If you're struggling in life WATCH THIS | Jim Kwik

now the metaphor i'm using for what's going on right now is that of a butterfly a butterfly because while the beauty is in the butterfly the growth happens where in the cocoon and don't you feel like you're cocooning or you're physically distancing yourself so i'm going to share with you right now five quick things you could do to be able to come out of this cocoon with your brand your business stronger faster better all right stronger faster and better well because while the caterpillar feels like it's the end of the world it becomes that butterfly but it's that creature's will and to get out of the cocoon that builds the strength to be able to soar to new heights and in limitless i have a quote from a french philosopher says life is the c between b and d life is c between b and d you're like jim what are you talking about it doesn't make any sense b stands for birth d stands for death c what do you think c stands for choice the power of choices your business your brain your body your life is a reflection of all the choices you made up to this point true or false right the sum total of all the choices and we always have that choice you always have the ability to make a decision and i believe that these difficult times can define us these difficult times can diminish us or these difficult times can develop us but we decide we always decide so here are five things you could do while you're cocooning for you your family your team to come out of this stronger when i'm done with this i'm going to share with you the limitless model which is the core of this book it's a three-part framework for accelerated learning and it becomes a lens to look at what keeps us truly limited and how do we redraw the borders and boundaries of what's really possible it's also a framework for tapping human capital because that's as you know the largest line item of any spreadsheet and so how do you get the most out of your team so here we go five choices you can make while you're cocooning to come out of this stronger i'm gonna make them five c's i tend to alliterate everything use acronyms simple memory devices so you can store it in your mind even without you don't take notes so the first c rapid fire is clarity clarity clarity is power when you're going a million miles an hour throughout your day when are you taking a pause to say am i going in the right direction am i going the right direction you don't want to as steven covey seven habits of highly effective people one of my favorite books i'm gonna recommend a number of books um it's interesting because i i'm doing this because when i learned these skills and researched these and i changed my life around 18 years old i started to tutor and one of my first students she was a freshman in college she read 30 books in 30 days not scammer scam but really read them and i wanted to find out not how but why and i found out her mother was dying of terminal cancer and the book she was reading were books to save her mom's life because doctors only gave her mom literally two months to live and i get a call six months later from this young lady and she's crying crying i find out they're tears of joy that her mother not only survive but is really getting better doctors don't know how or why they called it a miracle but her mother attributed 100 to the great advice she got from her daughter who learned it from what all these books and in that moment i realized that knowledge is power and learning is your super power and that's where i started 29 years ago i've been doing it ever since now going back to this clarity how do you get clarity you ask yourself a question and the question i want you to train yourself to ask is this what's most important to me in life what's most important to me in my business what's most important to me in my brand what's most important to me in hiring what's most important to me in my impact because that's going to give you your values because sometimes as stephen covey says you're in climb the ladder of success get to the top and you're very efficient about it but you find out it's leaning against what the wrong wall and that's not the goal so solitude is a wonderful time for self-reflection so ask yourself what's most important to me life and the second qualifying question i want you to ask yourself are my actions today aligned with those values are my actions truly aligned with the direction i want to go in these areas because here's the thing how many of you write it down feel burnt out how many of you feel burnt out you feel overwhelmed you feel exhausted a lot of times people say they're burnt out because they're doing too much but it hasn't been my experience talking to people that's truly the cause maybe you're not burnt out because you're doing too much maybe you're burned out because you're doing too little of the things that light you up the things that make you come alive the things that you value so you want to make sure your actions are aligned with those values so that's clarity the second c the second choice you can make while you're cocooning to come out of the stronger and wiser and smarter is that of care now you know self-care is not selfish and it's more important to take care of yourself and others than ever before and here's the thing it's not just physical hygiene but also mental hygiene did you know that there's an algorithm to your mind just like there's an algorithm to instagram and an algorithm to facebook that if you engage with just all the cat posts you watch all the cat videos you like all the cat videos you comment you share all the cat videos what happens the algorithm is going to be more of what you engage with but here's the thing your mind has that same algorithm so you want to make sure you stand guard to your mind because if you're just watching everything that's dark and scary and threatening because it believes it leads and it hijacks your amygdala right and you're in fight or flight the challenge is whatever you engage with you get more of and so it just and you have a limited bandwidth and so here's the thing if your attention is going there and it's feeding you more of that then you don't have the bandwidth or the focus to focus on possibility focus on opportunity to focus on things that you could be grateful for but here right now we're talking about your brain i find that more people upgrade their apps and they got the new iphone and they upgrade their technology more than they upgrade the most important technology which is the human mind and the faster you can learn the faster you can earn so how do you upgrade your mind i'm gonna give you ten things right now you could do and they're very tactical 10 practical things you could do right now to really upgrade your hardware your brain and i teach this at places like the cleveland clinic scent center for brain health i train their doctors their caregivers their researchers their patients and we find that one-third of your memory is predetermined by genetics and biology but two-thirds is in your control isn't that exciting one-third is genetics biology but two-thirds twice as much as in your control and your influence so here are the 10 things that move the needle now i don't want this to be passive i want you to make this something that's relevant to you so what i want you to do in your piece of paper is i want you to write these down maybe in the q a if somebody asks how do i memorize them i'll teach you how to memorize these 10 things so many people know i train a lot of the ted speakers to memorize their speak their talks i teach a number of actors hollywood actors how to memorize their scripts and this could apply towards entrepreneurs if you have to give a talk at a board meeting you have to go on to national business news if you need to give a sales presentation or a sales video or sales script such an important uh technique all right so if that's one of the questions i can teach you how to memorize these ten so here are the ten but when i give it to you and you write it down i want you to rate yourself on a scale of zero to ten how much energy and effort or focus are you putting into these ten categories because i don't think you're going to debate any of these ten right it's common sense but sometimes a coach reminds you of what you're doing when you're getting world-class results right because if you miss one of there's not just one there's not a magic pill like some people think what limitless they think about how many of you saw the movie with bradley cooper and robert de niro he took a pill he went from zero to hero he wrote his book really fast he had incredible focus he learned languages you know he had this identic you know photographic memory and he had a surge of motivation but after 24 hours it disappeared and all these side effects we had dr mark hyman write the forward of the book and he's head of functional medicine at the cleveland clinic and he said there's no magic pill but jim gives you the process for having your best brain your brightest future and this is the process all right so ten things let's go through it rate yourself zero to ten how much energy and effort are you putting into it ready number one a good brain diet a good brain diet what you eat matters especially for your gray matter there's an area of science i talk about in the book called neuro nutrition now while your brain is only two percent of your body mass it requires 20 of the nutrients and it actually requires different nutrients than the rest of your body and so we talk about different recipes and different foods some of the best foods are this avocados blueberries i like to call them brain berries broccoli is good for the brain as vitamin k olive oil is good for the brain eggs if your diet allows the choline in eggs is good for cognitive performance also green leafy vegetables like kale and spinach good for the brain wild salmon and sardines good for the brain i'll give you a spice turmeric lowers inflammation is good for the brain walnuts and well has to look like the human brain there's a little memory trick right there walnuts have vitamin e good very neuroprotective for the brain and finally dark chocolate not milk chocolate not a lot of sugar but dark chocolate is good for the brain so so enjoy that right and so those are foods now and so on scale of 0 to 10 what you don't want to do with what we know is harmful to the brain processed foods right high sugar foods and we go a lot more detail so number one good brain diet break yourself number two killing ants killing ants has been clinically proven to be good for your brain in ants i get this from dr daniel amen who's written a number of books and he's a brain doctor automatic negative thoughts all right because here's the thing a lot of people come to me and they say jim i have a horrible memory jim i'm too old i say stop if you fight for your limitations you get to keep them if you fight for your limitations you get to keep them and so your brain is like a super computer and your self-talk is a program that will run so if you tell yourself i'm not good at remembering names you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your super computer not to so on a scale of 0 to 10 how good and positive encouraging does your self talk or does that need to be worked on number three as part of your assessment number three on the list what's good for your limitless brain number three exercise write this down as my body moves my brain grooves as my body moves my brain grooves and here's the thing when you move you create something called brain derived neurotropic factors bdnf and it's like fertilizer for your brain we know the research shows that when people are on an elliptical or they're going for a brisk walk and they're listening to an audio book or a podcast i know we have many many of you listen to our podcast you will retain it and understand it better there are a lot of entrepreneurs who are famed for doing walking meetings outdoor meetings steve jobs bill gates right as your body moves your brain grooves so it's not just about doing pilates three times a week or you know crossfit three times a week it's about moving throughout the day i heard recently that somebody said sitting is a new smoke we're all behind these screens all the time but when are you getting up to move and i would suggest the ideal amount of time to work you'd be surprised about 25 to 30 minutes 25 to 30 minutes after that there's a dip in your focus and so i advise you to do they call it the the pomodoro technique that take a break every 30 minutes and then take a five minute break and what are you doing you're moving you're hydrating you're deep breathing you're getting your brain back online right and then go back to your focus activity so on a scale of zero to ten how much are you moving throughout the day number four brain nutrients brain nutrients so if you're not getting from your diet maybe you need to be able to to supplement with it the number one brain nutrient dha right omega-3s number that's number four number five is a positive peer group positive peer group who you spend time with is who you become and they say if you spend time with nine broke people be careful because you're number ten because what happens is you have mirror neurons and you're constantly imitating people around you and that's what it does mirrors and what does it matter i always tell people to watch watch what w stands for words a stands for your actions t your thoughts c your character h your habits first create your habits then your habits create you right but we tend to imitate the people around us and so make sure are you around people encouraging challenging uh cheerleading for you are you around energy vampires scale of zero to ten number six clean environment we know the human brain thrives in a clean environment that your outside world is a reflection of internal internal world you clean your desktop you tune your desk you have clarity of thought right a scale of zero to ten how good is your environment number seven sleep let's have a conversation about sleep how tell me share with me how's your sleep last night when you don't sleep the night before how's your how's your focus how's your memory how's your ability to solve problems how's your mental endurance right you have all this mental fatigue so sleep is important for three reasons for your brain number one it's where you consolidate short to long-term memory so you have long-term memory issues check your sleep number two it's also where you clean out plaque that leads to brain aging challenges um this is something that near and dear to my heart because i lost my grandmother to alzheimer's when i was going through my issues five six years old she she was taking care of me and then i started to take care of her because there was this mental decline and so we actually donated the proceeds of this book um to education and also alzheimer's research in totality so that's number that's actually number seven is make sure you're getting sleep the last reason you want to do is when you dream and did you know some of the most amazing entrepreneurs and inventors came up with their ideas in their dream states mary shelley came up with frank stein in her dream paul mccartney came up with a song yesterday in his dream why is how creating a sewing machine in a dream so what are you dreaming about if you get proper sleep that's number seven so how's your sleep you're out of ten number eight brain protection wear a helmet you know obviously your brain is very resilient but it's very fragile number nine new learnings and i'm preaching to the choir here there's a study done it was on the cover time magazine now if you saw it on longevity these nuns living 80 90 and above they found out half their longevity was our emotional faith and gratitude the other half they were lifelong learners and because of it add years to their life and life to their years so always be learning and schedule it the best exercise reading reading is to your mind what exercises to your body schedule that reading every day somebody has decades of experience they put into a book and you can sit down and read that book in a few days you can download decades into days that's the number one advantage if you see pictures of me on social media with bill gates you know with oprah with elon musk we bonded over books leaders are readers the average person only reads two or three books a year you know we like to get people doing four to six books a month 50 one book a week 52 books a year you get a phd or master's in any area and be able to do that so that's number nine and finally stress management manage your stress chronic stress shrinks your brain chronic fear actually this whole area called psychoneuroimmunology makes you more susceptible to colds flus the viruses so on a scale of zero to ten how well are you handling stress and what are you doing to cope is it meditation is it body work is it red wine what are you doing so those are zero to ten i mean one to ten what you could do to care for your brain i'm gonna go through the rest really fast number three third c is contribution contribution the antidote to this fear i was talking about the chronic fear and stress is contributing right how can you invest some of your time your talent your treasure to make a difference especially now with your brand with your business with yourself and it'd be something simple like making food for frontline workers be able to check in on you might be more vulnerable right that's number three i believe the success formulas you learn so you can earn so you can return learn earn return number four after you have contribution creativity did you know is during the great plague that shakespeare created some of his most amazing masterpieces macbeth anthony cleopatra sir isaac newton had to physically distance himself from london university when it closed sitting underneath the tree apple fell on this tree he created the theories of motion the theories of gravity so what can you create what new departments in your in your business what new marketing initiatives what can you create um or personally also as well would you want to write music and so on and finally number five capabilities capabilities everyone always said i'll do that when i have time i'll learn that you have a to-do list but do you have it to learn list the future belongs to the learners all right and the creators so what's on your to-learn list and i think number one i mean we have unfeathered access to podcasts the world's information to to youtube right so what can you learn i think the number one thing as we talked about learning how to learn and you've heard these you read leans tell me you've read lean startup eric's book the only way to wins learn faster than anyone else right jack welch said an organization's ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly is the ultimate competitive advantage so learn how to learn

Channel: Jim Kwik

Views: 41,261

Keywords: jim kwik, jim kwik motivation, if you're struggling, struggling in life, kwik brain, jim kwik memory

Id: Sz0N538e-ng

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 19 2022