A podcast highlight featuring Dr. Don Wood recounting stories that illustrate how words shape self-belief. Central is Jim Quick’s narrative: a childhood brain injury, a teacher’s well-intended remark (“Jim has a broken brain”) that cemented a limiting identity, and his later transformation into a world-leading memory expert after finding motivating reading and mentors. The clip broadens the theme with Don’s anecdotes (his book Don't Mess With My DNA) about how casual comments to children can be internalized and produce lasting effects.
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Jim Quick went through our program. I did his podcast with him. He loved what I did. But his story is fascinating because what he said was, when he was in kindergarten, he was on a chair, and he fell, hit his head on the radiator. So he had a brain injury. And he says he remembers not being able to focus and not be able to remember. So he was really struggling in school. And so one time the teacher asked him to read something from the book, and he couldn't. He was struggling. And the kids started to laugh. And, you know, that nervous laughter, you know that it's, like, embarrassing. And the teacher said, again, probably thinking she's helping him. She goes, don't laugh at Jim. Jim has a broken brain. And he says. And that's when he quit. He said, I can't learn. Of course I can't learn. Right? My brain's broken. So he struggled all through school, and he tells this story, and he says the only thing that he loved was the X Men, you know, the Marvel comics. And he said. He said, I felt like a misfit. The reason I like the X Men is because they're the misfits. And he lived in Connecticut? Yep. And he says, as a kid, I remember riding my bike around thinking that the academy has to be here. It's in Connecticut. If I find the academy, that's the school I want to go to, because I would fit in. He's got this amazing ability to focus on X Men and everything he loved about it, struggling in school. And then he said, to make a long story short, he says, I don't know how, but I managed to get into a college. And he says, and I was still struggling. And to the point that he said to his roommate, he says, I just have to drop out. And the roommate says, I'll tell you what. Before you drop out, come back with me this weekend. I want you to meet my dad and just talk to my dad before you quit. And so he said, okay. So he went for the weekend. And the father sat down with Jim and said, jim, write down the things that you love, that you want to do in your life. He says, make a list for me. So Jim says, he sat down and he sort of wrote out the list. And the father grabbed it from him, said, let me look at this. He says, now I'm mortified because I don't want anybody to see this. And so he's like, oh, no. This guy's looking at my innermost secrets and what I want to do. And so he has this wall of Books like a library. And he goes to the wall and he takes five books off the shelves and he says, now, Jim, I want you to promise me something. Before you quit college, I want you to read these books. And so he says, will you agree that you'll read the books before you decide to quit? He says, and Jim says in his own mind, he's going, I don't think this guy heard me. I can't read a book, let alone five books. So he says, so I agree just to get out of there. He says, and on the plane ride, yeah, on the, on the plane ride home, he says, I pick up one of the books and I start reading it. Before I knew it, I'm like, almost through the book. He found a book he was interested in. The father realized what he was interested in by giving the list. And as soon as he gave him material, right, that he was interested in, he could focus. They just haven't given him anything that.
He was interested in totally, which undid that lie that his brain was broken, right?
And now he's the world's leading up expert on memory. And so it was really fascinating because the other story he tells, which I love telling, is because he says, so now I'm this world expert on memory, he says, I'm hired by Universal Studios, he says, to work with some of their executives. And he says, so I'm in a meeting with their executives. And he says, and the president of Universal said, let's go to lunch. Jump on the golf cart with me. We'll go to the cafeteria. And on the way to the cafeteria, he says he sees the Wolverine billboard up in Universal Studios. And so he says to the president, he goes, that was my hero when I was growing up. The X Men were my heroes. And so the President says, where are you going to be for the rest of the week? And they said, well, I head back to my, my home in Los Angeles. He says, if you want, we're shooting the scene at the Academy in Montreal. We're shooting that whole scene for the movie. Do you want to come with me? And he says, so I'm flying on a private jet with Holly Berry, Hugh Jackman, all of these people, they let me stay there with them for a few days and working on their lines to help them with all of that. Then he says, what an amazing like this is living his life's dream as a kid. He says, he gets back home and there's this big package waiting for him and it's a giant poster of all the X Men with him in it. And they all signed it and said, welcome to the Academy.
Wow.
Incredible.
That's incredible. I love stories like that where the. I think the impact of our words, I think we're careless as a culture, for sure. I mean, in a way, cursing others and to say that his brain was broken was a curse to him, really, until he got free of that. And I feel like part of our training with our team and the connection and all that is. It's really the intention and how you say what you're saying and what you focus on. And it's so significant because we all believe things that aren't true about ourselves. Like the girl who was singing like you were saying she had a beautiful voice, but there was a whole bunch of lies that she had about whether she would be liked or. Or valued or whatever those things were for her. From her story matter, I love. That's a great story. I haven't heard that one.
I loved it. I sat with him when he was telling me the whole story, and I was just like, this is amazing. And then the other thing that was interesting, I wrote my fourth book. I called it Don't Mess With My DNA, because it's all what I'm working on. And this is one of the things I talk about in the book. It's just like you talked about how words can have an impact. And I said, with the best of intentions, you can hurt a child. So that teacher wasn't trying to hurt him. She was trying to help him. She thinks she's helping him by making an excuse for him. But what she did is she set atone for him for the rest of his life. And so I. I talk about when my wife was growing up, so she's got this traumatic household she's already in. And then some of the mothers in the neighborhood decided to put a tea party together so that all the little girls could come to the tea party. So she's all excited because she's a girly girl and she gets her grandmother dresses her all up and she gets to the tea party and the mothers are greeting them. And the one mother says to Bridget, she goes, oh, my gosh, Bridget, you're going to be such a heartbreaker when you grow up. And all the other mothers are like, oh, yeah, you going to be a real heartbreak unison.
I all agree.
She says, I felt sick to my stomach and had to go home. What she heard is, you're a bad person. You're going to break people's hearts. Now, they're not trying to say that but a 6 year old doesn't know what that means so she's filtering through her experiences thinking that that is a bad thing and they're not trying to do that. So you have to be so careful with the words. And also in the book I tell the story which is funny, which isn't traumatic at all, but I remember my mother saying at times it's difficult to make ends meet.
Oh yeah.
And I remember as a child thinking we were having a problem with meat. Getting meat to get together like two pieces of meat.
That's your child's brain. You don't have the capacity to.
No, that's exactly. And I tell that story because it's sort of funny. It wasn't harmful to me but I, I just assumed there was some sort of a problem. And do you ask said child? No.
No, you don't. You just move.
What do you mean ends meet? There's a problem with meat in this house. I don't know what it is.
