Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1002: Jim Kwik's 10 Keys to Getting More Out of Your Brain

Episode Date: April 4, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin speak with Jim Kwik, a world expert in speed-reading, memory improvement, and optimal brain performance. Having worked with A-List celebrities and billionaires, J...im entertains and educates with a steady stream of fascinating anecdotes while providing actionable techniques you can take away to immediately improve the function of your brain. Must listen: Jordan Harbinger podcast episode with Clint Watts. (2:21) How your phone is messing with your mind: The 4 ‘digital demon’ challenges we face today. (4:36) Jim’s ‘superhero’ origin story: The boy with the broken brain. (22:40) How questions are the answers: The 3 questions you should be asking yourself. (54:51) The D.R.E.A.M.S. acronym explained. (1:07:28) Has he had any ‘ah-ha’ moments from his dreams? (1:22:49) What was the most impactful thing he has learned from the celebrities he has worked with? (1:26:55) The 10 things you should do to ‘jump start’ your brain. (1:30:50) Why the same level of thinking that caused your problems won’t solve your problems. (1:39:33) Information combined with emotion helps you remember. [2 minute memory exercise on neuro-nutrition] (1:48:40) The 10 keys to unlock your ‘Kwik’ brain. [Exercise to give a Ted Talk] (2:01:05) Featured Guest/People Mentioned Jim Kwik (@jimkwik)  Instagram Website Kwik Learning – Read faster. Work smarter. Think better. Podcast Jordan Harbinger (@jordanharbinger)  Instagram BJ Fogg (@bjfogg)  Instagram Max Lugavere (@maxlugavere)  Instagram Tom Bilyeu (@tombilyeu)  Instagram Will Smith (@willsmith)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned 172: Clint Watts | Surviving in a World of Fake News - Jordan Harbinger MAPS Fitness Products Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked - Book by Adam Alter Unplugged: Evolve from Technology to Upgrade Your Fitness, Performance, & Consciousness – Book by Dr. Andy Galpin iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy--and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood--and What That Means for the Rest of Us – Book by Jean M. Twenge PhD Kwik Brain 015: How to Create a New Habit with Dr. Fogg – Jim Kwik The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change - Book by Stephen Covey Kwik Brain 014: How to Remember Your DREAMS – Jim Kwik The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Book by Thomas Kuhn 5 Mental Hacks To End Procrastination | Jim Kwik Kwik Brain 047: How Gratitude Rewires Your Brain – Jim Kwik Juggling enhances connections in the brain | University of Oxford Kwik Brain 005: My 10 Favorite Brain Foods – Jim Kwik Ellen Langer's reversing aging experiment - Business Insider Kwik Brain 087: Protecting Your Brain from 4 Invisible ... - Jim Kwik Religion: Long-Lived Nuns - TIME

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Starting point is 00:00:00 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Avocado, blueberries, broccoli, leafy greens, olive oil, salmon, walnuts, turmeric, dark chocolate. Boo! I have. Still remembers it. Adam, days later, Adam just recited all of those brain foods
Starting point is 00:00:31 because he remembered them through using one of the tactics that you're gonna learn in this upcoming episode with Jim Quick. That was, we recorded that episode like a week ago. Yeah. And yet you still remembered. It stuck in my head for sure. Yeah, this guy's like a week ago. Yeah, yeah, and yet you still remember it stuck in my head for sure Yeah, this guy's like a memory expert You're gonna learn a lot of different techniques in this episode very compelling And this guy's got a crazy story an incredible story
Starting point is 00:00:56 So we know you're gonna enjoy it his name is Jim quick you can find him on Instagram at Jim Quick, QuickestBeltKWIK. And his website is quickbrain.com. And he also has a podcast called QuickBrain Podcast. He's worked with some of the biggest names, man. I mean, he's worked with Bill Gates. He's on Musk. Will Smith. I mean, and he talks all about that in this episode.
Starting point is 00:01:21 What a great episode. This is probably, I would say, one of the ones that we talked the least. Oh, it definitely was a different style for sure for us. And so I think you guys will appreciate it. It was totally different. He actually gives you tangible things. You can use literally, listen to this episode,
Starting point is 00:01:38 stop the episode, apply what he said, and you'll see results right away. Adam just gave a great example. I mean, those are things he told us to memorize using one of his tactics in the episode we recorded like two weeks ago. Yeah. And he literally, you haven't brought it up since. No, no. And you just remembered it right now. Yeah, it's very cool. Really, really crazy works. Now, also before we get into the episode, you've heard Jordan Harbinger on our show before he's one of our favorite podcasters. He says one of the best podcasts in the world in
Starting point is 00:02:04 our opinion. And we value his podcast quite a bit. He says one of the best podcasts in the world in our opinion. And we value his podcast quite a bit. He has some of the greatest interviews I've ever heard. One recent episode was with Clint Watts. And this guy talked about surviving in a world of fake news. Now I have Jordan Harbinger here with me right now. That episode blew me away. Yeah, this guy's cool, right?
Starting point is 00:02:24 So his job is he chases terrorists online. I have Jordan Harbinger here with me right now. That episode blew me away. Yeah, this guy's cool, right? So his job is he chases terrorists online. So he was a social engineer, which is like kind of a human hacker type of situation working for intelligence agencies in the military. And then he found on Twitter, and you see this, I even got some of this now that he's been on the show.
Starting point is 00:02:42 I started getting like Russian, Kremlin bots and like crazy people sending me messages and being like, you're a Nazi. And I'm like, wait, how did I go from like interviewing this guy to like being a Nazi and they're like, you hate Russians, that's racist, therefore you're a Nazi. I'm like, wow, there's some logical jumps here. And it's just insane because this network of Kremlin-backed
Starting point is 00:03:02 media, Russia-backed or China-backed or North Korea-backed sort of like info warfare, this is a very real thing. Oh, it's crazy. The thing that blew me away was, and this has been happening since the beginning of the internet, but now with social media, they have armies of either human trolls or automated trolls that go on to shift ideas, to combat people's opinions, to make us believe that we're changing our minds on our own when in fact they're influencing us. It was a crazy episode.
Starting point is 00:03:31 Anyway, you guys have to go check it out. Again, it's Clint Watts, the title of the episode is surviving in a world of fake news. And the podcast, the Jordan Harbinger podcast, make sure you go check it out. We will link it in our show notes. I wanna remind remind everybody go to maps fitnessproducts.com, check out all of our different maps programs, and we have different programs for different people and different levels of experience. So, if you're a complete beginner, we have the workout for you. If you're really, really advanced,
Starting point is 00:03:59 we have the workouts for you as well. We have programs for people who want to train like bodybuilders, athletes, strong men, bikini competitors, people who want to sculpt, people who just want to get stronger, people who want to just get more mobility and improve their movement patterns. We have all those programs available. We even have something called a Super Bundle where we combine multiple programs
Starting point is 00:04:19 and give you a year of exercise program. All planned out. In other words, you start your workout today and every single day is mapped out for you for an entire year. All of those can be found at mapsfitinistproducts.com. And that's it. Here we are interviewing Jim Quick.
Starting point is 00:04:35 We have a video with me and Simon Sinek, and it has almost 38 million views on Facebook, all about your phone and our phones just messing with our mind. Oh, we got, damn, we're gonna talk about this. Let's hold on there. Yeah, because we're just insane. We're talking about digital wellness now, just in our space and, uh-huh. Talking to people about how they need to create practices around technology, just like
Starting point is 00:04:56 you have to create practices for activity and nutrition. Yeah. No, I think I definitely would like to, I mean, God, maybe the digital wellness, maybe we do start there. I did not know you did that with Simon. And that's a, that's been a hot topic for us lately. And my audience is tired of hearing me talk about the book Irresistible by Adam Attler, you know, Andy Galpins, unplugged Gentories, I, Gin.
Starting point is 00:05:21 But those three books in the last two years are just completely shifted my mind on the way we look at technology today. I find it very fascinating and a little bit scary. Dude, we should be recording right now. We are, it's real. Yeah, yeah. Right, yeah, so we start. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:38 Yeah, we just see the technology being the new, obviously being an amazing tool, but also being the newest health threat to modern societies. And we think it's responsible for a large percentage of the increase of anxieties and things that you're seeing in kids in particular. Yeah, I could talk about four challenges right off the top of my head. So digital. And these are like digital threats to our health and our wellness. Number one is digital overload. Too much information, too little time. Right. The amount of information is doubling at dizzying speeds. I was down the road here at Google and I was doing a training and I heard from the chairman that the amount of information that's
Starting point is 00:06:20 been created from the dawn of humanity. Since human beings walk this planet to the year 2003, which is only what a decade and a half ago that amount information how long does it take to create that nowadays. Two days. Two days. 48 hours. Is that true? Yeah, I think about all the podcasts, the YouTube, the social posts, that amount of information. Let me just think about the library of Congress. That amount of information only takes two days. So the amount of information is doubling at dizzying speeds, but how we learn it, how we absorb it,
Starting point is 00:06:52 focus, retain it, apply it, is pretty much flatline. And that growing gap creates something called anxiety. They call it information fatigue syndrome because everything is a syndrome, right? Higher blood pressure, compression of leisure time, more sleeplessness. You know, your brain's always multitasking, and so our brains, we live in an age, I know we're talking about SpaceX, we live in an age
Starting point is 00:07:12 where, you know, electric cars and spaceships that are going to Mars, but our vehicle choice when it comes to learning and education is like a horse and buggy, you know, like the education system has not, we all grew up with the 20th century education that prepared us for 20th century world, which at the turn of the 20th century was working in farms and factories. And that's what the education was.
Starting point is 00:07:34 It was assembly line, cookie cutter, one size fits all. But now we live in a world where the world's changing so much. I read recently that someone graduating school today is gonna have eight to 14 different careers. Can you imagine that? Not jobs, but different careers because we don't know where the world's gonna be. So your ability to out-learn, out-think, out-perform.
Starting point is 00:07:56 I mean, that's your greatest advantage. If there's one skill to master in the 21st century, it's your ability to learn rapidly, to be able to keep up. So digital overload, digital, the second digital, super villain today that I think is a health threat to all everyone listening, whether you're an entrepreneur, your parent, your high achiever,
Starting point is 00:08:14 is this thing called digital distraction. I mean, guys, yeah, I mean, think about all the social media alerts, the app updates, I mean, our minds are being fried because we're getting these dopamine fixes all the time. On my show, yeah, and it runs along the nervous system, motivation learning centers of your nervous system, and it makes it addictive. I did two on my show on my podcast. I interviewed Dr. BJ Fogg, you know who he is.
Starting point is 00:08:42 He runs Stanford University, the influenceluence and Persuasion Lab. He is like the Habits expert. In fact, one of his students co-founded Instagram. Do you know how often the average person opens up Instagram? It's ridiculous. Like 50 something times, isn't it, now? It's now 150 times. Holy shit.
Starting point is 00:09:00 And then if you guys are opening up a list, I mean, somebody's opening up a whole lot more. But that's by design, right? Because every like, share, comment, you get this dopamine flood, and it drives our habits and our addiction, if you will. And we talk a lot about routines, and now we're gonna talk about
Starting point is 00:09:15 how to jump start your brain, morning routine, evening routines, because, I mean, really, the success that everyone is desiring, it's hidden in our daily habits, right? First, you create your habits, and then your habits create you. But one of the things that everyone is desiring, it's hidden in our daily habits. First you create your habits and then your habits create you. But one of the things that a bad habit, the most successful people, they have their to-do list
Starting point is 00:09:31 and we all have our to-do list. But I've also noticed that some of the highest achievers they have a not-to-do list. You know what I mean? They have a list of non-negotiable things they will not indulge in because we've all read the book Good to Great. You say no to good so you can say yes to great. And a lot of times when you get more and more successful, you suffer from this opportunity stress. You get more and more
Starting point is 00:09:54 offers, more and more opportunity. And you can't say yes to everything. And that's a big challenge because then you have so many windows open on your computer. And even if they're minimized, they still take up energy and they take, they still take up space and memory and you wonder why you're fatigued all the time. You wonder why you don't have the mental energy to do the things that you need to be able to do. So digital distraction and on the top of your not-to-do list should be not checking your phone in the first thing in the morning. And I know everyone's listening to me and and automatically, so many people are just like, oh my god, you know, like I hate this guy. But the first hour of the day, the reason why you don't want to pick up your phone is because, and we're all guilty of this, is because it rewires your brain for
Starting point is 00:10:33 two things. Number one, it rewires your brain for distraction. When you wake up first thing in the morning, you're in this relaxed, alpha creatives, it's a very suggestible state, right? You just woke up. And so you have to be very careful in protecting to stand guard to your mind from outside influences. Because number one, if the first thing you see on your phone, you're watching these cat videos and everything that's going on on social media,
Starting point is 00:10:56 you're getting these dopamine flood which is building your distraction muscles. Because when it comes to focus, focus is like there's a focus fitness, if you will. And you have focused muscles, but you also have distraction muscles. And a lot of people, their distraction muscles are way overdeveloped because of picking the phone up first thing in the morning. But the second reason for neurological reason why you don't want to pick up your phone
Starting point is 00:11:20 the first hour of the day is because it also rewires your brain for reaction. It's training your brain to be reactive. And so you know, you go through your phone, you wake up in the morning, you pick up your phone, you get one text, one voice message, one email, and all of a sudden your day is shot. Like it puts you in a bad mood and you carry that mood throughout your entire day. And that's a big challenge because, you because, if you're just fighting fires, then you're just on the defense.
Starting point is 00:11:47 If you're just trying to fulfill everyone else's needs without going through like what's gonna help me to win this day, to own this day, to be able to make it the best, then you're reacting. And I have a friend, Brenna Bershard, he says, your inbox is nothing but a convenient organizational system for other people's agenda for your life.
Starting point is 00:12:06 I mean, you guys know what I mean? It's your training your brain to react, and you can never have an incredible day if you're just reacting to things, right? So for me, I wake up in the morning, and when I just start journaling, and I write down three things I want to accomplish personally that day, and three things I want to accomplish professionally. And it's different every single day, but I always begin with the end in mind. One of my favorite books of all time is this book called Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
Starting point is 00:12:34 And we've read this book. Some people like, I have that book and it's sitting on my shelf, and it becomes shelf-elb not self-help, right? Because nobody's actually like reading that book. Because so many people buy books, and I like to encourage people to read at least one book a week because the average person reads about two,
Starting point is 00:12:49 maybe three books a year. But what I love about reading, number one, is the best exercise for your mind. And it's like reading is to your mind, what exercises, to your body. It's an incredible workout. And most people, they don't take the time to read, but the other reason I like to read is if somebody has decades of experience in leadership,
Starting point is 00:13:10 negotiation, entrepreneurship, fitness, and they put it into a book, and you can sit down in a couple of days and read that book, you can download decades of experience into days. And that's a huge advantage, right, because leaders are readers. So when I'm writing, when I'm writing, what I need to accomplish, I'm writing three personal things, three professional things, but this book, Seven Habits Highly Effective People,
Starting point is 00:13:32 one of the habits of highly effective people is seek, is actually put first things first, put first things first. Meaning I believe that the most important thing is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing. The most important thing is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing. The most important thing is to keep the most important thing, the most important thing. Because a lot of people have a fear of failure or fear of success. You know, my fear has always been, I don't want to succeed at things that don't matter.
Starting point is 00:13:59 It wasn't so much about failing, it was about getting really good at something that didn't make a difference. And Stephen Covey talks about it like you're really good at climbing the ladder of success only to get to the top and realize that it's leaning on the wrong wall. And so if you begin with the end in mind, so I'm thinking about my friend Clay Bear has this phrase about champagne moments. In sports, it's very clear when you're popping that champagne, what has to happen? You're criteria. And for me, I think about, if I'm coming back, you know, at night and somebody asked me
Starting point is 00:14:30 how my day was and how like I crushed it today, you know, what had to happen, working backwards in order for that to happen. And I think about three things professionally, three things personally. And so I write that down first thing in the morning and then I don't check my phone until I get one of those checks done. Just at least one thing, you know, and then I get some positive momentum, for example. But that's the reason you don't want to check your phone.
Starting point is 00:14:52 It's training you to be distracted and it's rewiring your brain to be reactive. And you can't be successful and fulfilled if you're just giving up the sovereign to your power to something outside of yourself. The third digital, like, super villain, if you will, when we're talking about digital challenges, is, so you have digital overload,
Starting point is 00:15:11 digital distraction, is digital dementia. Have you heard this term yet? You're gonna hear this a lot in healthcare. It's basically where we're outsourcing our brains, our minds to our smart devices. Oh, this is why I can't remember anybody's phone number. Exactly. I mean, how many phone numbers did you know growing up, as a, to our smart devices. Oh, this is why I can't remember anybody's phone number. Exactly. I mean, how many phone numbers did you know
Starting point is 00:15:27 growing up as a kid? All of them. All of them. Literally all of them, as we had to, right? And how many phone numbers do you know right now? Two. But the old ones that don't die, and you're not dead. And you're not dead, or anybody in your life's, yeah.
Starting point is 00:15:37 Exactly. So you know like one or two, there could be somebody you're texting or calling every single day. And if your phone was dead, or if you didn't have it with you, you would honestly know what that number is. And here's the thing, I don't want to memorize 500 phone numbers. Nobody wants to do that, but we've lost the ability to remember one phone number. We've lost the ability to remember a conversation, somebody's birthday. I mean, I feel like abs and mind in this.
Starting point is 00:16:00 I mean, how many people feel like senior moments are coming too early? Like you walk into a room and you just forget why you're there. Or you open up the refrigerator. You go to the store to buy one thing and you come back with like two bags full of things, except for that one thing you went to, you know, get there, get there. Or you can't remember a few,
Starting point is 00:16:17 you're just in the shower, you can't remember if you shampooed your hair. And I believe two of the most costly words in life and in business are I forgot. You know, I forgot to do know, I forgot to do it. I forgot to bring it. I forgot that conversation. I forgot that meaning.
Starting point is 00:16:28 I forgot what I needed to say. I forgot that name. I mean, I think number one business etiquette networking skill there is is remembering people's name. I almost feel like we've replaced that ability of remembering certain things with just being distracted instead. So rather than like, oh, I'm outsourcing this
Starting point is 00:16:46 and I have more space. I'm filling that space now with flipping through social media and going through Instagram and shit like that. And we don't realize how much time we're spending on these devices, right? When you go and you actually look at the numbers, when you look at your phone and you look at, like just just something like 24 hours a week,
Starting point is 00:17:01 you know, on social media or whatever it is. I mean, that's, people always say, oh, I have no time to read or I have no time to work out. It has nothing to do with time management. It's all priority management. Jim, you know what I did? As I stopped, this is going to sound funny, but like 100% guarantee, 90% of the people listening do this. I stopped taking my phone into the bathroom. I have now read a book. I have read an entire book in like, like a week and a half, because I don't have the phone in there with me. So I take a book with me and now I read when I'm on the toilet and it's so much better. And little things like that sounds kind of funny, but it's
Starting point is 00:17:32 true. I should have no take control. Here's the thing with this addiction that we have with ours. And I'm not, this is not me saying technology is bad. You know, just anymore than fire is bad. But fire could, you fire could cook you food and it could burn down your home. Technology is how you use it. It can amplify your value, reach more people. It's why a lot of us are connected through social media. There's so many benefits.
Starting point is 00:17:54 You can learn something, history from the best professor at Oxford. It's incredible. And if you're picking up your phone at a habit, like dead time, out of boredom or something like that, technology is a tool for you to use, but if technology is using you, then who becomes a tool?
Starting point is 00:18:11 Like, that's us, right? I'm a tool. And that's the thing. So sometimes people need to break up with their phone and create borders or boundaries because digital dementia is basically saying, our phones keep our to-do, coolness. It keeps our schedules.
Starting point is 00:18:24 It keeps our phone numbers. I was out to dinner the other night, and it was 10 of us, and then at the end, when the bill came, like half the table picked up their phone to find the calculator, divided by 10. And if that's not funny, then that's that's that illustrates the problem that we have right now,
Starting point is 00:18:41 is because that we can't even do simple mental math, because even GPS, that's how they, that's how originally they were talking about digital dementia, where if you're relying on a piece of technology to tell you when and where to turn, then you wouldn't realize when you would normally have a memory lapse, so you're not going to the doctors to get checked out. So we're highly dependent on our digital devices, and so our smartphones are making a stupid and they call it digital dementia.
Starting point is 00:19:06 And then the last thing, besides digital overload, digital distraction, digital dementia, is digital depression, right? I mean, this comparison culture that we all live in, that we're all comparing our lives unconsciously or consciously to a highly curated, filtered, life trailer of everything that's being posed on social media, and that's a challenge,
Starting point is 00:19:26 Facebook depression. People feel like inadequate. They don't feel like that they're enough. And they suffer from FOMO, that fear missing out there. And once having this incredible life and that depression leads to a lot of mind altering challenges. And so that's the thing. It's just we know technology is wonderful.
Starting point is 00:19:44 And to the degree, we could use it as opposed to letting it us use us. Then the degree will have to be happy, fulfilled, successful. Now, do you ever think that this is similar to what we probably went through when television first came on the scene? Before all that, we didn't have that type of entertainment
Starting point is 00:20:01 that would get kids or get people to sit down and stare at it for hours at a time. And I'm sure many people are addicted and binge watch that when it first, do you ever think that it's just like that? Or what do you think is different today than like when the TV first came on? Yeah, I think it's two things. I think it's the velocity of of information because now television when it first came out, you know, there were three, maybe four networks. There was a lot of, it was coming at, you know, very slow speed.
Starting point is 00:20:28 Nowadays it's tough, right? In education, you have teachers trying to teach kids when they're used to like all this information coming at them at light speed, right? So it's not just the velocity, it's the variety of information. I mean, because of the internet, which is amazing, right? We have access to all the wisdom of the ages. He had our fingertips. We have more access than Clinton had when he was president, right? There could be some kid in a third world country in some village somewhere who has access more than what the president had just in their pocket. So we live in an exciting
Starting point is 00:21:00 time, and yet the velocity and the variety has increased so much. And so the human brain wasn't really, wasn't created to be able to adapt. I mean, it is adapting through, you know, these challenges, through digital depression and digital dementia, digital distraction. But I'm just saying, like, it's similar to television, but just like exponential. Oh, yeah, because you couldn't take the TV with you in your pocket. You didn't have limited, you know, an unlimited bandwidth. TV's bandwidth is limited, even today.
Starting point is 00:21:31 Did it answer all your questions immediately? It didn't, it didn't, it wasn't so individualized. What would learn your habits and learn how to get you to use it more? It's way different. It's absolutely, the difference between seasoning your seasoning food with salt and engineering and processing food and, you know, with a bunch of scientists
Starting point is 00:21:48 and creating the most hyper-pellable process food of all time. That would be the comparison I would make. I think today, because we were in health and the health and fitness and wellness space, and we completely understand that in order to be fit and healthy, today you have to have practices. Activity doesn't just happen spontaneously anymore in modern life. You're just not active. Eating right just doesn't happen because you go hunt your food and that's what you eat. Now you have all these choices. So you have to create all these practices. The way I look
Starting point is 00:22:19 at digital wellness, if you will, is that we have to create practices. We have to learn what those practices are first. Like, what are there? Are there some practices you talked about not using your phone for an hour in the morning? I thought that was a great one. In fact, I implemented that and I think that's a phenomenon actually changes the way I wake up. Are there any other practices that you that you can think of? Absolutely. And so here's the thing. They say the estimate about 40% can think of? Absolutely. And so here's the thing.
Starting point is 00:22:42 They say the estimate about 40% of our daily activity is habitual, meaning it's unconscious. We're on autopilot. And the challenge is, my question for everybody who's listening to this is, when did you actually design your habits or your routines? And so if you want to be able to win the day, that I think the most important hour of the day
Starting point is 00:23:04 is the first hour of the day. And then the most important hour of the day is the first hour of the day, and then also the last hour of the day, right? You get those bookends, if you will, and then you're going to win. So, for me, for example, I have a 10 things that I do every single morning to jumpstart my brain. So, that's how my morning routine is different than tims, is different than tones, is different than opras. My thing is my brain controls my life.
Starting point is 00:23:27 And what I wanna do is make sure my best foot is stepped forward. And so in no particular order, when I wake up in the morning in order for me to win the day, the first thing I do is I remember my dreams. And is you're like, wow, that's really different. I haven't heard that before. You mean you try, you do something to remember?
Starting point is 00:23:44 Or you just naturally? No, I go through an exercise. And like they're, I did a deep episode on how to remember your dreams and I give you some of the tips here, but the reason why, and I always start with why, is because when you're, if you're a student or you're an entrepreneur, you're learning all day,
Starting point is 00:24:00 you're trying to solve problems all day, you think your brain shuts off at night, but in actuality, your brain is more active at night. People don't realize that. And what is it active doing? It's consolidating short-term memory. It's cleaning out plaque that leads to, you know, dimension, brain aging challenges. But the other thing is it dreams.
Starting point is 00:24:17 Like you will spend about 20 years of your life sleeping and about three to five years fully dreaming. And what's going on in your dreams? It's amazing. People don't realize this, but there's so many things in human culture, literature, art, music that came from dream states. Meaning, for example, Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein in her dream. A chemist came up with the framework of the Pier Octable in his dream. Elias Howe created the sewing machine in his dream. Paul McCartney came up with the song table in his dream. Elias, how created the sewing machine in his dream? Paul McCartney came up with the song yesterday in his dream.
Starting point is 00:24:49 Jack Nicholas, we talk about athletics, right? In high performance, how do you perform really well in the field? Jack Nicholas was going through a real slump. He was shooting in 1964 around like high 70s and he couldn't get over the slump. And then we had a dream one Wednesday night where he changed his grip just slightly on the golf club and the next day he shot like low 60s, which was incredible difference,
Starting point is 00:25:18 right? And so your mind is learning throughout the day, but at night it's actually integrating your learning. So exactly. And then you last, but the problem is it's actually integrating your learning. And so exactly. And then you'd last, but the problem is, most people wake up and they kind of remember the dreams and then they forget them. And so what's going on in your dreams
Starting point is 00:25:34 that could be actually solving problems in your business or your learning and everything? So a few things, I had this acronym called Dreams, right? The D, and I use everything at acronyms just because it's easy to remember. The D stands for Decide, a real decision. Like most people never decide to remember their dreams. And so, just like remembering names, right?
Starting point is 00:25:53 We could talk about how to remember names and confidently go into a room meet 20 strangers and leave saying about every single one of them. I do this thing in front of an audience where a lot of a hundred people stand up and introduce themselves to the rest of the audience and I'll remember their names, all 100 of them and give it back to them because everyone could do this.
Starting point is 00:26:08 Like a lot of people don't realize, but I grew up with severe learning challenges. You know, at the age of five, I had a very bad accident in class in kindergarten, bad fall, traumatic brain injury. And I was just, I was putting special classes. Like I had bad focus, teachers would repeat themselves three, four, five, six times,
Starting point is 00:26:27 and then I would pretend to understand, but I didn't understand anything, right? It took me an extra three and a half years longer to learn how to read, and that was a big challenge because, you know, you know what, back in class where they taught you how to read and you have to pass around that book, that circle. I mean, I think that's where a lot of fear of public
Starting point is 00:26:43 speaking came from, you know what I mean? Every single time that book came closer to me, I was like, and I would get it, I would look at the words, and they look like hieroglyphics, and I would just pass it on, you know, because I just thought there was something wrong. I actually taught myself how to read by reading comic books late at night. Something about the illustrations and the stories brought the words to life, and that's why I always talk about superheroes. Modern-day superheroes, because I think everyone listening to this has the potential to be a modern-day superhero. Not shooting lasers out of your eyes
Starting point is 00:27:12 or leaping tall buildings, but discovering and developing your unique superpower, your unique talent, your unique ability, if you will. And then just having a superpower doesn't make you a superhero, you have to use that super power for good So for me like passion is what lights you up and purpose is what lights up the world, you know So my passion now overcoming these learning difficulties like at the age of nine. I remember in class
Starting point is 00:27:37 The teacher pointed to me and it's like that's the boy with the broken brain Like that's so crazy in front of the whole class talking to another adult. And here's the thing. Adults have to be very careful with their external words because your external words become a child's internal words. So every single time I did badly on a quiz or badly on a test or I wasn't picked for sports, which was like all the time, it would be like, oh, because I have the broken brain. That became my inner talk. What was the turning point for you? So it was until like about 18 years old
Starting point is 00:28:11 that I actually, because I, you know, school's interesting, because they teach you what to learn, math, history, science, Spanish, but there's zero classes on how to learn. You know, how to be creative, how to solve problems, how to focus and concentrate, how to be able to listen better, how to be creative, how to solve problems, how to focus and concentrate, how to be able to listen better, how to be able to think differently,
Starting point is 00:28:28 how to be able to remember things, how to read faster, all the things that we teach, I think that's like the most important thing because the content's always gonna change. Like if there was a genie in the room right now, and the genie would grant you any one wish, and only one wish, what would you ask for? More wishes, right? That would be the hack, if you will. But if I was your learning genie would grant you any one wish, and only one wish, what would you ask for? More wishes, right?
Starting point is 00:28:45 That would be the hack, if you will. And, but if I was your learning genie, and I could help you learn any subject or skill, better and faster, what would be the equivalent of asking for more wishes? It would be, I wanna learn how to learn. Faster, better. Exactly, they call it meta-learning,
Starting point is 00:29:00 learning how to learn. Because if you could do that, you could take on any subject. Because another habit of highly effective people going back to the book by Dr. Steven Covey, the last habit, seventh habit, sharpen the saw. That if you have all this wood that you need to cut and you have a saw with the dull blade,
Starting point is 00:29:18 you're never gonna just pick it up and just start, that would wait, we've such a waste of time, so much struggling and sweating and suffering, you sharpen it first and then you cut through those that would like butter. Same thing with reading. I teach people how to read three times faster and understand more and have better focus. But why would you start just reading with if you're not taught how to read well? Because then you're just trying to cut wood with a dull blade if you will.
Starting point is 00:29:40 So at 18, you started to teach yourself these techniques. So I got, I was lucky to get to a state university and I purposely chose a school that none of my friends went to because I feel like, you know when you want to make a fresh start, but the people around you kind of keep you, because they have an expectation of who you are. Sure. And I really do believe that's the biggest challenge that we have in life. One of the biggest challenges is trying to live to the expectations of other people, meaning that I was doing in Hollywood, I do a lot of training for actors. I helped them to speed read scripts, to memorize their lines, to help them have focus and presence on in front of a camera. For example, I had the best mental acuity in brain health, and
Starting point is 00:30:20 I was working with Jim Carrey, and I was at his home, and we're in his kitchen, making all these brain foods, right? Because I know you had Max talking about genius foods and we're making like avocado and guacamole and everything. And I asked him, Jim, I was like, why do you do what you do? I always want to know why, right? What drives people?
Starting point is 00:30:38 And I find out that his biggest drive, the reason why he acts so crazy on film and camera is because he's like, I want to give people who are watching at home permission to be themselves. You know, I act like a complete fool, so extreme, because I want everyone to free themselves from concern, the concern of others, because I believe personally that you could go broke buying into the opinions and expectations the people around you. And it's usually the people I care about you, right? They're their friends, they're your family, and they can care about you,
Starting point is 00:31:12 but they're like, why listen to their podcasts? Why are you going to work it out so crazy? Why are you always eating all that crazy food, taking all those supplements, whatever, right? And they can have good intentions, right? Maybe they don't, at some level, there's some kind of secondary gain. They don't wanna lose you, they don't want you to be disappointed, they don't want you to outgrow them, whatever it is.
Starting point is 00:31:32 But people can be sincere, but they can be sincerely wrong. Right, so we always have the stand guard to like our peers, to who we get power, to like how we feel and how we think and everything. And so going back to this free of yourself from concern, I wanted to go to university that I know anybody, so they didn't have this expectation of me and I wanted a fresh start.
Starting point is 00:31:51 And I took all these classes and I really wanted to make my family proud, right? Because my parents immigrated here, they, we lived in the back of a laundry mat didn't speak the language, didn't have any money, completely broke, like that whole story. And I wanna make, I have a younger brother, younger sister, I wanna be a laundry mat, didn't speak the language, didn't have any money, completely broke, like that whole story. And I wanna make, I have a younger brother, a younger sister, I wanna be a good example, right,
Starting point is 00:32:09 as the oldest, and I was like, failing out of school, right? And I wanna be like the role model. And I took all these classes, and I did worse. And I'm like, what the hell? I don't even have the money to be here right now, much less do worse. And I was ready to quit, and I didn't know how to tell my folks,
Starting point is 00:32:25 like how am I gonna tell, like, as the oldest, I'm gonna quit school, right, that this is their dream, right? And my friend in mine was like, hey, take a few days, I'm gonna go visit my family this weekend, why don't you come with and get some perspective. And I feel like perspective is a magic word, because when you change your point of view of something, and it usually changes place
Starting point is 00:32:46 or the people you spend time around, because that's why you always have to be careful who you spend time with, because we've all heard who you spend time with is who you become, right? And the reason why they say, if you spend time with nine broke people, be careful because you're gonna be number 10.
Starting point is 00:33:00 The reason why is because in your nervous system, you have these things called mirror neurons. And your mirror neurons is what imitates people around you. It's why you watch a movie or watch sports and feel what they're feeling because you imitate them. And the reason why you have to be careful who you spend time with all the time is because it's not just your neurological networks, it's your social networks. Because then you start adapting and adopting the same beliefs, the same behaviors,
Starting point is 00:33:26 the same attitudes, the same habits as the people around you. And so he was like, why don't you get some perspective before you tell your family you're in a quit school. It's a big decision. So I go visit his family that weekend and the family is pretty well off and the father walks me around his property
Starting point is 00:33:42 before dinner and asks me this simple question, which is the worst question you could ask me at the time. He's like, Jim, how's school? And I'm like, shoot. And like, and I just break down and start crying for this complete stranger, right? And I was like, I can't hold this in anymore. I have to quit school.
Starting point is 00:33:58 I tell him about the broken brain and school's not for me. I'm a disappoint my family. And after I like vented all that, he was like, Jim, stop, he was like, why am I in school? And here's the thing, questions I feel like are the answer. If you wanna be a faster learner in life, like so many of us, have you guys, have you read a page in a book, got to the end,
Starting point is 00:34:19 and just forgot what you just read? Yeah, yeah, I had to read it. And you go back and you reread it, and you still don't know what you just read, right? And one of the reasons why, is first of all, you're read. Yeah, I had to read it. And you go back and you reread it, and you still don't know what you just read, right? And one of the reasons why is, first of all, you're reading too slow, and people, there's this big myth that if you read, if I asked you to read faster, you'd think your comprehension would go down. But in actuality, your comprehension goes up, and it's counterintuitive.
Starting point is 00:34:39 I think it's a rumor being spread around by slow readers. But the reason why is your brain is this incredible supercomputer. But when you read, you feed the supercomputer, one word, add, time, metaphorically, we're starving our mind. And if you don't give your brain the stimulus it needs, it'll seek entertainment elsewhere
Starting point is 00:35:02 in the form of distraction. You ever just find yourself reading something in your mind wanders or you get started like imagining other things? That's when I do the forgetting. I found this hack from Tom Billio was the person who turned us on, turned me on to this like three years ago and he was the first person I'd ever met that listens to his audio books on like three speed. Right. And I thought exactly what you just said was, I thought when I started to speed it up, there's no way I'll be able to comprehend all this, but it, what it causes me to do is to focus harder.
Starting point is 00:35:31 The faster I went, the harder I focused, the more I retained. And that's so true. Blue my mind. Because when you read slowly, you don't give your brain the stimulus that needs. So it seeks entertainment elsewhere and that's why it feeds its distraction if you will. It's kind of like driving a car. If you're driving the car really, really slow, are you really focused on driving? No.
Starting point is 00:35:52 No, right? Because what are you doing? You're like texting, you're singing a song, you're thinking about like a client, you're talking to somebody in the car pulling with whatever. You can be doing five things when you're going slow. But if you're racing a car and taking like hairpin turns 200 miles an hour, do you have more or less focus? More.
Starting point is 00:36:08 You're not thinking about the dry cleaning. You're not trying to text. You're completely focused on the active driving and what's in front of you. Same with reading. Even though this makes sense, the police officers still give me a ticket. Right. I'm way safer. Okay.
Starting point is 00:36:20 You can't even imagine with a name like quick, it's the worst name to have when you get pulled over for speeding because when you hand over your driver's license, you're not gonna be able to talk away out of that, too. So it's really my last name, too. I didn't change it to do what I do. A name like quick, my desk, my life was pretty much planned out. My father's name, my grandfather's name, I'd be a runner back in school,
Starting point is 00:36:39 which is a lot of freaking pressure. It was that quick. And then I get to do my Dharma, my mission, which teaching people to learn quicker because I'm the boy pressure, it was just quick. And then I get to do my Dharma, my mission, which teaching people to learn quicker, because I'm the boy with the broken brain. I turned it into my mission to help literally build better, brighter brains. My mission is no brain left behind.
Starting point is 00:36:53 But when this guy asked me this question, you know, why am I in school? I think questions are the answer. Like if you had more questions when you're reading, you'll get more answers. Does that make sense? It's kind of like, you know, years ago, my sister was sending me these emails and these postcards with these certain kind of dog.
Starting point is 00:37:12 It was like a pug dog. And I was like, why is she, and this is my question, why is she sending me these pictures? And I realized her birthday was coming up. And so what did she want for a gift? She wanted these pug dogs, right? And all of a sudden, I start seeing these pug dogs freaking everywhere. Like I'm at the grocery store, I'd like whole foods or whatever,
Starting point is 00:37:28 and I see somebody checking out with a pug dog, right? I'm running in my neighborhood, and I see someone walking six pug dogs. Now my question for ability to listen is where were these pug dogs before? They were there. They were there. Yeah, we just, and here's the thing,
Starting point is 00:37:43 at any given time, there's like two billion stimulus that we could be paying attention to. The brain primarily, people don't realize your brain primarily is a deletion device. It's trying to keep noise out. Because if it focused on everything, you would go crazy, right?
Starting point is 00:37:59 And so what you determine, what determines what you focus on? Because you can only focus on coordinate George Miller at Harvard, five, seven plus or minus two bits of information. So if I gave you guys a list of like 20 words to memorize, you probably remember seven plus or minus two, five to nine of those words, because that's how much you could hold consciously,
Starting point is 00:38:17 unless you had like a strategy, which I could teach you like how to be able to do that. And so you're constantly trying to ignore certain things, but all of a sudden this pug dog became important, so I start seeing it everywhere. When you're reading, there are all these pug dogs. You know what I mean? Questions, answers right in front of you,
Starting point is 00:38:34 but you don't have the questions to activate what's important to you. And so going back to the power of questions, this guy asked me a question like, well, why you went school? You know, if you're having all the challenges in school and you hate it so much, why you went school? Nobody's ever asked me that question like, well, why are you in school? You know, if you're having all the challenges in school and you hate it so much, why are you in school? Nobody's ever asked me that question, right? And if you ask a new question, you get a new answer. You know, when we talk about innovation, and I do trainings for Elon at SpaceX, for himself, as rocket scientists, it is funny. There's this book I was talking to him about,
Starting point is 00:39:00 called the structure of scientific revolution. and it basically says pretty technical book basically to sum it up says that all big innovation in fashion, automotive, computers usually comes from somebody outside the industry because it takes somebody from the outside to look in saying with today's where it is right now with technology where it is why aren't you doing it this way? Because you don't grow up with the same limitations as somebody who had schooling in that, because there is this learned helplessness. And that's a big thing because I remember years ago, I saw this video online, and it was like these fleas.
Starting point is 00:39:38 This professor put these fleas in a glass jar and put a lid on, they would just jump out, right? I don't know why lab scientists do this, but like the fleas would just, they put them onto the jar and they would jump right out, because the lid wasn't on it. Then he put the lid on the jar. And then after a little while, the fleas would still jump, but they would just, they would stop right before they hit their heads, if you will, on the top of that lid. And then funny thing happened, he opened the lid.
Starting point is 00:40:03 Stayed. And what happened? Yeah, stayed. Isn't it the same thing with elephants too? How they used to tie them down, and when they're young, and then later on, they have all this weight and power, but, Exactly.
Starting point is 00:40:15 They feel that little bit of tension, and they won't move. Exactly. You go to a circus, you wonder why that elephant that's this huge magnificent beast doesn't pull down the whole circus tent, right? Because it's tied to a rope in the stake in the ground. The reason why it's been tied to there since it's been born. In the beginning, it would try to get its sovereignty and freedom.
Starting point is 00:40:32 It would pull, pull, pull, and realize it would learn it's helpless. And then weeks later, months later, when it's big and strong, and it could easily pull itself out, and its mind is not. And people are listening to us like, what's the point? I'm not a flea, I'm not an elephant. But how many times as adults have we tried to learn the piano, we tried a new workout or a new class or whatever it is? And we're like, oh, no, this is not for me. Because that's the problem. I mean, who are the fastest learners on the planet?
Starting point is 00:40:58 They're like children, right? How fast can they learn a musical instrument? How fast can they learn another language? Really fast, right? And part of it is, you know, besides neurology, a bigger part, as an important part is, they're not scared of failing, right? A child doesn't fall after eight times, trying to walk
Starting point is 00:41:15 and be like, oh, screw this, I'm not gonna walk. Right? But adults, we do that. And that's the thing with mistakes. It's like we have this fear of making mistakes, but people don't realize it's when we fall. Like people who fall are so much stronger than people who never fall, because they build like the muscles to be able to get up.
Starting point is 00:41:32 It's just like when you see a butterfly, everyone thinks the beauty is in the butterfly, but the growth happened in the cocoon. When that, you know, that caterpillar was pushing its way out, it built this strength and its wings to be able to transform. And I feel like if somebody's going through adversity right now, we've all gone through challenges. People hear about post-traumatic stress all the time. And I bet some people who were listening
Starting point is 00:41:55 had gone through such difficult times that they wouldn't wish it upon anybody. But also at the same time, they came out with a new perspective, a new lease on life. And they wouldn't change that incident no matter how horrible it was because they found a mission, they found a strength, they found a new identity, and they call that post-traumatic growth. And people could Google it, but that's its phenomenal. Like, and so through adversity, I believe that difficult times, they could define us, they could diminish us, or they could develop us. But we decide ultimately, right? We decide what things mean.
Starting point is 00:42:27 And then going back to this question, I've never been asked why you went school. Like I never questioned it. I was like, everyone goes to school. Like that's what it's supposed to do, right? And he was like, well, why you went school? What do you want to be? What do you want to do?
Starting point is 00:42:39 What do you want to have? What do you want to share? And I honestly did not have an answer because nobody's ever asked me that before and asking you shall receive. That's why I think questions are the answer. You have to train yourself to ask these questions. And I was like, well, and then I go to answer him,
Starting point is 00:42:54 he's like, stop. And he pulls out of his back pocket a journal. And honestly, I thought it was only like 12-year-old girls who carried diaries and wrote in diaries. But he takes out his journal. He tears out a couple of sheets, and he makes me write down my answer. And after I don't know how much time goes by,
Starting point is 00:43:12 I have like a bucket list. You know, all the things I want to do be have whatever before I kick the bucket. And when I'm done with this exercise, I start folding up the sheets of paper to put into my pocket thinking it's done. This exercise is done. And he reaches out his hand,
Starting point is 00:43:25 he grabs the sheets out of my hand. And I'm freaking out, because this guy is really successful and he's looking at all my dreams, and I've never even shared my dreams with anybody, even myself, really, right? And I don't know how much time goes by, but when he's done reading all my dreams, on my bucket list, he looks at me,
Starting point is 00:43:40 and he was like, Jim, you are this close to everything on this list. I'm spreading my index fingers about a foot apart. And I'm thinking, no way, give me 10 lifetimes, I'm not gonna crack this list. And he was like, he takes his fingers and he puts them to the side of my head, meaning what's in between, like my brain is like
Starting point is 00:44:00 the key or the bridge that's gonna get me all my dreams. And he takes me into a room of his home that I've never seen before. It's like maybe this size. It's huge. It's wall to wall sealing the floor covered in books. Like I've never seen a library in somebody's house before. And keep in mind, I've never finished a book covered a cover. I'm a horrible, horrible reader.
Starting point is 00:44:20 I have all this negative association around books. It's like walking into room full of snakes. You know what I mean? Like if you're the hate snakes. Well, it makes it worse. This guy starts grabbing snakes off the shelf and hands them to me. And I'm looking at these titles of these books and there are these biographies of some incredible men and women in history. And some very early personal growth books, like Norman Vincent Peel, the power of positive thinking, Napoleon Hill, right? And I've never seen these books before, and he was like, Jim, I want you to read one book a week.
Starting point is 00:44:51 And I'm like, have you not heard anything I've said? I was like, I have a broken brain. I have all this school work. And when I say school work, he looked at me, he's like, Jim, don't let school get in the way of your education. And I didn't realize at the time it was a Mark Twain quote, right? It was like 25 years ago.
Starting point is 00:45:11 And I'm like, wow, I was like, same way. I was like, that's really smart. And yet, I can't do this. You know, because if I say I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it, and I can't commit to doing this. And then he's very smart, man. He picks up out of his pocket my bucket list, which he still has.
Starting point is 00:45:26 And he starts reading every single one of my dreams out loud. And I don't know guys, but it's something about hearing your dreams, your fantasies in somebody else's voice and a stranger's voice being, you know, like encanted out in the universe. It mess with my mind, my heart, my soul, something fierce. And honestly, a lot of things on that list were things I wanted to do for my family.
Starting point is 00:45:49 Things my parents could never in a million years afford to do for themselves, and even if they had the money, they wouldn't do for themselves. And I've noticed that it's so important in your life to have leverage, to have motivation, right? Because everybody wants something, but people don't know why they want it. And unless you feel that, you're not gonna do it. Meaning, I believe the biggest lie there is in the high performance personal development industry,
Starting point is 00:46:14 it's knowledge's power. Like, we hear it all the time, right? You see an unfortunate cookies and we were taught like knowledge's power, but it's not. Knowledge is at best potential power. It only becomes power when we use it, when we apply it. People think they get points because they listen to a podcast or buy a book
Starting point is 00:46:32 or go to a conference, but literally, all the podcast coaching programs, conferences, online program, whatever, none of it works unless you work. Right, and that's the thing. So it's only potential power at best. And I'm going through, and I'm thinking like, if I'm gonna say I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it, right? And so that motivation is key.
Starting point is 00:46:54 Like I remember I was doing a talk right down the road here in Palo Alto, and when I'm done, the Bill Gates comes up to me, he was in the audience. And I asked him like, if you can have any one super power, what would it be? And he was like, Jim, the ability to read faster. And I was like, oh, I could totally help you with that. Because leaders are readers, right?
Starting point is 00:47:13 Warren Buffett said, I probably wasted 10 years of my life reading slowly. Warren Buffett reads 500 pages a day, right? And so important to be able to read. I did it in the story recently with Will Smith, you know, on set. And I was like, what are two things you do to keep your brain alive? Like, really active. He was like, Jim, I do two things every single day. They're my non-negotiables. He was like, I run and I read. I want to do something physically every day and I have to do something
Starting point is 00:47:39 mentally every single day. Because the key to building new brain cells, neurogenesis, neuroplasticity is two things, novelty and nutrition. The same thing that builds your physical muscles, novelty, work it out, and then you give it nutrition, right? You feed it, and then you give it rest, same thing with your mental muscles. So when people want to get physically fit, you know, they want to be stronger, faster, more flexible, more pliable, more agile, more energized, I want that to be for your brain muscles, your mental muscles. I want your brain muscles to be stronger, faster, more flexible, more pliable, more agile, more energized. I want that to be for your brain muscles, your mental muscles. I want your brain muscles to be stronger, more energized, more focused, more agile, more flexible also as well.
Starting point is 00:48:14 And it's absolutely possible through neurogenesis, neuroplasticity. Anyway, the guy was like, when I was talking to Bill Gates, we were talking about the future of education. What does the future education look like? I was talking about metal learning, learning how to learn, you know, accelerated learning. He was taking it where I was taking it from theory standpoint. He was taking it from a tool technology standpoint.
Starting point is 00:48:36 What education will look like. And this whole crowd was gathering around us. And somebody asked, is there anything missing? You have the theory, you have the tools. And we looked at each other, we've talked. Yep, human motivation. Because so many people know what to do, but they don't do what they know. Because common sense is not common practice. And it comes down to human motivation. And really it comes down to self-awareness. I believe self-awareness is a superpower. That if you want to be truly fulfilled in life, you
Starting point is 00:49:02 need two things. You need the curiosity to know yourself. I mean, that's why we meditate, that's why we journal, that's why we go, you know, to do these deep explorations about our beliefs and our values and everything. But once you know yourself and you have the curiosity to know yourself, you need the courage to be yourself. So many people kind of know themselves, but remember that expectations and if you fuel your life on other people's opinions and expectations, you're gonna run out of fuel. You're gonna run out of gas easily, right? Because here's the thing. I spent a lot of time with seniors. I don't talk about this a lot,
Starting point is 00:49:37 but when I was a child, my grandmother passed away with Alzheimer's. So it's kind of, you know, turn inflection points in a life, put us on a path, right? And so I spent a lot of time at senior centers not teaching them memory techniques. I do that and help caregivers do that also as well. And, you know, medical doctors at the Cleveland Clinic for brain health. But I also just help them share stories because I think we can learn from everybody. And when they share these stories, it polishes off their memories, which is amazing. But after they get done sharing their stories, invariably they come to regrets.
Starting point is 00:50:10 You know what I mean? They talk about their biggest regret. And what do you think their biggest regret is at the end of their life? Things that they didn't do? Yeah. Things that they did. Exactly. It's literally that.
Starting point is 00:50:21 It's like the things, and why didn't they do it? Because there's usually, how would it look to somebody else? You know what I mean? And that's what going back to what are talking about, Jim Carrey, and freeing yourself from the concerns of other people. That's so important to be able to liberate yourself
Starting point is 00:50:36 because it's hard to learn and be a child like and play all the time because you think you're gonna be silly. You know what I mean? And then here's the thing. You know, you don't stop playing because you grow older. Most people think they stop playing
Starting point is 00:50:48 because they grow older. It's the opposite. You grow older because you stop playing. You know what I mean? And we lose that sense of play and that's why it's so important to be able to learn faster as a sense of play, making mistakes,
Starting point is 00:50:58 falling down. You know, I'm really concerned even with kids nowadays that we protect them so much. We are like, we're moving swings and sea saws from the playgrounds. We're not because we don't want them to get hurt, but they need to move around. That's how children learn is through mobility. People don't realize this, but the number one reason
Starting point is 00:51:14 we have a brain is to control our movement. And when your body moves, your brain grooves. Literally, as people are more active physically, they create the brain to arrive neurotropic factors, which is like fertilizer for the brain, which promotes neurogenesis and neuroplasticity. We need to move, but you know, we know this, we live in a sedentary culture, you know, where they say sitting is the new smoking,
Starting point is 00:51:37 and we're sitting behind computers all the time, we're not moving as much, and we need to move in order to be able to understand information better. But going back to motivation, it's really key because what Bill Gates was talking about, human motivation is we all know what to do. But honestly, a lot of people, they listen to your show and they watch your videos and they could quote you guys, but you know, they could say it over and over again, but they're
Starting point is 00:51:59 not doing it. And I'm here to challenge people who are listening to this because I'm not here to play K2U. I think a real coach tells you what you need to hear. And I feel like if you can't apply it and do it, you don't know it. You know, you might be able to say things and repeat things that other people say, but the thing is is what robs you of mastery is saying, I know this already. You know what I mean? Getting away from the basics and all the masters out there have always talked about've always talked about even Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee said, the one thing he ever said he was scared of,
Starting point is 00:52:31 that he was afraid of. He's like, I'm not afraid of the guy who's learned 10,000 kicks to practice them once. I'm afraid of the guy who's practiced one kick 10,000 times. The 10,000 hours, that's the road to mastery. And so I'm challenging everybody to, as you're listening is to take notes and I take notes a very specific way.
Starting point is 00:52:51 And I take my sheet of paper, I put a line down the page, and on the left side, I take notes, and on the right side, I make notes. Because people don't realize this, that when you learn something, there's a learning curve, right? And I'm all about shortening that learning curve. And so when I go into organizations, I could show them how to literally, if it takes normally
Starting point is 00:53:11 two weeks to be able to do it in a few days, or be able to cut their learning cycle for sales or training, whatever it is. And when we're talking about learning curves, there's also a forgetting curve. Did you guys know, like, when you learn something on a podcast or a book or you go to a seminar within two days, how much of it's lost? How much do you forget? I would guess something like half of it. Yeah, more than half, 80%.
Starting point is 00:53:35 Oh wow, practice it right away. They call it the forgetting curve that you learned something once within two days, 80% of it is gone. And how many of you who are listening could identify with that. It's like you didn't study in school and what did you do the night before? You crammed, right?
Starting point is 00:53:51 You crammed and then forgot it right after. Exactly. And then the next morning you pulled it all nighter, which is really bad, because you know you should have slept because that's where you can solidate short to long-term memory and everything. And the next morning you had breakfast
Starting point is 00:54:02 and nobody could talk to you because you don't want anything to spill out of your brain. And you can't wait to take the test. And when you're done, you put the next morning, you had breakfast, and nobody could talk to you, because you don't want anything to spill out of your brain. And you can't wait to take the test, and when you're done, you put the pen down, what happens all the information? It's completely, that's the forgetting curve. That's where you lose all the information. So taking notes helps you to retain.
Starting point is 00:54:16 But on the left side of the page, I take notes on the right side, I make notes. Now what's the difference? There's a huge difference. On the left side, I'm capturing. This is Jim's morning routine. This is how you remember names. This is how you learn any subject or skill faster.
Starting point is 00:54:33 That's your step to do. That's your capturing. And on the right side, I'm creating. Instead of your imagination or distraction going somewhere else, what if you put your impressions of what you're capturing on the right side? And the three questions that dictate my focus, here's a big takeaway. As everyone's listening to this right now, my goal is to take knowledge and turn to action,
Starting point is 00:54:55 because that's how our life changes by doing something new. But we don't do something new, and because we're everything is habitual. Even the thoughts that we have, we have 60, 70,000 thoughts a day, but 90, the problem is 90, 95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts we had yesterday. And people wonder why they don't change, right? Because all the thoughts are exactly consistent and thoughts are things we know that.
Starting point is 00:55:16 And so going back to this, this process, the reason why I have people, there's three questions I ask all the time. Now, I'm obsessed about these three questions because I remember questions are the answer. And before I go into my three questions, I want to give everybody like a tool or an idea distinction that you already ask yourself questions all the time, but we're not conscious of it. Like the act of thinking is nothing but the process of asking and answering questions.
Starting point is 00:55:45 You know what I mean? If you're listening to this and you're thinking, is that true? Notice you had to ask a question in order to be able to think about it. There are certain questions you ask all the time. I mean hundreds of times a day, but you're probably not aware of it. For example, I took a friend of mine through an exercise and we found out that her, this dominant question she asked all the time is, how do I get people to like me? How do I get people to like me? Now you don't know anything about this woman. You don't know her age, her background, her career, ethnicity, but you know a lot about her. If somebody asked themselves continuously, how do I get people to like me?
Starting point is 00:56:25 What's her life like? What's her personality like? Well, if she's always asking that, yeah, very insecure. She's insecure. She's always judging herself. Probably depressed. Yeah, she's sad.
Starting point is 00:56:36 She's always judging herself. Her personality is very malleable, meaning it changes depending on who she's spending time with. She's a people pleaser. You know what I mean? She's always, you know, doing all everything for everybody else. Not all of it. Exactly. And so you know all this about her, and you don't even know anything about her. But you know one question she asked herself. That's all you know about her, and you know a lot about her.
Starting point is 00:56:56 So that question determines her focus. It determines her particular activating system. That R.A.S. just like when I saw the pug dogs, it determines your focus. So my question for everybody here is, am I challenged for everybody? I would love to see this even on social media is, what's your dominant question? What's the question you ask yourself all the time that you learned when you were like five years old and you've been getting answers and looking for validation on that question ever since? So for me, I was the boy with the broken brain.
Starting point is 00:57:23 Growing up as a kid, I didn't want the attention because when you feel like you're broken, you don't feel like you have a lot of value. And so my superpower back then, in all honesty, was being invisible. I was really good at making sure nobody knew I was in class. I never raised my hand, I never created a challenge or anything because I didn't want the spotlight.
Starting point is 00:57:44 I didn't want to be seen, I didn't want to be heard, right? But my question early on was like, because I felt like I was broken is, how do I make this better? You know what I mean? If I had the broken brain, I'm always trying to fix everything and I got trained. And so here are three questions
Starting point is 00:57:58 that I would ask yourself to ask yourself on the right side of this page. Number one, when you're learning something, you're listening to this episode, you're watching this video, ask yourself obsessively, how can I use this? How can I use this? Because that's where the rubber meets the road, right? You start thinking of all this creative eye ways of how you could use this technique. So if we talk about how to remember names, how can I use this? Like, in what situations can I use this and write that down, right? Instead of your attention going somewhere else,
Starting point is 00:58:26 put it on the right side of the page, right? It's kind of like a metaphor for your left brain and right brain. Left brain's all logical, right brain's creative, right? The second question is, now that you know how can you use it, ask this question, why must I use this? Why must? This goes back to human motivation,
Starting point is 00:58:44 because I believe there's a success formula. I call it three-h's, h cubed, head, heart, hands. That if you could affirm things in your heads, that goals and KPIs in your head, right? These outcomes and these things that you need to do, but if you're not acting with your hands and you're procrastinating, you guys know what I mean. You have something you should put it off.
Starting point is 00:59:06 Like, why do we put off the things that are going to make our life better? Why would we do that? It's not even logical to do. Parallels is by now. Exactly. Because we're overthinking things and we want it to be perfect and we don't act and we're afraid of making mistakes and on all these things. And I did this video in my backyard and I have some people might have seen it.
Starting point is 00:59:25 I have this 10 foot hulk in my backyard. And I did this how to smash, how to smash procrastination five different ways. But one of them was this formula, H cubed, because it goes from your head to your heart to your hands. If you affirm things and set goals in your head, but you're not acting with your hands, you're procrastinating or self sabotaging, check them with the second H, which is your heart, which is the symbol of emotions, the energy emotion, because we're not, you know, remember this quote, it's not people,
Starting point is 00:59:54 that they don't biologically, they buy emotionally, right? We do everything emotionally. Then they justify it with logic later on. Exactly, because we're not logical, we're biological. You think about the, all the, you think about dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, like we're this chemical soup. And so we wanna be able to proactively have agency,
Starting point is 01:00:16 meaning we are in control and decide like why we wanna do something. Even if you wanna remember names, one of the greatest hacks of remembering names is just ask yourself, why do I want to remember this person's name? Because how many people listening right now have trouble remembering people's names? Everybody, right?
Starting point is 01:00:30 95% of the population. But let's say this, let's say mind pump had a suitcase here of a million dollars cash to the, if you just remember the name of the next stranger you meet on the streets, who's gonna remember that person's name? Everybody. So how does everyone go from like,
Starting point is 01:00:45 they're the worst person to remember names to be coming up memory acts. They're motivation. They're motivation, right? So as your coach, I'm calling you people who are listening on your BS, is that you don't have a bad memory. Like you could remember people's names.
Starting point is 01:00:59 You just don't really want to. Because I believe as a core, you can write this on the left side of your note taking, is genius leaves clues, that if somebody does something extraordinary, like when I do these demonstrations, I memorize list of words, 100 numbers,
Starting point is 01:01:12 100 words forwards and backwards and names, or whatever, I don't tell people, I tell people, I don't do this and press you, I do this to express to you what's really possible because the truth is all of us could do this. We just weren't taught. If anything, we were taught a lie. A lie that somehow our memory, our intelligence, our potential is somehow fixed like our shoe
Starting point is 01:01:33 size. And it's not, it's absolutely not true. Like what I love about your show and the work that we do in this community, it's about we're about transcending. You know, think about the word transcend. I'm always looking at word origin, transcend, ending the trans, ending this massive noses out there that we're broken, that we're not enough.
Starting point is 01:01:55 Spread out by marketing and media and stuff like that to for mediums of control and drive consumption and everything. And I'm saying that if you knew how powerful your mind was, if people really, truly knew, they wouldn't say or think something that they didn't want to be true. That's how powerful your mind is. Like how it rewires, they say that a person's mind,
Starting point is 01:02:18 Oliver Wendell Holmes had a person's mind one stretch by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. Right? So the second question I ask all the time before after how can I use this? The second question is, why must I use this to tap into that? Why? Because when you meet somebody, you forget their name. Here's the thing.
Starting point is 01:02:35 You don't forget all names. You remember some names. I guarantee the names that you probably remember. If our names are motivated, exactly. You're attracted to that person, you know, or that could be a good person to, you know, do business with. There's a motivation. You wonder why you remember the person's name.
Starting point is 01:02:50 So ask yourself next time you're meeting someone for the first time, why do I want to remember this person's name? Maybe it's to show the person respect. Maybe it's to make a new friend. Maybe it's to make a sale. Maybe it's to practice these things I learned from Jim because I heard what I practiced in private
Starting point is 01:03:03 I'm rewarded for in public, right? And so you know that and that's that that's where the practice comes because you're prepared. I remember I was doing this, I was with Will Smith and we were shooting in Toronto from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and I don't know it's like this is crazy and I take him through the same exercise trying to discover his dominant question and we found out his dominant question is, because remember, your life is a reflection of this question that you ask all the time. His dominant question we came up with is,
Starting point is 01:03:32 how do I make this moment even more magical? How awesome is that question? Like if you obsessed around that question, hundreds of times, you would get answers all the time. There's a pug dog, there's a way, there's a way, there's a way, and then his life is a reflection of that. Like we were shooting, I remember it's like 3 a.m. And his whole family from West Philly,
Starting point is 01:03:52 as you know from the song, it's like there. The whole array. And it was cold in Toronto and they're all bundled up and they're drinking like, you know, like they're just watching, you know, we're waiting, right? It's not glamorous at all. People are just waiting, waiting to be filmed and will comes.
Starting point is 01:04:05 And he brings how chocolate for everybody and he makes jokes. And you can tell he lives that, right? And I was asked him, I was like, how do you do this? Like, how do you just, we're just waiting for hours for the director to say, get ready and let's go. How do you, how do you get ready?
Starting point is 01:04:20 You know, how do you stay prepared? How do you get ready? And he looked at me, he was like, Jim, I don't have to get ready. I stay ready. And I'm like, Jim, I don't have to get ready. I stay ready. And I'm like, oh, it's good to be Will Smith. That's awesome. But my point of bringing this up,
Starting point is 01:04:31 that's what world-class people do, right? Because they live it so much, they can just roll out of bed and do it. Because I believe at a core that the life you live are the lessons you teach, the life that you live. It's not what you say. And that's what my big pet peeve outside of knowledge is not power,
Starting point is 01:04:48 it's only potential power, is this, you know, so many claims everywhere, you know what I mean? Like, especially on social media, and people gotta stop saying it, they just gotta show it. Like, stop promising it and just prove it, right? Because it's better well done than well said. And the life you live are the lessons you teach, and that's what I feel like when people know it,
Starting point is 01:05:06 going from here to their hands, from their head to their hands, that's where you have congruency, right? It's about taking information that's in your head. It's information here, inspiration, to do something with it, and then implementation. And when you have those three eyes, then you have the fourth eye, which is integration.
Starting point is 01:05:21 It's just who you are, right? It's not something you read in a book, it's just part of who you are. But going back to the second question, why must I use this? And come up with all the reasons, because that's the inspiration, the fuel that moves your car. Finally, the third question is,
Starting point is 01:05:34 now that you have, how can I use this? Why must I use this? Third question, when will I use this? Oh, I see. You know what I mean? Because the most powerful productivity performance tool we have is our calendar. But we don't treat our own personal growth and self-development like we do other things. Like a lot of people just don't work out. Flat out reason is this not in their calendar.
Starting point is 01:05:57 You know what I mean? They're like, and they wonder why it gets cut at the end of the day when they have no more energy because they never made the time. But like the whole thing with high performers is they know that in this cliche, but it's true just like most cliches, that self love and self care is not selfish. That you have to take care and schedule this stuff for yourself, otherwise it just doesn't get done. Right, if you don't schedule in your meditation
Starting point is 01:06:19 or your journaling or your mobility or whatever you're doing, you're not gonna do it. So those are the three questions I'm asking people to put on the right side of their page. I would even challenge people to relisten this episode and go through these brain gems, if you will, and just write this down, take pictures of your notes, and I'll even reshare some of my favorite also
Starting point is 01:06:38 because this is so important, because if you wanna learn something, the best way to learn something is to teach it. You know what I mean? You guys know, like if you had to go through a presentation on how to remember names and how to give a TED talk about it on Monday, I mean, how much better would your focus be? Of course.
Starting point is 01:06:53 How many would your notes be different? Would you ask better people ask more questions on social media or whatever? Of course, you would own that information. So what I would say is learn as if you're going to teach it because that's the goal. Learn, earn, return Right, you learn so you could earn and then you earn so you have more to get back and return to other people
Starting point is 01:07:12 And I think that return also could come in the way of teaching somebody else Because here's what you want to remember when I teach something I get to learn it twice When I teach something I get to learn it twice So those are your notes. And so going back to this original conversation, you're like, Jim, man, where were we? We were at exactly at the morning routine, right? So we talked about the first thing I do
Starting point is 01:07:33 is remember my dreams. The D is I decided on how to remember a dream. The E, the R, if you will, is I reflect on it. You know, and I write it down, I keep a dream journal because I think when you write it, that's the first part where you take something intangible, invisible in your mind, and make it tangible. So Jim, this is as soon as you wake up,
Starting point is 01:07:49 you start doing that, you kind of pay for it. I literally wake up and I go through this process where I just, I've decided the day before I reflect on it, and I capture it, the E, if you will, or your eyes. It helps actually before you go through this process to keep your eyes closed, to remember your dreams and reflect on your dreams, because once you open your eyes. It helps actually before you go through this process to keep your eyes closed, to remember your dreams and reflect on your dreams, because once you open your eyes, it loses a lot of focus.
Starting point is 01:08:10 Absolutely. The A is affirmations, meaning that I affirm, I did this whole process of lucid dreaming, where I teach people how to, you know what lucid dreaming is? I do, and I would love for you to teach people how to do that. I used to have done that since I was a kid, but I don't know. Naturally, yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, very small part of know. Naturally. Yeah. That's amazing.
Starting point is 01:08:25 Yeah, very small part of the population doesn't naturally. It's an incredible gift to be able to give yourself because for people who are listening that are aware of it, how would you describe lucid dreaming? Control, right? Control the dream. You're aware that you're dreaming.
Starting point is 01:08:37 You're in your dream and you're aware that you're dreaming. And through that process, you're able to actually control your dreaming. And what you're doing in the dreaming. Most people that have experienced it, they don't know they experienced it. Like I remember the first time that I remember it is like when you, I was in a, it was scary and then it was not scary
Starting point is 01:08:51 because I knew how to control. It's like somebody, you know, those dreams when you're a kid that you used to be running from somebody chasing, you can't get away, where I have now this ability to become stronger than whatever it was that was chasing me. That's how I learned how to do it. I was a kid and I had nightmares and my mom told me, hey, while you're dreaming,
Starting point is 01:09:08 if you're scared, pinch yourself and then if it doesn't hurt, you know you're dreaming. So I'm like, okay, so I did it. And then I realized I was dreaming but then I was still in a scary dream. And so then I realized, I thought to myself, if I jump off a building, I'll wake up. And so that's the first thing I did and I woke up.
Starting point is 01:09:22 And so I taught myself how to wake up out of my own dreams. It's amazing. And then I stopped waking up and just started controlling my dreams. And it was very, it was like watching the Matrix when he tries to jump off the building or jump over the building. And he couldn't because he didn't believe it. So I tried flying in my dreams and it took me practice because I didn't believe I could. But over time, I became much more powerful. That's amazing. And this shares the thing. Everyone who's listening, who benefits of doing this is huge. And you could use it from all these different things. A lot of people use lucid dreaming. If you have the ability to be aware of your dreaming and control your and influence your dream to overcome phobias, overcome challenges and traumas that
Starting point is 01:09:56 we've had, and have kicked back the locus of control. Because ultimately we are happiest when we feel like we are and can have semblance of control. Because the reason why I love your community so much is not only are we like-minded, but it's also, we identify more with thermostats than thermometers. You know what I mean? Think about it functionally because part of how we learn better is through metaphors.
Starting point is 01:10:19 Comparing something to what we already know. We take something unknown, we compare it to something we know. And that's a question I ask all the time. It's like, how do I relate, if I don't understand something, how do I relate this to something like, you know, working out, you know what I mean? And then I understand it better, right?
Starting point is 01:10:33 And then on top of it, with the thermostat, you think about a thermostat or thermometer. A thermometer, it's only function is reacting to the environment. Doesn't change anything. Exactly. And as human beings, sometimes we are thermometers. We react to the environment. Doesn't change anything. Exactly. And as human being, sometimes we are thermometers. We react to the weather.
Starting point is 01:10:48 We react to how client treats us. We react to the economy, right? That's to be human. But to the degree, we have the agency, meaning we have the control inside. We have thermostat. We have thermostat. Because that's what a thermostat is.
Starting point is 01:11:01 A thermostat doesn't react to the environment. It gauges the environment. so it knows where it is, where we are currently, you know, through our situation awareness, but then it raises a temperature, or it sets a standard or a goal, and what happens to the environment? The environment changes, so it acts on the environment,
Starting point is 01:11:19 and I feel like- You think lucid dreaming helps with that, because it helps it learn that skill. Exactly, that you actually have more control than you think, that the agency, even when it comes to our dreams and our feelings too like years ago I got to I got to introduce two modern-day superheroes together They wanted to have dinner and it was Richard Branson and Stan Lee Wow, you know Stan not not Stan Lee but Stan Lee the late the late Stan Lee. Wow. Stan, not Stan Lee, but Stan Lee, the late Stan Lee.
Starting point is 01:11:46 And we're in the, I mean, he's the co-creator of Spider-Man and X-Men and Avengers and everybody. And we're in the car. And we're in the car. And I was just, I had to ask the question. You created all of these superheroes who, you gotta tell me who's your favorite. And he looks at me. He was like, Jim, my favorite is Iron Man. And I'm like, I love Iron Man, right? And I was like, can you say Jim, who's your favorite. And he looks at me, he was like, Jim, my favorite is Iron Man. And I'm like, I love Iron Man, right?
Starting point is 01:12:06 And I was like, can you say Jim, who's your favorite? And he had a, I posted us on Instagram. He has this huge, like, Spider-Man tie. So I was like, oh, it's Spider-Man. And without a pause, he looks at me, he was like, Jim, great power, comes great, responsibility, right? And I have these learning difficulties.
Starting point is 01:12:25 And a little bit, you know, like the select C.I. reverse things, you know, and I heard something different and I then I changed it back. I'm like, stay on your right. With great power comes great responsibility. And the opposite is also true. With great responsibility comes great power. When we take responsibility for something,
Starting point is 01:12:43 we have great power to make things better. And most people avoid responsibility, right? Yeah, especially entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs, their highest value is like freedom. They wanna do, like we wanna do what we want, when we want, for as long as we want, with whoever we want, you know, like, and but here's the thing,
Starting point is 01:13:00 you know anything that makes us something we have to do, you know, this discipline, we have to do this or do this, whatever it is, it takes, if you, we feel like it's taken away for our freedom, but in actuality, we know that that act or that habit or that discipline equates to freedom. We just know it, right? Because if you can't get yourself to do the things that are important to you, then you have the opposite.
Starting point is 01:13:19 You're in jail, right? And that's the thing. And I tell people it's all the time that the treasure, the treasure you seek is hidden and the work you're avoiding. The treasure you seek is hidden, the work you're avoiding. And most people don't want to do the hard stuff. Like, you know, I do this. Jordan Peterson says that. He says, the place, your answers and the places you're least likely to look or the ones you're, the places you least want to look. Right. You don't want to put, like, where are we not? Here's another question. Where are my avoiding shining the light?
Starting point is 01:13:49 What area of my life are we not avoiding? Exactly, and that's the thing that people avoid, but that's can give them the most treasure that they're looking for because it's the difficult thing. I mean, that's why you push yourself in the ways that you push yourself with your mind, with your body, because you get yourself to do the hard stuff. Like, you know, before I came here, I did like my ice bath, and I did all these things.
Starting point is 01:14:09 I hate cold. I hate it. And I met Wim almost seven years ago. We were speaking right outside of Harvard University together, and I interviewed him, and I've been doing these cold baths ever since. Every single one, I hate it. But I think that's part of the point, because you get yourself to do difficult things You know and you expand you make you know what's you know that that discomfort zone You remember how you feel when you get out of it though. Hey talking and look what happened exactly
Starting point is 01:14:32 And then but then you pull on that resilience and that grid or that will put whatever you call it to go on stage and do the difficult things Well, Jim I want you to teach people how to lose a dream I what did yeah, I teach us those skills because yes because that's cool because then you could dream and then you could do whatever you want, like Justin could just eat cheese the whole time. And your mind. The possibilities. I mean, the idea is you could meet anyone you want to meet, you could learn anything you
Starting point is 01:14:53 want to learn, you could live out every single fantasy, everything's in this matrix of your mind. And if you're pertain it and remember it, combining, then you're in great shape. So one of the techniques and their number of them is first of all, just being aware, right? That's the hard part is, first of all, most people aren't aware that they're dreaming. So you have to train yourself. Have you ever, like, indulgence something all day
Starting point is 01:15:16 and all of a sudden, like, you start dreaming about that thing and that's the integration? So what if you had to practice every single day to trigger yourself, to ask yourself if you're dreaming? Like in fact, even this inner talk that we have, what if you ask yourself 100 times a day, train yourself, like put on your phone, have an alarm go off for every single or trigger. Every time you get in an elevator or you walk through a doorway, ask, am I dreaming?
Starting point is 01:15:39 Am I dreaming? Am I dreaming? Because what will eventually happen when you're dreaming? Because you'll ask that question. And the first time the answer is yes, then you're loose of dreaming, right? People have these other exercises where they'll just train themselves to look at their hand. They'll like train themselves look at their hand or a piece of writing or something like that.
Starting point is 01:15:58 And they say certain things you don't see in a dream state, like writing or words the same way or your fingerprints when you look at your hand. And then you train yourself to look at your hand, but the first time you're looking at your hand and it looks different because it never looks exactly like what it looks like in reality, if you will. Then you're like, oh, then you alert yourself as like, this is a dream. And the other things that actually help lose a dream is actually things that help you to remember dreams. So we start about dreams, you know, the acronym D, as you decide,
Starting point is 01:16:22 are as you reflect on the dreams or write them down, the E is you keep your eyes shut. The A is actually interesting, you affirm throughout the day. So you could even affirm throughout the day, I'm going to remember my dreams because that affirmation makes a difference because even when I say I'm the boy with a broken brain is because when people come to me, this is another pet peeve, people come to me all the time, they're like, Jim, I have a horrible memory. Or Jim, I'm just not smart enough, or Jim or whatever. And I always tell people, stop. You know, if you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them.
Starting point is 01:16:54 If you fight for your limitations, you get to keep them. And people fight for the limitations all the time. You don't realize how powerful your mind is. And so you wouldn't say those things if you knew you truly how powerful it was. And it's not to say if you have one bad negative thoughts can ruin your life, any more than eating a doughnut can ruin your life, but it's the consistency of doing that. And so even if you say you have a horrible,
Starting point is 01:17:14 I don't have a great memory, add a little word like yet, YET and it changes the feeling around that. The reason why I always go back to feeling is the key to long-term memory, you guys could do this Say and do this information information so put your hand out information Combined with emotion mine with emotion becomes a long-term memory comes a long-term memory One more time information information combined with emotion Combined with emotion comes a long-term memory. Yeah, and here's the thing We remember the things that make that the way things make us feel, right? My, my Angelou said this, people she said, people will forget what you say, they'll
Starting point is 01:17:48 forget what you did. They'll always remember how you made them feel. And the reason why remembering names is so important is people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And how you're going to show somebody you're in care for their business, their health, their fitness, their finances, whatever your family, whatever it is you're selling them if you don't care enough just to remember their name. Because what's the emotion? What's the message we're sending somebody when we forget their name? That we don't care.
Starting point is 01:18:12 That we don't care. That they're not important. And that's not necessarily true. We get lazy. So the emotion is what's key. Now notice, information times emotion and I know this is pro-positive because you could test it yourself. How many of you because you could test this yourself, how many of you listening, you could hear a song and it could take you back to when you're
Starting point is 01:18:29 a teenager or a fragrance, like a perfume or a cologne or a essential oil or a food. You could smell a food and it could take you back to when you're a kid because the information by itself is forgettable but information that touches you emotionally is unforgettable. But most information is forgettable and but information that touches you emotionally is unforgettable. But most information is forgettable, and that's why people forget. Think about, what was the primary emotion you felt back in school? What do you primarily feel when you're sitting in class? Board of people? Yeah, I board them.
Starting point is 01:18:57 And on a scale of zero to ten, what's boredom? Zero, right? Information times emotion becomes a long-term memory. So you have to say, emotion. So you have to say, no emotion. Right, and so if anything times zero is a long-term memory. So you have the emotion. The emotion, no emotion. Right, and so if anything times zero is what? Zero. Zero, and you wonder why you don't remember the periodic table,
Starting point is 01:19:11 because there's zero emotion. And so what we're trying to, we're always trying to add emotion into this. That's why you talk about the power of motivation. So the affirmation in terms of like, in the dreams helps you remember saying affirming. I will remember my dreams dreams because that carries weight. Even just another pet peeve,
Starting point is 01:19:27 we did a whole episode on Thanksgiving on how gratitude rewires your brain for peace and prosperity and positivity. It's incredible, but even a little brain hack like changing God to get. You know, people say, I gotta pick up my kids, I gotta work out today, I gotta make the stupid brain smoothie or whatever.
Starting point is 01:19:44 What have you changed it from God, change that one, you know, that one O to an E. I get to pick up my kids today. I get to work out today, you know, I get to make a smoothie, whatever it is, it changes the feeling around it and the reason why gratitude is so important, and that's part of my morning routine also is I go through a process of what I'm grateful for. And I actually do this thought experiment. I would challenge everyone to do this with us or do this today. What if the only things you had in your life tomorrow were the things that you fully express gratitude for today?
Starting point is 01:20:17 Like what if the only things you kept tomorrow, your sense of sight, you know, you're the people in your life, anything or your bank account. What if the only thing to kept tomorrow were the things to express gratitude for today? And the reason why it's important is I believe there's a universal fundamental law of the universe that says what you appreciate appreciates. Like what you appreciate in your life appreciates and that's a hack for relationships right there. If it right. I mean, think about that. How many people just forget forget that in a relationship
Starting point is 01:20:46 to appreciate the other partner and you just, because you see them every single day. And you take it for granted. And because we always take for granted what's familiar. And the way you change that is to change your questions that you ask all the time. Because that takes your focus. Because there's always another level of depth
Starting point is 01:21:01 or gratitude or understandings. So going back to affirmations, that's the A. The M is managing your sleep. And that's important for lucid dreaming and it's important for remembering your dreams because if you can't manage your sleep, the M in dreams to remember your dreams, then you can't dream, right?
Starting point is 01:21:18 And so you're not getting to that RAM and that deep sleep. And so, you know, and we know all of, and you guys have talked about on your show, you know, all the brain hacks, right? You know, you, so it's, you know, the blackout curtains because a little bit of light could keep you away. It's getting off the screens and blue-block sunglasses and keeping your devices outside of the, outside of the bedroom and keeping it on the cold side and like the, the epsom cell magnesium baths, all in that, and the heater, the cold therapy. We all know these things, but manage your sleep and make it a priority. Like everyone thinks their alarm clock is,
Starting point is 01:21:48 you know, supposed to wake them up and that sure, that's a function of it. I would say that an alarm to when you go to bed, because that also, people don't realize to have sleep is the consistency of it. You know, like in terms of even at night, even on weekends, waking up at the same time is important also for your rhythms also as well.
Starting point is 01:22:05 So that's the M and finally the S in dreams which could help both lucid dreaming and remember your dreams, share, talk about it, get used to sharing your dreams with people around you because the more you talk about it, the more you give life to that, you give energy to it, you're more likely, you know, talk about your dreams and your lucid dreams that aren't, you know, you knowsyn-all, and then you share that. That would be interesting one about Deon Sanders' recent. Yeah, I shared a dream. You'll never forget that one.
Starting point is 01:22:33 We didn't forget that one. Oh, yeah, you did our audience, yeah. So sharing your dream, when you're passing it on, you're training yourself to make this thing important, and then see you build your intentions to be able to seek these things in the future. Have you had any, since you started doing this, have you had any epiphanies from your dreams?
Starting point is 01:22:50 Oh shit, that's the idea, or I'm gonna do that video or whatever. Completely, and so, one of my biggest challenges, and I don't talk this about this publicly, but for the last seven years, I've suffered from really bad sleep apnea. Growing up with, so growing up as a kid, my two biggest challenges were learning and public speaking, because I was phobic of having attention, right?
Starting point is 01:23:15 Which the universe has a sense of humor because that's all I do for my life as a public speak on learning. But I do believe our struggles could be strengths, right? When you overcome adversity, you build your ability to, and then when you could pay that forward, then you could find your purpose. Right? And so, but privately, I struggle with sleep apnea. And I've have CPAP specialized dental devices. And I've spent two weeks
Starting point is 01:23:40 with John of God in Brazil, you know, and I've had these one-on-ones with some of the best change workers on the planet. I have every biohacking and device, and I even had surgery with the head of, throw it at UCLA to be able to breathe, and it's just chronic, right? And it's a big challenge. And so my dream states are always few and far between
Starting point is 01:24:00 because of, I never get into that realm. Even when I wear these, the, you know, the aur rings, I see how many wakeups I have, I stop breathing 210 times a night. Oh, wow. You know, which is insane, because each time, each episode is at least 10 seconds. So imagine counting to 10,
Starting point is 01:24:13 and I, I know, I wake up suffocating, right? Even if I use the breathing device and all this stuff. So it's a little crazy. So that's my own personal challenge. But I still, you know, I meditate twice a day and I, part of my routine is my morning routine. I also do that. And, you know, I have a float tank in my home and I, you know, I do all these things to rejuvenate and I'm always very sensitive. But here's what, here's the, the, the gift is, and I've always trained myself and I offered this as a gift
Starting point is 01:24:39 to people who are listening that when we go through challenges, challenges, can lead to change. And I've trained myself to ask, to ask, what's this here to teach me? Where's the gift in this? And so with my learning, it's super charged my learning and my public speaking skills with the sleep. It's been really hard, but the gift I've gotten two gifts out of it. Number one, it's forced me to double down and lean into everything I teach. The reason why I do zero prep before I go on stage or before I do a podcast or anything
Starting point is 01:25:08 is I don't have to because this is what I live. All I'm doing is sharing with people what I do for sure. Because I would never be able to get the productivity and performance that I get on a regular basis, which I would think is five times what a lot of people are doing on such little sleep. Because for four and a half years, I slept two and a half hours a night. And we know the power of sleep knowing this, and I'm not advocating for it. It's not like I gained an extra five hours of productivity.
Starting point is 01:25:32 But the second gift is besides forcing me to do everything I teach, the second which is a gift into itself, the second gift is it's made my decision making extremely clear. Everything in my life is hell yes, and if it's not hell yes, it's hell no. You know what I mean? Because if I don't get completely aligned juice,
Starting point is 01:25:51 mentally, emotionally, physically, you know, just completely aligned, I just don't do it. Because one of the biggest stresses as we started this conversation is opportunity stress. You know, it could be, you could fly to Dubai and Hong Kong and do these talks or have lunch with it. You know, but then you get to really clear what's most important to you.
Starting point is 01:26:07 Like right now, there's nowhere I'd rather be, and there's no one I'd rather be with. And so I could be fully present, but that frees up my energy, because so many people, they're not, where they, they, they, they agree to so many things that they shouldn't be there, and they're, all their energy is spread out sporadically, and they wonder why they're depleted. But I could be completely present, completely energized because I wanna be here. And there's some kind of benefit viscerally in my nervous system knowing that I'm where I wanna be and because I'm making the decisions
Starting point is 01:26:34 to be where I wanna be. And I have to do it to protect, because when you don't sleep very much, you have to protect your energy, your time, your emotions, your temperament, and you can only give it into things that matter. So it's forced me to focus on the things that would just really win. So those challenges made you who you are.
Starting point is 01:26:51 I think all of our challenges have made us so we have. Absolutely. You've worked with some of the greatest, some of the greatest people you've just rattled off in this whole conversation. I want to take you back to some of them and ask you, I would love to hear, like, what was the most impactful thing that you did for someone like Will Smith? So in that level already, that's already kind of a bad ass, like, what did you bring to the table that impacted him? Yeah, I mean, so I can't talk a lot about some of the specifics that I've worked with
Starting point is 01:27:20 individuals. I mean, just like, you know, as personal trainers and people have worked with, you know, famous individuals, they've shown, maybe their workouts and such. At a high level, with Hollywood, specifically, I focus on reading while they're speed reading while the scripts, and not only that, but retaining the lines, because it's, some of these guys have to, and, you know, men and women have to retain pages and pages, dozens and dozens of pages of work. And it's a lot of mental, especially for the people I work with who are live. Like I've trained a lot of the top Ted Speakers or Broadway performers because there's no editing because that has to be done in a live setting.
Starting point is 01:28:01 I mean, some of the gifts I've gotten, you know, from what I've learned out of there are things like his magical question, and his commitment to discipline, you know, his, how he runs, and he reads all the time. You know, but, you know, we talk about the great thing about this is whether people are famous or not famous, they all, we're all the same. You know, we all have, there's a gap between where we are and where we want to be. And, you know, maybe people are famous, it's a little bit more extreme or on facing the world because they're more public. I remember being in his trailer just a couple weeks after he launches Instagram.
Starting point is 01:28:36 And that was kind of interesting to me because I was like, why'd you start it after all this time? And he was like, Jim, you know, we've had these all these conversations together. And usually all the stuff that I put out there is scripted by somebody TV or movies and you know, I want to talk about really what inspires me and what it really lights me up Because I believe guys that a lot of people who feel burned out or they feel tired all the time I think that's a common complaint, right?
Starting point is 01:28:58 If people feel like that. I feel like it's not because you're doing too much. You think it is But maybe it your feel burned out not because you're doing too much. You think it is, but maybe your feel burned out, not because you're doing too much, but maybe you're doing too little of the things that make you feel alive. For sure. You know what I mean? That's pretending too much.
Starting point is 01:29:14 Light you up. And pretending takes a lot of energy. You know what I mean? You have all these energy bodies. It's like this energy body you have on social media of this amazing life. And then you have this also this energy body Of like the person you fear that you are and then you have like your real self So I thought that's at least three different people and that takes a lot of energy putting that you know feeding that
Starting point is 01:29:35 And so out of it say is the people who are most successful whether it's the people I talked about whether it's the Elans the Will Smith The Richard Branson's the Elon, the Jim Carries. What I would find the commonality between all of them is going back to thermostat, is they feel 100% responsible for their life. And until we do that, we don't have anything, because then we're just a victim and we're just reacting to everything that goes on. But my big thing is just no matter where people are and the levels they are, we all have the same fundamental challenges.
Starting point is 01:30:09 We all have our suffering from digital overload, digital distraction, digital dementia, forgetfulness, absentminded, digital depression. We are so trained to compare ourselves to other people. What I would say is there's hope in that, here's the thing. One third of your potential is predetermined by genetics and biology. This is what science is saying. And people, it's pretty well accepted,
Starting point is 01:30:31 even like for example, your memory. One third of your memory is predetermined by genetics and biology. But two thirds is completely in your control. And those come back to those 10 things I talk about. I train. But the first thing I do again, go really rapid fire in term morning routine. First thing I do is remember my dreams. Second thing I do again, going really rapid fire in term morning routine,
Starting point is 01:30:50 the first thing I do is remember my dreams. Second thing I do to build my brain power is I make my bed. Some of you have heard this before, but I'm talking about this for years. It's just the reason why I make my bed is just what the rest of the reason they do it in the military, because how you do anything is how you do everything. And you want to start your day with excellence, because how long does it take to make your bed? Three minutes, right? Exactly. Max, right? But you could do that wonderfully perfect, right, then success, breed, success. You could stack and build positive momentum. And that's the key.
Starting point is 01:31:14 The game is the science of momentum, right? Starting a positive momentum because some of us, you know, we've been hit by a metaphorical Mac truck and you go and spiral down to negative momentum, right? And you start eating that bad food and you start going to realize, start binge watching everything on Netflix, right? But same thing with positive momentum. So you want to start with excellence. But the other reason why you make your bed, it's also another part of what makes your
Starting point is 01:31:35 brain good is a clean environment. You know, because you want to Marie Kondo your mind, right? Tidy, tidy environment is a tidy mind. Be your external world's reflection of your internal world. Plus also another reason you come back to, at the end of the day, you come back to a made bed. That's a great feeling. You know, when you go to a hotel room
Starting point is 01:31:52 and like the bed is all remade, you know, because they made it and they made it immaculate, you get to come back full circle to success, right? So that's why it's good for your brain. Another thing I do first thing in the morning, I brush my teeth and you're like, Jim, you don't even have to say that. Obviously, we all brush our teeth.
Starting point is 01:32:07 I brush my teeth with my opposite hand. All right, and the reason why it's good for your brain, again, you get yourself to do difficult things, right? Because how you do anything is how you do everything. So I, and it also trains me to be present. Because in order to do it, I have to be in the moment. Just to pay attention. I call that the stranger.
Starting point is 01:32:23 Exactly. He said, brush his teeth, bro. I know. That's it. Let's say that's the 11 thing he does. So, they didn't make the list. Training dragon.
Starting point is 01:32:35 Use your opposite hand and you're challenging yourself because it forces you to be present. And you do your stuff difficult things and then it brings you to be in the now and that's where you have the power. You don't have the power in the future, you don't have the power in the past. It's right in the now. Plus, the reason why you do your difficult things, and then it brings you to be in the now, and that's where you have the power. You don't have the power in the future, you don't have the power in the past, it's right in the now.
Starting point is 01:32:47 Plus, the reason why you do it, is there was a study done by Dr. Lawrence Katz, and he worked with seniors, and wanted to find out how to keep seniors' brains alive, you know, how to keep them agile and focused and strong. And he termed this like neurobics, where you could actually do little things, like eating with the opposite hand
Starting point is 01:33:06 Actually builds brain power. There was a study done at Oxford University Saying that jugglers have bigger brains and you guys juggle Yeah, so this guy's got really big big brains And that's what you bet there's a reason why is because the people who juggler in the juggle actually create more white matter And so this is a thing what I was saying as your body moves your brain groups It's not just a mind body connection There's a body mind connection and using different parts your brain like body like your left hand You actually stimulate the right side your brain which some people suggest is creativity imagination all those other activities
Starting point is 01:33:40 So brushing it through the opposite hand. I hydrate, you know, very specific, like structured water because this is the other thing, because, and this is obvious, but again, common sense is not common practice. So, as a coach, it's not always something like the newest sexiest thing. It's the back to the fundamentals, a reminder of what you do when you do it great,
Starting point is 01:33:59 is you could lose up to a pound of weight just in water, you know, with respiration and perspiration at night. And so hydrate, right? Because your brain is 75, you know, and people don't realize, we were talking, we did an episode on neuro-nutrition, which is basically what you eat matters, especially to your gray matter, and hydration should be part of that process. And just getting hydrated increases your reaction time, you're thinking about 30%.
Starting point is 01:34:24 You know, so stay hydrated. And also do some probiotics, because I'm really big. and just getting hydrated increases your reaction time. You're thinking about 30%. So stay hydrated and also do some probiotics because I'm really big. We've done episodes on your gut health because that's your second brain. So from there, I do a bunch of squats. I read this study in Appalachian State University saying once the best time to exercise, seven a.m. set,
Starting point is 01:34:42 one p.m. or seven p.m. Seven a.m., one p.m., seven p.m. And overwhelmingly it was 7 a.m. set at 1 p.m. or 7 p.m. 7 a.m. 1 p.m. 7 p.m. And overwhelmingly, it was 7 a.m. And you don't have to do your full workout, which you got to get your heart rate going for at least three or four minutes. So you could do some, you know, tbata's or you do some burpees, whatever, you know, calcetics because whatever is good for your heart is going to give you a head blood flow oxygen, you guys know this, but those people in that study that did at 7 a.m., they had also, besides the benefits, the other benefits that are obvious, they slept better.
Starting point is 01:35:12 You know, and that's obviously, that's the number one life hack, right? You sleep, you could do everything else, not sleep, and then how's your brain performing? So I do just three or four, it's not my full workout first thing in the morning, but it's, I just three or four minutes. And then I take a cold shower
Starting point is 01:35:25 when we always talk about cold therapy. Everyone knows what that is, lowers inflammation, resets your nervous system, doing difficult things also as well. I make a brain power smoothie. I always talk about, I could teach you how to memorize like maxes genius foods in like two minutes
Starting point is 01:35:43 if you guys want to do it. But I basically take 70% of those ingredients and put it into a blender and I just make a brain power smoothie. So the, you know, the 10 that he talks about and they're similar to mine, our avocados, blueberries, I call them brain berries, broccoli, which is really good, olive oil, eggs,
Starting point is 01:36:03 very neuro protective, green leafy vegetables, kale, spinach if you will. Also wild salmon are sardines, really good for the brain. Well, you put that in your shake. No, that's good. That's a good catch. And then I put, I actually put turmeric, but he puts wild grass-fed beef, which is good for the brain.
Starting point is 01:36:28 I put turmeric because I make this kind of golden, milk thing every morning with peppers, lowers inflammation, because I think inflammation leads to a lot of challenges when it comes to cognitive performance. Walnuts, which is kind of interesting, walnuts because they look like a brain. And so it's interesting in nature, I don't think there's science, real science behind this.
Starting point is 01:36:45 It's kind of like pseudoscience, but certain things in nature look like the organ that it's serving. If you cut a carrot, it looks like a human eye, right? Or if you cut a tomato, it looks like four chambers like in the heart, which is good for your heart also. But those are more in the monochem devices than anything. But the easy thing you remember, signature sign of nature goes and kind of tells you. And then a dark chocolate, very good for the brain.
Starting point is 01:37:07 Generally what's good for your mood is going to be good for your mind. So I put a lot of those ingredients into a blender, Vitamix, whatever. And then I just, I drink it, add some stuff to it. And then I journal, right, I do my gratitude. And then I also do my three things that I'm gonna accomplish personally and professionally. And it kinda goes on from there, but the most important thing is to do it consciously. Again, the, your success is hidden really
Starting point is 01:37:36 in our routines and best the first hour a day. And I know there are kids involved, there's all these other things, maybe you have to wake up a little bit early, go to bed a little bit earlier, whatever it is. But you have to prioritize that time because if you want to win the day, as we all hurt, you want to win the day, you got to win
Starting point is 01:37:52 the first hour of the day. It sets the intention. It's like when people pray over their food, even if they're not religious or they're whatever, they're stopping, they're becoming intent, there's an intention, they're aware about what they're about to do. Right, and if they're not watching Netflix
Starting point is 01:38:05 and some people have the bad habit of actually watching stuff and everything else, it's better to have the intention and peace and conversation, it's in your impaired sympathetic and that's rest and digest. And most people are watching like these shows, I put them in this, you know, fighter flight pair, you know, more sympathetic mode
Starting point is 01:38:20 and that's not great for digestion, either. I found quiet time also just creates more space in my mind, so literally sometimes doing nothing and just thinking not being on my phone and then I end up remembering more shit as a result. Yeah, I really think it's you hit the nail on the head, scheduling a white space in our days is so important. When even when you look at Warren Buffett's schedule,
Starting point is 01:38:41 he has a very few things on his schedule. He has so much white space for his reading and other things. Even Steve Jobs, he was just really, he was known for doing all these walking meetings, right? He would never be sitting around a boardroom, he would be walking around, and that's how you think. Because again, it's, again, you're creating a brain drive, neurotropic factors.
Starting point is 01:39:00 But you have to disconnect, to reconnect, and we've heard it, but we have to schedule it and make it a must for ourselves. And also when you're moving, it's been shown that when you do rhythmic activity, like an elliptical, or you're just doing a light walk, brisk walk, and you're listening to a podcast, you're gonna learn it better. Right, you're gonna be more creative, but that white space, it just doesn't happen by accident. You have to schedule that white space. Especially nowadays, that's for sure.
Starting point is 01:39:23 Because there's no, yeah, there's no downtime, your your time is like a vacuum and nature of horse a vacuum So something is gonna fill it unless you fill it with something that's intentional So when you were with your your friends dad and you were 18 he said read a book Did you just do that and then that was it? No, so what didn't and happening was I Left their home and I come back to school and I sitting at my desk and there's a pile of books that I have to read from midterms and a pile of books that I wanna read that I promise to read.
Starting point is 01:39:51 And I already couldn't get through pile A, right? So where do I have the time? I don't, so what do I do? I don't eat, I don't sleep, I don't work out, I don't spend time with friends. I literally just waste away and I just live in the library. And then one night, it was late at night, probably like two, you know, very late at night, I pass out and I fell down a flight of stairs in the library.
Starting point is 01:40:12 I hit my head again and I woke up two days later in the hospital. And at this point, I was down to 117 pounds. I was hooked up to all these IVs, malnourished, dehydrated, and I thought I died. And honestly, a part of me wished I did, because I felt like I was such a burden. I thought life was so unfair that I worked harder than anyone I knew, and I was just barely passing, right? It was so unfair life. And I didn't want to be a burden to my family.
Starting point is 01:40:39 It was a very dark, it was a really dark place. I get, like, shook up just thinking about this. So when I woke up, I just there, I thought there had to be a better way. And when I had that thought, the nurse came in with a mug of tea and illustrated on the side of that mug was a picture of Albert Einstein.
Starting point is 01:41:00 And it had these words. And it felt like he was speaking to me. These words you've heard before in different forms basically said the same level of thinking that's created your problem won't solve your problem. You know the same level of thinking that's created your problem. We all have problems in our life. You know I do an annual quick brain conference and in the audience recently I had a Quincy Drone and I was like, please come on stage because I, you know, I like glad you're participating,
Starting point is 01:41:25 but I would love to just, you know, there's so much wisdom here, right? We just celebrated last week as 86th birthday. And I was just like, everyone always talks about your successes. You know, all these, you know, thriller and we are the world, and that's amazing. Color purple is like, but I wanna know
Starting point is 01:41:43 about your problems. Like I wanna know what the difficult times, you know, what got you through all the problems you have in your life. And you're like, Jim, I haven't had any problems. And I'm like, no, I've saw the document. You know, I have seen, I know you, like, you get their challenges, right? You're like, no, I don't have problems. I have puzzles.
Starting point is 01:41:59 And I'm like, wow, talk about the change. You change one word. I would change your interpretation because automatically when I started using puzzles instead of problems, like, yeah, exactly. There's a solution, you can solve it and there's some kind of fun. And I made me ask this question, like, what's my problem? And how do I think differently? Like Einstein says, and I was like, my big problem is I'm a really slow learner.
Starting point is 01:42:23 And I was like, okay, how do I think differently about it? Well, maybe I can learn how to learn, right? And I was like, okay, then I asked the nurse for a course bulletin for next semester's classes. And I look at them all of the classes, hundreds of classes, but all classes on what to learn, zero classes on how to learn. All about what to learn, what to think, not how to learn, how to think. So I said my schooling aside, and I just start studying this thing called metal learning.
Starting point is 01:42:46 Like the riddle or the puzzle, like Quincy Jones said, but the puzzle I wanted to solve is, how does my brain work so I could work my brain? How does my memory really work so I could work with my memory? Work my memory practically, not the theory in an ivory tower stuff, because a lot of people, again, could quote like all this research and stuff, including with their body, but if their body doesn't exhibit that, then they
Starting point is 01:43:08 don't know it. You know what I mean? So, getting out of their ivory tower, what practical can I do? And I start studying adult learning theory, multiple intelligence theory. I start studying mnemonics. What did the ancient Greeks 3,000 years ago before there was printing presses? How do they remember? How do they pass on history?
Starting point is 01:43:25 What did the Indians do? Like their Native American? Like what did all these cultures do back then? And I started studying the old stuff and the new stuff. And speed reading, the monics, and everything, card counting, all this stuff. And I became obsessed about that. And then about 60 days into it, a light switch just flipped on. And it felt like I could understand things
Starting point is 01:43:45 for the first time. It felt like I had better focus. I felt like I could read something and retain what I was reading. And so my life completely changed. And through that enthusiasm, okay, with this start out as an enthusiasm, it started out as anger.
Starting point is 01:44:00 Because I was so pissed that I struggled my entire life. Never knew those things. And this could have been taught to me little things on how to study or when to study or how Roman therapy and music changes my brain. Like little things that are so easy to implement and I was just struggling just trying to work harder. I had that dull saw.
Starting point is 01:44:17 I was just trying to harder, harder, pull on nighters, not eat and I was just wasting away, right? And so I got angry and so I started, I was like, I was like, I'm gonna start helping, I started teaching all my friends and their grades started shooting up and then I wanted to just tutor it, right? And I found, so I started tutoring it
Starting point is 01:44:38 and I, one of my very first students, she was a freshman and she read 30 books in 30 days. Now, let's think it, not skim or scan, because I teach people routinely how to read three times faster with better comprehension. We have students in a hundred eighty countries, so we have a lot of data in terms of what works. My students, most traditional speed reading,
Starting point is 01:45:00 honestly, it's not speed reading. It's skipping words and scanning and skimming and getting the gist what you read. But I trained some of the top world leaders, financial advisors, attorneys, doctors. You don't want your doctor to get the gist of what she's doing. Right? Like that doesn't make a sense. So when I, she read this young lady,
Starting point is 01:45:17 read 30 books and really retained it. And I wanted to find out not how, right? I know I taught her how. I want to know why. I'm telling, like that is the magic question. Like why? What's the difference in terms of, it's not knowing because everyone knows but nobody's doing.
Starting point is 01:45:31 I want to know why. And then asking her, I found out her mother was dying of terminal cancer. Doctors gave her mom two months to live. 60 days, that's it. And the book she was reading were books to save her mom's life. And I was just like, and I to save her mom's life. And I was
Starting point is 01:45:45 just like, you know, I was 18 year old kid, right? I was like, good luck, you know, prayers, like six months later, I get a call from this young lady. And she's crying, she's crying, crying so much time goes by. She can't even get a word out of her. And I find out their tears of joy that her mother not only only survived but is really getting better. Doctors don't know how, they don't know why. The doctor is called the miracle. But her mother attributed 100% to the great advice she got from her daughter who learned her from all these books. And that's at that moment, I realize that if knowledge is power, learning is our superpower. That if the knowledge is power, learning is our superpower, and it's a superpower we all have inside of us.
Starting point is 01:46:27 And it's just we aren't shown how to unlock it. Because our brain is this incredible supercomputer, but it doesn't come with an instruction manual, right? And I really do believe that our life is like an egg. That if an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends. But if it's broken by an inside force, life begins. All great things begin on the inside. And everyone who's listening to this, I'm reminding you, you have greatness inside of you, you have genius inside of you. And when is now a good time to let it out? You know, so many
Starting point is 01:46:57 people are, they're so, they're diminishing themselves. They're dimming their light because it's shining in somebody else's eyes. And that's not the world we need in right now. Like for people that are bringing you down, friends, family members, I care about you, you can't change them, right? Think about how hard is it to change yourself? Much less change somebody outside of us, right? So you don't want to change.
Starting point is 01:47:17 Exactly. And the best we could do is to be an example for them. To show them that what we're doing in terms of everything that you're having, your practices and everything that you're talking about is to do it and prove it to them and being an inspiring example Because we can't have it too much light right now because it's not even a competition So if you were comparing themselves to other people all we and we know this we're just comparing ourselves to the person Where we're yesterday right and that and that that's all there that there there is and so we don't have to diminish it We could be able to light up.
Starting point is 01:47:45 And really the key is really believing in ourselves. Because this negative self-talk, we could just put an end to that. Like we all too busy, and that's such a, that's another pet peeve. People, you ask them how they're doing, and they automatically go, I'm just really busy.
Starting point is 01:47:58 You know, and basically what they're saying at a meta level, because there's always a secondary third level communication is, I'm important because if I, you know, because a secondary, third level communication is I'm important. Because if I, you know, because I'm so busy, I got must be important. And that's the secondary gain that people get out of that badge of honor, they're saying they're busy.
Starting point is 01:48:12 The problem is you start designing your life around being busy to maintain that and you wonder why you're stressed all the time. You know what I mean? Like for me, that people are busy busy all the time. I'm like, you gotta work a lot smarter than harder. I'm all for hard work and hustle, but I'm just saying, make sure you sharpen that saw.
Starting point is 01:48:30 You know, and so going to the, remember one third of your memories predetermined by genetics and biology, the really quick 10 things that are open up and unlock your quick brain. Number one is good brain diet. What do we matters, especially for your gray matter? And we talked about all those. Actually, let me show you how to remember Max's genius
Starting point is 01:48:47 who was real fast. Like literally two minutes, right? So an ancient memory device that how they, Greek orders used to memorize 2500 years ago, like poetry and their speeches, they would use something called the memory palace, right? And this is where you would understand that if you took information and turn it
Starting point is 01:49:07 into a visualization, you would remember it better because your visual cortex is just larger, right? And it takes it to be stored information. We remember more what we see than what we hear, right? You remember the face, you forgot the name. You go to someone and say, you know, I remember your face, but I forgot your name. You never go to someone and say the opposite.
Starting point is 01:49:23 You never go to someone and say, I remember your name, but I forgot your face. And that go to someone against the opposite. You never go to someone, say, I remember your name, but I forgot your face. You know, that would make a sense. There's a Chinese proverb that goes, what I hear, I forget, what I see, I remember, what I do, I understand, what I hear, I forget. You know, I heard the name, I forgot the name, what I see, I remember, I saw the face,
Starting point is 01:49:38 I remember the face, and what I do going back to the power practice, you understand, right? And so what I would say is, let's get it in our body. So they would store information in places. We don't realize this, but the human nervous system loves to store information in physical place and proximity.
Starting point is 01:49:57 Because let's say you're a hunter-gatherer, you know, it's all around survival and reproduction, you didn't need to memorize numbers and words and everything else like that. What did you need to remember? Where food was, where the clean water was, where the enemy tribe was, where the fertile, where was everything?
Starting point is 01:50:15 And so what knowing that, you would take a place that you're familiar with, maybe your home, your office, and you would take these designated places, like the fireplace, the bookshelf, the catstand, whatever, and you would store what you want to remember in those places. And then, so I'll give you the 10 tips, and then we'll actually do it together collectively everyone who's listening, and you're going to take a place where you're going to store information in these different places. And, but the first place we're going to store is on our body. And I'm going to give you a shopping list, which is going to be the best brain foods.
Starting point is 01:50:48 Right? And what we're going to do is 10 places on your body. So what everyone is watching this and listening to this, to the best your ability, be active. Because 20th century education prepared you for a 20th century world was passive. It was like, you were lectured to, and the human brain does not learn through consuming, it learns through creating. The human brain doesn't learn through consumption, it learns through creation. And so you can't be passively lectured to
Starting point is 01:51:17 and learn something, that just doesn't happen. Any more than listening to a passively to a podcast is gonna change your life. Active, because learning like life is not a spectator sport. You can't sit on the benches. So I'm gonna challenge everybody to do this with me and take time even if you're working out
Starting point is 01:51:34 or you're on whatever, pull over and do this because this could be worth everything for you. This is how you learn to give a TED talk without notes. Right? So 10 places on your body, everybody do this. Just touch the place and say the place. So one is top. Top.
Starting point is 01:51:49 Top of your head. Two is nose. Three is mouth. And four are your ears. Here's. Five is your throat. Throat. Six.
Starting point is 01:52:00 Shoulders. Shoulders. Seven. Collar. Collar. Eight fingers. Eight fingers. Nine belly. nine belly, ten seat here we are in. Ten butt. So let's do the N1 is top, two is mouth, throat, shoulders, collar, fingers, stomach, booty.
Starting point is 01:52:23 Right, good. So these are 10 places. Now what we're going to do is next time you're at the health food store, let's say somebody calls you up, right? One of these guys calls you up and say, hey, we're going to do a mind pump, barbecue. Can you stop by the store and pick up these 10 things, right? And when you pick up, you can't talk. You can't write anything down because you picked up the phone, you're driving or you're in the shower. I don't know why you pick up, you can't talk. You can't write anything down, because you picked up the phone, you're driving,
Starting point is 01:52:45 or you're in the shower, I don't know why you pick up the phone in the shower, but you can't write something down. And you're like, oh, perfect, I'll just throw it on my body, and I'll remember it. So here's the key, using imagination, being playful because children are the fastest learners. That's how they learn, using imagination.
Starting point is 01:52:59 And the power of your imagination could change your health. I don't know if you saw this study. It was by Ellen Langer, and you're like, this guy goes through so many stories, but this is how we embed things, and you learn it really well. And the reason why I mentioned celebrities is not to drop names, it's to drop triggers.
Starting point is 01:53:16 So next time you watch their movies, you see their Instagram, it reminds you, oh, that was my lesson. Next time you watch a Marvel movie, you have a great responsibility, comes great power. You see Richard Branson, you see Will Smith on Instagram, whatever, you're like, oh, how do I make this moment, even more magical?
Starting point is 01:53:29 So Ellen Langer at Harvard, she's a Harvard psychologist. In 1979, she was at a senior center nursing home. And she was like, this is a really dreary, non-inspiring place to live your final days. And she's like, I'm gonna do an experiment. What if we rewind time in their minds, in their psychology, would it affect their physiology? And she took eight guys and put them into
Starting point is 01:53:53 kind of refitted like a little monastery. So instead of 1979, it was 1959. And so the Time Magazine articles were from 1959. The television was black and white, introducing people like recordings. They took all the mirrors out so they couldn't see themselves and they replaced and they said, hey, we just want you to pretend like it's 1959 as if you're living and for one week live here and do that. And when they got out of the van going to the monastery, they were senior.
Starting point is 01:54:24 They took them apart from the walk, they had their arthritis and they took pictures of them before they go in. And then seven days later, they let them out, right? And it was like a totally different group of guys. And empirically, the difference was they were physically stronger. So they did strength test. They were physically stronger after seven days. They had their sense of hearing and sense of sight were heightened, right, because they tested these all before and after. And their cognitive memory and focus was better. And they took pictures of them,
Starting point is 01:54:56 and then they showed a focus group before and after. And they're like, which one is the older photo? They might have many years. And they all chose the, which one, the older photo, if I have many years, and they all chose the older photo, they all chose like the older, the younger, which one's the younger one, the later photo, by two years difference. And that was just like the power of expectation, the power of belief. And they repeated this study in Great Britain and South Korea, but that's just the power of your mind and visualization.
Starting point is 01:55:23 So, and I really do believe, is very timely conversation because where jobs are going right now, it's like three places. It's going AI, right? You know jobs are being lost to artificial intelligence, automation, software that could do your taxes and everything else, then this can take away jobs and Asia, right? Everything's being outsourced to the different countries that are for cheaper. Where are value in humanity? Because it's no longer muscle power, it's mind power.
Starting point is 01:55:54 It's not brute strength. It's our brain strength that adds value. The faster you can learn, the faster you can earn. Three areas to double down on, creativity, Your ability to be creative problem solving, imagination, you know, like you as exemplifies taking the invisible and making it visible, because it always success is always an inside-out process, and the third thing is strategy, you know what I mean?
Starting point is 01:56:17 Coming up with strategy. So what we're doing right now in this exercise is exercising our creativity, our imagination, and our strategy building muscles. So this is a practice. So top of your head, right? You have, now I'm gonna ask them, give you the 10 foods, avocados.
Starting point is 01:56:33 So just put avocados on your head. Now you have to visualize it because that's where you're gonna remember it. And the more, remember, information is forgettable but information combined with what? Emotion becomes a long-term memory, so make it funny or disgusting. We just did, yeah.
Starting point is 01:56:47 He did the avocado son. He did the avocado son. Peel the avocado. There you go. Can we see that? So that's avocado, and you always remember that. Two, second place is what? No, no.
Starting point is 01:56:57 No, it's no, I wouldn't remember blueberries. Blueberries. I call them brain berries, coming out of your what? No. And that's all you have to do. Smell them, imagine it, whatever. What do you think your nose do? Exactly.
Starting point is 01:57:07 I've never done that before. Yeah. So that's blue berries. So just remember them coming in your nose. You'll never forget it. Blueberries, somebody just came over and putting blueberries in your nose. Would you ever forget that?
Starting point is 01:57:17 10 years later would you ever forget it? I know, I have it. No, that's how long-term your memory could be, right? Third place is what? Mouth. Mouth. Broccoli. I want you to remember broccoli. So somebody-
Starting point is 01:57:27 Just stuck in my teeth. Yeah, but just exaggerate a little bit so it's like a big stalk of broccoli, right? Exactly. Fourth place are your what? Years. Years? Olive oil.
Starting point is 01:57:38 Olive oil. What do you picture in your everyone? Oh, I massage my ears with olive oil every night. Smirry, yeah. Like a wet willy. I give you a wet willy with some olive oil. Yeah, yeah. Or maybe you have olive earrings
Starting point is 01:57:48 or whatever would it be this different, right? Or if it's the same, then don't use that. All right, so that's four. Number five is what? Throw. Throwed eggs, very neuroprotective. Very, very eggs. So, stuck in my throat, maybe,
Starting point is 01:57:59 when you just follow the whole thing. There you go. So instead of a Adam's apple, you use eggs. And you're through. I have an example. Okay, great. That's number five. Six are your what? Shoulders, shoulder, green leafy vegetables. So imagine like shoulder pads versus made a kale. Yeah. Shoulder pads made a kale. Yeah, it's finished, right? New style. See it? Feel it. So you would what you don't want to do is like, oh, I like that,
Starting point is 01:58:20 but you have to see it, right? Number seven is your what? Color. Color. Wild salmon and sardines. So a necklace made out of wild salmon and sardines. It keeps the girls away. There you go. Fish necklace keeps the girls away. And you always remember that.
Starting point is 01:58:35 That's number seven. Eight are your what? Fingers. Fingers. I'm gonna go a little different than what Max, I like it. He talks about grass-fed beef. I want turmeric. So just imagine turmeric all over your fingers. He talks about grass fed beef. I want turmeric. So just imagine turmeric all over your fingers.
Starting point is 01:58:48 Orange stuck on your finger. Yeah, exactly. You can't get it off of your fingers, right? That's number eight. Nine is your belly, so it's walnuts. So walnuts coming out of your what? Belly button. So imagine just eating walnuts coming out of your belly button.
Starting point is 01:59:04 Yeah, I'm sure and I'm super great. Right, fighting in E, really good, excellent belly button. And finally, 10th place is your what? Your butt. Dark chocolate. That's easy, that's easy. I don't even want to know what you guys are doing. Just whatever you're picturing.
Starting point is 01:59:18 Let me show the stripper. There you go. I'm not gonna go there, but it does. All right. So now you're at the supermarket. You don't have your list, but you got the list on your body. And you're having this mind pump barbecue full of brain foods. I can already see it on your head. And then what are the, let's just do it.
Starting point is 01:59:39 Everybody who's listening, I challenge people to do this and take pictures of this episode post the 10, 10 things. But the number one is what? Avocado, blueberries, broccoli, olive oil, sardines or salmon, your throat is eggs. Eggs. After eggs is... Shoulders, so that was the green vegetables.
Starting point is 01:59:57 The green vegetables. Then you got the sardines and the salmon. Yeah, the car. The turmeric on your fingers. The bellies, the walnuts. The walnuts and the dark chocolate you poop. That's amazing. And the turmeric on your fingers. Your belly is a walnut. And then dark chocolate you poop. That's amazing. It's incredible, right? And you learn that like like
Starting point is 02:00:10 two minutes. Can you do it backwards even? Yeah. Yeah. Good. Dark chocolate, walnuts, and then salmon, and leafy. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Sorry. Tumeric. And then salmon, and then on the shoulders, it's the leafy greens. Broccoli, egg, and... Yeah, let's see where else it is.
Starting point is 02:00:31 Broccoli, blueberries, and broccoli, blueberries, I'll go. And this one. All the way up. You guys got it. So it's amazing. So that's how your memory works. So if you want to be able to memorize, let's say, and you'll remember this, like you guys attest yourself like the next couple of days, just don't remember this.
Starting point is 02:00:44 And I challenge everybody who's listening to this to teach somebody else the same list because these are the foods that are good. This is neuro-nutrition. Your brain needs different things than your body needs. So that's a little bit of correcting a myth that they're exactly the same, but your obviously your brain is part of your body.
Starting point is 02:01:01 And now, that's the number one is a good brain diet. So what I want you to do at a meta level, let's also talk about 10 to 10 keys. I want you to remember these 10. So imagine you have to give a TED talk on the 10 keys for unlocking what I call your quick brain. So the first one is a good brain diet. The second thing, and what I want everyone to do as you're writing notes, is rate yourself zero to 10.
Starting point is 02:01:21 So on a scale of zero to 10, that's what a coach does, right? They do an assessment in terms of your baseline, zero to 10, So on a scale of zero to 10, that's what a coach does, right? They do an assessment in terms of your baseline, zero to 10, how good is your diet? And see, like, yeah, you can learn the best speed reading, memory, learn languages, technique, and more than just, but if you're not eating the right foods, that could be like one thing. Everyone wants to know what the one thing is.
Starting point is 02:01:37 There's no magic pill, there's a magic process. So I'm giving everyone the process by the pill. So here you go. So good brain diet. Number two, killing ants. Killing ants is clinically proven to be good for your brain, cognitive performance. I love killing ants. Yeah, ants that are negative. Ants dance for automatic negative thoughts. See, it's a term that I got from Dr. Daniel Aiman who wrote change your brain, change your life.
Starting point is 02:02:01 But your thoughts matter, especially to your gray matter. We talked about, here's the thing, your brain is like a super computer and your self-talk is a program that will run. So if you tell yourself you're not good at remembering names, you will not remember the name and next person you meet because you program your super computer not to. So automatic negative thoughts, you want to be able to keep them positive. We already talked about changing your your gods to get. You know, I get to work out, I get to pick up my kids. We always talked about putting a little word like yet at the end, you know I don't have a great diet yet, you know, I'm not smart enough yet
Starting point is 02:02:29 Whatever it is but monitor yourself talk because your mind is always eavesdropping on yourself talk All right number three a third critical key now reach yourself zero to 10. How's your you know level of negativity? Number three is movement All right, so I scaled zero to 10. How much are you moving? Ready to talk about as your body moves, your brain grooves, that sitting down all day, sitting as a new smoking.
Starting point is 02:02:54 And I'm not just talking about working out for an hour or four times a week. We're talking about, this is our movement culture. This is what we're doing. We're going for walks, we're making deliberate time to do it. In fact, we should be taking a break as you're studying and learning every 25, 30 minutes because they call it the Prado's principle.
Starting point is 02:03:12 That after 25, 30 minutes, your focus goes down and Prado, you know, in Italian it's a tomato. They have this tomato timer to go off and it reminds you, hey, just take a five minute brain break. And what do I do during my brain break? I move, like we're talking about now, I hydrate because, you know, water is important, and I do deep breathing. You know, alpha breathing, deep breathing, box breathing,
Starting point is 02:03:33 fire breathing, whim Hof breathing, whatever it is, but a lot of people are lethargic and they go to food. It's not the food, it's hydration and the oxygen. That's so really more critical. So if you have brain fog or thinking, and also part of it's posture, because a lot of people when they're sitting, their chests are like claps, their diaphragm, and the lower one third of your lungs absorbs two thirds of the oxygen. So a lot of people when they're reading, they start falling asleep, it's because of more
Starting point is 02:03:59 of their physiology, it's affecting their psychology. So on a scale of zero to ten, how much are you moving? Number four, brain nutrients. Brain nutrients is basically, maybe you have a fast food lifestyle, you're not getting all the nutrients from your diet. And so maybe, because if you're long in B vitamins, that's gonna make a difference.
Starting point is 02:04:16 So do a test, right? Or get a functional medicine, like nutrient density test. If you're at low, number one, brain nutrient, DHAs, right? You're omega-3s. So very important, your brain is very, it's very fatty. Totally.
Starting point is 02:04:29 Yeah, absolutely. So that's the thing. You can learn all the strategies, but your hardware has to be set, right? Also, so it's like what I'm talking about to have a quick brain, you have hardware, which we're talking about now, and then software. That's the processes on how to learn all these things.
Starting point is 02:04:41 But you gotta make sure your hardware's, because more people update their phones and then they do their brains, you know, their minds, if you will. And that's what I'm really communicating. That's number four. Now, on scale of zero to 10, maybe you know or you don't know,
Starting point is 02:04:53 but you might be lacking in certain things. Number five, positive peer group. We already talked about all of these, actually, because I built them into all the stories. But number five is positive peer group, who you spend time with, who you become. We talked about the marinara neurons that we started adopting the habits and attitudes, actions and standards of the people around us. So, you know, on a scale of zero to 10, how
Starting point is 02:05:11 many energy vampires you have in your life. Because you could do all this, everything, eat the best diet in the world, but spend time with the wrong people and that's going to affect your learning, your potential, and your performance. Because positivity and performance is contagious, right? And so get around those, those kind of people that are encouraging you, challenging you, your tribe and everything. That's number five. Number six, and I'm gonna teach you how to memorize all these.
Starting point is 02:05:32 Number six is a clean environment. We already talked about that. Your external world is a reflectionary interworld. You know, as you clean your desktop and your computer, I mean, don't you have a clarity of thought? Also, you clean things, you know, a tidy, tidy environment, tidy mind. And also when I say clean environment, also talking about the things like we did an episode on,
Starting point is 02:05:50 you know, invisible supervillains, stuff you've ties have talked about like, you know, air quality, you know, that's a clean environment because that could, you know, affect your, your performance. Light, lighting, you know, could make a big difference in your performance, right? Water also, also as well EMFs, you know, we can get into so that's number six seven sleep Enough said three reasons consolidate short to long term memory so on scale zero to 10 you can be doing all that have crappy sleep so and then so zero to 10 how well is how good is your deep is your sleep? And so you want to do a consolidate short totime memory, clean the plaque out of your brain that leads to brain aging challenges,
Starting point is 02:06:27 and dreaming, we do this whole thing about dreaming. Number eight, brain protection. You know, I got to participate in some of the things that were going on for concussion, for that movie that came out, you know, I'm very concerned about head trauma. Like I remember years ago, cause I'm mixed on this, because I move,
Starting point is 02:06:43 and I don't, I don't, just why I like to, like, spar and box and but I hate it because you know all the research saying your brain is resilient but it's fragile. I remember years ago I got a message in my phone from Sebastian Stallone, you're like this guy drops a lot of names, but watch where to listen kiss. He was like Jim you want to come over to my place to watch the Pacquiao Mayweather fight. I'm like yeah do I I wanna watch the biggest fight ever with Rocky?
Starting point is 02:07:06 Yeah, I totally wanna do that. So I go down street, go to his place, and I'm sitting on the couch, guys. And it's me here to my left is Sylvester Stallone, and to his left is Arnold Schwarzenegger. And we watched the fight, and I was like, yeah, and afterwards I'm like genius leaves clues. So I got to ask these guys questions. I was like, what does and afterwards, I'm like genius leaves clues. So I got to ask these guys questions.
Starting point is 02:07:25 I was like, what does it take to be like up there, you know, fighting $300 million and just like at the highest level? What's the difference between an amateur and a champion? And he was like, Jim, the difference between an amateur and a champion, this is Arnold said. The difference between an amateur and champion is a champion's willing to push past the pain period.
Starting point is 02:07:43 And I was just like, wow, you know, we get getting uncomfortable again. And then I was asking Stallone about like, making the decision about certain things. Should I do this, should I do this? And I was like, Jim, and he asked this, he's asked the same kind of question. He said, will the pleasure be worth the pain?
Starting point is 02:08:00 You know, so it's highly sensitive to how we feel going back to like our willpower and motivation to be able to do something new. But coming back to this as a story, protect your brain, wear a helmet, extreme sports, just be careful. Number nine, new learnings. And there's a study done, talk about longevity. They had these nuns, I don't know if you guys saw this on a cover time magazine. They wanted to find how these nuns were living 80, 90, and above. What was the secret to this community of women that were living so long?
Starting point is 02:08:30 They found out half of it had to do with their emotional gratitude and faith. The other half, they were dedicated life-long learners. Because they were learning every single day, it added years to their life, but not only years to their life, life to their years. Because we want to grow older, but we don't want to like lose all that function and then vitality. So new learnings, and then finally, number 10, stress management.
Starting point is 02:08:51 And this is a huge one. If you want an active, super brain, you don't realize how much stress you're under unless you're like, you know, on a beach somewhere, right? And so what I'm saying is, chronic stress shrinks your brain. And you know, cortisol, adrenaline, fight or flight, it's not good if you need to take a test or give a TED talk or meet someone for the first time. So those are the 10 keys for unlocking your quick
Starting point is 02:09:12 brain. Now, rate them 0 to 10. Everybody, because self-awareness is a superpower. And really quickly, I want to show you how to memorize these 10 things so you can give a TED talk on it. Okay. So now, instead of taking your body, because you use your body, you could use your home because imagine you could take 10 plays in your home. Imagine yourself like right now in your doorway of your living room or kitchen, you just see go clockwise. You take this, this, this, this, this, this, right. And so what I want everyone to do is do this with me.
Starting point is 02:09:42 Actually, let me, let me first sake of time some place, because we're only use different places. Let me just use my office, all right? So like, I'm gonna walk you through my office and then walk you through a journey. And I'm gonna tag the 10 things, I'm gonna take the first tip, put in the first place, second tip and then second place. Now by the way, if you've ever found yourself saying
Starting point is 02:09:58 in the first place this and the second place that, you know that language, that came from this 2500 year old memory technique. But that technique, I'm bringing it, you know, I'm bringing it back because I feel like we need it. But that's how we used to remember things. But the technique disappeared, but the languaging is still there. It's interesting.
Starting point is 02:10:16 So everyone take a deep breath, exhale. And then just, I want you to imagine, if you can't close your eyes as you're listening to this, this helps with your focus. I want you to imagine you're on a plane and I'm based in LA and in New York. I'm an office in Westchester, New York, home in the X-Men, by the way. I'm putting that out there. My favorite superheroes were the X-Men growing up because as a kid, they weren't the smart, the strongest, but they were mutants.
Starting point is 02:10:45 They didn't fit in. I felt like growing up as a kid, I didn't fit in. I read when I was nine years old in the comic book that the X-Men school was in Westchester, New York. I lived in Westchester, New York. Every weekend, when I was nine, I used to ride my bicycle around my neighborhood trying to find that school.
Starting point is 02:11:05 You know, Charles Xavier, Professor X School, for the gifted. It's kind of interesting, because there's a big lesson here. Years ago, I got a call from the chairman of 20th Century Fox, and I did a program for him on Friday for his executive team. And afterwards, he was like blown away. He was like, this is the best training we've ever done for our team.
Starting point is 02:11:22 And he walks me around the Fox lot, and Hollywood, I've never been on a studio before. And there was this movie poster of Wolverine. And I was like, I can't wait for that movie to come out because it wasn't come out for a few months. And he picks up his phone and then, you know, like five minutes later, I'm in the Fox theater with 3D glasses watching Hugh Jackman fight all these super. No, you do that.
Starting point is 02:11:39 That was so awesome. That's crazy. So crazy out of Friday afternoon. And after he gets me, he was like, Jim, how's the movie? Because he knows I'm like, he's, I was like, this is so, we're so crazy. I loved about it. And he was like, you don't know this,
Starting point is 02:11:50 but I had the broken brain and learning challenges. Couldn't read, read comic books, favorite comic, X-Men, write my bicycle around town, looking for the X-Men school. He's like, Jim, I didn't know you liked superheroes. How'd you like to go to Comic Con? You guys know a Comic Con? Yeah, of course.
Starting point is 02:12:02 So he's, I was like, when's Comic Con? He's like, it's day, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And automatically, I'm like acting nine years old, but I'm become 99 years old. Because my critic was like, oh, I'm like, I get to San Diego from LA, and I have all these meetings here in LA, and like goes to me traffic, and I'll have tickets,
Starting point is 02:12:15 wait on lines, I'm looking where. And he's looking at me, he's like, perplexed. He's like, Jim, you wanna go and go and tomorrow. I'm like, yeah, there's Chairman's, he has 20-century Foxes going, I wanna go with you. So he picks me up the next morning, Saturday morning at my hotel, and instead of driving, we get on his plane.
Starting point is 02:12:29 I swear to you, we get on the plane, we're the last ones to board, and the entire cast of X-Men's on the plane. They're gonna surprise Comic Con, make a surprise, because they're gonna, like, announce X-Men days of future past, and they're gonna surprise them. And I don't even see like Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart.
Starting point is 02:12:46 I see like Professor Axe Wolverine. I'm sitting between Jennifer Lawrence, Hollywood gonna Comic Con, right? It's like awesome. The day ends, we come back and the chair was like, how's your day? I was like, this day was amazing. Thank you so much.
Starting point is 02:12:58 Like he has changed my life. And he's like, I have something else for you. I'm like, I don't want anything else. What can I do for you? He's like, Jim, they really loved you. How would you like to go on set? I was like, what do you mean? I was like, we have something else for you. I'm like, I don't want anything else. What can I do for you? He's like, Jim, they really loved you. How would you like to go on set? I was like, what do you mean? I was like, we have another 30 days
Starting point is 02:13:08 of filming the new X-Men movie and Montreal, you know, how would you like to go? And he was like, I can totally, I want to totally do that. What can I do for you though? He was like, do what you did for us? Teach him how to speed read scripts, memorize lines, be focused, present.
Starting point is 02:13:19 I was like, I can totally do that. Next morning, where I'm what they call the X-Jet, Sunday morning, flying to Montreal, and I get to brain train. Next morning, where I'm what they call the X-Jet, Sunday morning, flying to Montreal, and I get to brain train like my heroes, right? And the very first scene that they filmed was shot in the X-Men's school. And I got to see my superheroes come to live, like right in this X-Men's school
Starting point is 02:13:39 that I've always been looking for. I spend the week there, but even better than that, I get back home to New York, and I open my package the size of that plasma TV and it's that photo. It's me and the entire cast of X-Men. Jennifer Lawrence, Holly Berry, Patrick Stewart, Michael Fastbender, James McAvoy, the entire cast, but better than the photo was the note. It said this from the chairman. Thank you so much for sharing your superpowers with all of us. I know since you were child, you've been searching for your superhero school.
Starting point is 02:14:11 Here's your class photo. Oh, how, let's talk about leadership. Please tell me that's like frame. That's my, this is like your house. Please. I permanent Twitter, Facebook, cover profile, photo, you know, my cover photo, but it's like that playfulness. What allowed that to happen was this idea of like,
Starting point is 02:14:29 you know, like looking for your superhero school. And I've never really found my superhero school, so that's why I created my podcast, my show and everything else like that, because I want everyone's superpowers to be on leash. So anyway, my office is in Westchester, New York. So imagine everybody now, you're taking the plane and it lands in Westchester Airport
Starting point is 02:14:49 and, you know, car service comes, pick you up. You're in the backseat and it's a suburbia, right? I want you to imagine you're there. Even if you can't imagine it, imagine you could imagine it, right? So the car picks you up and I'm gonna name 10 places in my office just for speed of time and then I'm gonna take the 10 keys for unlocking your quick brain and put one in each place.
Starting point is 02:15:09 So it's a big glass building. Trees everywhere. The first place is the parking lot. So I want you to say I allowed for your auditory memory. What's the first place? Parking lot. Parking lot. When you get out, there's a good brain diet waiting for all of you.
Starting point is 02:15:20 All the best brain foods there, we have a big brain buffet fight. And the food fight, right? Oh, and there's avocado. What are some of the foods there, by the way? Yeah, avocado, blueberries, sardines, broccoli, dark chocolate, walnuts, turmeric, green leafies. And that's a testament because when you understand how your memory works, you can work your memory.
Starting point is 02:15:41 And what if everything, what if you can improve your business vocabulary like 10 words a day or learn 10 language, like words language words with a day. What if you could be able to remember everyone's name just as easily. So that's a good brain diet. You go from there and there's a waterfall
Starting point is 02:15:53 crits a little mode around the building. So you have to cross a bridge to get there. So that's the second place. What's the second place? Bridge. And with your eyes closed, just match your cross in the bridge and you're killing ants.
Starting point is 02:16:03 Stepping on ants, automatic negative thoughts. Remind you of that, because remember, you're gonna give a TED talk on Monday morning, you need to remember these 10 things in order. Okay, so you step on all the ants, you would never do that, but that's why you remember it. You go into the building, third place is the elevator. What's the third place?
Starting point is 02:16:17 Elevator. Elevator, you get into the elevator, and it's what? Exercise. So whatever it is, your exercise, you're doing your exercise routine in that elevator with your trainer. It's a gym in the elevator first of all. There you go.
Starting point is 02:16:29 That's your brain gym. You're doing it right there in the elevator. And that's remind you exercise. From there, you walk out to the fourth place, which is the elevator opens, right in front of you is the hallway, what's the fourth place? The hallway.
Starting point is 02:16:40 You see the carpeted hallway, and you see on the floor, all these brain bottles of brain vitamins, right? All these bottles of brain vitamins and there maybe they're big bottles of brain vitamins And you're jumping over them like you're Indiana Jones lower craft Donkey Kong whatever jumping over big bottles And see all the DHAs, the Gingos, the B vitamins, Coling, whatever big bottles of vitamin You're jumping over you'll never forget that you open the to the office, immediately to the left is the fifth place, which is the closet. What's the fifth place?
Starting point is 02:17:07 Closet. And inside there is the fifth brain tip, which is the positive peer group. I want you to see all your happy friends in the closet. They're stuffed in there. All your happy friends are hanging out in the closet. All right, they're just running. I'm gonna let them out.
Starting point is 02:17:20 They're gonna close it. Yeah. They're real, they're all happy and they're really amazing. They're in the closet, right? They're real. They're all happy and they're really amazing. They're in the closet, right? They're cheering for you and they're closet. You go from the closet to six place, which is the receptionist. What's the six place? Receptionist.
Starting point is 02:17:33 And the receptionist is cleaning the environment. Like OCD, bleaching, mopping, vacuuming, everything has its place, clean environment. And then just notice that. You got to see that. And then behind the clean environment, next place is the fish tank. What's this? What's the seventh place? Fish tank. And they're all sleeping. All right, sleeping with the fishes. But imagine the sleep. They're in the bunk beds. They're wearing their pajamas. They're snoring. Nemo is there and Dory. They're all sleeping. All right, you see them all there? Sleeping. Good. After that, you walk over to a classroom,
Starting point is 02:18:05 we're going to take, let's say we're going through a speed reading class, the eighth place is the door, the doorway, but it's closed. What's the eighth place? Door, or way, and it's closed. So you put on a helmet to remind you of brain protection, like wear a helmet, and you put it on and you headbutt the door open and it shatters. Right. And then the ninth place in front of you is the whiteboard. It was the ninth place. And I there, writing the words new learnings. Like that's a remind you new learnings. I'm listening on my favorite books, new learnings, right? New learnings.
Starting point is 02:18:31 Because that's how you create neurogenesis, neuroplasticity, novelty. And then finally, on the side of the room are all these bonsai trees, bonsai trees. All right, Japanese plants. And I want you to imagine stress management. So whatever relieves stress for you guys, whatever your practice is, do that on the bonsai trees.
Starting point is 02:18:47 Oh. Oh. I like that. Like massage or meditate. Whatever you're doing, having a glass of red wine, whatever, but stress management, but associated to the bonsai tree. All right.
Starting point is 02:18:58 Now, you guys are on stage, and you don't need to memorize things for beta. I mean, there's a different strategy. I did two episodes on how to do things for beta and poetry and what I do for Hollywood actors. But let's say you just need to remember the points. That's what you need to remember. So you know, it doesn't sound wrote. But the problem is if you go to answer someone's question, you come back and you're like, oh, where was I?
Starting point is 02:19:19 I went on a lot of tangents in this conversation, right? But I always came back to where I left off, because I remember where I left off, because you could do that because you have things on your, you know, on your body or in your office or wherever. So now you're on stage. What's the first brain tip walking? Well, parking lot first. It's parking lot.
Starting point is 02:19:36 Yeah. And the brain food. And you walk over to the bridge and what does it remind you of? Dance. And you get into the elevator. Exercise. Exercise.
Starting point is 02:19:44 You open the elevator immediately. There's the brain fall way. All the hallways. Yeah, all you get into the elevator exercise you open the elevator immediately. There's the All the brain vitamins the brain supplements good and then you open up the closet inside the closet are your Happy friends positive peer group six plays the receptionist is cleaning cleaning the environment behind the receptionist is the what fish fish tank What are they doing sleep sleeping Ryan. Sleeping, Ryan, you asleep. The door is closed, what do you do? Break it with your head. Break it with your head. Put your helmet on.
Starting point is 02:20:10 Protect your brain. In front of the room is a what? Is the, is I'm drawing on the what? Wipe-or, wipe-or. And what are we learning? New learnings. And finally, the bonsai trees are mind you of what? Smoke and weed.
Starting point is 02:20:22 Here. Stress management. Here we go. Excellent management. There you go. Excellent man. Yeah, awesome. Good times brother. You guys rock this. That's awesome.
Starting point is 02:20:30 That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome.
Starting point is 02:20:38 That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. I feel like you're a thermostat because you're doing the work and you're doing. And I have such a big respect for you guys and everyone's listening because I feel like the world needs more people who really follow through.
Starting point is 02:20:51 And I feel like success is half and half. It's showing up and what you show up playing full out. And that's really the secret of success. Thank you very much. Amazing. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate you guys. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.
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