Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.
Stu: This week we welcome Jim Kwik to the show. Jim is the founder of Kwik Learning and a widely recognised world expert in speed-reading, memory improvement, brain performance, and accelerated learning.
For over two decades, he has served as the brain coach to students, seniors, entrepreneurs, and educators, and as an advisor to many of the world’s leading CEOs and celebrities.
Audio Version
Questions we ask in this episode:
- What do you say to those who self-label themselves as ‘just having a poor memory’?
- What do you think are the most common roadblocks where learning is concerned?
- What are your thoughts on artificial stimulants like coffee or energy drinks?
- Do you think that nutrition can impact our mental performance?
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Full Transcript
Stu
00:00:03 Hey, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition, and welcome to another episode of the health sessions. It’s here that we connect with the world’s best experts in health, wellness, and human performance in an attempt to cut through the confusion around what it actually takes to achieve a long lasting health. Before we get into the show today, you might not know that we make products too. That’s right. We’re into whole food nutrition and have a range of super foods and supplements to help support your day. If you’re curious, want to find out more, just jump over to 180nutrition.com.au and take a look.
Stu: 00:00:37 Okay, back to the show. This week, I’m excited to welcome Jim Kwik. Now Jim is the founder of Kwik Learning, a widely recognized world expert in speed reading, memory improvement, brain performance, and accelerated learning. In this episode, we discuss the strategies he developed to improve the productivity of our brains, and on the flip side, the most common roadblocks that hold us back from our full potential.
Stu: 00:01:02 So if you think you’ve been burdened with a poor memory, or you struggle to remember phone numbers, or simply want to sharpen your brain, then you will get a lot from this interview. Anyway, enough rambling from me. Let’s get into the show.
Stu
00:01:18 Hey guys, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition, and I am delighted to welcome Jim Kwik to the show. Good morning, Jim. How are you?
Jim
00:01:25 Stu, thank you, and thank everybody who’s joining us. Looking forward to this.
Stu
00:01:29 Fantastic. So Jim, before we get into the nuts and bolts of the show today, I would love if you could just tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, what you do, why you do it, and go for it.
Jim
00:01:46 Sounds good. Well, if people are listening to this episode, at some level they’re probably interested in improving their mental performance, their focus, their memory, they want to read faster, they know their brain controls every aspect of their life. If people see me on stage or on YouTube, they’ve seen me memorize 100 people’s names. Like literally, 100 people stand up and I’ll remember their names, or they’ll give me 100 words or 100 numbers, and I’ll memorize them forwards and backwards.
But I always tell people, Stu, I don’t do this to impress you. I do this more to express to you what’s possible because the truth is every single person who’s listening to this can do that and a lot more. The only challenge is we weren’t taught. If anything, we were taught a lie, a lie that somehow our intelligence, our potential, our memory for instance is somehow fixed, like our shoe size.
We discovered more about the human brain in the past 20 years than the previous 2,000 years, and what we found is we’re grossly underestimating our capabilities. The reason I know this is because I grew up with learning difficulties. At the age of five, I had an accident, head trauma, brain injury, and I had these learning challenges where teachers would have to repeat themselves over and over and over again. I just didn’t understand. I had very bad focus. I had a very poor retention and memory, and all these learning disabilities. It took me an extra few years longer to learn how to read, and so I really know what it’s like to struggle. That really was my whole academic life, all through elementary school, middle school, junior high, high school. I was just challenged.
Jim
00:03:31 At the age of nine actually, one of my teachers pointed to me, talking to another adult, said, “That’s the boy with the broken brain.” So it’s kind of interesting. I don’t know how many parents are listening to this. If you have a child or a child in your life, or you once were a child, I feel like an adult’s external words become a child’s internal words, and those words were my internal voice. Every time I just was not good enough, I was like, ” Oh, I just have a broken brain. I’m just broken. I’m just not enough.”
00:04:05 Really my work is really about overcoming that. It’s about transcending. I mean, if you look at the word transcend, it’s about ending the trance, ending the trance. This mass hypnosis and marketing and media that says we’re not enough, that we are limited. My work really is the culmination of the past 25 years of teaching accelerated learning, brain performance, is just all about showing people really what is possible for them, that we are smarter, we are faster, we are more powerful than we think-
Stu
00:04:38 Fantastic.
Jim
00:04:39 … because we weren’t taught how to access these abilities.
Stu
00:04:41 Absolutely. So Jim, at what point then did you realize that you did have the ability to learn and you were capable, but it was just perhaps in a different way that you were being told that you had to learn?
Jim
00:04:59 I think, Stu, that a lot of people wonder how smart they are, how smart their kids are, how smart their team is, and that’s the wrong question. It’s not really how smart you are. It’s how are you smart. So it’s not how smart you are. It’s how are you smart. I find that when we are in our element, when we utilize … It’s kind of like if I ask somebody to write their name, first and last with their dominant hand, of course that’s easy to do. But if I ask you to switch hands and write below it your first and last name with your opposite hand, you would notice three things. You would notice the second time, it takes longer. You would notice with your non-dominant hand, it feels uncomfortable, and you’d also notice the quality isn’t quite as good, those three things.
00:05:38 And really if somebody’s ever listened to a podcast, or they’ve gone to an event, or they’re at a conference and they’re interested in a subject, but they’re not just getting it, usually what I find that it’s the way you prefer to learn is different than the teacher’s preferred way of teaching. So you’re like two ships in the night, and you pass each other, and you don’t even realize that the other one’s there, and you don’t connect. So it’s kind of like you’re learning with the opposite hand. So it takes longer, it feels uncomfortable, and the quality is not quite as good.
00:06:09 So one of my things that when I overcame this, to answer your question, I was 18 years old, and I had just gotten into university, and I was lucky to do so. I wanted to make a fresh start, show myself, show the world, show my parents really, to make them proud, show them I was capable, and I just did worse. I was ready to quit school. I didn’t know how to do that because I’m the oldest of three children, and I wanted to be a good example for my brother and my sister.
Jim
00:06:42 My friend was like, “Hey, before you quit school, I’m going home for the weekend. Why don’t you just come with and get some perspective?” And I find that everybody could benefit, if we’re ever stuck in life, in our job, in our health, in our relationships, sometimes it helps to change perspective. For me, it was changing place and people. You get around different people, you get around a different place, and you get a different point of view.
00:07:06 When I visited my friend’s family, they’re pretty well off, and the father walks me around his property before dinner, asked me a very simple question, said, “Jim, how’s school?” which is the worst question you could ask me at that time. I was just like, I tell him the whole story, about the broken brain, I’m not smart, I’m going to quit school. And he was like, “Jim, why are you in school? What do you want to be? What do you want to do? What do you want to have? What do you want to share with the world?” And I didn’t have an answer.
00:07:32 This is the other principle … I think it’s very important when learning to learn, which I think is one of the most important skills to learn how to learn faster, is really the power of asking questions because questions, you know, ask and you shall receive. If you ask better questions, you’ll get better answers in life, and that really is the process of thinking and problem solving and innovating.
00:07:52 So I didn’t have an answer, but when I go to answer him, he says, “Stop,” and he takes out a journal out of his back pocket, takes out a couple sheets of paper, and makes me write it down. What ended up happening is, Stu, this was my first bucket list. You know what I mean?
Stu
00:08:05 Yes.
Jim
00:08:06 [inaudible 00:08:07] share before I kick the bucket. When I was done with the exercise, I fold it up to put it in my pocket, and he grabs the sheets out of my page, out of my hand, he starts looking at them. I was freaking out because this guy’s obviously very successful, and he’s looking at all my dreams and goals and desires. When he’s done, he’s like, “Jim, you are this close to everything on this list,” and he spreads his index fingers about a foot apart. And I’m thinking, “No way. Give me 10 lifetimes, I’m not going to crack that list.”
00:08:34 And he takes his fingers, and he puts them to the side of my head, meaning what’s in between, which is my brain, is really the key. He walks me into a room at his home, and you’d appreciate this, Stu. I’ve never seen this room before in someone’s home. It’s wall to wall, ceiling to floor, covered in books. I mean, just I’ve never seen a library in somebody’s house, right?
00:08:53 He starts grabbing books and handing them to me, and they’re these biographies of incredible men and women in history. I think intelligent people learn from their own experience, but I think really wise people learn from other people’s experience. So I think biographies are really wonderful, and some of the titles were some early personal development, personal growth books, like Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking, and so on. It’s like, “Jim, I want you to read one book a week. Leaders are readers. I want you to read one book a week.”
00:09:24 I’m like, “Are you kidding me? Have you not heard I have learning challenges, and I have all these issues?” I notice that automatically when people get you to stretch, sometimes we want to stay put, sometimes in our health and our relationships and our career and our income, and I’m fighting for my limitations. I’m like, “You know, I have learning disabilities. I have a broken brain.”
00:09:48 Here’s the thing. If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. If you argue for your limits, they’re yours, and I say, “I have so much schoolwork. I have mid-terms,” and he looked me right in the eye. He says, “Jim, don’t let school get in the way of your education.”
Stu
00:10:02 Wow.
Jim
00:10:02 I’m like, “Oh, okay.”
Stu
00:10:05 That’s a big quote.
Jim
00:10:06 It is. I didn’t realize it was a Mark Twain quote at the time, but he … and I was like, “I can’t read all these books. I can’t commit to it. If I commit to it, I’m going to do it, and there’s no way.” He’s a very smart man. He reaches into his pocket. He takes out my bucket list, which he still has. He starts reading out loud all my dreams, and something about hearing another man who’s obviously very happy and successful, hearing your dreams, deep desires, wants, out in the universe, it messed with my mind, it messed with my heart, it messed with my spirit something fierce.
00:10:39 Honestly, a bunch of things on that list were things I wanted to do for my family, things they can never afford or would never do for themselves. So motivation is so important to the art of learning. When people say they’re horrible at remembering names, they can’t remember what they read, all these things, I always first go to the motivation because I believe reasons reap results. My reasons were on that list, things I wanted to do for my family. So with that motivate, I agreed to commit, and I say, “Okay, I’ll read one book a week.”
00:11:10 Now fast forward, I’m at school, I have a pile of books I have to read for school, mid-terms and study, and I have a pile of books I want to read, I promised to read. I can’t even keep up one of those piles, and so what do I do? I sacrifice. I don’t eat. I don’t sleep. I don’t work out. I don’t spend time with family. I don’t spend time with friends. I don’t … all the things that you know are good for your health, optimize your health, and I just live in the library.
Jim
00:11:37 Not very sustainable. I end up passing out. I fall down in the library. I fall down a flight of stairs one night, and I hit my head again. I woke up in the hospital two days later, and at this point, I’m down to about 117 pounds. I was wasting away. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was hooked up to all these IVs. I was malnourished, dehydrated. I thought I’d died. It was the darkest … really a dark time in my life, and I woke up with that question, thinking, “What am I going to do? I can’t do this. What am I going to do?”
00:12:09 When I had that thought, the nurse came in, and she brought with her a mug of tea. On it, it had a picture of Albert Einstein, really smart dude, right? And it had this quote that we’ve heard, “The same level of thinking that created your problem won’t solve your problem.” It made me think like, “What’s my problem?” I thought, “Well, I’m a really slow learner. I have a very slow brain.” It’s like, “Well, how do I think differently about it? Well, maybe I could learn how to learn faster. Maybe I could learn how to have a quicker brain.”
00:12:41 I put my studies aside and I start studying because I notice school, when I was looking at a course bulletin for classes next semester, and they’re all classes on what to learn. Math, history, science, Spanish, important classes on what to learn. But how many classes did I find on how to learn?
Stu
00:12:57 Yeah, none. Never.
Jim
00:12:59 Not one. How to listen, how to take notes, how to study, how to concentrate, how to focus my attention, how to solve problems, how to think better, how to read faster, how to remember things. I always thought it should be the fourth R in school. They teach you three Rs, reading, writing, arithmetic, but what about retention, what about recall, what about remembering. Socrates says, “Learning is remembering.”
00:13:23 I started studying those subjects. I wanted to understand, solve this riddle, this … like how does my brain work so I could work my brain? How does my memory work so I could work my memory? I start studying positive psychology and brain science, speed reading and mnemonics, and adult learning theory. About 60 days into it, a light switch flipped on, and for the first time, I started to understand things. For the first time, I started retaining things. For the first time, I started finishing books, and then my grades, just leaps and bounds.
00:13:57 When my grades improved, my life improved. The reason why I’m here talking to you right now is because when I learned these skills, I couldn’t help but help other people. I was so upset that our school system let this ball drop, meaning that we live in an age of electric cars and spaceships that are going to Mars, very advanced, but our goal when it comes to learning that we choose is like a horse and buggy. Our education system, in other words, hasn’t advanced as much as the world has advanced. Most people don’t feel they’re prepared, so they’re suffering from digital overload, digital distraction. They call it digital dementia, these memory loss where we’re outsourcing our brains to our smart device. We just can’t keep up because we weren’t taught how to use this magnificent super computer found between our ears called our brains.
00:14:46 I started to teach people, and one of my very first students, she was a freshman. She read 30 books in 30 days. Can you imagine Stu, if you go online, go to the bookstore, buy 30 books, and in one month, finish all of them. Not skim it, scan it, but really read it and retain it and apply it. I wanted to find out not how she did it. I know because I taught her how to do it, but I wanted to know why. Going back to motivation, how motivation is key. What was her motive for taking action?
00:15:16 I found out that her mother was dying of terminal cancer and was given only two months to live, 60 days. That’s what doctors said, and I wished her luck. Six months later, I get a call from this young lady, and she’s crying, and she’s crying, she’s crying. I get choked up just thinking about it. She can’t get a word out, but when she finally starts talking, I find out that her mother not only survived, but is really starting to thrive. She was crying tears of joy. Like her mother was alive and doing well. Doctors don’t know how or why. The doctors called it a miracle, but her mother attributed it to 100% to the great advice she got from her daughter, who learned it from all these books on health and wellness and energy and fitness and everything.
00:16:03 That’s when I realized that if knowledge is power, learning is your super power. That if knowledge is power, learning is our super power, and it’s a super power we all have, regardless of our age, regardless of our background, regardless of our career, regardless of our level of education, our financial situation, our gender, our IQ, our person history. None of that matters. It’s just we either learned it properly or we didn’t.
Jim: 00:16:29 So my mission from that point on, 25 years later, is still the same. It’s helping people build better, brighter brains. They say we use a very small percentage of our potential. We use all our brain, but in terms of how we access our potential, it’s very small. Now we live in an age where it’s … Nobody who’s listened to this has really paid for their muscle power. You’re paid for your mind power. You’re not paid for your brute strength. It’s your brain strength, and the faster you can learn, the faster you can earn in today’s knowledge economy. Knowledge is not just power, it’s profit.
Stu
00:16:29 You don’t touch that.
Jim
00:17:06 I don’t just mean financial profit, obviously financially, but just with what I told you about this young lady, it’s all the treasures of your life, your health, your relationships, your business, your mission because is there a book out there really that solves pretty much any problem that we have that we’re facing. Somebody has decades of experience and they put it into a book, and you can sit down in a day or a couple of day and read that book. In that you can download decades into days, and that’s a huge advantage when the biggest asset we have, our most valuable asset, is our time.
Stu
00:17:39 Absolutely. [crosstalk 00:17:40] Fantastic.
Jim
00:17:42 So that’s what I’m-
Stu
00:17:44 Wow. That is so inspirational. I’m very intrigued as well as what you said, Jim, about digital dimension, dementia as well because I have three young daughters, so three girls. They’re living in a very different age to when we were young and went to school. Now they do have smart devices and tablets and all manner of distractions. My two youngest daughters are twins, and they’re nine years old. Learning on tablets and e-readers and things like that at school is commonplace now. I almost find that counterintuitive to the way that they should learn because it’s very … It’s instant gratification. I want the next thing, and they’re swipe, swipe, swipe. It seems hard for them to settle and be comfortable in their own space without these digital devices.
00:18:46 Now I have an elder daughter. She’ll be 13 this year. She’s quite unique in the fact that she does actually read a book a day. She is fascinated with reading, and she’s all consumed with reading. She reads at the breakfast table, at lunch, at dinner, and on the bus.
00:19:05 I love that.
Stu
00:19:06 It’s really interesting because her vocabulary has just grown exponentially, day by day, and she looks at the world in a very different way. I just wonder where the educational system is going to end up, Jim, because right now, it is certainly about the social media and the connection, and just digital dementia. I’m just seeing this everywhere I go. There are children out there that are at restaurants, and they’ve got an iPad or an iPhone in front of them. Otherwise, they simply cannot … They just can’t concentrate. If you can’t concentrate, how can you learn?
Jim
00:19:50 Yeah, okay so let’s unpack that a little bit Stu. I think everybody can relate to this. I think there are three forces. I always talk about super heroes, super powers, because it’s kind of a fun way, the metaphor I think we all have a super hero inside of us. The reason why is just because I’ve mentioned that I couldn’t read as a kid, and I taught myself how to read by reading comic books late at night when my parents thought I was sleeping. Something about good versus evil, that one person can make a difference, hope and offering help.
00:20:24 So I think modern day super heroes … I don’t mean that they have super powers like they can leap tall buildings and shoot lasers out of their eyes, but I think they’re modern talents modern day talents that we all have, unique abilities. We have unique strengths that make us special, that we apply towards our careers and our vocations.
00:20:43 But they’re also super villains. I think the three super villains, you nailed it. I mean, these are the villains, the enemies that have really taken away from the quality of our life. It’s hurting our health, it’s hurting our influence, it’s hurting the level of impact we can have, our income, and really these are the villains of our times. These are digital villains.
00:21:04 There’s digital overload. There’s too much information, too little time. They say that the amount of … The chairman of Google has said that the amount of information that’s been created since humans walked this earth to the year 2003, which is what a decade and a half ago, that amount of information … Think about how much information that is, human beings have been here. That amount of information is now created every two days online.
Stu
00:21:29 Unbelievable, isn’t it?
Jim
00:21:29 Think about blogs and podcasts and articles and books and there’s so much information. So the amount of information is doubling at dizzying speeds, but how we read it, retain it, recall it, it’s the same. That growing gap creates stress. They call it information anxiety, and this is a big health epidemic challenge, higher blood pressure, compression of leisure time, more sleeplessness. Our minds are just everywhere and stressed.
00:21:55 The second obstacle besides digital overload is digital distraction. We know this because our smart devices are rewiring our brains, and we can’t concentrate anymore. Like they’re saying we have less of a concentration span than a goldfish. Our minds are just going from here to here and trying to multitask. All the research has proven, multitasking does not work. People think that they’re multitasking, but really what they’re doing is they’re task switching. They’re switching from one task to another and then it takes any where … Did you know it takes anywhere from five minutes to 20 minutes just to regain your focus and what they call your flow. In actuality, we’re actually losing ground, and that person who’s trying to multitask is also making more mistakes. That’s what the research is showing. So our focus is everywhere. That’s digital distraction.
00:22:45 The third enemy is what you’re saying is digital dementia. Digital dementia’s this new term in healthcare that basically says we become so dependent, so reliant on our smart phones … Your brain is like a muscle. It grows stronger with use, but it’s use it or lose it. If you’re using your smart device to keep your calendars, your to dos, to do simple math … I remember I was out at dinner one night, and there was 10 of us. When the bill came, the three people took out their phone’s calculator to divide the bill by 10. Just to move the zero, the decimal point over one. We’re so dependent for GPS, for phone numbers. Like think about how many phone numbers did you know growing up? How many phone numbers did you know, if you remember?
Stu
00:23:33 I would have known probably 10, 10 of my good friends and my phone number as well.
Jim
00:23:39 Yeah, like we knew a lot. How many phone numbers do we know right now?
Stu
00:23:43 We just don’t Jim. The good bit is we don’t have to.
Jim
00:23:47 Right, exactly. And here’s the thing. Not that I want to memorize hundreds of phone numbers, but we’ve lost the ability to remember one. We forget the pass codes, the PIN numbers, conversation we had earlier that day, what we had for breakfast, the meeting that we had. You know, I believe two of the most costly words to our life are, “I forgot.” I forgot to do it. I forgot to bring it. I forgot that meeting. I forgot what that person said I needed to do. I forgot that actor’s name. I forgot that person’s name. It just goes on and on.
00:24:16 And every time we find ourselves in that circumstance, we lose opportunity, we lose credibility, we lose time, we lose money, all those things. So my thing is like these are very simple, easy to fix, challenges. It’s just we weren’t taught how to do it. So digital dementia’s basically saying that we’re so dependent on our smart devices, that our smart devices are in some ways making us not so smart.
00:24:45 Just like I have a podcast, and they’re very short, 10 minutes, 15 minutes long, where I just answer a simple question. How do you read a book a week? How do you speed read? How do you remember people’s names? What are my top 10 favorite brain foods? We just did a whole program on my daily routine, like what I do in the morning, the first hour, because if you win the day, you’ve got to win in the first hour of the day to build positive momentum. So there’s 12 things I do every single morning to jump start my brain.
00:25:14 But one of the things I don’t do I I don’t check my phone. The reason why, and if people walk out with one thing from this conversation, they don’t want to hear it, but I feel like they need to hear it, is that when you wake up, you’re in this alpha theta state. You’re very impressionable. It’s a relaxed state of awareness. So your very suggestible. And if the first thing you do, which most people do, is pick up their phone, you’re training your brain to do two things. Number one, you’re training it to be distracted. You’re rewiring your brain to be distracted because every time you get a like, a share, a comment, you watch a cat video, you get a dopamine flood, and it goes through your reward system of your nervous system, and it hijacks your brain. It makes you more distracted.
00:25:56 So you’re training yourself to be distracted, but the second thing it does, first thing in the morning if you touch your phone, it’s training you to be reactive, meaning that you cannot have a quality life, quality body, quality business, quality family, if you just wake up fighting fires. My friend Brendan says, “Your inbox is nothing but a convenient, organization system for other people’s agenda for your life.”
Stu
00:26:21 That’s so true.
Jim
00:26:23 If you wake up and check text messages, voice mails, your emails, and then you’re just replying and reacting to everyone’s agenda, and what they need from you, but you’re not really thinking about meditating and thinking what are the three things I need to do today that will make today a win for my family, for my work, for my health. So you get hijacked, and you know this, you get one bad email that just throws off your whole day.
Stu
00:26:49 Absolutely.
Jim
00:26:49 So I would say protect yourself. Stand guard to the doors of mind, to your brain, and don’t touch your phone the first hour because you train yourself. And not only that, but the episode we just released was one on EMFs, like these electromagnetic fields. We don’t know what the ramifications of all this electricity in the environment, from your laptop, to your phone. Most children … you were talking about your daughters, most children actually sleep, over 90% sleep with their phones right underneath their pillows. We don’t know the ramifications of having that electronic device literally an inch away from their brain, and the harm that [crosstalk 00:27:30]
Stu
00:27:29 Absolutely right. It’s funny that you should raise that because only last week I had interviewed a specialist on EMF and EMR and talking specifically about wireless radiation and the effects that it has on children, and the way that we learn as well with the smart devices on our laps and mobile phones pressed to our ears and things like that. So it’s a fascinating world. I think 10 or 15 years, we’re going to look back and think what were we thinking, like, “Boy did we get that one wrong.”
Jim
00:28:01 I believe it.
Stu
00:28:04 Many people, Jim, label themselves just having a poor memory, and just by default. “Oh my parents had a poor memory. I’m getting old. I have a poor memory as well.” Given what you’ve told me today about our individual potential, where would be the best place to start to want to improve that?
Jim
00:28:27 Yeah, okay. So couple of principles that I adhere to. First of all, I believe that … So science is saying that one third of your memory is predetermined by genetics and biology, but two third is in our control. So that’s exciting to me, knowing that you could grow older, but in some ways, you could grow better by learning what the two third, what makes a difference. So we could talk about what those things are. I also have a belief that there’s no such thing as a good or bad memory. There’s just no such thing. There’s the trained memory and the untrained memory. That you don’t have a memory or you don’t have focus or you don’t have love or you don’t have creativity, you do those things. You do love, you do creativity, you do focus, you do concentration, you do a memory for example.
00:29:20 So I like to take it from something you have like a noun to something like a verb, something that you do because when you make it an action, you can turn it into a process. So that’s what I teach in my podcast and our online programs, we teach people how to learn another language. I train a lot of actors and speakers, like TED speakers, how to memorize a speech really quickly without referring to notes, how to be able to improve your business vocabulary, how to remember numbers for if you’re in the financial industry or what have you. So then it’s very doable. There’s not some magic. There’s always a method behind the magic, and I believe that.
00:30:02 So a starting point for this is … There are three keys to improving your memory. If you’re ever forgetting something, one of these three things is missing. I always tell people to remember this acronym. Mom. Remember mom. M-O-M. So let’s apply this towards remembering names. Most people complain that they’re have challenges. They meet somebody, and as soon as the handshakes breaks, the name just falls right through the floor. Or if it’s not a short-term issue, it might be a long-term issue. They might be at the mall or at the gym. Somebody taps them on the shoulder. They turn around. They see somebody they recognize, but for the life of them, they don’t know who that person is, right?
Stu
00:30:50 Right, yeah.
Jim
00:30:51 What makes it worse is when that person has the nerve to remember your name, right?
Stu
00:30:51 Yes, yeah.
Jim
00:30:51 That gets really … or somebody comes and you have to introduce two people together.
Stu
00:30:54 Yes, very awkward.
Jim
00:30:56 Play all those games. Why is it important to remember names? Well, it’s really hard to show somebody you’re going to care for their business, their future, their family, their finances, their health, whatever it is you have to offer them, if you don’t care enough just to remember their name. So let’s say somebody has trouble remembering names, but there’s a suitcase of $1 million, whatever the equivalence is in any county because I know you have a very international audience, $1 million for them, tax-free for them and their favorite charity, if they just remember the name of the next stranger you meet. Who’s going to remember that person’s name? Everybody.
Stu
00:31:38 Yeah, everyone is. Motivation there.
Jim
00:31:41 Right because then that’s the thing. You hit it on the head because everybody becomes a memory expert. When people ask me what I do, I just say, “I’m a brain coach. Just like you have people have a personal trainer that makes them faster, more focused, more fit, stronger, better endurance and agility and energy, I want to do that for your mental muscles, help you have sharper mental muscles, more focused mental muscles, greater endurance, energy, and strength and power, with your mind.”
00:32:13 So I want to tell people the truth, and the truth is you have genius inside you already. You just didn’t want to remember a person’s name because here’s the thing. Reasons reap results, and so a simple brain hack when you’re meeting somebody for the first time if you want to remember their name, ask yourself, “Why do I want to remember this person’s name?” Very simple, right, very simple. “Why do I want to remember it?”
00:32:37 Come up with an answer. Maybe it’s to show the person respect. Maybe it’s to make a new friend. Maybe it’s to do some business. Maybe it’s to practice what I learned from this podcast. What you practice in private, you’re rewarded for in public. What you practice in private, you’re rewarded for in public.
00:32:55 I was doing some training with … I was on set with Will Smith, the actor. I help actors speed read scripts, remember their lines, and they were shooting at like 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, and I asked him … I remember asking him, I was like, “What do you do to get ready? Like you’re just waiting here all the time for them to set up and get the cameras perfect, and the lighting, and for stop raining. How do just get ready?”
00:33:24 And he looked at me. He’s like, “Jim, I don’t have to get ready. I stay ready.” And I’m like, “Wow,” because the people who are the elite performers, mentally, physically, and so on, they live in that place where they don’t … It’s not what they say, it’s just who they are. You know what I mean? I believe, at the core of my being, that the life you live are lessons you teach. The life you live are the lessons you teach.
00:33:51 It’s not what you say, but it’s what we do. It’s better well done than well said. Coming from that point of view, I just feel like that if motivation, that if people cared about the other person, they’re more likely to remember they’re name. Ask yourself, “Why do I want to remember it?” Come up with reasons because reasons reap results.
00:34:10 I believe there’s a success formula that all of us subscribe to whether we know it or not want we’re successful. I call it H cubed. That goes for your head to your heart to your hands. Meaning you could keep things in your head, you could visualize your goals, and affirms them, and have positive self-talk in your head, but if you’re not acting with your hands, something’s the matter.
00:34:32 We’ve all procrastinated. We’ve all self-sabotaged, right? We’ve all held ourselves back. Why don’t we do the things that we need to do action-wise with our hands that we know is good for us with our heads. I would say, suggest to people that check in with the second H, which is the heart, the emotion, the energy emotion, what gets us to do what we do, and find your why. So start with why, like the famous book says, and come up with your why. Then want you do it, it adds the fuel that fuels the car if you will, right?
Stu
00:35:05 Yes, yeah.
Jim
00:35:06 So start with motivation, with your memory. The O in Mom stands for observation. This is huge. A lot of people, they’re not forgetting a name. They’re just not hearing the name to begin with. They blame their retention, but it’s not their retention. It’s their attention.
Stu
00:35:23 Right.
Jim:
00:35:24 Their attention. I believe that the art of memory is the art of attention, but most people aren’t paying attention. They’re meeting somebody for the first time, and where’s their attention. It’s usually looking around the room, like you’re thinking like, “Who else is in this room? Who’s important here?” Or if it’s not distracting you around visually, you’re auditorily, you’re saying you’re verbally distracting yourself. You’re talking to yourself. You’re thinking about how you’re going to respond. You’re not even there listening to the person. You’re waiting for your turn to talk, and that’s what most people think they’re listening? They’re not.
00:35:57 I remember, and I posted this photo on my Instagram. It’s me and President Clinton, and we’re sitting at a fundraiser together, sitting at dinner, right next to each other, and you’ll see in the photo like Forest Whitaker, the Oscar winning actor’s there, Richard Branson, Ashton Kutcher, Ashton Kutcher’s twin brother … I didn’t realize he had a twin brother. That was the table. You look at it, and you’re like, “Who Photoshopped that Asian dude on that table?” But I’m talking to President Clinton, and it was the second time I got to meet him, and the first time was very brief, and he remembered my name.
00:36:34 I was like blown away because he probably meets a lot of people. He remembered the conversation that we had. I noticed that when he’s looking at me, he’s really looking at me. It was almost uncomfortable because he was like, and not staring, but he was really present with me. He wasn’t looking … There are much more important people in the room and at that table, but I felt like I was the only one that was in that room with 2,000 people, and he was listening to what I was saying, and I thought he was sincerely interested.
00:37:06 Maya Angelou, this poet, one of my favorites, she has this phrase that says, “People won’t remember what you say, they won’t remember what you did, but they’ll always remember how they made you feel,” you know, how you made them feel, right? We are emotional creatures. He just made me feel seen. He made me feel heard. Regardless of people’s political beliefs, he has got this incredible charisma, a connector, and he’s a great communicator, but he’s got an incredible memory and a powerful presence, but I think, Stu, his incredible memory and his powerful presence with people comes from being powerfully present with people.
Stu
00:37:44 Right, right.
Jim
00:37:44 You know what I mean? Like his powerful presence comes from the powerfully present. That’s the thing is I believe we all could be more powerfully present with our customers. We could all be more powerfully present with our students, with our coaching clients, with our children, with our spouse, because that’s all people really want. They just want to … One of my favorite books of all time is a book by Stephen Covey, Dr. Stephen Covey, called 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. These are the seven habits that the most effective people walking the planet that they have in common.
Jim
00:38:18 One of the habits is called seek first to understand, then to be understood. Seek first to understand sb, and then seek to be understood by them. I find that a lot of people, they don’t really seek to understand. Like if they’re selling something, nothing sells like your sincere interest in somebody else. You can’t fake that because people could tell.
Jim: 00:38:45 So all I’m saying is for M-O-M, mom, is to be motivated to remember somebody, and you will care about them. The O is pay attention, observation, and just really be present with them. I think it’s just good recipe for just being a good human being. Caring about somebody and being present with them.
00:39:03 Then finally, the last M in mom stands for the mechanics. The mechanics, not the person that fixes your car, but the tools, the techniques, how to remember. It’s stuff I have in my podcast. How to remember names, how to change your habits, how to have focus and remember things that you read, but I just feel like a lot of success, in half of it is the mentality. It’s the mindset of winning like that.
Stu
00:39:31 I think, Jim, that the mechanics then would be very easy to sabotage given the fact that … and I’m going to use an analogy like sleep. So sleep’s very important for overall health, perhaps one of the most important pillars there is. It affects everything. We know what we need to do to get a good sleep. So we know that we need good eight hours of restful sleep, and it needs to be nice and dark and quiet and cool, but it’s very easy to sabotage. We could sabotage sleep with alcohol. We could sabotage sleep with digital devices, with coffee, energy drinks, a poor diet, lack of exercise, all of those things.
Stu: 00:40:19 So given the fact that you know what the mechanics are that will allow us to be able to take our brain to a whole new level, what are the most common elements that will sabotage that. And I’m thinking along the lines of energy drinks, stimulants, social media, all of those things.
Jim
00:40:37 I’ll lay it out for you. That’s such a great thoughtful question, and it’s so valuable for everybody who’s joining us to be able to do a download on this. I mentioned earlier that one third of our intelligence, our potential, our memory is predetermined by genetics and biology, that two thirds is in our control. So let me outline the 10 things that fall in that two thirds, the 10 things that we have control over that will make our brains better. Then I’ll address what keeps us from doing those 10 things because I feel like awareness is the starting point for any change. You need to be aware something needs to change. So want I go through these 10 things, I would suggest people, yes, certainly people could write it down if they’re in a place where they could write it down, but more importantly, I would ask people to do a mental check-in, saying, “Oh …” Like one of them is sleep. I would ask you to rate yourself from a scale of zero to 10, how well are you doing in that category? Do you know what I mean? Because you could do all of the 10 things, but if you don’t get … You’re right, if you don’t get a good night sleep, it doesn’t matter because it’s so important.
00:41:41 So want I go through all 10, I don’t think anybody who’s listening to this will challenge any of them. They won’t debate any of them because it’s kind of self-evident. It’s common sense, but as you’re saying, common sense is not common practice. People know what to do, but they won’t do what they know. We could talk about why exactly. So here are the 10 things that I find are most important to activating what I call your quick brain.
00:42:06 Number one are good brain foods. So in no particular order, good brain foods. So want I say foods, just on a scale of zero to 10, just everybody who’s listening, just rate yourself. How well are you doing with your diet want it comes to the foods you’re eating? Just as an idea, there are certain foods that are really have been proven to be good for your brain. Avocados, it’s good fats. Blueberries, I call them brain berries. Broccoli, very good for your brain. Coconut oil. For people who eat eggs, the [inaudible 00:42:34], it’s good. Number six, green leafy vegetables, wild salmon or sardines from fresh source, tumeric. Man every morning I make like a, or most mornings, like a golden tea or a golden milk with almond milk and tumeric and some pepper to help you absorb it, some good fats in it because it lowers inflammation in the body, which is the cause of a lot of challenges. I would say walnuts are good for the brain. Notice a walnut looks like a brain.
Stu
00:43:00 It does.
Jim
00:43:02 It’s kind of funny nature … sometimes the food actually looks like the organ. If you cut a carrot and you look at the … It looks like an eyeball, right?
Stu
00:43:02 Yes.
Jim
00:43:11 And it helps the eyes. So certain foods as a signature are a sign of nature. So walnuts, and then dark chocolate, good for the brain. I’ll have something good like that. So just so on a scale of zero to 10, you are what you eat, literally what you’re eating becomes you. So how are we doing? Good brain diet.
00:43:30 Number two, killing ants. Killing ants is actually clinically proven to be good for your brain. And you’re like, “Jim, you mean those little insects that are on the ground?” No, I mean automatic negative thoughts. That’s what ANTS stands for, automatic negative thoughts because not only we are what we eat, but we are our thoughts. Thoughts that we have consistently, and so what I would say is want you’re saying, “I’m too old,” or “This runs in my family,” or “I’m just so forgetful,” want I said, you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them, even if they’re inside your mind.
00:44:02 I was preparing for a marathon, and I read a book. One of the chapters was on the psychology of running a marathon, and I’m sure a lot of your listeners are very fit and they do sports, but they’d appreciate this. And the chapter starts like this, word for word, verbatim because I’m a memory expert, right? It said, “Your brain is like a super computer, and your self-talk is a program that will run.” So if you tell yourself that you’re not good at remembering names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your super computer not to.
00:44:35 I believe thoughts are things, that it’s not … the belief is very important. As Wayne Dyer said, “It’s not that you’ll believe it when you see it, you’ll see it when you believe it,” because success is an inside out process. So you got to get rid of those negative thoughts, what we call ANTS, automatic negative thoughts.
00:44:54 Third thing that’s good for your brain is exercise. All the research says, 100% of it says, people who are more physically active will do better on mental acuity, they’ll have better focus, they’ll do better on memory tests. Basically what’s good for your heart is going to be good for your head. You think about the blood flow and the oxygen and so on. As your body moves, your brain grooves.
Stu
00:45:16 Any particular type of exercise, Jim?
Jim
00:45:19 Yeah, so there’s various research on this. First of all, when you’re doing rhythmic exercise, like you’re on an elliptical or you’re going for a nice brisk walk, and you’re listening to something like a podcast, like your show, you’re more likely to retain it because as you’re moving in that rhythm, you’re creating … Well, without going too much into the science, besides the fact that you’re creating these brain derived neurotrophic factors through movement, as your body moves, your brain grooves. As your body moves, your brain grooves.
00:45:48 Literally we have a brain … people don’t realize this, but the primary function of your brain, and you think about wow, it does everything, what’s the primary function? Is to control your movement. You know that there’s these cross laterals that if somebody, god forbid, has a stroke or has head trauma on the left side of their brain, if there’s paralysis, it manifests on the opposite side because that’s the brain/body connection. But there’s also a body/brain connection. There’s a study done at Oxford University that’s interesting. They said that jugglers have bigger brains, that just the act of learning how to juggle will create more white matter, and that just a testament.
00:46:27 There is a study done by Dr. Lawrence Katz, and he was working with all these seniors, and wanted to find out this question. How do you keep seniors, their minds alive, as they grow older? More focused and better memory and stuff, and they found out a lot of ways doing it was just using your body in certain ways, like brushing your teeth with the opposite hand or eating with the opposite hand, challenged it, and actually build your brain power. So exercise is very important, but the thing is we lead a very sedentary lifestyle. We’re in front of our computer eight hours straight. So I always recommend, set your timer on your phone for every 30 minutes, 45 minutes, to take a break. Take a five minute break to give your brain the three things it needs, movement, hydration, and oxygen.
00:47:20 A lot of people, they feel like they’re losing energy, and they want to grab some food or whatever it is, but really movement, hydration, and air is so important, especially with people’s posture. They’re sitting on the computer, they’re so slumped and crunched in, they collapse their diaphragm, and the lower one third of your lungs absorbs two thirds of the oxygen. That’s why deep diaphragmatic breathing is so important. But the reason I say every 30 minutes or so is they call this the Pomodoro Technique. They found that your focus slips after about 25, 30 minutes, and that’s why the average sitcom, television show is about 25, 30 minutes. Our attention goes and flees.
00:47:59 So if that’s the case, take a break and just a five minute break to refresh yourself, and then come back. Plus you don’t want to be sitting. They say sitting is the new smoking. I don’t know if that’s true, but the basic idea is where our bodies are made to move, and we’re too sedentary. That’s number three is exercise.
00:48:14 Really fast, the rest, there are four brain vitamins. That basically is saying that your brain needs certain supplements if you’re not getting it from your diet. Most importantly, DHA. You need your omega 3s, your fish oils, your B vitamins. So if do all of this, notice that you could … having the right … you could move around and everything else like that, you could be getting perfect sleep, but if you’re lacking certain nutrients, your brain is not going to get the results that you’re looking for. That’s number four.
00:48:40 Number five is a positive peer group. If you want what I call a quick brain, notice not just your neurological networks or biological networks, check out your social network because who you spend time with is who you become. Like whether or not somebody smokes or not has less to do with their biology, and more to do whether or not your friends’ friends smoke, is more likely to dictate whether you do that or eat wrong or stuff like that because you actually have … You have these mirror neurons in your nervous system that imitates everything. That’s the reason why you could be watching television or sports and you could feel what the person is feeling because you’re imitating in your body. It creates empathy. That’s why children learn so well because they learn by imitating, not by what you say, but what you do.
00:49:25 So it’s important, when you spend time with the right people because you start imitating and adopting their beliefs and their values and the things that make them who they are. That’s why they say we’re the average of the five people we spend the most time with. So five is positive peer group.
00:49:40 Number six is clean environment because your external world is a reflection of your internal world, and we know this. You clean off your desktop, your laptop, and clean it, don’t you feel more clarity of thought.
Stu
00:49:52 You sure do. Yes.
Jim
00:49:53 You clean your office, and you’re like everything’s organized, it’s organized in your mind too. So external environment, clean environment.
00:49:59 Number seven, sleep. Like it’s so important. I would say sleep for three reasons, and I know you’ve done episodes on this, and I’ve done like four episodes on how to get deep rest, sleep, like brain hacks, sleep hacks, but number one, you want to get sleep because from a learning perspective, that’s where you consolidate short to long term memory. The second reason why you want to sleep is where you clean out plaque that could lead to brain aging challenges. And the third reason … I’m going to throw one out that people do not think of, it’s to support your dreams. And what do I mean by your dreams? I don’t mean your goals necessarily. I mean your actual dreams and REM sleep. You’re thinking, “Why is that important, Jim?” Well, here’s what happens. Want you’re learning and you’re going throughout your entire day … let’s say you’re a student or you’re building a business, your brain doesn’t shut off at night. If anything, your brain is more active at night, and so it doesn’t stop learning. It keeps on learning. It keeps on solving problems that you’re working on during the day, and you come up with answers, but what happens when you wake up? You forget a lot of those dreams.
00:51:06 One of the most popular episodes we did was how to remember your dreams because remember I said there’s 12 things I do every morning?
Stu
00:51:06 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jim
00:51:11 So to jumpstart my brain, the first thing is I have a six step process for remembering my dreams because check this out. A lot of people don’t realize that a lot of things in culture came from dreams. For example, Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein in her dream. A chemist came up with the framework of the periodic table in his dream. Inventors like Elias Howes created the sewing machine in his dream. Paul McCartney came up with the song Yesterday in his dream.
00:51:39 So my question is for everyone listening, what are you dreaming about that could change your life, could change the world, but you wake up, it just disappears. So that’s why. You can’t dream unless you could sleep, so number seven, get deep sleep.
00:51:55 Number eight, brain protection, and what I mean by that is like I was on the set for this movie Concussion, with all these football players, and you know, your brain is resilient, but it’s very fragile also. So whether you have kids, avoid extreme sports, wear a helmet, protect your brain. So number eight is brain protection, including EMFs. So everyone can do their own research into it, but you look up the harmful effects of EMFs and your brain. So protect your brain. Even simple things like turning off your wi-fi in your home before you go to bed. There’s just no reason, something simple like that. That’s number eight.
00:52:33 Number nine, we’re almost done. Nine, in order to have a quick brain, new learnings. Commit yourself to lifelong learning because here’s the thing. We’ve discovered the past few decades these concepts of neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. Neurogenesis says that you could get older, but you could grow new brain cells the day you die. Neuroplasticity says you could create new connections within those brain cells until the day you die.
00:52:56 What helps enable neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, two things, novelty and nutrition. Novelty and nutrition. Same thing if you want to build your physical muscles. You have to give it novelty. You have to give it stimulus or workout, but then you have to give it nutrition. You feed it. Same thing with your mental muscles. So number nine is lifelong learning. Commit yourself to new learnings. They say the average person has about 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day, 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day, but the problem is-
Stu
00:52:56 Yeah, nonstop.
Jim
00:53:29 … yeah, the problem though is 95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts they had yesterday, and the day before that, so there’s not a lot of newness here. The reason why it’s important, there’s a study going back to health with everyone who’s still passionate about it listening to this show, it was on the cover of Time magazine. They found these nuns that were living 80, 90, and older, and they’re vibrant. They wanted to find out what was the secret to longevity. Half of it had to do with their faith and emotional gratitude, but the other half had to do with they were lifelong learners. They were lifelong learners, and because they were lifelong learners, it added years to their life, and life out their years. So they’re growing older, but they were still functional, and they were still thriving. So commit yourself to lifelong learning.
Jim
00:54:19 And finally, number 10, in order to foster a quicker brain, a super brain if you will, stress management, stress management. A lot of people don’t realize how much stress they’re under because emotional stress, work stress, relationship stress, financial stress, and we’re all addicted. The thing is, whenever you ask somebody how they’re doing, more than 50% chance they’re saying, “Oh, I’m so busy.” We have gotten so responsive and reactive, and just trained ourselves to always talk about how busy we are. We wear it like a badge of honor, and the problem is if we start building an identity around being busy, which really is the secondary gain to why we’re doing it is saying, “Oh, if we tell people we’re busy, then we’re telling them we’re important, that we’re very important.”
00:55:09 The problem is if you set your life like that, you start rewarding yourself for being busy, what’s going to happen? You’re going to be busy all the … You literally will design your life around being busy all the time.
Stu
00:55:18 That’s right, yeah.
Jim
00:55:19 So we are stressed out out of our minds nowadays. When you’re stressed, you’re in fight or flight, which might be good for physical activity, but it’s not good for mental activity. If you are a student, and you need to study, not good to be stressed. If you need to give a presentation at work in front of a group of people, it’s not good to be stressed and fearful because you create cortisol and adrenaline and it shuts down big parts of your mental facility. So what are people doing to manage their stress, whether it’s meditation, whether it’s journaling, whether it’s massage, what are you doing to alleviate yourself from that stress?
00:55:51 So those are the 10 keys for unlocking your brain power. I don’t think anybody’s going to say, “Oh no, that’s not true.” So all I’m reminding people, as people listening, as your brain coach in this episode, where are you neglecting? Where are you not putting your focus? Are you not getting the best diet? Are you not controlling … Do you have negative thoughts? Are you not moving every hour or working out because you’re just working out once, for me, that doesn’t even make sense, because you’re just spending the rest of the time, the 23 other hours like just not moving.
00:56:23 So we need a culture of more movement. Are you not getting the brain nutrients? Are you not spending time with the right people because one person in your life, you do all this, but you’ve got one energy vampire in your life, and your brain is just off. You just deplete. What about a clean environment? What about your sleep? What about protecting your brain? What about new learnings? What about stress management?
0:56:44 So those are the areas I would say to foster, and if there’s one or two or three areas that you feel like maybe it’s on a scale of zero to 10, a five or a six, then put your attention there, and notice like once you’ve figured out … because everyone wants to know what the magic pill is, but there’s not a magic pill, but there’s a magic process.
Stu
00:57:02 Yes, there’s a formula.
Jim
00:57:04 Exactly, there’s no silver bullet that’s going to fix your memory. What can I take, the ginkgo biloba to fix all my issues. No, that’s the thing. You have to do everything. I always tell people it’s not easy, but it’s worth it because your brain is everything. You want that to flourish as we grow, we want that to thrive. Then I really think, to answer your question, now that we know the 10 keys to unlock your brain power … and I did a whole episode on how to memorize these 10 keys and give a speech without notes so people could reference that on our podcast, but to answer your question of why we don’t do those 10 things, I’ll give you a framework that I think would change everything.
00:57:45 We did a podcast episode separate from this on the five keys on overcoming procrastination. Like in 15 minutes, like why we procrastinate and how to fix it, but I’ll give you a framework on why we procrastinate. Usually, everybody think about something that we’re putting off. Like one thing that you should be doing or behavior you should be doing, but you’re just putting it off. You know you should be meditating or journaling or working out or making a smoothy or making 10 sales calls a day, whatever that behavior is, think about the behavior. If you’re putting it off, here’s what I invite you to look at.
00:58:19 People try to struggle with that behavior level and try to force themselves through willpower to get themselves to do that behavior or stop doing that behavior, like stop smoking. That problem is is we’re not just our behaviors. We are multi-dimensional, so I would invite people to look at the level above that. The level above behavior is a level of capabilities, capabilities, meaning that that’s the how you do things. It’s the training you’ve had. So people could want to read a book a week, but if they don’t have the training on how to do that, then they’re not going to be very effective, right? Behavior can be remembering someone’s name, but if they’re not doing it, maybe they don’t have the capability or they weren’t trained on how to remember names. But above the level of capability are this level called beliefs and values, beliefs and values. So let’s go back to the behavior. Let’s say somebody wants to read a book a week or read 30 minutes a day. Maybe they capable because they’re trained on how, maybe they have a belief like they’re not smart enough or they believe they’re not a good reader. Or they have a value where reading is not important to them. Is that going to affect the behavior? Isn’t that interesting? Like somebody’s behavior could be like to stop smoking, but if they have a belief saying that they can’t stop smoking, or smoking is good for them, or they value smoking, then they’re not going to change that behavior.
00:59:39 If people could have a behavior like remembering names, but that they believe they have a horrible memory, how are they going to be able to remember names? If they have values like they don’t care about people, then why even remember their names? So then you wonder why they don’t do the behavior, and they’re just fighting with the behavior, but maybe they weren’t trained. The capabilities, they have a belief conflict or a values conflict. Above beliefs and values is the highest level called identity, identity. And this is who you are or think you are. They say it’s the two most powerful words in the English language are two of the shortest words, I am, I am, because whatever you put after that controls your life, your destiny. So let’s say somebody … the behavior that they want to change is they want to stop procrastinating, but they believe at the identity level that I am a procrastinator, what’s the chance of that behavior changing? Let’s say their behavior they want to change is they want to stop smoking, but they believe on the identity level I am a smoker, what are the chances that it’s going to change? So that’s the challenge.
01:00:42 And then finally, below the level of behavior, below it, is the level of environment because the environment outside of it is just as powerful as the environment inside. So for example, let’s say the behavior is someone wants to read, very simply, 30 minutes a day, but the environment is too dark. It’s not going to happen. Or the environment, there are no books, so it’s not going to happen. Or say some behavior is, they want to stop smoking, but the environment is all their co-workers smoke. That’s going to be very hard out change that behavior because they’re not controlling their environments.
01:01:14 So here is what I want to leave people with. I mentioned that questions are the answer in the beginning of this episode, that geniuses out there ask better questions. They ask more questions, so they get more answers. Even when I teach speed reading, where I teach people how to read … We have program teaches the average person to read 300% faster, with better focus and better comprehension. But one of the keys to getting better comprehension is asking questions when you read because if you don’t have questions, you’re not going to get all the answers that are in there.
01:01:42 Now in school, you learn that there are six fundamental questions, only six fundamental questions. They’re the five Ws and the H. So watch this. You see the five levels of what I call these levels of transformation. Identity level answers the question of who. Identity is who. The belief and values level is the level of why, why. The capability level is a level of how. How are you going to do it? How are you going to speed read, remember names, so on? Behavior is a level of what, what you want to do. And finally, the environment level is a level of when and where, when and where, so it answers all six questions.
01:02:26 So what people, to answer your question, is like why is something … like why aren’t people doing things that are good for them. You would think it’s in their best interest to get eight hours of sleep, to go to bed at 10:00 pm and everything else like that. But I would go through is just look at the behavior when, for you or your family or the people listening, their co-workers, their employees, their kids, and don’t just look at the behavior, look at the other levels and see where they’re stuck, and see where something needs to be addressed, maybe in the environment, maybe in their belief system.
01:02:59 Then you could go to other opportunities. Maybe if they have belief issues, maybe they could look into affirmation, maybe go look into self-hypnosis, maybe go look at EFT, right now, Emotional Freedom Technique, all these other tools out there that can help people circumvent this and enable themselves because when you’re completely aligned, then you are a powerful super human because everything is completely congruent in one line like this. So you’re not fragmented, like take one step forward and then three steps back, self-sabotage yourself and things like that.
Stu
01:03:30 Fantastic. Jim, you have shared so much information with us today, and I’m very much aware of the time as well, but I know that our audience would want to learn more, and they want to take that to a much deeper level. So where can they go to tap into all of your info?
Jim
01:03:48 I appreciate that Stu. If people want to continue this conversation, there’s two places. Number one, we have often … it’s usually the number one training podcast on iTunes in training and education, and look for us there. Every show is 10, 15 minutes and if they like these kind of quick tips on learn a language or how to give a speech without notes, top brain foods, how to memorize all this stuff, including those 10 keys for unlocking your quick brain, they could go there and go to kwikbrain.com, so maybe you could put a link there. Here’s the thing, Kwik really is my last name. I didn’t change it to do what I do, my mission, but K-W-I-K brain dot com.
01:04:23 The other place to do … I’d be very curious is in social media, and I would love for people to do this as an assignment because I don’t … if people just leave here today, they might … they kind of learned something, but they’ll forget it after a couple of days because there’s [inaudible 01:04:38].
01:04:37 I want to ask everybody who’s listening who’s serious about taking their life to another level, I believe that if you want to learn something faster, you teach it to somebody else. When you learn with the intention of teaching, you relisten to this episode. And what I’m asking people to do is to screenshot this episode specifically, post it on your social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, tag both of us, and put your big a-ha, like your big takeaway. I think a lot of people took a lot of notes here. I’m willing to bet people took pages of notes here because we covered a lot of information in a short period of time.
01:05:08 Want you teach something, remember this mantra, everybody, when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Want you relisten to this and you learn with the intent of teaching somebody you care about, you’ll learn it twice as well. One of the ways you could teach it is to take a screenshot of this episode, post it, tag both of us on there, and put your big takeaway from here, so you could teach us, and also teach your friends and family your big lesson.
01:05:31 What that will do for you as a benefit is you’ll own this information deeper because it’s not just ours, it’s yours also. So you share it, and then tag us, and certainly follow both of us on our social media. Mine’s always @jimkwik, K-W-I-K. If you want daily brain advice on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, I did … In fact, I remember asking Will Smith … I had this on video. I asked him like what are things you do to enhance your brain, and on our Instastory, and I put it on my Instagram also, he gives the two secrets that he does to activate his brain power in like 10 seconds. So you can watch all those videos at Jim Kwik, K-W-I-K.
Stu
01:06:08 Fantastic. Jim, we will share all of those links and more in the show notes as well. I am so grateful for your level of insight. It’s astounding, and I want to learn more personally myself. I’m itching to, so thank you again for your time. I hope that we can connect with you as well at some stage in the future.
Jim
01:06:26 Absolutely. Congratulations on everything, and I just wanted to say also, if you’re still listening to this, you’re a special human being because you have committed to life-long learning, so I feel like we’re kindred minds and spirits. And Stu, specifically though, thank you for creating … thank you for the cape that you wear and bringing this kind of information to your audience around the world because I believe that the best thing … like I share a dollar with somebody and they give me the same dollar, no big difference. But if I share an idea with you, you share a new idea with me, we have two brand new ideas. With all of your listeners, and your millions of downloads, like think about, one little change creates this butterfly, this ripple effect.
Stu
01:07:01 It does.
Jim
01:07:02 Without your health, you have nothing. Really, your wealth is your health, so I wish everybody [crosstalk 01:07:09]
Stu
01:07:08 That’s awesome. Jim, thank you so much. You enjoy the rest of your day, and we will be in touch with you soon. Thanks.
Jim
01:07:16 Take care.
Stu
01:07:17 Bye bye.
