Jim Kwik went from being labeled "the boy with the broken brain" after a childhood injury to becoming a learning expert. A second head injury in college forced him to rethink how he learned, leading him to master memory and focus techniques. He now teaches that learning how to learn is a superpower, citing a student who read 30 books in 30 days to help her dying mother.
Bulletproof radio, a state of high performance. What happened very early on, in fact, I want you to talk about it. How did you start this, this very idea back when you were in college when you had a brain injury? Just walk us through in one minute how you got to where you are, and we're going to continue on how to do it.
All right, so the quick story of it, quote, unquote, my last name really is quick. I didn't change it.
You didn't change it?
Okay. No, it's my father's name. It's my grandfather's name. It's. So I found my. Found my mission. When people see me at your events that you host, and I give those one of the keynotes, I do these memory demonstrations that I'm known for. While I have 50 people Come on, you know, stand up, or a lot of people come on stage, and I'll memorize all their names as they introduce themselves. Or people give me 100 words or 100 numbers, and I'll recite them forwards and backwards. But I always tell people, I don't do this to impress you. I do this to express to you what. What's possible. Because the truth is, everyone listening can do that and a lot more. And now you're probably thinking that's total bs, But I'm going to show you why that's not the case. And I know it's possible because I grew up with learning difficulties. When I was five years old, I had a very bad accident in elementary school. Head trauma, brain injury. And I was a slow processor after that. I had very poor focus, poor memory. It took me an extra three years to learn how to read. Teachers would have to repeat themselves over and over again. And I eventually learned how to game it and say I understood, but I didn't really understand. When I was nine years old, I was slowing the whole class down. And I remember I was being made fun of, and a teacher pointed to me and said, that's the boy with the broken brain. And that label became my limit. And we're going to be talking about limitless. And three forces that really unlock help you to be able to do things that you don't believe are possible, but that put me in a box. And as somebody's listening to this right now, they might feel like they're not making progress in an area of their life. And I'm going to explain why and explain exactly how to go through a process I call unlimiting the act of removal of limits in our life. And so when I Was in college, I hit a wall where I was just studying all the time, you know, three times harder than everybody else. I was just wasting away. And I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't working out, and ended up passing out one night in the library late at night, fell down a flight of stairs, again, hit my head. I woke up two days later in the hospital. And at this point, I was down to 117 pounds. I mean, I was dying. I thought I did die. Maybe part of me wished I did. And at that point, when I woke up, I thought, there has to be a better way. And the nurse came in with a mug of tea. And on it was a picture of Albert Einstein. Pretty smart dude. And it said this quote, the same level of thinking that's created your problem won't solve your problem. And it made me ask a new question. What's my problem? I'm a really slow learner. I was like, well, how do I think differently about it? Well, maybe I can learn how to learn. And I asked the nurse for a course bulletin for next semester's classes. Flipped through all these pages, hundreds of pages, a couple hundred pages, and they're all classes on what to learn. Math, history, science, Spanish. There were zero classes on how to learn. So I realized that school teaches you what to learn, what to think, what to focus on, what to read, what to remember, what to study, what to. But not how to do any of those things. And so I really focused on those subject matters. And about 60 days into studying multiple intelligence theory, adult learning, ancient mnemonics, speed reading, a light switch flipped on, and I just started to just understand things. My focus, concentration became, like bulletproof, you know, my memory. And I couldn't help but help other people. And my very first student that got me on this path, she read 30 books in 30 days. I swear to you, like, didn't skim or scan. Read it. And I wanted to find out what her motivation was. And I found out her mother was dying of terminal cancer. And the book she was reading were books to save her mom's life. And I wished her luck, you know, for two months, you know, six months goes by, I don't hear from this young lady. And then I get a call, and she's crying, crying, crying. And I find out when she stops her tears of joy that her mother not only survived, but it's really getting better. Doctors don't know how, they don't know why. They called it a miracle, but her mother attributed 100% to the great advice she got from her daughter, who learned it from all these books. And in that moment I realized that if knowledge is power, then learning is our superpower. And it's a superpower we all have access to. And I think it is the number one capability to cultivate today. Because if there was a genie could grant you any one wish, you would ask for limitless wishes. Now, if I was your learning genie, I could help grant any one learning wish, any subject, any one skill. What would be the equivalent of asking for limitless wishes? It would be learning how to learn. Because if you could learn how to learn, you could apply that towards everything. You could grant all your own learning wishes. It doesn't matter if it's money, martial arts, Mandarin, music, management, marketing, everything gets easier. Especially today where the faster you can learn, the faster you can earn. And I dedicated my life 28. Almost three decades later, I've been doing it. That's all I've been doing.
