How To INSTANTLY IMPROVE Memory, Focus & Learn 10x FASTER | Jim Kwik

Just as you have physical muscles, you have mental muscles. If you're not growing those mental muscles, then they're atrophying. So a lot of people don't know this, but when they see me on stage memorize a room full of people's names, like 100 names or 100 numbers or 100 words, I'll do it forwards and backwards, I always tell people, I don't do this to impress you, I do this to express to you what's really possible, because the truth is you could do it too. You just weren't taught how to do it, because school is a great place to learn what to learn: math, history, science, Spanish. but there were zero classes on how to learn, how to think, how to be creative, how to solve problems, how to listen, how to read faster, how to remember more. I always thought that it should have been the fourth R in school, reading, writing, arithmetic, but what about remembering, what about retention, what about recall? And Socrates said, there is no learning without remembering. And so I know this is possible for everybody because at the age of five, I had a very bad accident. I had head trauma, a brain injury, and that left me with learning challenges all through school. all through elementary school, middle school, and high school. And so how did that manifest? I couldn't understand things like everybody else did. Teachers would have to repeat themselves four or five times, and then I would just have to pretend I understood. I had no focus. I had a very horrible memory. And I actually took me an extra three years to learn how to read. And so I grew up with these learning challenges. And I remember a few years after that, when I was about nine years old, I overheard one of my teachers to another adult thinking I wasn't paying attention, pointing to me saying, that's the boy with the broken brain. And that's where I, you know, and when you're a child, that really leaves an impression. And so that was my identity growing up. And eventually when I got to college, when I was a freshman, I wanted to start fresh, right? I wanted a new start. I wanted to make my family proud, show the world, show myself that I really did not have a broken brain. And I took all these classes and I actually did worse. and I was ready to quit school because I couldn't handle it anymore. And a friend of mine was saying that, Hey, why don't you, I'm going home for the weekend, why don't you come with me, get some perspective with my family before you tell your parents you're going to quit school because you're a broken brain. And I said, okay, and I go and the family is pretty successful and the father's walking me around his property before dinner and asked me a very innocent question, which is the worst question you could ask me at the time, says, how was school? And I was like, oh my goodness. And I just are breaking down. I tell him about my broken brain and I don't learn like everybody else does and there's something different there. And he's like, well, why are you in school? What do you want to be? What do you want to do? What do you want to have? What do you want to share? And I noticed that questions really are the power of questions in our lives to be able to ask a new question to get a new answer. And nobody's ever asked me that question before. So it took me a little while to answer and then When I go to answer him, he pauses and he takes out a journal out of his back pocket and he rips out a couple of sheets of paper and he makes me write it down. And I also noticed some of the most amazing minds out there are geniuses. They keep journals and they write things down. And they don't know if it's because they're geniuses that they write things down or it's because they write things down in journals that they're geniuses. So it's interesting. Anyway, I write down this list. It's like a bucket list. And when I was done, I start folding up the sheets of paper to put it in my pocket and he does something unexpected. He grabs the sheets out of my hand. and he starts reading my dreams, he starts reading my goals, my deep desires, and I didn't realize that somebody else was gonna look at it, and I don't know how much time goes by, but when he's done, he goes like this. He's like, Jim, you are this close to everything on that list. And I'm thinking, There's just no way. He spreads his index fingers about a foot apart. I'm like, Give me 10 lifetimes, I'm not gonna crack that list. And he goes like this, like this, right to my brain, to my broken brain, right? And he takes me into a room of his home I've never seen before. It is wall-to-wall ceiling-to-floor covered in books. And for me, growing up with learning challenges, never finishing a book cover to cover, you know, I have a phobia of reading, right? It's the equivalent of walking into a room that's full of snakes for somebody who's afraid of snakes. And what makes it worse is this person starts grabbing snakes and starts handing them to me, right? All these books. And I started looking at the titles and there are these incredible biographies of men and women in history and some very early personal growth books. And he says, Jim, I want you to read one of these books a week. And I'm like, have you not been listening to our conversation? I have learning challenges. I have a broken brain, right? And he's like, then he says, Jim, and I tell him about all my schoolwork and I have my midterms, and he looks at me and says, Jim, don't let school get in the way of your education. And I didn't realize at the time it was a Mark Twain quote, but I said, that's very inspiring, but I really can't commit to reading a book a week. And then he's a very smart man. He reaches into his pocket, he takes out my bucket list, and he starts reading each of my dreams out loud. and something about hearing another man who's obviously doing well for himself, hearing my dreams being incanted out to the universe really shook with my mind and my heart and my soul something fierce. And a lot of the things on that list were things I wanted to do for my family that they can never afford or would never do for themselves. And with that extra leverage or motivation, and I talk about motivation is very key to be able to have a growing brain, to be able to fix your broken brain, is having the motivation and drive to want to do that. and with that extra motivation, I agree to read one book a week. Fast forward, I'm back at school and I have a pile of books I have to read for school and a pile of books that I promise to read for my own improvement and I can't keep up. So I don't eat, I don't sleep, I don't work out, I don't spend time with family or friends, any of that. I just live in the library, which is the worst recipe for fixing your broken brain, right? And it's not very sustainable. I end up passing out in the library and I fall down a flight of stairs. I hit my head again and I wake up two days later in the hospital. And at this point, because I wasn't taking care of myself, I was down to 117 pound pounds. I literally was wasting away. I thought I died. And when I woke up, another part of me woke up also. And that part of me thinking, what's going on? You know, how do I fix this? Right? And when I had that thought, the nurse came in with a mug of tea and on it had a picture of Albert Einstein. you know, a genius. He was the opposite of what I thought I was, right? He's got incredibly bright and better brain and had this quote on there on the T that said, the same level of thinking that's created the problem won't solve the problem. The same level of thinking that's created the problem won't solve the problem. And it made me ask a new question. It's like, well, what's my problem? My problem is I have a very slow, broken brain. Well, how do I think differently about it? Well, maybe I could learn how to have a faster, better brain. right? And I put all my studies aside and I start studying this thing called my brain. I wanted to solve this riddle, how my brain works so I could work my brain, how my memory works so I could work my memory. So I poured myself into adult learning theory, brain science, anything having to do with memory or reading and focus and concentration. And after I started doing that, about 30-60 days in, it's like a light switch went on and I started to understand things for the first time. I started to have better focus. I started to remember things better. I started to read faster. My grades improved and then my life improved dramatically after that. Now the reason why I'm here still today, this is 25 years later, is I couldn't help but wanting to help other people, right? And thinking it's so unfair that this wasn't taught and available to everybody because everyone's struggling and suffering more in this digital age than ever before with information overload and overwhelm, all the villains that are attacking our brain. And I started tutoring this. and one of my students, she was a freshman in college, she read 30 books in 30 days. 30 books in 30 days. Can you imagine what books you would read? And she wasn't just reading, she was absorbing it and retaining it and understanding it. And I wanted to find out not how she did it, I know exactly how she did it, but I wanted to know why, going back to human motivation again. And I found out that her mother was dying of terminal cancer and the books she was reading were books to save her mom's life, books on health and wellness from a lot of the the experts that are in this series. And so I was blown away by that. And I remember six months later, I get a call from this young lady and she's crying and she's crying and crying and I can't get a word out of her. And I find out they're tears of joy and that her mother not only survived but is really getting better. Doctors don't know how, they don't know why. They call it a miracle, but her mother attributes it 100% to the great advice she got from her daughter that learned it for all these books. And that's where I realized that if knowledge is power, learning is our superpower. So what is brain training and why is it important? What I believe is in today's day and age, our wealth is not based anymore on our muscle power, it's based on our mind power. It's not our brute strength, it's our brain strength. And so what I'm interested in working with clients is not, yes, mental intelligence. I want to get them to remember facts and figures and formulas and foreign languages. That's really important. And also, it's not just mental intelligence. We want mental fitness, right? Just like as you're building your body, you're building your muscles, you want them to have energy, you want them to have strength and power, endurance, flexibility, agility, speed. Your brain is like that also. I want your brain, your brain can be trained for greater ability, speed, endurance, power, strength, all of that. And so that's really what correct brain training is going to help foster that, where you're going to be able to remember things, have greater focus, have greater retention. be able to take this information because knowledge is not power, it's only potential power. It only becomes power when we implement it. Be able to take that information and apply it and turn it into action. So my thing is this, we all could have better, brighter brains. And what it takes is just as you have physical muscles, you have mental muscles. The challenge here is we're not using our mental muscles to our greatest ability. And so what happens if you're not growing those mental muscles, then they're atrophying, right? If I put my arm in a sling for six months, it doesn't stay the same. It doesn't grow. It doesn't even stay the same. It grows weaker, right? And a lot of, for our brains, is what's happening there also as well. So I talk about superpowers a lot and superheroes, right? I think everybody has these innate mental superpowers, a focus, a concentration of creativity and so on. But I think there are three super villains that are attacking us on a regular basis that have never been here before. There's, number one, there's digital overload, right? We have, they call it information fatigue syndrome, information anxiety and higher So what's the result? We have higher blood pressure, a compression of leisure time, more stress than ever, right? Or even if we have leisure time, we can't even enjoy it because our minds are still multitasking, thinking about all these other things. There's an epidemic of sleeplessness, right? Because of all this overload and overwhelm, there's so much information in the digital age, the amount of information is doubling at dizzying speeds. And how many people feel like they go out there and they buy books, right? And they buy all these books to help themselves and it sits on the shelf and it becomes shelf help instead of self-help, right? There's so much information, emails and social media and app notifications and text messages and newspapers and magazines and so on. It feels like you're taking a sip of water out of a fire hose. And if knowledge is power, then it's not only power, it's profit in today's day and age, right? The faster you can learn, the faster you can earn. But the amount of information is doubling at dizzying speed. The president of Google says that the amount of information from the dawn of humanity to the year 2003 just a little over a decade ago. That amount of information now is created every two days online. So people are drowning in information, but they're starving for practical wisdom, right? And so if the amount of information is doubling like this, the challenge is how we learn it, how we remember it, how we read it is pretty much consistent. That gap creates a lot of stress and anxiety. So number one villain is information over digital overload. So the second challenge nowadays is digital distraction. Our brains are literally being rewired by our smartphones. smart devices. One of the things I talk about are morning routines, right? And I think everybody has a to-do list. And I really think equally important as important in today's modern day is you have to have a not to-do list. And on the top of your not to-do list because the most successful people, the most productive high performers out there, they say no a lot, right? They say no to good to say yes to great. And one of the things you want to say no to is touching your phone the first hour of the day. And when I say that, some people slip out because they're so addicted to their digital devices. Now, I'll tell you two reasons why you don't want to touch your phone first thing in the morning. Number one, when you wake up first thing in the morning, you're in these alpha theta brainwave states when you're most impressionable, right? And when you're doing that, if the first thing you do is touch your phone, you're literally going through and you're looking at getting your dopamine fixes on your likes and your shares and your comments and text messages, all those things give you a dopamine fix and you're frying your brain. You're rewiring your brain for distraction. Right? And I think a lot of people right now have trouble focusing, right? They'll read a page in a book, get to the end, and they'll just forget what they just read. And they'll go back and reread it and they can't concentrate, right? And one of the reasons why is because these digital distractions that we have. And so what's happening is there's something called decision fatigue, right? Decision fatigue is this research saying that we can only make a certain amount of good decisions in a day. And after that, we can't, it could be the end of the day, we're at a restaurant, we're looking at a menu, and we can't decide what we want for dinner, right? It's that difficult. They found this research working with surgeons in terms of when they're making the most mistakes and when's the best time for a patient to get operated on and so on. And so we all have this decision fatigue. And that's why a lot of high performers, whether it's Mark Zuckerberg or Tony Hsieh who runs Zappos, they wear the same sweatshirt, they wear the same t-shirt every single day because they don't want to waste one of their decisions in deciding what they're going to wear that day, right? And so to the best of your ability, it's for you to be able to manage and create routines in your life because first you create your habits and then your habits create you. And so one of the habits you don't want to do is touch your phone because it wires you for distraction. But besides that, the second reason you don't want to touch your phone is it because it wires you for it to be reactive, to be reactive. Because when you check your phone and you see your text messages and your emails and these are all things that people want something from you, right? You have fires that you need to fight. It's training you to be able to react to people as opposed to waking up in the morning and having a clear plan for your day and being proactive about it and design it. I talk about the difference between being a thermometer and a thermostat. I think the quality of our life, the quality of our brain comes down to whether we identify more with the thermometer or a thermostat. Now, what does a thermometer do? A thermometer's main function is it reacts to the environment, right? It reacts to what the environment is giving it. The difference though is with a thermostat, a thermostat's different. A thermostat sets a standard, it sets a vision, it sets a goal, and what happens to the environment, it raises to meet that standard. And so I feel like the happiest people out there, the ones that have better brains, because they have the locus of control coming from the inside. So one of the keys to fixing your broken brain so that it has more peace, more positivity, and more productivity is not touch your phone first thing in the morning and not indulge in digital distraction. So, the third super villain that is attacking our broken brain is this thing. So, number one was digital overload. Number two was digital distraction. The third one is digital dementia. Digital dementia. Now, what does that mean? That means most of us are outsourcing our brains to our smart devices. So, it's keeping our names, it's keeping numbers, it's keeping our to-dos, it's doing simple math. And if we talk about the brain being metaphorically like a muscle, it grows stronger with use. but it's use it or lose it. Now, how many phone numbers, for example, did you know growing up? How many phone numbers growing up decades ago? We knew every single phone number. How many phone numbers can we remember right now? Like 1, 2, maybe 3, right? And not that you want to be able to remember to do that. And so what digital dementia is saying is we're outsourcing our brains to our smart devices so our brains aren't getting the natural exercise. And so our smart devices in a way are making us not so smart. smart. So I think one of the big modern day challenges people have is they feel like that maybe they're suffering from a broken brain because senior moments are coming a little bit too early or they'll read a page in a book and forget what they just read or they feel absent minded, right? They can't remember if they're in the shower, they can't remember if they shampooed their hair so they end up doing it twice or they misplace things like their wallet or their purse or their cell phone. Have you ever found yourself calling your own cell phone hoping you kept it on so it rings somewhere in your home or you misplace things like your your keys, or if not your keys, something much larger like your car. You ever see the people outside in the mall parking lots using their car alarms trying to figure out where they placed their car? And so these are the challenges that are attacking us on a regular basis. And one of the best ways to prevent brain aging, to keep your brain youthful and young, is by activating your brain. And here's two things, the benefits that come out of it. By using your brain more often, you actually could live longer. And so there was a study, it was on the COVID of Time Magazine with these nuns. and it's like these super nuns. They were living well into their 80s, 90s, and above. And they wanted to find out the researchers, like what do they attribute that to? And half of it had to do with their gratitude, their emotional gratitude and their faith. But the other half had to do is they were lifelong learners. Throughout their entire life, they were mentally engaged in conversation, in games, in reading. And by keeping mentally engaged and having life dedicating themselves to lifelong learners, they added years to her life, but also life to their years. So what's really exciting is we've discovered more about the human brain more in the past 20 years than the previous 2,000 years combined. And when you hear new science out there like neurogenesis or neuroplasticity, basically saying that you could create new brain cells to the day you die, you could create new connections inside your brain to the day you die. And what does it require? It requires just two things. It requires novelty and it requires nutrition. novelty and nutrition. So what's, it's kind of like the human body, right? You go to a personal trainer and they want to get your muscles, they want to introduce stimulus to it, they want to give it novelty or exercise, and then they want to feed it with the proper nutrition so it could grow and it could be, it could be healthy. And same thing with your, your neuro fitness, you know, your, your, your mental fitness, if you will, by giving it new stimulus, either new, like new thoughts or new body movements also, because certain physical exercises you could do will actually build your brain power. There was a study in Oxford University that said jugglers, the act of juggling, actually will create more white matter in your brain. And so we teach people how to not only juggle, but to do other things like, for example, eating with the opposite hand or brushing your teeth with your opposite hand because we know that there is a mind-body connection. We know that part of one half of your brain controls the opposite side of your body. So God forbid if somebody had a stroke on the left side of their brain. if there's paralysis, it would manifest on the right side of their body and vice versa. What we're realizing now is not just a brain-body connection, there's a body-brain connection that using your body in certain ways could actually stimulate different parts of your brain. And that's really exciting because primarily we have our brain, the primary function of a brain is actually to control our movement. So as your body moves, your brain grooves. One of the challenges is in today's modern society is we lead a very sedentary lifestyle, right? Most people are sitting at their desk all day, eight, nine hours straight. and they say sitting is a new smoking. So what I advise people to do is to set their phone alarm, every, they call it the Pomodoro Technique, right? It's a time management technique saying that the average attention span is about 25-30 minutes. After that, there's a sharp decline. And so knowing that, if you want to maximize the return of your time and your focus, your attention, set your alarm to go off every 30 minutes, maybe 45 minutes, and focus on one task, and then when you're done, the alarm goes off. take three, four, five minutes to do the things that are brain healthy. We're talking about movement, right? We're talking about deep breathing. We're talking about hydration because your brain is only 2% of your body mass, but it requires about 20 to 25% of the nutrients, of the oxygen, of the water. So how do you improve your memory? The first I would start with is believing that you can improve it. People talk about, oh, I'm too old, or, oh, this runs in my family, and, oh, I get these senior moments. And what I find is sometimes you have to be careful of your self-talk because your brain is like a supercomputer and your self-talk is a program that will run. So if you tell yourself you don't have a good memory or you're not good with names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you programmed your supercomputer not to. Because the truth is only one-third of your memory potential is biological and genetic. So biological, genetic, one-third, two-thirds is completely in your control and that's really great news. So if you want to improve your memory, I teach you to remember three three things. Because if you ever forget something, where you put your keys, somebody's name or anything, usually one of these three things is missing. And I want you to remember mom, M-O-M. Now the M stands for, well, let me ask you a question. Let's apply this towards remembering names. Most people have trouble remembering names. And let's say that there was a suitcase here of $250,000 cash for you or your favorite charity. If you just remember the name of the next stranger you meet, how many people are going to remember that person's name? Everybody's, everyone all of a sudden is a memory expert, right? So I want to point this out as your brain coach. It had nothing to do with your potential. It had nothing to do with your capacity or capability. It had everything to do with whether or not you wanted to or not. And so the truth is you could remember things. You're just not motivated to remember because so the M in mom stands for motivation. What is your motive for taking action? I believe that there's a success formula. I call it H cubed. goes from your head to your heart to your hands. That we could affirm things in our head, we could think things in our head, we could visualize things in our head, set goals in our head, but if we're not acting with our hands, nothing changes. And if we're not acting with our hands, usually what's missing is a second H, which is your heart. The heart, which is the symbol of emotion, right? The energy of motion. It's the fuel that moves the car, right? And so tap into what they call your why. And so ask yourself, why do I want to learn this? Why do I want to remember this person's name? Very simple question. Maybe it's to show the person respect. Maybe it's to make a new friend. Maybe it's to practice these tools that we learned from this series. Because here's the thing, reasons reap results. Reasons reap results and rewards. So reasons come first. So the M in MOM is motivation. Now what's the O in MOM? I want everybody who's watching this, I want to do this quick exercise. I want you to take your right hand and just kind of shake it out like this. Make a fist. like this, take it out, make a fist, put it to your chin. Now where's your chin, right? And so what happens is everybody, I do this with an audience of 10,000 people, 90% of them will go like this, they'll put it to their cheek and not their chin. The O in MOM stands for observation. Observation. See, a lot of people, they'll blame all their memory issues to their retention. It has nothing to do with their retention. It has everything to do with their attention. One of the people who have an incredible memory is President Bill Clinton. And I've had the opportunity to meet him a number of times. I remember the second time I met him, he remembered my name. I mean, he has an incredible memory. Everyone knows he's a great connector, a great communicator, great charisma. He has an incredible memory. I remember asking him, how do you do that? I mean, I'm a memory coach. How do you remember these things? and he's like, I don't even, he's like, I don't use any memory technique. He said, growing up, my grandfather in Arkansas would get the kids around and tell stories, but afterwards he would ask questions to see if we're really listening, to see if we're really paying attention. And I remember we were at a fundraiser and I got sat here and I put this picture on Instagram, it's me and then Forrest Whitaker, Sir Richard Branson, Ashton Kutcher and his twin brother, which I didn't know Ashton had a twin brother, and Bill Clinton sitting right next to me. And when he's talking to me, I felt like there's a lot more important people at the table, certainly in this room than I am. But when he's talking to me, he's like completely paying attention to me. He's not looking over a lot of times when you meet someone brand new, they're looking over your shoulder, right? Or they're talking to themselves. And I find a lot of people aren't really listening. They're really just waiting for their turn to speak. They're thinking about how they're going to respond. And if you want to have a better memory, you want to observe better. And I really think that President Bill Clinton's, his incredible memory and his powerful presence with people comes from being powerfully present with people. And so that's something we could all do. We could all be present with people in the now and pay better attention. And finally, the last M in MOM stands for mechanics. And I don't mean the person that fixes your car. I mean the strategy, the tool, the technique on how to learn a language, how to remember someone's name, how to read faster, how to give a speech without notes, but I talk about motivation first because that's about caring and observation, which is about being present. And then you can put the mechanics on. I mean, I really think that a good memory training, here's what I believe. There is no such thing as a good or bad memory. There's just a trained memory and an untrained memory. So I think proper brain training and proper memory training really trains you to be a better person. Because when you're thinking about motivation, observation and mechanics, in order to be the The art of memory is the art of attention. The art of memory is the art of caring. Being motivated to care about another human being because Maya Angelou said that people won't remember what you said, they won't remember what you did, they'll remember how you made them feel. But here's the thing, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And how are you going to show somebody you're going to care for their future, their family, their finances, their health, whatever it is you're offering them if you don't just care enough just to remember them? So I think the art of memory is the art of caring. art of memory really want. They want to be seen, they want to be heard, they want to seek first to understand then to be understood. So it's the art of observation. So I think by going through a lot of these exercises, what people are learning, it's just caring about somebody. Because here's the thing, nobody remembers everyone's name, right? But nobody forgets everyone's name either. So I think genius leaves clues and you could role model yourself and saying, okay, I am the memory expert, meaning you, and when do I remember things and when do I forget things? I tend to remember people, oh, that I'm motivated to remember, someone I'm attracted to, somebody who could be good for my business and so on because there's motivation there. And you'll notice you remember people's names who people you're really paying attention to also as well. So one of the biggest challenges people tell me about is their memories. They say, Jim, I want to have a better memory. And when people say that, I'm just like hearing, well, I want to be better at sports. What sports specifically? And most people, their biggest challenge is remembering people's names. Have you ever met somebody? They give you their name and then seconds after the handshake breaks, the name just falls right to the floor. Or if it's not a short-term problem, it's like a long-term problem. It's you're at the post office or you're at the grocery store, you're at the gym and somebody taps you on your shoulder, you turn around, you see someone you recognize, but for the life of you, you do not remember that person's name. And what makes it worse is when that person has the nerve to remember your name, right? Or somebody comes, you're having a conversation, someone's name you really should know, and somebody comes along and you're in a position where you have to introduce those two people together. So how do you get over it? I want to teach you a really simple step on how to remember people's names. Really, seven steps. You could use any part of the seven. It'll help you to remember names. I want you to remember to be suave. Be suave. And so next time you're at a networking function, you're at a conference, you're at a wedding, you're looking in the mirror, you're checking your makeup, you're checking your clothes, say to yourself, I'm going to be suave. The B stands for believe because if you believe you can or believe you can't either way, you're right. So you want to get rid of the automatic negative thoughts. because those are self programs that are going to self-destruct in your mind. The E in B-SUAV stands for exercise. And I don't mean physical exercise, although one of the best brain hacks is physical activity. People who are more physically active will do better on mental acuity tests. They'll have better focus. They'll have a better memory. But I mean practice because practice makes progress. Practice makes progress. So the bad news is it takes effort to improve your memory. The good news is it doesn't take as much as you think. and that's the good news. So I always tell people, I didn't say it was going to be easy, but I did tell you it's going to be worth it. And so after that, the suave, what do you do with suave? The S is you meet someone for the first time and then you say the name back to them, right? You say hello using their name back to them. The U in suave stands for use the name. Use the name in the conversation. You use it, but you don't abuse it. You don't say, hi Bob, it's nice to meet you. Bob, do you want to grab some lunch? Bob, you want to talk about blah blah blah blah blah blah, that would be an abuse, right? But you want to use it three or four times in the context of the conversation. After that, the A in suave stands for ask, ask. So what's everyone's favorite subject? It's not travel and it's not health or fitness. It's themselves, right? And this is a really great technique for people who have unusual names. Like most times you meet somebody 80% of the time it's a name you've heard before, but maybe 10 or 20% of the time it's a new name. How do you memorize their name? Ask about it. right? What can you ask about a person's name? Oh, how do you spell it? Where is it from? Are you named after this person, right? What does it mean? And I remember I was doing a training for the country's largest life insurance company. It was about 100 or so people in the room and the training director's name was Nankita. Nankita. I was like, wow, that's a beautiful name. How do you spell it? Where is it from? And I said, what does it mean? And she paused. I said, what does it mean? And she looked at her co-workers and she says it means graceful, falling waters. And I was like, wow. And based on her co-workers reaction, I was like, Nikita, how long you worked here? She tells me, and she's like, with all these people, she's like, yeah, a lot of them are good friends. They're at my wedding. And I said, raise your hand if you knew that's what Nikita's name meant. And out of a room of a hundred plus people, how many people raised their hand? Not one person, right? And here's the thing, the reason why you want to remember a person's name is the name is the sweetest sound to a person's ears. I mean, think about the emotion that's connected to someone's name. think about the first word that you learned how to write and how much love got associated, encouragement was associated that with that. So you want to ask about a person's name. The V in suave stands for visualize. Visualize. So what do I mean by that? How many people are much better with faces than they are with names, right? You meet somebody, you say, I remember your face, but I forgot your name. You never go to someone, say the opposite. You never say, hey, I remember your name, but I forgot your face, right? That wouldn't make a lot of sense. and what happens is we tend to remember more what we see than what we hear. There's a Chinese proverb that goes, what I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. And what I do, I understand. What I hear, I forget. I heard the name, I forgot the name. What I see, I remember. I saw the face, I remember the face. What I do, going back to practice and exercise, I understand. So if you tend to remember what you see, then try seeing what you want to remember. And this is kind of a more advanced technique than what most people do when they forget their names. How many people do this? They go through the alphabet. Does it start with an A? Does it start with a B? Does it start with a C? And they get really nervous and scared when they get to like W because there's not a lot of letters past that, right? But does it sometimes work? Yes. Sometimes D is like, oh, it's David, right? And instead of that, what we're going to ask you to do is I want you to take the person's name and turn it into a picture. So if a person's name is David, my picture for David is a slingshot. Why? David and Goliath. Imagine you're meeting David for the first time and you do imagine in the privacy of your own mind, you're not sharing this with David. you just hit him in the nose with a slingshot, right? And that represents David. Because what will happen is, 30 minutes later when you're saying goodbye, you're like, what happened to that guy? Oh, I shot him in the nose with a slingshot. What's his name? David. So a person's name is Mark. Imagine you're putting a little check mark on his forehead. Person's name is Mike. Imagine they jump onto the table and start singing karaoke on a microphone, right? To remind you of Mike. And you're like, that's so childish, Jim, but who are the fastest learners on the planet? Children, right? How fast can a child learn a musical instrument? to adult? How fast can a child learn another language compared to adult? So they use their imagination. They make fun of people's names. Most children made fun of, you know, 80% of my friends got made fun of their names, right? That's how children learn through this source of imagination. So if a person's name is Mary, you can imagine getting married or imagine them holding two lambs underneath her arms, right? Mary had a little lamb and when you say goodbye to Mary later on, you'll see those lambs. What's her name? It's Mary. So if a person's name is John, you can picture whatever you picture, right? And so the V stands for visualize. The E finally in Suav stands for end, end, because if you could walk into a room and end saying goodbye to every single one of them by name, who are they all going to remember? They're all going to remember you and that's unforgettable. So how do you fix your broken brain, right? So the good news is one-third of your brain is predetermined by genetics and biology, one-third of your memory and so on. That means two-thirds is completely in your control. So I found that there are 10 things that you could do to really fix your broken brain, right? So these are the 10 things to have a quicker brain. I would say number one, and I will give this to you, and then maybe we could also memorize this also together as well. So number one is a good brain diet, a good brain diet, because you are what you eat. Literally what you eat becomes you. And so what's good for your brain? We know the foods that are good for your brain are things like avocado, blueberries, right? Broccoli, coconut oil, salmon, you have green leafy vegetables, you have all these things that are really good for your brain. and so you want to eat good food, so good brain diet. Number two is getting rid of your negative thoughts. Getting rid of your negative thoughts. Dr. Daniel Amen, the brain doctor, calls them ants, automatic negative thoughts. Number three is exercise. Exercise is good for your brain. And so basically anything good for your heart is going to be good for your head because it increases blood flow and nutrients and oxygen to your brain. So exercise is important for fixing your broken brain. Number four are brain nutrients. brain nutrients, because when you're fast and on the go, maybe your food doesn't have all the nutrients it needs, so maybe you need to supplement with omega-3s. Maybe you need to supplement and get tested to see if you're low in B vitamins, for example. Number five is a positive peer group. Positive peer group. And what we found, and I talked to Dr. Mark Hyman about this a lot, it's not just your biological networks or your neurological networks, it's your social networks. right? And so who you spend time with is who you become. And so are you around people who are zapping your energy? They're energy vampires. They're letting you go. They're not encouraging you. Or are you around people like your positive peer group, people that are teaching you things, that are challenging to you, that are taking you to the next level? The number six key to fixing your broken brain is a clean environment. A clean environment. Because we found through research that your external world is a reflection of your internal world. And you know this anecdotally. because how do you feel when you clean your home? How do you feel when you clean your desk? How do you feel when you organize your laptop and your desktop, if you will? Because that clarity goes from the outside in also as well. So a clean environment is very important. Also, when I talk about clean environment, we're talking about clean water, we're talking about clean air, we're talking about a clean environment that has natural sunlight, we're talking about an environment that doesn't have the toxins, the pollutants, the mold, and all the things that could affect your nervous system. and lead to a broken brain. Number seven, the seven key to optimizing your brain, fixing your broken brain, is sleep, right? The lack of sleep is an epidemic right now. And the problem is, is taking from a accelerated learning perspective, when you sleep, that's where you're consolidating short to long term memory. When people suffer from insomnia or sleep apnea or any of these sleep issues, what happens to their decision making next day? What happens to their ability to make good decisions to solve problems? How focused do you feel? on a bad night's sleep. How much energy do you have? How much brain fog do you have? So you want to be able to fix and hack your sleep. And so that you could, there's so many things you could do. Everything from blackout curtains to grounding devices to getting rid of the blue light, you know, not touching your phone at night and so on. After number seven, I would say number eight key to fixing your broken brain is simply this, brain protection. Brain protection. Growing up with learning challenges, I've had many head injuries. traumatic brain injuries, head traumas. And so how do you overcome that? And how do you fix that? You wear a helmet, right? You avoid extreme sports, right? Because all those concussions or those damage, your brain is very resilient, but it's also very fragile. So brain protection, protect your brain. Number nine key to fixing your broken brain is new learnings, new learnings. And that's obvious for anyone who's joining us for this conversations, because I feel like we're kindred spirits because you have these growing brains already. But new learnings is where you create neurogenesis, neuroplasticities, and the more you learn, the longer you're gonna live, the more fulfilling it's gonna be. So challenge your brain, that's how you create new connections. And finally, number 10 is stress management. The 10th key for fixing your broken brain is managing your stress. Most people don't realize all the anxiety, the depression, the challenges that they have from this environment because it's there all the time. It's like the fish don't never notice the water because when you're inside the jar, you can't see the label from inside the jar. When you're living under this kind of stress, whether it's environmental stress, whether it's emotional stress, whether it's some kind of physical stress, relationship stress, wherever it is, work stress, we start to get accustomed to it. But the problem with stress to your learning, to your brain, when you have cortisol, when you're producing adrenaline, it's good for fight or flight, something physical, but it's not good if you need to take a test. It's not good if you need to remember someone's name. It's not good if you need to give a presentation at work to a group of people, because stress literally shuts down parts of your brain, so you can't learn it really so those are my 10 keys for fixing your broken brain. So now I want to give you what I call a quick recall technique for memorizing this list of 10 things to fix your broken brain. So this is a 2500 year old memory technique. It's an ancient memory technique attributed to the ancient Greeks. And the story goes there was a Greek order named Simonides and he was giving a poetry reading and when he left the building something really tragic happened. The building collapsed and it killed everyone that was remaining. and he had the responsibility being the lone survivor to come back and help the family members identify their loved ones. And he was able to do it though based on where they were he remembered them sitting in the room. And what we discovered through this is that we remember where things are because as hunter and gatherers we didn't need to memorize numbers and words and all those things. What was more important is we need to remember where the good soil was, where the good food was, where the clean water was, where the enemy tribes were. our survival, right? And so what we're learning is that we store information in different locations unconsciously in our environment. And so knowing that what you want to do, a great memory technique for people who want to remember anything from a grocery list to giving a speech without notes. Like, have you ever wanted to go in, you ever wonder how those, we get to train a lot of TED speakers, right? To give those 18 minute talks. And you ever wonder how people memorize the speeches or how actors memorize their scripts and so on. And one of the ways they do it is through this technique. And so let's say you have 10 key points you want to give on stage or at your next meeting, right? And I think it's very important for people who are watching this series to learn with the intention of teaching to someone else. One of the best accelerated learning principles there is, is to teach what you learn to somebody else because when you teach it, you get to learn it twice. When you're learning it with the intention of teaching it, you should pay better attention. you ask better questions, you take better notes, you make it personal to yourself to be able to express it to somebody else, right? So I recommend everyone do this for this exercise. Now, we're gonna take a location. Most people use their home because they're most familiar with their home, but because everybody's here is watching this, their home is different. I'm gonna take a different location. I'm gonna take your body, 'cause everyone's body is the same, right? We have similar parts. And I'm gonna take 10 places on your body and we're gonna name them together. And when I'm done, I'm gonna take the 10 keys to fixing your broken brain right? A good diet and getting rid of negative thoughts and exercise. And we're going to put the first key in the first place, the second key in the second place, the third key in the third place. By the way, if you ever found yourself saying in the first place this, in the second place that, in the third place that, like you're in an argument, that languaging came from this 2500 year old memory technique. Now that technique has almost disappeared. We're bringing it back, but that languaging is still there. Okay? So let's do this together. I want everyone to take a deep breath and I'm going to name 10 places on your body. We're going to do it together. I want you to say it. I want you to touch to touch it and see it if you can. So number one is the top of your head. So everyone say the top of your head. So number one is what top, right? Number two is your nose. So everyone's saying nose. So say nose out loud. Great. Nose. Three is your mouth. So three is your mouth. Everyone remember three is mouth. We're just going down the body. Four are your ears. Four are your ears. Five is your larynx. Your larynx, right? Your throat. Six are your shoulders. Six are your shoulders, seven is your collar, eight are your fingers, so eight are your fingers, where are your fingers? Nine is your belly, nine is your belly, and ten is your seat. Ten is your seat. So let's see if we can remember this. Number one is the top, number two is what? Your nose, number three is your mouth, number four are your ears, number five is your larynx, six is your shoulders, seven is your collar, eight are your fingers, nine is your belly, and finally ten is your seat. So those are your ten places. Now, if we wanted to remember like let's say a grocery list, maybe you're in the shower or so you're driving and somebody calls you up and saying, hey, we're gonna have a party tonight. You know, it's all about fixing your broken brain and we're gonna, I want you to go go to the health food store and pick up these ten things. You can't write it down because you you're driving or in the shower or I don't know why your phone is in the shower and people are calling you in the shower. But what you could do is say, okay, avocados, put avocados on the top of your head, right? If you wanted to. Oh, blueberries, right? I call them brain berries. They're coming out of your nose, right? Oh, three is coconut oil coming out of your ears and right, you're like, oh, that's so childish. Who are the fastest learners, right? Children learn through imagination and play. But instead of doing that, I want to put the 10 keys for unlocking and fixing your broken brain. The first key was a good brain diet. I want you to imagine you're putting your good brain diet on the top of your head in the first place. Imagine the avocados there, the blueberries are there, the broccoli, the green leafy vegetables are there, the dark chocolate without the sugar, of course, is there also as well. Imagine that's on the top of your head. You could see it, feel it, and imagine it. I always think about what do I see and how does it make me feel? You make it a little silly, right? Because here's the thing when it comes to your memory. Information combined with emotion becomes a long-term memory. Information combined with emotion becomes a long-term memory. And you know this because the things in your life that you add emotion to, you remember better, right? Now, do we all have a song that will take us back for years? Because the emotion brings back the information. Maybe it's a scent, a cologne or a perfume. Maybe it's a smell like of growing up, you know, as a childhood favorite food brings you back years or decades because information combined with emotion becomes a long-term memory. So how do you make this emotional? Right? The second place is your nose, right? And so the second key for fixing your broken brain is this thing called killing ants, automatic negative thoughts. Get rid of those negative thoughts. So how do you kill ants? Imagine ants coming out of your nose and you're killing them and you never do that, but it's always impressionable. It's always unforgettable, right? The third place, right, is your mouth. And I want you to imagine coming, like using your mouth to exercise, right? So maybe you're doing pushups on your mouth. That's to remind you exercise is good to fix your broken brain, right? So maybe you're doing like lip exercises or something silly like that. The fourth place are your ears, right? And your ears, I want you to remember brain nutrients. That's the fourth key for fixing your brain. You want to substitute with the essential nutrients that you need to fix your brain. And so what I would say is imagine coming out of your ears are these brain vitamins. Okay. Brain vitamins. And then finally, as we get to the second half, number five is your larynx. and five is your larynx and that's your positive peer group. Your happy friends, right? So what are they doing? Maybe your positive peer group's coming here and they're putting little happy faces on your larynx, right? Like those yellow little smiling faces right there. You see them there and you feel them there, kind of silly. It doesn't make sense but that's what makes it memorable. And we're halfway there. So by the way, can you remember this? Number one is what? You go to the top of your head and there's a good brain diet, right? Number two, you go to your nose and what's going on with your nose? killing ants. Number three, you're going to your mouth and what's going on with your mouth, exercising. Number four, what's coming out of four, your brain nutrients. And number five is your happy friends. Number six here are your shoulders. And we remember six on the list was a clean environment. So I just want you to imagine looking to your shoulders left and right and you are, somebody there is mopping. On the other side, somebody is vacuuming. And that's what you remember. You look at your shoulders, you see that. That's number six. Number seven is your collar. and I want you to remember for number seven, that is to remind you of sleep. So I just want you to imagine on your collar, you have a necklace made of like a hammock. Like you have a hammock here, you're taking a really nice rest here, you're sleeping hammock. Number eight is your fingers. And the eighth tip to fixing your broken brain is, is brain protection. So I want you to imagine looking at your fingers and you're wearing helmets. So maybe they have a helmet for each of your fingers, and maybe it's your favorite sports team. right? And on your fingers, you see that right on your fingers, brain protection. Number nine is your belly and I want you to remember nine is new learnings, new learning. So what represents new learnings? A lot of people think of books, right? So imagine there's a, you have a whole bookshelf on your belly, a whole bookshelf with your favorite books on your belly. And then finally, number ten is your seat and ten you want to remember stress management. So how do you relieve stress? Maybe some people get a massage, maybe maybe they do yoga, maybe they drink one glass of red wine or whatever it is. So just associate that with your seat. I don't want to know what your image is, but just imagine that as number 10. Okay? So now you are on stage or you're on camera or you're talking to your friend and you're like, I watched this video. It is so, it's so awesome. I show you something. There are 10 keys for fixing your broken brain. And these are the 10 keys and just literally go up your body, down up your body and down your body. Number one is a good diet. Right? Number two is killing ants. What's number three? Say it out loud. Number three is exercise. Number four, coming out of your ears is what? Brain nutrients, brain vitamins. Number five is your larynx and what do you have? Happy stickers, your happy friends. Number six, what's going on your shoulders? Oh, people are cleaning, so that's your clean environment. Number seven, what's going on your collar? There's a big hammock there to remind you of sleep. Very good. Number eight is your fingers. What's on your fingers? Helmets, right? Brain protection. Number nine, you have on your belly a bookshelf to remind you of new learnings. And finally, number 10, you have stress management. And those are the 10 keys. That's how you memorize the 10 keys for unlocking and fixing your broken brain. So one of the most important keys to fixing a broken brain, to have a better, brighter brain, is to control your routines, meaning control your habits. Because first you make your habits and then your habits make you. And I think what's most important in your day is to really start your day off right by jump starting your brain. So I have very specific morning rituals I do every single day that really jump start my brain and also jump start my day. So the reason why you want to focus on the first hour of your day is because if you can win the first hour of your day, you can win the entire day because you get positive momentum right throughout the entire day. And so this is what I do every single morning. The first thing I do when I wake up, I go through a process of remembering my dreams. remembering my dreams. And this is the reason why a lot of people would want to do this. Most of the times when you wake up, you have these dreams of inspiration, things that could really like solve some of the problems you have. Because when you're going throughout your entire day at work and through your life, you're solving problems, right? You're learning new things. But when you go to sleep, your mind doesn't stop. Your subconscious is still working on those problems. The challenge is when you wake up, you often forget what those answers are. and throughout history, like our world is a reflection of a lot of the things that created in our world actually were birthed in someone's dreams. So for example, art, literature, science, for example, Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein in a dream, right? Paul McCartney came up with Yesterday in his dream. The Elias Howe created the sewing machine in a dream. For example, the scientific method the periodic table, that framework was created in chemists' dream, right? So what are we thinking about? So when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is I go through a process of remembering your dreams. And I just want you to remember this. Remember the acronym dreams. I use a lot of acronyms. Dreams, right? The D stands for first decide. Decide the night before that you're going to remember your dreams because decision is like incision. Incision means to cut. Decision means you're cutting off from the possibility that you're not going to and you're going to. to. Right? So first decide that's something that you want. The R in dreams is record. Record. And I mean keep a dream journal. Keep a dream journal by your bed. And if you wake up in the middle of the night, have one of those little light pens and light pens and write down your dream. Write down your dream. So your recording will help you remember it. The E in dream stands for I. And what I mean by your eyes is keep your eyes shut. And so this is not in a very specific order. But what you do is you train yourself when you first wake up to keep your eyes shut because usually the reason why a lot of people forget their dreams is they open their eyes and they get distracted and they forget their dreams. So keep your eyes shut. The A in dreams stands for affirmations. Affirmations. And so throughout the day or even at night, what I'll say to myself is, I'm gonna have good dreams. I'm gonna have peaceful dreams. I'm gonna, I'm gonna remember my dreams. And those affirmations are very powerful because your, your brain is like a supercomputer and your self-talk is program will run. So you say, I'm going to remember my dreams. It's kind of like, have you ever had to wake up at a specific time for a very specific meaning early, right? And you set your alarm for 5:30 and you wake up like two minutes before the alarm goes off. That's because you had the intention or you set that affirmation to do so. And so you could do that also that you're going to have positive dreams and you're going to remember your dreams. So that's your affirmation. The M in dreams stands for manage. And what are you managing? You're managing your sleep. All right, so we teach a number of brain hacks to be able to manage your sleep, but make sure that you have, for example, you're in a room that's completely dark, right? You have blackout curtains because even if, even the light on an alarm clock could keep you from getting a restful sleep, right? So you want to, for example, keep it completely black. You'll manage your sleep. And then finally, the S in dreams stands for share. You want to share your dreams. You want to celebrate your dreams. You want to talk about your dreams to others throughout the day. 'Cause if that's an intention point for you, you're gonna start paying attention to it while you're dreaming, alright? And so the first thing I do when I wake up my morning routine, I remember my dreams. The second thing I do with my morning routine is I actually make my bed. I make my bed. And you're like, Jim, why do you make your bed? How's that good for a good brain? I'll tell you a couple of reasons. First of all, you wanna start your day with excellence. Because I believe how you do anything is how you do everything in life. And so you wanna take a couple minutes, make your bed, make it perfect, and you start with a success because success breeds success and creates positive momentum. The other reason why you want to be able to make your bed is because again, how you do anything is how you do everything. You want to build some positive momentum and have to carry that excellence on throughout your day. The other reason also is when you come back at the end of the day, you come back to success, right? You come back to a win and that's very important. Another thing I'll do first thing in the morning is I'll take a cold shower. I take a cold shower. We know that when you hit your knee, you put ice on it because it reduces the swelling, it reduces the inflammation. We know top athletes like Michael Phelps take ice baths because it reduces inflammation. Inflammation in your body creates disease and obesity and all these big challenges. So taking a cold shower, not only does it wake you up, right, but it helps to lower the inflammation in your body. From there, I'll brush my teeth. And I brush my teeth, I bring this up, you're like, Jim, obviously, I would brush your teeth. I would encourage you to actually practice brushing your teeth with your your opposite hand. And these are little exercises you could do that stimulate your brain because everything I'm talking about helped to wake up your brain and build on success. So using your opposite hand forces you to put your mind into your muscle. And we find that the best exercises that you could do that build your brain power, things like juggling, things like ballroom dance, things like martial arts, things like music that requires you use both hands and be ambidextrous. So brush your teeth with the opposite hand. From there, I'll go into the kitchen. and I'll have a tall glass of water and that's obvious but when it comes to your brain, your brain is again 2% of your body weight but it requires 20 to 25% of the nutrients and you use a lot of water like when you're sleeping so you want to replenish that. That's when I take my probiotics because so important, gut health is so important because your gut is your second brain, right? That microbiome and so you're drinking lots of water, you're replenishing your probiotics there also as well. because you have a high concentration of nerves in that area. After that, I meditate. And I think it's important for everybody to have a mindful training or some kind of mindfulness practice in their day, because if you are suffering from digital distraction, your attention is everywhere, you need a time where it's just you in silence, you're focusing on your own breath. And the reason why meditation is so important is, yes, it's nice to get all zen with yourself, and the other reason why is every time your attention goes somewhere, which it naturally will, but you bring it back, you're building your focus. Everything I'm talking about, you don't have creativity, you do creativity. You don't have focus, you do focus. You don't have memories, you do a memory. So everything that I teach in our coaching system is we take all these things and we make them verbs, things that you could do. So they're process oriented, step by step by step. And so what I'm saying with here, you build your focus muscles. Because every time you bring your focus back to yourself or to your breathing, you build those, that fitness. After I meditate, I'll make a tea. I like tea myself and I make either a turmeric tea, right, because turmeric along with pepper, it makes this like this golden milk with almond milk or something and it reduces inflammation in my body. Or I alternate between a turmeric tea, this golden tea to what I call brain tea, a brain tea. So I'll take Ayurvedic herbs. I'll add ginkgo or gotu kola or lion's mane into a tea which are all good your focus and your memory and your attention. And I'll put some honey, if some people like honey or some kind of sweetener in there that's not sugar, right? And then I'll add some kind of fat in there also as well. And that'll be my brain tea. And when I'm drinking my brain tea, what I'm doing my next activity is I'm journaling, right? I'm journaling. And the reason why I'm journaling here is I'm writing three things that I'm grateful for because I think gratitude is the ultimate emotion. And I also feel like Okay, so there's four keys for having an incredible mindset, like an incredible mindset, the opposite of a broken brain. I'll give you those really quickly. Number one is a growth mindset, right? You always have to be growing because if you're not growing, you're dying, right? Nothing stays the same. So your brain has to always be learning, otherwise it's slipping, right? You're green, you grow, you're brown, and you rot. So you always want a growth mindset. The seminal work on it is called Mindset by Carol Dweck. The other thing you want to build, is your grit. The second G is your grit. And what I mean by that is your perseverance, your resilience. So I remember I was, there was a big boxing match that was going on and it was the largest one for the decade, right? And I get a call from Sylvester Stallone saying, Hey, do you want to watch the fight at my home? And I'm like, yeah, I totally want to watch a boxing championship fight with Rocky, right? and I have mixed feelings as I'm watching this fight. I'm sitting on this couch and it's me, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. And I swear, if somebody took a picture of that couch, people would be like, who photoshopped that Asian dude into that photo? But we're watching this fight and I have mixed feelings because I'm all about brain protection, right? I've had traumatic brain injuries and concussions and you have to protect your brain and yet I'm very curious about competition and how it takes us to the next level. right? And afterwards, I remember asking Sly and Arnold, I was like, what does it take to be a champion at that level? Right? What's the difference between an amateur and a champion? And Arnold looks at me and says, Jim, the difference between an amateur and a champion is the champion could push through the pain period. The champion could push through the pain period. Meaning that if you're gonna go work out and you want to build a muscle and you're doing 10 reps or curls, like the curls that you want the least do, are probably eight, nine, and ten, the ones you don't want to do. But if you use grit going back to grit and you push yourself through it, those are the same ones that are going to give you the most growth. And so I think that I believe in the maxim that if you do the easy things all your life, then your life is going to be very hard. But if you do the hard things in your life, then your life is going to be easy. So you want to build your grit. The other reason why I take cold showers is I don't like cold showers. I don't like ice baths, but I do it because oh, can I do another 30 seconds as long as it's safe because I build my grit, right? So it's growth, it's grit. The third G, I would say, for like the superhero mindset or a really great mindset would be this thing called giving, right? Giving because we grow so we have more to give. And I think everything in the environment either grows or it dies and everything gives back to the environment or it's eliminated or it becomes extinct. So we're here to be able to give, but we have to grow also. It's not not martyring yourself. It's you. I always tell people self-love and self-care is not selfish. Right? So you have to grow so you have more to give. And finally, the fourth G, I would say, is gratitude. Gratitude, because gratitude is the ultimate emotion. And that's why when I'm writing down my going back to my journal, my morning routine, I'm writing three things that I'm most grateful for. Right? Everybody talks about a vision board and the things that they want to be, do, have and share. but I'm more passionate about not my vision board, but my gratitude board, the things that I'm most grateful for. And if people say like, oh, I don't have a lot to be grateful for, I'm not wealthy or anything, I would ask a different question. I would say, for me, gratitude has nothing to do with financial wealth. I would ask yourself, how many things in your life do you have to be grateful for that money can't buy? All the things that we have that money can't buy, that would go on to my journal. so I start my day with three things that I'm grateful for because I feel like I can't build on it unless I'm grateful for what I already have. And then I write three things that I want to accomplish that day professionally and three things personally. And that's it. Because everybody has a massive to-do list with dozens or hundreds of things that's there every single day. I found that the high performers, the people that are really working their peak brain, they don't focus on all 200 things that they need to do. They focus on the three things that are going to make the biggest difference in our life personally and professionally and they get those three things done and they thrive. After I do that, I do two to three minutes of just intense movement, meaning I do burpees or I do push-ups or I do sit-ups or I do jumping jacks just to get my heart, that's not my exercise for the day, but gets my heart pumping, gets blood flow going into my body. From there, I make a brain power smoothie, right? And Jim's like, wow, that's a lot of stuff. I'm saying you don't have to do everything, but as much as this you could do, you really jumpstart your brain. So we talked about great foods for your brain, right? We talked about avocado, we talked about blueberries, we talked about dark, raw chocolate with no sugar in it. We talked about green leafy vegetables. I'll put like most of those ingredients into a blender and I'll just blend it up and that's my brain smoothie. And when I'm drinking my brain smoothie, I pick up a book to read. And I think this is so important. I work with a lot of actors teaching them the speed read scripts, memorize their lines. And I remember I spent time with Will Smith. on set. And two things I got out of this. I got, number one, we were shooting from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. which is insane, right? Imagine having to adjust your sleep schedule and be ready and everything else. And I remember asking him this question. I was like, you know, how do you get ready at 3:00 in the morning, get prepared to go in front of all these cameras with hundreds of millions of dollars behind this movie? How do you show up like that and be prepared? And he's like, Jim, I don't have to get ready. He's like, I stay ready. I'm like, wow, that's a superhero mindset, right? But besides that, we were talking about how we keep ourselves fit and he's like, Jim, I do two things every single day. I run and I read. I run and I read. I do something physical and I do something mental. And when I say going back to your reading, I think it's important every day for someone to read 20, 25 minutes, 30 minutes a day because that's your mental exercise. Besides the fact, you know, I teach speed reading, right? I teach the average person to read 300% faster in like and understand more of it. So essentially read something in 15 or 20 minutes that normally takes an hour because leaders are readers. Because if somebody takes in these series, right, they have incredible experts. If someone has decades of experience and they put into a book and you can read that book in a few days, you could download decades in a days. And that's incredible unto itself because knowledge is not only power, knowledge is profit. And I don't just mean financial profit. I mean all the treasures of our life, our health, our relationships, our career and everything. I read and I teach people how to read one book a week. I did a podcast on this episode on this is how do you read a book a week? The average person reads two books a year. That's it, two books a year. The average CEO reads about four or five a month. How do you do that? Really simple. I went to Amazon and I was searching what's the medium amount of words per book? I came out with the number like 64,000 words in that book. I was like, okay, the average person reads about 200 words per minute. I divide that to together and says, okay, so that means the average book to finish is about 320 minutes. That's a lot of minutes. But I was like, well, if I divide that by seven, how many minutes is that really? Comes out to about 45 minutes a day. That's very doable, right? 45 minutes a day to read one book a week. And so leaders are readers. And so I would say read for 20 minutes or 30 minutes while I'm drinking my superpower smoothie. So from remembering my dreams to making my bed to making my superhero smoothies, that's how I start my day. So recently I was invited to the Cleveland Clinic Center for Brain Health and I was asked to do something very specific, to train the attendees, doctors, caregivers, some patients and the local community how to improve their memory and their focus. Because their initiative there, it's very powerful. They do all this incredible research in brain aging and in dementia and in Alzheimer's and they do a lot of caregiving to patients. and what they're starting to incorporate more and more is the power of prevention and the power of lifestyle. And so when I went there and we filmed all these videos and me presenting to this group of people, I addressed the things that were most presenting for them. So they wanted to talk about how to overcome absent mindedness, how to improve people's focus, how to improve their day-to-day memory, like what they ate for breakfast. that day. And sometimes even when I'm working, this is a topic that is very near and dear to my heart because my grandmother, when she passed, she was suffering from Alzheimer's, didn't recognize me and didn't know my name. And I was very young at the time and at that time I wanted to fix her, right? Because when you're going through that suffering, not only did I have my own suffering from my own brain injury at five, but a few years later when I seen my my grandmother. And when somebody is suffering in this way and they don't recognize you, I find that, yes, I teach people how to remember facts and figures in foreign languages and the like. And I think what's equally important is remember three things when it comes to your memory. Number one, you want to remember your loved ones, like my grandmother. I want to remember those people that are closest to me. Besides loved ones, I want to remember my life, right? Because I feel like that if your life is worth living, it's worth remembering. But a lot of people, they don't even remember what they had for breakfast yesterday, right? Or today. And so you want to remember those magic moments in your life. So you love your life and then finally your lessons. Your lessons. I have a friend named Mary Lou and we're talking about this definition of insanity that we've all heard, right? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. And Mary Lou was like, Jim, that's not insanity. That's just a poor memory. And what that means is some people were repeat mistakes in their life. They eat the same bad food or they get in the same bad relationship or they make the same bad investments or they hire the same bad people because they don't remember the lessons in their life, the pain and the problems. And so I think that's one of the reasons why it's important to have a good memory. And so what I was doing, and I remember even as I started training this and learning these skills, because I believe there's no such thing as a good or bad memory, there's just a trained and an untrained memory. and I would go to spend time with seniors and I would teach them these methods and even at the Cleveland Clinic I was talking to patients and sometimes I would teach a technique and talk about a lifestyle hack that's going to help them to remember more but sometimes I just got them to talk and tell stories and polish off those memories because I think one of the keys to immortality is first living a life worth remembering. What would my advice be to a parent who's watching this that wants to help their children, maybe their children are they're struggling with learning or they're struggling with their own broken brain or they're struggling in school like I was when I was a child. I would start with this. It's not how smart, the question is not how smart your children are, it's how are they smart. It's not how smart they are, it's how are they smart. I find that with children, having worked with a lot of children in this, helping them with their focus and their memory and their reading abilities and such, everybody has a preferred way of learning first of all. And so it's nice to be able to honor that. That sometimes in our traditional school system, they only reinforce two kinds of education. Like it's like mathematical or verbal linguistic, right? Like standardized tests. And I'm saying that you are not your IQ. That IQ is actually being highly disputed that your intelligence is not fixed like your shoe size. So no matter where your children are, they could have growth. Okay? So I'll come from that kind of belief. On top of that, I would say that it's not just honoring and valuing two kinds of intelligence. There's other kinds of ways that children are smart, right? And so, for example, and adults. So it could be verbal, linguistic, and it could be mathematical, but also another form of intelligence or genius is visual spatial. I mean, these are the great artists, right? These are the great architects, and that's equally important as anything else, as somebody who's great with words and great in math. Another form of intelligence is interpersonal intelligence, meaning maybe that child is really great with other children, right? And they have great connections and they're a great communicator and such. So interpersonal. I would say another form of intelligence is intrapersonal, where intrapersonal is self to others, intrapersonal is self to self. And I think an incredible superpower is self-awareness. You know, I think you can only be happiest for me, I think, is if you know who you are and if you be who you are, meaning you have the curiosity to know yourself and you have the courage to really be yourself. So intrapersonal intelligence is very important. On top of that, musical intelligence. Maybe your child is really, maybe they have trouble with, with learning math or learning languages or something like that, but they have a great musical gift, right? These are the, these are future musicians. and singers and so on and songwriters and so on. And then maybe also there's kinesthetic intelligence. Some people might have challenges with math or maybe with music, but they have incredible intelligence in the human body. And these are your athletes, these are your dancers, right? People that can move their body in ways that other people can't. So I would say I would start with working with a child. It's not how smart they are, it's how are they smart. And maybe they have other areas of intelligence. The other thing is, if I ask everybody to write down on a piece of paper your first and last name and people could do this, they write their first and last name and then, and if you're watching this, you're able to do that, do that now, and then switch over to your opposite hand and write your first and last name under it with your opposite non-dominant hand. And I think for the most part, that second time, so the first time it's faster, quality is better and it's more comfortable, right? But the second time it takes longer, it feels a little weird, uncomfortable and the quality is not quite as good. good. Sometimes what happens is when you're normally interested or your children are normally interested in a topic, but they're not getting it, sometimes they're trying to learn it with the opposite hand, meaning it takes longer, the quality is not as good, and it feels uncomfortable for them because maybe the way the teacher prefers to teach is different than the way the student prefers to learn. And it's like two ships passing in the night and they don't even see each other and there's no connection and then there's no learning. so I think as a, as you're a parent working with a student, honor their difference because their difference is what makes them special. Honor their specific learning style. Some people love to learn by basically what they see. Other people like to learn by reading something. Other people prefer to have a discussion over it. Other people like to roll up their sleeves. They're kinesthetic learners and they need to move around. And so it honored that individual. This was more like a whole self-learning right, where we're not treating everybody as assembly line, one size cookie cutter fits all kind of situation. The other thing I would say is really encourage them in the 10 things when I'm talking about lifestyle hacks, meaning give them the good diet, give them optimize their brain, right? Fix the hardware, then fix that broken brain, give them the right diet, help them with their negative thoughts, make sure they're moving every single day. Because children now, they don't have their recess. Like, a lot of that stuff is being taken out of schools. They're not moving, right? I want to, I want create an initiative where classrooms are required standing desks because they say that sitting is the new smoking, right? And being sedentary, so you have to be able to move around. So make sure that they're moving, make sure they're around positive peers, make sure they have a clean environment, all the things. Make sure they're getting sleep, make sure they're not spending too much time on their digital devices because that's rewiring children's brains. You see these children out in restaurants or anything else, they can't take them off those iPads. right? And they're really rewired. So I would keep the negative influence, the EMFs, the toxicities, check your environment for environmental mold and all the toxins that could be affecting your children. You know, I mean, for me, I like to do a lot of blood work and stuff and see food sensitivities, right? Refunctional medicine to have a good functional medicine doctor because you don't know if you're feeding your children foods that are irritating them, that they have allergies for, that's making them tired and helping them not, you know, this distracting them, that's helping them to spread out their focus. All those things matter. Everyone always wants to know what the magic pill is. There is no magic pill, but their magic processes. And you have to do every single thing to be able to fix your broken brain. If you loved that last video, you should check out the next one for sure on getting to the root cause of all disease. The moment you can become conscious and familiar with those states of mind and body, if you keep becoming familiar with it, if you keep becoming conscious of it, you won't go unconscious.