Overstimulation Is RUINING Your Life - Daily Habits To Take Back Control Of Your Focus! | Jim Kwik

many people these days are complaining that they can't Focus they're struggling with their memory they they just can't pay attention in a way that they used to so in your view what's going on yeah I mean the world is has changed certainly uh technology and I'm pretty Pro technology it also it it maybe hasn't caused it but it certainly has Amplified some of that distraction that digital distraction I mean we live in an age of rings and pings and dings and app notifications social media alerts and uh as I feel like in a way that we're driven to be distracted and how do you maintain your concentration which is so important nowadays you know we live in the attention economy and um you know but we're rewiring our brains to to react uh and to be able to to focus every little thing that's that's in our purview and so um and how we can get things done how are you going to learn how you're going to study how you can be productive um you know in the book in my book Limitless I talk about four uh digital um it's like the four horsemen if you will of the mental apocalypse and I I tend to alliterate so I made them all D's uh the first one actually is digital distraction you know is uh is you know with uh with the rise of technology and everybody like and share and comment and Cat video and then we get those dopamine hits for kind of rewired to be distracted another one that's that we're facing that people I think are are struggling with right now is this thing called digital Deluge it's feel like there's too much information but not enough time to go through it all it feels some people describe it as taking a sip of water out of a fire hose maybe or they're drowning in information and how do you catch up and keep up and get ahead and some of the things we could talk about here as I talk about accelerated learning which I think is one of the most important skills to be able to uh to master in the 21st century to be able to be able to uh to catch up and and really really Thrive accelerated learning could also be uh speed reading you know where you could you know you have so much to read you know this you know in in your field in the half-life information getting shorter and shorter but the amount of information is coming at dizzying speed but how we read it or learn it that growing Gap creates uh information anxiety higher blood pressure compression of Leisure Time more sleeplessness so it could be a big challenge for people um and then there's one that I I turn digital deduction the digital deduction yeah that's the third one right yeah digital deduction um so you have you have digital distraction and digital Deluge digital deduction is this phenomenon where we it seems like this generation is not having the same ability to to think or to rationalize you applied logic critical thinking and um you know it could be because of Technology you know with algorithms a lot of technology is doing the thinking for us right it's telling us uh you know given us our recommendation it's telling us how to get from here to there if you think about you know way back before GPS you know we would have to build visual spatial intelligence in order for people to get from here to there but now we rely on our devices so we don't have to think through Outsourcing that and then a big one is digital dementia I mean think about that we're we're so reliant on technology to also be like our external memory uh Drive I mean think about how many phone numbers you know your audience you and I used to know growing up I mean a lot right a lot yeah and how many do we know today current numbers you know probably you could count on one hand maybe one two or three not that I want to memorize 500 phone numbers uh but it should be concerning that a lot of people complain about not being able to memorize one you know a phone number or a PIN number or a passcode or a seed phrase or what they ate that day or conversation they just had I believe two of the most costly words sometimes in our life certainly in our work or I forgot I forgot to do it I forgot to bring it I forgot that meeting I forgot that conversation I forgot what I was going to say I forgot that person's name you know every single time we have those lapses we could lose time and credibility uh we could hurt a relationship those are two powerful words aren't they I forgot it's interesting because it's clearly something that is increasing in society people in their 30s I was saying you know I just can't remember that I can't remember where I put my keys right so or something larger like their car or or something larger like that can you see people walking around the lot with their with their car alarms like GPS trying to figure out where to park their car so I I want to sort of explore what's going on here you've mentioned these four D's rights yeah and of course they all start with digital yeah and you also mentioned that your pro technology right so it's not necessarily technology that's doing it maybe it's the way we're using that technology sometimes that's problematic so you know let's let's go through those one by one I know you've outlined them but digital distraction I think we all kind of get that that we can't focus because we're just drawn to our smartphone and we're just before we know it we should be doing a work project but somehow We've Ended up down a Twitter Rabbit Hole or or we've been on Instagram for 10 minutes without even realizing it so what can we do about that yeah I mean for me technology is none to say good about it so that's exactly what you said it's how it's applied like fire is a form of technology and fire could cook our food or it could burn down our home right but you're right it's how it's it's how we're using it and as opposed to it using us right technology is a tool for us to use but if that if technology is using us then who becomes the tool that when we become the tool right and so you know having agency I think is very important the way of starting this conversation in terms of that we're not a victim that we always are the pilot or the pilot of Our Lives instead of the passenger we're the pilot of our minds we're not the passenger we don't have to just be reacting to it you know my challenge is when people pick up the phone out of boredom right I mean you don't in terms of how many how many times do people open up social media or touching their phone or if it's at the table during a meal you know it creates that kind of unconscious anxiety that it's there it's just the impulse to be able to pick it up and uh and so part of it is obviously controlling the the environmental aspect of it and knowing that we always have a choice right there's a quote in Limitless from a French philosopher and he says life is the letter c between the letters b and d life is C between B and D B is birth D is death life C choice you know we always have that choice every single day we are our lives in effect is the sum total of all the choices we made up to this point you know where are we going to live who are we going to spend time with what are we going to eat what are we going to do for a living what do we need to feed our mind and uh you know I'm also thinking that when it comes to choices when the decisions that we make I believe that even at a meta level that these difficult times they could distract us we're talking about distraction it could diminish us or these difficult times can actually develop us we we always decide because we always have Choice every day we wake up with a with a chance because we have a choice right and uh and to take responsibility of it as opposed to putting it out there like something you know I always use this metaphor that it's important for all of us to identify more with a thermostat than we do a thermometer meaning a thermometer let's say a thermometer is in your room what's its function it just reacts to the environment whatever the environment gives it it reacts and as human beings we are sometimes like that we react to how people treat us we can react to the weather we can react to uh the economy uh you know all these different things but ultimately you know you know this you know you write about happiness the the the people that are most fulfilled happy successful they tend to not react as much right they tend to maintain more of their agency a thermostat has that agency a thermostat doesn't react to its environment a thermostat it knows the temperature it gauges um it has awareness and though it sets at temperature and what happens the environment the environment reacts to it yeah right no I I love that and you know when I've watched your videos online or listened to your podcast I see a lot of shared philosophy I see a lot of things between us that we both like to talk about and I know first thing in the morning is a very important time for you as it is for me I really do passionately believe that the way we start the day determine so much of what happens later on in that day you know if you start off consuming news don't be surprised that you feel anxious a bit frazzled a bit negative about the world later on because the way we feel is often Downstream from what we're consuming yeah and I know you're big on morning routines you're big on not looking at your phone for a period of time in the morning and if we use the analogy of the thermostat I guess we get a chance every morning to set the thermostats on our life yeah depending on what we do right so you're a brain coach you're a world-renowned brain coach so to you what does an ideal morning look like if we're thinking about the health of our brains and specifically towards things like Focus yeah better focus throughout the day yeah I I'm I'm very intentional and and when I go through some of the things I talk about in my morning routine I'm not suggesting it's for everybody I don't think necessarily everything is for everybody or everybody's for everything you know I do ask people to maybe experiment I think ultimately we are our best coach and uh it's nice to have mentors and and others and get their feedback but uh to test it on themselves and then you know you know everyone's situation is a little bit different right some people work at night you know they're night workers they have lots of kids and and such uh for for me when I wake up my my goal is we you know while I do some of the biohacking people see on on social media you know the the cryotherapy and the the saunas and all that most of that I like to get nowadays from nature because it's free um I feel like it's it's very natural it's very duplicatable you know for all of us is that one you spoke about recently um you'd like to get the four elements yes I do I do that was beautiful okay could you elaborate you know I was when I was um researching another book I was reading about the elements and how you know ancient cultures like from from Babylon and and Babylonian times they used to believe in ancient Greeks they used to believe everything was made up of these four elements air fire water and Earth and I thought wow that's that's that that's very beautiful it sounds very natural and organic for me and so for me I like to infuse my day with those elements you know maybe first thing in the morning and you could do it by going out and getting grounded you know I love taking off my shoes and you know being Barefoot you're Barefoot now in the studio yeah and walking around your beautiful yard and it's very peaceful you get grounded and you know some people use biohacking like pmf mats you know at certain frequencies but you know I feel like all of those and are meant to kind of imitate nature like the infrared you know the red lights intimidate the the Sun and so on so I'm going out there I'm getting the direct sunlight which is very important you know we know many people talk about getting uh direct sunlight first thing in the morning to reset your circadian rhythm to help you sleep better at night so that's the fire for me and I have the earth I hydrate because we could lose a good amount of water through when we sleep through respiration and perspiration and you know uh just staying hydrated could boost your reaction time your thinking speed upwards of 30 percent I mean it's a huge not not a small boost but a huge lift so how much do you drink each morning yeah for for me it's a little different um you should I always go by like how I feel and you know also that's dictated by the night before just like getting a good night's sleep is dictated by how you start the day also as well I do some electrolytes that really works well for me the salts and then the minerals uh you know a nice tall glass works for me usually room temperature it just kind of like that's my personal thing and then um and then the last one is air and that's just doing some breathing exercises you know sometimes people feel sedated or they when they're reading they fall asleep or they feel like they have that that mental fatigue and I feel like a lot of times it's just because we're not getting enough air I mean sometimes we have to just even check our posture when we're at our desk because sometimes when you collapse your diaphragm the lower one-third of your lungs could absorb two-thirds of the oxygen so you know it's really important to get that blood flow in the doctor oxygen to where it really matters so those are the kind of things I do but intentionally what I'm thinking about in the morning is I do this and I've done this for the longest time I do these thought experiments you know where I'm I I just I'm gonna imagine myself at the end of the day I could do this in bed or I could do this outside I can imagine a family member asking at the end of the day how was your day and I was like today was really great you know I'm very blessed you know I crushed it today something like that and then I asked myself if that's what I say then what had to happen in order for me to feel that way and I work backwards I kind of reverse engineer it meaning like I think about three things personally and three things maybe uh professionally that happened and they don't have to be huge big things but that's where I kind of put my focus and my intention I kind of worked backwards I was like okay if I do this you know if I have this this conversation with you you know that that's a that's a big check mark for me and I make me happy you know if I walk the dogs you know or play with my son or I do these you know do specific activities that that's a win so I work backwards from that Yeah you mentioned before about being the pilot yeah right rather than a passenger and I really like that practice where yeah you've mentioned the four elements you completely get that you can see how that will be a very well literally a way to ground at the start of the day reach yourself give yourself the kind of core ingredients that a healthy human needs each morning right but I really like that exercise where you fast forward to the end of the day and almost visualize saying to yourself that was a great day yeah and so what do I need to do to make that a great day I think that's a really nice practice and can you give an example maybe or how does this change things because you know does it automatically change the way you approach the day are you thinking about things you have to have done or are you also thinking about things like you know when I see my work colleagues I want to be calm I want to be present I don't want to be snapping at anyone I want to you know what what sorts of things are you thinking about actions behaviors but are both yeah yeah and I've done both and or created a composite I think to-do lists most people listening have some form of to-do list way of tracking the tasks that they have to check off um I think it's important also have a to be List It kind of maybe it sounds a little corny uh but to be list it's you know the whole idea where we're not human doings we're human beings but you know when we're faced with the decision or dilemma you know often people like what do I need to do and I think if people took a step back and say who do I need to be at this moment it changes you know the reference point meaning that um maybe I would like maybe you're in a spirited debate with someone at work and you say who you know who do I want to be maybe I want to be compassionate right or I want to be loving and then the behaviors take care of themselves I don't have to think about what I need to do if I'm focusing on who I I need to be at that moment right so this is really about a proactive approach to life rather than a reactive one yeah I very much think like one of the syntaxes or strategies of success is you you know the B do have share that kind of model you know because it's a lot of people want to jump to the have they want to have a perfect body they want to have you know lots of money or or whatever right or even when people win the the their their Lottery right and you know all the stats when people have what happens over the next X amount of years they lose all that and more right those jackpot winners because they jump to the maybe you do have they jump to the half point but they were never being a millionaire so they weren't doing the things that you know wealthy people would do to have the things that they would have right so I think all behavior is belief driven meaning that if uh at events when people see me do these demonstrations where I'll memorize uh you know a room full of people's names or whatever I always tell people I don't do this to impress so I do is more to express to you what's possible because the truth is every single person listening to this regardless of your age your background your career education level your financial situation your gender your history your IQ we could all do this we just weren't taught right how to learn there was no class called memory um you know the Socrates said learning is is remembering so part of it is knowing that you could have the skills the the knowledge the abilities through training right because you know School taught us what to learn but not necessarily how to learn those those specific subjects and I think that's important but um but also when we're going from B to have share people at these events they'll come to me in that gym so glad you're here I know you're you're a memory coach I have a horrible memory or our senior moments are coming too early or I'm just not smart enough right and then I'll say stop if you fight for your limitations you get to keep them if you fight for your limits they're yours right and and so I really feel like you know everything starts at that being level that it's part of success is aligning three H's your head your heart and your hands meaning there's an integration and alignment of what you what you think and believe what you feel and what you're doing meaning some people could have goals in their head and they have a standard in their head but they're not acting with their hands consistently maybe they have a goal for health or impact or income but if they're not doing the actions with their hands I think it's really important to check in with the second age which is our heart right which symbolizes functions of emotions because we are not logical we are more biological when you think about dopamine oxytocin serotonin endorphins where this neurochemical feeling soup right and when we're coming even building on that yes maybe you want to have a instead of just a to-do list maybe you want to add three things you want to be and also three things you want to feel that day because here's here's the first principle that I teach with accelerated learning is that you don't it's about taking nouns and turning them into verbs getting in the habit of taking the nouns in your life and turning them into verbs so what here's an example I I think the nature of what we do you and I and others it's about transcending it's about ending the trance this Mass hypnosis whether it's through marketing or Media or from our parents or from wherever those thoughts kind of came from you know in those Impressions those expectations that somehow told us we were broken that we're not enough right and so how do you trans part of the and if it's not external some of that hypnosis is not just coming from marketing or Media or fear-based thing it's coming from ourselves it's like internal you know belief and internal doubt and even our internal self-talk so if you say something like I don't have motivation or I don't have energy or I don't have Focus I don't think these are things you have necessarily I think it's they are more things you do so you're taking when you have something it's a noun but when you do it it's a verb so you don't have energy you do it there's a process for generating energy you don't have Focus there's a process for harnessing your focus and concentration you don't even have a memory right there's a there's a there's a process of encoding and storing and retrieving you know those memories you know you don't have motivation there's a process for motivating yourself also as well so the reason I bring this up is you know before we go into all the tactics and the tips for focusing and reading and memory and so on it's just this idea of this having this mindset where it's it's your uh where we can coming back to personal responsibility personal ownership where you're Relentless about your own agency and uh and that gives you when you turn something into a process into a verb that gives you your your control back right yeah you're not putting it out there saying I wake up and I I hope I'm I have creativity so I can write today or I hope I have energy so I could be with my kids you don't have to hope you could actually do real help because hope is not a strategy and say okay how can I generate energy how can I create these memories how can I uh how can I what's the process for motivating myself I love the idea that behavior is belief driven it it really sort of resonates deeply with me uh and I just want to share with you what some of the things I've learned yeah over my years of clinical practice um I used to think and I believe this is one of your seven lies of learning that knowledge is power and I want to talk about that in a minute and you know maybe 10 15 years ago I've always been very passionate about the power of Lifestyle to prevent reverse and also treat most of the things that I see always been passionate about that and what I would often see Jim is that some people you know you'd spend time with them you'd try and educate them on the changes that you think if they make them it's going to help them feel bad to help their brain function help their hearts health help their energy their focus whatever it might be and yeah some people would make changes for a few weeks a few months you know they changed their diet they'd go to bed a bit earlier they'd have you know 30 minute walk every lunch time and they would feel different I thought okay great this is awesome and then not all of them but you know a significant percentage a few months later or when they come back to see me six months later they've kind of slipped back to their old cells and I used to sit for a long time pondering this again what's going on it's not knowledge is information knowledge is power because they've got the knowledge not only do they have the knowledge cognitively in their brain they've also got the experience they've applied it and felt better so why is it that they're flipping back and I believe it's a huge part of it to do what you just mentioned which is behavior is belief driven I think it's to do with compassion you know if you fundamentally don't like who you are or you have a problematic relationship with yourself at some point you often will slip back into those negative behaviors because they they align with what you actually think about yourself you know you're worthless you're you know you there's not you know you're not worth achieving or whatever it might be you're not worthy right so before you know it your behavior starts to align with those internal beliefs and I observed who are the people who truly transform their lives for goods and it's usually when they've changed their internal programming the voice in their heads you know a person who truly loves himself who truly cares about themselves actually looks after themselves pretty well because that's what someone who loves himself would do they would look after their body and even in my own life I would say I used to be very regimented I used to be very regimented about routine you know I would you know my classic case was New Year's Day you know I'd be like right this year I'm going to nail meditation right that's it and I would be great for two weeks or three weeks you know I do my 15-20 minutes a day and I feel I was rocking the air and then you know you miss a day because you're a bit busy right and then that one day becomes two days then before you know it is something you used to do right and I over the past years have really worked on the internal dialogue and you know my childhood and all those kind of things as you change your beliefs and your values I actually find behaviors very easy to stick to now like I'm not as regimented as I used to be there's a mixture there's a kind of balance between discipline and compassion now whereas before it was kind of like this hard coach to myself does that resonate at all it does I think there's a there's a you know there's this pendulum that swings that it could be it's paradoxical but it could be true that you know things could be you could you could you could you could uh Force something and then also things could be in in flow right that you could uh you know you could strive and then you could surrender right it's this kind of uh balance between hard and soft hearing and yang I I would say when it comes to mindset so you are it's been my experience right I'm doing this is I'm starting my 32nd year of as a brain coach that our brains are like this incredible super computer and our self-talk and our beliefs are the programs it will run so if you tell yourself things like I'm not good at remembering people's names you probably won't remember the name of the next person you meet because you program your supercomputer not to if people truly understood how powerful their minds are they probably wouldn't say or think something they didn't want to be true and that's not to say you have one negative thought and it ruins your life any more than eating just one in some of that candy or that donut will ruin your life but if you did it consistently every single day multiple times a day it will it will show up in your life and so for me you know when we're thinking about planning our day it's not so much about time management I'm thinking about more mind management I'm trying to think about priority management for me it's about you know controlling the controllables right right and it's about the most important thing is to keep the most important things the most important things and for me the most important thing is the three things are the three things that we control and we could turn this into a master class if somebody feels so Limitless which is the title of my book it's not about being perfect Limitless is about advancing and progressing beyond what you currently believe is possible for yourself or what you're demonstrating for yourself so the opposite of that will be non-advancing it will be being stuck so if your listeners or your viewers if they think about it let's let's again they're very very uh you know engaged here think about an area of your life where you feel stuck okay I'm talking to the listeners right now like take a moment is it your health are you not advancing in your health your impact your your income your wealth you know your level of Happiness where do you feel like you're not growing and you feel you can't kind of feel a stagnant and stuck and contained maybe it's your reading speed you feel like you're a very slow learner or or a bad memory where do you feel like you're trapped in a box now by definition that box that cube is three-dimensional right and so that's three forces that contain that box and these are the same three forces that will liberate you out of that box so when I'm coaching a client what I'm listening for as I'm going through like this intake and this discovery is is where which dimension is keeping them stuck where's the bottleneck so if you think about a Venn diagram like three intersecting circles like maybe Mickey Mouse two ears that are intersecting in a face there these are the three forces the dimensions if you will that keep you stuck and will make you Limitless and I'll tell you that I'll give you the ending you know of the story the face The end one it they're three M's those are the methods so you've mentioned that you know you you uh as a medical professional you know doing the work that you do you people know what to do but they don't do what they know right because common sense is not common practice Yeah I mean how many times do we need to hear about the benefits of cold therapy you know saunas you know breathing you know meditation you know reading and exercising and you know zone two like we we hear the same things so those are the methods and the methods could be upgraded over time as we learn more and more we and then research is done and we we get that feedback but a lot of people wouldn't know what to do but they don't do what they know because you're right knowledge is not power it's potential power it becomes power when we apply it so what keeps people so if the last m is the methods what's keeping people from doing what they should do consistently because that's the only evidence that people are you know are they're you know committed is that they consistently Act so the first Circle the first m is your mindset now you've had many experts on the you know on your show talking about the power of mindset you know we had you know this this conversation about all behaviors belief driven right that your brain is like a super computer self-talk as the program will run you know and so that that's in mindset mindset for me functionally how I'm looking at it I have defined mindset as a set of assumptions and attitudes you have about something what's your assumptions and attitudes about money what are your assumptions and attitudes about health what's your attitude's assumptions about love our relationships right because let's say you know your attitude assumptions about like memory is just like hey you know it's hard like my I grew up with a traumatic brain injury when I was five years old I had an accident because I was I had very slow processing I poor focus a poor memory I struggled every single day it took me three years longer to learn how to read you know I was being teased I wanted people here you know when I was nine years old was being teased in class because I was slowing the class down a teacher came to my defense and pointed to me and said leave that kid alone that's the boy with a broken brain right and that and that that affected my mindset because before that you could pretty much say I was more of a blank slate right that was that was I wasn't born with this idea I was broken but every single time you know I wasn't picking class first you know for sports or I did badly in school which was often I would say oh because I have the broken brain and that be that label became my limit right and so adults have to be very careful with their external Wars because they often become a child's internal words right and so why yeah and so while you know we while we are a product of our history you know the expectations of others you know our experience our external environment um you know family and everything we and we alone are 100 percent responsible for our lives and that's something I just choose you know I have these primary beliefs that I am responsible for my life good bad or indifferent for everything is that because wherever you know whatever you feel because if I put the blame outside that's where my that's I'm just giving up my power my sovereignty to something else right just to my to the my boss you know to investor to to the environment and I don't want to do that because then the benefit of having responsibility is that it gives you the power to make things better like I got to um I got to go to dinner I spent a lot of time with Stan Lee you know the creator of all these superheroes and superheroes is a big part of my Mythos I even uh you know Limitless even as you open it up it has the the structure and the stages of a hero's journey Joseph Campbell's work yeah and um and Stan uh Stan wanted to meet Richard Branson and Richard Branson wanted me to Stan so I'm picking up to go to dinner and stands in the car and I just I was like can I ask him is it appropriate I was like okay I'm gonna do it because I need to know this because I'm just very curious It's like Stan and the reason why I love comic books is they changed my life I mentioned I couldn't read for three years after my brain injury like all the other kids but I taught myself how to read by reading comic books and something about the illustrations and it brought the words to life and so I'm very connected to this uh this hero's journey because that for me a superhero is somebody they're not perfect right they're flawed they have challenges but you know they offer people hope and they offer people real help right and then that's something we all could do you know in our life we could offer people hope and real help and one person can make a difference these overarching themes that good will will eventually overcome evil and uh so I was like Stan who's your your favorite you know superhero that's the question I have and he was like Jim it's uh my favorite is Iron Man and he said uh you know he's he said who's your favorite he flipped it on me who's your favorite superhero and Stan had this big Iron uh Spider-Man tie and uh I was like Spider-Man and when I said Spider-Man to stand in his iconic voice he said with great power comes great responsibility right something we've all heard and truth be told I I reverse things when I hear it sometimes or when I read it and maybe because I had a you know some head trauma as a child um and I heard something different I was like you're right with great power comes great responsibility Stan and the opposite is also true with great responsibility comes great power yeah when we take responsibility for something we have great power to make things better yeah I love that gem so what would you say to someone who says okay I get that we've got 100 responsibility for our lives but you don't get my life I've had a a tough start um I grew up in poverty yeah you know I'm an immigrant in a different country and I've got all kinds of struggles and discrimination to face you're saying I've got 100 responsibility for my life but I disagree what would you say to that person I would say whatever script people have that I would say if you're you're probably right first of all I'm you're right that these are all the situations that that are there and and I would say in as kindly as I could say it and I would say and what what changes because it for me beliefs are something that's not necessarily true or false for me a belief is is is this useful or not is it useful for me to believe that and I would ask that person the same is that is it useful for you because because I also have a belief that if somebody had hardship or they didn't have the connections or they didn't have this and they still succeeded and we all know in culture there are many examples you know then then what then what happened there right like you know my parents immigrated you know to to the US my dad lost his parents when he was 13 didn't speak the language living in the back of a laundromat that my my mom worked at you know had no money who had no connections or anything and then so everybody had and I you know my brain everything everyone has a story then the thing is that story could keep us in that mindset as stuck like we're a victim and my challenge is that all all the excuses that and we all could justify where we are and and nothing changes I mean we're like fighting for our limitations it's like this is all the reasons why I can't be happy these are all the reasons why I can't be healthy these are all the reasons why I can't make money or or whatever right or I can't learn or I can't read or anything and for me life switched when I started because I used to say like you know why do I have this broken brain you know why me why and literally you know I'm activating my reticular activating system and I'm shining a spotlight on these answers and I didn't like the answers I was getting right because they weren't useful I couldn't do anything with that but when you had the belief you could find evidence everywhere to support that belief like you could have a negative belief and go yeah this is why I've got broken right this is why I've got broken brain right so you reinforce the narrative oh absolutely and then so was I you know I talk about in the book this dominant question idea where we have 60 000 thoughts on average a day the challenge is 95 of those thoughts are the same thoughts we had yesterday and the day before that and the day before that you know and of those thoughts you know lead to lead to uh feelings those feelings lead to actions those actions lead to experience experience go back to you know modeling our thoughts right and becomes this Loop and so if you're having the same 95 thoughts feelings everything then how are you going to affect real change right you know in yourself or somebody else and so my thing is I got frustrated my inspiration was my desperation I was going through so much pain so much suffering so much bullying not feeling enough and doubting myself all the time and then I started changing the questions it's like instead of like why is this happen to me then I started saying well I'm broken how do I fix this I was like okay because if I said that gives me a little bit higher quality answers because I start shining I start activating that reticular activating system that res because primarily our brain is a deletion device we're trying to keep information out right if we let everything in we would go we would go mad or it would be so overwhelmed you know so where do we shine the spotlight of our attention and usually you know like for example we're hardwired to to respond to our name right if you're out and about in any City and somebody shouts your name you're going to look regardless because it's your nervous system is hardwired your Ras is hardwired to do that we're also hardwired to look for things that are important to us the things that we value you the things that are survival the things that we ask questions about obsessively and so I started asking how do I fix this and I said how do I make this better and I was like then I started getting answers I was like okay and then with those answers I started behaving differently and starting to get different kind of results and that reinforced you know so I think we all have this kind of momentum and you know because everyone wants momentum but some people have momentum in a Direction they don't want to go you know also as well I mean I think it's really powerful hearing that you know this idea that we have 100 responsibility to make sure you're taking action after watching this video I've created a free guide to help you build healthy habits we can all make short-term change but can those changes become a fundamental part of our life often they don't and that's why in this free guide I share with you the six crucial steps you need to take that really really effective if you want to get hold of that free guide right now all you have to do is click the link in the description box below as you say you can be dealt a bad hand in life right for sure yeah but if you don't believe you have agency to change it's just not that useful it's like yeah we can you can have self-pity you can tell the story and again I get it many people have had and my heart goes out to people so suffering and struggling but we saw the interest for me uh what one of well there's two now but one of the conversations on this podcast that has changed me the most what's the conversation I had with a lady called edithika a few years ago at the time she was 93 and she was an Auschwitz concentration camp when she was 16 her parents were murdered within a couple of hours of getting there but there was something about her that was just so it was just so inspiring like she was full of forgiveness compassion empathy and she said things to me like when I was an Auschwitz I didn't see myself as a prisoner the prison guards were prisoners they weren't free in their minds yes I was she said to me I never forgot the last thing my mum said to me which was Edith nobody could ever take from you what you put inside your own minds right and I never forgot the last thing she said to me which was Dr Chatterjee I have lived in Auschwitz and I can tell you the greatest prison you will ever live inside is the prison you create inside your own minds I fundamentally am not the same person after that conversation as I was before it because if if I'm ever having a struggle in my life and that something seems insurmountable and I'm tempted to play any form of victim narrative in my head about oh poor me bloody bloody blah I think hey wrong you know in Auschwitz Edith could reframe yeah right if she can do it in that hell you can probably do it here yeah right so I found that very inspiring and literally two weeks ago I spoke to there's a book that's just come out called my uh my friend Anne Frank so Anne Frank's best friend Hannah pick goslar it's one of the most gorgeous books I've read I say gorgeous it's tragic at the same time but Anne's best friend if moving away from Germany coming to Amsterdam um the war's closing in the Nazis coming in her ending up at the age of 13 in a concentration camp for two years and then you know she's liberated she died a few months ago uh just before her 94th birthday but literally in that chair two weeks ago was her daughter and her co-writer of her book and again I was asking them I said what is it what was your mum like you know one that trauma as a child she said to me Ruthie said to me she could deal with anything anything she was a doer if there was a problem if things were going well she'd always very much like you're saying it was 100 responsibility so I feel we can learn when you see people in those extremes right it's not about making ourselves feel bad and go our pain is nothing compared to theirs it's more for me it's more about wow if they can if they can learn these lessons yes that I can learn them here yeah those two stories gave me uh Goosebumps yeah I don't know the camera showed it like when when you were telling it I would eat it and I I call them truth bumps because there's something that's that's a fundamental truth there you know I I had um 20 years ago plus I was giving a presentation at a conference in Upstate New York and uh like three or four hours north of New York City and one of the other speakers her name was Immaculate she told the story she's from Rwanda and she was there during the genocide and she hid in a bathroom with uh seven or eight other women and stayed there stayed until I'm not getting choked I'm thinking about this staying in there uh to survive for 91 days in the bathroom with seven or eight women a small bathroom um hiding there while you know her the most horrific things happened to to the people in her life and when she came out of that she found out that her entire family was was murdered and you know and it's interesting because when I met her I just like I I hugged her and I just cried and and I offered her she was going to fly back to New York City and after a ride you know I said I'd driven there and I she went into detail about what she went through and I pulled over three times because I just couldn't deal with like the details um you know so I was just bawling the entire time and it's interesting though because she came out of it though the the you know says some of the most she's like one of the most forgiving peaceful people that I know and you know she wrote a book called Left To Tell and uh and sends her story going through uh you know and it's it's all and all the great stories you know that we when we talk about the hero's journey it's going from limited to Limitless right going going from you know like come somewhere where people are stuck or they're trapped into a point where there's some kind of change inside and they're they're liberated and they get a level of Freedom right and and I feel like um it's so profound and I use that also as a lesson when I see people you know going through situations and they come through it and they're authentically genuinely you know better off than a lot of people who haven't gone through a fraction of what they've gone through and I and I do believe that again that with struggles comes strength we hear a lot about uh post-traumatic stressing and I'm not minimizing that all that's that's a very real thing you know I get a lot of people coming to us that want to learn how to read faster but their nervous system is really locked up you know and they're they're trapped in their Survivor brain and it's holding them hostage of their creative executive functioning and everything and there's also something I'm China Spotlight to whoever's you know this might be useful for we hear about a lot about post-traumatic stress we don't hear a lot about post-traumatic growth you know this phenomenon where people have gone through adversity that they won't wish upon anybody right but they also authentically wouldn't change what they went through because there was some kind of gift yeah through there they they found a mission they found a strength they found a character trait you know they they found they found something a purpose going through it you know for me my challenge was learning every single day not feeling good enough every single day being bullied for my you know for being different um and having this kind of quote-unquote disability you know and life has a sense of humor and because of it also my my superpower was shrinking like I would I would sit behind the tall kid because I never had the answer right I would get sick if I had to give a book report right I would have I would avoid the spotlight because I didn't want to be seen I didn't want to be heard why'd you call that your superpower because I was really good at avoiding getting attention meaning that you know when they passed around the book to to you to read out loud you know I when it got to me I wouldn't understand any of those words I would pass it on that was so painful for me I never wanted to feel that Spotlight I think a lot of public speaking the fear of public speaking came from those reading circles because nobody's good at reading the first time and that's what we learned and so fear is learned outside of you know a couple and eight you know uh you know fear-based things in our nervous system as human beings but a lot of that fear is learned and I talk about it in the book about the lies you mentioned that we tell ourselves lie for me everything's an acronym stands for limited idea entertained it's not true that you're not enough it's just a limited idea we're entertaining at that time right and going back to the beliefs I like to choose beliefs that are useful to me because I ask this is useful or not useful because the truth is again all the excuses we make for our lives it can be absolutely accurate and nothing changes because excuses are in fact useless you know when we complain about something and we put outside of ourselves nothing is different we waste a lot of time we waste a lot of energy we waste a lot of focus you know even by doing that and we honestly okay I'm like the coaching part of me is coming out we can't be upset by the results we didn't get from the work we didn't do you know and so much so many of us have to do more of that deep work you know in certain areas and so you know even online you know I'll give you a fifth one just to have in this conversation with you for the fifth Horseman not only these digital Deluge and digital distraction and digital the longer one was digital dementia you know digital deduction there's digital depression right people are you know not feeling enough and they're going through and comparing themselves to the Highlight Reel of everything and I just want to remind everybody on social media that the grass is greener where we water it and sometimes the grass is greener on social media because the filter the person is using right or and there's a whole lot of artificial turf you know in social media land also as well you know so if we if we compare ourselves to other people we're always going to be Green With Envy and it and that's that's a challenge because we feel less than right in comparison and so I just want to bring to light you know these are challenges and it's you know we know at mental health you know uh challenges is a is a real uh loneliness uh you know depression you know there's an algorithm when it comes to media and social media it's kind of like there's an algorithm to our mind like the algorithm is whatever you engage with you get more of you watch all the cat videos and like share them and everything comment you're gonna get your news feeds can be full of cats yeah right and your minds are the same way if you're just watching the news and everything that's dark and threatening and scary right whatever you engage with you're gonna get more of so you're just going to start your res your particular activating system your nervous system is just trained to look at what's threatening and chronic stress will shrink the human brain chronic fear will actually suppress your immune system yeah right chronic fears the whole area of science called psychoneuroimmunology it just makes you more susceptible to coals the flus to viruses right so we have to stand guard to our mind in terms of what we're letting in going back to the conversation about mindset though you know and personal responsibility that you know with great responsibility comes great power I start there because I think there's three big things in mindset so mindset is your set of assumptions and attitudes you have about something your attitude assumptions about your problems because often people think they're problems and we're addicted to our problems right we start justifying you know this is the reason why and we use them as kind of uh you know evidence of why we can't be anywhere anyway else you know um and so if we start focusing on the problem I had Quincy Jones in our audience we do an annual brain power music producers yeah yeah did Michael Jackson yeah amazing we are the world and he was in the audience I was like okay this is I I have to invite him on stage so you didn't know you were just doing an event and you saw him yeah he he was there I mean we were we're long time friends and you know we would collaborate on some some stuff and he was there as a guest but I I pulled him on stage and then we started going this conversation um this was in uh you know quite a few years ago and I was like okay I want to and here's the he could speak all these languages and and part of it is you were talking about music and languages and and everything but then I was like okay everybody knows your successes right you've listed some of them um I want to know like tell me about your problems tell me about your struggles you know what you know what what are some of the things that Genji went through are currently going through and he looked at me he said Jim I don't have any problems I'm like you're 80 something years old like how you like we all have problems he's like no I don't have any problems I have puzzles I was like wow that's a mindset right a puzzle like think about problem is just like oh I don't want to deal with that but a puzzle is like a game there's a solution you know to it it's like a riddle and something that you can have fun with and I was like wow that that's like is one of his that's part of his mindset the set of assumptions and attitudes about problems right well I don't have problems I have puzzles and so that's like a small example of this shift do you know if he um has always had that or is this something he has cultivated intentionally throughout his life like maybe the younger Quincy used to have disempowering sort of narratives and problems and he figured out after a while hey if I keep repeating that that's who I become whereas if I call these things puzzles yeah but it totally changes everything my Downstream thoughts about that puzzle are completely different than my Downstream thoughts when I call it a problem I don't know the specific incident you know he didn't know either in terms of when that when that when that happened you know but it's definitely one of those lead dominoes right because that informs so much Downstream you know as you mentioned and he has this this way of uh we're he says you have to go to no you know one of the reasons why he thinks it's important to travel even in your own country or different neighborhoods is because you get to experience you know something there's different words there's different foods there's different language and different music and it changes your perspective and I think such a point of view changing your point of view who you spend time with or the people place will give you a different way of looking at a problem because often the problem is not the problem right when we say we have these problems or all these situations often the problem is not the problem often the problem are our set of assumptions and attitudes about that problem you know I mean the problem is not often the problem the problem is more attitudes about the problem that kind of keep us in that box so I'm just always thinking about mindset and the three things I would think about mindset for everybody it's not just your attitudes assumptions about money because if you're attitude some social money as money is root of all evil or you know you only can get rich if you're hurting people whatever that you won't use the methods right that keeps people inconsistent because you that's why people self-sabotage is because of mindset they take one step forward and two steps back right they buy your one of your five best-line books right and it just sits on their shelf unread and become shelf help not self-help right because their mindset is it's just like oh the mindset is oh if I have the book then my life is better and that's absolutely not true right and even if you read the book and then apply it your life is no better than somebody who is illiterate right so the mindset's a little bit different I would also say that in this mindset it's not just your set of assumptions about health and relationships and love that keep you from doing in the methods that their their your attitude assumption about yourself so there are three things that I would focus on in mindset number one what I believe is possible because if you don't believe it's possible you're not going to do it right and that's the other second thing is what I believe I'm capable of because some you could believe it's possible for someone else to heal or have someone else to have a great relationship or someone else to be happy or someone else to read three times faster and understand what they read but you might not believe it's possible for yourself right so what I believe is possible what I believe I'm capable of and then the third one what I believe I deserve right because that's kind of a thermostat setting that you know if you feel like we don't deserve that income or deserve you know that relationship or deserve you know that level of intelligence that impact whatever then we're always going to be mitigated in that box because that that Dimension is holding strong so that's mindset and the last one is methods and the last part of it the third dimension or the second dimension here and that starts with m is motivation so you're only going to be stuck in that box if you have the right methods to get out of that box if you have the right mindset that allows that box to expand and and this if you have the motivation to even struggle get out of that box right to be able to practice and play at the edge of what you perceive are your limits and I believe that motivation is is a very straightforward thing for me in order to motivate yourself or to motivate someone else uh your kids your your team right or someone to buy your product or someone to invest there are three factors the formula is three parts to get Limitless motivation and Limitless motivation is just P the letter P times e times S3 P times e times S3 so release let's just use an example let's say you know you listen to one of our podcasts and hear all these experts talk about uh exercising and it's good for your brain right as your body moves your brain grooves you get brain derived neurotropic factors and but you're not exercising you're not moving daily right um because maybe you have a limitless mindset but you're not because the first part is p is purpose a lot of people they think purpose is something cognitive I'm pointing to my head but really I think it's more the heart it's a feeling it's something it's something that you feel you feel purpose and if you don't have a reason you won't get the result even when people forget people's names right [Music] so if I ask an audience of a thousand people I say who's has trouble remembering names 98 5 99 people raise their hand right if they're honest and then I said okay what if we gave you a suitcase full of millions of wealth right currency if you just remember the name of the next stranger you meet outside who's going to remember that name now and then those same people raise their hand right and then so as a coach I'm saying okay how would you all become memory experts all of a sudden right you just said you couldn't do this and now you can do this so I'm calling you on your BS your belief systems right it's not true that you can't remember names you're just not motivated right because we don't remember all names but we don't forget all names either right and I would say that Genius Leaves clues that when something's working there's something there that's either visible or invisible to us conscious or unconscious that we're not connecting with meaning that you tend to remember the names of people that could be good for your business they could be a whale a client a great person for your podcast someone you're attracted to right there's some kind of reason to remember the name and with the reason you'll get the results so even if you wanted to hack that when next time you're at an event or a wedding or something you want to remember names just ask yourself you know when you're meeting someone why do I want to remember this person's name maybe the person maybe to show the person respect maybe to get a referral maybe to make a sale maybe to practice these things that I learn you know from this from this podcast right and if you can't come up the reason you don't get the reward right so that that's the power of purpose meaning so some of the time people will come to you and because obviously people come to you they want to read faster they want to you know memorize things right a facts figures form they're in medical school but you're saying Anatomy are people trying to jump the gun are they trying to get to just Jim Give me the give me the method give me the hack tell me how to learn but you're like no no back up a minute let's go Upstream what's your reason yeah without the reason forget it and that's the thing because and I truly and I get I've got goosebumps you zoom in here like and they're true spawns because I get so passionate about this I feel like if you're listeners I'm gonna I'm gonna I don't know who I'm talking to right now but I expect that you listening to this right now you probably have forgotten more about health and personal growth and and and self-actualization anything that you've heard on this podcast more than most people will learn most more than most of your family and friends have learned you're like you're you're you're probably your friends are probably asking you why you listen to another podcast watching this another YouTube right you know and it's hard to change people like just something about how hard it is to change ourselves right and and I would say also how much are you putting them to play because common sense is not common practice right my book Limitless when I was first submitting it to my publisher it was all methodology and then before I hit send on you know in the email I was like will a hundred percent of the people who read this book get the results they're hoping for and I was like there's just no way because a lot of people know what to do but they don't do what they know so what's missing mindset mindset and motivation yeah right so that's why I spend most time because honestly a lot of the techniques 95 percent we have courses and everything else a whole Academy students in 195 Nations that go through this and I speed read and improve their memory and focus and everything but 95 we publish is is free you know YouTube is free podcast free and people could but so the things to do is always there right but do you have the mentality to do it and you have the motivation so the first thing is purpose and I'll give you the the a hard illustration that I had recently I was um going out and about and I saw someone I thought I'd recognized you ever see that you're like do I know that person and I was like when I got I was like they called me my name I was like oh that's the person but I didn't recognize them it's not that I don't have to remember they look totally different because the Back stories this person was very very unhealthy when I knew this person I mean extremely unhealthy or very overweight and lethargic and the friends we were just not he's not a close friend but we would just kind of Coach him just like oh you know why don't you stop smoking that and doing this and drinking that and trying this you know and he doesn't know he would take pride in being unhealthy right and I see him years later and I don't even recognize him he looks younger and he's fit and he's got this kind of glow and I was like I need to know because Genius Leaves because like what happened he starts telling me all the things he's doing and I was like a lot of stuff we talk about on our podcast and I'm like well yeah we've been telling you about that for years yeah he was like yeah but you know uh he's like a little while ago I was off on a business trip you know killing myself I came back and my daughter was crying hysterically and he had a nightmare that I had died you know and she was like she was broken and she was just like clinging on him and he that was that was purpose for him you know because of that he had a reason and he got a result so I'm just saying the P times e times S3 you start with purpose because if you don't have a purpose if you don't have a purpose in reading that book you're not gonna remember what you read in that book right and most people just you know read a page in a book get Tina and just forgot what they just read because they didn't have purpose right and so I would say start with purpose and start with learning States and these states of curiosity and anticipation and focus these are things you don't have these are things that you could do and create but always start with a reason the the second thing though is someone could have unlimited Limitless purpose to work out or to read or DeMent and or to start a business or or finally talk to that person they've been wanting to to date and still not do it because the E is you need energy right motivation is somebody who is exhausted is not going to be very motivated to work out or to study that day or to make those calls they need to make right and so if you had a big process let's say you were going back to working out or reading if people have seen pictures of me with Elon or Oprah whoever people always ask how we connected and I'm telling you like yes we were God connected by people in the same room but how we maintained that was a deep love of learning because anybody at that stage they didn't get there by accident right they love to read right you read to succeed leaders or readers we've heard this for years as if someone has Decades of experience like you do and you put into a book and somebody could read that book in a few days they could download decades and days that's the biggest Advantage I think in life period right the ROI on reading books is just yeah and that's why we do these phenomenal accelerated learning and speed training programs at Facebook Nike Google SpaceX Virgin Galactic you're right at Harbor different places because especially because you could spend four hours a day reading just think about all the emails and proposals and social media and magazines all the research if you could just double your reading speed cut that in half save two hours a day two hours a day over the course of a year that's massive even if you save one hour a day over the course of a year that's 365 hours how many 40-hour work weeks is that about nine two months of productivity to get back saving an hour and reading also by the way just for encourage you know somebody who's just has a book you know in one of our books or something on your shelf that you haven't read yet you know it's reading is to mind what exercises the body I think it's one of the most one of the best ways to be mentally to stay mentally fit but let's say you're not reading each each day like you want to you committed to reading 30 minutes a day you're not doing it if you had a big process meal maybe that's why because you're you're in a food coma right or so the energy you're saying so you've got the purpose you've got the desire you've got the motivation but because of maybe your lifestyle behaviors you've got no energy to kind of act yeah on that purpose you have you have a purpose to drive somewhere but you don't have the gas the fuel to get you from here to there because you're in a food coma maybe you have a newborn child and you haven't slept in three days you're not be very motivated to go to the gym that day so I'll just say you know a lot of what you and I talk about in our books and podcasts is how to get energy how to manage stress because stress depletes a lot of energy how to create a positive peer group because energy vampires could steal I think some people are batteries included they're born with it but some people are batteries not included they're just stealing everybody else's energy right or the foods you're eating a lot of processed foods and high levels of sugars and not the best brain foods you're not are in sleep can we talk about you know like sleep so if you're not getting that then you're not gonna be an exhausted person is not going to be motivated right and so an exhaustion will make a make a coward out of anybody you know we're not going to boldly go and do what we need to do and then finally you could have Limitless purpose to do whatever you're trying to achieve to get out of that box the money money in the relationship whatever you could have a limited amount of energy and still not be motivated because you need S3 small simple steps it's been my experience that sometimes when people set goals I want to make the next unicorn I want to find my romantic partner live happily ever after my soul mate I want to make a million whatever it is one of the six-pack it's way too big for somebody who hasn't been close to that and how do you break that down in this small simple step meaning maybe working out you haven't done it and you'd be just has been on your to-do list and you're not doing it that's too big a small simple step put on your running shoes right if you can't get your kids to floss their teeth get them plus one tooth right because little by little nobody's gonna stop at one tooth get them put one sock when they're cleaning the room into the hamper right or if you're not reading get you know maybe 45 minutes of reading by the way it takes about 45 minutes for the average reader to read one book A Week the average person only reads what two books a year you know and there's a reason why Warren Buffett reads 500 pages a day there's a reason why people love you know who are very successful read to shortcut you know the the success achievement process you know but maybe it's if you're not doing that 45 minutes a day is what it takes someone reading so the average book has about 64 000 words the average person reads about 200 words a minute if you divide those numbers 320 minutes to get through a book Divide by seven days in a week 45 minutes a day 20 minutes for 25 minutes just break it down to reading periods and you know it's it's a little bit of work but you know and that's the thing is and I and I I know we started like you know what I mean being sick is is hard and and eating right and exercising is hard we choose our heart being broke is hard and working and you know studying and implementing things is hard and we choose our heart every day because we have that choice and so when I'm going back to small simple steps maybe reading is too hard opening up a book is not hard reading one line is not hard right so I think that how I get my small simple step is I ask myself this key question and I want to invite everyone to write this down what is the tiniest action that I could take right now that will give me progress towards this goal or I can't fail what is the tiniest action I could take right now that would be some progress towards this goal where I can't fail you know and so like then you'll get your like little you know uh BJ fog talks about tiny habits right and so you get your small simple step because little by little a little becomes a whole lot and that's really what so what I'm working and coaching somebody or I want to be able to get them to do something that's going to be empowering I I want to say is this their mindset do they not believe it's possible do they not believe they they're capable of doing it do they believe they deserve it then you know where the intervention is right um if nor in motivation do they not feel purpose do they know it intellectually but they're not feeling the purpose do they not have enough energy right so they have to generate more energy we have to check their stress or their sleep you know or or their um their diet and maybe they're just confused because this is to a confused mind won't do anything right and so maybe we could break it down in a small clear simple steps and then finally the last M are your methods and then those are the methodologies right on how to read faster how to learn another language quicker how to remember names how to lose weight right all right how to be able to sleep better whatever the method how to invest and how to do something on with AI whatever it happens to be the reason I just put it last is if you don't have the mindset or the motivation you're going to be stuck in that box and so my my message to anybody if you're going to sum this up is I think out of the past few years people feel a lot of and when people feel fear they're they're looking for safety if you're they're not looking to grow because that's uncertain right and that that could be unknown and that could be very threatening and so I would say that maybe have look at it through a new lens kind of like Quincy was talking about maybe this is not a problem maybe this is a puzzle maybe instead of saying maybe instead of downgrading your dreams to meet the current situation maybe we should be thinking the opposite maybe instead of downgrading our dreams to meet this situation maybe we should think about how do we upgrade our mindset how do we upgrade our motivation how do we upgrade our methods that we're using to be able to meet those those incredible Dreams yeah I love that it's so comprehensive and I think it really helps people understand why when they jump to methods without the preceding work sure you can make changes but often those changes aren't long lasting do you know what I mean you can do it this is like your classic January two or three week burst where you're doing the methods that you've learned about but you haven't upgraded the mindset you haven't upgraded your belief system so I really really like that approach it's interesting talk hearing about your Rams I have this kind of mnemonic for a morning routine that I written about I've made videos about that the 3ms are for morning routine for me are mindfulness movement and mindset so I love it again I'm not saying it's for everyone you know we all got to find what works for us but for me I started with some form of mindfulness practice it could be breathing could be meditation something like that some form of movement you know I I like to do a five minute kitchen strength workout while my coffee's Brewing it's a it's a it's a system I've got going you still have those habits stack it very very small and then the third piece of me is mindset so I always finish off uh reading something uplifting or thought-provoking every morning that that's kind of I can do that in 15 minutes if I have the luxury of 45 minutes I can take 45 minutes an hour but it can also be compressed if I needed to get those 3ms in but for me and for many of my patients they found that that's very helpful framework to think about starting their day you mentioned reading and I know you also like me talk about the importance of setting up your environment yeah to make things easy and so I've always got three or four uplifting books kicking around my kitchen or my living room why because I am reading them B so in the morning I don't then have to think oh well what am I going to read today you know you know too much Choice procrastination I just pick up one of the books that's found and before you know it you've read a chapter yeah so it's and again I want to tie in what you just said to what we were saying at the start which is the importance of the morning yeah right the importance of intentionally setting how your day is going to be and you know you've shared some tools I've shared some sorts like things that people can think about because here's the thing if you don't and I get it some people say they're busy they don't have time but the problem is if you start the day reacting yeah consuming yeah watching the news right you're you're setting your thermostat is set at a different temperature right you everything you experienced that day yeah is likely to be affected by that you know it's interesting a few years ago one of the things my wife stopped doing was watching anything negative right so at the time I was watching house of cards I started watching it quite a few years ago now and I thought oh my God this is amazing I couldn't stop watching and I said to my wife I said hey vid come on you've got to watch this with me she said she I think she watched about five minutes of one of the episodes and says that is way too dark for me these days I am not watching that at the time I was a little frustrated because I was like no I want my wife to watch it with me but actually it was fantastic because she has made a conscious decision yeah and to some people that's going to be extreme right but actually I think a lot of the things that we regard as extreme these days are necessary because of the world in which we're living right if you allow negativity in don't be surprised when you have anxious thoughts don't be surprised when you're up at night thinking about the worst things that could happen in life right so again we've all got to do what's right for for us but she made an intentional choice and she's stuck with it she won't watch dark films she's not interested she's like it may be great the reviews may be fantastic but I don't want to have that kind of energy state in my mind anymore you're a brain coach what would you say to that I mean it's similar to when people feed their body right they could feed themselves some gluten or whatever and some people are more more sensitive to certain things and I've seen that no different than you feeding your body certain foods that might be a little bit people some people could enjoy in the moment and everything and there may be maybe some long-term consequence but they are willing to accept that and other people a bit more sensitive and just saying like I can't really do this right now you know with mine and so as you feed your body you could also feed your also feeding your mind and food is information certainly yeah and Netflix is information also as as well and again it's just I I personally don't judge what people do and I know you don't either and it's just but I but I do say that if people do that anything complain about something that's coming from that behavior then I get a little bit like people getting response personally responsible yeah I want to talk to you about reading a little bit and learning because you help people read quickly or quicker than they currently do and it's interesting one of my cousins the other day said to me he's quite a bit younger than me that I just can't read books anymore like I I don't have the attention span to read yeah right and I think many people feel like that so they go oh it's not for me and it may not be for them but part of me feels that just many of us have untrained the skill or we've allowed technology to overwhelm us and we've now trained ourselves to be distractible right I kind of want to know your perspective on that and then I wonder maybe it's a good a good way of tacking this is to walk you through I guess my process for getting ready for podcasts because that generally involves a lot of reading so I can tell you what I do and you can maybe tell me how I can improve it so first of all maybe we would tackle this thing are people able to read less than the past okay so in Focus as we're talking about morning routines and touching your phone and doing those things I think focus is a muscle right and I don't think it's something you have it's something that you do and you could Flex that muscle and that's one of the reasons why I personally choose not to touch my phone the first half an hour hour for other day because when you wake up in the morning you you know you're in this relaxed state of awareness you're very suggestible the first thing you do is pick up your phone which has access to the world's information and you're just context switching for thousands and thousands of times and you know in a very short period of time you know you're rewiring your brain number one for distraction right we talked about that um but you're also rewiring your brain for reaction right because every I don't know voicemail text message email whatever can put you in a mood that could hijack your mood but in the beginning like you know when you say you want to practice mindfulness in the morning that's the last that's not very mindful right just sharing you know switching from content I mean mindfully reading Instagram posts it's not that much well even when I said people like you know brush their teeth trying it with the opposite hand it's not just about you know the the cross lateral and potentially you know engaging a different part of their brain yes that that's but it's also a Gateway habit that allows wow if I could brush my teeth without saying what else can I add in terms of Stack my habits but also you're not gonna be good at it at the at the beginning so it forces you to be mindful so mindfulness doesn't have to be regulated just to meditation we could bring mindfulness to when we eat right we could do to everything and then if you're eating with the opposite hand as an example right then it forces you to be present right and and for me I I like that feeling as opposed to you're right it's not just what you eat it's how you eat right and a lot of people are working while they're eating each other on that parasympathetic rest and digest place and so they're probably not even getting a lot of you know the what they could get out of consuming um and I'll go into the reading in a moment just just on the consumption part in the morning like another framework I use for my day and I don't it's not perfect right all these are like little filters generally I like to keep the morning free and of course there's other things doctor appointments have to you know do this for for my child not to do you know have this other podcast interview but generally in the mornings I like to be I like to create that's I found for me uh my brain mode in the morning is to be creative so I want to Output in the afternoon I tend to consume and that's where I tend to do some study uh read for a podcast listen to a podcast have conversations with people I tend to consume information so I'm putting information in and then the last where I create consume in the evening I want to clear and that's what I'm trying to do so I want to clear my mind meaning I want to write down the things I have to do the next day maybe so I could get it out of my mind so I don't have to ruminate about it or maybe I'll use some Yoga Nidra and just do some breathing meditation to clear you know my my mind or maybe I'll journal and I'll just write it or I'll talk to my wife and talk about what I did that day to clear my mind find a journaling why is it good for our brain so for for me I Journal at two different times I tend to journal in the morning and in the evening that's my personal preference and I'm again people could find their own way and figure out what works um in the morning I I have this gratitude practice I I really think it's important so many people actually will tell me that I'll I'll do a gratitude practice when I have something to be grateful for something to that nature and I was like okay that's that's interesting because I don't think you have to and that's what I told this specific person I was like uh maybe you don't have to wait for Greater Life to feel grateful maybe if you feel grateful you'll have a greater life you know what I mean yeah because I'm always like just like the responsibility and power and reversing and I'm just I just find like that's kind of my thinking style because I think that for people feel how are you going to have more if you don't appreciate what you have I know so many people even clients that have a lot that they're just not very happy people some of them are miserable because they don't even appreciate you know the things and I think if people want to feel truly wealthy a mental exercise I do is uh you know write down all the things you have in your life that money can't buy you know if you could hear this right now what are you willing to would you give up your hearing for a certain amount of money or or whatever right or a thought experiment like what if you know what if the only things you had in your life tomorrow were the things you Express gratitude for today not not wrote it down but actually Express gratitude for the people or the things you know and I just feel like gratitude is just such a healing emotion yeah you know it's just like it trains my nervous system that there's enough you know and I think honestly my experience has been what you appreciate appreciates meaning what you appreciate in your life tends to appreciate meaning it enhances or gets or grows yeah you know and so that's what I want to have you know that makes me feel good and it also puts me in that kind of parasympathetic so I tend to do gratitude in the morning and night and it helps me for me to journal because I everybody has a different process then sometimes you can imagine but I like writing it down I mean I've very much Echo those views about journaling for me all sets a morning and evening practice I've in the morning it's about gratitude it's about setting an intention for the day you know similar practices maybe word is slightly differently about trying to frame the day you want to have to make sure you're taking action after watching this video I've created a free breathing guide that's going to help you reduce stress calm your minds and boost your energy in this guide I share with you six really simple breathing practices that work immediately even just one minute a day will start to make a big difference to receive your free guides all you have to do is click on the link in the description box below um it again it's about intention right it's about not living a reactive life not being passive it's about being active about trying to generate the experience of life that you want and then in the evening you call it clearing which is a really nice way to think about it it's about sort of reflecting on the day like a uh an athlete would always have a coach and reflect on their performance right that's how they get better they assess they go yeah but you can improve here oh yeah great I can tweak it there that's how they get better right that's how they become High performer but we all want high performance in our life you know whether it's high performance as a father as a mother as a work colleague we all want those things and and so I kind of feel a process of reflection is very very important for us daily if you can I'm very biased towards analog things right I think as the world becomes more and more digital yeah you know you've been in my kitchen you've been in my house it's a very analog setup intentionally yeah in fact me and my wife are currently having a discussion about a smart TV I'm reluctant to get one because I want to make the behaviors that I don't want to engage in myself or I don't want my kids engaging it I want them to be difficult to do at home I don't want them to be easy so I'm saying if we get a brand new spanking TV where things work currently we've got this all version box where Netflix takes like five or six minutes to load it's a bit slow I love it because that friction to do that behavior will often mean it doesn't happen yeah right so I'm as the world becomes more and more digital I personally like to set up things in an analog way at home you know and I'd like to write in nice journals that feel good and I I just I wanted to ask you before we go back to sort of reading like as a brain coach as a memory coach as someone who's spent over 30 years now helping people with the stuff is the act of writing it down in your mind different from typing it into let's say an app in your phone I mean I've seen some research supporting that it is yeah what's your perspective on that you uh well that's been my experience also as well especially with our students and the feedback that we get um you know we have students every country in the world 195 Nations and people vastly prefer handwriting than than typing uh digital let's take note taking right we know that there's a learning curve but there's also a forgetting curve that when you hear something on a podcast or in a lecture you can lose upwards of 80 of it within the first 48 hours but in order to mitigate that capturing it you know it's certainly great now digital is great for storing it's great for ease of sharing with your team and your family right and files um but actually when people are when students are tested for the things that matter comprehension retention handwriting notes ex surpasses digital note-taking and part of I'll give you one reason why is um a lot of people are pretty good typers and they could type as fast as you and I are speaking but you can't possibly handwrite that fast so what does it do it forces you to filter yeah like is this important and organize the information so you're not just because the worst way of taking notes is having everything verbatim that's not helping anybody right all the resources you know shown that keywords are more important than just having a transcript of necessarily of given that it certainly helps to read it but if you could pull out information and and do practice retrieval and test yourself and teach somebody else you're going to learn a way far better but um I I prefer lifestyle more analog because I don't need another reason to get on the screen yeah it's a little bit hard when I'm traveling because I like to read so you know I can't necessarily bring five books you know my and you know traveling with a carry-on or something like that but I like I'm very tactical and also I do like handwriting because even just thinking about it logically right leadership or innovation it's it's an inside out process right you're taking something invisible in your mind and you're making it visible like an invention or or one of your books right or a podcast you're taking something in your mind before it actualizes phys in the physical environment and I love handwriting something and I've always been like this because it's the first step of making something in your mind visual on the outside yeah you know and I think that's the beginning that's the first step of the creation process going back to the conversation about greetings people how do you read so right now we have the right mindset right the leaders are readers and reading is your mind would exercise your body you have purpose so you're not reading without intention right P times e times S3 and the methodology is okay so first first of all I want to make it easy just like you're saying like you don't want to get a smart TV and you want you want Netflix to load in Split Second because you want to make it difficult and that's part of you know designing habits proper habits you want to make the things that are not good for you more difficult like if you don't have your phone on your nightstand you know when you're sleeping then you're not going to pick it up right it's like putting it in your bathroom is probably a safer place because you know and just like doing the things like I put a kettlebell and a chin up bar right you know at the entrance of my office and I'm just like I see it and it was just easy to do just like you do something when you're when you're doing your make your coffee yeah right I mean that's why not make the good things that are good for you easy to do and the things that are not good for you more difficult you know so if you are going to get that thing that that alcohol whatever why don't you put it in the basement in a very difficult place you know so you have to oh man I don't want to go all the way downstairs and do that or that candy bar or whatever or just not have it in your home you know which makes it a lot easier just like if you don't if not good with bread then like it doesn't agree with you and you're at a dining table you know and they bring you bread you could either look at that bread and say no 20 times in your mind throughout that whole evening or you could just say no when they bring it to you and then you don't have to say no every single time use up all this 100 attention yeah so going back to the power of purpose I'm the same way with my reading right and I set up my environment just like you do I have books specifically around and I do read multiple books at a time and I'm a big fan you know especially the past few years reading fiction books um it's a lot of times I'm I obsess about non-fiction I'm like what's the purpose in this on reading books on you know on Neuroscience adult learning theory um and and I've seen so many benefits of reading fiction and even research shows it improves empathy um you know character development imagination uh problem solving pattern recognition it also it also um improves your EQ you know where we're reading maybe something else is your IQ this is more your emotional quotient um and so I also schedule my reading and so I I'll say this so I mentioned that it takes about if you're if you're a basic reader 200 words per minute then um you get through a book 45 minutes a day so I schedule that and I recommend everyone's schedule because if you don't schedule your workout or you don't schedule your meditation I mean we schedule a parent-teacher meetings and doctor's appointments and investor meetings or client team meeting whatever but we're not scheduling our own growth so so you you've said I think before reading is a workout for your mind I think reading is to your mind what exercises to your body yeah so then if we use analogy and go yeah you scheduled your physical workouts you need to also schedule your mental workout yeah and I think some people don't don't schedule the physical workouts and they don't get to it and so they want because life fills up those voids and then it's at night and as after dinner like oh I forgot to work out or I just don't have the energy to work out and that's the thing is prioritizing the most important thing is keep the most important things the most important things and I think top of that is self-care you know and self-care is not just you know working out I think also part of self-care is self-love you know we started that in the beginning of the conversation that part of our journey is you know looking in the mirror and falling in love with that person looking back that's been through so much but is but is still standing right just like how you're saying if you love yourself you're not gonna eat this like cons if you really deeply care about yourself you're not going to do things that would potentially harm it by eating certain things or or or otherwise just like you wouldn't do that thing for someone you love and just if you love somebody else and I would say no amount of love from somebody else is going to give your soul what it needs from you right the loving caring and compassion you need from you and I'm not saying it's easy right and and this whole thing nothing I'm saying is necessarily easy I I would do say it's simple but simple doesn't mean yeah easy right and so what I would do is schedule it because if you don't schedule I think the number one productivity Performance Tool we have is our calendar right but if you don't put it down in your calendar it's not it's likely not going to get done so I would schedule that 45 minutes or 20 minutes of reading whatever you're committed to you know also as well um when you have a book if you're reading in case you you prefer analog and if you're watching this on video you know I'm just grabbing my book you know so like even basic things right when I'm looking at this and I and I open up the book when I'm looking at it at this angle here so I'm taking the book and I have it flat on the table for those of you just listening to this if I'm looking at this angle from where I'm sitting I'm sitting upright then the the words appear smaller at this angle because I'm looking at it at an angle and now some people what they'll do unconsciously to make it easier for them to read is they'll slump over like this so they could see the words better but when I did that what happens I go into this kinesthetic posture which is slower than visual posture I Collapse my diaphragm which we talked about is also the key to getting more oxygen to your brain that's why people fall asleep when they're reading often because of their their physiology is affecting their psychology I would also say when you're reading something and I'm and you're going through enjoying this number one have an intention why are you reading this book because the fastest way to read something is not to read it at all right so if you ever read a patient a book and got the end just like nothing registers maybe you don't have questions going back to the particular activating system how part of it is initialized by questions so it's kind of like a long time ago maybe 20 years ago my my sister would send me these uh pictures and email postcards of a very specific kind of dog breed of dog pug dogs right these kind of smooshy fun dogs especially faces and um they're very compliant you can dress them as like ballerinas and they're just home whatever um and and I was like why my question was why is she sending me these and she's a good marketer because she's seating because her birthday is coming up right and I was like okay and funny thing happened when I started asking the question I started seeing these pug dogs everywhere like I'd be at the grocery store checking out and the person in front of me is holding a pug dog and I'm running in my neighborhood and somebody's walking six pug dogs on a leash and my question for everyone listening is did these pug dogs magically appear in my neighborhood and no of course not but I wasn't paying attention because again your brain is primarily a deletion device right so we're not shining a spotlight and so we it's in the dark for us and so but once I started asking the question I just started seeing the pug dogs everywhere and so my question for everyone listening is what are your dominant questions you know my dominant question was how do I be invisible so I got really good ideas on how to shrink and not be seen in class and that was my result you know a dominant question I talk about in the book is a friend of mine found out her dominant question out of the 60 000 thoughts some of them are questions the one she asked all the time how do I get people like me and you don't know anything about her but you know her career but you know a lot about her someone's obsessed with how do I get this person to like me that's the question they're asking what what's their life like their personality you know there are martyr people taking advantage of them they're sycophant their personality changes depending on who they spend time with because they want to be liked and it's interesting you know like you don't know anything about it but you know a lot about it because you know the question am I principle here that I'm talking about questions are the answer you know like the question the example I put into the book with Will Smith and I train a lot of actors how to speed read scripts memorize lines I'll give you some of the speed reading tips in a moment just because these these illustrations these stories stick with people we're brain training during the day we're in Toronto in the winter at the evening he's shooting his movie right superhero movie and it is cold and it is not people think it's very sexy and very thrilling to be on a movie set but it's really just people just waiting all the time and during this waiting outside his family is there and I'm there outside and we're freezing just kind of watching these monitors underneath this tent and he's bringing us hot chocolate that he made himself even though there's a crew that could make it for him and and you know he and he's uh cracking jokes and telling stories and I found out earlier that day his dominant question is how do I make this moment even more magical how do I make this moment even more magical and I realize that evening you know he was demonstrating that question at that time by making the hot chocolate and cracking he's just bringing more magic into it you know and my dominant question could be like you know what's the best use of this moment right I mean you know you you read the book uh zero to one by Peter Thiel you know he says like you know if you had to reach your 10-year goal but you were only given six months to do it how would you go about doing it and you ask a different question you're gonna get a way different answer right and so my my question for everyone listening what do you think your dominant question is because that determines your focus and that Focus determines how you feel and what you do and what you experience in your life do you have your dominant question yeah for the longest time it was how do I make this better because remember I felt like I was broken so my dominant question came out of my struggle so I was like how do I make this better it's very empowering question that isn't it it is because then I start shining a light and saying oh there's a pug dog there's a pug dog there's an answer there's and there's there's the answer but even within the question is the energy of agency like it's built into the question that's why for me it's such a wonderful question it's you can't adopt a victim mindset with a question like that yes and that's and that's great I got goosebumps again because that's again I call them truth bumps because the presupposition is you do have the power to make it better right and so people could ask a question like how do I make the most of this moment right the three questions I ask when I read going back to the reading non-fiction preparing for a podcast how can I use this why must I use this when will I use this so think about the power if you're reading something and not normally getting you know maybe 10 of what you think you can get out of it if you start reading something a book on Health and Wellness on glucose and whatever you happen to reading how can I use this then you're like oh there's there's a pug dog there's a pug dog there's a pug dog right just like in when I teach students how to do well in standardized tests like reading comprehension you know I always tell them go read the questions at the end first and then start reading the the reading comprehension then you're like because then you know what the author is looking for then you have answer there's answer there's answer why read all this get to the end and not and they're like oh that's what was important right and so you ask your question so in the beginning of my book every single chapter starts with three primary questions to activate their reticular activating system so they're looking for that answer so when they read it they're like oh there's a pug dog there's a pug dog there's a pug dog so three questions I ask every day of my life especially when I'm in learning mode how can I use this write that like there's the answer there I could use it this way this way this way this way why must I use it so it goes my head to my heart so I have purpose right I think about all the rewards and how my business my podcast will be better my book will be better how can I use this why must I use it because without reasons you won't get the results just like asking why do I remember the person's name and then I say when will I use this and that's the scheduling because I going back to the LIE limited idea entertain the knowledge is power it's not it's potential power because power when we utilize it I have a primary belief that every hour you spend listening to a podcast like this to be fair you should spend an equal hour putting it into action right every hour you spend this reading a book every hour you spend in a lecture you should spend an equal hour putting into play right and that I think that because otherwise nothing happens if nothing if nothing changes nothing changes right I'm gonna get really like fundamental and then when will I use this and then I schedule it I'm like oh this is a great thing I know why I should use this and then I schedule like I'm gonna do this you know do this add this part to My podcast here so one of the ways in which people can get better at reading is by asking the right questions beforehand yeah like what I'm thinking about is is let's say someone's bought a book that they heard a guest on a podcast so I'm gonna buy that book yeah but the book hasn't been read yet but until the action they bought it and some days they're trying to look at it and they're probably reading the same page over and over again and they just can't move forward with it so why might that be well I don't know to me it's like okay you could be tired right so nothing's going in that day it could be that the book was poorly written right so therefore it's not you it's actually the the book isn't that well written which does happen um or I'm guessing it could be that you're not you've not primed yourself in the right way to read it is that is that sort of how you would look at it and then and built in everything you just said again personal responsibility and agency and it's it's there you know even even if it's not a book and it's a lecture I'll even find I'll notice I'll control my state like I have to I go to a lot of conferences I speak for a good part of my living and I can be on three continents in one week we're in front of 250 000 people a year usually at Live Events and I could be sitting in the audience waiting to go on and somebody else is speaking on something in the industry and um and I can see the effect by looking at people around me as they're falling asleep right we've all been at lectures like this or even in school and and I'll take agency I I honestly I will do this uh just not not because I'm so enlightened it's just I don't want to be bored right I want to control how I feel because I'm a thermostat I'm not a thermometer I don't want to be bored just because that reacting to people and I'm like I'll changed my mindset I'm like wow this is fascinating how's this dude like putting everybody to sleep all at the same time and I'll actually get curious and I'll get energized thinking about that but that's how I'll entertain myself even you know or I found in a movie and I have to stay in the movie and I don't I you know I don't want to leave because I have family there or friends I'll just like think about other things about how I could apply this and use this and and so on because I'll I'll take responsibility for how I feel and and what I'm thinking and what I'm doing we could always control our mindset our motivation which our feelings and the methods our behaviors so the same situations going on but your experience off that situation now becomes very different doesn't it very very good and and not just like a book is poorly written I could try to find the gems there or I could take responsibility and say um this is not book it's not for me and that's still my agency I could walk out of that movie yeah or walk out of that speech or anything else so I start with having the right questions and have purpose like I I read with intention or I listen with intention right people aren't randomly listening to your show they could because they like you right and they know you offer value and they would get even more if they if they thought like oh like what are the kind of questions that I have so I could have because you pull information inside here by asking questions right and if you don't have those questions nothing's going to register because you can't push information to somebody's head right a podcast can push information but you could pull it in yeah it's interesting jim I've maybe for two or three years now on the audio version so not the YouTube version on the audio version when I record my outros I always say you know what's one thing you can take away from this conversation and start applying into your life and I do that very intentionally because it's like okay you've heard a lot yeah you've hopefully been inspired but let's just make it one thing what's one thing you can take away and apply but as I was um researching you for this conversation you talk about the importance of you know you've already mentioned how much we retain how much we forget within 48 hours and you talk about the importance of teaching it when you teach it to someone else so I was thinking maybe for next season I might um tweak my outro to be instead of just one thing you can apply and what's one thing you can teach someone else about what you learned you know do you think that would make a difference yeah I think I think both both make it maybe rich but if you want to single one out and people could test this because everyone's a little bit different but I learned so I could teach right I I have a philosophy that when you teach something you get to learn it twice and I also feel like we teach the things we most want to learn that's a different subject because I wanted I was a poor learner right and my struggle became my strengths and uh so I teach other people how to learn I think that if you give someone an idea you enrich their life but if you teach someone how to learn they can enrich their own life kind of like that I will like learn how to fish yeah and so what I would say is yeah absolutely if you want to learn okay so when you're reading this book have a purpose for doing so you know notice that I'm always going to close this out that if I if I'm not going to bend my body and if you're not watching this video I have the book again on the table top and I'm I'm my I'm in visual posture medium I'm upright and I'm breathing properly and I don't want to see at an angle so instead of collapsing my body I just want to close this Loop then you just move the book right so now I could see the book and at an angle I could even rest it on the table or rest it on my knee and that makes a difference it does because over time especially if you're reading faster you know part of what keeps people reading slowly is just visual fatigue yeah right so if the if the book is at an angle goal then it's the words are smaller so more difficult to read logically but if they're tilted towards me then all of a sudden they they are noticeably larger and easier to read right yeah I love that and then I have questions you know that I'm asking so then I say oh there's an answer there's an answer there's answer so I never get in a situation where I read something and I just forget what I just read or not didn't understand it it just like time passed when in one eye out the other or whatever and then I'm asking questions now that's for spard reading but for speed reading if you want greater speed like like all we teach is not it's not skimming or scanning like we work with a lot of attorneys a lot of financial advisors a lot of medical doctors you don't want your you don't want your doctor to get the gist of what their show they're reading right oh I know I don't so you know so a lot of traditional speed reading is scanning skipping words getting the uh gist of what you read right and that that that's never worked for me because I started as a Memory Trainer so one of the ways you can improve your reading speed is first of all get your base rate all right so I would say put a mark in the margin pick up a book that you're reading or a brand new book put a little Mark in the margin where you're starting uh currently today it might be somewhere in there and then read for 60 seconds set a timer your phone to go down for 60 seconds and have it ring and then put a mark in the margin where you left off so in 60 seconds and then count the number of lines you just read and it counts you know you could guesstimate right so don't if there's two words in a line don't count it as a line and then you have your lines per minute right that's how many lines you read in a minute and you could easily also kind of approximate how many words there are per line and most books you'll find about 10 words per line right if I was to count or average then the average number of words per line about 10. so let's say you go through and you read like 20 lines and to simplify it in 60 seconds 200 words per minute right and that's by the way about the average reading speed about 200 250 words per minute now if I ask you to pick up where you left off and put the clock on 60 seconds again pick up where you left off but just do one thing different is what I'm going to ask you to do is just underline the words with your finger or a pen not you're actually not marking it but just like use it as a visual Pacer and a visual Pacer is it could be a pen a highlight or a mouse on a computer right I use my finger because everyone carries them with them right you don't have to worry about them you haven't at all at all times if you just underline the words right you don't have to touch the page and you did that for 60 seconds and count the number of lines you just read that second number will be on average 25 50 or more so okay I love this so you you read one section to get your Baseline right then you you're not rereading that no you're going to a new section so you're putting a mark in the margin when you start yeah and where you end count the number of lines and you have your base rate and then the second time all you're doing is as you're reading the new uh elusive uh or the new words you're just underlining with your finger yeah you're just going to order nine you're not yeah exactly you're just going left to right left to right left to right right about left to right back to left to not right and you're just not everything just keywords every no no you're not marking it you're just literally using your finger and going right underneath and like this so the whole thing yes just like this and you're just following your eyes across the page like this wow I'm telling you you don't have to believe everything I'm saying everyone listen just pick up a book and do it and then count the number of lines you did even without practice you haven't even practiced this but if you practice it'll even be more and I'll tell you why logically because as human beings you know we want the explanatory schema the reasons why a couple reasons first of all kids naturally when they're learning to read will use their finger while they read help them to focus until depending on what kind of school system you want you got unique feedback some people got a ruler to their hand or whatever because you know they wanted and I'm not saying there's a conspiracy trying people not use their finger because they want to keep people ill-informed or anything I'm not saying that but if you just use your it's interesting kids organically we use it use their fingers help them Focus interesting also we do it so I when you do this notice when I ask you to count the number of lines you just read everyone will start with doing what using their finger to point one two three four five or a pen one two three because you're using a visual Pacer to count because you know it helps you to focus so why not use that while you read the third reason why I use your finger while you read or visual Pacer again you could be using you know a pen across you're not marking it right you're just going right above the line is because your eyes are attracted to motion because as Hunter and gatherers like if you're in a bush and you're hunting lunch right there's a rabbit there there's carrot whatever your lunch is right if a bush next to you moves you have to look at what moves because that's Survivor survival it number one it could be lunch or number two you could be lunch right so you have to look at what moves in your environments and so when you're underlining the words across the page left to right and back and forth your eyes are being pulled through the information as opposed to your attention being pulled apart right and the other reason why because right now if something someone just walked across the room that we're in everyone would look even people watching on video right you and all of us because your eyes are tracked into motion so when your fingers going across the page your attention is being pulled through it and it maintains your focus but the another reason if we didn't that wasn't reason enough it's how your neurology is set up certain senses work very closely together so for example do you love like a fresh piece of fruit like nothing like right off the vine right it's from the pharmacy and that's something that's been sprayed in wax is sitting in a store for six months but something like for sure I've ever tasted a great tasting uh peach yeah yeah and so in actuality we're not tasting that peach what are we doing we're smelling that peach the tongue is not capable of really tasting what a peach tastes like but to sense of smell and taste are so closely linked that your mind can perceive the difference it can perceive the difference when we're sick if your nose is congested what do a lot of foods taste like tastes Bland right yeah because your sense of smell and tastes are so closely linked so is your sense of sight and your sense of touch in your nervous system so like if like um you know we have we have a newborn baby you know if I was and starting to like you know grasp if but if you're going to infant and take your keys and just shook the keys in front of the infant or you know that who understands to say look at look look at these Keys what would the child naturally do grab them right because that they associate looking with with touching right in fact when people read using their finger they say they feel more in touch with their reading over time oh here's here's another way if someone loses their sense of sight how do you read use your Braille touch right and so I would encourage everyone to do is just just a kind of a quick tip because obviously you know we we do trainings courses that people can sign up for yeah 10 minutes a day for 30 days and we'll triple anyone's reading speed with much better comprehension but even if you just underline the words as you read you'll feel not only greater speed a lift 25 50 but you'll feel more in touch with your reading also as well especially if you're adding the questions and everything else we talked about and so I would say everyone could experiment with that there's if people can I give a link yeah sure if people go to jimquick.com forward slash more kwik.com there's actually a free one hour Master Class where you can I'll actually work and walk you through it you bring a book online and I'll show you how to do this visually and I'll show you some really cool shortcuts but that will boost your rings be 25 50 and that that's not a little bit that's a lot that's a lot right if they say time is money how many people got it 25 50 return on their Investments last year right so it really adds up over time and little by little a little becomes it becomes a whole lot yeah I mean thanks for sharing that that's brilliant I mean I I I guess I would I've never measured I would consider myself a quick reader relative to what I see around me but I don't do that I don't think I put my finger there so I'm already really excited because I I reckon I get through two to three books a week just for this podcast yeah right and I think it's interesting hearing you talk about uh learning and reading and like I what what have I intuitively found over five and a half years of doing this show works for me well I don't do I never will allow the Publishers to send me an electronic book like so it has to be a hard copy it's just again I don't want any more excuses to be on a screen so it's a hard copy book and initially I had to get over this hump of writing in books because initially I don't know I can't I can't put a colored pen inside this book I can't underline something this is like a work of arts you know but I've got over that like I will literally with my colored pens I will read some I'll underline key sentences and of course I've got some of those questions are built in because I know the guest is coming in two days right I'm gonna be on the mic so yeah I want to be well prepared I I don't have a researcher I do it all myself so I I'm reading the book I'm underlining uh keywords key phrases sometimes stroke often I'll have a journal next to me and I'll write down key quotes or key ideas yeah but there are only words or a few words I don't write questions for my guests I don't have set questions I just have themes and ideas that I want to go through so I let it sort of hopefully just breathe organically and see where we go to in a conversation and then I guess roughly one hour before the guest arrives in the studio you know give or take sometimes it's half an hour sometimes it's 90 minutes before but I would say on average an hour before the gas comes I look at the notes are made in a journal and then I open up this book which is my sort of podcast book now and I will just write down keywords key ideas try and put them in some you know group them in certain areas uh I will use colors yeah colors are really important for me they're always having even as a kid when I was revising at school I've always wanted a black red green and blue pan and you know here's the irony I I very rarely look at these things when I'm actually in the conversation but they actually I think they almost just Prime my brain they almost allow me to consolidate the information that I've absorbed and they give me a safety net one hour before a guest arrives in case I ever forget what I'm saying or in case I run out of things to say which I don't think I've I can't remember the last time I did that but I don't know that's kind of a brief sort of overview of my process what does that sound like to you and how might you improve it yeah and I love it have you always been so you're very you're very good at putting things in action and you you you're very you're very fast to to implement things like that and you tend to be very um more intuitive also yeah in terms of well I've just done your brain quiz and you don't know the answer so we'll go through that in a minute I'll tell you what my uh you know where we got to with that but yeah I would say that's right yeah so dude all right so when you're talking about a broad brain quiz because I'll I'll customize it for what we're talking about so your process obviously works because you refined it over you know lots of episodes in a number of years right and so we tend to with all our learning as you have a certain level of schema and background information start making things more elegant and I really do believe that it's not how smart we are it's how are we smart you know after especially in the work we do in education it's not how smart you are how smart your significant other how smart your kids are how smart your team is how are they smart and we all have a preferred way of learning and executing right Beyond learning styles um you mentioned the brain quiz so over over the past 12 months you know we refined our teaching and just as there's personalized medicine or personalized nutrition this is a way of kind of personalizing your learning around how you prefer to learn or lead or live all right and we've you know I pulled as inspiration from you know Myers-Briggs and left brain right brain dominance Theory and multiple intelligence uh Theory um and all these different areas to and we've discerned that there are about four cognitive types and I think everybody could I'll go through them really quick everyone could kind of see themselves in that or see friends like oh I know what animal that person's gonna be um for you I would guess it was a cheetah if I was a guess um and I I made it simple okay for me it's code c-o-d-e and uh everything is your brain code and people who take this it only takes a few minutes like probably take like three four minutes yeah it's really fun actually yeah if people can do it for free they can just go yeah it's a mybrainanimal.com mybrainanimal.com and you can see what brain animal you are now the animals are the letters c-o-d-e code so the C is the cheetah the cheetah are your fast actors they they Implement very well they tend to be very intuitive also as well so that you write notes but you go by your intuition you don't have to refer to it it's just you're you're in the moment and you could and you could you could you could pitch and toss right back and forth and I love that because you're such a great listener and we can go fast paced because I like I like quickness also as well you know it's part of part of my style and uh and you don't just learn things you put things in action you know I've seen your show over over the amount of years and just like you are you're knowing you're just like even how how your platform has grown because you you're implementing things and you're just probably thinking like and you you thrive in fast-paced environments and maybe because of medicine you had to do that you know it trained you to be able to you know to be quick on your toes and be a quick thinker right the O are your owls and we're not any one of them you have a primary and a secondary um because we're a blend nobody's 100 any of these animals but it gives you a filter just like when I was going through a limitless model of how to look at transformation how to look at leadership how to look at learning the oh owls are owls represent logic right they love data and you could you could probably you could die that might be your secondary you you love data facts and figures and formulas use the white papers you know you like to look at that at the the evidence there and and now by the way like they these are two people that could also blend but they could also learn differently right or be or they invest differently right ajito could invest in certain ways you know and to maybe tolerate a little bit of risk do things intuition you know and owls more luck you know I want to see I want to see these numbers and so on do their diligence the okay the D in code cheetah owl the D are your Dolphins these are your creative Visionaries these are great problem solvers they have an exceptional ability to do pattern recognition also as well as you can imagine uh they have great imagination they're creators right and then finally the E are your elephants and your elephants I would say they're they're highly empathetic strong interpersonal skills they thrive in in collaborations team environments also as well and this is a highly abbreviated you know aversion but when people go we've designed very specific questions and usually people know which answer it is or they struggle between is it this one or this one yeah I didn't overthink it I just thought what was the first one that's and that's the perfect way of doing it because that's what a cheetah would do um and then yeah when you get um you'll also get uh your report for you and we we customize personalized learning depending on what brain animal is your dominant and your primary this is how I would go about reading this is how I go about studying or note-taking or memorizing something so depending on which four you are the relevant says that you'll send people who do that quiz online like a personalized way yes of tackling life even things like goal setting like a cheetah like they go in Sprints so we said you know like even recommendation for goal setting and goal getting you'll see this report on on a cheetah creating a clear short-term goals right going from here to here to here because that's that would be aligned with your personal performance cognitive type and it's interesting and then I I also weave in stories in there of these four animals kind of like a child's book where you can see these these four animals that play at school or I work right because it's interesting when you have your team do it because we got a lot of insight also because we also see the back in all the numbers in terms of what percent you know our our each in different environments if I speak at a leadership conference or I speak at a entrepreneurial event or a student event um but our team it was interesting you know where our customers like our customer experience people were really in that in the empathetic kind of kind of space you know and our finance person was clearly an outlet like it's interesting because I also show people I give them sample careers where you would Thrive because based on your predilection for logic or or speed or you know empathy and so on so it's kind of fun it's at mybrainanimal.com and you know we're loving we're loving this because it informs I think in order to be happy and I'm looking forward to having you on on my show and talk about a happy mind and you know very full life in order to be happy I feel like you need two things you need to have the Curiosity to know yourself and then the courage to be yourself meaning that you know curiosity know yourself that's why we go to you go to therapy you know you Journal you do the inner work right and you get to know yourself you know your identity what you believe in what you stand for what you value in you know in your life what's important to you what you live for but once you have that you know I think a lot of people have done some of that work yeah and it's deep work but then Having the courage to be yourself so having the Curiosity to know yourself but then I'm encouraged to be that person you know because sometimes you know I spent a lot I lost my um so when I had my head injury my parents were working a lot so I was I had a lot of in three accidents before age of 12. my grandmother was my primary you know caregiver um she when I was going through these issues started showing early signs of dementia and the passing of Alzheimer's she would call me my father's name um you know uh say something she just said and just a situation um so so we donated um a good portion of the proceeds to this book to not only build schools around the world Ghana Guatemala Kenya Healthcare clean water build this this actual facilities teachers um but also Alzheimer's research for women because women are twice as likely to experience alzheimer's than men and yet a lot of the research is done on male brains treatments on male brain so that's something I'm very passionate about but that informed what I would do as a living in terms of education and brain health you know for this but I spent a lot of time because of it I didn't have the um I lost all my grandparents very early um I I spent a lot of time in senior centers in nursing homes um because I number want to help polish off memories because that's my superpower but I also I get to hear wisdom you know that I didn't have a lot growing up from generations and I feel like the life we live or the lessons we teach right the life we live are the lessons we teach you know people around us and then somebody who's been on this uh you know on this on this Earth longer than me they have lessons and it could be lessons of examples or Warnings right but lessons either way but I also hear these amazing stories but I also hear when it gets very intimate some regret creeping in you know they talk about uh you know and the regret is always not what they did but what they didn't do right and we know that the regrets are dying and but somehow the regrets I could sum up is they somehow shrunk them their life um in some way or limited their life because of what other people would think they didn't pursue that relationship that they were really infatuated but but because of what society would think about that relationship or they pursued a career path because it was expected by their parents or some some form of that and I just want to remind people who hear that when you're taking your final breaths it's not a fun conversation because I tend to be more positive but I'm going to be very practical when we're taking our final breath think just like how I fast forward at the end of my day you know it's like what three things happen personally professionally if I really said I was happy you dealt with your life also because when you're taking your final fast forward to the end of your days at that time were you taking your final breath none of other people's opinions their expectations are going to matter you know not none of our fears are going to matter what's going to matter is how we learned how we laughed how we loved you know how we lived right yeah and I just want to remind people you know the whole idea of beginning with the end in mind you know for for me somebody asked me recently like you know because I was uh you know new new father and I was saying like I'm going to do this and people like you know you want to make your son proud yeah I want to make my son proud of him you know parents proud all of that you know the two you know my my wife is on but when I think about it the two people I want to make proud really a nine-year-old boy that was going through all those challenges you know like that was being teased and bullied called broken you know I want to look back I do these mental experiments all the time I was like I want to make that you know the nine-year-old me proud and then also fast forward 99 hopefully you know I'd be doing this a long time I want to make that guy proud also as well you know and so you know that that that's what I could control you know and I just feel like the life we live again our lessons what we teach and I think we're all in this Quest you know to that you know to realize and reveal our our fullest potential this book over 30 years you know I had an opportunity to scale my business infomercials and franchises and train the trainer and oh you know like all this kind of the media book deals I never said yes and in 2019 I got in a car accident put this and I um you create a very safe space I just appreciate you um I almost died and um and it made me think about that put everything in perspective because I never want to be famous right I want to help people but I don't need to be known for it just because I'm very introverted and I'm just I like to you know do things that like that um and that helps me have some kind of Harmony not balance but Harmony kind of like an orchestra kind of not everyone has equal amount of everything but they play music and it's just your art um but when I had that kind of near-death experience I I signed the book deal that's been in my inbox for like 10 years you know um because I was made me think about what I leave behind and it really kind of made me think you know and you might have you know have this experience or know people have had that kind of near-death experience maybe just think of of Legacy you know in my next book isn't it's different it wasn't inspired by death it was experienced by the birth of my son so now it's part of my life and wow because I want to I want to I want to leave the world brighter you know for for him and it's just become very personal for me in terms of Clarity of mission building better brighter brains no brain left behind but also depth you know of of purpose yeah thank you for sharing that Jim and it is a great book and I can see why it's been so popular and helping so many people it's really fascinating to here where it came from where that energy came from so I really do appreciate sharing that just before we finish off talking about building better brains um on a slightly I guess light-hearted notes juggling is something I've seen you talk about before you know why is juggling so good and then something I I haven't heard you talk about but I'm interested because I play with my kids regularly table tennis or ping pong so juggling yeah what's the deal why is it good uh does it matter for any good or not and then maybe table tennis or ping pong is that also good for our brains and why yeah there's there's a study down here uh Oxford University saying juggler is actually have bigger brains they create a more white matter I believe as your body moves your brain grooves and I think the the number one reason we have a brain is to control our movement which is interesting to watch you know uh my son starting to learn how to crawl and we know that close cross laterals are very important for brain development and you know the communication between left and right brain and corpus callosum that kind of bridging station so you know as you move your body it challenges different parts of your brain so it's not just a mind-body connection there's a body mind connection that even using your opposite hand you know will stimulate different parts of your brain even when I I challenge you know for people who are just alphas and they're very achievement oriented try using your finger opposite hand my speed reading yeah try using your left if you're you know eleven percent of popular populations left-handed but if you're listening this in your right hand try using your left hand because potentially what if it could stimulate the right side of your brain you know they say that your left side is very and this is over simplification for sure logical but you're always say more imaginative creative but just imagine using your left hand to stimulate different parts or eating and making more mindful certainly um in the beginning it might be difficult because you're focused on doing it right because I used to like if I ask you to write your your name with your opposite hand and probably won't be so so good and that's how I see learning also if I ask everyone to write their first and last name actually you could do it now write your first and last name on a piece of paper yeah and then when you're done switch hands and then below it try below that with your opposite hand you know and as you're doing it oh wow and I'm challenging people you know that second one as you're doing it it takes longer it um feels weird oh wow and um this is and the quality is probably not as good so those are the three differences right you can just leave it at that that I I get it I think I get it but um so the second time it takes longer um it was uncomfortable and the quality is not quite as good and I often feel like when people are trying to learn something they're trying to and they're not getting it even if they're interested in the topic maybe there's just not maybe the way you prefer to learn it is different than the way the teacher prefers to teach it and I'm taking my hands and kind of passing them there's no connections like two ships in a night and there's no connection because how you learn it is different how it teaches so maybe it's a learning disability or maybe it's a teaching disability or it's just not that communication where you have a unification and connected and so maybe you're trying oh there's no way put it maybe trying to learn it with the opposite hand so it takes longer it feels uncomfortable herbal and the quality the end result is not quite as good as if you're going to use your dominant hand and that's what going back to the the brain quiz once you know what your strengths are you can take the Judgment out you know and you're not judging a fish you know by its ability to climb a tree you know that whole thing you know you could honor your own strengths and know that you could also develop your weaknesses certainly because we give you protocols on how to be more owl or be more uh cheetah and and so on but um but going back to the using your opposite hand or something or table tennis table tennis is wonderful for the brain I've had multiple matches with you know Dr Daniel Ayman it's his favorite brain training really yeah yeah it's literally what he says is the number one physical activity for the brain uh thinking speed Reaction Time hand-eye coordination it's a good cardio if you're doing it well but um I love tables we me and my son particularly play some pretty good you know gains of reaction speed everything and I'm hey I'm enjoying it I'm having having a blast but B it's kind of like I I know I've read support this is good for our brains and sometimes will also play left-handed yeah so we're both right-handed because I know it feels different but after a while you started to groove yeah you get it and I'm like this is good for my brain I know it is in fact there's a um you know arguably the world's greatest ever snooker player a chuckle Ronnie O'Sullivan now I don't know if he's like completely right-handed and then he learned this with this weekend of whether he's ambidextrous I couldn't tell you that but he can play almost as good with his left hands yeah and actually when he initially started doing this in composition some some of his opponents wouldn't shake that shake his hand they thought he was taking the Mickey they thought he was being unsportsmanlike wow oh I can you know like the the quip oh I can be you know like you might do with your mates when you when you're younger I can beat your playing with my left hand mates kind of thing but actually he's learned he can play both handers yeah and so on one side of the table if someone has to use a rest because of just the what just the mechanics he doesn't have to he just flips to his other hand he doesn't need to use the rest which is really interesting yeah I love I didn't grow up with uh a ping pong or table tennis uh in in in our home but uh it's something that I enjoy now we have we have one in our home and you know I when people come and they're decent at it I'll play left I'm right-handed but I play left handed and I've noticed that my left hand is actually getting in some ways my slice is better than now my backhand is better than my forehand like my my dominant hand and so yeah table tennis uh ballroom dancing uh juggling all that is very stimulating for the brain the juggling going back to it you could watch the video I'm not I'm I could juggle right but I'm not juggling swords and flaming like chin saws but you could watch a YouTube video what I do a couple tips on this though the reason why I like juggling besides the building better brains is um it's nice to challenge yourself it's you know getting this end result because I feel like it's a good metaphor for life because how many of us don't feel like we're we're juggling everything in life right but the other part is it forces it actually helps with your reading interesting enough going back to speed reading because if I'm juggling three balls up in the air I don't I have two eyes I can't look at all three balls with just two eyes right so I have to instead of my foveal vision like really narrowing I have to soften my gaze to get more of my uh perceptual Vision right be able to see more my field of of of focus and that's the kind of focus similarly I noticed when I started teaching juggling is that I read is when you look at a and I'm opening a book if you look at this word liver right you look at that word liver so you have to there's about 10 words per line as we mentioned uh flush toxic toxins from the liver then there's something called fixations so this is what keeps people another thing that keeps people reading slow when you're doing a fixation that means a fixation is an eye stop so if they're 10 words per line you're fixating on each word you're making 10 stops and it's kind of like if you're driving on a road yeah it's like doom boom boom sour traffic so boom boom 10 times as opposed to if I look at you know the word here and I could see the word to the left and to the right or you know and then so I could soften my gaze with my peripheral vision see to the left and to right and maybe see three or four words at a time so then it only takes two three max fixations to get across the page so instead of you know 10 stops it's less traffic it's just like one two and then I'm done okay I can't just say it's just amazing that you're un packing the Arts of reading you know for many of us we learned how to read at school or from our parents and then we've never given it any thoughts I haven't I just open a book and read but I'm already thinking I can use my finger now yeah wow I think I'm pretty quick anyway let's see what happens when I start using my finger and now I'm thinking am I you know super focused on one or two words or can I soften everything yeah be more relaxed and you know have that more peripheral vision two two practical things that I can Implement straight away and then in order to do that you have to relax right so when I'm juggling like this I I open I expand so I could see this you know feel the play so I could I could take everything in same thing when I'm looking at a page you know or or a line and then so and also that relaxed state is not putting me in fight or flight right sometimes when we're so narrow focused on something that yeah no I love it and so and then it's like and it's more taxing when you're looking at like you know think about your even just the the muscles in your eye having to go from and then sometimes what we're doing is regressing we're back skipping have you ever noticed you reread words or go to or we read whole lines and that takes up a lot of time and I want to honor what you what you know what you you know the self-reflection and the awareness that yeah reading is a skill and it can be improved through training but when's last time we took a class called reading we were six so the difficulty in demand has increased uh tremendously but how we actually read something is the same way as we did as a as a as a child yeah and we haven't upgraded those skills and that's why I think this is so important I'll tell you the big thing in terms of what and by the way when you understand your your peripheral vision then you don't even have to go across the page you could indent you know a handful of whatever centimeters to the left and to the right and in between so you need to have to go all the way across you could just stay in the middle and still see what's what's going to write and there's another save another 25 right and this adds up every single day you're getting that time back the other thing is the the thing that's actually challenging the most for readers have you ever noticed when you're reading something you hear that inner voice inside your head reading along with you you hear that voice inside your head hopefully it's your own voice it's not like someone else's voice the reason why it's a challenge is if you have to say all the words inside your mind in order to understand that means your reading speed is limited to your talking speed but not your thinking speed right the reason why most people read 200 to 250 words per minute is that's the average rate of speech and can you understand faster of course but you can't talk that fast so let me ask you the underlining like they were reevaluating what we learned do you need to say words right like uh computer New York City in order to understand what those words are no because you've seen them how many times 100 000 times and they're called sight words words that you've seen thousands of times you know by sight you don't have to pronounce by sound and 95 of what we're reading on a regular basis are sight words just like when you see traffic signs or a stop sign and says stop you don't say stop but you understand what it means right and so not that's most of the words could this be one of the reasons why I'm I don't haven't done this enough to to say this for sure but I'm not I think like sometimes when I try audio books like I love listening to podcasts yeah but I'm not sure I love listening to audiobooks like I much prefer real books and I wonder if that's because I think I'm a quick reader do I maybe find like the audiobook too slow for the speed that I'd like to go like could that be a reason yeah and I'll give you a couple distinctions but I love podcasts yeah so some people all right let's let's deconstruct this and pack it so some people will listen to a podcast or audiobook at faster speed right the data 1.5 or 2 when they might be doing it right now right because you can no one can speak that fast but we can understand that fast right and that's just another evidence that we could be reading faster than we currently are you know when people are mostly reading they're reading one word at uh time and I'll tell you if you get distracted while you read which is a lot of people it's because you're reading too slow let me let me say that again most people think they get distracted because they're not an interesting topic and that could be an interesting Factor but most people get distracted because they're reading too slow because your brain is this incredible supercomputer and when you're reading you're feeding this super computer one word uh uh time metaphorically you're starving your mind and if you don't give your brain the entertainment it needs it'll seek stimulus elsewhere in the form of distraction so you start thinking about other stuff it's like if you're driving if you're driving down uh down you know your wonderful neighborhood here you're not really focused on driving right but if you're racing a car at you know you know F1 and you are are you like if you're driving slow you're thinking about the dry cleaning about what you should have said on the podcast be thinking about five you could be drinking coffee texting maybe five different things when you're going slow because you could be that but if you're going fast are you are you thinking about are you trying to text are you are you trying to drink coffee are you thinking about the dry cleaning no because the speed gives you the focus and the focus gives you the comprehension so most people think if I read any faster I want to understand it actually because we test we have more data than anybody we have the you know our Flagship speed reading program has been around for a long time we actually find that the people who are reading faster actually have better comprehension in general because they have better focus because when they're going faster there's no time to be distracted and thinking about other things and trying to get P some people read so slowly they fall asleep because they're just bored yeah you know and then they're multitasking and everything because they're not giving their brain the stimulus they need so it entertains itself in other ways so there's a big science and art to this like in the training that we do we show people because I can't and there's no quick tip for it on how to reduce the sub-vocalization so you're not saying you're only saying the words that are new to you right and you know the words you have to pronounce because you're they're not familiar to you and so and then we teach all the different ways to take notes and to study and underline do all the fancy stuff but the idea here is you know prioritize reading because leaders are readers you read to succeed readings your mind would exercise your body that's the whole mindset part and give yourself a real purpose to read don't just read randomly like you read for purpose because you want to implement it how can I use this why must I use this when will I use this and then the method upgrade your reading of skills and abilities because it's just like seven habits are highly effective people right that you know by Stephen Covey the seventh happened sharp in the saw if you have all this wood you need to cut and you have a blade you know that's that's dull when you want to sharpen it at the end in the middle of the beginning in the beginning because if you wait to the end you just struggle a lot you waste a lot of time you suffered you stressed and when you sharpen the saw like this Limitless will help you read every other book this is like like you know lord of the Rings like the one ring that controls them all Limitless is like the one book that will help you learn read and remember them all yeah you go through this and then everything after that you sharpen the saw and it's just a whole lot easier so I could talk to you for hours that's so much wisdom about memory learning Focus attention that we haven't even got into of course you've got all your online courses you've got your Limitless but you've got your own podcast so there's plenty of resources that people can go to to learn more I've really enjoyed this conversation um as you know this podcast is called feel better live more when we feel better in ourselves we get more out of our life your whole mission is to help us have better brains better functioning brains which is going to help work relationships Hobbies whatever it might be so right at the end of this conversation I wonder if you could leave my audience with some wisdom some insight some sort of practical tips if they feel inspired by what they've heard what can they do right now to start improving how their brains function yeah yeah okay so so I would say within the next hour definitely the next day put something in action right the knowledge is not only Power you know it could be profit if it's utilized then I don't mean just Financial profit certainly the faster you can learn the faster you can earn most people listening to this it's not like 100 years ago you're not compensated for your muscle power like it was back then it's your mind power it's not your boot strength today's your brain strength so I would say prioritize your ability to learn how to learn if there was a genie can graduating one wish you would ask for well Limitless wishes but if let's say I was your learning Genie I could help you become an expert in any one subject or any one's skill yes you could pick ping pong you know or you could think or you could think about Neuroscience but if you could say like hey I want to be excellent at learning how to learn every area gets easier medicine money martial arts music Mandarin everything gets easier so I would say the first thing is prioritize learning how to learn whether it's reading better improving your memory Focus these are not things that you have these are things that you could do and Genius Leaves Clues right so you can learn how to learn right whether it's through us or just finding it online learn how to learn the second thing I would say is just read more that that's kind of obvious but I'm just reiterating what we've talked about here leaders or readers just even if it's just 10 minutes a day make it super easy you know carry a book with you and when you have down time I do so much my reading just like when I feel like time opens up you know meeting starts 15 minutes late and that 15 minutes adds up so I just like picking up a book or if I'm waiting online at the DMV or something like that is to read more um the third thing think about your dominant question I'm talking about things that you know we've gone over because it's a rapid review think about what your dominant questions are because you change your questions you change your life you know maybe your question is how do I make this moment even magical what's the best use of this moment what's most important to me in the you know you know right now you know or or how can I make that nine-year-old you know version of me proud you know whatever your focus goes that's where the energy is definitely going to flow and um and then the the last two things I would say um take the quiz that a small simple step you could do is post your quiz result and tag us both so we get to see what you are and share one thing you're gonna do for a better brain like share what animal you are get a nice uh we created these AI animals uh personalized you could post it online tag us both I'll actually gift out three copies of Limitless just the three random people who do that so it's a small simple step you could take to really show your your fans your your followers your friends your family you know like something new about you um and then well because you tag us I'll get to see it and I'll repost some of some of those um and then the last thing is teach it you know my my philosophy on life is You Learn to Earn to return he learns he can earn so you have more to be able to return I think one of the best ways returning something is it teaches somebody else you take advantage of something called the explanation effect the explanation effect is exactly what it sounds like if you learn with the intention of explaining to somebody else you're going to learn it easier and better you're going to own it because you're not going to use when you sum up what you learned here and that's active retrieval that's another practice you could use you're not going to use necessarily my words you know our words to explain it you're going to use your own words and then you're going to have that ownership and I think that's the most beautiful thing right if you gave me a certain amount of currency and I gave you the same amount of currency nothing happens it's the same thing right but if I share a new idea with you and you share new idea that's why your community is so amazing and I'm a big fan of of your show and your YouTube I subscribe to you know it it always shows up early and even on social media also on Instagram but then I share a new idea with you and you share a new idea with me all of a sudden we have two brand new ideas and all I just ask is that you don't keep it an idea you turn it in to some kind of implementation because that that's the ultimate thing is the integration you know when you're my when you're mindset your motivation and the methods when you're head your heart and your hands are all aligned then you're limiting living a limitless life you know I I truly believe there's a version if you're still listening to this I promise you I'm talking to the person listening to this right now there's a version of yourself that's patiently waiting and the goal is you show up every single day until you're introduced Tim I love everything you're doing love the input you make here on the worlds that's coming on the show thank you if you enjoyed that conversation I think you are really going to enjoy this one all about the simple morning habit that you can use to transform your life so many people get stopped by procrastination you know what you need to do the issue is how do you make yourself take actions

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 246,733

Keywords: the4pillarplan, thestresssolution, feelbetterin5, wellness, drchatterjee, feelbetterlivemore, ranganchatterjee, 4pillars, drchatterjee podcast, health tips, nutrition tips, health hacks, live longer, age in reverse, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, motivation, inspiration, health interview

Id: 5tbtrUZm12k

Length: 149min 27sec (8967 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023