was that kid that teachers would have to repeat themselves four or five times and I still wouldn’t get it. It took me three to four years longer to learn how to read and such.

So, a light switch went on and I started to understand things, and I couldn’t help but help other people, and one of the very first students, she was a freshman in college, she would have 30 books in 30 days, which is remarkable, right? What an advantage somebody has who could digest and retain 30 books, and I love this, because if somebody spent their lifetime coming up with this great wisdom and they put it into a book, and you could sit down in an afternoon or a few days and read. You could literally download decades of experience in two days. It’s remarkable.

What an advantage that person has, and I wanted to find out not how she did it, but why she did it, because I think motivation is the key to learning. I really do. I think motivation is so important, and I found out that her mother was dying to terminal cancer, and the books she was reading were books to help save her mom’s life, because doctors gave her only 60 days to live, and I wished her well and good luck and everything.

Six months later, I get a call from this young lady. She’s crying and she’s crying, and I found out they’re tears of joy. Her mother not only survived, but is really getting better. Doctors don’t know how, they don’t know why. The doctors, all of them called it a miracle, but her mother attributed it 100% to great advice she got from her daughter that learned it from all these books, and that really messed with my mind something fierce.

It changed my perception on information, of knowledge, of health, of what’s in our control, and also, it put me on my purpose. Because, I was just like, “Wow, everybody needs to be able to do this,” because I realized this that if knowledge is power, then learning is your superpower. If knowledge is power, learning is your superpower, and it’s our right, and it’s our privilege to be able to have this power, and it’s there just to be unleashed, if we know how to do it.

Well, know how to do it, and so you said growth mindset, grit, and giving. How much is desire built in? You know, there’s this favorite quote of mine that your desire to be change has to be greater than your desire to remain the same, but I see a lot of people that are stuck that just appear to be stuck, and they say they want something different, but there’s just that something. Is it maybe it’s the grit missing that they’re not willing to be uncomfortable, they’re not willing to change or they’re just so — you know, those habits are so gripping?

But, what is that piece that really differentiates those that otherwise have the — I mean, we all have, really, the same capacity to learn and to — but there’s something, that additional piece, I think.

Yeah, I could talk about how I feel the guiding principle is, and then a couple of techniques. I really do believe the thrive and the wanting, that desire, that hustle, if you will, is the difference that makes a difference. Because, just when people are taking incredible amounts of action, just results happen, especially if it’s smart action.

So, I understand that people are complacent, but if there was a gap between where you are and where you want to be in any area, which — and if we’re healthy, I think, that nobody has that perfect life, independent of what you see on social media, where everybody has the highlight trail of everything, which creates all kinds of — they call it Facebook depression, where it’s really people are measuring their life based on this highlight reel of everybody else, but instead of the highlight reel, when we’re getting real about ourselves, I think —

I was doing this talk up in Silicon Valley, and afterwards, Bill Gates comes up to me and we have this conversation, and I had this thing where I was just, “If you could have any one superpower, what would it be, Bill?” and he says, “The ability to read faster, Jim.” I was like, “Oh, I could totally help you do that.” But, we had this deep conversation about the future of education, and if someone was listening to this conversation, it would be obvious that I was coming to this challenge, this education from my perspective, which was adult learning theory, and he was approaching it from his perspective, which was technology, which makes sense, and we were talking about that. And it’s so interesting because I think we do a program online called Kwik Thinking, which is about decision-making and problem solving, and I think one of the best ways to solve a problem, one of the reasons why we can’t all the time is because we always approach it the same exact way from the same exact perspective, and I think it’s important to be able to change perspective and try on new hats, if you will.

But, somebody was listening and was like, “Hey, adult learning theory and technology, is there anything else missing?” We talked about it and we thought about it, and we both came to the same conclusion. It’s desire, human motivation, because people often know what to do, but they don’t often do what they know. And so going back to the motivation of this young woman who read 30 books in 30 days, she was very crystal clear about the reasons.

And when I talk about motivation, making it practical, what I do is like, let’s say I want to get myself to do something, and my motivation to go to the gym or to work out is probably like a 3, because I just got off a flight and I’m tired. I didn’t sleep really well the next day. I have all these projects to do, and I can’t even talk myself out of it. But, I’ll say maybe it’s a 3 and I’ll think about like, maybe if I want it to be a 4 or a 5, what would I have to do differently, and I would kind of psych myself up to doing that by changing either my body or anything, or my mindset, if you will.

But, one of the things that makes it easier, like if people procrastinate things, there’s a few things that people could do. Like, if they procrastinate going to the gym, or reading that book, or doing the things that they need to do, which we’re all guilty of, I would say one of the things is know your why, and one of my favorite books, business books, or even light books, is called “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek, and even if you’re not a strong reader and you want to watch his TED Talk, it’s remarkable. It’s one of the top 5 TED Talks of all time. Start With Why, Simon Sinek.

But, what I know is that reasons reap rewards. Reasons reap results. Like, I just call it H Cubed, I mentioned it before, that you could visualize things in your head, or firm things in your head, or set goals in your head, or keep it mental. But, if you’re not acting with your hands, usually what’s missing from your hand to your heads is the second H, which is your heart, and that’s your emotions, right? The energy, emotion, motivation. Even when you think about it, what’s your motive for action? What’s your motive for taking action.

So, coming up for reasons even for things like remembering people’s names. Everyone could remember one word, a name, or two words, right? Your brains, this most unbelievable supercomputer on the planet, just by one of the techniques I teach just in terms of a brain hack. It’s just ask yourself, “Why do I want to learn this person’s name? Why do I want to retain this person’s name?” Maybe it’s to show the person respect. Maybe it’s to create a new relationship or a friendship. Maybe it’s to make a sale, make it a practice, these techniques I learned from Jim Kwik. Because if you can’t come up with one reason though, you won’t do it.

And I always tell people, let’s say, someone’s horrible with names. I say there’s a suitcase here, $100,000 cash if you just remember the name of the next person you meet, a stranger, who’s going to remember that name? Everybody. So, it had nothing to do with their potential at 0 to do with their capacity or capability. It had everything to do with whether or not they wanted to.

So, I would say if you get over that hump of procrastination where you feel stalled, tune in, number 1, to your why. Because, reasons reap rewards, results. The number two thing I would say is people think that beating yourself up over things, and this is interesting because, intuitively, some people think, “Well, if I beat myself up over it and I say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe I ate that food, or I didn’t do this, or I didn’t do whatever,'” your taxes, whatever you put off, you beat yourself up for it, it actually makes it a bit more difficult to actually get yourself back on track. The latest research says to be kind to yourself that when you’re making mistakes and you’re not following through, it’s actually better to be light with yourself and acknowledge that you’re taking on a lot right now, that you’re only human, and that it’s okay, and you give yourself commission like that, and you’re more likely to get back on track that way as opposed to giving yourself a lot of hate for doing that.

So, I would say number 2, besides knowing your why, is be kind to yourself. Number 3, I would say tiny habits, and what I mean by that is just research out of Stanford University pioneered by BJ Fogg, Stanford, those labs for persuasion and influence, that’s where Instagram came out of and everything. So, think about the psychology that goes into making something like that addictive, right? With the dopamine fixes where every like, and share, and comment, and everything gets people going, and in a way, it kind of fries our reserves, so that way, later on, we’re just spent. Spent because we’ve hyperstimulated ourselves on things that we could say is not the most supportive thing for our day, but we got so stimulated with these dopamine drips that we have inside of ourselves.

So, anyway, that’s by design. So, when we’re talking about that, about influence persuasion, how do you influence yourself to do something that’s good for you? So, tiny habits is something like this. It’s breaking something down, like you don’t want to attack the monster because that could be so overwhelming. You visualize yourself going to the gym and lifting all this lift, it would be like, “Oh, I’m tired. I don’t want to do that.” But, if you break it down, it’s just like, “Oh, how do I just like lace my gym shoes,” right? Because, that would be something small that would lead you to the big thing.

So, for example, if somebody hasn’t flossed. I mean, flossing is linked to longevity. That adds years to your life. But, someone won’t floss, then their tiny habit would be to just floss one tooth. Because is anyone going to floss just one tooth? No, of course not. They’re going to do all of it. Just the same thing when I read 30 days with somebody to get their reading speed permanent where they’re just reading faster and have better focus and comprehension. But, they have to practice for those four or five weeks, and so it’s going to be daunting.

Even if I’m asking people to practice for 20 minutes a day, people are like, “Oh, I don’t want to do that. But, I’m like, “You could triple your reading speed and read in 15 to 20 minutes to what normally takes an hour.” It’s like, “Oh, that’s a lot of work.” It’s a lot of work doing the hard work, right? But, what I would say is like, “Okay, don’t read for 20 minutes. Just pick up your book and read just one sentence,” and everyone does that, and miraculously, everyone reads the second sentence, and the third sentence, and the fourth sentence.

So, I would say if you want to be able to make things easier for yourself, break things down into tiny habits. So, it’s coming up with your reasons, and even writing them down and feeling your reasons why, number 2, don’t be hard on yourself, number 3 would be to —

Well, the tiny habits, and I’ve heard you say it before. I don’t know exactly how you say it, but our habits, we make our habits, and our habits make us. And you talk about patterns of power. How much are we like a product of our patterns, and just are almost. I mean, we’re not even aware of them. We’re just going through them. It’s like robots every day versus being very conscious. Like, what are my patterns and what do I want to choose, or what can I change to break down to these tiny habits to change the habit, maybe?

I really do believe self-awareness is a superpower, and it takes a level of presence to be able to reflect on yourself and just notice what we’re doing. Because, most of our learning is unconscious, and what I mean by that is most of the stuff that we learned, let’s just break it down. Let’s even think of music, like the lyrics to songs. Like, how many do we know by heart? Hundreds, right? Hundreds. But, how many do we formally sit down and just study? Probably very little of those, right? Because, we learn the best when we don’t even realize we’re learning. It’s unconscious.

So, I think one of our greatest gifts and our greatest genius is our unconscious mind, because that’s where we’re learning all the time. The challenge, though, is that because it’s unconscious, we don’t realize the things that we’re doing might be sub-optimal, like in our habits. Like, where do these habits come from? They usually came from when we were a child, and I don’t think any of us sat down, or were sat down when we were a child and said, “Okay, let’s consciously decide what we want in life, and break it down into steps, routines, and rituals, and resources to be able to get those things.”

So, I would say that it’s important. The two areas that I think are the biggest leverage is really organizing the first hour of your day and the last hour of your day. And when I say an hour, it could be the first 30 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever it is. Because, that’s the time when you have the most — for most people, it’s the time where you have the most control, right? During the day in your work, you’re fighting fire, you’re dealing with clients. It’s not as cruel, but the first hour. So, how you map out that first hour, those habits, I think, are really important.

This is another reason why. Besides setting yourself for peak efficiency, knowing you’re going to do it, it also helps to preserve your mental energy. So, we all have a certain level of mental vitality throughout the day, and after that, it fatigues. And it’s areas like decision fatigue, right? So, that’s why you never want to make a decision when your mood is not in that place, when you’re tired, when you’re angry, or you’re feeling fearful. Rarely does the best come out of us when we make good decisions. We rarely make those kind of good decisions.

So, a lot of people, though, spend so much time making decisions on things that just don’t matter, and they wasted their decision-making energy there. So, when it comes to something that’s like the million-dollar decision they have to make for the business, or for their kid’s future, or for their health, or whatever, it’s a suboptimal decision. And so, people struggle with decision fatigue.

That’s why a number of leaders, they streamline their life. They figure out ways, even before they could afford to get something like a private chef or something like that, they would figure out ways to streamline their life. Even at an extreme example, when people say Tony Hsieh, or they see Mark Zuckerberg, and they’re always wearing the same sweatshirt that says Zappos, you ask them why, and they’ll say, well, they just have 20 of these shirts. It’s because they don’t want to think about, “What should I wear today?” and they don’t want to put energy towards that because they have all these other responsibility.

So, I would say setting up your first hour and then your last hour, especially that last hour, because how you end that day is so important, especially for your sleep. Sleep is so critical for your body, but it is so essential for your brain. People think that they go to the thing, and when you ask people, “How do you build strong muscles,” and everyone is like, “I work out.” You know, that’s part of it, but you’re actually building the muscles when you rest, right? When you sleep.

Same thing with your mental muscles. You can stretch them and learn new things, but if you’re not sleeping, you’re not consolidating that information. You’re not moving it from short-term to long-term memory. If you’re not sleeping, you’re not cleaning out all the plaque that’s in our brains and all that stuff. So, that last hour is so important for you to be able to shift into this parasympathetic kind of mode where you’re not watching your computer screen, you’re not being hit with all this blue light all the time that prevents or reduces the amount of melatonin that we’re doing. And so, we’re all addicted to this.

I could tell you, every time we meditate, because I think mindfulness is so important. Some of the most successful people, I find that most of them have some kind of practice for themselves, it’s not that you have to do it for — I mean, yes, it’s great to do 15, 30 minutes, or whatever each time you’re doing it, but the exercise of being present where if a thought comes in, it’s every time you bring it back to your center, then you’ve built those mental muscles for your focus.

So, every time you feel like grabbing the phone, and the average person grabs their phone, touches their phone about 150 times a day, which I think it’s a lot larger more recently, obviously. So, every time you feel like doing it, but you don’t do it, you build some resilience towards it. And so it’s harder but it’s easier in the long run. Like, it takes energy and willpower sometimes to make a habit to get some momentum and to be doing it for a few weeks that it becomes more routine.

But, once you’re doing it, then it takes hardly very little energy. It’s kind of like a spaceship going out of the Earth’s atmosphere. 90% of the fuel is being spent just to get out of that huge gravity well, but once it’s out, you could just go like this, and you’re like Superman, Superwoman, and you just go on, because that’s like your habits. It take a little bit of energy to create it, but once you have it, it gets a lot easier.

Yeah, and you touched on a really important point, though, that it really does start with self-awareness, and we all need to gain that superpower, because if we’re not aware of the habits that are thwarting our dreams, our desires, our intentions, then we can’t change those habits, and sometimes it’s hard to look at ourselves under the microscope and be real with ourselves.

Completely, and even the fact that people are still here listening to this, I have to commend you because change is not easy, right? So, again, we’re not saying it will be easy, but we’re saying it’s going to be worth it. And so we want a goal that going back to just procrastination, you want something that — we always hear about smart goals, and those are really good to make them specific and measurable, and actually contingent to realistic and so on and so forth.

You know, I always talk about HEART goals. The H stands for healthy, like making your goals healthy and the ecology of your life, especially making health on your goals like that. I think the E is very important in HEART. E stands for enduring. Because, there’s times when you’re just going to want to give up, and are you setting goals that are going to get you through to endure those inevitable setbacks that we’re going to have?

The A in HEART stands for alluring, and the alluring is kind of like enduring, but learning it, for me, when I use that word, it’s like we don’t hear it very often, but our goals of learning, are they attracting you like a magnet, pulling you towards it? Because, you can’t push a rope, but you could pull it, right? Like a magnet? And that’s how I think we need goals to be solely attractive and learning to us. I think that’s important.

The R in HEART stands for relevant, and I think this is really important because I think a lot of people didn’t learn as well as they could back in school because they didn’t see trigonometry or history, and they didn’t even see how it was relevant to their life. Like they’ll talk to their parents like, “When do you use sine, cosine, x hypotenuse? When do you use that?” So, relevancy is very important to learning. But, when you’re setting goals, how is it relevant to a problem that you have? How is it relevant to your deepest values?

Finally, the T in HEART stands for truth, and not to get Kumbaya, but I think that a lot of people set goals and it’s not really their goals. It’s like the goals they adopted from their parents, or the goals of their neighbors, like keeping up with the Joneses. They’re saying these goals are goals from their co-workers. It’s not really theirs. So, what’s your truth, because I think, ultimately, when we talk about self-awareness, for me, success and fulfillment comes down to self-awareness, which is knowing yourself, like knowing your true self, and getting raw through exercises you could do, in reflection, journaling, and all these things that you could do.

But, knowing yourself and then once you know who are, then be who you are. Because sometimes people can know who they are, but they’re not really congruent with that’s how they’re showing up every single day.

Excellent, and you alluded to something else that I wanted to question in a little bit deeper is health. So, how important is it to really learn how to learn and to be a learner, a reader, this growth mindset, curious. How important is being healthy? A healthy brain, a healthy body. You mentioned nutrition and novelty, but we talk about, “What is a healthy brain?

Right. I think there’s 10 elements for having your optimal brain, or what I call the superior brain, and I’ll go through the 10 really fast, and when I go through it, as you’re listening to it, every single one of them are going to be common sense. There’s not one of them that will be like, “Oh, that’s not going to work,” or anything else like that.

But, as we heard many times from many thought leaders, common sense is not always common practice. So, maybe as you’re coached for this part, as whoever’s listening to this, you’ll go through it, and there’s a difference between a dabbling mindset and a mastery mindset, and I feel like a dabbler will be like they’ll dismiss. They’re dismissive. They say, “Oh, I know that already,” and I think the masters, my experiences are, is they get so good at practicing the basics.

It’s going back to at the conference that you attended, the Superhero Brain Conference. We had the daughter of Bruce Lee, Shannon Lee, talk and it was wonderful talking about her father’s approach to mastery and lifelong learning, and his philosophy on growth and everything. And he has this quote that says that — Bruce Lee has this quote that says he had never been scared of anything, but what he’s scared of is he’s not scared of the person who’s practiced 10,000 kicks once, 10,000 different kicks once. He’s scared of the person who’s practiced one kick 10,000 times.

When you think about that, how that applies to things, it’s like you might hear something, but maybe you could hear it in a new way so we’re actually deploying. So, these 10 things that are key for being healthy, because I think health, in a lot of ways, is your wealth. The greatest wealth gives you the energy to go out there and pursue your passion to do things that you’re supposed to do.

So, 10 things for unlocking your superhero healthy brain is a good diet. And this is in no particular order, but we know you are what you eat. Literally what you’re eating becomes who you are, and so you want to be careful of that. I always think that — there’s a billion books on this from people who are much more qualified than I, because I’m not a nutritionist or a doctor or anything else like that. But, I would recommend is people going and getting blood tests and seeing their food sensitivity. It’s really great. They put it in, “This is red, this is yellow, this is green. Red, you want to stay away from. Yellow, have it sparingly. And green, go for it,” right? Who knows if we’re eating a food on a regular basis that’s actually causing a lot of the challenges that we have. So, good brain diet: walnuts, avocados, wild fish, and so on, berries.

So, after that, I would say number 2 is killing ANTs. If you want good brain health, killing ANTs, and that’s borrowing that from Dr. Daniel Amen who also spoke at our superior brain conference, and the ANTs are automatic negative thoughts. Because, we are we, but we are kind of like what we think. We’re not ultimately just what we eat or just what we think, but it’s hard, right?

So, we are our thoughts, and I would tell people this is that I remember I was preparing for a marathon and I was reading a book, and one of the chapters was the psychology of running a marathon, and it said this, of verbatim, because I’m the memory guy. It said, “Your brain is like a supercomputer, and your self-talk is the program it will run.” So, if you tell yourself you are not good at remembering names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your supercomputer not to.

So, killing ANTs are killing automatic negative thoughts that I would say that the tweetable for this is, “Your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk.” Your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk, and so you want to keep it positive, right? Because, here’s the thing, if you keep it negative and you start, “Oh, I’m just Alzheimer’s runs in my family, I’m getting too old, I was just not smart enough,” whatever it is, if you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them, and that’s the challenge. So, if you fight for limitations, you get to keep them. So, avoid negative self-talk, killing those ANTs.

Number 3, I would say, that’s good for brain health is exercise. That’s a given, right? This is indisputable. If you want a better mental acuity, mental focus, better memory, move. And primarily, through evolution, your brain is there. Its number 1 reason it was there originally was to control your movement. Movement is so key. So, the takeaway from this is as your body moves, your brain grooves. As your body moves, your brain grooves. So, literally, as you move your body, you create more neuroconnections, and there’s certain exercises that are just, in particular, even better than some. I pick juggling because it’s a very powerful exercise.

We do it at all of our conferences and everything, but jugglers actually have more weight matter and more brain mass, if you will, and everyone can learn how to juggle in a few weeks on YouTube or whatever. It’s free, you learn how to do it. Just roll up some socks and they won’t bounce away or roll away, and just do it over a couch or a bed, practice those juggling. The other reason I like practicing juggling also besides building more brainpower, is in order to juggle three balls — you only get two eyes. You can’t see any one of the three, but you just soften your gaze and you literally see — you’re more relaxed, your eyes, so as you’re juggling, you could see more here in your peripheral vision, and that’s a similar state you want to do when you’re speedreading, because if you can take in more of the words, you can read through it, obviously, faster.

So, movement, right? And the important thing about all of this is you need to schedule it, because if you don’t schedule it. If it’s not in your calendar when you’re going to work out, you’re not going to do it, because it will be the first thing you cut is the stuff that’s going to serve you the most. Like, “I got to finish this,” and the things you cut are the things that are most important to you, often. So, exercise.

Number 4, brain nutrients, very important, and what I mean by that is we live this fast lifestyle that we’re on planes, and you go try to grab food at the airports or whatever they’re doing, I would say that not all the nutrients is in our standard diet, and so maybe we need to supplement with that.

Number 5, I would say positive peer group is so important. So, who you are is, yes, you are your thoughts, you are what you eat, but you’re also who you spend time with, which is why I love your community like this. Like, these are the bonds then, because what we find that your health is not just limited to your biological networks, or even your neurological networks. It’s your social networks that Dr. Mark Hyman, who also spoke at Superior Brain Conference that you were at says that whether or not you smoke or not, for example, has less to do with your biological networks and more to do with your social networks, like if your friend’s friends smoke, it’s going to be a larger influence on your lifestyle.

So, positive peer group, when it comes to your brain, is are you around people who are just brain-friendly? Are they encouraging you, are they challenging you, are they upleveling you, and teaching you, and so on? Holding you accountable?

Number 6 is a clean environment. So, if you want your brain to really thrive, you want it to be in the clean environment, and I mean, yes, clean as in you know how your external world is a reflection of your internal world? Like, you clean off your desk or you clean off your desktop on your computer, and all of a sudden, you have a sense of calm or peace. Your brain feels like a little bit more focused. So, you want to clean your environment, but also clean your environment of toxins. So, when we talk about health, I think a lot of people are you don’t realize people have been exposed to mold or different things in their environment. The lighting, fluorescent lighting has been proven not to be really good for your eyes or for brain processing and such, clean air, clean environment all around.

So, that would be number 6. Number 7, and again, when I’m going through this, you can say, “Oh yeah, but I’m really not really being true to my negative self talk, or I really have to work my time.” It’s usually one or two things that is if you put your energy there, it just unleashes everything. And so, number 7 is the one you and I have deeply shared value with around sleep. Because, nobody knows the value of sleep more than the person that’s struggling with their sleep, and we just talked about that during this conversation. I think sleep is the biggest life hack there is. If you’re not getting this amount of sleep. We had a sleep expert speak at our — but also, sleep is still important.

Number 8 is brain protection. If you want a healthy, vibrant brain, you have to protect your brain. So, wear a helmet and avoid things where you could be in accidents and such like that.

Number 9 is my favorite. It’s new learnings. New learnings, which is if you want to create more brain cells and more connections, you need to stimulate yourself. But, this is also you have to schedule it, right? So, that schedule every single day, like when I’m going to do my 30 minutes of reading, or my hour of reading and such, but you need to schedule it for yourself. And so, I think we’re always learning, and if we’re not learning, we’re sliding. So, that’s important. But, everyone who’s watching this already has that as a huge value, otherwise they want to talk to us two in this conversation, right?

Finally, number 10, and this really is the one too. Because, this one, if you don’t fix it, could leak into all the other areas, and it’s the one we don’t really feel all the time because it’s kind of like a fish, they don’t sense the water because it’s there all the time, is stress management. So many of us live in a constant state of anxiety and stress, and we don’t even feel it because we’re so used to it. We’ve gotten comfortable being uncomfortable in a bad way. I’m not talking about positive stress.

There’s obviously positive stress when you’re working out and you’re challenging yourself as you’re upleveling yourself to be successful in these area. I’m talking about anxiety, the overload, all the other things. Stress management is something that we don’t usually get a feel of it. Like, I remember I spent a few weeks in the Amazon rainforest, and it was an incredible journey. I mean, we came across an indigenous tribe, we were their very first Western contact ever. By the second night, we were having dinner with them, this village, we were playing with their kids the next morning. I mean, shamanic journeys, it was intense.

But, from there, I got on a plane to fly into L.A. into LAX, and in that, as we’re descending, you see the traffic, you see the smog, you see the billboards where you’re being marketed to, and it’s just you don’t realize that this is all the time. So, how often do we take time to really nourish ourselves, to really be good and kind to ourselves? Whatever it is that releases stress and gets us in a parasympathetic space is so important.

Now, these are the 10 things that I focus on because I think that with the 80-20 rule, what moves the needle for most of it, it’s usually this. But, when you do an audit of your life, in which area do you feel like you can do better? Is it your environment, is it your stress levels? Maybe you’re not getting enough sleep, maybe it’s your self-talk, maybe it’s your diet. Maybe something simple as getting some fish oils, whatever it is.

But, it could be that it’s the metaphor of the stone cutter. They’re pounding this stone all the time with the stake and they’re going, and they do a thousand hits, and nothing happens. And all of a sudden, they do one more hit, and it just completely splits. Now, was it that last hit that did it? It was all of them leading up to it. So, maybe if you look at these 10 areas and there’s one area that you’re just neglecting, and you add some time, and energy, and talent in that area, maybe you’ll cut that stone, and then you’ll have that breakthrough you’re looking for. Or, you’ll have a breakdown and then maybe the breakdown will lead to a breakthrough. That happens also.

Well, something, like you said, as simple as nutrition, and getting the right nutrients for the brain is necessary to have a brain that can focus, and engage, and think, and problem solve. But, if we’re living on these really bad diets, and a lot of sugar and caffeine, and the stimulation from the environment that, yeah, all those things, we’re not even conscientious to the fact that they are making some sort of impact, either positive or negative, and probably more on the negative side.

So, we’re really approaching the end of our time together. You’ve been so generous to be here with us, so thank you. A couple more questions I have, a little bit more technique, is as your superpower is your memory, and anyone listening, please watch Jim, and your jaw will be on the floor when you see his abilities.

But, when it comes to memory, I’m guessing that there is sort of a belief out there, a common belief that, “Once I get to a certain age.” We sort of just accept that our memory goes, and, “Oh, I don’t remember names anymore.” How many times have I heard people say, “Oh yeah, I’m older now. I can’t really remember things.” Is that true? I mean, do we lose our memory with age, or is it just we’re not using our brain or training our brain in a way that keeps it sharp?

So, there is a certain amount, as we grow older, that things slow down, because that’s the natural progression over things, and slow down in all kinds of ways, certainly. So, there are ways to — the best ways to stave off, according to research, one of the best ways of staving off brain and aging challenges is constantly working out your brain. Like committing yourself to lifelong learning, always reading and having those kinds of conversations, that’s a huge mover.

So, I would say focus on any of the 10 areas that — so, when we talked about one-third of your memory is predetermined by biology, two-thirds is in your control, when I’m listening to these 10 things, like a superhero brain, that’s the two-thirds that’s going to make the biggest difference. So, I would say that what I tell people is that there’s no such thing as a good or bad memory. There’s this trained memory and an untrained memory. There’s no such thing as a good or bad memory. There’s a trained or an untrained memory.

If you have memory challenges, yes, part of it has to do with living in this world, where the demands of distraction and things are getting distorted, there’s so much information overload. It’s like people feel like learning nowadays is like taking a sip of water out of a firehose. There’s just too much. So, that’s a reality. But, the other reality is we weren’t prepared for it, because back in school, we had three R’s: reading, writing, arithmetic. The fourth R should have been recall, remembering, retention. Because, Socrates said, “There is no learning without remembering,” and what we know is that memory is not so much a noun. It’s not you’re having this memory. For me, memory is like more of a verb. It’s a process. Do you know what I mean?

So, it’s not something you have, it’s something you do. So, a lot of people, though, when they see somebody who has an extraordinary memory, like they can learn a language, or they can give a speech without referring to notes, or they could remember everyone’s name, or whatever their memory, or they’re at least really good at their career, remembering facts and figures and everything. You could look at that and you could say, “Well, that’s really great. That person is just gifted,” and walk away. Or, you could look at that person and just say, “That’s incredible. How are they doing that?”

Because, I do believe, again, that there’s always a method behind the magic. There’s always a method behind magic. Just like when you see wealthy individuals, there is a method that got them from — if they didn’t just inherit and they’re an outlier that built it with limited resources, there is a method that they used, right? As somebody who has great health also, there’s a method that they’re using, right? So, the same thing with their memory in that it’s not something that you have. It’s something that you could do on a regular basis. It’s just whether or not we make the choice to be able to do that.

So, I think it’s that important elements, we just cut some of the learning elements here, but motivation is key to learning, because if you have no motivation — like, I think I could uplevel everybody in their memory and their brain power if they come in with two criteria. That they come in and they’re driven, they have some level of motivation or drive to make things better, and number two, that they’re open-minded. And what I mean by that is somebody could be very motivated, but if they’re not open-minded, they’re not going to learn anything brand new, or somebody could be very open-minded, they could be very teachable, but they have no drive, and that’s not going to work. Because, if they have zero motivation, zero times anything is just zero, right?

So, I think, as we talk about the superpower of self-awareness, is maybe we do this self-audit with ourselves and tell ourselves that, ultimately, we are responsible. And I really think responsibility is the starting point for all of this. It’s not that we’re a victim. It’s like people tend to feel like they are a thermometer, when really deep down, their truth is they’re a thermostat. Like, a thermometer is something that the functionality of a thermometer, it just reflects what the environment is giving you. It’s a reflection of the environment.

But, a thermostat is different. You set a thermostat at a temperature, or a standard, or a goal, or a mission, or a vision, and once it’s set, the environment raises to that standard, right? And that’s what I think, ultimately, is going to be the difference that makes the difference with successful people is they — and we all react as a thermometer. “Oh, the weather is crummy, or the economy, or look what’s going on in politics,” or whatever’s going on can make us feel a certain way.

But ultimately, if we’re speaking truthfully, what’s most honest is how we feel as a decision that we’re making, and that there’s a gap between stimulus and response, and in that internal gap, we could decide what something means to us, and I think when we take responsibility for how we feel, and what we focus on, and what we’re going to do in life, our life is playing at a whole different level.

Yeah, and there’s that part, like we talked about. There’s the two parts. There’s that front part that’s required, and then like you said, there always is a method to the magic. So, I think one thing that I learned from you that was really eye-opening is that when it comes to memory, that there are practices and techniques to use to improve one’s memory, and even part of what you taught was how memory works. So, would you share a little bit about that? Because, I think that can really help those that do have the motivation and the drive.

But, what to do? Like, how do I even remember names easy as PIE is one technique, and MOM is a technique. But, the different techniques, they can be practiced and learned for someone like myself that couldn’t remember somebody’s name two seconds after they introduce themselves. I’m much better at it now because I learned from you how memory works. I learned the technique, practiced it, and now believe me, I’ve got a lot of room to continue to grow, but I’m so much better than I used to be by practicing.

And that’s the thing. So, the bad news is that it takes practice, but the good news is it doesn’t take as much as most people think. So, we’re going to be meeting people anyway, so practicing this stuff is very important. So, there’s three stages to your memory. All the memories that you have inside of you got there through these three stages. First, information is encoded, and then it’s stored, and then it’s retrieved. So, information goes in and it’s encoded in a certain way, and then it’s stored in a certain place, and then it’s retrieved from that place.

Information is in there for the most part. There have been studies done where they stimulate a patient’s brain and they’ll remember when they were 10 years old to the point where they could read signs right off the road on a family trip. They’ll do a process of hypnosis or something called age regression where they’ll take some people down to when they’re 9 years old, and with 95% accuracy, they’ll tell you what day their 9th birthday was, because that memory is there.

But, it’s all unconscious. You know that actor’s name, but you can’t remember it to your friends, and then three hours later, you’re just driving, and then what pops up? I find this incredibly fascinating. So, all the magic lies in how is it encoded, where is it stored, and how do you retrieve it, right?

The magic comes from those first couple of stages, and what I mean by that is when you’re encoding information, this is a good starting point. Information tied to emotion becomes a long-term memory. Information tied to emotion becomes a long-term memory, and we know this because if there’s a song — is there a song that brings you back like years or decades, because that emotion brings back the information? Is there a — maybe it’s not a song for some people, maybe it’s a smell. It could be cologne or perfume, an essential oil, a food that’s being cooked, or something, and it just brings you back decades. Or something you eat to bring you back, right? Because, emotion tied to information stored that memory, good and bad, right?

So, one of the ways you can encode how our strategies work is we take the principles of recall. When you remember things the absolute best way, there are certain traits that are there or principles that are there, qualities that are there that aren’t there when you’re forgetting things. So, one of those things is adding emotion. Because, one of the ways kids will learn very well is they use their imagination, they have a lot of emotion there. How fast can kids learn stuff compared to adults sometimes? Really, really fast. In actuality, adults can learn just as fast as children. Children just have a lot of free time compared to adults.

So, when I want to remember something, I would say, “Well, how do I make this fun? How do I make this interesting to me?” Because, if your emotion, if information tied to emotion becomes long-term memory, a lot of people, when they’re learning something, their emotion level is like a 0 on a scale of 0 to 10. And 0 times anything is 0. So, a lot of people don’t learn stuff because they’re not stimulating themselves.

So, for example, and this is a gross simplification, but you have three parts to your brain: you have this reptilian brain, and a mammalian brain, which a lot of memory and emotions are processed, and you have this like neo-cortex, right? You have a left brain and a right brain, and your left brain is logical in its words, and it sounds — it’s like how most people read, but your right brain is the experience of it.

This is a gross simplification because it’s a lot more complicated, obviously. But, just on your right brain, if this is logical brain on your left side, your right side then is imagination, creativity, it’s your emotion, it’s your visualization. So, one of the reasons we could get people reading so much faster is a lot of people read left brain where they just hear the words and they’re pronouncing the words in a linear fashion and language. But, they’re not experiencing it.

So, we have techniques for people to acclimate their right brain, but whenever you can add imagination and emotion, you become more of a whole-grained learner. So, it’s like you’re not limited. Most people are trying to type like this with two fingers, when they actually have 10 fingers. So, people who do this don’t have to work quite as hard. This people has to work five times harder because they’re only using two of their digits as opposed to someone who’s using 10, right? So, all of that quick learning is all about working smart instead of just working hard. If you’re going to work hard, then work smart, definitely.

So, I would say for the key to memory is those three stages: encoding, storing information and retrieving it, and the area you want to really focus on is how you make things more memorable, literally. So, you don’t remember if it maybe rained about a few weeks ago, but if somebody poured a whole thing of orange juice on your head years ago, you would remember it, because it’s outstanding, and it’s funny, or it’s emotional, or it’s visual, all of that. Those qualities, you’re like, “How do I take something that’s ordinary and make it so extraordinary, I could never forget it?”

It’s like, “Oh, that takes a lot of work.” No, it actually takes a lot more work trying to find where you put your phone, or where you put the car keys, or embarrassing ourselves about, “What’s your name again?” You’re talking to someone for 20 minutes, and you forget your name, and they have the audacity to remember your name, so that makes it really awkward. Then, somebody comes, and you’re in a position where you have to introduce people, and you have to play all these games, and everything else like that. But, when you look to somebody, Krisstina, and just call them by name, it’s the sweetest sound to a person’s ears.

Like, when you’re going back to motivation, just making it a priority, because I think when it comes to business etiquette, the number one networking skill there is on the planet is remembering people’s names. Because, when we talk about emotion, think about one of the first words that we all learned how to write. It was our own name, right? Think about the positive love, and reinforcement, and encouragement we identified and connected to that. So, a name is the sweetest sound and it’s the most important thing to remember.

So, if you just make it a priority, you’re more likely to remember it, independent of techniques. I believe we set up some free gifts for your audience and your community as a thank you for training to participating and listening to this conversation, and they’ll learn exactly there are seven steps on how to remember names. Oh, this is how to memorize Jim’s 10 keys for unlocking your superhero brain. This is how you read faster, like that.

But, the mechanics are important. But, when you said like MOM, the simple acronym I do for memory, and this motivation, so tune into your motivation why you want to learn something, like someone’s name. The O is observation. Because lots of people blame. They’re forgetting names, they’re blaming their retention. It’s not your retention. It’s your attention, completely. So, most people aren’t forgetting something. They’re just not paying attention. They’re not having the focus, and I think that’s the superpower is focus and concentration. And the final M in MOM, motivation, observation, the final M is mechanics. There’s a reason why I put it last. It is so vitally important, but you still want to be able to have a reason motivated to be able to learn something and you still want to be able to pay attention. And the mechanics help supercharge the whole process.

That was one of the biggest a-ha’s for me in remembering names was to actually look at the person versus, I think, so much times we’re trying to think about what we’re going to say that we’re not focused on them, and just as simple and silly as it sounds, it’s silly because it is so simple is just to look at the person and to look at their eyes and their key features, and then to match up their match with how they look, it only takes a few seconds, but it’s totally different than being in my head and not present with the person right there with me. And that alone, regardless of the mechanics and some of the techniques to remember, has made all the difference.

It is the difference that makes the difference. And, again, it’s not always the sexiest tip or anything. It’s always the fundamentals that’s going to make the biggest difference for people. So, making it important and just paying attention to somebody, because you’re right. A lot of times when somebody’s learning someone’s name, there’s a lot of stuff going on. So, they’re looking out around, and who else is in this room that I want to meet? Or, if they’re not distracting outside, the distraction is going on near. They’re talking to themselves and they’re not thinking about what the person is saying. They’re thinking about how they’re going to respond to the person.

One of my favorite books of all time written by Dr. Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the incredible study on most effective people, and they practice these seven habits on a regular basis. One of them was “sharpen the saw”, saying that if you need to be able to cut all this wood, it’s better to sharpen your saw first and then cut the wood, and not cut all the wood and then sharpen your saw. And that’s what I feel about reading. If anyone’s going to be reading for anything, we have a reading course for people, and if people could read faster, it makes sense to do that first and then make you read faster throughout everything.

One of the other habits besides sharpening the saw is seek first to understand then to be understood. Seek first to understand the person and then to be understood. Because ultimately, I think it’s one of the deepest human needs we have is to be seen, is to be heard, is to be understood by individuals, and I think that’s what you do. That’s the gift you give somebody. That’s why they call it “present”, because you’re present with somebody. That’s what people want most of all. Because, you could feel when somebody’s there, especially women, they’re exceptional at this. If you’re talking to a woman and your gaze or your thought goes anywhere else for a split second, the feminine can really feel that.

It’s one thing I’ve always really admired about Brendon is that when he’s present with you, he’s 100% present with you, and it feels amazing to have somebody that’s listening. You can tell that they’re looking in your eyes, they’re listening, they’re fully present. There could be a bazillion things going around and trying to yank for his attention, but if he’s there with you, he’s there with you, and I remember how that felt, and I thought, “I want to do that for others.”

Yeah, and here is it going back to this is genius leaves clues, that if somebody is good at something, it usually came through discipline and effort. You know, they chose up that way publicly. So, it’s a scale anyone can learn.

So, two more questions, and these are two questions I ask every guest. So, the first question is that when you get to a certain level, obviously, it’s so easy to think, “Oh, well it’s so easy for Jim. He’s successful. He knows all these celebrities. He’s got this amazing business.” Sometimes, it looks really easy, like it’s just straight to the top. So, I always like to make sure in every interview that I ask, “Has that always been easy?” Since adulthood, can you share at least one struggle, or breakdown, or moment when you’re like, “I’m not so sure.”

I will. I don’t talk about this publicly, but I’ll share it because if it serves somebody who’s listening, even one person, certainly, the people I like to role model, because I think one of the fastest ways to learn is to find a coach, or somebody who’s been on that path, or role model, and the role models I like to learn from are people who, against the odds, you would understand if they weren’t the level of success that they were, because they didn’t have the background, they didn’t have the education, they didn’t have the resources.

Now, I think success comes from not just your external resources, but your internal resourcefulness. Because, growing up, my parents immigrated here, so we had no money, I had no education, I didn’t know anybody at all. To answer your question, one of my biggest struggles of recent in my adult life besides my learning challenges. So, my big struggles growing up was I was the most challenged learners that I knew, and then I also had a big fear of public speaking.

Because, when you’re the boy with the broken brain, you don’t connect with a lot of people, and you don’t express yourself because you don’t feel like you have a lot of value. So, I would be one of the kids that I would do the book report. But, if the teacher asked me to present it in front of the class, I would lie and say I didn’t do it, and I would take a failing zero and I would throw out my book report, because I was that phobic.

So, it’s funny that my biggest challenges growing up were learning and public speaking, because the universe has a sense of humor, because that’s what I do. But, it’s still not comfortable for me. Like, even me going on stage, I still get, more than anyone I know, the butterflies and anxiety, because it’s not my natural essence. I do it because I feel like I have a moral obligation because if I could help people and help them avoid what I went through, then I’m going to do it, right?

A more recent example of my struggles was going back to sleep, and this is why I emphasize sleep very often. I don’t talk about this. I never posted about this, but for the past three years, I only slept about two hours a night, and you could identify with this. You know when people get — if anyone listening to this, you have one bad night of sleep, the next day, things are not the best ever. You’re very short-tempered, you can’t feel productive, you got horrible headaches and migraines, you can’t look at a computer screen, all these issues.

Mine, I tried everything, and most people, when they have a problem, they say they tried everything, but when you dig deep to their issue that they have with their health, or their wealth. They’re wealthy in one areas of wellness or wealth is you say they’ve tried everything, but we ask them to write it down, most people, if they’re honest, have only tried two or three things, but they blow it up in their minds and say, “I’ve tried everything.” I literally could write down 300 things I’ve tried, comprehensive list, everything from nutrition, to unconscious stuff, to healers, to grounding pads, to blackout curtains, to everything, and nothing really moved the needle, and I had this surgery because I had sleep apnea obstructed, so I couldn’t breathe.

That’s why I just had a surgery recently, which is why it’s difficult to talk, but I was excited to be able to share with your superheroes, but I had, over 120 times a night, I would stop breathing, and when I say “stop breathing”, each one of those are measured by at least 10 seconds. So, essentially, every single night, somebody was coming and choking me 100 times a night, and I would wake up suffocating. And I would use a CPAP device, and a dental device, and everything that I’ve tried. Nothing was moving the needle.

So, I went in for surgery, and I was reluctant about it because I’ve heard of a few that just really didn’t turn out well, but I went through it, through my research, found somebody, and it worked. But, for the past three years, I know what it feels like to be 24/7 just frustrated, just tired, just spent. When you have all these dreams and desires and you’re doing everything right, and then life throws you a curve ball out of nowhere, it’s just like you wonder, “Why me? Why is my body or my brain betraying me?”

These are the challenges, right? Because, the biggest challenge is what it does to your brain. I wasn’t not sleeping because my brain was active. My brain was completely quiet. It was serene, it was just the oxygen levels, and when I’m getting below 80% levels of oxygen to my brain, the challenges that go along with that, the brain fog, the forgetfulness, the mental fatigue. So, it forced me. I would say that that’s been my most recent struggle since the surgery, which was only about a month ago. My sleep has doubled, which is moving in the right direction.

But, it’s forced me, when I was commenting on your state, and only if you come through experience, that I know what it feels like to not have any kind of resources inside of me and still having to go on stage and still coming and getting on a flight across the world to be able to perform. And I would say that if you’re struggling right now, that maybe that there’s a reason, that through going through this breakdown, that there’s going to be a breakthrough.

I could go through, if I’m honest going through my life, some of the biggest challenges led to the biggest results in my life. I don’t think, and I was talking to the universe and I’m like, “I didn’t need three years to learn this lesson, but I’m glad I did, and I don’t take it for granted.”

So, for another example is every single month, I learn something new. Every single month for as long as I can remember, I’ve had these skills, because I need to feel what it feels like to not know how to do something, because I feel like that makes me a better coach. So, I’m taking flying lessons. I’m not really good in closed spaces, and I get vertigo, but I do it because I’m like, “Say that again?” I want to feel like what it feels like to not know, to be uncomfortable doing that, because not only will it make me a better person in terms of growth. I put myself in the comfort, but it will also make me more sensitive and more empathetic to somebody.

When I’m talking to them about reading three times faster, or talking about something that’s even possible in their mind, that’s what I’m feeling when I’m saying, “Oh, get on this surfboard, or get on this boat, I feel the same exact way.” If you’re going through something right now, keep at it, work smart, learn from your mistakes, pivot when you need to, and keep going, because here’s the other reason you do something is when you find your why is people are watching you. You’re struggling right now, there’s so many people who would totally give you an out and totally understand if you quit, but when you don’t, you inspire people with your grit and with your grace, and that’s the real gift that you give people.

Yeah, and another quote that I’ve heard recently that really stuck with me is we can do hard things, like you can do hard things, and in knowing that, and I love — I mean, there’s such a really big lesson in what you just said of how important it is to put ourselves in that place of be comfortable being uncomfortable.

But, when you’re a beginner at something, you feel like an idiot. I mean, you just feel like stupid, and it’s a very insecure, uncomfortable feeling, but it’s that type of, I think, uncomfort that is the biggest growth, because when you have the grit to get through that and do it anyway, and keep doing it when you feel stupid and think, “I can never learn this, and oh my gosh, what are people thinking of me because I’m just — look at me. I look like a beginner,” but it’s like doing it anyway, and then realizing there’s just so much confidence that comes out that when you realize how much later that, “Wow, I’m actually decent at this,” and teaching ourselves that we can do hard things and we can learn hard things.

Yeah, and I think there’s two things that people could do that would empower people is number 1, it’s not your fault. Because, most of us weren’t taught how to do these things. None of us are born and crawled out to the hospital waiting room, start speedreading a magazine. It’s a skill we learned, and so if we weren’t taught it, then it’s not really our fault. So, I would say if you’re new to something, you’re taking up something brand new, then if it’s going a little slow for you, then be patient, because it’s not your fault, because most of us never really learned how to learn.

The second thing I would say is you’re not alone. I mean, how good of a feeling is it to know every time — I promise you, I get in front of thousands, tens and thousands of people all the time and I say, “How many people have trouble remembering a name? How many people read a page of a book and forget what they just read? How many people were in the shower and forgot if you shampooed your hair, or forget where you parked a car?” Everyone’s hand were raised, raised, raised, and it’s like a big support group because like, “Wow, I’m not the only one who’s going through this stuff.”

So, I would say that whenever you’re tackling something new, be patient with yourself, be forgiving with yourself, be kind with yourself, and it’s that uncomfortability that usually happens right before you have that breakthrough. And you have to get comfortable with chaos and not understanding things, because that’s where you do learn it. Because, when you’re not putting yourself in that space, we’re just not growing.

Exactly. Alright, well one final question, and you’ve already covered a lot of myths, but I like to ask every guest, because I try to do some myth busting, and really introduce people to some unconventional thinkers and doers, and that only unconventional thinkers and doers, obviously, they have some unconventional beliefs, I think. So, based in your life, it can be just professionally, personally, or what you see that you travel the world, you meet with all types of people, what’s a myth, maybe, that you come across most often where you just hear it over and over again, and you’re just like, “Ugh, I just want to bust that one.”

So, I’ll give you a couple, because the first one, I’m just repeating that we just do as a theme on this, saying that their learning or their potential, their memory is fixed, and that’s a complete myth. A complete myth. That’s not fixed like our height, our shoe size. There’s growth. So, all of us have room for improvement, and so if you feel like you’re too old, or too whatever to fill in that blank, then it’s absolutely not true and it’s a lie. So, you don’t want to believe that. And there’s all kinds of ways to be able to get over it, and that’s a conversation for a different time.

But, I think our intelligence being fixed is a misnomer. Even the IQ test has been debunked. It’s only testing for something that’s very specific areas of intelligence, and people feel like your IQ is your intelligence is fixed all throughout your life, that whatever it was when it was 8, it’s going to be the same when it’s 88. So, that’s a complete myth.

We also know that it’s a myth that we use only a small fragment of our brain. We actually use all of our brain, or at least most of it. So, it’s not like the 10% or the 2% that we once thought. It’s actually all of it. But, how we use it is different. So, how somebody who’s had a trained, that has gone through a curriculum of brain training uses their brain way differently than somebody who didn’t have access to that training. They could be using all that brain, but how you’re using it is differently, if that makes sense.

The last myth I would mention for people is I would go back to this myth of responsibility, and I’ll share this because you’ll see behind me is Iron Man, and I always believe in SuperheroYou, I call it, the Y-O-U, which is our best self, that we are the superhero that we’ve been waiting for, and I really think that so many people are waiting for Superman or waiting for Superwoman to save them, but we ultimately are the superhero we’ve been waiting for.

Recently, I got to introduce two of my superheroes together. It was Sir Richard Branson and Stan Lee. Not Stanley, but the co-creator of Iron Man, and Fantastic Four, and Avengers, and X-Men. We’re going to dinner and I ask Stan, I was like, “You created this pantheon of superheroes that I love. Who’s your favorite?” He’s like, “Jim, my favorite is Iron Man.” I’m like, “That’s amazing,” and he’s like, “Jim, who’s your favorite?” and I was like, “My favorite is Spider-Man, because Spider-Man, really, he was picked on, he was bullied, he couldn’t fit in in school, and I felt like that was me,” and when I said Spider-Man, without a blink, he goes, “With great power comes great responsibility,” right? We’ve all heard it, we don’t remember when we heard it, but it’s like in our DNA, but we’re all on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, right?

I’m like, “You know, that’s funny, Stan, you’re right. With great power comes great responsibility, like when you have great power, like you’re the president of the United States, you have a great responsibility,” and I was like, “Of course, I mentioned l mentioned Kwik Thinking, which teaches you how to think out of the box, and differently, and invertedly, and everything.” I was like, “The opposite is also true. With great responsibility comes great power.” With great responsibility comes great power.

I think a myth comes from one of the lies we tell ourselves is we’re not capable, or we’re not responsible, or we’re a victim. We’re at the response of things. But, we actually have the ability to respond proactively, and what I mean by that is when we take responsibility, we have the power to make things better. I think there’s a myth that people think that discipline – here’s another myth that goes in line with responsibility – is that discipline is a prison.

A lot of people feel like, “Oh, I have to work out, I have to go drink this green juice, I have to clean the juicer here, I have to write in my journal, I have to do this with my kids, or I have to move for 30 minutes, whatever it is,” and then they always say, “I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this.” But, when you change your “got” to “get”. “I get to work out, or I get to work with my kids, I get to read today, I get to journal,” everything opens up.

Simple one letter from “got” to “get”, and everything opens up. Because, when we take responsibility, discipline is not a jailor. Discipline is complete freedom. Because what’s a jailor is when you can’t get yourself to do something you have to do, then you are in prison. So, I think the other myth going along the lines is discipline. People don’t want to be disciplined because they want to be free and they want to be out. “I don’t want to plan the first hour of my day. I want to be spontaneous.” When you are disciplined, it allows a level of freedom that most people will never experience.

I totally agree. So, to close, and to really book in the close, I want to say, again, a public thank you. I don’t think you really realize how you’ve really helped me regain my brain, and I’ve learned so much from you. I’ve probably attended every conference of yours since after I got back from being sick as well as some personal coaching at your house. So, I really admire you and I value your work and thank you for what you do, because I know you’ve helped millions of people, but I’m one of those.

Thank you, and I want to congratulate you also in being such a force of inspiration. I think the world needs modern-day superheroes. I see your cape flowing on the back. Because, a superhero, they have two traits, right? They found a unique ability, or a strength, or a talent, or a superpower. But, just having a superpower doesn’t make you, necessarily a superhero, because you have to use that superpower for good. So, I want to thank you right back for the good that you do. And I want to thank everyone also for being here with us also, for exercising your superpower, for being present here, and committing yourself to lifelong learning.

Well, thank you, and where can my listeners find you?

We created a brain gift for everybody. You know, we worked with your team, and we put together a training for people more on speedreading and memory like more in the how-to-do-its, like the step-by-step procedures. So, they can go to jimkwik.com/wise. Jim Kwik, and that’s K-W-I-K, my real name, jimkwik.com/wise, and you get to get all these amazing brain training videos. There’s no cost, but it’s our thank you for playing full out and showing up for this.

Well, thank you, and we’ll put that link in the show notes to make it very easy for everyone. Well, thanks again. I really appreciate you and your time, and thank you for being here with us.

Thank you, Krisstina. Thank you everybody.

And so ends another episode of the Wealthy Wellthy Life. This was one more millionaire mindset that will make you wealthy while keeping you healthy. Before you leave, if you want to learn how to become rich, healthy, and happy, then sign up for my free money training at mindfulmoneywebinar.com. You will learn my signature formula for transforming your life from debt into a healthy multimillionaire. It’s the only moneymaking system that makes your health your number one asset. It’s helped thousands of others and it can help you too. If you’re curious how it all works, visit mindfulmoneywebinar.com and sign up today. Again, that’s mindfulmoneywebinar.com. Remember, it’s free. And as always, be sure to subscribe to my podcast to make sure that you catch next week’s millionaire mindset. This is Krisstina Wise, your personal guide to having it all, signing off. Here’s to living a Wealthy Wellthy Life. I’ll see you next time.

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